Bitcoin Forum

https://0verhyped.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/16_the_wasteland_survival_guide.png

A lot of people own bitcoins but only few understand how Bitcoin XT drama will unfold and what should be done to survive the aftermath. Both the sides (Mike+Gavin tandem VS other coredevs) are bad guys. They have economic (and psychological) incentive to push their plan through and they do NOT care about us. We, ordinary bitcoiners, should help each other so below you will find a guide how to save your money.


1. Move your bitcoins to a wallet controlled only by YOU. If it's a webwallet like BlockChain.Info it's still strongly recommended to download original Satoshi's wallet software and start downloading 40 GiB of the blockchain. If you leave your coins somewhere on the Internet you may be unable to double them once the fork happens.

2. Wait for the fork. Try to enjoy this time, the price will likely go down and down and down, but as long as it's above 50% of the price you paid you are safe. While you have nothing to do install software which works with Bitcoin XT.

3. After the fork find someone who owns coins not existing on the both blockchains and ask them to send few satoshis to your account, do it for the both blockchains. Those lucky owners of coins that don't exist on the other blockchain will likely be miners or guys who managed to get their transaction not included into the other chain. I expect that the market will react to the fork by selling such special coins slightly more expensive than their face value.

4. Find exchanges that work with different blockchains and send your coins TWICE by combining your original coins with coins obtained on the previous step. This will prevent a transaction on one blockchain from inclusion into the other blockchain.

5. Sell your bitcoins on the both exchanges for fiat and watch market reaction. Once the market decides which blockchain wins send fiat money to the corresponding exchange and buy bitcoins. If you are a skilled trader you may try to exchange BTC for LTC or another altcoin instead of fiat. Do it at your own risk, I don't dare to predict how altcoin markets will react to the fork.


PS: Once again, it is very important: your bitcoins must be controlled only by you when the fork happens, otherwise the wallet hoster will do the explained trick by himself and will feed you with a legit looking excuse.


Edit: Maybe it's not the best strategy, see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157679.msg12197629#msg12197629...

yep. i saw this written here before and it sounds correct to me. Love to hear anyone's dissenting facts or logic tho.

Well, I doubt that there will be miners that will give your the coins they can take advantage of.
So, why doesn't someone send his coins to himself with the hopes of them being included in only one chain?

It won't work.

If XT is adopted, XT wins, there's no other chain, or at least there's no other chain with value.

You may find someone that lived in a cave for the past year and scam them using the abandoned chain, but that's not something you'll want to brag about, I think...

This may work too, but probability is very low because your first transaction will be kept in memory pool if not already included into a block. Good timing and extraordinary skills are required for such trick.

This is very arguable, but I won't argue, let's stick to the topic without derailing it.

XT win lose or draw will never have value, maybe price v USD but it'll never be anything of value.

if you can double your bitcoin in any way i'm sure the price will tank to 50% of current price long before you can do anything


what happen if both chain hold 50% of the network? it's like having a bitcoin with half the network and a new altcoin that want to be bitcoin 2.0

Fork doesn't occur under those conditions.

People's choice will be clear and every service will update software in proper time if a fork does occur..

In this case a rational person will do as written in the guide to save as much money as possible.

There is no way to know if a miner really supports Bitcoin XT or just pretends so to give a lesson to the tandem and to show that "one does not simply mess with the blockchain" and future attempts will fail too.

Well, then a fork does not occur, no problem...

It will occur in this scenario and some miners will be mining Bitcoin while the others will be mining Bitcoin XT. Those who pick the right side will get increased income during some period of time.

Wut?
If they say they vote for xt, a fork will occur.
Then they don't actually mine big blocks....

Well, in that case that's an issue that has to be sorted out before the deadline.

Is there a proposal on how to prevent such attack?

Since the losing chain value doesn't drop to $0 in 0 seconds, there's a chaotic time during which the op's scenario may unfold.

It will work. That would be the case of reaching complete consensus with the economic majority.
AFAIK 75% (needed by XT) will cause a noticeable split, and thus this can be achieved. The guide is sound, and should work.

So far ... not much thought happening here.

The question in my mind is: how do you get coins on exactly one chain immediately after the first big block is mined?
Remember the coinbase coins can't be used until 100 blocks have passed. Anyone who can make this work sooner will spend their coins twice.

No.

You need to generate a lot of low-fee transactions that will be included into 1+ MiB blocks of XT but won't be included into the original Bitcoin. Once you get at least one such transaction confirmed in XT you need to generate a block with a contradicting transaction in Bitcoin. Only pool owners can do such the trick with high reliability. More info is available on http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4942/what-is-a-finney-attack. Obviously, it's almost impossible to do that right after the first block.

Do we know what the big players are planning to do in the event of a fork?
For example is it sensible for an exchange to offer trading in both coins?

So basically, if I understand correctly, this is a hack that favours the miners.
And obviously, miners would be motivated to make a fork happen.

Am I correct?

This attack is possible now tho right?
Why is it easier, more profitable in the forked case?
edit: ahh, because the lower hash rate chain is having slow confirmations?

I understand that, I don't believe it can work because businesses will update their software in time, but if someone neglects to do so, it is possible and it can go bankrupt in a second...

What do you mean "hack"? If you are talking about the guide - it's a necessary thing to do for everyone who wants to save as much money as possible. If you are talking about the trick of creation of exclusive coin inputs - yes, it favours the miners because gives them a way to sell 1 BTC for 1000+ BTC.

This attack is useless before the fork, both the blockchains will have the same set of inputs.
Blocks indeed will have slower confirmations. And every miner will be earning more percent-wise.

I would consider a case when exchanges will provide trading of the both currencies. No sane businessman will bet on one horse if he can bet on both for the price of one.

Well, since I doubt anyone will be selling these newly generated coins or be lucky enough to get his transaction in only one chain,
it is logical to assume that we will see a lot of this hack (or trick if you prefer) happening by miners.

The question is: Where does that leave the average Bitcoiner who is not aware of it or lucky enough to get them coins and attempt to double them?

You pointed us at a finney attack description. Which works now.
I'm not getting how that relates to what you described I guess.

All the coins created (and all transactions using these coins) before the fork are valid on both chains.
After the fork the coins created (mined as part of the block reward) will be valid on the respective chain only.
Transactions which use some of the latter coins will be valid on that respective chain only.

To answer your question: you have to get some of the coins of the block reward on the respective chain.

Forks are nothing new in the world of open source software. (“Open source” is software that can be used, and even changed, by anybody. The software supporting Bitcoin is essentially that). When two rival versions of the software are made available at the same time it is known as a fork. It is, in effect, a way of forcing a “vote” on which version users prefer. If one is adopted by the vast majority of people, then it naturally becomes the “winner” and the default version. That is what we are seeing right now in terms of the software that supports Bitcoin.

An average bitcoiner who saw the guide will likely pay 0.1 BTC to get exclusive 0.0001 BTC and will lower the loss by doubling his bitcoins. In the best case scenario he will get his bitcoins saved at the current price and will also get free coins of an altcoin named XT or Bitcoin. Someone may buy those altcoins giving him free money for beer.

Finney attack description hints how to send a transaction that will be included into one blockchain only. It works now but it doesn't give any advantage in our special case.

If bitcoinXT wins I'm pretty sure we'll see a couple of "legacy bitcoin" holdouts for a while, and for a short time we might also have a good chance to find some smaller exchanges on both chains. So I'm pretty much optimistic about doubling my BTC holdings :D. I also expecting to see some bottomed out BTC and inflated altcoin prices as fiat sources can dry out quickly after the first big BTC dumping wave.

