Until a few months ago, no one talked about satoshis per byte. For years now transactions have been so cheap that you could have addresses with lots of tiny inputs, and it would still cost only 0.0001 or 0.00005 BTC to send. Since I was just a user sitting behind the driving wheel, clueless as to what an alternator or a distributor was, I paid absolutely no attention to the size amounts coming into addresses. Now suddenly, the truth comes forward, and it can now cost tens of dollars to move out smallish amount of bitcoin in an address. It can also cost a still reasonable amount, if you only have one input in an address that you're  spending.

Anyway, now we all know better, Satoshis/byte is a real world thing now, and smallish amounts of BTC will be sent less and less frequently, sending bitcoin on chain will not be for tiny amounts anymore, fees will be more reasonable once this turnover of small inputs finishes, and we'll all adjust our usage habits.

A split seems inevitable, the main question is which side gets to keep the name Bitcoin.

How does this scenario sound to folks here.

Let's say UASF has 15% hash rate.

Now miners have not exactly been known for their reverence of bitcoin, and would probably do whatever they can to increase their personal stash.

So, after chain split, a group of rogue Legacy miners with more than 35% hashrate (to add to the already 15%UASF  hashrate) decide to game the hell out of the situation.

They sell their Legacy coins, short the hell out of more Legacy coins, leverage the crap out of BIP148 coins...and then on D-day, H-Hour, switch over to BIP 148 chain. With UASF now having more than 51% hasrate, Legacy coin value heads down south, BIP 148 goes to the moon, and we have some new, very wealthy, very elite miners.

Imagine using the Legacy chain, and going to sleep each night with that sword of Damocles hanging over your head, (and wealth).

Could a group of miners actually be so....selfish?

Wow didn't even think about it this way.

At some BIP 148 hashrate (25%, 30% 35%?), the game of chicken will really ramp up for legacy chain users, and at some point should avalanche.

Because if the BIP 148 chain gets longer, the old chain gets reorged into the BIP 148 chain, causing the history of transactions of the old  chain (it's being called "legacy" chain) to disappear (along with bitcoins transacted there). Since this can only happen in the legacy chain reorging into the new chain (no losses if the other direction happens), it is expected this risk of transactions being wiped out will make legacy chain transactors nervous enough to gravitate to the BIP 148 chain.

But you know, even if the chains remain split, I'd be pretty nervous transacting on the legacy chain knowing dozens and dozens of the top developers,  having probably been exiled to the minority BIP 148 chain (if it were the majority chain Segwit would activate) and possibly have some idle time on their hands, may just look in the direction of the legacy chain with eyes of causing much damage to what will inevitably be weaker code on the legacy side. And judging by history, the legacy chain code will just get weaker and weaker as time goes on, since the top developers would now be on the other side of the "fence". Will open season on legacy chain begin starting early August (or did the developers take some sort of software hippocratic oath when they entered the crypto world)?

When push comes to shove, and it looks like that'll be the case Aug. 1, if the choice is to follow the smart miners, or following the smart developers, I am confident  which direction the community will follow.

It's a shame these smart folks can't come to a reasonable conclusion (in the timeframe provided, Segwit + 2MB in 6 months going to be very very buggy, dangerous, and cause bitcoin value to plummet once bugs are exposed - this is no solution). The miners have day to day power (power of the purse to bribe and coerce) >> developer power, but developers have the nuclear option (POW change), which would pretty much eliminate current miner stranglehold at the price of doing much harm to bitcoin for the forseeable future.

Really looks gloomy at the moment, even though I believe community will choose smart developers over smart miners when everyone realizes their backs are against the wall.

Looks like some of you are setting yourselves up to lose bitcoin after Aug. 1

Pretty sure bitcoin doesn't differentiate between merchants who are aware of the new rules, and merchants who aren't. There's no customer service to complain to if you choose wrong, whatever the reason was. But I am also sure as the time gets closer to Aug. 1, you would have to be living under a rock to be unaware of what will be going on with UASF.

Bro, you can't just be 90% right, you have to be 100% right, because if you're wrong and transact on legacy chain after Aug. 1, and legacy chain re-orgs into segwit chain ANYTIME after, your transaction history on legacy chain gets erased, and your coins are gone.

