Nobody said that it wasn't.

Hyperbolic nonsense, nothing surprising there. If you want additional capacity, you will try to use Segwit as soon as possible, otherwise you are indirectly stating that you don't need/want it. It is as simple as that. The calculations have been done and we can expect a realistic ~180% capacity after some time (certainly not "ages or never").

2 MB block size limit is not needed today. It has just been sold that way by Hearnia & co.

I do agree that there are quite the number of threads on this subject already. Report it and see what happens.

Why would it not make sense? Should I clarify once more? Here: Currently there is no risk when you are engaging in account trades as you are free to do so. You might get marked by a DT member if you get caught, but that is all. In the case where account sales are bannable, anyone who engages in trades risks getting a permanent ban. It's as simple as that?

I wouldn't mind that.

That point does stand, however the situation would be different. When you think about it, right now there is nothing stopping you from involving in these trades (there are no 'risks', apart from possibly getting scammed by either the buyer or seller). In the case where account sales were disallowed (a bannable offense) there would be no more sales on the forum (they'd have to try to engage in these trades somewhere else) and now a certain risk factor would be present (anyone who gets caught doing account sales would be permanently banned). This would reduce the amount of trades by a noticeable amount.

No. Stop posting nonsense (i.e. FUD).

I don't even understand why people think of this as something important. It is naturally going to come for each country that decides to forbid Bitcoin usage, else Steam would be breaking the law.

No.

No. They can still go through third parties, the same way that everyone else did before Steam started accepting Bitcoin directly. There is nothing special about this and it won't work anyways.

I concur.

Yes.

Why would he? He would most likely be in life-threatening danger if he did.

He doesn't have to show anything to the public. Anyhow, Bitcoin is not based on trust, nor any kind of authority. Who invented it does not matter at this point, nor does any know who Satoshi is.

Correct. While I might have wrongly used 'average' instead of median somewhere (I don't recall all of the times that I've written about this), Maxwell never did. Franky does not know the definition of median TX size which does not surprise me at all.

It was never part of the Bitcoin Core roadmap. There is (I think) only one roadmap for 2016 and it was not changed at all. The original estimates and content are still part of it. He has either gone made or thinks Core == Blockstream (which would also be wrong since he does not know the 'roadmap' of this private company).

He can't. He will do one of the following:
1) Request math (not relevant) while he provides false calculations.
2) Lauda doesn't know C++.
3) Maxwell is a liar.
4) You are all Blockstream shills.
5) Other irrelevant nonsense.

I could not agree more.

You view this wrongly. Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency. What you are doing is the equivalent to:

• Buy EUR with USD.
• Wait for EUR to be more valuable in USD equivalent.
• Don't buy goods with EUR -> convert to USD to buy the same goods that could have been bought with EUR.

Unless you plan on engaging in trading constantly (in order to try and keep profiting from the volatility), then the last step is redundant.

I will say this directly to make things clear: Mike Hearn is an idiot who sold himself to the banks. It's as simple as that. If I recall correctly, they knew at that R3 conference (there's a video about it) that the negative blog post and article (from NY times) were coming. It was planned.

In other words: He was spreading hyperbolic FUD. I remember the time when Bitcoin "required" 20 MB blocks or it was going to die, and yet here we are.

He has the same amount of credibility like Gavin does now. None that is.

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For those that are reading this, watch the following video for a free laugh: Hitler finds out about Mike Hearn and the bitcoin dump.

If you're talking about cloud mining websites, it is best to stay away from those as there are quite the number of scams in that area.

You should be using your bitcoins and not trading them back to fiat which is pointlessly redundant.

There's no stagnation, just random fear mongering. Seeing that you listen to franky's nonsense is more than everyone else needs to know about the type of people supporting controversial HF's.

The irony here is that a increase of the block size limit is no solution at all.

It can be your fault indirectly if one of the following applies:
1) Usage of online wallets.
2) Usage of too many inputs and then complaining about large fees (which means that you don't know how fees work anyways).
3) Other factors.

Comparison to traditional systems: Try sending a payment via your bank and ask them to include a fee 5 times lower than what they ask for (require) and see what happens.

The current private keys are usually 256-bit (although there are wallets that tend to create them with different sizes). What you're talking about is a size of 1 GB per key which is a exponential increase in comparison to what is currently being used and highly inefficient. If the hashing algorithms behind the process get 'broken', increasing the key size is not the right answer (they'd possibly just need to spend more time per key or get more computational power).

They seem to think that, but that is the theoretical requirement at this point and we do know that things tend to differ a lot in theory and practice.

Bitcoin is obviously better. Just because you don't know how to properly use it, don't pin it on the network. You can send 1$ and $1 Million for practically the same fee. Try doing that with Paypal and get back to me.

Without giving us more information there isn't much that can be done. I highly doubt that it is a standard TX (unless there is a problem with blockchain.info itself) with a few inputs. For a media TX size the fee is around 5 cents.

Just another day of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I'm not surprised by any of these statements as I've read a lot of more in that subreddit. Maybe you should try again with the next controversial HF, 'Bitcoin Coinbase' or something.  

He asked about a switch to a new algorithm (mining), i.e. changing SHA256. At least, that's how I understood the question, I might be wrong though.

That depends. There's no definite answer to that question.

Correct, such a change does require a hard fork. The "chinese" (as in the miners located in China) don't have to agree on anything (the other option carries the loss of everything anyways). It seems like some think that these guys have control over the network. People need to stop panicking when they hear the words 'quantum computers'.

Just because you haven't seen them, that does not mean that you should make such hasty generalizations.

That's a whole different story. Besides, in order to be able to do something about wallet encryption they'd have to gain access to your wallet file.

Nobody can really tell you at a given time why exactly the price is rising. The law of supply and demand is what dictates it, while other factors have an influence. For example, when the media is spreading negative news, the demand might be lower and thus the price adjusts. If you're looking for information as to why Bitcoin has a value at all, then that is a different topic.

Start by watching these 3 videos:
1) What is Bitcoin
2) The Essence of How Bitcoin Works (Non-Technical)
3) How Bitcoin Works in 5 Minutes (Technical)

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Well, that's part of the basic 'law' of supply and demand. Miners are the ones that produce new coins (the current small % inflation). The media is also able to influence the price with negative news and articles that contain false information.

No it is not. He's been told that he's wrong by practically anyone, ranging from DannyHamilton to G.Maxwell and yet he persists with posting his own nonsense, assumptions/conclusions of what other people think and "math".

You should not be opening and closing channels constantly, that's the idea of being 'efficient' and the theoretically infinite limit of transactions per second.

Then these people should not complain about any 'capacity' problems.

No. It is not comparable to multisig.

How do you not realize that the obvious answer to your question (in the OP) is yes? There are quite a lot of people that have lost Bitcoin through various events (e.g. theft, sending to wrong addresses, hardware failure, no wallet backups and ect.). However, fortunately I can say that I'm not one of them. I've successfully avoided a lot of problematic events such as (Mt.Gox, Inputs.io, Cryptsy) and have properly managed to keep my wallets safe and secure.

A story.