Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense.

Now you are bringing back the BIG BLOCKER arguments to the thread?  Are you just trying to provoke, you goofball?

You realize that segwit was adopted through adequate consensus mechanisms, and if you want to remove segwit then some similar process needs to be followed in order to remove it.  Seems very unlikely to happen, merely because some people have "suspicious feelings" about segwit that are not based in any kind of substantial and meaningful fact(s).

also, get the fuck out of here with the worn out and beaten up claims that BIGGER blocks is less complicated.  Part of the reason that BIGGER blocks was not the solution was because it failed to receiving any kind of meaning traction in the bitcoin community, so if you want some BIGGER blocks, then take ur selfie to bitcoin.com.. (I am reminding myself of that shakespeare saying "take yourself to a nunnery"  hahahahahaha)

I think that when a few of us speculate that there are going to be fungibility battles in the future, these are the kinds of battles that we contemplate to be within the realm of possibilities.  Part of the problem about speculating about the future is that no one is really going to know how the battles might play out.  I am fairly certain that varying levels of preparation for fungibility battles have been ongoing in bitcoin since it's inceptions, and even during my about 4.5 years in bitcoin, I have seen various kinds of fungibility discussions, even from  core developers.  So the topic is not lost on them and the tools for defending bitcoin from these kinds of challenges is not new, either.  So, it remains somewhat speculative if fungibility challenges become more of an issue or a BIGGER problem that might need more tools - but there may not be a real easy way to put safeguards in place for every possible fungibility attack if certain kinds of fungibility attacks have not started yet and they remain mere speculation rather than actual and current practices.

So some of these FUD spreading nutjobs, like jbreher, who seem to want to continue to present the speculation of the fungibility issues as if it were a current attack on bitcoin, rather than speculation of the future seems premature, misleading and an attempt to spread FUD about speculation rather than actual and current things going on in bitcoin.

O.k.  I am with you that before segwit, we had one aspect of bitcoin that is considered on chain transactions.  Segwit added functionality to bitcoin and was adopted and implemented through a then agreed to consensus mechanism, but such added functionality did not create a different class of bitcoin, furthermore it remains optional to use segregated witness bitcoin addresses or legacy addresses, and you can send bitcoin's across in any direction.. from segwit to legacy and from legacy to segwit from legacy to legacy and from segwit to segwith... So fucking what?   That is not a different class of bitcoin, it is just additional functionality that has been absorbed into the system and likely to continue to exist.. and  you have to make some kind of proof that there is some actual rather than theoretical fungibility issue.

Regarding lightning network, this is another test system that is being built in order to federate peg bitcoin's into such nominally second layer.  Seems that I am not smart enough to really understand all of the implications of such system that is being built, and surely remains voluntary and in early testing stages.  My understanding is that the December 2017/January 2018 spam attack onto bitcoin from BIG BLOCKER nutjob comrades of yourself created incentives to cause the test version of lightning network to go live much more quickly than had been anticipated, and even initially pissed off a few core developers, but in some sense the toothpaste is out of the tube, and the system is being tested on an ongoing basis with limitations in the quantity of coins that can be added to any one channel, and from my understanding lightning network is not creating any new coins, because the coins that are being used on lightning network are federated to actual bitcoins that are verifiable on the blockchain.  

You can label this as a new class of coins all that you want, but such labelling seems to be misleading at best, and having seen your track record, I would not be surprised if you are not attempting to engage in deceit and/or trickery regarding the topic to suggest that some kind of significance and meaning is present with additional optional functionality being a new "class of coin" when no fucking new coins are created..  

So, in the end, I still don't see what evidence that you have that there is some kind of actual fungibility issue in regards to bitcoins that might be used in the lightning network beyond mere speculation about something that could happen, but there are no actual facts to back up your differences in fungibility assertions related to lightning network and it even seems to be a stretch to be asserting that new functionality rises to the level of some kind of "new coin".  In short, you seem to be engaging in either misleading or deception with your discussion of different classes of coins and arguing about some kind of non-existent fungibility issue, no?

