Bitcoin Forum

https://www.gldtalk.org/devteam/matonis_video.jpg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=748&v=OwO5u6OVaaA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=748&v=OwO5u6OVaaA

Jon Matonis sat down for an interview on Wednesday to clarify his recent statements (http://altcoinpress.com/2015/06/bitcoin-executive-says-21-million-cap-increase-inevitable/) regarding possible increases to Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap. He is the Founding Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, former CEO of Hushmail, and a contributor to Forbes and Coindesk.

Matonis believes it might be possible to preserve the 21 million bitcoin cap, but only if Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen) withdrawal their attempts to hard fork bitcoin by propagating Bitcoin XT to existing nodes.

"Bitcoin XT is attempting to fork the core code by propagating it through the existing nodes. I would urge Gavin and Mike Hearn to withdrawal the Bitcoin XT propagation starting today. (If Gavin and Hearn succeed) it will eventually lead to a 21 million cap change."

If two rogue developers can manage to increase the Bitcoin block size without the consensus of Bitcoin's core development team (https://bitcoin.org/en/development), Matonis believes it might then be time to kiss the 21 million Bitcoin limit goodbye.

"When we get to July 2016 someone else could propagate software so that the block reward wouldn’t go down to twelve and a half. That’s entirely possible. That is no different than what we're seeing now with the block size."

But Jon never mentioned that Gavin controls Bitcoin’s Alert Key (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts). Making him the only known Bitcoin developer with the power to send out security alerts and upgrade notices to every single Bitcoin core client. That power should never be underestimated or forgotten.

Full Story: http://altcoinpress.com/2015/06/matonis-if-bitcoin-xt-succeeds-you-can-kiss-21-million-cap-goodbye/

People would just switch back to core.  This is a non issue.

Jon explains in the video that he believes user consensus will eventually support a 21 million cap change. He uses various welfare programs as examples.

pure fud

If you will watch the first 20 minutes of video, I think you'll agree that Jon makes some excellent points. Not sure where the FUD is you mention.

Bitcoin is build on trust.
Trust of the supply.
Trust of the limit.
Trust of the value.

XT solve differents problems ... but trust ?
Trust is solve by the majority.

THIS:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes

Well, that escalated quickly...

Even if the 21 million cap is altered, who cares? We will all be dead by then!

To my understanding, those rules are unenforceable if XT succeeds and core developer consensus is by-passed.

https://bitcoin.org/en/development



Watch the video. Jon is talking about July 2016 and the possibility of the block reward not being decremented to 12 1/2.

If miners and/or nodes support a version of Bitcoin that increases the supply, it will necessarily be a hard fork
from the version of Bitcoin that keeps the supply as it is.  I know which version I'd go with and I'd venture
to say that 99% of Bitcoiners would agree.  (That's why this is pure FUD.)

EDIT:  Heck, even if 90% DISAGREE, let them have their
non-21M Bitcoin.  I'm sticking with the original.

In addition, I think you may have a misunderstanding about how consensus
works in Bitcoin.  EVERY user must consent to the rules, not just the core
developers. 

If any rules are changed that are incompatible with the existing protocol,
a fork arises.   Assuming you are running your own node, you can choose
EXACTLY what rules (what version of Bitcion) you want to use.  And
if you're not running your own node, then you can run an SPV client
that follows the set of rules you want.  It's that simple.

Then bitcoin stops being bitcoin, there are plenty of alts out there, people just move to litecoin.

If the 21M cap is changed, bitcoin will loose its core value and price will plummit. There is no point in changing the 21M cap. What will it achieve? Gavin and Mike understands that. He is just saying that to scare users off XT.

This. Let's see, we all know (users, miners, merchants, developers) that if the 21 million cap is changed in any way, the thing would fucking collapse. Who in hell wins? nobody that wants Bitcoin to be a success. So I don't think Gavin is a Kamikaze. He may have his controversial opinions on what needs to be done on BTC, but he asks for consensus. And I doubt he wants to kill the coin in purpose, so he will never change the 21 million cap, because that is an insta-kill.

Bull.