He meant coin maturation period of 120 blocks (or is it 100).

If majority of user are against XT why the fuck they want to fork it? Did anyone tried to know total number of users who are against XT??
Someone should start a petition to know reality.
https://www.change.org/en-IN/petition

So in your view there is no way to get exclusive coins immediately after the fork? Everyone has to wait 100 blocks.
OP says different, but I'm not following his argument ... yet. :)

We have to distinguish:
a) a fork of the software
b) a fork of the blockchain

Open-Office and Libre-Office can fork. As long as they agree to use the same document format you can
handle each document with each of the software packages and both software packages can coexist. If they
are going to fork the format specifications as well, all the documents created after the fork can be handled by
only one of them.

If bitcoin-core and bitcoin-xt will fork, they will use different specifications on the block properties. Thus
if the fork happens and if both software packages will continue to exist, there will be a fork of the blockchain
as well.

Surviving the split is the question, although the way BIP101 is triggered a split is highly unlikely.

Forks are good. Without them bitcoin cannot evolve.

Edit: the amount of disinformation posted on theymos/blockstream controlled outlets is just staggering.

not much to gain though if btc and/or the pretender drop at this point in price v USD a significant amount (compared to when u acquired said btc), which is an exceedingly likely scenario imo.

Right now, I'm getting the sense that a lot of the xt types are not that serious. They are just moving in that direction to put pressure on core devs to make a block cap change soon.
I hope I'm right (tho even if they are serious, i still don't think xt will get the miners necessary to fork).

Well instead of petitioning against XT, we should make one to force the Core developers to increase. If the petition is successful, and they refuse, then there is something wrong with the current way that development is operating.

A petition could still prove to be useful.

As it stands Bitcoin is being hijacked by Blockstream.

Otherwise they wouldn't need to resort to spreading lies and propaganda.

Well, then don't even attempt this. Good for others because they will have less competitors.

Will exchanges not be at risk with all of this mess as well? Will they not lose if they find themselves on the wrong side of the chain?

If this is the case, I would say that most of the exchanges will freeze their operations for a day or two until this mess doesn't get sorted out.

Also, price of the losing chain can go to zero in about 10 minutes in my opinion, lock at the crash yesterday on Bitfinex.

Sorry but a 4 billion dollar open source project cannot just be forked without super special care about the risk to the ecosystem and the value stored there.

Even if i believed this, i think i'd still rather the devil i know than the fork devil i don't know.

And voluntary refuse to earn a day or two worth trading fees (which likely be 2-3 times higher than usually)? Operating on the both blockchains looks as a much better decision.

+1


That would be the logical thing to do, but....
This seems like a great opportunity for many to rip you off your coins....
You don't think that exchanges are coming up with ways (like the OP is for miners) on how to part you with your coins as we speak?

I am pretty sure that even e the fork happens, everything will be thought about in advance and measures will be taken so the OP's scenario cannot happen.

Because if the OP's scenario will be able to happen, that will mean that for every person that doubled their coins, some poor sucker out there has lost their coins.

Just because of this, devs on the both side should think of the mechanism to prevent OP's scenario from happening.

If they don't take certain measures and this scenario happens to be possible, then honestly, Bitcoin would be the biggest joke around.

I think you immediatly can create a transaction using (part of) the block reward (if you mined that coins) and
send it to the network. But it may take 100 blocks until it will be included in the blockchain. However, I have to
admit that I am not familiar with the details of the protocol in this respect.

So as I understand it:  I have 1BTC.  The blockchian forks, I now have 1BTC-core + 1BTC-XT.  I continue to do nothing, and this balance remains.  After a time, the value of these different coins (in fiat terms) diverges.  Someday, I decide to sell for fiat.  If I've waited long enough, I think one of those coins is probably worthless, so I probably don't want to bother separating them. If I want to separate them, I can do so by the method in the OP.

It is worth noting that BTC-XT is not necessarily the one that gets the value (even though it has greater than 75% of the network).  If the people who are buying bitcoins with fiat are more confident in btc-core, than that is where the money will go, and that is the version that will have more value (even though it's network is smaller).

There is no a way for the market to instantly decide which coin is worthless, this can be done only via trading. If you have balls of steel and can wait long enough then you indeed don't need to bother separating your bitcoins.

Forks are needed to improve bitcoin. There were a number of forks already.

XT is a fork of Bitcoin Core which implemented BIP101. It's a way to progress and it depends on all the participants of the network to accept it.

Bitcoin is not Core, XT, d or any other software. These are just the implementation of the rules followed by the community.

The blocksize increase is not even the real issue here.

Blockstream have grown to completely dominate bitcoin development. It is unacceptable considering that bitcoin is a decentralized system.

Boiling it down we have 2 choice:

XT = freedom

Core/Blockstream = slavery

When I got into bitcoin, I subscribed to transparency, independence and freedom, not the tyrannical rule of a select few.

The way BIP101 works prohibits a split of the blockchain.

I think waiting as long as possible is the most conservative and least ballsy action.  I believe that 1 BTC-prefork = 1 BTC-core + 1 BTC-XT.  Both of these values can go up and down since bitcoin is very volatile, but by doing nothing, I wouldn't expect to gain or loose (unless I have a prediction of which way the marked is going, but I'm not a market analyst.)

If I were to sell one or the other right away (or as soon as possible), I'd be gamboling on which fork will hold the value in the long run.  I might (roughly) double my money, or I might loose it all.

XT is not freedom and neither is Core (or these forums for that matter).
And both of them are too centralized.
Yours and my oppinion don't matter to either sides because they both have their interests in mind, not the community's.

That is the problem with this.
And the real problem following this is that a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money over this bullshit.

 

This is the most intelligent comment yet. Why is a community who idealizes decentralization indulging the whims of core maintainers who are positioned for personal gains if certain changes take effect?

I am all for democracy however this conversation is implicit in directing the less informed toward the wants of few. Allow the community to make a democratic decision with reference to adoptions that will result in unpredictable forks without the subversive FUD being created in this thread. The choice should be made without the influence of capital gain that will in the end demoralize an entire community.

The insistence of importance to adopt changes in the core of Bitcoin open source software is a contradiction to the ideals that a decentralized system is intended to espouse. Offer the changes in new software. See where it goes. Stop the manipulating BS that is designed to offer key players profit.

This is a plausible scenario, I think the risk for the business is to great for someone to try this, for the business and for the user, in this situation pretty sure someone will try to scam people.

I fully agree that blocksize increase is not the real issue.
It is just a  false pretence to take bitcoin-core out of the hands of the current developers.

I just do not agree with your rating: XT = freedom, Core/Blockstream = slavery
The world is not black and white.

The question is: are we all going to risk a breakdown of bitcoin because the developers do not get along with
each other.

Something else came to my mind:

If both chains continue to exist, would it be possible to do 'merged mining' on both blockchains,
similar to merged mining of BTC and NMC today ?

I read somewhere that BTC-XT is programmed to disconnect from BTC-core once it reaches the 75% threshold, so it would be two separate networks.  Someone else can confirm?

I'm not getting this thread... There will be no "coin doubling". This has already been discussed on this sub-forum.


One can't ask someone to do such a thing. If that person does not own coins on any existing blockchain, he can't send any coins... Because he doesn't have them. If I don't own 1 BTC I can't send anyone 1 BTC, like if I don't own 1 USD/EUR/CNY/whatever, I can't send them this money I do not have. if this was even possible, nobody guarantees there would be someone mining a transaction on the "losing" chain. There will be no special coins... 1 BTC = 1 BTC.

