Bitcoin Forum

Would it be fair enough to assume that the project has failed, or failing?

90% of Bitcoin being held by an oligarchy of the elite, a cartel of banks, and by governments working together might turn Bitcoin into their "playground".

If by "supply" you mean "newly minted coins", then Bitcoin is finished. If anyone has 51% it is bad, but if it is government specifically, then RIP Bitcoin, I will be dumping and going for Dogecoin.

I don't see that happening honestly. I mean more and more people are joining the bitcoin scene every day, buying bitcoin and "hodling". The Banksters don't want to get people rich so If they decide to control most of the coins, they'll have to make a lot of people rich (fiat) in the process (since its a matter of supply and demand). Not to mention that there will always be people who don't want to sell.

well for sure they gonna control it, if they just want to shut it down it will be waste of energy and money if they mine it that need some crazy setup to gain a ton of BTC circulation and if they bought it that gonna need lot of money too. if they really do that thing and sell all of the BTC together so the price dump they still lost lots of money cause they bought it at an expensive price

But everyone has a different definition of rich. If they knew that one day they would champion bitcoin then they'd also be aware that would greatly increase the price. Paying a surplus at current price levels might look like a very cheap deal 10 years from now. And as much as you're right and there will always be people who don't want to sell I think they're a small minority, most people have a price, especially those who are maybe a little older and have a few more commitments. Right now bitcoin isn't as easily spent as fiat and some people will want to spend some of their accumulated wealth while they still have chance instead of holding bitcoin for the benefit of future generations.

some think it is not a possibility. but think about it
imagine a merchant has $1m. and pays 20%  business tax  ..... IRS now has $200k
imagine the merchant then pays out salaries
the 800k goes to staff.. those staff then pay their income tax of 20%(160k)..... IRS now has $360k
staff spend the left over $640k to merchants


imagine merchants has $640k. and pays 20%  business tax($128k)  ..... IRS now has $488k
imagine the merchant then pays out salaries
the 512k goes to staff.. those staff then pay their income tax of 20%(124k)..... IRS now has $612k
staff spend the left over $388k to merchants

repeat repeat

.. now imagine the foolish notion of paying taxes in bitcoin. to give bitcoin to the IRS

now after showing the math that the IRS could easily accumilate alot of % of hoard.
there ar also things like lightning factories, which USERS put in X and as the funder circle around in circled from factory to channel, get spent(user holds less) and settled back to factory with users having less.. and repeat repeat repeat

to a point where general public only hoard 10% left overs
the end result is that although alot of coin is now hoarded.. the network CODE has not changed.

the main thing would be the devs changing the CODE to benefit the IRS/LN factory merchants who have most of the spend ability decisions.

EG if 20 main merchants/exchanges said no to a new CODE change. then the code change shouldnt happen. because pools wont use a code that means they cant spend their coins with the top merchants.
users wont spend their coins using a code change which doesnt allow them access to merchants.

so what you will find is users and pools usually follow the money and follow the main merchants decision that allows the users/miners to be able to continue using their coins..
there no point accepting code which stops your spending habits. and no point denying code which merchants do adopt, again preventing spending if you oppose the merchants

so the oligarch would get merchants on their side and then get bitcoin code changes implemented that benefit the oligarchy and main merchants

bitcoin is not a shitty PoS coin that if you have a large portion of the supply you can control the coin. it is PoW and the 51% that you have heard is talking about hash rate not supply!

now with all that said...
i am not worried about "government". its the corporate elite that are corrupt. EG wall street caused 2007 not government
wall street strong armed government for bail out.. the government didnt plan to screw people

(P.S i am not a fan of government but open minded to stand back and see the big picture then step forward to point out the real flaw)

so its corporate/capitalist control thats more of a concern than govrnment (people still drank beer in prohibition, so dont worry about government)

we have seen its corporations that raise fee's and get greedy.

..
it doesnt actually require hoarding most coins to control things. it actually involves controlling people. (merchants and devs)
the code acceptance deciders

pools and users are not deciders. they are followers.
pools have to make blocks that fit the rules. and the rules(devs) have to fit the needs of the main group that will accept payment and offer products and services(merchants)

Yes, that is why I mentioned "newly minted coins" - whoever mints them, has the hashpower, and if someone has 51% of it then the situation can be bad. It happened before with one of the pools having more than 51% and nothing bad happened.

It's not about 90%, if a particular agency controls 51% of an asset (be it bitcoin or anything else) then that agency receives the controlling power over that asset. Similarly if 51% of total bitcoin supply stays with a single entity, it will certainly become a playground for them and we common people will just be a small part of their game! This rule implies to not only bitcoin but on any asset, be it gold or anything else!

Also I see Franky raised a very valid question here by showing the bifurcation of taxing system! Even though it is a hypothetical scenario, but if we pay taxes using bitcoin, we will essentially hand over the controls to the taxing authority! However, this is how the world and our social system functions, we don't even have an escape pod available! Either we comply intentionally or we will be forced to comply! A radically different social and economical system may save us from such wrongdoings, but that looks like a distant dream, at least as of now!  

The banksters and the governments will have to spend 180 billions US dollars, in order to purchase 90% of all bitcoins.Do you think that they will ever spend that amount?It would be way cheaper for them to just ban bitcoin,instead of buying it.If they ever decide to buy such large amount,the bitcoin price might skyrocket to the moon in just 1 hour.What if the bitcoin sellers refuse to sell?

all pools can do is decide to include or exclude particular transactions.
if they even dared to submit a block that doesnt fit the rules. that block gets rejected in 2 seconds.
pools are not rule setters. they are followers. and it doesnt matter how much electric/hashpower they have.. a rule break is a rul break no matter what

The project is to provide a peer-to-peer cash system, so one or two entities holding 90% of it won't automatically mean failure. It's still going to work as intended. They're going to have massive influence, if not outright control of the prices, but they'd also have the most to lose -- that may incentivize them to play nice.

For idealists who wish to escape their grasp over the financial system, yes.

So I guess it depends on what the project is for you. Not that I think this scenario will ever happen.

hoarding 90% of coin is hoarding.. inaction.. meaningless. EG has the 2009 stash of coins influenced anything.. nope.

as for spending the coin to influence. if it was done just to market crash.. then so be it. once a hoarder spends, they are out. and new people buy coin at discount. so win for the buyer. thats just price drama and not network control.
market crashing the price is just temporary drama and not a permanent uncorrectable change

but code changes which merchants accept is a uncorrectable change..

the only way a 90% hoarder can influence is to incentivise merchants and devs by paying them bribes to do things a certain way. and pay them privately away from market influence thus not affect the price and keep the merchants and devs interested in changing things.

but all in all it circles back to the main change makers. merchants and devs, as they have the ultimate control. pools and users are just followers

all that can happen. either the government, the bank, or maybe even whales that hold 90% of bitcoin and have the potential to make the game as they wish. for example when the market is down now.

Would banksters and governments really spend that much to accumulate 90% of the possible max supply (21M)?
I do not think any institution is liquid enough to sustain that.   