I doubt miners would see even a fleeting interest in raising the 21 million cap because they wouldn't voluntarily contribute to a reduction in the value of the coins they're earning.  Whatever the founding director of a less-than-transparent foundation thinks, it's not even a remotely likely outcome.  Attempting to tie any such willingness to promote such a change in XT is completely baseless.  Anyone could theoretically release a client at any point with an altered cap, but:

a) that doesn't mean anyone would support it
b) XT is no more likely to try to implement such a change than any other client
and
c) no one is likely to try it at all.

Slightly OT, but he also he seems to be yet another person who doesn't understand the simple fact that more users would equal more fees collected in the long term.  I cringe every time he calls it a "subsidy" just because he doesn't understand basic numerics.  It's not going to be about "free transactions" as time goes on.  If you artificially limit the number of transactions you can process, you are in turn also artificially limiting the revenue you could be collecting.  Why are people still in denial about this?  People also talk about forcing smaller transactions (that goddamned "cup of coffee" argument) off-chain, but again, this would just take away potential mining revenue and give it to whatever third party would process it instead.  

Run it through to its logical conclusion.  Most new users pick up an SPV/lightweight client and most of those clients are pre-configured to include a fee.  The vast majority of those users will have no need whatsoever to send fractions of a penny over the network.  It's only natural that over the course of time, free microtransactions will become a smaller percentage of the overall traffic being processed.  Most of them will be legitimate, fee-paying transactions.  If Bitcoin ever turns into a niche service that only a small number of people use once in a while to move a sizeable amount, that will generate less fees for miners than millions of people using it several times a day for small and medium sized purchases, plus the occasional large one.  There is no gain whatsoever in artificially limiting our target audience, so the blocksize has to accommodate them as the userbase grows.  

meh who gives a damn about the bitcoin foundation. increase how divisible it is, not how many if you are going to do anything.

to be honest, I find it scary that we are even having this discussion at all ..

Then I guess there are more ulterior motives behind XT than a 20mb block. 

obviously

Then let's officially call XT as Gavincoin just to get it's official altcoin tag out there. GVC.

Not that won't work as you will just fork to  new coin while everyone else runs the 21 M version.

Welfare programs are not comparable because you don't have a choice to opt out fiat money supply/fractional reserve banking/be the bank....until now.

Bitcoin enable the elision of sovereignty to the individual, empowered by choice force for the first time in history.

This not something any rational actor gives up.

Non rational actors exist but they die out pretty fast or are marginalized.

even if right you would just see LTC or something else take over, and not make the same mistake.

Given how hard it is to agree on a minor and obviously beneficial block size increase to 8 or 20MB, I doubt such a large and destructive change to increase 21M cap can have any chance to happen. Ever.

agree with this statement. Raising coin cap would never ever reach consensus. No one would ever be fool enough to even present this sort of change to the core principles of bitcoin.

Great interview, lots of good topics, specially touching foundation topics from the money raised from members and advocacy of the bitcoiners, he actually has some good points about the foundation turning wrong  into crafting regulations.

If there was no one holding a gun to my head, I would say let's go with core developer consensus. The BIP process and democratic methods of core seem to be in the best spirit and best interest of Bitcoin.

However, there is a gun to my head. And I don't want to be murdered in cold blood. Thus, I must side with the person that has his paws on Bitcoin's alert key. I don't see how a consensus, on any level, can overturn the rule and mandate of our mighty Bitcoin Führer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrer).

Are you serious?  You run an altcoin and a crypto news site and you can't figure out how consensus works?  I have to thing you aren't that dumb and are just fudding.

The so called 'alert key' is just part of the code, it doesn't do anything except send a warning message, and it too can be forked away from Gavin should the community arrive at a consensus to do so.

this is one of those unnecessary changes, just for the sake of changes... instead of concentrating on more important thing like the tx limit, they waste time talking about thing that do not need any fix and they work fine

one thing that could be changed in the future is the minimum divisibility of bitcoin, if 1 satoshi will be too big in value(aka 1 dollar ecc...)

uhh, I'm interested in Bitcoin, just because there is already known cap and until now I lived in some stupid dream, that it is "mantra" which can't be changed by any circumstances..omg, first this block size discussion, now this shit..