If coins are "not existing on both blockchains", then they don't exist.

There will be no business for the "losing" fork. If one has vested interest and is far deep within Bitcoin he will follow the "winning" chain (whether he likes XT or Core), under the risk of losing everything he has on a fork that will not succeed.

I have to disagree. Read https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154520.0, please.

Not on a panic-driven market.

I think if XT is near 70% (and I hope it never happens) people would already stop accepting core altogether. It's designed in a way were you can't double your money, unfortunately. And again, I hope XT remains a small thing and eventually dies out. I want a bigger blocksize but NOT with the extras that Mike and Hearn are trying to pass over there.

Please consider what is bitcoin XT and the BIP101 proposition again, there is basically no risk of a "breakdown".

Right, but it's not our case.

Wrong. Because of https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154520.0.

What extras do you not like?

They can be disabled, or you can go with a branch of XT which only contains BIP101.

I guess many users will try this, but I wouldn't be surprised if some shitty exchanges would also try to make some extra profit from this opportunity.

There is an other scenario for "afterfork" scamming. I think if the "old" chain losing, and gets abandoned by most miners then it will be relative easy to take over and then this "privat chain" can be turned to a scammer hideout for selling freshly minted worthless coins to noobs.

Yep. There will be chaos.
It's possible if both chains survive that it's a zero sum price game at equilibrium, but even then I wouldn't expect the panic factor to fade away too quickly and the price(s) to return to pre-fork levels in sum.

Not necessarily.  Once the 8MB version gets 75% miner approval, the other 25% must promptly switch to it, from self-interest.  Then hopefully no one will pay attention to the Blockstream FUD anymore.


As per above, it will be very difficult to find such miners.  If and when the chain actually splits, every miner who cares about his money will be on the 8MB branch. 


Since those coins will exist on a chain that will be issuing only 1 block every 2 days, "slightly more than its market value" may be zero plus 10%.

Not worth pointing out the problems with the other steps...

CfB, by the way, what is your stand on this issue, pro XT or against XT?

We don't know if these 75% will be real (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154520.0) approvals.

There's no economic incentive to do that, if you have invested a shitload of money in mining would you risk to fuck up the network? and for what?

Amateur hour is over.

I think a smoother growth of the limit is better. None of the alternatives looks good to me.

Both the sides have wealthy proponents who can bribe pool operators. And the operators will accept this money if they are rational.

Aren't those proponents also invested in bitcoin, why would they want to fuck up the network?

Maybe ask them directly? http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/

Assuming I have Bitcoin in Circle and Coinbase (which are basically the big fiat replacement exchanges) and assuming they will adopt XT the second it is clear the move is going to be made (And they will because I have talked to both companies in depth and they fully support XT) - wouldn't it be safest and easiest to just leave my bitcoins in their respective Coinbase and Circle accounts?

And this is assuming a succesful XT fork where you assume XT "wins".  Is there any potential risk anyone see's in this scenario / strategy of just leaving your coins in the exchange wallets?

Honestly. I dont mean to turn this into a debate. But why wouldn't XT win? I read our volumes are only 30-40% of block size now.. but there is a real risk of hitting a limit if bitcoin continues to be adopted, which it will. I see no reason why XT wouldn't win. Though I am certainly disappointed at the dev's of both sides. Bitcoin has always been an amazing concept with the overshadow of greed and shady business. I wish it were not so.

It may not be adopted by enough people, BIP 101 may be implemented in Core, some other proposal may be implemented in Core, or some other thing I can't think right now...

You will be unable to double your coins and earn money by selling non-XT coins.

OK.... but isn't your entire premise based on the fact that non-XT coins (Core Coins) will somehow be so widely demanded based on the fact that non-XT will ultimately become a new sort of underground Alt-Coin in effect?  I mean - MY PREMISE is based on XT wins.

So maybe I am not understanding - but is this the underlying principle of your position?  That non-XT Bitcoin will be a highly demanded "underground" alternative version to the XT Bitcoin (which is what the masses, and financial institutions will use - because it won?)   And I am not trashing your principle - but it is more of a gambling strategy than an investment /wealth protection strategy.

Yes. If you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins. You have IOUs issued by whatever exchange you are using.

I don't make assumptions other than that the fork will happen. The guide is steps required for minimization of damage.

Welcome-from-Beyond!

OK - well, my scenario question did make a presumptive scenario - which I guess your answer is ignoring, so therefore has no value.  

And it sounds like yourargument does indeed make an assumption based on the fact that you said, "You will be unable to double your coins and earn money by selling non-XT coins."

You are basically ASSUMING that there will be a market for non-XT coins after the fork.  You are assuming that there won't be an immediate Flash Crash of the losing chain.  

I mean, in that scenario, you are simply gambling.  Not a smart one either it seems, because if your Bitcoin is worth $200 prefork, and non-XT chain flash crashes to $10 - I hardly see the value in taking $200 Bitcoin, that will probably start soaring in the XT Chain once the drama is over, and trying to "Double" your Bitcoin by moving it to a Chain that has a $10 value - and you double it $10 x2 to $20.  Now that is investment genius.

This argument is made more from a hatred and FUD of "The Man" than realistic awareness of how things work.  Coinbase and Circle have insurance on accounts, and they have 2-Factor, etc etc.   I mean - your argument could be made about the current banking system - but I bet you have a bank account.  And YES - they could do a "bank holiday" and they could freeze your assets, and the entire darn system could implode overnight.  But I seriously doubt that that will happen to the replacement bitcoin system immediately.   These entities have investments from the likes of JP Morgan / Goldman Sachs.  Now that is NOT a moral argument, because of course these folks are evil incarnate - BUT they also aren't going to let there newly built little replacement enterprises be compromised.  And they won't do anything like mass seizing of funds that would make for pretty bad press, and effectively kill any chance they have for mass adoption (which is clearly their goal).

So I respect your paranoia ad your position.  I actually like it from a macro perspective.  But in the near term it is naive.  I think to protect wealth you better have a healthy mix of assets - even physical ones like gold.  But for a time at least Bitcoin will eventually take over things I think - and it sure as heck won't become the global currency based on the idealistic visions of a well intentioned, but inexperienced few.  Sorry - but Bitcoin is entering it's adult phase, and old men with lots of power and experience are now sitting at the chess table.  Better start thinking with a bit more cunning and realism.

I also assume that there will be miners to confirm your transaction, and that you have a computer to send the coins, and that there will be no blackout in your house. From this point of view I do assume extra things.

Regarding "investment genious", read #5 once again, please.

I am sorry - but now you are just throwing out irrational nonsense.  And I am honestly not trying to be disrespectful.  But it is becoming increasingly apparent how inexperienced some people are here in financial issues, and the way the system works.   And I am NOT saying that the system is good, heck I personally think it is basically evil as anything in the history of mankind.  And it is complicated too.  Incredibly complicated, and even more so based on the introduction of technology, which changes the rules frequently - often unexpectedly.  But some of the next phase of Bitcoin is going to be how it merges into "the system".   Because it has to if it is going to grow and survive and thrive. 

I'm just a middle aged pre-grey hair who likes to think he's one of the good guys.  And I have some petty good experience and background, and I see some people getting hurt / wiped out here with some of the ideas / advice going around.  I myself am very concerned with where things are going,and I think that how this core-XT fork turns out is the turning point that will decide many outcomes.

