Bitcoin Forum

to all those constantly say Bitcoin will take over the world and to the moon,
check out video interview with Mike Hearn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMIzMVABFxQ#t=135

~CfA~

I am partially satisfied with the Mike[from video]

However some facts were wrong :)

ROFL thx for ur competent developer opinion :)

~CfA~

I think if the Bitcoin Developers do not start creating a demand for bitcoin it will continue to fall down. It seems they are just sitting back dumping it much like other places, waiting for it to either collapse or for someone else to do what they should be doing and creating a demand for it. with no demand for their coin, it will fail. The newest places accepting bitcoin are not helping secure its future, when they are picked up the value does not increase, like DELL, why because its not creating a demand for the coin, new people are not rushing out to buy it, they are just simply giving a way for people who already have bitcoins to unload their coins, and in turn places like dell just dumnp them for fiat, this system only pushes the value of bitcoin down, because for the moment demand is not the value setting point for bitcoin, what is setting its value right now is simply the people buying it and selling it on the market, and right now the sellers are winning :)

Could you elaborate? Are you talking about things Mike Hearn said or what are you pointing at? I guess he has a pretty good idea of what he's talking about still, even if he isn't that deeply involved as others anymore!

Only the bitcoin adopters think bitcoin to will rise to the moon and deploy around the earth.In reality people its just another fantasy of people who love bitcoin

all developpers want "the saint graal" of software.
in P2P environment, it's impossible.

when a thing work ... all people use it ... even if it's a alpha or beta product.

standard norms (ISO, CE, ROHS) is for customs services only ... not for internet connected software.
that's why P2P work very good and flawless even if they "stay" in alpha stage product.

The underlying cryptography or way Bitcoin works is sound. If it wasn't someone would have exploited it by now. At least nowadays no one knows how to break the cryptography in place. The things that are 'fragile' is merely the way Bitcoin is implemented and how it scales when the number of people who use Bitcoin increases still.

Core developers like Hearn, Andresen, Garzik and Maxwell are sane voices whose words of realism drown in the noise spewed by the bulltards. Core developers actually seem to understand the inherent limitations of Bitcoin, and the fact that we're a very long way off (5+ years) from mainstream adoption, if it ever starts.

Contrast Hearn's statements with Andreas's here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq8yOMl8IUs#t=16m32s).

-Andreas Antonopoulos

and with Jeff Garzik's TED talk, Bitcoin the Organism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaPgfErzeu0)

Good point . bitcoin is still in its infancy , but technically it's not fragile .
 The only thing i worry about it's the dirty exchanges  ::)

Dirty exchanges?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EVg5agOroCI/TvjlWRG-jgI/AAAAAAAAAEc/IJjS6hWNSmM/s1600/hook.jpg

Bitcoin is in fact highly anti-fragile.

Time will show, until it stabilizes.

I think the fragile factor of BTC is the competition between alt currencys which of some have creative features and strong utility. Although it is still number one cryptocurrency, it still face pressure to survive. In order to survive, it needs to evolve to keep its pioneering condition.

LOL nice useless comment dude

~CfA~

Fragile compared to what?  Fiat needs bailing out by the taxpayer every couple of decades.

Watched the video, not sure where he said anything negative about Bitcoin.

He's merely talking from a developers perspective, and cites the "Malleability issue" when Mt. Gox lost all those coins.

Basically talking code problems when a technology is just 5 years in.

For bitcoin to be able to go any further I do agree that it does need more demand and that is going to take a while. I would not say that it's not possible for bitcoin to go far just that it needs more work and more demand.

Well of course it is, the version is 0.9.2.x which is still relatively new software.
Imagine just how fragile the altcoins are then?
Bitcoin is okay for now, but the development has to step up. I'm hoping that before v1.0 we see some serious issues being fixed.