Well, once it comes up there "won't be an alternative" because "network security" and there will also be this mob of sheep-zombies that support that shit much in the same way they support Gavincoin now. Raising the 21M limit will be sold to you as "what the community wants" and "what will bring in big money" and all that punchlines ...

And i mean... after sheep fell for Gavincoin it's really not that big of an issue to raise the limit on coins, really. It could become even inevitable when after a blocksize increase the growth predictions for txs don't happen and that fee market is never established because of it. Running a bloated blockchain with lots of microtx-spam on hot air is hard to do (mind you blocks should grow automatically instead of raising fees in Gavins' phantasy, so with Gavin there will be no fees only endless increase in blocksize). So raising the limit on max coins will be easy once the projected growth isn't happening. People will cheer "network security" and "longevity" to that and there will be talks about big investors now finally buying that BS and so on and so forth ...

I think that right there is a much more interesting topic!!!


edit:

well, there is that thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1102455.0

Why wouldn't miners support an increase in cap? If they can keep mining 25 coins instead of 12.5, ofcourse they are in! Price won't be cut in half, so they win out..

If only the Core developers would finally agree to raising the block limit we would not have these problems. I've always questioned the hidden motives from both parties.
We can't really know what they are up to, we can just speculate.

I'm pretty sure that even if it comes to this, everyone would either: a) return to Core; b) abandon Bitcoin.
There's no way that I'm staying if it comes to that. Such a move would put Bitcoin in the same bag as the Federal Reserve.

Because that would lead to inflation, which reduces the value of each coin.  They might get more coins, but each coin would be worth less.  You have no way of guaranteeing that the price wouldn't be cut in half, or worse.  If enough people dumped their coins and jumped ship because they don't approve of that change, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Bitcoin could return to sub $1 prices.  But again, it's barely even possible that enough people would support that change for even the slightest chance of it actually happening.  So it's not an issue.  And also to reiterate again, attempting to tie this highly unlikely scenario to what's currently happening with XT is baseless and unwarranted.

If you want to pay me what my bitcoins are worth @ the 21 million cap level then fine, if not then no way i support the change, think most of other people would see it this way until bitcoin is more mainstream.

XT is not proposing raising the 21 million cap.  But I'm sure the OP in this thread was hoping a few people might believe that. 

To clarify, someone who was a founding member of a slightly shady and not particularly transparent Bitcoin advocacy group thinks that if a fork is possible to increase the blocksize, a fork is also possible to increase the coin cap.  However, in reality, the likelihood of one bears no relevance whatsoever to the likelihood of the other.

cool.

IMHO, just the fact that people are ready to throw Gavin under the bus for associating with Hearn
leads me to believe the community is far too alert and aware to ever consider raising the 21M.
Such a non issue here.

ad hominem

There's a very short list of people that matter in development. They will figure out what's best for us. We really have no say anyway.

Wladimir J. van der Laan
Gavin Andresen
Jeff Garzik
Gregory Maxwell
Pieter Wuille
Luke Dashjr
Matt Corallo
Mike Hearn  
Peter Todd   

Matonis isn't in this group so his opinion doesn't matter.  

I've been shouting since 2013 that the max "hard" cap was not written in stone and that Roger Ver and Andreas were shills and the max cap would be changed.  I even had a debate on twitter with Voorhees about it when I posted a screenshot where it's actually listed as one of the risks in the Bitcoin ETF application.

It's amazing how I posted that in black and white everywhere and not one person noticed or even believed it.

Face it, Bitcoin worshippers, Bitcoin has been hijacked by banks, corporations and the government.

Enjoy the ride [and the drama].

keep shouting for all I care.  the max cap isn't changing.  And if it does, we won't use that fork.  have fun with your fud.

If the pools agree you will use the fork of their choice and love it.  Cause nobody will be able to secure your personal choice.  And any attempt to secure that chain by "the sheep" would be futile.  These massive pools could easily dedicate a small portion of their hash power to kill any attempt to secure any undesired fork.

