finally some great thought from wind_fury
you have definitely earned 10 merit for this

i may add some points to the 'consequences' and explain the 'simply works'
some privacy concepts being discussed by devs are to hide the VALUE being moved.
this alone can make bitcoin UNauditable and thus challenge the point of a transparent trustable chain where people can see that coins at Z are real because they can be seen right back through the chain back to their original mined block A
many dont care about WHO.. but they still want to clearly and simply know the coins have a clear visible path from A-Z

these privacy codes actually add bytes of data to a transaction and only work when multiple parties mix funds. meaning its not only a bloated multisg transaction. but a multisig with extra bloat for the value privacy.
which means less transactions per hard drive space. which is not an optimisation of transactions vs space. but a de-optimisation

then theres the fact of adding too many features to something that should just be about send A to B. that it opens up risks of bugs where certain checks are not instantly done because theres just so many checks to do. thus causing risks by skipping a check initially to attempt to optimise relay speed, and do checks after. that then cause bugs of their own

as windfury said. if you want privacy that your name wont get attached to a transaction on the chain that you do not want seen. use other services/networks that do not publish details that need to be checked.

bitcoin is about checking and validating data. if we stop checking and validating data. then blockchains become pointless

putting aside the social /community attitudes.

if you concentrate on the code/network affect of what developers are doing to the actual network. that too is actually deviating away from the original ethos of what bitcoin was about

decentralised
 is becoming a monarchy codebase (core reference client) that is distributed.
we have lost the diverse code bases of multiple teams separately making full nodes. hense why this months 'bug' has proven to be a risk. decentralised and distributed are 2 different things

borderless
 is becomeing walled up and bordered. we seen the fee mechanism ripped out. causing a fee war, which has caused a barrier of entry to 3rd world countries where the fee of even just 5cents+ is more than a hours labour for some countries. thus they have been chucked to the side.
the monarchy/hierarchy mindset of trusting core has made a barrier of consensual unity of different idea's. instead theres now a singular roadmap that the community fight over and created a barrier where if people dont like the monarchy's roadmap they are told to cross the border and use something else "F**k off" basically (ill let you decide if **= UC or OR)

permissionless
with developers themselves saying bitcoin is broke and cant scale but commercial side services are the future, requiring smart contracts of co-signing parters, is eroding the permissionless part of handling funds. also the reliance people have of preferring to have funds held by custodians. and ofcourse where new developers and interested parties now have to leap through a 3 hop process of moderated venues just to get a code proposal listed before it even reaches the 'reference' client

..
we need to get things back to the simpler more diverse times of 2009-2013 where things were not so manipulated/influenced by certain entities. as bitcoin was never supposed to put anyone into a referential, preferential higher pedestal as anyone else

look into orphans/rejects

transactions are deemed as 'confirmed' but not 100% immutible..as that takes time..
it just means it passed the first quality assurance checks, but thats not all of the checks/risks covered/ruled out

bugs can make blocks get rejected, thrown away and thus the transactions of that block are not part of the chain anymore. thus no confirms no existance. and not immutible.

once all the FULL checks are done
once enough good blocks are added to good blocks the chances of a transaction in the past being of issues becomes nothing.
(more blocks=more confirms=more confidence= eventually milestoned as immutable.. eventually(not instantly at 1 confirm))

its why some say dont trust a 1 confirm transaction as solid/definite as there is a 0.5% chance the block containing it can be rejected
its why some say dont trust a 2 confirm transaction as there is a 0.0025% chance the block containing it can be rejected
and so on

so only risk instantly accepting  (during a no known bug period)
a value of ~chewing gum for 0 confirms
a value of ~ a meal for 1confirm
a value of ~ a weeks salary for 2 confirms
a value of ~ a second hand car for 3 confirms
a value of ~ a lambo for 4 confirms
a value of ~ a house for 5 confirms
a value of anything for 6 confirms

but because of the bug. treat 200 confirms as the milestone as orphans/rejects can keep happening. for upto a day until the network cannot tolerate/allow constant interruptions of orphans/rejects

the  "<- important point" in my last post

the optimisation bug. was that it does not check for duplicate inputs in the initial 'optimised check' of a block. but does check when the node thinks its download new block sequence is done and can rest for a few moments.

so there is a gap in time where a transaction can reuse a input of funds of say xbtc hundreds of times in a block and it show as confirmed at the first important point. but rejected at the second important point

usually all of this happens in a few seconds. but some people may have systems inplace that if they see something have a confirm. that instant they authorise some goods to be delivered or a service to be honours.

