they WERE pro-privacy.. but that was pre-2013

also. if you look at stats pages of LN. it reveals who, how many nodes. how much value those nodes hold and if smart you can keep checking those nodes and when the values change you can log that. and then see the nodes they are connected to and log where the funds went to.

EG
A[20:10]B[30:15]C
C can find out what B has with A. because B can only send 10 to A
if A moved10 to be...
A[10:20]B[30:15]C
C can then see that B can move 20 to A so C knows that A just paid B 10

channels actually announce how much they hold and can channel. to allow people to choose who they should choose as a channel partner.. so its not private at all

i found it funny how LN was proposed as a tool to be more private. and yet i can find out mor about a user of LN than i can find out by a mainnet bitcoin user

again privacy is being eroded. especially when LN is moving to a factory/watchtower model which will then require AML KYC and having them watchtowers/factories register as 'custodians' to then require KYCing their channeled users

if only back in 2013 we didnt not rally/lobby for rgulation of businesses (they police and KYC users) but instead rally/lobbied for consumer protction (users police and KYC businesses)

GMO samsung and canaan..  "announced".. meaning they too have not "delivered"..... so the entire ASIC market is in the same boat..
as for articles that bitmain is losing its top place.. well thats just a debate similar to the GPU days of ATI Vs Geforce....

what equipment is used is not as important as the actual pool software that combines transactions due to rules.
(asics dont have hard drives to even touch tranaction/block verification rules.. they just hash a header)
so just like the GPU days... who is providing the equipment has no consequnce on bitcoin..

and as of june it seems bitmain has re entered the competitive market by dropping Unt cost from 2017's $2k to june 2018's $850 thus pople can buy atlaest 2 units for the price of one.  yet things like canaan's prices are only for bulk orders but grow to double for individual units.

anyway. we are already at a near bottom priceline. so ofcourse chances of going up are high.. its just WHEN and by how much is th qustion no one can answer.

article seems to centre around the words of whalepanda and sampson mow.. yawn more fud from the BScartel side

meanwhile social drama does not push up sustainable bitcoin VALUE. it only pushes up temporary price spikes that then correct.
99% of people never get to be online in time to take advantage of ths temporary price spikes of sicial drama cause. so why even bother wasting days talking about it.

most smart people dont waste weeks-months trying to cause and hoping for a unsustainable social drama hype bubble to cause a 100% spike.. instead they spend each day making 1-3% on the small natural movements which over the same weeks-months adds up to the same 100% profit. but without having to stir the social pot for hopes of a well timed hype bubble

bitcoin is not 100% spculation. it actually does have underlying value that people refuse to sell below,

even with bad news there is a limit/refusals to sell lower
and even without good news people will help move prices up

if you know the difference between VALUE and price. you will see that there is always a underlying value that sits near about $200 above the bottomline support.

the bottom line support is made up by the math of cost of mining and the psychological line people refuse to sell below
ignoring the ATH prices. .. if you just look at the yearly ATL and draw a line btween them. you see the bottom support.
then value sits a little above that as thats the "yay i mad some profit" part. usually its just a few % higher than bottomline(cost of obtaining).

whedrawing this line on price charts you would be surprised that it correlates with things like the cost of obtaining bitcoin(mining costs)
now with all the doom and gloom of social drama and public opinion the price wont go below the bottom line. because this is the line people refuse to sell for as its then selling at a loss.

now when there is not much more the price can go down by. even without positive news to hype the market. day traders can only make profit by having a prices that moves.. so if it cant go down by a few % as its already at the low.. the only way to have % movements is to go up.

but keep in mind the underlying bottom line over a period. because if the price moves too much over a certain level. that level is not sustainable (take december 2017 for instance) that was a 3x hype bubble price. and was not ever going to be sustainable. hens why it corrected down.