Hilarious to claim(vaguely) that    Bitcoin Dev is not a believer in Bitcoin..  Where do you come up with stuff?  If he breaks down his opinion on Bitcoin and says it not perfect then say that but don't try and make it seem like he doesn't believe in Bitcon because that is exactly what I took form the OP.  The Dev's have said in the past Bitcoin needs real work and time invested into it so we all know it's not perfect.  Many things could be better but that doesn't change the benefits it already brings to it's users.  I just find this thread to be misleading, and don't know what the point is unless you're trying to have a discussion on ways Bitcoin could be improved?  ;)

Different people different height of thoughts.We must accept bitcoin is a currency evolved out of vain the fragility of these things can just be guessed so simply,as its has peaked up so easily it could go down more simpler

In order for demand to increase one thing that needs to be fixed is how to do a transaction quickly. Another thread on here discusses the impractically of using it for day to day life like you can with cash, debit, or credit. The person wanted to pay his bar tab and the bar wants tips on a separate transaction. He had to sit and wait for 10 minutes for the first one to process.

Bitcoin has a long way to go to get there.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=758927.0

Now, I'm about to watch this video to hear for myself this "Malleability issue" that took down Mt Gox.

Most people don't know or don't want to know that Bitcoin software is still beta quality. There are very few core developpers (~3?, 1 full time and paid) and very difficult code to design and write.
We shouldn't confuse the ideas of bitcoin as described by Satoshi in his seminal whitepaper with the actual implementation. Mike wants to remind all of us that there is a lot of work to do. The malleability issue is a good example. The problem was known for years to the guys who worked closely on the core. But again, that's very few people. MtGox implemented their account tracking and they didn't take it into consideration. Someone took advantage of it and scammed them.  Surely not as much as they claim though. In another case, someone found out an integer overflow in the code and used it to create a transaction that generated billions of bitcoins. The blockchain had to be rolled back and all transactions cancelled. Imagine what kind of disaster that would be now. Also, the network code could be overwhelmed by DDOS, or the network split. I could go on and on but I see the drift.

In short, there are many many many very tough software challenges. They are not impossible to solve. But he warns us that they lack resources to fix them and hence we are at a point where mass adoption could very well destroy bitcoin now.

This person's issue was related to the wallet he was using not anything specific to bitcoin itself. It is possible (and common) to spend inputs from an unconfirmed transaction.

Additionally, for most transactions the amount of time it takes to be sure enough that a TX will be confirmed without having an excess amount of risk is very small, generally under 10 seconds, as once a transaction is properly propagated it is very difficult to double spend any of the same inputs (without spending a lot of money). 

It's very risky to accept a transaction that uses inputs from an unconfirmed transaction so we shouldn't expect businesses to do so.

There will always be critics, these people are the same type of people that are talking down the economic recovery that is happening in the West as well.

the fact is that Bitcoin has no flaws, the only implementations it needs are the Global ID and the Central Authority and this will bring the large Business players off the sidelines and get Bitcoin way back up to the level its should be, i mean think about it ....

there are only 21 Million !

in theory Bitcoin should be trading at 10,000 its only this Central authority and the Global ID, the Central Authority can properly secure the monopoly and the ID system will ensure no double spends.

basically the perfect Digital money.

Jeebus. Not this again.


'Bitcoin is perfect! All it needs is to abandon its most essential characteristic - its decentralized nature!'

 ::)

Moving on...

Devs develop. It's kinda 'what they do'. If the code was in an ideal state, development would cease. It would no longer have developers. Yeah, that's a tautology. But is seems that some must be told this essential fact.

Of course the primary developers see room for improvement. Otherwise it wouldn't need devs.

Technically, the big problems with Bitcoin in its existing form are:
- Confirmations are too slow.
- The block chain is too big.
- Micropayments are too expensive to process.
- Mining is too centralized.

All are technically fixable, and fixes have been proposed. All of those, though, are incompatible with the present blockchain.

It's always possible that Ethereum might have a brighter future than Bitcoin? Small & nimble development team, rebuilding the idea of a blockchain based on the limitations of Bitcoin's blockchain, and now they have $15 million to put towards development.

I'm already not liking the how this coin is coming on to the scene but I wish all the early investors all the best of luck along with the development team.  All I would like is a solid coin that is worth investing into for the long term.  Tired of all these alts that are not made to last long term and not doing anything for the progression of the coins overall or the communities that use and support them. 