The term '51%' in bitcoin is referring to the amount of hashing power percentage that could potentially 'fork' off the main chain and start doing its own copy of transactions from a single divergence point (the time when the 51% of the hashing power decides to create its own chain) and has nothing to do with owning bitcoins at all. Anyway going back, if people found out that the banks and the governments are owning more than what they have, it's either they're gonna dump on the market pretty hard or just continue with the flow, thinking that they have the big and the 'good guys' on board. With the present market, most of the people are in it for the profit and not the virtue bitcoin enthusiasts once had, so you can expect that these new people will think like an investor playing in conventional trading assets. Also, 90% is a huge sum to hold; volume and liquidity would be an issue if they are really owning that large of an amount.

the project will never fail, but what happens now is that the price of crypto is not stable so it is difficult to predict which projects will develop.

if that happens there are still many other crypto that we can make as a substitute for bitcoin and become the basis of the value for users to pair against the coin, not again on bitcoin.
and this must be held firmly by all crypto owners to fight the injustices and games they play

They would be wasting their time and tax payers / investors money. We (Bitcoin community) will just sell our bitcoins when

this happens and buy a new Alt coin with similar features and we will continue what we are doing now. The amount of money

they would need to do this will bankrupt them, if they continue doing this and the coins will be worthless when people realise

what they are doing.  ;D

let the corporations pump and dump the market. if their only tactic is to pump and dump.
we will sell to them for high. let them dump and we buy back at a discount.

hoarding 90% does nothing. and once they start handing out a 90% their 90% becomes 89% 88% 87%... all the way down until they are back to zero..

so just being coin holders/pump and dump is meaningless alone. and can make investors alot of profit while they temporarily play with prices.

like i said. coin hoarding affects nothing.. its the code and rule changes that matter. which is more about influencing the influencers, merchants and devs

Bitcoin should be in the hands of people! The larger the crypto community itself, the better. Indeed, then it will be extremely difficult to influence the course of Bitcoin. Buy bitcoin and keep for the long term

but anyone the 90% coin hoard is just a theory/scenario/concept question

lets take a more recent practical thing to talk about.
the merchant puppetry and paid devs by a corporation

http://dcg.co/portfolio

No one made a compelling debate.

If 90% of Bitcoin is controlled by a few centralized and powerful groups, what will happen? Will it cease to be a permissionless system?

I think the simplest answer is that it largely depends on the 90%, they may wish for things to remain as they were or they may look to exert some sort of control over the market. One thing I do believe is that even if such a situation occurred there would be enough people in the community who would be against it and some sort of fork would occur, that way leaving the 90% to their coin and having a further coin which goes back to the more core ideals of bitcoin. We've already seen that situation a few times in the past just in not exactly the same such scenario.

depends on HOW the 90% is utilised, presents different results

1. imagine people lock their funds into LN factory(fortknox) which accumulates to 90% locked into an address controlled by the small group of signatories.. leads to how banks done the 'gold standard' switch to paper money and now gold isnt even a payment method

2. imagine a small group bought up 90% of coins. first there wuold be a price spike. and people selling to the group would profit on the way up. then when the group sell. people can profit from the discount on the way down.. but all-in-all its just temporary drama

3. imagine the small group bought up all the coin. and just hoarded.. result. the rest of the community play with 2.1mill coins instead of 21m coiins. plus they play with them at a higher value... no other drama as its just about market play

4. imagine the small group obtain 90% of coins and then use those coins off-market to influence devs to write new rules, and influence merchants to adopt the new rules. thus thee remaining 10% users end up following the rules or find out they cant spend their 10% because the merchants are only accepting payment using the new rules

Interesting question ! I think that the state will have enough to buy bitcoins, but it is more profitable to buy them and just watch the growth in the future.

This would not totally ruin decentralization, because various banks will be in charge making their own decisions and there are also miners who are dictating their own rules in a way. It will be a failure of an attempt to get rid of banks once and for all though. Governments cannot work together anyway, so it's not a viable option even if 90% was indeed held by governmental structures. Even though sometimes bitcoin price dynamics suggests that there are some manipulations, we cannot be sure of it and even if there are whales, we cannot know who they are. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, so I think everything is okay.

If this happens then the aim of creating Bitcoin has been defeated. Bitcoin is not created to be controlled by anybody most especially the government.

I doubt it, they are against on this since the first.
Well now that they dont have a choice but to accept cryptocurrency it is for them to grab some and manipulate it for the future.
They can have bitcoin now and just store it somewhere! then let the people struggle on supplies and they will just wait for the pump.

and how it will then differ from the current situation. if the government will hold a large part, then again we will return to the fact that the government will turn everyone to the fullest.

But surely the chance for this to happen is very low when the government and bitcoin are always in a state of war, bitcoin threatens government and government can not control bitcoin, this is the story we hear very regularly, both are inconsistent with each other. In addition, bitcoin has entered the maturation stage and development, most of the bitcoin has belonged to the miners and users, want them to sell all bitcoin to the government, that's possible but the government will need to buy it for a very high price, I do not think the government has enough time and money to do this.

in my opinion, this will not be possible considering that many people in the first year also have a lot of bitcoin, but unfortunately many of them forget their password / private key address, so if we counted, it's actually a lot of bitcoin that is still a treasure without the owner

It may not be so easy to do so. I mean how much money would you need to do that. I mean its not impossible but its highly unlikely. As we can see more people joining in bitcoin everyday.

maybe you should share with us why you think controlling a certain percentage of the supply will have any effect on bitcoin itself as a permissionless currency?

from what i see, you can't do anything with supply other than affecting the price. and that has nothing to do with the "permissionless" feature! as it was pointed out, bitcoin is not proof of stake.
additionally it is impossible to control 90% of the supply because it is already too late to do that since the distribution of 80% of the total supply has already happened in a fair way.

It might be in their possession, but that doesn't mean the bank employers and others have included it to the bank. The whole currency is decentralised and indubitably in every way.

They can just type numbers into their computers and create money in an instan.  It wouldn't surprise me if they have stockpiled large amounts of bitcoin already.  I don't think it has failed if the banks control 90 percent of bitcoin because the most important thing is your are in complete control of your own funds.  They can not be seized without your private key.

Leave the Lightning factories or the Core developers conspiracy theories out of it. My thinking is 90% of Bitcoins in the control or under the custody of banks, services like Coinbase, and governments working together so that users would have to "gain" permission to use it.

Has Bitcoin failed in that given scenario?

I have abstained myself from posting on hypothetical threads, but as far as this:

1. How are the governments going to buy Bitcoin from all the ideologists?

2. If that happens, government would make a lot of Bitcoin enthusiasts rich.

3. And then what, dump? And ideologists will still buy. Now what? It's not cyclic. Genie is out of the box. The banks and governments would have to tamper down the whole decentralization. Could they? No.


https://medium.com/opacity/bitcoin-1537e616a074

Bitcoin might/might not become a tool of centralization. There would be another one, slowly building a network effect from the underground.

Majority of the world has come down to shared psychosis when it comes down to fiat, decentralization is a whole new term for them. They don't want change.

But transformation is something you would never know until it changed you.

I do believe that with SoV, Bitcoin would become a MoE, but now with the ETF's (even before that) getting into the scenario, not bad, but the peer-to-peer currency concept would be gone.