And I think XT will prevail, though I am not necessarily hoping for it in its current form.  But when it comes to protecting and investing my Bitcoin - I a not going to bet against the Huge Powers and Greedy Old men of the world in this transition.  I haven't by any means lost the idealism and dreams of my youth - but I'm not stupid either.  Patience and Cunning are good qualities in times like these.  And carefully weighing and sifting through the advice of all these forum boards filled with "experts of little experience".

I would advice nobody do this.  It's just plain stupid.

Usually when a person gives an advice, they give an explanation as to why they advise one to do something.
What is your reasoning?

If there is a fork, than XT has already won. NonXT is a joke. No mining pool in his right mind will use it. Mining pools want certainty not chaos.
The whole "but what if people throw a lot of money at them"-argument is silly. It's a last resort, when you lack any real arguments. Again, no investor with a lot of money wants chaos. Causing chaos is not an investment plan.
The scenario at http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/ is also a joke. A coin generated in one blockchain, can not jump into the other blockchain, since it is just invalid. All your clients do mostly is validating transactions and they don't accept invalid transactions regardless how many you throw at them.

No one has answered this.  The answer must be yes, it would be possible with a modified client. 
Another scenario comes up when you consider the shadow miners, all the at-home ASIC owners who turned off their machines as they lost out to the mega-miners.   They'd surely consider turning them back onto mining on the "losing" fork at reduced value, because the difficulty will drop dramatically as well.   Shadow miners are mostly from the idealistic phase of Bitcoin, so their incentive to continue on Core if XT wins out will be great.

Both forks continue, one will not die to zero.   One may become sub $1 again, but that's OK for some people.

OK - this actually made me think of something I haven't seen elsewhere.....
Let's assume the above scenario does occur - a fork where both chains survive.  What happens to the "finite number" of Bitcoin.  I mean, say you have 15 million Bitcoin at Zero Hour.  Then say XT Fork wins, and the vast majority of Bitcoins choose that chain.

But say 1 Million of those Bitcoin Holders choose the Core Chain.   Does that mean that the New Finite number of bitcoins that will ever exist on XT will now be 20 million?

NOTE:  I also still can't understand what is going to drive people to stay on Core IF XT Chain wins and takes off.  Because in that scenario there is almost a 100% chance that Bitcoin XT will start moving up in value, and Bitcoin-Core will start devaluing massively in the immediate aftermath.  I just am trying to imagine sitting there looking at my wallet with a Bitcoin in it, and saying if I take the right hand path I get $200+ and if I go left I get $20 - and then deciding to do the STUPID thing.  I mean - why wouldn't I just go to XT for a lot more value, then sell for dollars, then go back and buy TEN (10) Bitcoin-Core (now a minor fork altcoin).  I mean - I am thinking that is the path people would take???  I would.

No, it doesn't.
That's like saying "Will LiteCoin reduce the amount of Bitcoin?"
If there is a fork, it doesn't care about the other fork, it's really just as easy as that.

After the fork, you can get coins from each chain by mining on the pools that support each chain

Well, this doesn't make sense to me in the way I think about things.

If HYPOTHETICALLY at "Zero Hour" the hardfork occurs, and XT wins, but I subsequently choose to run my 1 million Bitcoins onto the old Core Chain - and if everyone seems pretty clear that those Bitcoins can NEVER EVER EVER go back onto the XT Chain - then it seems to me that the XT Chain just lost 1 million bitcoins.

So is my understanding of this flawed?  Or are you saying that my Core-Forked Bitcoin are still counted in the 21 Million XT Bitcoins - but just "lost".

They exist on both chains.
The only thing, that might happen, is that they never get accessed on one fork, if the people who have the private key, don't want to use their private keys on that chain.
So, you could call that lost, like if somebody lost his private key by crashing his hard drive or to keep up my LiteCoin-analogy: It's like when somebody thinks LiteCoin are much cooler and don't access his Bitcoin anymore.

There will be a period of time in which this will be possible to do. If you think that everyone will switch (all miners and merchants) the first day after the fork, then think again.

Some of your comments lead me to believe that you don't really understand what the OP is talking about.

It's simple. If you have bitcoins now (pre-fork), and a fork occurs, and there is a market for XTcoins and bitcoins post-fork, you will have XTcoins AND traditional bitcoins equal to the amount of pre-fork coins you had.

Let's say you own 1 bitcoin now (pre-fork).

A fork occurs. There is demand for coins (and mining occurring) on both chains. So, we have two surviving block chains (for whatever period of time).

You will then have 1 XTcoin and 1 traditional bitcoin.

You can then taint one of your coins with coins which only exist on one of the forks. Let's say you get a few satoshis from block reward which occurred in a XT 8mb block (thus is not valid and does not exist on the 1mb chain). You can combine those satoshis with your 1 XTcoin by sending them to a new address under your control. This means your XTcoins can be safely moved separately from your traditional bitcoins.

If you don't taint your coins first, any transaction you make will be valid on both chains, so if you send your coins to an address which is not under your control, the holder of the private keys for that address will be able to get both your XTcoins and traditional bitcoins.

There is no risk for you, until you make the decision to taint your coins on one chain, and then exchange them for something of value. You will hold coins on BOTH chains until you take these actions. Even the tainting itself does not incur any risk for you. It simply allows you to craft transactions on each chain which is no longer valid on the other chain.

You can then decide to:

a. sell only your XTcoins
b. sell only your traditional bitcoins
c. sell both of them
d. sell none of them

Should there be demand for both kinds of coins (and it's looking like there will be), then the risk comes when you make the choice to economically back one side. You may sell all your XTcoins and traditional bitcoins become worth far more, or you may decide to sell all your traditional bitcoins and XTcoins become worth far more. Perhaps the community is divided enough that both chains will continue to exist far into the future and they will reach valuations based on the demand for either coin. Perhaps the split will cause a loss of trust in Bitcoin entirely and neither fork will hold their value. No one knows.

If the fork occurs when there are 15 million coins, there will be 15 million XTcoins and 15 million traditional bitcoins.

In order for you to control both of your coins, you need to first be the sole controller of your private keys when the fork occurs.

I hope this clears things up for you.

Then excuse me, maybe I did not understood your post. Maybe you meant coins existing on a certain address on only one blockchain/a transaction only mined on one chain? Either way, one blockchain will be dropped... But anyways, my opinion is just that, my opinion, not based on facts. Just an hypothesis, like your first post. Unfortunately crystal balls don't work, at least yet ;D

Yes and No.  That does indeed fill in a very large part of the info gap I was unclear about.  But I am not sure that I trust the premise yet that the possibility that the coins can co-exist in both dimensions.  It seems to me that as soon as you spend a prefork bitcoin in a post fork world, it automatically vaporizes it's alter ego.   I understand that OP is theorizing about a way to allow a bitcoin to both exist and operate in both forks simultaneously - but I surely haven't seen enough other opinions to know whether this is simply science fiction fantasy, or real technological science.

It is indeed an interesting concept IF true.

Interesting..

No, if you withdraw mined coins you will get coins from other (pre-fork) blocks.

Thank you!

The concept of tainting the XTcoins (and corecoins) is the key.

