trying to be unbiased. cobra's opinion is flawed in many ways.
1. by separating mining from the nodes(2013) actually splits the point of failure. because instead of core changing something and the whole community moving. the pools have to agree/disagree. this made core (in 2016) not fully tyranical because core cant control the mining internally via code. this is why core did not get segwit activated in december 2016 because they only had ~30% of the community vote.

2. as my previous post said pools cant simply change the rules and mess with bitcoin. because the nodes/community have to agree. but nodes too shouldnt have the power to change the rules without the pools or node users agreeing. which core abused by making opposition/abstainers shift to a altcoin to unanimously get their fudged 95% in 2017

3. this is where we do actually need multiple full nodes made by different teams, which can use consensus to make agreements on positive changes. and not allow negative changes, rather than just 1 team acting like tyrants avoiding consensus by throwing opposition into altcoins so they always win the vote.

anyway the other major flaw of cobra's thinking is this:
4. if a mining algo change did occur. in a fair and multi team consensus agreement... it would still not help the little guys get on the profit ladder.. big mining companies (yes there are many more than just bitmain, although cobra wont admit that) these mining companies will just pool together many nodes and within a short time be back at the top of the ladder again.
EG
if it was a PoS.. lets say 100k individuals staked. .. 20 pools could simply make 10k stake each(200k) 3.3% of the time a pool get a block and 0.00033% of the time a individual wins a block
EG
if it was a PoH(harddrive).. lets say 100k individuals had nodes. .. 20 pools could simply buy 10k raspberry Pi's each(200k) 3.3% of the time a pool get a block and 0.00033% of the time a individual wins a block

so no matter what within hours/days weeks. there will always be a way to 'pool' resources

to me i am not worried about pools. as my previous post pointed out. the real point of failure is the lack of diversity in node teams

another scammy ICO thinking it can protect itself by having a "policy".
sorry DW but the FCA will be on your ass faster than a fly on warm dogs mess.

you are not even FCA complient even if you were going to pretend you are honourable.
after reading your policy which is full of red flags, your lack of concern for running a legit service, the lack of "insurance" details. you really are throwing yourself into a legal black hole of being arrested and charged for atleast 3 UK financial crimes when things turn bad.

are you really that dumb or just that greedy that you just dont care. because its pretty obvious you have not even bothered to even look at the technical stuff of running an exchange.

how about going back to being just a website designer, because you are out of your league with your scammy ICO/exchange

back in satoshi's day (cpu mining) the concept was:

if a miner could out pace other miners then that miner can then make some nasty changes. but that concept was flawed because it would need the community as a whole to accept the block as valid and not reject it.
which is where the concept was extended to explain that if other nodes who CPU mined also had the same new code and over many blocks there was a clear majority of which blocks were accepted over all. then that majority became the main chain. and most users would need to react and either update their node to join.. or if the new rule was nasty. not upgrade and just treat it as an altoin of more hashpower but less real world utility(not let merchants adopt nasty new rule)

same thing for GPU pool mining. even if many miners grouped together to out hash the rest of the community. the main payment services (coinbase/merchants/bitpay/exchanges) needed to also have the code for the new rules otherwise the blocks were deemed invalid and pools couldnt spend their rewards with their favourite merchants/services

the worse to occur was high reject/orphan rates which eventually gets the rule breaking pool IP banned and thus they only communicate with their like minded peers.thus making their own altcoin. the community that sticks to the old rules may suffer a delay in the average block time until difficulty adjusted

now that mining is no longer '1 node 1 miner' because ASICS dont hold the blockchain and nodes dont themselves mine directly. pools really do need to persuade the community to download a new node client version, with the new rules for the blocks to be acceptable.