 

the exploit has existed since the blockstream devs re-wrote the bitcoin codebase to be including certain features and what they believed were certain optimisations (from 0.14.x)
bitcoin nodes that did not include those certain features are immune automatically from having themselves become victim of becoming DDosed.

but while nodes that are immune wont get DDoSed by a malicious block. the network, while it continues to have a mix of vulnerable nodes could see a chain of blocks broadcast to it containing the malicious block and see it get rejected and cause havok with transaction confirmations

EG
imagine a chain of 5 blocks
block height X12347
block height X12346
block height X12345
block height X12344
block height X12343

imagine x12343 was a malicious block exploiting the bug
the network of immune nodes reject it. and accept a different pools y12343
there are now 2 block height of 12343  (x and y)

the immune nodes add a clean y12344 to their clean y12343 and life goes on. y..5 y..6
but behind the scenes the malicious pool adds on a x..4 of their own to their bad x..3.. and then a x..5 and then a x..6

now imagine that the malicious pool gets to add on a x..7 before the clean pools win the block creation race
the malicious node announces they are the winner. broadcasts its CLEAN x...7 and all nodes see its good.

the immune nodes then because this winner has differing y..6 y..5 y..4 y..3 request the 4 differeing blocks the immune nodes dont have.
and optimised check x..3 is good. keep it and delete their y..3 <- important point. ill explain in next post
and optimised check x..4 is good. keep it and delete their y..4
and optimised check x..5 is good. keep it and delete their y..5
and optimised check x..6 is good. keep it and delete their y..6
and optimised check x..7 is good. keep it.. now all caught up

so now they have seen transactions in Y that had upto 7 confirms that are now gone
and now can see transactions in X that have upto 7 confirmations suddenly show as confirmed

now the immune node thinks it has caught up, it can regenerate a new set of the confirmed transactions which requires a full check of the blocks (unoptimised)
and bam.. x..3 is show to be bad.     <- important point. ill explain in next post
meaning x..4 5 6 7 are also bad.
suddenly the x blocks are rejected and the transactions are unconfirmed.

and the immune nodes ban any conversation with nodes broadcasting a x chain.
the immune nodes then rebuild the y chain. and suddenly the transactions in the y chain re appear as confirmed again.

...
this game can continue every new block the x pool wins the fastest block race. of making confirms disappear and reappear. until the entire network either
a. outpaces the x pool to never win a block again
b. the entire network bans communication with vulnerable nodes broadcasting x (causing a altcoin fork)
c. there are no more nodes or pools that accept/create/rebroadcast x blocks

which is a case where a solution is usually found and implemented within 200confirms, as having x continually disrupt and causing a headache of rejections wont get tolerated

in simple terms
if some people keep gifting you the same crappy (10min)birthday present, within 200 birthdays you will stop inviting them to your party(option b)

some nodes have a checkpoint of 200 confirms that lock a chains state as immutible. meaning anything less than 200 confirms if something was off about that block is able to be rejected and its subsequent blocks of that 'iffy' chain can be rejected.

many people state this bug is 'fixed' for the network. however. the real wording is that a vaccine has been provided for the vulnerable (nodes based on core 0.14.x-0.16.2 code) and it still requires everyone who is not already immune via having a diversified codebase (not core 0.14.x-0.16.2) to upgrade, so that there are no more (core 0.14.x-0.16.2) vulnerable nodes left on the network

until the point of which the network has removed the vulnerable nodes, there is still some risk. especially for those running such

many people also think that the mining reward is a defense in itself to not try it. however trying to assume that miners wont do something because of a 12.5 reward is flawed.

there are over 20 pools and only 1 pool gets the 12.5btc every ~10 minutes.
the other pools still mine blocks knowing that its not a guaranteed outcome of every pool wins. but a fight.
they still mine anyway.

knowing on average across the network its a 95% chance they can make a block, work on it and not get 12.5 anyway. every 10 minutes they continue working anyway. so a malicious pool could take the risk... because they are used to not always getting 12.5btc every 10 minutes anyway.. thus its not really a loss if they dont get it. they will just try it, and worry about getting income in later blocks

and all you have done is predict the PRICE waves will go up and down.. not much of a prediction...