Are you merely saying that there are differences of opinion about where the bottom might be?  Surely, there has been multiple attempts to break through support in the $6k territory.  Surely, there are questions about whether such support will hold.. but merely not knowing whether the support will hold or not is not the same as saying that it is difficult to see the bottom.  Of course, if support does not break, then that means we are going up.  A lot of folks prefer to see high volume bounce off of any bottom, and many times, that can make the bottom more clear, but historically, even in bitcoin, there have been times when the bottom is in and then the price just trickles up further and further and further making it then difficult for bears to bring the price back down to test the previous bottom testing points.



You are talking about the correction from $19,666 to present right?  I don't think that would technically be a "bear market," especially given the context.  But you can call it whatever you like, even though "bear market" seems both premature and misleading.


Do you know what is a strawman argument? 

You seem to be making one with your reference to "a lot of people" claiming some kind of solid bottom at $6,500 and supposedly being wrong about such claim.  So fucking what?  A lot of people say a lot of things, including dumb things.  So the mere fact that people may have said something does not really get us anywhere regarding the supposed meaning of such claims, as you seem to be suggesting that the hopes of such "lot of people" have been dashed.  Is that the claim?


That is true. Each of us has to follow, tweak or come up with our own individualized plan.  Such plan will both depend upon what stage of entering bitcoin we are in and also what plan we may have already been following (and whether we might need to tweak such plan).   

What is your plan?   buy, sell, hold or some combination of such?



Somewhat typical with consolidation periods is that the range of volatility becomes more and more narrow, until the consolidation breaks in one direction or another.  Sometimes there can be a sudden increase in volatility that comes with a break in one direction or another, and other times the break away from the consolidation range can end up being more gradual and trickling towards one direction or another.

Well, ultimately, you are going to do what you are going to do, and even though your amounts seem a bit high to me, there may be some reasonable basis for the amounts that you have chosen to invest in bitcoin if your underlying fiat is not holding value.

It is considered that the dollar loses between 1% to 3% per year due to inflation of goods to buy and various depreciation mechanisms including the printing of money that depreciates the value of the dollars that you hold, yet it is still good to hold a certain amount of dollars to off-set a volatile risky investment, such as bitcoin.

Another concept that I like to keep in mind is having enough of a cash reserve in order that you do not have to dip into your bitcoin investment that a time that is not of your choosing... so what I do is project my cashflow ahead for up to 18 months.  The amount of time that I project ahead is going to vary based on various business activities of mine, including if I have debt money that I am floatin and considering the payments, too.

If you have a steady source of income (cash flow) then you can be kind of lucky to be able to project your cashflow, but if you have a business, then there may be a certain necessity to underestimate your cashflow, which will better prepare you for emergencies, and increase the chances that your cashflow is going to outperform expectations (and a decent portion of the "outperformance" can be used to invest in something like bitcoin).



My alt coin exposure is less than 2% of my total crypto investment, so we are in the same boat (similar mindset) there.

O.k., so pretty much you are saying that you made some profits in 2013/2014, when you sold because you were able to buy those nice things with the profits.  However, perhaps 1) you ended up spending both principle and profits on your nice things, 2) you did not recognize the investment value of bitcoin until much later, so you did not buy many bitcoins between 2014 and 2015, 3) you said that you bought some bitcoin in late 2016, but that was not enough (or was not very many bitcoins), 4) you seemed to recognize the value of bitcoin late - in 2017 and perhaps even in late 2017.   

These are really tough circumstances, and still I gather that it is very unlikely that you really did learn your lesson and really do recognize the value of bitcoin. Hopefully, you can just engage in a kind reasoned approach, and just buy back with reasonable amounts of ongoing dollar cost averaging rather than attempting to bet on either the direction of the market or engage in a kind of gambling.

It seems that even if you have screwed some things up in your recent bitcoin perspective history, I think that if you continue to dollar cost average into bitcoin and attempt to learn from your mistakes and attempt to employ incrementalism strategies, you could be doing very well, financially, in 5-10 years.  Personally, I don't think that you should attempt to rush the matter, because you will have a greater likelihood to take rash actions, like you already have done in the past.  Anyhow, hopefully, it all works out and you can attempt to play the long game, and please keep in mind that sometimes I may seem to be harsh on people or lecture people for gambling too much, but it is mostly because I don't think that gambling is a very good way to approach the matter, and if you do not rush the situation, there are still decent chances that you can build up your BTC portfolio and  things are going to work out for you.  If you end up gambling and playing around too much with alts and things like that then the odds of your personally profiting are not likely to be as good.