Store of value has a lot of established investments, top gold. If Bitcoin proliferation has to happen it should be as a medium of exchange or we are simply coming back to the circle that's shared with the centralized/governments, no change whatsoever.

scenario of 90% of users funds in custodial accounts...
for those 90% yes its not a permissionless system they are using

for the other 10%, where its probably too expensive for a 3rd world country to transact with (tx fee's being more than a few hours wage) those able to access the non-custody 10% are not going to be average joe or just anyone, as the cost of fee's become a barrier in itself
EG football stadium, analogy
anyone can sit in the 10% empty seats but they need to pay for a ticket or get rejected out of the seats
anyone can transact using 10% funds but they need to pay the fe's or the min-dust/min fee rules will reject them

thus rejection rules are a permission.. thus the 10% has its own thing of requiring permission.. so yea it becomes a permissioned system

anyway, in a currency that has 90% custodial control well thats just like a fiat currency.
the answer is to look at if fiat failing

that again has many results.
Venezuela would say yes its failed. Zimbabwe would say yes its failed.
america would say shh the sheep are asleep it hasnt failed until its failed so dont mention its failed until the sheep wake up to the failure alarm sounding off

people think because a bank broadly authorises payments without objection, so feel that fiat is not permissioned because they dont see the back-end system.
even though its their money(cough) there are limitations of £$500 ATM max limits. KYC, sars reporting for £$1000+, extended sars reporting for £$10k, etc etc
but for most sheep they will say its not failed until something actually goes wrong

as krishnapramod said
bitcoins old ethos was to be a insurance against the corporate monopoly of citizens only using the monopoly fiat

but yea if btc does become 90% custodial permissioned and 10% tx expense permissioned.
then yea bitcoin has failed the insurance against corporate monopoly

It is unlikely that event ahs taken place. the government, banksters and the elites will ahve to spend a lot of money to buy and hold 90% of the Bitcoin. The amount is so huge that not even the government will make such attempt. It will be easier for them to ban the cryptocurrency and declare it illegal to get rid of the problem than to buy that much of Bitcoins.

You have a point this is very risky for our beloved Bitcoin if 90% of the supply goes to the hands of government institution, it could mean the end of Bitcoin because they can do whatever they want to do it, but I prefer a bitcoin fork then dogecoin I love to have the word Bitcoin on it.

Then what should be done to avoid such a situation? How can we prevent the old system from conquering the new? Or should we be worried about this hypothetical scenario? Because if it can happen it will happen.

This scenario will be sad and a part of Bitcoin will be admitted as failed. It won't be different compared to the current system. But despite this, people won't stop to use Bitcoin for the same reasons they don't stop with cash. Because they need it.

your previous post (before the quote above) told me not to discuss ln factories/core theories (BSCartel).
so i shall not give my answer in this topic. :D

people will stop using bitcoin. they will find another altcoin thats cheaper tx fee and not needed to lock funds up
(myspace to facebook scenario)

if you think people will remain just using bitcoin. then bitcoin becomes the monopoly

in my view as others have also displayed. bitcoin should be the open choice to avoid the monopoly. thus if bitcoin becomes a "one world currency" where nothing else is available. then bitcoin failed itself

The situation with bitcoin in this case is the same as with other assets in the financial market. Whoever has more money, he also runs a feast. I don't think anyone will play games. Most likely, bitcoin will be treated seriously as an investment instrument.

I'm glad that we will never head into that direction with how there is enough room for a wide variety of currencies to emerge and all occupy their share of the so called 'money market'.

Institutions don't really care much about Bitcoin itself, so they are more than happy to continue trading convenient financial instruments with cash settlements. As long as they can buy Bitcoin's exposure it's enough already.

Eventually options and futures markets will dominate Bitcoin too, so it's only a matter of time. Let them have their cash settled instruments and we continue to actually own what we think we own.

More and more people are joining the bitcoin scene everyday,buying bitcoin and hodling. The banksters don't want to get people rich. For sure they are going to control it, if they just want to shut it down it'll be waste of energy and money if they mine it that need some crazy setup to gain a ton of BTC circulation.

It is a failure if that happened. Although I think it will not happen because many holder believe in Bitcoin and those people are investors and they will keep it and hold it for their future.

i dont think so, look at the confiscated bitcoin in the mt. gox echange it wat sold or bid by the FBI to the public, though were not sure who bought it cause they dont disclose that information, it could be some rich individual or the government itself haha, i mean who knows, your point is likely possible though.

because the supply of Bitcoin is limited if the government or banker holds 90% of the supply of course there will be market manipulation
but I think this will require a lot of funds and only a few countries can do this, like Dubai

Then we are totally fucked since they can control the price of Bitcoin in the market :(  

If the bank and the government hold nearly 90% of the bitcoin supply. I think that's not good for investors. Price fluctuations of bitcoin will be controlled by the government. Tax regulations will be issued. It can affect the profitability of investors.

Hahaha only because I haven't fully read about Channel Factories yet. It is hard to debate on something I only partially know something about, and that "something" changes as fast as it is being developed.

Core conspiracy theories are a fun topic, but let's have every discussion on the technical side, and make it a part of everyone's learning process.

in my opinion the only way to discuss a "what if" scenario like this is to first talk about the reasons why you think that scenario is going to happen.
for example in this case you should first discuss the reasons why a government or bank would want to control 90% of bitcoin supply? is it to control its price and make profit? or is it to control its future development? or some sort of censoring?

if we clarify the motivation then we can clarify whether it is even going to happen or not. for instance to control the price there are a lot of easier and much cheaper ways. other motivations may not even work with controlling the supply. for example no matter how much bitcoin you have, you still can't change consensus rules because it is not Proof of Stake coin.

It's sad if they take bitcoin and become a playground, but that won't happen. I think all this will work well without the government and also bankers, bitcoin holders are quite varied and this will be a separate game by the community.

If government agencies and the banking agencies held 90% of the coins, it would have sunken already. There is no doubt about that. Most government agencies are trying to make their own form of cryptocurrency that allows intervention, as a result they do not want the traditional crytocurrencies to exist.

In my honest opinion I do not think this is possible. Because many people are investing in bitcoin so as bitcoin value depends in supply and demand so if the banksters and governments hold 90% of the supply the value will increase making a lot of people very rich.

It's not possible, a lot of 'whales' are HODLING so many bitcoins that the numbers just won't add up. Besides, 90% share means a huge sum of investment in the market, buying out small stakeholdes which is the equivalence of being rich in fiat.

Perhaps it will.Not surprised.We have to buy as many bitcoins as possible and get in the same boat with governments and bankers and oligarchs.Kidding)If it's that easy, we won't be allowed to get in that boat.Personally, my opinion is that 90% of elites would hardly spend their money in bitcoins. And for fiat money, you can buy an island and a yacht and live to the fullest.Bitcoin is something unknown and incomprehensible for many businessmen and elites.So to speak about the ownership of 90% of all bitcoins is groundless.

I am a believer of the idea that Bitcoin will become a global reserve currency one days, that governments and corporations would be willing to make the most important of their transactions with because of its security, finality, and immutability.


The motivation would be the same as what they do to other valuable assets. Try to corner its market.



What? Controlling 90% of the supply would make it stop from being a permissionless system.

It is highly impossible for this to happen even though this is their primary aim before they accept crypto. If this happens, they will continue to manipulate their economies as they are doing with their fiats. They won't have total control over the economy if they accept crypto.

to be a reserve is to lock it up and not be a common currency  (IMF SDR is not common dollar. much like canadian is not american dollar)
to be a reserve some entity has to secure, hold and control the reserve because left in the hands of common folk makes it unpredictable/volatile

so trying to start the reserve. many are saying bitcoin has failed being a common currency.

i will now leave you to your research on the depths some will go to make bitcoin not useful for common use. and instead a locked up custodial reserve.

i hope you can realise my own "reservations"(excuse the pun) about why i do not like bitcoin to become a reserve. as this topics title and your own inferred idea of the end result in such a situation

The government is very rich then if they will able to held 90% of the Bitcoin supply but if this will happen then there will be two scenarios like Bitcoin will probably going to be centralized platform as the price will become stabilized or it will be the end of Bitcoin as the government has the full disposal of it anytime but there are lot of Altcoins that are ready to step up therefore if this will become possible then still there is nothing to worry about as we will just shift to other currencies probably the Ethereum.

f that happens, then banksters and the government can control all crypto markets and can control the price of crypto currencies. this will damage the market and investors or users of crypto currencies will leave. so the crypto currency will be extinct. however, the government and banksters will need large capital to get the bitcoin that is currently on the crypto market. if they have got all the supply of bitcoin then they can control all the supply and price of bitcoin.