With due respect to Mike, the human element is what ultimately makes bitcoin resilient. No matter what current problems exist, there is a huge body of people with incentives & knowhow to keep bitcoin going.

Real world example: March 2013 chain fork recovery. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki

Theoretical example: If the core SHA256 hashing algorithm is compromised, software cannot automatically recover from that. It will be humans who decide the best course of action for the network to take. It will be other humans who evaluate that judgement, and agree (by downloading & using new software) or disagree.

Every time I hear this story I wonder.. Why aren't big vested partners -- like Coinbase, BitPay, etc. -- in the bitcoin space are not doing more to address development.

I agree, they have a lot of pull and skin in the game. It is in their best interest for bitcoin to succeed.
They should team up and set up a bitcoin lab or a site for promoting development like other big brands do for various causes and technologies.

Bitpay pays jgarzik to work full time on core development. You're right about the others of course.

To be honest I think this is the list of the most overhyped problems.

- Confirmations - slow for what scenario? propagation is almost instant, confirmation is faster than any previous system.

- Big for your 20GB hard drive and ADSL connection?

- Micropayments - again, show me an other system which is unlimited, independent and has lower fees?

- Mining centralization - as always if it gets centralized people will vote with their "wallets"

I really hope the devs won't rush any changes. With a project like this everything has to be tested and thought through properly.

But while we figure it out, the entire system is offline and what does the economy do in the meantime?

Too true. For those who can't find him on the list, it's because he's way down at #81. Do an edit -> find "hearn"

Recommended watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHUPPYzzZrI

Look at the remittances market, that alone is worth over 500 billion a year. And mark my words, Bitcoin will eat every penny. You know why? Because Western Union and the others are parasites who steal 20-30% of the money they process. 20-30%! It's outrageously greedy price-gouging highway robbery.
How long until people realize they are needlessly throwing their hard-earned money - and these are POOR people we're talking about here - down the toilet? They will ALL switch to bitcoin, just like EVERYONE stopped using Blockbuster video to pay $5 for one movie rental once Netflix came online.
This will happen sooner rather than later, because people prefer to have money rather than throw it away.
--> http://www.coindesk.com/philippines-startups-fulfil-bitcoins-remittance-promise/

Iran exports around 200 thousand barrels of oil to China every day. That's $20 million worth of oil being exported every day. The Iranian and Chinese are not idiots. So there is or will emerge at some point a HUGE MARKET DEMAND for being able to transact $20 million of value in cyberspace every day.
The daily volume currently traded in Bitcoin is MINISCULE relative to the potential volume. A tiny fraction of a fraction of it's potential use-cases. Ask yourself how much the bitcoin price would have to rise to make the daily volume $20 billion, for example.

Now look at cash transfers in Africa, look at MPESA, http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2014/06/cash-transfers-africa
Look at the situation in Argentina. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__m-w4N7NI

Point is, there's a cornucopia of industries, services, dire situations, and absolutely awful inflated, worthless fiat-scrip currencies just BEGGING to be swallowed up by Bitcoin.

The only question for each of them, is when. Not if, when.

If the software protocol (rule set) is broken or not working effectively enough then you need to stop all connections and implement a change. Bitcoin is a set of rules that connects clients together to make magic happen because all the clients know what to do and they do it all by the rules that are set up. You may have a little thing that needs to be fixed that is in the wrapper. You have to stop everyone's connection (shut down the network) put in your little fix (give everyone worldwide a new copy of the fix) and then restart everyone. If the change is small and you tested it well for every outcome then we all march along happily ever after. What if the change is big? What if the base set of rules that make your release work needs to be changed because it was broken from the start? Your little test net group most likely won't be big enough to discover every problem and everyone around the world will be running a broken Bitcoin. What the economy will do in meantime is sit static waiting for the fix. There will be issues that can't be corrected because it's to late the damage is done (think Mt Gox - malleability). But what are the draw backs of not fixing the problem, not taking the risk? Then you end up with an even bigger problem because your are shutting down an even larger economy that can have even more damage done and even more lost money. There is no logical choice other than to fix the problems now and that's not really a good choice it's just the only thing you can do. That's the problem with letting this little experiment get so large before you fix big issues.