this is why running a node is important. pools could make blocks of 200coin reward. but if no one in the main communuty accept such block. a pool cant really spend that block and thus they are wasting electric and ASIC hashtime making blocks the community (metaphorically) throw in the trash within 2 seconds

this leads to the 'rule breaking' pool to decide to either carry on with their altcoin and then develop exchange/paymnt service relations with merchants to accept their new coin network.. or stop mining the new rule (kiling the alt) and going back to mining the old rules just to atleast have the normal block rewards accepted by merchants, to cover pools mining costs

another part of bitcoin evolution is the floppy disk argument

1995 floppy disk: "i can only hand just over 1mb, you cant store more without a central computer, so dont even try evolving distributed media"
2018 400gb microxd: "if we listened to you the usb/flash industry would not exist and i wouldnt be here.. well i exist and people can hold 285,000 more then a floppy in less physical plastic then the floppy"

if we continue with the 1mb base vs 1gb block argument. blockchains will stagnate.. what the small blockers done to stagnate legacy tx's is say its impossible to go to 2mb then 4mb then 8mb then 16mb over time.. by trying to push the 1gigabyte block FUD

all so they can persuade people the only way forward is co-signed transactions with hubs(banks2.0)
- and dont rebut that LN only needs 1 channel per person. hop model does not work. users need many channels(hub) to ensure reliable service.
- and dont pretend LN has anything to do with blockchain. LN is offchain. like depositing into coinbase where user and coinbase both need to agree to withdraw funds(in laymans terms)
-bitcoin(using blockchain) has stagnated..

 

theres already lotto things and gambling for bitcoin. infact theres gambling for fiat apps.. but they are not special/new/different/killer
we need to think of things that are new/different

but going one step further by having it in a virtual game GUI .. so yea.. get team open bazaar and team dragons tale to work together and create something

imagine dragons tale. (im guessing you kprawn have been around long enough to have come across dragon's tale to envision what im about to say)

but instead of kicking a trashcan or buying seeds. people can set up their own vendor station(market stall) and sell real goods that get delivered to real addresses, intreacting with others in a virtual environment

making it a bitcoin virtual mall for real online shopping/home delivery
it already a bitcoin game and wont take much alteration to slip in more stalls for merchants to communicate with customers. as the bitcoin paymnt part between users is already part of the game

bitcoin is a currency (asset class currency) and not a gambling token(poker chip)

so bitcoin is halal, as is the dollar a currency and not a gambling chip so the dollar is halal

the confusion comes when governments say that bitcoin is not recognised as money. but the same goes for the dollar
you cannot pay national taxes in sharia countries using the dollar.
you cannot pay court fines in sharia countries using the dollar.

this is not about halal or haram. this is about the legal tender.
only the national currency of the country is legal tender of that country. this does not mean other currencies are then haram. it just means its not a nations national currency.

so relax. a nation not accepting a currency to pay fines/taxes does not make a currency haram.

i emboldened and enlarged the most important thing the OP wrote

how about this for out of box thinking..

instead of crying about how banks wont adopt bitcoin yet we value bitcoin vs the dollar. and thus other FIAT currencies then convert the dollar fiat to their own countries fiat to then value bitcoin against their own currency. thus making the dollar more significant than bitcoin

how about WE as a community decide to ditch the dollar, because right now even in america itself there is a disparity of using the dollar as the measure. in arkensaw (min wage=$8.50) and in illinois($10)
arkensaw has to work over ~950 hours where as illinois only has to work ~810 hours

so again, how about WE as a community decide to ditch the dollar and measure bitcoin against, either:

cost of living:- lets say right now today that a bitcoin is 900 hours of labour.(where markets then buy/sell in hourly increases/decreases) so that everyone around the world can get a bitcoin for the same labour time no matter what their fiat vs fiat rates are

barrel of oil:- oil is a dying industry.. but we could measure it as being that we are willing to buy 100 barrels of oil for 1btc

id say its far more easier to petition our own community to get bitcoin exchanges to swap the measure. than it is to cry and sit on hands hoping banks/opec take the lead and control of the price

its because most people are not told what bitcoin is really about.. they are just told that a friend of a friend of a friend doubled their fiat in a month.