You could be right that the costs per coin  are lower than the estimated range that I indicated.  There are threads on the cost of mining topic, and various discussion points.  

I am certainly in agreement with you that there could be various ways that once miners are able to generate coins, there are likely other ways (besides pure mining) that they could either drive down the costs per coin or alternatively to generate profits from such coins.

You are a miner, so you probably know more of the technicals of mining than me.  And, there are likely a lot of people that look at the mining issue from a different perspective than me, but I am largely thinking in terms of security.. and the fact that changing the algorithm would introduce a whole hell of a lot of unknown risk to bitcoin, including qustions about its centralization (if the algorithm was quickly changed)

In essence, my understanding is that it would not be very difficult technically to change bitcoin's mining algorithm, but the question is not so much about what is technically feasible, but instead looking at game theory and broader scale economics and incentives that are created and which players would be advantaged by an algorithm change.

I don't think that the individual profitability of mining (as the way that you outlined the possible motivation for changing the algorithm) is a significant reason to change the algorithm, because in essence, if mining becomes less profitable because of the number of big players mining, then the free market would likely take care of that by causing the less profitable players to drop off... and sure more centralization, but still not a motive to change the algorithm in order to spread out mining to smaller players.

A bit over a year ago, LukeDashJr and perhaps some of the other developers were proposing an algorithm change as a means to undermine the seeming monopoly of bitmain and some of their seeming bullying behavior and in order to punish them.   It seems that a motive to change the algorithm in order to hurt Bitmain  would not necessarily cause that kind of speculated damage to bitmain, but instead would likely hurt the smaller players more and would likely hurt any of the upcoming miner developers who are trying to put a dent into bitmain's efficiency.  In other words, bitmain would likely be way to likely to be advantaged by an algorithm change because it would be the kind of player that could most easily establish new machines to adapt to such new algorithm and to phase out their no longer useful (and old machines), and therefore if there was an aim to punish bitmain through a new algorithm, the opposite effect would be the more likely outcome which means that it is not too likely that a change in the algorithm would cause greater decentralization (if that was the intention).

Bitcoin ultimately remains stronger, more secure, by sticking with the original algorithm that a lot more players can develop upon (including bitmain, and bitmain does not have as BIG of a monopoly as is asserted).

Regarding cost of mining, I have seen a pretty wide spectrum of costs between $3k and $7k, and perhaps that largely varies based on electricity costs and the efficiencies of the equipment being used and perhaps some software technics that can cause for some private employment of greater efficiencies that miners would keep secret some of their efficiency techniques and other costs (to the extent that they are able to keep those private).

It's not going to happen, so I don't know what your point is except to bring up something that is not going to happen?

From my understanding, for some assertion to fit into a lying category, then it would have to include an intention to mislead, right?  

I have had no intention to mislead in regards to this particular segwit fungibility topic.  Whether I was "completely wrong," I have my doubts about that too, so I would need to see the exact statement in order to attempt to assess about what you are referring and whether it matters.

Even though I have been wrong about various matters in the past, a categorization of "completely wrong" is a very strong assertion that I will deny, at least for now, unless I see evidence to the contrary... So far, all I see is that you are making bullshittingly bold lack of fungibility statements, and acting as if they have some kind of material significance in regards to the current state of bitcoin.  



Hole?  What hole?

Are you just trying to argue for the sake of it?  Is there some kind of point that you would like to make?  Is bitcoin going to die soon?  cause of death = lack of fungibility?

You surely act as if you have made some kind of meaningful statement at some point in regards to some kind of lack of fungibility question in bitcoin.



O.k.  You are asserting a theory.. So fucking what?  Do you have any evidence of a problem, yet?  Anyone refusing to take segwit transactions that amounts to a material and significant problem?



That is generous of you.  I recall something about you not using segwit.. so good luck with that.  Of course, legacy addresses can still be processed because the segwit fork was backwards compatible, so perhaps that will work out for you.  Maybe at some point in the future, you will come around to using segwit?  Who knows?  You do seem to have some strange inclinations.  But hey, to each his own.