As a dev when you work at a big company then you benefit from a group of sometimes thousands of computer scientists and software engineers working on the same problems. We have a test-net and a handful of volunteer and paid professional and semiprofessional programmers some working only part time. They have done a great job so far making sure that things stay running and fixed but they have a working disadvantage. Bitcoin has been balancing on the edge of sword since it's release. You need a lot of users to drum up interest in development and you need a lot of developers before you have a lot of users spend money.

I still have a feeling that bitcoins is in its early stages. The philosophy of bitcoin rising to the moon can seem true if bitcoin is infant now. Moreover BTC is spreading fast now.

I believe he worked mostly on the BitcoinJ implementation and he is the #1 contributor there

https://github.com/bitcoinj/bitcoinj/graphs/contributors

Most small minners connecting to big pools, instead of p2pool or solomining. But in the GPU age most miners were in the big pools as well... Does something really changed in the last two years? I think not much...

I guess infancy compared to the transactions being made.
The numbers are still too small. The security is solid but the transactions do not compare to the smallest of countries.

I was just trying to point out that any suspension of service would be catastrophic for the economy. If bitcoin is used by everyone and no one can do any purchase while developers fix and deploy a new version, we would be back to the stone age. The user I was replying to didn't seem to realize that software that must run 99.999999999% of the time must be treated very differently.
Bitcoin has a long road ahead but hopefully it can grow slowly just like the internet did.

If done correctly and soon I think even major changes don't have to be catastrophic for the economy. The way changes are implemented determines the effect. It's better to know about a vulnerability and fix it now than to recover from the exploit later. Some things will always need to be fixed. Isn't it better to tackle the large problems now rather than wait until the economy is even larger?

All Hearn is really saying is that Bitcoin needs more developers. I'm saying it needs more professional paid full time developers and fewer free time hobby developers. Of course he's not going to say that because it's insulting to his colleagues.

It is not actually possible to "turn off" or "disable" the bitcoin software. That is not a feature of bitcoin. The closest thing to this that could happen is to recommend that users not spend any of their bitcoin. This did happen somewhat when Gox announced that they were suspending withdrawals due to malleability as other exchanges followed, however mining still very much continued and people that had bitcoin in wallets they controlled personally still were able to and did spent their bitcoin.  

Theorically, not possible. In practice if the software crashes or worse produces unexpected results it will be down.

I was replying to someone who had a fairly casual approach to bug fixing. If it breaks, no worry we'll fix it.

Whether bitcoin needs full time developpers or hobbyists is open to discussion but we need to a way to rollback. I'm sure that everyone in the software business will agree that using production to test out high scale deployments is bad idea. Doing so without rollback is crazy. Now the economy is already pretty large but still minuscule compared to the real world yet we are not generally concerned about the product stability.

The topic is "Bitcoin Core Developer says Bitcoin Too Fragile and in its Infancy". Immediately some people jumped and called him ignorant, biased, etc. Ready to put his head on a pike for blasphemy.
In my opinion, if we want to have it reach out to everyone and be a serious competitor to Fiat or even VISA it is too fragile and in its infancy. This is not a bad thing. Everything has to start small. It's a serious problem if we think it's ready when it's not.

Everyone who is running QT has the software running independently of eachother. if the software crashes on one person's computer, it will not necessarily crash on someone else's computer. Also the remedy to software crashing like this would be to simply restart either the software or the computing running the software.

Hearn the "visionary" is much over-rated methinks, we shall see.

Got to admire him for having a go with his Lighthouse venture, how is that going btw?