..
what you will notic though is eventually all those that bought below $6k would have set their limit as $6k+ or got out the community.
if a person buys a coin for $6k+. they set themselves the limit of happily selling for over $6k but nver under $6k. unless they are stupid or exiting at a loss.(small population are stupid/exiters) so once they are out. the new holder of that stupid decision has the coin and that then reinforces a minimum because 2 stupid traders in a row is far less chance of happening. so you notice the over all psychology of the community moves the price up as funds change hands. (this is the psychological buying coin cost of obtaining bottomline support)

then if you look at the mining costs that too increases over time too as the hashrate goes up. this too reinforces the minimum bottom. again they wont sell for a loss.(this is the mathmatical mining cost of obtaining bottomline)

so if a price is down near the bottom line. then day traders are going to want to shift the market to avoid it going stagnant so they can make their couple % per trade. so as i said they become incentivised to push prices up because they cant go down.

summary
so even without hype, without positive news, when prices are at the bottom (this months mining cost range is $5.7k-$8k dependant on hashrate)
the only way is up.

the only way prices can move to zero. is if EVERYONE sold at a loss (evryone is stupid. or bitcoin is broke). so unless bitcoin cryptography breaks. be confident with the ~$6k bottom line.

and feel free to do the math on mining costs to see where the bottomline zone is so that you can se if the PRICE is near or above VALUE

ignore the HIGHS. you will just drive yourself insane always checking and hoping for highs.. no one knows or can tell you how high or when high..

however there is both math and psychology that backs up the LOWS.. its called the cost of obtaining limit. (only stupid sell below the cost they obtained it)


bitcoins hashrate at january 2017 was only 2.5exa hash  with ASICS average price being $2k. and calculating the number of asic units and the electric and spreading the unit costs.. brought the COST to mine btc to $700+
bitcoins exchange price LOW was ~$900 ($700 value + $200 speculation hype)

skip forward 6 months
bitcoins hashrate at july 2017 hashrate was 6exa.. with ASICS average price being $2k. and calculating the number of asic units and the electric and spreading the unit costs.. brought the COST to mine btc to $1680
bitcoins exchange price LOW was ~$1990 ($1680 value + $310 speculation hype)

decembers hype was not sustainable. and would never have lasted and not many people actually got to be online to take advantage of the temporary bubble and correction event.. which is another reason to not fuss over th hype bubbles because they happen so fast 99% of people just cry they missed out. so dont worry or car about it..

moving forward lets take july 2018
at this point ASIC unit cost dropped to $850 (waa $2k a unit)

bitcoins hashrate at june 2018 hashrate was 36exa.. with ASICS average price being $850. and calculating the number of asic units and the electric and spreading the unit costs.. brought the COST to mine btc to $5570
bitcoins exchange price LOW was ~$5850 ($5570 value + $280 speculation hype)

this math is not to be taken literally as a daily scale.. as people do not sell instantly. its best to get the months low hashrate and treat that as the months price LOW once calculated.
weekly/daily/hourly do not work out as correlated as people are random about when they finally sell coins

so take a months overview and take the lowst hashrate you see and the highest. to see the area/zone of break even
https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/hash-rate?timespan=30days
37exa(28th july)-54exa (11th aug)

so now look at this months low of 37exa and this months top of 54exa.. you will see a range of $5.7k-$8k for the month. and now guess what the high and low bitcoin PRICE swing was for this month.. yep $5.7k-$8k
magic right... nope. its math and social conscience of nevr selling at a loss

now you can be left to look at the hashrate chart and draw some lines on the hashrate chart and it may hlp you better define where the LOWS may settle

forget about trying to predict how high the next ATH will be
forget about trying to predict how soon the next ATH will be

instead realise the most important thing is to know what the LOW average is expected to be.

and here is a tip.. look at the cost of mining.

EG - back of an envelope math...
take 47exahash network hashrate, thats 47000000 terahash
an asic is 14trra (fixd number worth remembering)
so 47000000/14
so thats 3.3mill ASICS needed

imagine electric
at 6cents an hour (to cover 5cent/kwh at an asics 1.3kw (back of envelop rounded math)
0.06*3.3m
=$198k an hour /6blocks /12.5btc =$2640/btc for electric

imagiine unit cost
recent batch of $850 per asic and lastability is 1 year..
so lets break it down to an hour 850/365/24 = ill call it 10cents for back of envelop math
0.10*3.3m
=$330k an hour /6 blocks /12.5btc = $4400/btc for unit cost
total cost to mine= $7k/btc