but ignored my content completely at looking at the bottom line growth of a sustainable rise of value.
each day i can easily write ' i predict this week the price will go up and down due to.." and i would be right, but who cares

the ups and downs are meaningless prediction goals. whats important is the bottomline value that the community refuse to go below. as thats the line we all can stand above and take advantage of.

as for the ups. only less than 1% are online/fast enough to take advantage of the tips of the mountain(ATH). so why even concentrate on the ATH tip that we all will not gain from. but all can gain from standing at the bottom and riding the waves and let the bottom grow taking us along with it constantly.

yes enjoy the waves and profit from the waves. but just dont concentrate on waiting for the next tsunami, because when it hits, 99%+ would have missed the chance to ride it, or fellioff due to a wrong move

firstly some do not wish to protect and defend the network, some only wishes to protect a team of developers
i find it funny in that regard as the proof is clear when you look at some attitudes about the assert ddos bug of yesteryear compared to the block ddos assert bug this year.

neither of which did some sound like network defending arguments.. but sounded like arguments to why some want to hug a core dev and smother them with affection

one day, its been 3 years so far some will learn about the the network concepts of consensus and decentralisation that have become lost, and hopefully learn that when devs retire the network should live on and that caring about a certain dev is a meaningless pursuit as it does not help the network

if people cared for the network more than a certain dev. they too would actually want
diversified codebases in consensus and decentralised
instead of a
monarchy 'reference' codebase and distribution.
as the two concepts are vastly different


but hey. some has a long way to go yet. and many have tried reminding them to learn about the network and code protocols but stil see some only reply protecting developers


*i removed names in replacement for 'some' to avoid the auto reply of the ad-hom buzzword, of which has been a over utilised defensive argument to avoid addressing the content about caring for the network more than a developer point of my post. if anyone feels that 'some' equals them. than do not reply just realise that they have just confirmed to themselves that they care more about a developer than the network and thus no point trying to reply to sway that argument. as replying is just confirming it more. i also greyed out this statement to ensure some really concentrate on the care of the network content of which we should all want diverse codebases instead of a monarchy codebase. rather than have some reply only to rply with persona attack defense posts that distract the point about the network

if the poster is just
plagiarising someone else, no
just repeating something thats been common knowledge for years, no
just saying something they have an opinion on, no

but if its something notable. like something that makes people feel like they just been hit by a wisdom stick.. then yea it can be worth a merit.

but then.. its like youtube. number of views does not always equal number of likes/ subs/ shares.
and you will find begging for merits actually counter acts getting them. so dont expect a merit per view even with a well wrote wisdom giving post

as avikz hints with the physical ETF, expect a spike.

but to know the impact/magnitude. you need to first find the details.

unless you can look at the details of a ETF proposal to know how many coins its trust currently holds, how many shares it equates to.. to estimate how fast all them shares will get sold before the trust needs to buy another basket of btc to offer more shares... you have no way of even estimating
you just end up throwing a bunch of numbers in the air like confetti and just grabbing a random number.

it might be best for people to research

EG
take the winklevoss.. i remember years ago they had 200k coins in trust (1.2bill value today)

now imagine that of 320m americans only 32m customers of a certain investment company wanted to 10% diversify their investment



lets call it 100k average .. so $10k is diversified for btc etf per person
.. thats $320,000,000,000 (320billion)

ok lets say only 1% diversified as BTC.. thats 32billion

ok so we know that if only 10% of a population (lowball)
and they only invest 1% of their funds into btc (lowball)

the amount of funds looking to buy a bitcoin ETF share is 26x more than the winkles currently have
screw it lts low ball it again. lets say its a 0.1% diversification into btc.

thats still 2.6x more demand than the winkles can offer. so the winkles will need to grab up another more than 300k coins just to meet the lowball demand of 32million retirement portfolios looking for 0.1% holding

alot of people think when a bear appears in open farmland it scares away the farmers bulls.
when the truth is the bulls charge at the bears and scares the bears back up the hill into the mountains

its why you dont see bears often in the open fields

so if you see a bear in your field. dont sell your bulls in fears. instead buy more bulls to protect and sustain your field

too many people are stupid and sell their bulls too young and to cheap and then buy lambos to make it look like they made profit
downside is the lambo ends up costing them more up the road and they have no more bulls to sell to cover the costs

now here is something to think about thats not anal about math or techno jargon.
so it easy to think about.