too many people only se bitcoin as a vessel to 'get rich scheme' their way back to fiat.

bitcoin original ethos/purpose.. electronic cash, the borderless, open, payment system

then comes along people who are most definetly more fans of core/blockstream than bitcoin..
translation:
if you dont like core/blockstreams roadmap that has screwed bitcoin.. go F off

seems you dont understand it..
lets say Alexksso, bitart, ichardsNY and ETFbitcoin were using LN

[alex:bitart]  [bitart:ETFbitcoin]  [ETFbitcoin:richardsNY]

alex puts in 0.1btc
bitart only has 0.2btc to deposit
ETFbitcoin only has 0.005btc
richards has 0.1btc
[alex:bitart]  [bitart:ETFbitcoin]  [ETFbitcoin:richardsNY]
  [0.1:0.1]       [0.1:0.0025]            [0.0025:0.1]

now bitart wants to pay 0.1 to richardsNY
but ETFbitcoin cant route it.. ETfbitcoin only has 0.0025 to pay richardsNY
so the payment cant be made from bitart to richard

now bitart has to close the channel costing him on onchain fee. to then open a new channel with someone else to move those funds into a possible route  with diffrent people that could

..
or imagine this
[alex:bitart]  [bitart:ETFbitcoin]  [ETFbitcoin:richardsNY]
  [0.1:0.1]       [0.1:0.0025]            [0.0025:0.1]

alex wants to pay richardsNY 0.0025
ok theres enough funds per channel to route the paymnt.. lets do it
[0.0975:0.1025] [0.1:0.0025]  [0.0025:0.1]  alex pays bitart
[0.0975:0.1025] [0.0075:0.005] [0.0025:0.1]  bitart pays ETF
[0.0975:0.1025] [0.0075:0.005] [0.0:0.1025]  ETF pays richardNY

ok the payment is complete alex paid richardsNY 0.0025
.. now the problem
bitart no longer has 0.1btc of his own funds to pay either ETF or richard
ETF has 0 of his own funds to pay richards

all because alex made the route useless.. so now bitart and ETF have to close channels to re-agregate their funds in new routes.

LN is not a constantly open, not limitless utility, not send any amount.
channels will need to be closed and opened more often then people thing.

imagine you had a joint bank account.. you deposit $100.. but then your wife wants to buy coffee for all of her friends using your joint bank account..
even if you put a limit of $5 per payment.. your wife simply makes 20 payments of $5.. and your funds are gone before you yourself even got to spend your own funds 

now your wife has to close all her joint accounts with her frinds to re-agregate the funds into your joint account. and you then have to re-agregrate your account with the coffee shop so that you have funds if you ever want coffee for yourself.

in short.. look passed the utopia of the white paper. and actually run scenarios

a few people that dont want to run a node and learn command lines. can do it simple with a few boxes of matches. or even pen and paper

i didnt miss the point at all
even since i started in 2012 i had the notion that measuring bitcoin to the dollar is a failure

i have said many times over the years of this forum that if bitcoin was measured as a cost of living index the volatility would not be noticable even if the FIAT valuations jumped 15-30%



my notion is forget fiat pricing.
if we measured things against cost of living where say right now no matter where in the world you lived 1btc was worth
8000 loaves of bread or 1100 hours of minimum wage

th markets would all act differently

it can change the world of economics and people will start to see that its FIAT that volatile
you would start to see people arbitrage the FIAT to get better deals of bitcoin.. rather than arbitrage bitcoin to get better deals in fiat
thus by switching the direction of arbitrage between the different FIATS to get bitcoin.. the end result would be that everyone could earn the same thing and buy th sam thing around the world.

i even remember mentioning the disparity between states of america.. where today 1btc is worth 1100 minimum wage hours in on state.. while right now in another state 1btc is worth ~550 minimum wage hours..
think about it.. if you lived in a state that offered $7.50 working in mcdonalds.. you would need to work 1100 hours to get 1 btc.. meanwhile in another state where minimum wage was $15.. you only need to work ~550 hours
same country, same fiat, same job, same company.. but having to work double the hours.. FIAT is the failure.. not btc