I don't think so.  You want to continue to pursue this topic, and it seems that you are not really getting any traction, here, but you want to continue, right?  What does that say?  To me, it seems that you want to continue to pursue irrelevance and attempting to give more weight to the topic than it deserves... at least at this time.


Does not really seem that it is subject to much debate if it is a pie in the sky speculation with a very low probability of even being an issue.  Probably better to create another thread on the topic or to join the topic in another thread if you think that it remains such an important discussion point, no?


Gotta find some humor in this self-description.  I couldn't maintain a serious face, and argue that you are without some humor, from time to time, even if your humor, in this case, was not intentional.



touché

Answering a question with nearly the same question.  I suppose you could not really answer my rhetorical question very well, except to merely tailor your question to what you perceive to be my conduct.

We've exhausted this fungibility topic, for now, no?  

Any other points needed?  Doesn't seem like it to me.


Exactly.  I think that is part of the point.  There is no real evidence of peeps refusing to accept segwit coins or segwit tainted coins.... Not yet, anyhow.  So the discussion point remains theoretical and speculative rather than based on any kind of significant facts (except for "asserted facts" whatever that is?).

So in regards to the merit number, I had seen some of the 1337 discussions, yet I think what confused me about jojo's post was how the whole thing is connected to the portion of my post that jojo cited?  It's like over my head.  dudes, and dudette.

This concept of maintaining fungibility is not a new one in bitcoin, and of course, it is going to be tested, and perhaps tested with a bit of rigor.  Just because it is a potential vulnerable area does not mean that bitcoin is not going to be able to overcome various attacks on its fungibility.  Should we not be taking one step at a time, rather than assuming that various attack vectors are going to be successful merely because people, such as jbreher, are attempting to spread FUD about it?

Surely, I might conclude that fungibility is a .1% concern, and you might conclude it is 10% and jbreher might consider that it is 20%, but the mere fact that we have different probabilities about future value and utility should cause us to invest differently based on how BIG we believe the threat to be.  Some folks are going to be closer to being correct than others, and that is the nature of the free market, to some extent.


Your answer above, about fiat being sort of non-fungible seems to be a bit off.   Fiat is backed by government laws, etc, and there have been fungibility court rulings in regard to fiat.  Of course, governments can chose to change their fiat related rules too.  I would conclude that there is a decently strong public policy to attempt to maintain dollar fungibility and that gives the dollar decent strength and decent predictability.  Of course, the rules could be changed, at some point in regards to the dollar.  Seems to be a bit more difficult to change the rules in regards to bitcoin, and in that regard, there will likely be both governmental attempts or anti-bitcoin groups that try to change bitcoin rules, and some of the anti-bitcoin groups will actually tout themselves as being pro bitcoin, and out to do what is "best" for bitcoin.  Good luck, we will see, and each of us will decide if we are scared by what is happening or decide to sell our bitcoin (or discontinue usage of bitcoin) based on such happenings.


You are likely correct that there is a sliding scale when it comes to fungibility, and I think that most free market types are going to perceive the most value in bitcoin being associated with greater levels of fungibility... so yeah, you are right that lesser fungibility may maintain some value, but the amount of decrease in value may be a lot greater than what you seem to be projecting it to be.  For example if confidence is lost because coins get blacklisted, then surely that seems problematic to me if it is allowed to occur.  So if any 3rd party such as coinbase or fed government tries to label coins, then there would likely be some effort by the bitcoin community to either not use their services or to move coins to other location and clean them of their blacklisting.

Well, I guess the best case scenario for normal peeps (meaning people with cashflow and some money in which to attempt to invest) getting into bitcoin would have been to have largely established a decent BTC position before 2017; however, we also know that some peeps are doing well if they were able to continue to invest into bitcoin before the August 2017 pump that came after the issues regarding the hardfork attacks on bitcoin (bcash) were mostly resolved in bitcoin's favor.  I do understand that during early 2017 and even late 2016, there were a lot of ways that normal peeps could have been FUDDED out of buying into bitcoin, but if we had been in bitcoin since 2013/2014, then there should have been some ability to sort through a lot of the FUD and to continue to establish a decent BTC position inspite of the then ongoing FUD spreading (actually, a fact of the bitcoin matter, remains that there are periods in which FUD spreading is greater or lessens, but FUD spreading always seems to exist to some extent, so FUD spreading is not a phenomena that tends to go away, so in that regard each of us, has a personal responsibility to sort through that FUD crap).