Being a global reserve currency is storing a currency that governments and institutions would want to be a part of their "foreign exchange reserves" like the Dollar or the Euro, not the conspiracy theory that you're thinking.

That's why I started this topic because it is up for debate if Bitcoin failed if governments and institutions are holding most of it.

This sounds a little paranoid and made out of thin air
I mean, a healthy awareness is only good, but what would be the point of holding?
I assume if the flow of coins stops and everybody holds it, then it's busted, right?

I think that most of the bitcoins are in private hands and few of these people will give or sell it to banks or governments. Everyone who believes in the development and growth of the crypto-currency market will keep them on their wallets and carefully protect them. Therefore, it is unlikely that 90% of all cryptocurrencies will be in the hands of public authorities.

we hope that bitcoin will not die here, I see and read a lot of people's comments about bitcoin soon to die, it's just people's speculation, but it's real if they hold 50% BTC don't play BTC or just hold on over time BTC will run out

If so they will probably create price instability and we can hardly predict the market trend when the government wants to control us.

Provability of scarcity, of limited supply, and a monetary system's deflationary properties might have its own downsides too in my opinion.

I believe that this demonstrates that there is no "perfect" system.

I think it will be very difficult if banksters want to control the majority of bitcoin assets. besides the price which is relatively very high, when they try to buy a lot of bitcoin, at that time the price will also rise. the result is that many people try to keep their assets, and many people are increasingly interested in buying bitcoin. banksters won't make mistakes like that

That is side-stepping the question, and avoiding the point of the discussion. But I understand. Some of us cannot accept the possibility that Bitcoin can fail. That is not a healthy attitude to have in my opinion. I believe we should also perceive it as a "software experiment that could fail".

Where you got info that 90% of being held by an oligarchy of the elite?
It's not true.
Bitcoin is serious coin and serious business + mining.
"playground" can't exist in any case.

It is a hypothetical scenario, and whether Bitcoin has failed if that were to happen, is up for debate. I believe in a sense, it would fail as an open system because Bitcoin would effectively cease to become permissionless.

I don't think so. There are more and more people joining in cryptoworld, I don't think that bankster and governments can held up to 90% of bitcoin supply. It is true that government and bank really hate and want to kill bitcoin so it is impossible that they 90% of bitcoin.

There will definitely be pros and cons if that happens. The biggest con being is that it will obviously already become regulated which therefore means losing control and democracy over the actions of banks and governments on our bitcoins. On the other hand, if there will that much holdings by the banks and the governments, then there is support for bitcoin being widely accepted.

Will governments have the power in censoring Bitcoin if only a few of them bankers hold and control most of the supply? For example, coercion of Bitcoin companies from making some transactions that was ordered by the government.

I believe banking institutions buying Bitcoin wallet services will become dangerous.

Ah thanks but no thanks. Once 90% of bitcoins are held by banks and governments, it's already called take over. In Corporate Actions, Take Over is the term used if a company is taking over another company. That happens when at least 50% of the shares of the company being taken over is being held by one shareholder. That will be the same case for your stated situation.

That definitely the end of Bitcoin because every banksters and goverments just want to shut Bitcoin down so if they held 90% of the Bitcoin . They will try to kill it for sure.
But in the opposite side, maybe they will try to help Bitcoin developing because it's their money and noone want to lose their money right ?

Yes its will be the end of bitcoin because the origin of creation of bitcoin is a peer to peer electronic currency without middleman
nowadays most of bitcoin is on the exchange not a peer to peer anymore

If the bankers and governments hold 90% of bitcoin, then it will be easy for them to kill bitcoin completely and they would have done that already but I don't think that can be possible because so many individuals hold quite a number of bitcoin.

check out https://dcg.co/portfolio
bitflyer
bitgo
bitoasis
bitpay
bitpesa
bitso
blockchain.info
        blockstream(paid core devs)
        bloq(paid devs involved in the bilateral split)
buda
changetip
circle
coinbase

... and thats just letters B and C (also notice the media control in the list.. coindesk)

In my honest opinion I do not think this is possible. Because many people are investing in bitcoin so as bitcoin value depends in supply and demand so if the banksters and governments hold 90% of the supply the value will increase making a lot of people very rich.

what if i told you that there is a high chance that an exchange you use or a merchant gateway or a hardware wallet or even a software wallet can be tied back to a single company with some ownership stake in your coin holding/using solution.. see post above for hints(link provided in previous post)

It is indeed a scary future if they continue to accumulate comtrol of more and more control of the supply, especially when most of the supply has been mined.

Would it be right to say that this iteration of a decentralized currency is failing? Because what would it be if it's censorable?

But is it possible for that to happen? I don't know how much of the people were using the exchange to store their coins but if most of the people were using the wallets means thay can't take our coins without the private keys right?

That's quite unlikely to happen but if in case it does, then we're doomed. If cryptocurrencies fall under the power of avaricious entities, there will be chaos but then again, since bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are unregulated, that is quite unlikely to happen.

If Banksters had held 90% of Bitcoin then price of it will rise more and more each day, because the number of people ambitious to buy Bitcoin is increasing day by day but every other Millionaire will not release Bitcoin, so price will shoot up.
Government's never store Unregulated Currency correct me if am wrong

I still believe top 1000 people are holding 92% of Bitcoin.People are sacred to Bitcoin after it's fall from $ 17k, so average earners will never risk buying a Bitcoin even if you hype it will rise 1000% in a year.

even you bankrupted a country, you cant even get half of the total supply.

the coin amount ownership right now is not here or there in rgards to just who hoards it.
as coin ownership does not directly change anything. as i said just hoarding doesnt affect the protocol.

but certain hoarders can influence direction by SPENDING (eg bribing certain groups)

right now the situation is at a cliff-edge. so not failed not succeeding. as it still requires a few minimal tweaks to end up down a one way roadmap.

id say the imminent threat is the censorship/control already occuring/occured.  
EG
use this software or else find yourself either:
on another network,unable to spend with certain merchants
or
treated as second class software user that doesnt fully validate/(thus lose what was true consensus vote)

later comes the coin control of locking funds up into factories.

then comes when blockchain rules change again where transactions only get accepted to blocks if the funds are being outputted/spent to a certain transaction type

which is exactly like the 19th century banker game / fortknox locking gold up to make people only want to play with quicker swap unaudited paper promises

think about it. does 90% of people have funds in gold. or 10% today..
compare that to the 18-19th century before paper money
now speed up that 150 year switch over of gold to paper.. to be a game that only takes a decade in crypto (lets say 2015-2025)
the flip from sole custody 8 decimal bitcoins people have full permission of.
to full custodian(factory owned) or co-custody(private channel) permissioned 12 decimal unaudited unconfirmed promissory transactions

Bitcoin is was not designed to enrich the poor. It is fair money. Fiat currencies, like the dollar, are subject to manipulation of all sorts. It can be used unfairly by issuer. Bitcoin does not allow for anyone, even if they own 99.999% of the supply, to change the protocol.However, if your neighbor owns a factory, they may be making more than you and buying more bitcoin than you.

Anyone is welcome to own bitcoin and nobody can stop us from it. That includes people who can buy large sums of bitcoin. They of course pay large sums of other wealth to get it, it is fair. Even if how the banksters got their money originally is not. You know, the fiat they got from us all.

It is not just about "institutional hoarding" but also about services like the Blockchain wallet, Coinbase, BitGo, and other centralized services responsible in storing Bitcoins.


The community freely uses the Bitcoin Core software. Where is the "censorship"? Stop gaslighting.