but please without anyone wearing the core team fan defence cap
and with instead the bitcoin network innovation hat (and i dont mean separate networks like merge mined coins, side chains or second layer services wanting bitcoin fame)

think about this


if someone gave you a banana that could only give 2000 nibbles of nutrition and it cost 10 cents per nibble, which used to only cost under 1cent per nibble before a GMO messed with the delivery pricing structure

and a GMO company said it would take a couple years but we can give more nibbles per banana and delivery would be less..

would you after 2-3 years when presented with a segnana which is physically bigger but offers less nibbles per mouthful
and now costs 27cents for each nibble. and then handed a glossy leaflet for a LemoN that is segnana nutrient compatible as well as LeTtuCe nutrient compatible that promises to do more, but will take a further few years

would you still celebrate the GMO's on their initial promises?

when the fee wars began in 2014-2015 people were hating that fee's were approaching 10cents. developers promised a solution to scaling that would allow more transactions than the average 2000 transactions and a mechanism to bring fee's back to a level of only a couple cents at worse

role on 3-4 years later
and we see this topics OP celebrating that27cents is great value (facepalm)
and another topics OP celebrating that a block is 2.27mb but only holds 230..

WTF has happened to the community.
seems many have lost their marbles

reference to other topic

problem
core + distribution NOT = decentralised consensus
solution
diverse variations + distribution = decentralisated consensus

in short core being the "reference". the "core" the "center" the "main" the "only" is the fault

we ned to get back to diverse code bases of different teams all working to consensus and using consensus as is meant to be used, its been less than 18 months and already core devs have screamed that people need to "mandatory upgrade or else" twice

core fans believes in apartheid distribution (dont like it get off the network)
true bitcoiners believe in diverse decentralisation(all are welcome to move freely)

the two concepts are different

P,S
84,000 is their defence that it will never happen?
..
i laugh.
pools do not get 84,000 for every 10 minutes of work they do

there are 20+ pools ALWAYS working non stop. they all do not get 12.5btc every 10 minutes only 1 pool per 10 minutes gets 12.5

meaning 19 other pools attempt to create blocks but dont get a reward.
so there are 19 pools that know that there is more then a 95% chance they wont get a reward for their efforts anyway but they still try making blocks.
so there is a 95% chance that a pool could say "F**K it im not getting a reward anyway, lets remote DDoS core nodes

saing $84k is a reason not to do it is not a good reason/excuse for people to relax. because 95% of pools do not get $84k for 10 minutes of work anyway. but they still work

3 years hmm

$6k to $250k.. hmm

math time
if bitcoin is to stay at $6 this year
it only needs to *3.46681 each year
end of 2018 $6000
end of 2019 $20800.86
end of 2020 $72112.63
end of 2021 $250000.79

i think a ~3.466x price increase is normal, healthy and achievable after all if we done the same number historically
EG
lets take a conservative low of 2012 of just $3.50 and then yearly *3.466 it
2021: $252,653.36
2020: $72,894.79
2019: $21,031.39
2018: $6,067.91
2017: $1,750.70
2016: $505.11
2015: $145.73
2014: $42.05
2013: $12.13
2012: $3.50

seems to play out alright (ignoring the volitile wobbles of a few ATH and just thinking of the lows of the years.)
so id say its a healthy estimate for a sustainable LOW value increase

the ATH price is a spoon
"one of the first things you need to learn, there is no spoon"  child potential, matrix 1999

never stand at the top of a mountain lookin down thinking everyone else is standing where you are living along side you

less than 1% of people were online and active to take advantage of exchanges offering upto $20k
99.9% of people never got to experience, gain from the $20k price. they never seen it. touched it..
all they can see is a history graph they seen after the supposed event occured that said it happened.

so why now care so much about something that never happened to you personally.
imagine there was no spoon

now.
imagine the price is the matrix. it moves and changes effecting people differently. but not everyone is attached to itand interacting with it the same way.

now imagine the bottom line value. as zion. the real world
ready for the red pill?

at this present moment 65% of coin holders will not sell for less than roughly $6k
bitcoin UTXO set shows in the last 10 months where the price has been above $6k 65% of coins have moved and interacted with prices above $6k. and they are not willing to sell for less than the price they interacted with.
miners have a mining cost at or above that too. again they wont sell for less..

now imagine everyone was not standing ontop of a mountain peak that only 0.1% experienced. but everyone emptied their mind and accepted the reality of $6k bottomline wont go below value. and we all stood at $6k bottom line. looking up at the speculative illusion that is the price..