Are you saying that in 2013, 2014, 2015 and much of 2016, you were not stacking bitcoin?  Even if you had stacked a small amount of perhaps $100 per month ($25-ish per week), you could have stacked a decently sized BTC holdings by the end of 2016, no?



That is true.  Even though the start of the upsurge in BTC prices started in late 2015, it gained a lot of momentum throughout 2017, and especially in the last part of 2017.  And even though I personally had concluded that a blow off top had not yet happened, it is surely possible that because of the intensity of the upwards slope increase, that late 2017 had constituted a blow off top.  I am still inclined to believe that the blow off top for this particular cycle is still to come, but I acknowledge that the intensity of the late 2017 price rise could fit a more modest categorization of a blow off top assessment.



Actually, each of us has to come to a calculation that suits our own financial situation, and my initial goal was to put about 10% of my total quasi-liquid investment capital into bitcoin, and that is money that I had already accumulated through previous years that I had been investing.  My prior investing had varied through the years, too, and usually I attempted something like you, I would calculate my various regular expenses and try to create a cushion in my cash flow in order to have a percentage that would be available for investment, and surely 5-10% is a decent amount, but of course, different people have different things that they consider to be bare necessities, and so sometimes the amount invested could be increased by changing some of the perceptions of bare necessities.. and also calculating an emergency fund and various other good practices, such as maintaining a 6 month or so projection of living expenses in order that you would not have to dig into any investment, because of an "emergency."


Perhaps you will get lucky?  But, I don't think that you can expect bitcoin to wait for you.  It seems better to just attempt to maintain a solid ongoing investment strategy, and your 5-10% seems reasonable... because the amount invested continues to add up, so over the years, you are still going to be in a better position than a lot of the fence sitters and the many others who have not set anything up for themselves or have not heard about bitcoin in any kind of meaningful way.


I don't think that anyone could really blame you for being judicious with your money and investing only the amount that you reasonably had available in your cashflow.  The only thing is that you seem to be implying that you could have reasonably and easily bought much more, but you held off such investment.



The main thing is learning from the situation, because there are always going to be FUD spreading roaches out there.  I still think that you have to take into account some of the FUD, and to invest in accordance with your overall beliefs and a moderate approach is likely going to be best to keep putting money in to bitcoin but without over extending yourself.


Like I already mentioned, I think that there has always been FUD out there about bitcoin.  I doubt that the FUD is going away any time soon.

Hopefully, you can find some kind of long term and sustainable investment strategy, and I hope that you do not get scared out of your coins if the price goes down from here.  Certainly, there are no guarantees in bitcoin, and in that regard prices could go either way, so each of us needs to find balance for our own finances, views, timeline, etc.   Ultimately, each of us also needs to attempt to take personal responsibility for our approach and to tweak our approach from time to time, based on ongoing learning from our mistakes, and seems that any of us could make mistakes.

I am lost.  

Perhaps I am missing a variable, or the math is beyond me.

I agree with your overall assessment, especially if you are suggesting to treat bitcoin as a relatively long term investment.   It could be a bit too optimistic to calculate that you might be able to get away without paying taxes, but it does seem that the greater your profits, then even though the taxes might be greater, but you are only getting taxed on profits, and not principle, so there can be ways to strategize your cashing out to lessen the tax burden....

In other words, paying taxes does not seem to be a bad problem to have.

I could think of worse things than taxes.  Let's say, for example, you have purchased 10 BTC for $6,700 each, which would be $67k of principle (investment capital).  If all of a sudden, BTC does a 10x, and your coins become worth $67k each, then you total BTC portfolio is suddenly worth $670k - and if we assume long term capital gains of somewhere around 15%, then your tax burden would be ($670,000-$67,000=$603k * .15) $90,450.  However, if you strategically cash out your bitcoins over the years, then you may not feel the tax burden as much as if you are taking home the whole loot of $579,550 ($670,000-$90,450).

I guess that part of my point is that there are ways to incrementally take out the money, spread out the tax burden and perhaps feel less of a one-time shock to your accounting... and in the end, even while paying taxes, still feel richer than you would have felt without the bitcoin investment.