It transforms the bitcoins you have from dualcoins to an XTcoin and a corecoin, so there is some risk, but realistically both will trade at very close to the same value at the fork and diverging (noisily) from there

Now by splitting all your coins, you have to take some action, but this is a matter to just sell them for market price into something immune from the XT/core price. So let us assume an impossible, but simplified future price post-fork.

we will have winnercoin and losercoin, I have no idea which will be the XT vs core, lets avoid that debate and just call it winnercoin and losercoin. So we reach the block of the fork. Now all miners, exchanges, merchants, they are following this in realtime and immediately stop accepting/mining/using losercoin and at the next block the price/hashrate/usage for losercoin is $0/0/0. If you believe this, well, you are not familiar with the nature of markets.

What will happen instead is some sort of decay. From the split the losercoin will gradually fade away to some much smaller value, but probably always be worth more than $0 simply due to the latent value it has, ie ability for it to be used in transactions with people who dont know about all the tech details. this period of time will last for months and maybe even years.

However, what I predict is that the market battle between XT and core will not be any academic smooth curve sort of thing, but rather a chaotic high volume, high volatility price madness where one coin is worth more than the other, then less, then more. All during this time most businesses will probably be forced to accept both, which means they will be economically vested in both and if the miners can merge mine, without any real cost they can continue to mint both winnercoin and losercoin.

Now since this doubling is totally legit and enforced by both blockchains and people will do it, the value in them cannot disappear overnight. Otherwise the businesses that accepted losercoin will all go out of business and they dont like to do that. So we get vested interests in losercoin (or mass bankruptcies)

We might end up in a DOS vs Windows scenario. I think DOS lasted for quite some years before it finally died. OP has pointed out that this whole fork will make both winnercoin and losercoins into altcoins and there does not seem to be an alternative.

James

P.S. I am willing to pay a premium for some satoshis that can be used to taint my BTC.

So I see the thread growing, so I would like to ask for a summary please. What have we concluded so far? Will it be, or will it not be possible to double your bitcoins if the fork happens and we end up with 2 chains?

Does bitcoin (both flavors) accept a transaction if it is invalid?
If a transaction has an unknown input, is it valid?
If that unknown input is actually a known input to one of the flavors, then we have a case where a transaction is valid on one chain and invalid on the other. Meaning you can use it on one chain, but not the other. It also means that on the chain it was rejected, the coin is still valid.

There is no magic, nothing other than the fact that there will be inputs that XT accepts and corecoin rejects and approx equal value to both.

See. You taint your dualcoin and now you have corecoin and XTcoin. The market is paying about the same for both, so just sell both, wait for the market to decide, ie winnercoin is 50% more than losercoin (that seems a safe enough threshold), then buy back at a 50% premium. Still you are ahead by a lot

James

Very well said, I think we should hold a poll for these 4 options to increase people's understanding of the fork and its consequence

In fact that means the amount of coin doubles, which broke the promise of limited money supply - the biggest advantage of bitcoin. People will understand that when core devs have a conflict of interest, there will be 100% inflation in bitcoin monetary system... And people will start to drop the game. I guess miners would try their best to avoid that extinction level events by sticking to one side, which is what they are currently running. It does not matter how advanced XT is, a fork will kill bitcoin, so that is to be avoided at all costs

well you wont be able to directly double your bitcoins, but you can split all your bitcoins into winnercoins and losercoins. By trading them close to zerohour, you should be able to get roughly the same amount for each. Good traders will be able to sell winnercoin for more than losercoin and losercoin for more than winner coin by taking advantage of the market chaos.

Now your single dualcoin is split into winnercoin and losercoin due to the fact that there are XT outputs that will invalidated a tx in the eyes of corecoin.

The problem here is that we will end up with miners mergemining both (unlike normal merge mining where they are getting some sillycoin, they get losercoin) and there will be double the volume of sales so the price of both will be hammered.

I would recommend to split your bitcoins into winnercoin and losercoin as soon as possible after zerohour, sell them (via limit orders) into something that will hold its value. then when one side reaches more than 50% value of the other in a stable way (ie not a spike) to purchase them. if you have the time, just make a ladder so that as one side gets worth more and more against the other you are shifting more and more capital into it.

Done right you should end up with 50%+ more of winnercoin vs the number of dualcoins you have

James

How hard is it to mergemine?
I dont think miners will have to choose.

How hard is it to choose not to go bankrupt? I dont think many businesses will drop one coin over the other, they will just pretend they are both normal bitcoins. we will just have some growing percentage of bitcoins that are split and thus dramatically increasing the coin supply. not overnight, but over a period of 6 months, we will probably get to where the majority of dualcoins are split, just via normal transactions tainting the dualcoins into two.

The people that understand this will be making a ton of money. the people that dont will be complaining about why bitcoin price keeps dropping

James

From a value point of view, since a fork into two chains break the promise of limited money supply, it essentially killed bitcoin. I guess long before XT hashing power reaching 50%, the bitcoin value would already be single digits

I don't think, there is an economical incentive to keep on the weaker chain. I think, it will be settled by businesses, who want to make a revenue and they just take too much risk, when they stay on the weaker chain.
I don't think, it will be settled by ideological incentives, once the split has already happened.
So, the only interesting question here is, IF the split happens.
(And I think, all this "doubling you Bitcoin"-business is just a wet dream)

I think they can not mergemine since they are mining on different chain by that time

The coins are doubled, however the ecosystem can not double over night, if suddenly the money supply increased by 100% but there is no increased demand, we will get a zimbabwe coin

Lets be sensible here ... if larger blocks starts to get more traction and lets be fair we already have 65%+ mining power voting for larger blocks (notice how I said larger blocks and not necessarily XT) then *business* like exchanges will prepare themselves to be on the right side of the chain (be it XT or whatever it is that supports larger blocks)

The interesting thing here which everyone seems to miss is that XT has started a process which the none-XT/larger block pro developers need to respond to with a solution. Miners and Exchanges (who seems largely in the larger blocks group) are not going to wait around forever.

Grab your popcorn and lets see how this all unfolds ... It is going to be interesting for sure.

The old wisdom is don't fix it if it ain't broken. I guest majority of the miners will take a wait and see stance. Recent stress test already showed that even every block is receiving more than 1MB of data, the network still works well

That does not work when you are trying to revolutionize sectors ... we do not want to stay in the stone ages

Banks stayed in stone age for hundreds of years and that's the reason they become the master slaveholder. Value is all about stability and integrity

Isnt NMC mergemined with BTC since they both use SHA256?
isnt NMC a different chain than BTC?

Mergemining is to just use the same calcs you use as you are randomly searching for the winning hash against multiple chains. The extra overhead of adding another chain is much less than double, so you basically get to mint extra coins for very little extra work.

Based on this, the whole XT controversy could well be something FULLY backed by the miners
Follow the money

Due to the inertia of markets, this creates non-attack methods of double spending that isnt really double spending because we are all knowing that there will be two flavors of bitcoin. so by following the protocol, we can split our bitcoins. by knowing that markets dont do discontinuities, we can protect against the massive drop in BTC price this whole inventory explosion will create.

Do you really believe that the BTC whales wont take the time to split their dualcoins? And then they wont bother to make a ton of money by trading both coins?

James

This was my first thought after reading the reply above and this thread completely. If all this s**t will be possible, Bitcoin deserves to die and to be priced in single digits and to stay there, once and for all!