But what are channel factories for you? "Fort Knox"? Hahaha.

Channel factories are payment channels that give the ability for new payment channels to be created without making extra on-chain transactions.


What?


Then the post goes back to "the Core developers are wrong, I hate them.". Ok, they might be wrong. Give us 5 suggestions on what they should do to make Bitcoin a better network?

We need not fear, Bitcoin community is a strong community and we grow from zero to what it is today. If they intend to destroy the price of Bitcoin, they must know that there are people who are loyal to HODL and their actions are merely vain. No matter how strong the punch is taken so it makes Bitcoin fall, but I'm sure Bitcoin will recover somehow. (http://yubster.com)

But it might not assure censorship resistance anymore if most of the supply is held by banks and Bitcoin services owned by banks, the "Bitcoin oligarchy". What if the oligarchy, because of their own self-interest, be coerced by the government to censor some transactions it doesn't want? Has that iteration of a "censorship resistant" cryptocurrency then failed?


But wouldn't it make Bitcoin a permission-only currency once most of the supply if controlled by a group of banks and Bitcoin services working together, especially when most of the coins are already mined?

I think banksters and the government have bitcoin but not that much, they are more concerned with the interests of their country than buying bitcoin.

Crypto technology isn't for one day or for one year. I'm sure that cryptocurrency will still be swinging up and down for a long time.
There is no doubt that rich people bought Bitcoins for better times and just in case. But in order to strongly swing the market they need to unite.

take a step back from the UTOPIAN false PR department of DCG

fort knox is for gold deposit accounts that give the ability for new bank accounts to be created without making extra gold withdrawals deposits

From the onset,  everyone has the equal right to own any amount they wanted.  It was a risk and still same up till now.  People are trying to have some portion of this gem but top individuals  and institutions have the funds to own more at this time.  Nevertheless,  it won't forfeit it's aim because the circulation isn't much and the vision is intact. 

what FULL VALIDATION / FULL ARCHIVAL software choice is there that has no financial connection to DCG. that also offers its own proposal platform for onchain innovation. that has not been REKT/thrown off the network by not following cores roadmap

as for 5 suggestions
1. never use "inflight upgrades" (non consensus required trojan upgrades)
2. never use mandatory accept or get thrown out tactics
3. allow other teams to run on the network as a level playing field of consensus. and not the 'core roadmap or F**K off'
4. if a dev says 'blockchains cant scale people should use other commercial networks' then they have personally failed bitcoin and dont want to develop bitcoin, so reduce their contributer powers to implement code that sways people off the network
5. refer to point 3

Everything in the world is their Playground, you have to take it for granted.To combat this I just don't see the point.You need to smoothly fuck with the flow and do their job.Nothing plohogo not happen from such holders of assets.Quite the contrary.This will speed up the process of legalization of bitcoin and all cryptocurrency.This is basically what we need.On this sit back and just watch the process.

Everything's gonna be just fine.Don't be afraid of that.On the contrary,it should inspire you to move forward.We need this.Just try to have time to buy more bitcoins and all you will be fine)

But to do this, they all have to conspire to manage us and bitcoin. And this can hardly ever happen, because all these investors are very different people from different countries. Yes and sense coin (decentralization) then will be lost.

If this really happened, it would be worse than the bitcoin of the metamorphosis, the grace of bitcoin seemed to be gone.

if that happens. I am very sure. there will be many people investing in altcoin. therefore, the number of bitcoins is very limited. many people join and create crypto themselves. for bitcoin reserves ..

I don't think that's a serious threat. The main advantage of bitcoin is that it is decentralized, which means that bankers and banks will have to do a huge impossible job to unite to control bitcoin. The probability that this will happen is negligible.

If that was to happen then when FBI breakdown the silk route and found the chunk of bitcoins in this process would not have been selling it in open market. Once more think that when they are selling this bitcoins means they are supporting it. So i think what OP is expecting is not possible. But still cannot say about future. If that happens then it will be benefit for the other Altcoins as Bitcoin will lose the faith from its investors and they will diverse themselves to other altcoin.

just holding coins does not mean controlling.
however spending the coins where the funds influence devs or bitcoin businesses to be swayed in a particular direction does create control.
by this 'sway business' i dont mean businesses change bitcoin code rules. but if a business was to only accept 'whitelisted' coins or was told to only accept litecoin.. then suddenly people will see less utility of using bitcoin if they cant spend it with certain businesses.

id say i have more coins than you as i have had a nice hoard since 2012. but i dont flash my stash, because i know my coin hoard has no meaningful control over anything.
thus id say my hoard has no more control than your hoard of coins..

however if i bounty campaigned or VC funded a dev team to change the rules.. then things would become controlled

take DCG.CO having ownership stake in blockstream that coded segwit. ownership stake in bloq that done segwitx2, ownership stake in blockchain.info(ver) that gave opposition the fake "free choice". ownership stake in many merchant/exchanges and payment gateways that formed the NYA agreement. ownership stake in a few other people (USAF)

you'll see that things did change and anyone else was just sheep herded into the change activation via the "compatibility" trick where by not upgrading didnt actually prevent activation. thus people in the general community could not vote/veto/prevent the change.

---

so yea FBI hoarding silkroad funds caused nothing. but spending coins means THEY now have more fiat. to buy more guns and swat raid bitcoin business or send out court orders to sway businesses into doing what the fbi/sec want

thats why we need to ensure we are not reliant on third parties. and not reliant on single team of devs. to avoid us falling into the trap of corruption and monopoly games

I think bitcoin created because banks system are corrupt and created to againts banks dominant in our economic system If bitcoin held more than 90% supply, i think crypto fail againts the system and i think we should hold our bitcoin because its must be very expensive then

that's impossible, but i see opportunity when that happens, though that will limit the circulating supply of bitcoin, but in the same vein that will also mean a hike in the price of the coin, which will mean big gains to the holders of the circulating supply of 10%.

But you say it like channel factories are government controlled facilities like "Fort Knox". I know you are showing your own perspective but your comparison is wrong.

Plus I'm confused. Can you explain how channel factories work technically for a newbie like me? I want to know why you believe that it is like "Fort Knox".


Who decides to run Core's software?


Should the community call for the removal of the Core developers?


Assuming you are right, do you believe that Bitcoin should hard fork to bigger block sizes to scale?

Lol...i don't think is true shall...respective national governments are poor at seeing long term!...to me personally...they are not holding any bitcoins...most of the bitcoins collected by US government were option out!

this might happen to XRP, but bitcoin is something different where they don't have the full power to master it, but if that happens they will also try to move the concentration from fiat to BTC because fiat is considered useless in the next few years, they will lose their capitalist prestige and try alternatives with crypto monopoly as a reference for future currencies.

What's now? Well, manipulations, manipulations, and one more time manipulations. However, that's not that bad, and patient people can still make good money. We're still respecting the market cycles, so the current situation is pretty well aligned with the overall picture.

If the governments and the banksters are holding 90% of bitcoin means the price will be very huge because of high demand but they can make the price to drop over night and after that the bitcoins will go to different hands so it means they can't control the market for too long.

If the government and banks hold 90% of bitcoin then the volatility of bitcoin will become static and the value will not rise for a long time. The market forces of demand and supply determine that price of bitcoin. The government will have to spend billions or trillions of dollars to buy that amount of bitcoin so its cheaper for them to ban than to undergo such an expensive venture

Governments and banks fortunately do not hold 90% or even 50% of the crypto currencies. If you say that they hold 90% of the bitcoins, they would have stopped ordinary people from using it and keep the banking system in place forever.