2016: always above $300 BLV
2017: always above $900 BLV
2018: always above $5800 BLV

we are in a long term bull market in zion..
but the matrix is playing games of speculation of calves(small bulls) and cubs(small bears) above ground

because
1
a million people are not going to be directly connected to strbucks in LN. they are going to be presented with hubs a few hops away from starbucks (imagine it like cloudflare. middlemen ensuring starbucks dont get DDoSed and also where the hubs do the btc<->fiat swaps. for starbucks)

2 because people wont be directly connected and will have times where their channel partner may not be online. might have run out of funds themselves with thier channel partners. or the route doesnt work in that direction. people will need more than 1 channel to guarantee payment reaches the destination..
devs are already assuming 5 channels. (already explained that in your quote of my quote)

3 because of point 1 and 2 its not just a pay in $30.. its a pay in$30 but its split as $6 into different channels. after spending the $23 total of the other channels/routes are depleted they have to close the channel so the counterpart is made whole.
and the last channel with $6 goes offline have to either wait for them to come back on. or just broadcast the transaction to get the funds back .

too many people think that its just a have $30 and it can be pushed in any direction. to those that think that please go learn LN. learn about the copartner multisigs and go learn about lock ins. and also learn about the issues LN devs have already noticed where people do go offline. and money has to be split. and cant just jump channels like magic.

everyone dreams the utopian dream but doesnt rsearch the practical realistic limitations.

anyway ln is still just a outside network for multiple coins and not a bitcoin sole feature.
bitcoin needs to innovate and not let people obsess about side services that take utility away from bitcoin

institutions are waiting out the financial year.
those that bought at the wrong time are actually enjoying their positions. they can claim losses and write off some taxes(while still holding the assets).
and start the year fresh with their ETF's and be in a good position for a 2019 big rise in their shares and profits.
so they are just waiting out year end.

they have buddies in the SEC whos trying to delay and hold off the small guys from starting ETF's so that the big institutions can be the first movers and be the big names. so again waiting out year end

2019 will be the year of institutional subsidiary startups in the bitcoin ecosystem. . its just a waiting game now for them to get their eggs in a row

dont do market trend analysis people. you wont get anywhere apart from acting lik a sheep because bots are programmed to act like sheep

instead look at real analytics of cost of acquisition (hashrate and UTXO coin-age)
since 10 months ago more than 65%(10million btc) has moved and set above a barrier of $5800 priceline
thats over 10million coins that people value at more than $5800 as thats the lowest price of that period when people got them
mining costs have been around that pricepoint too again even miners getting fresh coins would refuse to sell below their costs

a good high percentage of the community are treating the area of $6k+ as the value bottomline. and as for the rest. 18% of coins have not moved for years. and if they wanted to sell for under $6k they would have done so.
even when the prices speculated over $6k for the last 10 months. those coin holders have not took advantage of the highd of upto $20k
so its definetly more than 65% of coins that wont sell for less than $6k (or more relaxed $5800)

trend analitics of just looking at the market price to make predictions is flawed
but when you take a look at the UTXO's of coins (the unspend coins) and look at their coinage(confirmations) to see where coin holders stand against time and price. you start to see what value the community put on their coins based on the price it was when they got their coins
and same going for the costs of the freshly minted coins cost..

all this news even the inews QQ is about a report done pre-june

bitmain have actually got new asics being tested. they sold off their old rigs at a pleasant discount of $850/rig
and over that period their hashrate did not go down(which would be the case of liquidising all stock)

the hashrate went up because they are now using (cough i mean QC testing new rigs) before releasing them later this year
and in june they also accumilated investors

in 2018 bitmain made 22 investments themselves into other companies
https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/field/organizations/num_investments/bitmain
such as giving Circle $110m in May 2018

and also $14m as recently as september 10th to a company called 1000video


but here is the real funny part.
has anyone noticed BTCC..