So basically it will become another piece of worthless technology that could have been awesome but never made it because a group of grown ass intelligent men AKA self proclaimed core developers spent more time throwing their toys out of the pram than working together to find a common way forward. Sounds legit :)

I don't know your line of work, mine is Software Development and I never worked for a company that holds this old wisdom. If you are not innovative and see new trends before they happen, your company dies.
There might be exceptions, when you are big enough or have political influence, but not everybody is Microsoft or a Bank.

well the margins on mining was getting pretty low and this is a good way to boost revenues 50% by merge mining

They can only merge mine if the protocol is specifically changed for that purpose

There are huge risk from existing coin holders: We often talk about Satoshi's 1 million coins, many are afraid that those coin will come out one day and crash the market, and several days ago we have witnessed that a 80K sell order will knock down the exchange rate by 10%

Imagine that you are a large bitcoin holder, when there is only one chain, the motivation to sell your coin is low, since they are all valuable. But once the coin forked, it is possible that core miners who controlls 25% of hash power are controlling 70% of the existing coins. They will dump the coins on the XT chain and destroy its value (Remember what Peter Todd have threatened with selling all his coins?). When XT coin worth nothing, miner will move their hash power back to core chain. Similarly, XT developers will dump their core coins, cause large damage there. A Mutual Assured Destruction fired up when XT went online 1.Jan. 2016, the end of bitcoin ;D

So things will get really ugly if we allow a fork to happen

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/273/how-does-merged-mining-work

please explain what protocol change is needed to allow merge mining XTcoin and corecoin?

please estimate what percentage of the chinese mining pools will not merge mine to make extra money, if merge mining is possible

Merge mining after the fork will be impossible as soon as atleast one different block is found. You need to include the merkle tree in the block you are mining. and the merkle trees will differ after the first block after the fork.

If the losing form decides to allow merge mining, yeah maybe it can be implemented. But I'd wager heavy money against two existing significant chains anyway. Will just not happen

This may be interesting for you - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority. It's not the miners who decide.

The larger the system the slower the change. Since every change in a large system would have a wide impact. You can't make a cruiser that holds 5000 people to turn like a water scooter

That still doesn't show an economical incentive to stay on the weaker chain.
Maybe you could describe it further? (That is not a rhetorical question. I am really curious.)

Technically if I have found a winning hash for a chain, how will you prevent me from submitting it?

It is the mining equipment that just needs to be changed. as far as the coin protocol is concerned it cannot monitor if you are submitting to other chains. How will the corechain know that the node that submitted the winning hash is also submitting winning hashes to the XT chain.

Maybe there is something about the mining process that you know that I totally missed.

James

P.S. i shouldnt call this merged mining that means specific things, think of it as parallel mining. will require some mods to silicon to do, so depending on the relative values, maybe it is not so practical. then again if you can make custom silicon...

The fork will happen if 75% of blocks are mined by miners who support it. This is a quite silly indicator because it's not the miners who decide what changes are good/bad. NotBitcoinXT  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154520.0)makes it worse, we can't trust even the number of blocks. What an average Joe will do? A sane average Joe will try to sit on the both chairs until he clearly sees what happens. And the most rational behavior is to follow the guide to maximize profit (minimize loss).

It has just come to my mind. If most of us sell soon after the fork then the price of the both chains will plummet. If someone believes that the price will go down significantly and he is not sure that he will do the split of the coins in time then it's better to sell before the fork and still get more fiat than after selling doubled bitcoins... All this looks like a catch 22, the price will go down anyway...

Instead of dloading the blockchain maybe we could use an electrum wallet?

And can we expect someone to write a tool to inspect the blockchain and confirm those 'fresh satoshis' exclusive to one chain that someone sent you were actually created after the fork?

You have to have a copy of the blockchains to be able to send coins in the both versions. I'm not sure if Electrum provides such service after the fork.

I think someone will write such tool, those who will be selling exclusive coins, for example.

miners can't decide on their own, true. but a combo of a few major miners/exchanges will do.
a miner would never switch to XT, if he can't find an exchange (running XT) to cash out.

however, the two top pools don't running XT (yet) >> https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/blocks/1
discus and ant are key as seen by this pool block distribution >> http://mempool.info/pools

the whole XT freak show is very interesting and educational to watch,
how people are changing heavily as soon they fear to loose something and
how all participants in this game (user/service provider/exchanges/miner etc.)
moving around to find their optimal equilibrium, mostly driven by greed.

not sure if theymos is aware, on what kind of treasure he sits with this forum,
i am sure that academical in deep research on this data could feed several
generations of sociologists, psychologists and other disciplines.

machiavelli was yesterday, here comes bitcoin and the fork btw won't happen.

This is right.  Don't think of a fork as dividing bitcoin into two pieces.  Think of it as creating a parallel universe.  (The fiat money invested would divide though.)

Well, 2 blocks bitcoin mined with XT, or 0.08%

Long way to go to 75%.

traders also decide, they're basically left out of the voting but in the end if no one buys miners well....... :o

top pools won't run xt

I'm still absorbing all of this - but I do want to say that I am still not convinced that the doubling / dual fork parallel universes is fact or theory.  I really think this is a pretty big deal that is not being widely discussed - so that makes me wonder if it is a Real deal.  I think something like this would deserve a public comment from one of the Core Devs or Gavin/Mike.

But assuming it is possible....

1) This raises really big issues with future Hard Forks.   For example - what happens if the China Miners/Exchanges decide to go a different route from Western Miner/Exchanges.  Could the Bitcoin Supply split again?   Because once things get more globally accepted and Bitcoin a more global currency - I can see potential future politically motivated Hard Fork divergencies.  I mean - if Gavin & Mike can do it - surely China or the U.S. or Europe could do it??   As pointed out earlier - kind of blows the whole fixed supply concept.

2) OP posted a few posts up something about the Bitcoin Price could be driven down, even on both chains, as cross attacks/dumping occurs.   Eh - maybe.  But I think that is taking a limited perspective of looking at Bitcoin with the current currency marketshare it has NOW.  What happened to the whole 1 Bitcoin will equal $1 Million in a endstage game.   It could just as easily be that an event happens after the fork to make everyone run/be driven into Bitcoin, and price will go up so fast that Buyers will outnumber sellers 10's of thousand to 1.  Not that farfetched actually.

3) Interestingly, if the whole Doubling / Dual Universe Coin theory is viable, then it most likely will be known by everyone as Zero Hour approaches, and only an idiot won't be making plans to double coins into both universes.  And so I would imagine you actually would end up with 2 Bitcoin Currencies.  Core would most like be the favored "underground currency" and would be treated/seen sort of like physical Gold is today.  XT would become the Fiat Bitcoin obviously.  BOTH would probably skyrocket in value eventually - although because of the huge insider Miner/Exchange infrastructure probably following XT - XT-Fiat would indeed probably shoot the moon fastest.  BUT - like I said, if this is real, then EVERYOE will know about it soon enough,a nd plans being made - as a defense against the XT Fork if nothing else.

4) I'd still like to hear more on the technical issues involved in "tainting" coins.   Again, assuming that this is even possible.  Because it is really sounding a lot like an untested theory - but with potentially huge consequences.

Aint that the truth.
Right now bitcoin is truly looking like amateur hour to the financial world.
And just when it could be getting a huge boost as a safe haven in the current increasing perception of a global meltdown.
Shame

If you understand about bitcoin tx using inputs and making outputs, then you can see that this is not any theory.
Just also remember that bitcoin protocol will reject any invalid input, otherwise people could just make up random inputs and spend them.

with me so far?

ok, so now we assume that XT will get a block that core cant use, ie it exceeds its capacity.

Now what do we have? A block with unspent outputs that is perfectly valid in the XT universe, but totally invalid in the core universe.

there is no theory, uncertainity or any doubt that there will be outputs that are valid in XT but invalid in core. Now, we take these XT only outputs and combine it with existing corecoins that were there before the fork. no magic required, just a matter to create a transaction that uses an XT only input and an old input that existed prefork.

what happens?