Why would they? Btc is a great tool to rip off people that don't pay taxes and also rip off hidden money. So btc is quite a smart move if designed by authorities. The original purpose of btc is bright, but what do we have now?

It is highly impossible for this to happen even though this is their primary aim before they accept crypto. If this happens, they will continue to manipulate their economies as they are doing with their fiats. They won't have total control over the economy if they accept crypto.

Smart government is the one who accepts and regulates cryptocurrency and I'm sure they don't see cryptocurrency as a commodity like oil that must be monopolized, at least that way it will indirectly only result in losses, even to the bank, it also requires management while the human resources are few, so they allow the ma (http://yubster.com)rket or encourage their domestic market to move in a field that covers this.

There's 2 scenarios:
1. They keep the BTC in cold storage. This essentially removes 90% from the markets. With such little float, it would be incredibly simple to pump and dump bitcoin, unless it's priced at $100,000 and above
2. They do actively keep BTC in government trading accounts. This would allow any government official to conduct insider trading and enrich themselves in a day
Thankfully both scenarios are highly unlikely, governments are allergic to bitcoin

I do not think it will ever happen. Because no one can control crypto currency. Because of this, Bitcoin has not been able to adopt some countries. Therefore, we should not think much about this.

This is the worst thing that can happen to bitcoin, if 90% of bitcoin is owned by banksters and Government then manipulation is not far fetch in the ecosystem.

I agree with your opinion, the government must spend very large funds to be able to master bitcoin, so it is not productive. It is better to regulate or ban bitcoin in the country, where there must be benefits that can be obtained by the government in the short and long term.

Who has money, he runs the game, that's how it works. In this harsh bear market, many average joes left the market and sold those holding to those elites. 

Bumping the topic. I believe it has become more and more relevant, and dangerous, that as instutions are buying more and more Bitcoins and placing it under centralized custody, like PayPal, it could lead to a point when the custodians could start censoring us.

That's what we can observe now, I don't understand why there is so much excitement about getting instututional giants and bankers into bitcoin. Better adoption, more money from institutional investors flowing in etc.yes it's all happening now but is it really good? Will everybody be happy to know that PayPal, Grayscale, Square, some Wall street banks and few greedy hedge funds control the rest of the supply and price?
Big question if the project failing or not, it's not clear yet but there are some worrysome signs.

I believe we should be worried more about a large percentage of the supply is controlled by custodians, or services like PayPal becoming THE custodians, removing the sovereign store of value feature, and majority of usage of Bitcoin, as a medium of exchange, would be through them.

what now? BTC is "De Fecto" begin centralized. 

Thus Satashi's original vision in his white paper "decentralized peer-to-peer cash system" remains "De Jure" as it is a thing of the past, technically.

 How much can it be decentralized if a few early ones mined %70 of bitcoin..appr 15 million coins in 1.5 years..i dont understand. And they just hodl,no adoption growing for payments, no MOE..

 There is only 1.5 million coins left to mine..Miner capitulation soon maybe.

 And i dont trust those bankers,wallstreet guys shilling..When they FUD at 2013 bitcoin below 300,500 usd they were buying, now they promoto agrresively. Are they trustable?

If deep state banking globalist cartel gain custodial control of 95% as part of strategic BTC reserve holdings, an motion for BIP shall be introduced by reason of necessity to subdivide each satoshi into smaller units,

like "mili satoshi" or perhpas "MicroSatoshi" are required to address divisibility to address real world micro-transactions issues, possibly due to successful activation of advanced side/off-chain solutions like graftroot or taproot.

Applying modern monetary theory so long the "velocity" of BTC as unit of account in real world circulation increases linearly or perhaps at a sub-quadratic growth, it will cause scarcity and this would cause rises in BTC valuation.

Due to the hard money nature of BTC, this effect can be difficult to contain.

Considering there are 328,000,000,000,000 yuan in total monetary supply, once unit of account reaches
100 million yuan per BTC it would require aggregate utxo private key holding to reach 3,280,000 BTC, which gave raise to question of practicality at such reserve amount.  As such it posses an practical issue even at a national level.

This maybe the very reason why Satoshi have left those coinbase utxo's untouched.

that doesnt solve miner paradox. Check yearly miner rewards. Capped supply is a  clever-well tought ticking dynamite..Satoshi is very clever.

It's plain and simple, people will not trust Bitcoin anymore knowing that it wasn't decentralized as banksters and the government will just manipulate it. But that is somehow impossible to happen. Why? Since Satoshi created Bitcoin completely decentralized and he remained anonymous to make sure that there will be no entity to be subject and responsible other than the people who use Bitcoin. These people are now those who are in total control of the outcome in the future as they decide how to use Bitcoin either to hold it or not, use it in good ways, and exercise their freedom with it. In addition, exchanges are built with fairness in such a way that exchanges only provide Bitcoin based on their protocol. This means that if governments want to acquire most of the Bitcoin, they need to buy it completely and that's impossible.

It isn't a problem for gold, so why would it be a problem for Bitcoin

I think one of the best ways to prevent this from happening is to build a mechanism within the Bitcoin Network to control the supply/price.  This could mean increasing the total supply from current 21 million to may be 30million. The additional 9million could then be distributed and locked safely using multi-sig/smart-contract and governed by a decentralized community. The  community could help prevent the extreme price volatility by keeping the price fluctuate moderately while remaining deflationary long-term.


* You could alternatively (or in combination with the above) reward people to lock and hold/stake their Bitcoins for certain period of time(esp when Bitcoin is bearish) and the bitcoins maybe unlock when Bitcoin becomes bullish. Once their bitcoins are locked, they could be rewarded in tokens or something... Reward automatically increases when Bitcoin price is going down to encourage more people to hold and decreases when Bitcoin is going up to encourage some selling

It goes without saying that such incidents are unlikely to happen in the future. Because the demand for Bitcoin is increasing day by day all over the world and more and more people are getting involved in it which has caused Bitcoin to spread among people all over the world. In this case, if the government and banksters have 90 percent of bitcoin, the value of bitcoin will increase significantly. On the other hand, if the government and the banksters have 90 percent bitcoin, the demand for it from the general public will increase manifold.

Not to mention that Satoshi hold so many coins and governments always sell Bitcoin in the auction if they seize crypto from criminal activities. In this case, 90% still far away from reality, if they buy bitcoin, people will gain profits through the process but doesn't mean they will control it, supply and demand will play the role.

banksters bitcoin game is to get people to lock bitcoin into bankster vaults. and then play with banksters tokens on other networks that are not bitcoin but just pretend to be.

thank you for suddenly waking up to the game.. only took you 4 years

1920's money was gold backed paper. where the gold was vaulted in custodians. and paper tokens(bank notes) were given to play with....... then THEY decided you cant swap it back for gold

those that then still wanted to invest in gold again in non bank note system.. evolved to 'online certificate' tokens. and has been a bankster latest gold game for decades. guess what will happen to that in future.
more recently:
LN 'millisat' tokens are the greyscale bitcoin game for the last 5 years. and like the 'gold standard' of the early half of the 1900's we will see how these 'watchtower''factories' will suddenly not be able to do bank runs if suddenly large amount of people want to exit LN

best advice:
feel free to day trade small 'disposable' amounts in their systems. but dont use them as your whole wealth asset management.
"if you cant afford to lose it, dont use it"
dont put your hoard into exchanges/LN

Stop gaslighting. ::)

I was never against the debate that centralized-3rd-party-custodians could spell trouble to Bitcoin's censorship-resistance.