There is no democracy in Bitcoin, you all have eaten propaganda for years and are too clueless to see it.

The only thing keeping this fork from happening are the Chinese pools who control about 60% of the Bitcoin network.  If they agree then you and all the other so called purists are gonna eat a massive increase in max cap and beg for more.

Welcome to reality!

I agree.  If everyone uses the same code, that's what Bitcoin will be.  it's called consensus.

The probability of everyone deciding to abandon the 21M limit is slim to none.

Unless you were able to make people believe it would have 'broad support in the community' and it is what 'bitcoin needs to grow' and 'who is against it must not have the best interest for btc in mind' and all that shit ... List goes on of course.
All you gotta achieve is to let a minority of apes believe they would be a majority on a mission for a great future and off do they go on a sanctuary mission to convert the heretics to also support increase max coins because "it will be the only way bitcoin can survive longterm" (without fees) and "even Satoshi wrote it down this way" ... and all that populist crap ...

If the community is that stupid, it would deserve it  :P

... should be pointed out to any newbe how toxic this environment actually is ...

At BTCtalk the rule is:  "i dig you a hole and if you fall into it you're a fool for doing so and deserve it. I on the other hand just helped you to see a truth about yourself by digging that hole for you in the first place and am a good man for doing this for you."

Yeah, man, this is how i can see bitcoin succeed. We all need to be that way! Thanks man! Great shit!

I think Gavin is actually doing a good thing for Bitcoin.

He is trying to leverage his position to make a change the community doesn't appear to support.  It is important that he fails miserably at trying to force this through to reassure Bitcoin's resiliency.  As mentioned by Matonis, if this succeeds, where does it end?  Gavin must fail at this and be shown that he is not bigger than Bitcoin, which is the only positive that can come from this.  If he succeeds, it is good that we discovered the Bitcoin project is a failure before it grew any further.

Well yeah, just need to make sure that doesn't happen by calling out the bullshit when it happens. Not sure what can be done about the amount of Gavincoin shills on Reddit but I suppose that's to be expected.

Increasing the cap would be disastrous, wondering if Mantonis smoked a bowl before attending the interview.

I don't really get your point although I detect a tone of sarcasm.

MY point is that if people agree to something as idiotic as changing the 21M,
there is really no hope at all.   Fortunately, I don't think that is the case.
In fact, bitcoiners appear to be MUCH more intelligent, free thinking,
and independent than the general "sheeple" population that is so easily
persuaded by mass media.


You're giving marijuana a bad name.  No amount of weed would make someone that stupid.

The problem is that most people aren't even running their own nodes anymore, let alone mining at any real scale to have an opinion.  The businessmen with the money invested in giant mining centers are the ones who will ultimately make the call, and they will choose what is most profitable (i.e. them not having to take a block reward cut).  Blame those who supported cloud mining & manufacturers building their own mining centers for causing the centralized network.  We've seen the direction that greed takes money, and it's printing more money.  Now we get to watch as greedy well capitalized businessmen destroy what we all love so dearly.  Just a shame that the push is coming from Gavin.  He's supposed to be the protector, but he's trying to turn into a one man FED.

I respect your opinion more than most here OG and especially because you are or have actually been in the mining business.

Still, what you are saying implies that increasing the supply will increase the revenue,
which is a theory I haven't heard before and sounds specious to me.

Even disregarding the fact that increasing the limit would absolutely DEVASTATE
confidence and cause the price to plummet like a stone... I think that if you increase the
supply, the price will be lower with the same demand, so the revenue will be
the same.

Also, while people may not be running full nodes, they are choosing which SPV system's
rules to follow.  So I don't really buy into the argument that not running full nodes takes
away the consensus power of the user base.

No.  Not increasing the revenue (market cap growth), redistributing it primarily to those in control.  Same old story.

It can be something more behind it, maybe first attempt to divide bitcoin chain. Create alt-Bitcoin and maybe destroy some principal rules imposed by Satoshi.
If ever something so critical like number of bitcoin will change I will quit. You simply cannot change some things.