In XT chain, this is a perfectly valid tx and it can be spent wherever XT is accepted. However, remember about the part of the protocol rejecting tx with invalid inputs? In core chain, this tx is rejected. As in it never happened!

So you have just spawned an XT only bitcoin, but you still have the original bitcoin! As to why this is not discussed by the others, I have no idea. Maybe they just assume that overnight thousands of decentralized entities with simulteneously flip the same switch in the same direction so this is not anything to worry about?

James

and this raises the possibility that it is all an intentional thing...
to create the very real possibility of splitting the bitcoin

Guys, the fork will NOT create two independently usable altcoins -- even if the blockchain splits into two branches that survive long enough to play with.  

Some clever bitcoin hackers may be able to create transactions that are valid on only one chosen branch.  However, most transactions issued by typical users will be executed in both chains;.  Thus they will not be able to "see" the two altcoins.  When one of those transactions, by accident, turns out to be valid for only one chain, the client will either not notice ever, or will get confused, and maybe end up with his wallet in an inconsistent state, maybe even lose coins.

Therefore, there will not be a functioning market for both versions; it would only cater for those clever hackers. Malicious hackers may be able to exploit the confusion of some ordinary clients to do double spends; but payment processors and exchanges will almost certainly deal with just one "bitcoin", the one with mining majority.  

instantly the moment of the fork?
across all vendors across the entire world?
what if they are sleeping?

Oh for crying out loud..... this is a complete and utter Cluster F#<K. 

I feel like everyone has gone full retard with this one. There will not be 2 different usable, spendable, mineable coins.

when the majority of bitcoin core devs all work for the same profit based company, well it is not surprising that making profits for that company trumps other things

In my experience it is impossible to coordinate the actions of much more than half a dozen people, especially when they are all over the world, even when they all want to do the same thing.

So how on earth with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people all do the same thing at the same exact moment, especially when a significant minority is disagreeing

I dont know the stats on the last bitcoin hardfork and how long it took for "everyone" to upgrade, but my guess is that it took a bit more than 10 minutes

James

not long term, no
but maybe for 20 minutes from zeroblock?
or maybe a few hours
or days?

how many vendors are there that deal with bitcoin?
how many timezones?
what if it happens on a weekend?

and how long will the losing coin be worth more than LTC?
more than NMC?

remember there are a ton of altcoins that still have value long after they are dead

James

instantly the moment of the fork?
across all vendors across the entire world?
what if they are sleeping?
[/quote]

The XT fork will not be a "stealth fork" (like the BIP66 caper).

Again: if and when the blockchain tags indicate that 75% of the miners are ready, there will be a 2 week period during which everyone running Core (or other incompatible software) will be warned of the event and urged to switch to XT (or any compatible software).  If and when that happen, you may be sure that all sensible exchanges and services will upgrade, together with the sensible miners among the other 25%.  Perhaps even Luke.  Perhaps even Mircea.

So, OK, there may be a few "rebel" exchanges left to cater for some thoroughly confused clients who did not upgrade, and the few "rebel" clients who refuse to consider bigger blocks and are willing to put up with 1 block every 2 hours...  But I still don't see any great opportunity there.

(After the 2 weeks period, there will still exist only one branch, and hence only one altcoin, until someone mines a block larger than 1 MB.  That may not take too long.  The average block size in early 2016 should still be 0.7 MB, but variable block spacings and empty blocks may create a backlog of more than 1 MB in the queue at some point.)

while not sure if this will work, the idea itself is great,

im sure there is some superb tech peopel who already have bots to do all this

Was the last fork as dramatic and full of emotion as this one?  Did it involve this much at stake?  This much accusation and handwringing about selling out to the fiat players?  I mean seriously... comparing THIS fork to one in the past is like comparing getting mad at your wife because she was flirting to how you would feel if you caught your wife in bed with someone.  LOTS more emotion being generated in this fork it seems to me.  Am I wrong?  Did as big a part of the community DIRECTLY THREATEN to intentionally split the chain forever?  C'mon.  Apples to Oranges.

The XT fork will not be a "stealth fork" (like the BIP66 caper).

Again: if and when the blockchain tags indicate that 75% of the miners are ready, there will be a 2 week period during which everyone running Core (or other incompatible software) will be warned of the event and urged to switch to XT (or any compatible software).  If and when that happen, you may be sure that all sensible exchanges and services will upgrade, together with the sensible miners among the other 25%.  Perhaps even Luke.  Perhaps even Mircea.

So, OK, there may be a few "rebel" exchanges left to cater for some thoroughly confused clients who did not upgrade, and the few "rebel" clients who refuse to consider bigger blocks and are willing to put up with 1 block every 2 hours...  But I still don't see any great opportunity there.

(After the 2 weeks period, there will still exist only one branch, and hence only one altcoin, until someone mines a block larger than 1 MB.  That may not take too long.  The average block size in early 2016 should still be 0.7 MB, but variable block spacings and empty blocks may create a backlog of more than 1 MB in the queue at some point.)

[/quote]
a forced global upgrade across thousands of independent entities, in two weeks.

No problem. Logistically this is a trivial matter of coordination. After all how hard can it be to force everybody to adopt the new bitcoin, even though they dont agree with it?

But even you agree that there will be an altcoin created out of this and that altcoin will have nontrivial value, probably more than LTC, certainly more than NMC. But what are a few millions of dollars when we are talking about a forced upgrade onto all the people that dont see the light.

James

So this makes it even more likely that holdouts will keep the losing chain alive for more than 2 weeks.

How to survive the fork:

1: Sell your XBT now.
2: Rebuy your XBT 4-5 fold on both chains with the same equivalent in fiat, about half and half, in about 5 months.
3: Continue holding your XBT forever, only now you have 4-5x as much on two XBT chains.

Absolutely!  Which takes me back to the reason I made the Cluster F#<K comment which is the fact that if this "Dual Universe Doubling" theory (sorry - I still say it is theory - although possibly I believe a little more after your explanation) is real - then I now understand that this creates a situation that bitcoins could end up flying across the Parallel Universe Rift occassionally, reeking havoc, causing bitcoins to be lost etc.   That was proposed as an earlier poster out as a "relative" rarity - but if this split LASTS, the longer it lasts, the bigger the chance for bitcoin loss - and speaking from a simply societal common sense macro picture standpoint - this is, again, a COMPLETE Cluster F#<K for the future of Bitcoin.  Mass Markets and Media don't like confusion and uncertainty.  And this will do it.  

If bitcoin was fully centralized and had a command structure where everybody had to obey, then maybe 2 weeks for a global update would be ok, though still on the edge of doable.

As it is, with the protocol design, the likely outcome is that the combined market cap will be split between the two variants as long as either has any chance of winning and even after a clear winner emerges, the remaining altcoin (be it original or XT) will still hang on for months

What I dont understand is why is this ultimatum sort of mechanism even existing?

if XT wins, does this mean all the current alt coins that relies their chain security with merge mining with bitcoin core will loose substantial network hash and end up dying along with the bitcoin core.

so asap get out of the alts that have merge mining with bitcoin core if XT succeeds or can they merge mining with both core and XT?

i think right now the safest bet is ethereum, it came out just the right time for the shaken btc world, people will look into eth for hope that it will take over most of btc marketcap.

ps i have no eth, only have nxt.