Hint: guys who know about networks and build protocols don't do java ... except maybe for a hobby.

ahh and it kind of has in case you haven't noticed ...

which means its perfect as it is , but now the monopoly is breaking down, so if Bitcoin loses the initiative and drops the ball with the monopoly kiss the price valuation goodbye.

so thus a central "price maker" authority is needed and this will require an essential "verification system"

I totally agree. All those huge, richly-backed companies should be providing multiple core developers to work on Bitcoin. It's not fair that they're riding on the shoulders of a small number of core developers who are basically doing all the grunt work for free.

Weee! Let's talk more about what other people should do, while we spend time browsing forum

I have a feeling most of the core developers are early adopters and have a substantial amount of Bitcoin already, so they are incentivized to contribute and thus increase the value of their holdings. You don't just quit a cushy job at Google out of compassion. Also, throwing money at a problem does not equate to solving it.

Mike Hearn is an incredibly talented and creative dev. He truly gets the wider reaching applications of the blockchain and has added tremendous value to Bitcoin. I find his level headedness refreshing and necessary. You don't have to agree with everything he says. Give the guy a break and more importantly some fucking respect. /rant

Nonsense. Looking at GitHub/bitcoin, I see that pull request 4839 was merged a mere 2 hours ago.


What monopoly are you speaking of? Bitcoin in relation to other cryptos? That natural (not enforced) monopoly is trending greater all the time. Do you know how natural monopolies come about? By the monopolizer being vastly superior as compared to all the wannabe contenders.


Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaha. Perhaps you have not noticed, but the community is unified in the principle that your 'centralized authority' model is A Bad Idea. You have scarcely more chance of convincing otherwise than you do of cracking satoshi's private key on a 1998 era palm pilot.

As others have pointed out: rather than tilting at this windmill, your time would be more productively spent in creating a spinoff alt with the centralization you desire.

Nonsense.  

Its hilarious to me that they think mainstream adoption is going to come first, and *THEN* they will add the necessary features to support it.   Smh ....

It is now that we need the features for the products 5 years from now.  Only a developer would use the logic that we can put these enhancements off 5 years.   That is suicide.  Any idiot with an ounce of knowledge of product development, marketing, and business trends knows:  You create it now.   Always.

You wait 5 years for mainstream adoption and there wont BE any mainstream adoption.   Incorporate the changes now.  Give the financial industry and innovators in the Bitcoin space what they need to start creating products for 5 years from now.  Do nothing, and nothing will happen.  Bitcoin will only go as far as it can go, and then it will stop.   We have already established that consumers have zero incentive to use Bitcoin in its current form.   So how exactly does Gavin think mainstream adoption will be coming?  

Developers should not be making product development decisions.  Period.

Andreas has always said Bitcoin is fine the way it is, but it is also the first "programmable money". Capable of evolving and addressing market needs. After 2 years in this space I have zeen zilch as far as that goes.

-B-

Generally, I agree. The sooner you can add features, the better.

But what features do you think are required? The only thing that I can think of that would be an unqualified improvement is a solution to the 51% quandary. But that would not be a feature - it would be a complete re-architecting of the system. Further, it is dependent upon a breakthrough invention.

After its launch few years before, bitcoin raised its value from beings few dollars to more than 1000 dollars by 2012. According to an investor this price variation is too fragile. I do agree that bitcoin might still be in its infancy due to much variation going on..

Bitcoin has crossed into a certain period of evolution how could a developer say it's infancy still?

I don't think it is really possible to solve the problem of being vulnerable to a 51% attack. An attacker could simply mine from various geographic locations to various BTC addresses to hide the fact that each of his mining farms is part of a potential large percentage of the network.

that's how bitcoin devs miss the boat while irrational average Joes become the next "Loaded"

I don't think it is so much the price, but is rather the stability of the network. There are still a number of ways that a well funded attacker could attempt to attack the bitcoin network and wreck havoc on the bitcoin network and on bitcoin itself.

Best response in this thread so far.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Captain Ulterior-Motive!

I think saying Bitcoin is "really fragile", conjuring images of a shipment of chinaware, is a bit misleading.

One could say the US multi-trillion dollar economy and infrastructure is fragile and defenseless to physical and cyber attacks on its power grid. Yet life goes on.