final tip. miners dont sell coins on exchanges instantly as soon as they receive them
so sorry this math cannot predict prices to the minute.
no one can predict exact prices, exact dates
no one can predict how high a hype bubble the next ATH will be or when
no one can predict if or when prices will stay low or for how long

but it can guage roughly the low area/zone for the month
so take a months overview and take the lowst hashrate you see and the highest. to see the area/zone of break even
https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/hash-rate?timespan=30days
37exa(28th july)-54exa (11th aug)

and look at the months low of 37exa and months top of 54exa.. you will see a range of $5.7k-$8k for the month. and now guess what the high and low bitcoin PRICE swing was for the month.. yep $5.7k-$8k
magic right... nope. its math

you can atleast find a safe zone of average expectancy of the low price to know if bitcoin is near a low(within the area/zone) or hyped up(way above the area/zone)

final final tip
look more broadly at the hasrate over a year. and draw a couple lines of expected future direction of the lowst hash expctation and highest expectation.. then do some math

this news is not about bitcoin.. its about other currencies/blockchains.

secoondly mining companies dont really want to sell their coiins on the markets or through OTC while the profit margins are low. so they are hedging their bets by investing their mining rewards into companies so the investments are not touching exchanges.

what you find is although investments have been signed. the value/funds dont actually move into these companies straight away. funds are normally released in small batches/tranches when certain goals are met and/or certain costs are needed to be paid for. so dont expect funds to hit exchangs via lambda any time soon either... and if/when it does. dont expect it to be noticable big amount of coins being convertd to fiat. as most big lumps will be done OTC and it only becooms small employ wages(if paid in btc) that gts swappd on public exchanges, thus no impact

OP has no clue

the underlying value actually has some real numbers. im not talking about the ATH specualtive bubble price. im talking about the LOW support lines which are built up by the 'cost of obtaining' costs.

if you ignore the spikes of speculation and instead only note the bottom line. lowest prices. you will see correlations based on certain things.
last years october $4k bottom was based on a bit of speculation but it held a supportive line based on costs of mining bitcoin when the old batches were $2k per asic. which if you look at how many asics were hashing for the entire network. and the electric needed. and then divided it down by perblock/per btc. you would see the numbers

this years bottom are based on mining costs of an asic batch of $850 per asic but with higher hashrate. which if you do the maths on how many asics are needed+electric plus splitting the cost of an asic over lets say a year. you start to see where the costs come into it.

now if you simply draw a line of what you think the hashrate will be like by the end of the year. and do the same maths on mining costs. you will see that miners will refuse to sell below those costs. and.. because most 'old holders' have set their new bottomlines due to the 10 month level-off of ~$4k+
as people sold off and new people bought that during the prices of over $5k over the last year. the new holders have now set their new bottomline. and this will continue as months move on, to double support a incremental bottomline.

no one can predict the next hype bubble speculative ATH. but you can atleast see where the bottomline can move/increment over time.

heres a hint:

seasteading since the 1981?... nah look further back, research buckminster fullar in the 1960's
plus floating homes have been around awhile now.. so i keep questioning why hasnt seasteading/blue frontiers moved forward..

you mention the "memo".

1. its not contract
2. the details, idea/gameplan for a project in French polonesia is different from what was proposed to the locals and what you tell investors of this utopian hype.

by the way
that memo was voided in january 2018. as no progress had been made.
secondly. the plan was to make CHEAP residences for the locals(they were told/hoped for). but the seastead investment and project was to make a independant tech colony for outsiders.

heres part of the discussion before the memo production
http://uk.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-seasteading-institute-2016-9?r=US&IR=T
*platform for 30 people=$15m cost.. ($500k pp or $1.5m per small family)
*break ground in 2017

the seastead institute likes to buzzword things. like
french polynesia .. but they pulled out in january (SO STOP HIGHLIGHTING A MEMO..)
peter thiel... but he pulled out in 2011.. (SO STOP HIGHLIGHTING HIM)
 see how elwar "big buzzed" peters entrance of 2008 but does not buzz his exit in 2011, thus subliminally/subtly trying to make investors assume peter thiel still is part and still approves of seasteading.