 


the obsession with fiat profits is the problem

but while we remain dislusioned to measure
bitcoin -> $$ -> bread
instead of
bitcoin -> bread

we are not changing ecomony or even helping bitcoin be a 'uaable' means of paying for goods

if everyone would please stop getting shocked about 1%-15% price movements
this is normal.

take fiat last year and the year before that
US$  GB£   165-150 (15%)  most brits do not even care/notice. half of media do not make a big deal
by this i mean cisitizens dont care but some media report it but its not the main story of the day..

US$  GB£   165-135 (30%)  most brits do not even care/notice. most media reported that it was due to brexit.. even when the truth is it was related to shifts in the IMF's sdr
.
by this i mean cisitizens dont care but many media reported, but couldnt explain the real reason and thus they FUD it to link to other controversial stories that are happening to try and make it into bigger news

in the end.. people still buy bread. milk toilet paper.. the world didnt end when fiat moved 30% last year..

so lets do the same with bitcoin and not care when prices move 1%-15%, just treat it like normal trading waves.

addresses starting 'bc1q'  are segwit addresses

low fee's are due to intentional spamming by mixer bots stopping..
not due to segwit.

though segwit is activated. the actual adoption of people using segwit addresses is too low to cause impact. which is the major thing that made me laugh. it seems the amount of actual community that trust segwit is low.

even the pools that were loud advocates of segwit are still afraid to even put their block rewards on segwit keys
heres BTCC pool
https://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000000017733b93cbe6b8f2852ea560f9b4c12a1ab1995487363b

1) thier reward address is legacy (begins with 1..) its not segwit(begins with bc1q)
2) they also are not filling their blocks (64kb), which is why fees are low. because there is no spam

some people keep 11 of the 12(23 of the 24 dpending on which format of seed you use) as digital.. and the last word remains in your head/offline as the final access password

they also set up a completely different 12th(24th) word(as a surrogate) with just a few satoshi's on that seed phrase incase ever physically aproached by someone with a hammer or gun demanding the whole 12(24) words... you simply give the 11(23) normal words. plus the surrogate 12th(24th) word to get them to leave you alone saying its all you have... knowing it would only cost you a few lost sats to be left alone

then you can use the 11(23) words plus the main 12th(24th) word later to get to your real hoard

you dont get it..
the technology is not a bubble.. things are not in a permenant bubble..
a bubble is a small piece of time where something is grossly OVER valued.

EG houses are real
EG tulips are real
but at certain times the market prices of those thing can go exceptionally high real fast. which is the bubble..
bubbles are about temporary speculative unnaturalhigh prices..

and before you try to reply.. what might have been a ATH bubble 2-4 years ago... might now be below this years alltime low. EG 2013-2014's $1200 ATH was a bubble..... but now with $6000 being tested as a good low for an ongoing period.. $1200 today would be classed as under valued, where as $20k would be this years bubble

again.. get the all time low of each 3-6 month period... draw a line.. call that the bath water of value.. expect a thin skin of foam on top for a bit of speculative stirring of the water.. but when you see a big mountainous lump that looks out of place. thats a bubble.

bubble does not mean empty. fake..
eg. houses are real things that people live in, house prices are naturally expected to increase, but there have been housing bubbles

in short.
look at the last 12 months.. find the LOWS of crtain periods in that time. and draw a line. the lows are considered the real value..
then when you see a unnatural spike up in the price that is a bubble

but just calm down, as i said bubbles happen everywhere like houses, but houses will always exist

the difference between a fork and a crapcoin is this:
crapcoins made by copy/pasting bitcoin code without any innovation restart at block 0. retaining no transactional data.
however a fork retains historic transaction/block data upto a certain date before they go in their separate direction