Yes, two weeks is rather short.  Two months would have been better.  I suspect that the 75% will be reached very quickly, or never.  I suppose that Mike was afraid of some PR counteroffensive that would convince many 8 MB adopters to switch back to 1 MB, if the grace period was too big.


Once 75% of the miners have agreed to switch to 8 MB, agreement is irrelevant.  The remaining miners and the major services will choose to switch before the 8 MB limit is enabled, even if they didn want to, otherwise they will lose money.  They will be aware of the event and capable of upgrading in time.


No, I don't agree with that.  

Litecoin is a functioning coin, that non-experts can use as easily as bitcoin, with no confusion.  It has its own exchanges, a large user base, etc.. (It is even used by bitcoin arbitragers, I read somewhere, to quickly transfer value between exchanges, due to its shorter block period.)  

The "1 MB bitcoin", if it survives at all, will have a very long block period, a huge and growing backlog of unconfirmed transactions, practically no services and exchanges -- and very few people will know how to handle it.  

Indeed, if the 8 MB sizelimit prevails, its miners may find it worthy to put some of their hashpower to the task of jamming the 1 MB branch, to minimize confusion of clients who failed to upgrade, and to prevent its use for scams.

I would think that all merge mined altcoins will still work with which ever BTC survives, maybe each such altcoin might need to hardfork too. not sure on the details, but i dont see this as any insoluble issue for merge mined alts

If this thread encourages people to get their bitcoin out of web wallets and into Bitcoin Core by the end of the year it will have done some good.

sincei use BTC from like 2010 when faucet gave out 1BTC ... im used to core
dunno about others ;)

I dont understand how if 1MB bitcoin survives (as losing fork) how there will be a growing backlog of unconfirmed tx? The assumption is that  if it loses, fewer people will use it, but maybe if all the miners abandon it CPU mining would become viable again. As long as the diff readjustments happen, the blocktimes will eventually get back to the 10 minutes per block.

but if as you say that the XT miners will aggressively attack the original to kill it, then it seems the tyranny of the majority. To be able to make the real bitcoin into an altcoin.... I never imagined this would be possible

James

It's just not smart to believe in a prediction not backed by anything. And hence it's smart to think that you may be wrong and we should cover our asses.

Because the transactions issued by clients are in principle executable in both branches.  Only a few transactions will be specific to only one branch: namely, those that involve coins that were mined in that branch, after the split.  

The incoming traffic is now ~120'000 transactions per day, on average.  For the last 12 months it has grown almost linearly at ~5000 tx/day per month.  If it continues growing at the same pace, by Jan/2016 it wil be ~150'000 tx/day.  The effective capacity of the bitcoin mining network, revealed in the recent stress tests, is ~200'000 tx/day or ~1400 tx/block.

Suppose that the miners split 90:10 between the 8 MB and the 1 MB branches.  The 8 MB branch will have ~130 blocks/day, which will have to carry ~1150 tx/block -- which is still less than the effective capacity ~1400 tx/block.  There may be "traffic jams" at peak hours or peak days, but the backlogs should clear after a few hours at most.

On the other hand, the 1 MB branch will have ~15 blocks per day only.  Each block would have to carry 10'000 tx, which is way over the capacity ~1400 tx/block.  So, every 10 minutes, on average, 1400 tx will be confirmed, and 8600 tx will be added to the queue.  The backlog will only begin to clear when the difficulty is readjusted and the block rate returns to ~10-15 min.  The adjustment happens every 2100 blocks, with is normally 2 weeks but in that chain will be 20 weeks.


Well, right now the 5 largest miners (who have ~70% of all hashpower) could cooperate to starve all the other miners, and take 100% of the block rewards intead of just 70%.  Or they could do much nastier things.

Let us not quibble over exact details, since it is not possible to predict exact amount. So using your numbers of 90/10 split:

"The backlog will only begin to clear when the difficulty is readjusted and the block rate returns to ~10-15 min.  The adjustment happens every 2100 blocks, with is normally 2 weeks but in that chain will be 20 weeks."

OK, it is 6 months later and blocks are back to normalish rates. With all of the existing bitcoin infrastructure are you saying that it wont be a viable altcoin? That LTC is worth more than old bitcoin? That NMC is worth more then old bitcoin?

Did you consider that there are a lot of people that use bitcoin and if dont update to a new wallet and they see that they received an old bitcoin, maybe they just accept it. doesnt even the Mtgox bitcoins sell for amounts > $0?

To be so confident that multibillion dollars of existing value will just vanish within weeks, this just does not pass the common sense test.

James

I strongly disagree. No sane person will follow your guide, since it is just highly speculative.
And again, there is no economical incentive for merchants not to go to the stronger chain. They most likely will just follow the lead, long before the split happened. And as I also said before NotBitcoinXT is a bad joke, no serious business will use it.

You don't risk by following the guide and you increase your chance for a profit. Looks like our definitions of "sane" differ much.

how is getting corecoin and XT coin both, instead of just one of them speculative?
It would seem that someone could make some sort of mathematical proof that (corecoin + XTcoin) >= corecoin and also that (corecoin + XTcoin) >= XTcoin

Then again, math is my weak point so I must be missing something

James

ad 3. You are buying overpriced Bitcoin, because they are "special". Oh, yes, that is really sane

ad 4. What if, there are just small unknown exchanged, that work with the weaker chain? How long does it take to register there?

ad 5. Selling your Bitcoin is always risky, especial if you exchange them for another cryptocurrency.

"There is no free lunch", if someone tells you otherwise, he has no idea, what he is talking about or is trying to scam you.

Few satoshis -> slightly over market price -> economic incentive given in most cases -> sane

The proposed medium to exchange to is USD/Fiat - only skilled traders are advised to maybe try alts. Selling anything is always risky because the value could change after the sale... what is your point excactly?

You don't need to buy a whole bitcoin, few satoshi is enough. You won't notice this purchase even if you pay 1000-fold.



Ever heard of off-exchanges trades?



Selling your Bitcoin is always risky? Not for fiat, last year clearly showed that those who sold did a smart move. I hope you won't try to argue that keeping bitcoins during a panic is a smart move.



Agree on that.

I argue, that you might miss the price increase and have to buy Bitcoin at a much higher price--> there is just a too big risk in there.
Yes just keeping your Bitcoin is a much smarter move, instead of playing casino with them.

Off-exchange trades don't change anything about, that you have to find such people.

Ok, keep bitcoins. If you are so optimistic you still should do first 3 steps.

If 1 CoreCoin = 1 XTCoin and vice versa,
why would one CoreCoin be worth less if a fork occurs and XT wins?

One would still have 1 CoreCoin (losercoin) on the XT chain (winnercoin).
CoreCoin -> XTCoin -> $xxx
Am I missing something?

http://i61.tinypic.com/f3tiy0.jpg

jl777 & CfB tag teaming, Impressive!!

This is what I was thinking too. Exchanges can be fork-neutral and they could offer services on both or more blockchains until they reach a limit when they cease to offer services on a particular blockchain.


No problem there! It will still be better than our traditional financial system of printing money! It will still be a fixed supply and it will be more transparent than what we have now.


The Bitcoin CEO will save us all!


Don't forget that the system is built to incentivize playing honestly by the rules! They can do that, but the market will react for sure.

 the fight between bitcoin xt and bitcoin core will make some people make money maybe bitcoin should be rename bitcoin xt the dev should work together for the community

The community doesn't pay them directly.

we are not going to abandon the main chain! you might, i for one will NOT. If im the last god damn node running core, then be it! I would rather go to LTC, Etherer... shit even dollars before i run XT.