sorry but peter does not.

french polynesia were told it would be a project that would give residences a place to live. yet the reality is a real estate deal where french polynesia gets ZERO economic benefit and those seasteads are made for the techno-rich population looking for a tax haven.

and lets get back to a point i have tried hinting at many times. the ecological negative of such a project.. waste managemnt.. as far back as 2008-9 there were many controversies.. elwar. go research russ george

but lets get to the crux of it
1. it does not take 4-20 years to make a float
2. it does not take millions to make a float to sstain a family
3 if you take all the buzzwords, fame-naming, and glossy pictures away. you soon see a big lack in an actual business/development plan.

to me its just empty plan that a 15yo could write up over 3 days and not something that really shows the detail needed that goes byond google searches that a real business plan would include. i can se why peter thiel left.

now how many people invested a few thousand with hopes of one day getting to live in french polynesia...
firstly if its more than 300.. many will get some bad news in a few years.
secondly if you think it will be cheaper than a land based house.. again bad news (yet non blu frontiers projects can make floating homes that are still in the housing retail market range!!)
thirdly if you think it will be free of government.. again bad news
fourthly if your one of the 75 local residents the blue frontiers promises and guarantees a home too.. i got bad news for you
fifly if you think after 10 years of seasteading in which elwar says he has had an partial interest in since 2008 things should be moving. but...


nope. all the funds thus far have been wasted on vacations and parties(elwar admits njoying his time in tahiti.. long with a team of others partying with investors funds)

also
while its been years that the seastead institute has been promoting all their crap and not moving forward. other projects unrelatd to the seasteading institute have actually got people living on the water
here is just one from 2015
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/06/the-floating-houses-of-ijburg-amsterdam.html

again for emphasis.. has NOTHING to do with the seasteading institute. and yet they made these at less cost, time and less buzzwords of promise. they just "got it dun"

the sea steading/bluefrontiers/varyon want to still be at a "insteading" stage way into mid 2020's yet many places around the world started and have already got past the 'insteading" stag years ago.

which if elwar done his research would se how blue frontiers/seasteading institute are very very empty of actual action

lastly.
for every CGI image elwar can publish of a buiding that has NO architectural detail of actual functional design (meaning only looks good but wont work out)
i can show you many images of floating residences that actually exist and are part of thier own water based community
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/floating-neighborhood-view-several-float-homes-calm-water-portland-oregon-columbia-river-washington-state-54410363.jpg

http://jfgrowotherseje.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/floating-homes-for-sale-portland-floating-home-floating-homes-floating-homes-for-sale-by-owner-floating.jpg

things i find funny

1. critics of ver are the ones calling him jesus. others that just dont care about him or not falling for the drama call him ver
   cores crew also call themselves things like jedi, wizards, ninja's.. so its all drama that has nothing to do with code/utility

2. the article says cash dropped from 10m to 3 mill merchant utility. (down to 33% of top)
    and yet bitcoin core dropped from 412m to 60mill merchant utility (down to 14% of top).. cores utility dropped more

.. what i would be worried about is where did the $358mill of top merchant utility disapear to?
why are people not spending $422m every month. why only $63m over both coins.

anyone can argue the social drama of the BScartel family feud, which behind the scenes they love each other and both turn up to family meetups.

but concentrating on the community usage and utility of crypto...
 you should notice although december had a 3x temporary event.
 
both coins have corrected and settled back down to pre december levels.
but why is core not at 33% of top utility. why isnt total usage of both coins with merchants at $140m monthly utility but instead down at $63m

i know i know im going to expect the typical core developer defense scripts.
but please. dont think about ass kissing PEOPLE of a certain dev group. think about the protocol and economics and really try to defend and think about the protocol, the utility. as we all know devs can disapear, retire, move on, get paid to do other things. (so put ass kising aside)

its better to realise that ver is not a coder. so defending/offending ver is useless. it changes nothing and is just drama/distractions. (but in the end he is still party of the same family as cores paid devs(if you really were to want to concern yourself with the people research DCG.co)

anyway. cash drops 3x core dropped 6x utility with merchants, yet although the price dropped 3x why hasnt overal merchant utility only dropped by 3x

and to summerise the topic
in december long term holders sold $15b (aticle said $30b over several months but half of that was december alone)

at an (average price) of $15k a btc that means 1mill btc moved in december.