Sorry, I don't quite follow.  No matter, I agree its good to keep a close eye on Gavin and what's he's up to.

Also its irresponsible of Matonis to imply there could ever be a coin increase, even if he has good intentions of
stopping the XT fork.

I don't think it's irresponsible. It's always good to be warned on possible negative outcomes to prepare ourselves.

Crowd behavior can be pretty irrational. If I take a look at threads on reddit where quite a few people begging for Gavin to take leadership and override consensus I get a very bad feeling. Uninformed masses often only go after short term rewards which can have disastrous consequences.

ya.ya.yo!

I don't believe that  :'(

I strongly doubt if that would happen.... But even if it did. What difference does it make whether there is a cap (in the distant future) of 21 million, or 85 million, or whatever?

And since the actual number in fact makes no difference at all, why the heck would anyone even bother to change it? (provided they could do so in the first place)

lol, what? Not gona happen.

Just wondering... Who among them support Gavincoin?

Wladimir J. van der Laan
Gavin Andresen
Jeff Garzik
Pieter Wuille
Luke Dashjr
Matt Corallo
Mike Hearn

^ ?

If user consensus supports an increase, and one is possible to put into effect, it will happen. No amount of dev solidarity can block a fork like that - if most users want it, someone will do the work.

Well surprise surprise, another FUD thread from the same guy, and from his so called "news" site.
Don't you understand noone gives it any credibility? The max. cap is Crucial part of bitcoin , and it is not going to change, the community won't allow that.

You would need both exchanges and miners to agree on the change, and both of them have nothing to gain from that increase.
Bitcoin XT has nothing to do with 21 million cap. so you can kiss your theory and FUD goodbye.

cheers

If the cap is altered you can kiss bitcoin goodbye.

Wait, what?  I can't tell if I'm reading that wrong somehow or if it's sarcasm, because I normally find your posts quite agreeable.  The entire debate is about the possible risk of mining centralisation versus the possible risk of not being able to accommodate more users on the blockchain and therefore force them off-chain into the hands of centralised payment processors (which is just a different kind of centralisation).  

It's odd that someone would place blind faith in the developers alone to decide the outcome, because that would mean Bitcoin is already centralised in a sense (developer centralisation, yet another kind).  The very fact that we get to decide which fork to support is a guarantee that no one group or individual can become entrenched and make all the decisions about how the network is run.  Of all the types of decentralisation, the ability for the users securing the network being able to enact change by running another client is vital.  We should never allow a small minority to dictate what Bitcoin is or should be, otherwise we run the risk of encouraging corruption and repeating the mistakes of fiat money.

With regard to mining centralisation, personally, I don't foresee a larger blocksize leading to that.  As the block reward diminishes over time, fees will become increasingly important to incentivise miners to continue securing the network, so naturally fees need to increase overall.  The question is, do you make individual users pay a higher amount?  Or do you allow the number of transactions to increase and collect a greater quantity of fees.  A larger number of users sending more transactions will naturally generate more fees.  In turn, more fees should encourage more miners to secure the network and pay for any additional bandwidth they need to use (not less miners, like people keep assuming for reasons that still don't make any sense).  If Bitcoin does ever turn into a niche plaything for the wealthy elites, just sending the odd large transaction every once in a while and everyone else is using something else to send small and medium sized payments, the "something else" they're using will probably attract more miners because of the higher transaction volume and the larger quantity of fees.

Obviously I can't guarantee it will turn out that way.  No one knows for certain what the outcome will be, because it all depends on adoption.  If adoption of crypto does surge and Bitcoin can't accommodate the extra users, which is the more likely outcome?

a)  Users either put up with having to guess what fee they need to include to guarantee their transaction is confirmed in a reasonable time, or go off-chain and risk trusting a centralised service with their money
or
b)  Users flock to another network that doesn't have an arbitrary 1MB cap, which can accommodate more transactions on a blockchain and confirms quickly without higher fees and guessing games

People tend to make the assumption that a larger blocksize would encourage more microtransactions or other transactions sent without a fee.  To an extent, that's possible (but not a certainty by any means), so there is a balance to be struck to ensure there is space enough for legitimate fee-paying transactions, but not so much space that most of the traffic being processed doesn't give any reward for the miners securing the network.  1MB almost certainly isn't enough, but how much is too much?  That's where most of the discourse seems to focus, and rightly so.  Balls to all this nonsense about the 21 million cap, that's just a distraction by people who don't want us to focus on the real issue, which is scalability versus decentralisation and the potential consequences of getting it wrong.