Still feeling that Segwit + 2MB hubris?

There's going to be a lot of bitcoins flowing into Electrum, Mycelium, Trezor, Green wallets the next few weeks (these wallets have committed early to enforce BIP 148)....would be crazy risk (of potential legacy chain re-org) to leave them anywhere that isn't wholeheartedly committing to BIP 148 early on.

I am sure we'll all learn a lot more about the chain split as it gets closer to reality, no doubt it will be pretty much the ONLY topic of discussion in July if it is not averted somehow...Until then , all i can really do is parrot what is being said right now....Hold your own keys, hold your own keys, squawk...hold your own keys hold your own keys, squawk squawk (I know, weak parrot imitation)....

At 200 satoshis it's market cap is around $750 million ?

What does this magical chain contain?

no comment

Best I can tell, the pressure has increased for bitcoin to move forward with scaling, because blocks were full for a few weeks recently and fees went up fairly dramatically.

Scaling bitcoin for more people to use it means some kind of "bloating" needs to happen.

The BU people want to bloat the blockchain with bigger blocks, more data, more bandwith, which means fewer people can afford to be nodes, thus centralizing bitcoin, while still not getting that much scaling.

The Segwit supporters want to scale bitcoin by huge amounts, first by incorporating Segwit and then the Lightning Network. But the price to do it is by writing massive amounts of code, extremely complex, which very few people can follow and understand. So even though it is open source software, there is still a certain amount of "intellectual centralization", according to the BU supporters.

Chinese miners (and other miners, Chinese are the majority at this point in time), who may or may not have long term investment in bitcoins future, are the first in line to make the decision which scaling path is to be taken, at least this is the BU claim of taking the Bitcoin White Paper literally word for word. It is not as easy a decision for them (the miners) as it is for the bitcoin economy, as they are first and foremost looking out for their own financial well being and influence over the system.

Since there is nowhere near any unanimity on the issue, and since the miners are the only group really supporting BU in any significant way, the Segwit camp, rightly or wrongly, have christened BU as China coin.

Best as I understand things at the moment.

Great. Guarantee this to Chinese miners and they will probably signal Segwit, and we can move on.

Seems like (Chinese) miners getting very worried about 6.25 BTC reward in 3 years, then 3.125 BTC looming in 7 years, they probably can't see viable financial future unless blocks get much bigger (more transactions, more fees) so are entertaining other ideas from all comers, sane or insane. Miner centralization can apparently lead to the tail wagging the dog, for awhile anyway.

Predictious, your wallet is having issues.

I tried to withdraw on March 5, and the transaction is showing as double spend


https://blockchain.info/tx/8912620da44f145d1da7fc5f6dbbcfa5434c0c88c9452ca3ededc0b0d2b00dd6


I saw other transactions from Predictious wallet in the same situation around the same time.

Please advise what to do next. (BTW, I have checked a couple of other blockchain explorers, and none recognize the transaction ID)


Edit: March 7, and blockchain.info reports "transaction has been pruned from blockchain.info site database".
Edit March 8 - Now blockchain.info only reports "transaction not found"
The bitcoin is not in my wallet, and it's not in my Predictious account.

What next?

Edit: March 8 - issue has been resolved, funds returned to my account.

If this happens to anyone else, I am not sure if the process is automatic or not, as I didn't hear back from anyone at Predictious. It could be just something that resolves itself automatically after 3 days, or it could be manual intervention by Predictious without them acknowledging that they did anything manual.

Exact same thing for me, no transaction ID for me either, but says "sent", same day (Feb. 4) mailed support, no reply yet (as they said in this thread could take a while they are very backlogged)

Well don't forget how close NitWit came to being consenusized in 2012, it was at 30% most of the year and then momentum picked up in month 11, then just missed out at 87%. You just can't ever tell what the herd will do...

They certainly are kicking some Swedey and Jewy mining ass, very well observed. But don't forget this country has such an ant farm mentality that the atmosphere in many of their cities looks like Venus on a nice day. This happens when the focus of your world is the next 5 minutes, not the next 5 centuries.