what the article does NOT show is
after selling and price corrected down below $10k how many old holders bought back in and thus attaind mor bitcoin than they sold, due to the corrctd price

what the article does not show is
that 1mill bitcoins move in a month anyway. think about it. even if ther is only exchange volume of 50k a day. thats 1.5mill a month. xhcnages easily do 1.5mill a month volume any month/every month easily

what the article does not show is
the hodl's are not investors. but the exchange reserve itself swapping/arbitraging coins to other exchanges to flip a profit in an a small time while traders(small fish) play the public market

what the article does not show is
the people. it just speculates that X might be a person rather than an exchange.

maybe people should review your code. seems you lack the attention to detail. so there might b issus you dont spot at first glance.
for instance your dredging up a 2011 topic.
secondly you mean its a smart contract. 
bcause escrow = 'An escrow is a contractual arrangement in which a third party receives and disburses money or documents for the primary transacting parties,'
you cant say something is an escrow and not an escrow at the same time.
anyway this topic if necro. so have a nice day. no need to revive it

bitcoins dominance and inspiration of 2009-2011 WAS based on the above..    
so from 2009-2011 yes bitcoins blockchain vs price. bitcoin was winning based on blockchan features, because the price was low compared to other currencies/mediums of exchange in the world, and the features bitcoin offered were far more valuable than its price
but..

2011-2013
then came altcoins that also used thee same solution. thus other coins utility of a decentralised network meant bitcoin no longer had a unique feature that any other currencies couldnt offer.

bitcoins dominance then became price and merchant utility. merchants didnt use litecoin as their "we accept.." paymnt method. but while other coins were offering faster confirmation average times or more data per block or more/less coin reward per block.. bitcoin started losing the utility race.

2013-2015
with less unique codebases of differing node clients, and the war against other 'generals' had started to rip(REKT) apart the byzantiines solution, thus losing bitcoins uniquenase, features and benfits further

2015-2018
and now the reliance on one source of new rule/upgrade path (core roadmap/mandatory upgrades) the whole utility of consensus(bysantines solution) has nearly disapeared completely due to this whole drama of the last 2 years.
and now merchant service tools are now opening their gates to other coins. so bitcoin is now losing the merchant adoption race too.
soo.. now it seems bitcoins only promoted 'feature' is first to market (which didnt play well for myspace or napstre)
leaving people to now only prompt the price as the reason to try inticing new people

now with all that said.
market cap and price are both illusions.
if i called 1000 apples shares as a 'cookingapple' (large apple) then the price per unit would be bigger.
if i made an altcoin of 5 trillion coins and sold 1 coin for $5 the market cap would be $5trillion.

think of it this way. look passed the ilusion of the basket terms of measure.
many people say that bitcoin is $6500 per unit and gold is only $1800 per unit(btc vs oz)...
but what if i told you bitcoin was only $0.0065 a unit and gold was $38k a unit. (bits vs KG)

so with people starting to measure bitcoin as ubtc(bits(100sat)) the price per unit will drop from ~$6500 per unit(BTC) to ~$0.0065 per unit(bits)
thus in future bitcoin will show as a under penny per unit price and other altcoins will hav a higher price per unit. and alts will have a higher market cap.

p.s i love bitcoin. but im a realist not an ass kisser. its far better to reveal the issues and hope the community wake up and then help sort the issue, rather than kiss ass, hide the problem and let it continue/get worse.