I don't think anyone would want to change the 21 million cap. The obvious reason for raising the block size limit is 7 transactions per second is not a sustainable rate for mass adoption.

Let me get it right. The meaning put out here is that basically if Gavin goes ahead to fork the coin without getting majority consensus, there's a possibility that one day they will also change the cap limit as and when they want to. I think basically the issue here is how do we determine what level of consensus we are talking about. When it comes to the larger block size, I believe there are 2 camps of people, one opposes it and another one agree. The question is how many each camp is dominating? if 60% says okay and the rest says no, the 40% can also claim that we did not get full majority.

Yes, it's sarcasm. I'm making fun of the fact the devs can do pretty much what ever they want to do. We can bitch and whine about it but really we only have two options after they make a change - continue to use Bitcoin - refuse to use Bitcoin. That's the extent of our power.

You guys don't get it, this has become another Nuclear arms race between nations.

Gavin and those backing him cannot do whatever they want cause China controls 60% of the network.  If they don't get the Chinese to agree then Bitcoin's storyline changes completely and becomes fiat 2.0.  The story behind Bitcoin was bullishit all along and I've been on record calling out Andreas et al as paid shills and liars but they really can't afford to make it obvious until After mass adoption which is another 1-2 years away.

After that happens you can bet Bitcoin is gonna go closed source, the fed will take over and once everyone is in the blockchain there will be no turning back so everyone will have to shut up and deal with it.

So until then, Gavin and the bankers pushing him will have to reach some sort of compromise in order to get consensus - especially the massive Chinese mining pools, which are absolutely owned and operated by the Chinese government.  Crypto has just become very political, on every level, including national security.

If the value of bitcoin matters, than the cap matters immensely.

It could be argued that Bitcoin is build on utility and scarcity.

Perceived future scarcity is one of the key drivers of current value. If people now perceive that the scarcity is not really trustworthy.. and can be pushed back.. that really damages the entire foundation of bitcoin (and of course the value).

has everyone gone apeshit crazy lately? Noone can think straight. The gov't and bankers given us drugs that make us stupid? What the hell?

LOL, suffer from paranoid delusions much? :P With you tin foil hat guys it's impossible to believe anyone is actually just a good guy trying to be honest. Everything must be hidden in secrecy and conspiracies. If you think like that nothing good will come of anything ever.

No kidding. I was stupid to start with and I understand how crazy this is. I'm about as threatened by this as by MintChip.

LOL  It was only a matter of time.

He's right to question these people, but I think his analysis is wrong.

My Take:

The elite powerbrokers of this planet (the ostensible conspirators) know about the inherent stability flaws in a debt-based monetary system. They also have an awareness of the cumulative nature of technological progress. And lastly, they have an awareness of the changing of "defining eras". We are currently in the crossover between the Corporate Era and the Information Era.

The use of information technology to develop and run game theory scenarios is now highly advanced, and the power elite use these kind of tools to examine as many possible configurations and outcomes as they deem, which they no doubt do exhaustively. I think they have come to a conclusion: that the confluence of the major factors mentioned in the previous paragraph (debt-based money, exponentially accumulating technological progress, shift into the Information age) means that government as we know it from the 20 century is not viable given these dominant trends. They are planning to exit stage left.

Take a look around you; the evidence abounds.

indeed, something strange is happening:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/09/us-cities-homicide-surge-2015/29879091/
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/7/8908073/heroin-abuse-deaths-united-states-cdc
http://abcnews.go.com/US/global-shark-attacks-rise-surprising-reasons/story?id=31799899

Next stop: raining frogs and plagues of locusts  ;D