What's missing is the countermeasure argument. There are all sorts of what-if potential problems all around us, all the time. That doesn't mean we fear getting out of bed each day. What I mean is, sure, Bitcoin isn't perfect nor completely invulnerable to attack, but that can be said for lots of things. However, what I do believe is it's incredibly resilient due to the resourcefulness of its supporters. That counts for a lot.

That's one of my problems with Mike, its like the guy has no idea how his glib little statements impact the larger ecosystem he's working on.
Not quite BP "We're Sorry" kind of gaffe, but certainly up there considering how much effort and money has been invested in the Bitcoin sphere.

While I appreciate the work Hearn has contributed so far, he is a proponent of blacklisting. He got such a huge backlash last year when he came out for it, though, I believe he'd never get such a thing implemented. Fixing malleability, as I understand it, has more to do with how businesses implement the Bitcoin protocol, not a problem with the protocol itself. It's a "best practice" kind of solution.

There is not that big of a demand for development right now. There are really very few things that are known to are needing to be addressed.

What needs to happen is the bitcoin network to be attacked, and changes should be made to address the vulnerabilities exposed in the attack. Until this happens there is not a lot to develop. 

I guess infancy compared to the transactions being made.
The numbers are still too small. The security is solid but the transactions do not compare to the smallest of countries.

Not sure you read the Risk Management Study 2014 by Jim Harper.

Possible threats (there are many, just naming a few here with the higher likelihood according to the report):

DS4: A significant bug exists in the code.
DM1: Mining becomes too expensive for anyone but a small number of specialists.
DN2: There is no benefit to running a node, the number of nodes/user shrinks.

As someone who works on (not with) Bitcoin daily, I think the developer is closer to knowing the problems with the whole Bitcoin ecosystem than the evangelists who claim the Titanic is unsinkable.

Assuming everyone has read the report. If not:
https://bitcoinfoundation.org/resources/removing-impediments-to-bitcoins-success/

And will leave you with the words of Gavin Anderson to reassure you that Bitcoin is rock solid:
"However, this is a good time to re-iterate my standard disclaimers: Bitcoin is still a work in progress, and you should only risk time or money on it that you can afford to lose."

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/06/centralized-mining/

until someone has enough hashing power to do whatever they want. then it becomes oh so fragile and can be used differently. i mean, at some point cex.io could get hacked and a lot of things could happen. or maybe someone else gets hacked and screws over a bunch of stuff. ya never know until it happens.

I think what he was doing was trying to prevent bitcoin from growing too quickly, as if it grows too quickly then it would be vulnerable to unknown attack vectors and if it has grown and is attacked then it will likely fail, verses it being attacked while being smaller, it's chances of survival are greater.

Mike Hearn is also the guy that is proposing to build blacklisting into Tor, as well as reduce the fungibility of Bitcoin with built in taint tracking and rejection.

Mike Hearn is the Bitcoin Anti-Christ  :)

What is wrong with a tor node wanting to block something going through their computer and network? It is their connection you're using and are under no obligation to forward any traffic to you in the first place while they risk themselves, and you're still free to use a different node.

Because it's fucking TOR. Why are they operating a TOR node at all if they want to block shit? That's not what TOR is for. They should take their computer and their connection to a different network.

Keep in mind that's only possible due to a flaw in Tor. The Tor devs are fixing that flaw, and mike posted on their mailing list telling them not to fix it, because he wanted it used for blacklisting. If you don't like Tor's anti-censorship ethics, I suggest you don't contribute to it at all. Equally if you do, then your "property rights" include the right to choosing to use a system where no-one has the ability to censor.

This is a weak point in open source. It's possible to have a rogue dev secretly working against a project for years because they can't be fired.

This is correct. TOR is designed to send all data from node to node and from the exit node to it's intended recipient. Exit nodes are not suppose to monitor to look at any of the data that is passing through it. This is part of the TOR protocol.

If an exit node does not follow the protocol then it poses a threat to the overall system and should be excluded excluded from the network, similar to how a bitcoin node that does not follow the protocol.

The TOR papers actually assume that the network is partially compromised. Kind of the trust less part.