I don't give a ratt's ass about what I said or did not say regarding your attempt to bring up some topic to get into the weeds of nonsense.

Look at the BIG PICTURE jbreher, and the BIG PICTURE remains that you are trolling with your attempt to distract WO peeps with your tangential speculations about some issues that are .1% important, while you are exaggerating the importance.

Even if I may have used strong language in your direction, stop getting caught up in these kinds of technicalities in order to attempt to keep your stupid-ass FUD spreading topic relevant, when it barely is relevant to anything in Bitcoin.  You are doing the same thing as a lot of historical trolls have done by attempting to exaggerate the importance of a topic to make it seem way more likely to happen than it is, with little to no evidence and attempting to shift the burden onto other people to rebutt your ongoing spewing of nonsensical points.



O.k.. so fucking what if you are correct on the theoretical issue, when such framing has little to no real world practice.


Are you asserting that such topical pursuit is not getting caught up in the weeds of bullshit, and there is some kind of importance in meandering down such rabbit hole in which you would like to direct me and the rest of this thread's participants?  Where we going with the nonsense talk?  Is there some kind of widespread practice or a building non-fungibility related practice in bitcoin in which we need to pay attention?  besides you quoting from a few WO posters who said that it seems that they had mispoken or that they were worried about segwit "in the beginning"?


Seems like speculation about a phenomena that is .1% likely to happen and you are attempting to treat such speculation as if it has greater than 50% odds, no?  

Why isn't your conduct here considered just FUD spreading and trolling?  

How is it that you want WO peeps to treat you seriously and with credibility, jbreher, when you seem to take nearly every opportunity to exaggerate negative aspects of bitcoin with highly unlikely theories?  You seem to be taking a similar tactic to stolfi, except stolfi left this WO thread a few years ago because apparently he found more hospitable grounds to spew his ongoing nonsensical "making a mound out of a mole hill" bitcoin bear theories.


Label my actions "flailing," if you will, but it seems to me that I might be too charitable in giving too much attention to your nonsense, which (like a typical troll) you merely look for little hooks here and there, rather than really attempting to treat significant and meaningful bitcoin WO topics.

But wait... Isn't fungibility a matter of degree rather than an absolute?  It seems to be like a moving target phenomenon in which government and anti-bitcoiners are going to want to place these kinds of restrictions on bitcoin in order to lessen its value and utility; however, developers are going to continue to create vehicles, and users are going to find ways to take advantage of tools that are provided... so in the end, who the fuck cares, if some coins that you have started with silk road, once you get a few levels removed from such.  And, maybe white washing coins will become a more prevalent practice, even through lightning network, perhaps?  Perhaps?

Scaling is a similar subject matter.  There is likely going to be a continued issue about scaling that has to continue to be adjusted for the level of use and the degree to which there are "scaling issues."

In the end, bitcoin is not likely to be broken by either fungibility issues or scaling issues because development and tricks continue to evolve while maintaining some foundational bitcoin principles (in terms of design and operation).

Fair enough. 

I have been largely painting this fungibility topic with broad strokes regarding what seems to be a topic that attempts to spread FUD rather than treating an actual serious bitcoin issue which fungibility currently is not such a topic, even though surely there are likely going to be attempted bitcoin fungibility attacks in the future - whether informationally or the employment of various methods, like you suggested blacklisting as one possible method that may not be easy to carry out in bitcoin if "people-empowering" tools continue to be developed and evolve.

Get the fuck out of here with that "totally right" language, when it come to bitcoin nobody knows the future not even bears who happen to get it right, because as even you should recognize, no one can be totally right about the future unless that person frames such future in terms of probabilities, which by definition should cause modesty in language, rather than assertions of "totality."   

Looks like xDan doesn't really know too much about the bitcoin subject matter, and like you he may be one of those supposedly PM fixated nuttards, who seems to have sold his/her/its BTC too soon - in the sub $500 price arena... at some point, it would seem that nuttards like you would realize the errors of your ways and begin to re-enter a position, but perhaps you are waiting for the supra $500k per BTC arena before you accept the situation?

Sorry for your loss...

Well, not really, perhaps BTC needs some not too smart peeps like you who are evangelizing other stupid peeps (by thinking that you know more than other smarter peeps) that keeps the BTC price down and allows smarter folks to accumulate BTC at lower prices?