..
summary.
watch trace mayors SEVEN network effects video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3n6lLeuPQA
then ask in 2018 do all these 7 network effects still apply to bitcoin uniquely
in my view the only one remaining is point 4 (mining hashrate). which the cost of mining upholds the price support (the low of a year) where people refuse to sell below their cost of obtaining bitcoin

there were no exchanges in 2009

if anything you probably bought bitcoin from an individual so you just have to check with your bank on a 2009 statemnt for a wiretransfr with someone you dont know

those looking at charts/price daily should stop seeing the information as a price.
instead if your involved in the price daily and wanting to make daily decisions/trades then see it as percentages

have some fiat and some coin
dont use it all in on go

when the price moves down by a few percent. put an order to buy some. and also then to sell som at a price a few percentage higher.

when the price moves up by a few percent. put an order to sell some. and also then to buy some at a price a few percentagee lower.

play for small percentages and repeat repeat.

again dont play your whole hoard. just look to small amounts often. small percentage amounts that you know rpeatdly move in a short time.
after a while you stop seing the price and only see it as a +/- percent vs last order
where both a +% is an oppertunity to sell for profit and a -% is a oppertunity to buy at discount for profit.

..
for those not intersted in day trading. but still get motional about the price. here is some simple advice
you have just admitted to yourself that you wont trade daily by reading this point.. so stop looking at the price daily, after all its not
like you going to do anything by your own admission

i swear elwar your such a deceptive person your now pretending you have only been involved for a year and prtending your innocent of any previous knowledge.

your infographic mentions 2040.. and also that your not gonna start for a few years..
i simply done a comparison to another big development which actually complete in a few years. but i tweaked the scentiment to show how things would be different if building WTC1 was told that they wont start for years and wont finish for decades... people would start asking questions.

it really is funny how a 104 storey building can be planned designed and constructed in less time than when sea steading started being a buzzworded.. and where is sea steading today.. still no where near even making its first floor

and i have been pointing out to you that your involvement in this sceme has been for much longer than just 1 year

to everyone else
here was elwar trying it in 2016. to fundrase to buy a boat for multimillions just so his buddies can use it as a "office" so they can discuss for years how to fundraise for their seasteading..


here is elwar back in 2013 talking about sasteading

yea they had a 2012-2017 plan tooo.. oh look 2018......... still no float

the technology is real. its not vapour.

but th price. thats a different story. but we first need to address peoples worry or confusion over "bubble"
the real estate(houses) market has had its bubble period. this does not mean a house is not real
tulips had a bubble. this does not mean the flower is not real

a bubble does not mean the tech/the asset is fake. it means a TEMPORARY PRICE is inflated and will pop
a bubble does not mean its ben a bubble from day one or will always be a bubble..
again for emphasis. a bubble is a TEMPORARY INFLATED PRICE THAT CANNOT SUSTAIN ITSELF

all a bubble means is that the price is hyper inflated and will pop.
the two major bitcoin bubble periods was 2013 and 2017

bitcoin is not in a bubble. the 2017 correction occured and now we are down at the low levels where real value lay.
this is uaually the best time to buy in.

regulations are USELESS

how many people were saved due to regulations in 2008.. none. millions of people lost their homes.

regulations are not a consumer safety net.
regulations are to make businesses police their customers.
its purely a tactic so governemts do not need to police things themselves and give the appearance that something is being done.

but this policing policy is not even wrote out by regulators. infact they ask the business to make their own policies on how they will monitor and report their customers if thier customers do something wrong.

which in return allows a business to do things that consumers would see as criminal.

if anything what is actually needed is consumer protection. that way random anonymous consumers can actually report scammy businesses.. as that is the ultimate problem people have.

emphasis
regulations NO
consumer protections Yes

there needs to be a way to ensure if a business is going to scam. they cant hide behind insurance, insolvency, or other things to get away scot free

seems too many people are too ill experienced of classifications.

im laughing at all those saying "commodity". they hav no clue

anything can be a currency. even cigarettes in prison are a currency. it does not matter if only 1000 around the world use it every 10 minutes or millions. it will still be a currency if only 3 people use it a day.
so bitcoin IS a currency.

below that are classifications of it (subcategories)
bitcoin falls into the asset class

do you even understand what a commodity is ?!?
a commodity is a raw material used to create other materials
gold=jewellery/circuitry
beef= steak/burgers
oil= gasoline/plastic
wheat= bread/cereal

i know what your thinking (bitcoin is gold2.0) but thats based on analogies unrelated to commodity.gold
infact gold sits in 2 markets. commodity AND asset
bitcoins gold analogies are about its ASSET classification

as for currency. stop thinking currency as just fiat. currency can be anything..

bitcoin is actually an asset currency