That only applies to custodial services for LN. A user has a choice to run his own Lightning node, so it's not a direct comparison to gold and bank vaults. Plus you always have uncensorable Bitcoin onchain transactions available.

stop abusing the buzzword gaslighting until you learn the meaning
if your doubting your sanity. that on you.
but facts and numbers and quotes from devs showing they dont want people to use bitcoin as money exist.

but anyway if we forget the bitcoin as money element and instead leap forward to say bitcoin was always thought of as a reserve asset(gold)
did you know when gold left the money standard in the 1970's they too said 'people can choose to run their own gold vault plus you always have uncensored gold trades available' you not forced to use banknotes

but look how 'mainstream' gold is not. its no longer something every day people use everyday for barter
its not something people think about using daily.
yea it exists in financial industry amungst the big boys. but be honest when was the last time you used gold for daily use barter

plus to be a viable 'vault' in LN. requires you to have enough 'value' locked up to be collateral for tokens in each channel and have multiple channels to be able to be a service. otherwise you just end up having no path/route available or not enough funds to offer out as a route/path for others. and end up only becoming attached to the large services. to reduce your collateral outlay/risk of loss.

maybe try to run real life scenarios/feasibility studies/test runs. and see how realistic the 'freedoms' are that have been promoted to you.
yep run some scenarios and dont just avoid it by saying doing so is some psychological experiment to make you feel insane(gaslight). that rebuttal does not work.

It's not a debate. You have twisted the truth, and putting words in people's mouths many times in the forum. Stop gaslighting. ::)


There you go again with the Disinformation. There is no "value locked up" in Lightning as "collateral" for "tokens" to be issued. Those transactions are signed by the participants of the channel, that have not been broadcasted to the network.

a bitcoin is not the recipients property until its confirmed. thus the 'non broadcast' LN contracts are not verified/solid/confirmed/guaranteed. meaning its a promise not a settlement

secondly gas lighting is about doing things to make you feel insane. sorry but your not that important to the forum. me presenting facts about what a true bitcoin transaction is and what a flimsy promise is that doesnt even use the same units of account has nothing to do with your sanity. its about making people see a different picture to what empty promises and hopes the big banker group are promising by trying to say LN is the same as bitcoin in all things/ways.
same way banks made people falsely believe bank notes were as good as gold. which we now know they are not.

sorry but LN is not bitcoin... the easiest way to spot this, should you do your research. is LN uses tokens/values with more then 8 decimals.
if you cannot count. thats not my problem. but just dont pretend an LN millisat accounting of more then 8 decimals is the same as bitcoin of 8 decimals.
atleast learn what unit of account HTLC use. it will definitely surprise you
atleast learn that LN is not a service devoted to bitcoin. (atomic swaps) that will surprise you again.

its got nothing to do with a making you insane. its actually a reality check. not a scheme to send you to the loony bin. so drop throwing about the gaslight word as my comments on LN has nothing to do with trying you put you into a psych assessment/72hor hold. so get over yourself and wake up

but if you do want to keep promoting LN while not fully understanding it.. atleast dont try over promising LN features under the guise of the security of what bitcoins blockchain offer.
its not the same security model nor accounting model nor settlement model(factories settle offchain).
yep factory/watchtowers can aggregate the vaulted value on the blockchain. and then offer offchain promises(htlc's) where by the promises(htlc's) never settle onchain. they just separetly go back to the factory/watchtower that then re-issues new promises(htlc's) all offchain.

if your not upto date about what LN does. maybe try to use it if you actually want to promote it.. and run scenarios and realise the flaws/limitations. after all you seem to be a fan of it, so its strange you seem reluctant to then use it to learn how it works outside of the publicity literature given to you by others.

just stop acting like a publicity kiss ass and actually understand what your a fan of, thats all im saying

Well, that scenario would only happen if the government is already knowledgeable enough to play within the Cryptocurrency Industry but as far as most users can see, its not happening within the next incoming years. However, if a project failed that is completely reliant on banks and the government, it would really turn into something bad which can affect this Industry.

governments dont play in the finance industry. they give that game to a separate organisation which is central and commercial banks. even you subtly recognise the separation by saying 'banks AND government'

so getting back to the topic.
if BANKS want to be involved in crypto heavily they would lobby/bribe government to make laws that help monopolise crypto into banks favour
(EG independent average joe hoarding needs transparency, taxing,verified accounting)
(EG teasing average joe to put funds into custodians offering those services and not be independent hoarder)

if BANKS dont want the crypto as competitors and dont want crypto in their asset list they would again lobby/bribe government to outlaw crypto
(EG governments didnt care either way early on but banks told governments that crypto should be feared)
(EG banks were involved in freezing exchange fiat accounts out of fear early on.)

but using the scenario of favouring crypto assets as this topic deems. we can all look at the gold history of the last 100 years to see what could happen if banks had 90% of circulation.

what happens is banks set up services where normal people can vault up their assets into management of bank services. and in exchange banks offer them tokens/promissory notes to play around with under the guise that its too expensive to handle the underlying asset in normal peoples own hands.
then they start substituting out the tokens via diluting the value via sub divisions of the asset and then when the time is right declassifying the like-for-like settlements if people chose to truly exit the bank service token and return to holding the real asset.

LN factories that do "offchain settlement(close:reopen channel session without blockchain confirms)" are basically bank accounts of promissory note credit

enjoy

BUT the onchain transactions that opened the channel are confirmed transactions, signed by the participants of the channel. They are actual Bitcoins.


It's either you're playing stupid, or if you truly believe that there are entities that issue IOUs in Lightning when you open a channel, then you are truly stupid.

If this will be their plan, I think we should take advantage of what we can while in the process. With a lot of Bitcoins in other people, they would be having a hard time controlling the price. And if that would be really their plan, the price of bitcoin would surely go up since they will be buying them unless they convince most of those companies that hold bitcoin to do that.

learn about factories.. or other LN things. such as lightning labs 'shadowchains'
then maybe you will understand that inchannel HTLC's (not 8 deciminal, so not broadcastable) do not always get converted to bitcoin transactions(8decimal) to settle to the bitcoin blockchain

meaning settlements are not always broadcast to the blitcoin blockchain. but instead just arbitraged/aggregated back to the factory/orchestrator/manager. that then just re-issues new HTLC to play with offchain.

ive told you multiples times now if you want to act like an LN promoter. atleast do some research

htlcs do not have to convert to 8dec transaction to settle to the bitcoin blockchain. and cannot themselves be settled on the blockchain direct.
their converted settling contract can just be a signal to a manager to re-allocate HTLC off chain. or can end up "settling" to a sidechain which again is not the bitcoin blockchain.

try to understand the tech.. not just repeat the promotional brochure buzzwordatory

again
HTLC are not 8 decimal nor direct link to a blockchain transaction. they are a sub contract in a different unit measure.
please just try to do research. dont hit reply to say you done it and you disagree.. just go check. actually check. then reply. if you reply in the next couple hours it shows you didnt put in the effort and you have no interest in learning. you just want to cause an argument to defend a "product" you want to advertise/promote.
drop the promotion mindset for just a day and put in some research mindset effort.
things to check before dare replying:
factories.
shadowchains,
watchtowers.
millisats vs sats
htlc vs confirmed bitcoin transaction.

..
i say this. because there are already "liquidity markets" that are selling HTLC balance all off chain where people can swap balance to open and close new channels all without touching the blockchain.
go research it. and then maybe then you will see how the big finance and devs are trying to de-tether LN value from true bitcoin value.
EG 1 real 0.00500000 bitcoin utxo may only be worth   470000000millisat  (0.00470000btc) in LN htlc due to all the service fees and 'renting' fee's of a channel

I also think that most of the bitcoins are in private hands and very few of these people will sell it to banks or governments. Anyone who believes in the development and growth of the cryptocurrency market will keep and protect them in their wallet.

There was NOTHING in what you posted, that proved or showed, that there is/was a centralized entity that held Bitcoins, then issued IOU tokens in the Lightning Network.

when you finally go and research what factories/shadow chains do (settle and reissue) OFFCHAIN. then you will have your wake up moment.
then during that wake up moment i hope you start to wonder and then further research who would own/manage/supervise such factories/shadowchains. who sets the rules for whats an acceptable "settlement" on these offchain services.

then you might start to see the bigger picture.

but that day.. seems to be another ignorant amount of months/years away

so have fun in the meantime.

..
p.s should you get bored of ignorance. check out whats the difference between a HTLC and a 'commitment tx'
yea they love to rename things to hide their function. but. i know you wont bother
..

anyway. to the global point of this topic..
when people start to realise their asset is being made to be too expensive to barter/transact daily with normal things in life independently. and bankers are offering services which can give them the speed/cheapness they used to have independently. yet there is a relationship between the bankers and those 'innovators' that made the asset more expensive to handle

then slowly people do end up handing over their assets to a custodian. and the custodian hands them other tokens. and slowly but the vale/spendable value of the token detaches from the value of the locked up asset.
eventually more fee's and methods are employed to make it harder to get hands on the underlying asset. and the bankers try to offer you less valued assets in exchange

..
with LN this is ALREADY HAPPENING
i do hope you learn about shadowchains beyond the glossy brochure fluff. it is eye opening

NOTHING from your post proves/shows that Lightning transactions are made through the use of IOU/tokens. You're deliberately making it long, and confusing for newbies, but it doesn't prove anything. Bitcoins in Lightning channels are actual Bitcoins.

So, as always, you don't bat an eyelid about centralised exchanges, PayPal, or any other fully-custodial services, where users will undeniably have far less choice about how much control they want to keep over their funds.  Instead, you take aim at the open-source code that provides people with more choice.  Not to mention taking yet another topic that had nothing to do with Lightning and turning it into yet another lie-fest about a system you're totally obsessed with.

Just because people could eventually have an option to use services that work with channel factories, they will still have the choice to open their own channels if they choose to.  Stop pretending that factories would be compulsory, you lying shitweasel.  I know you hate freedom, being the fascist little Nazi that you are, but none of your tiresome fear-mongering is going to stop users enjoying the freedoms off-chain transactions offer them.  You can't put a dent in progress because you are a meaningless speck of excrement.  I can't remember the last time I saw anyone take you seriously.  You're a joke.  Why don't you go back to loitering in the Politics and Society board?  Your caveman mindset appears to be tolerated there.  You're too ignorant and too heavily discredited to be in any position to lecture people about Bitcoin anymore.  You pathetic, worthless troll.

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To everyone else, I'll point you to this factual topic about Lightning (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158920.0), where the above troll is banned from posting, because the moderators got tired of his constant dishonesty.

So far, this is not happening, so try to make a profit now, and do not think about what will happen later.

Plus even if you use a custodial Lightning service/wallet, NOTHING in their process of opening the channel has, made them deposit to a centralized entity in order to receive "tokens" to use in LN. NOTHING.


That should be taken as an opportunity to reply/post the truth. He's posting anything in case people like you don't reply, and gaslight newbies.

windfury. still has not learned the meaning of the word gaslight..
also windfury himself was told that the in channel transactions are measured in millisats and they are separate to the close session(commitments)

so again inchannel transactions in LN are IOU. the commitment/settlement transactions are separate contracts


cant trust the htlc.
measured in millisat
when making the commitment transaction the HTLC is not used it simply gets trashed
.. do you get it yet
the payments within LN are not guaranteed commitments. they are weak assed promises. in a token measure thats not 8 decimals

im starting to think you have never even used LN. because in that very same thread. those using LN alot are talking about how LN has flaws and messes up their close sessions. where they have to play around with fee's and their channel partner does the same. delaying things.

this 'trust' and reliance on a partner is not the independant control idea of bitcoin.

as for doomad trying to be your body guard. he has for years now been hyping up the services because even he know trying to just be your own node and hope for good working routing without a hub/spoke, just wont work.
he knows people will have to end up giving hubs(custodians)(factories) your funds and then let then hand over arbitratored millisat balance htlc's.

so please atleast try using LN, try seeing the flaws, try reading the many people saying there are flaws. and stop just reverting to the outdated promotional material

please its been requested soo many times for well over a year now.
can you please just try to learn about LN before trying to fluff up its promotional material from 2017.

heck read the concerns on the link doomad provided. read into the bits where it says they can add more layers and services to avoid onchain settlements. understand LN.. properly.

again, things to check before dare replying:
factories.
shadowchains,
watchtowers.
millisats vs sats
htlc vs commitments
routing issues
fee issues

Yes, for once I'm actually inclined to agree with something you've said.  

I hope everyone reading this understands the importance that you read genuine issues from real people, rather than franky1's ridiculous made-up campfire stories.  The simple fact is, most losses on LN come from user error.  So do make sure you fully understand what you're doing before you use it.  But it avoids the situation where you're likely to suffer a total wipeout because of something someone else did, as is the case with custodians.  The responsibility is yours.  Then, once people have gained a decent understanding, they'll know that, while it's not a perfect solution, it's still by far the most viable option for those who want to use Bitcoin as a currency and spend it regularly.  Naturally, for those who are more of an accumulator/hodler, then it won't be particularly useful to them.

As always, franky1 believes me to be a blind fanatic, but this is not so.  I'm fully aware that Lightning has issues.  But sane and logical people will recognise that every shortcoming in the Lightning Network is a weakness that hasn't been introduced to the base protocol.  Whereas franky1's desired direction is to inject every possible compromise directly into Bitcoin and weaken it.  He's clearly a moron.  Pay him no mind.



I'm not a bodyguard.  Merely a fact-checker.  Dispelling abject lies is not "hyping up" Lightning.  I just call out the bullshit where I see it.  I'm not making any unrealistic claims.  

I'll state categorically that each user will have a different experience with routing transactions, as it will largely depend on how many people they know and how many they are likely to transact with.  If you know a whole bunch of people who use LN regularly, you're probably going to find it easier to avoid relying on any large "hubs".  But for people like franky1 (who probably has no friends because no one could spend more than half a minute in a room with him without feeling the urge to punch him square in the face due to him being inherently unlikable), they might struggle to route transactions.

Is that why you hate LN, franky1?  Does it do a great job of highlighting the issue where you're a repulsive waste of oxygen that people go out of their way to avoid?  Does it constantly remind you that you have no friends because you drove them all away by being so unbelievably obnoxious?

But anyway, the point is, some people will rely on larger hubs until there are more users.  But even having several large hubs is still an improvement over Bitcoin's early history.  Back in 2012/2013, a huge number of people primarily used the Mt.Gox exchange.  Some of us saw the warning signs and tried to warn people, but many just didn't listen.  The collapse of that one website caused absolute devastation to thousands of people.  And because it was fully custodial and centralised, the vast majority of the victims are still waiting for recompense all these years later.  Imagine how many affected users, due to that experience, vowed to never use Bitcoin again.  It was a major catastrophe that highlighted the issues with centralised fully-custodial services.  Some would argue we still haven't learned the lessons it should have taught us.  So... even -IF- the Lightning Network was as bad as franky1 claims it is, it still couldn't possibly be as bad as Gox or any of the present day exchanges or webwallets.  I don't believe Lightning will ever become fully custodial and I don't believe it would ever centralise into one giant hub that could fail.  So again, the responsibility is yours to use it wisely.  As such, I'm satisfied that it should continue to be developed and given space to grow and evolve.