Immutability at work.  Perfect consensus over status quo.
Not the slightest bit of consensus over alternatives.  That was what the immutability dynamics of bitcoin was all about, and it works marvellously.  Not the slightest bit of chance of a rule-changing consensus.  Ever.  That is what "immutability of the rules" means.

Two options: when near 50-50: a hard fork and two coins.  Or, nothing.

Yes, like you leave your old car for a newer one.

I think it won't happen.  Immutability and consensus can only be reached over status quo.

As I said elsewhere, the valuable commodity will not be the coins any more, but the room on the chain.

Indeed, if the vote were about nodes, then a sybil attack with 100 000 nodes on Amazon for a day would do.  If consensus is reached by the number of nodes, proof of work wouldn't be necessary.  Anybody can fire up an unlimited amount of nodes to get it his way.

Non-mining nodes do not mean anything.

The point is that "immutability dynamics" is such that *everything* is part of the consensus rules. Especially now, that the block size became a scarcity parameter, and hence that "room on the blocks" is now a commodity that is sold against money (fees, and probably later, contractually provided room between institutional players and miners).  In other words, the block size is now a parameter determining scarcity *on the same level* as the 21 million coins are.  It is NOT a technical parameter any more.

What is still a technical parameter, is the silly little-endian convention in bitcoin, and even that has never been "fixed".

But block chain room is now a commodity of which the "production rate" is determined by the block size, in the same way as bitcoins are an assset of which the "production rate" is also determined by the economic consensus rules.  A new commodity emerged: scarce block chain room.  It is something that is commercialized now.    It is not unthinkable that this commodity, "block chain room" becomes much more valuable than the coins themselves.  Actually, it is one of the things that bitcoin has been "proud of": its strongly protected chain.  Maybe in the future, transactions will be worth much, much more than bitcoins, of which most of them cannot move.  At that point, the 21 million coins will become a technical parameter nobody cares about, and what really matters is "block chain room".  We will maybe discover that what is really the value of bitcoin, is its chain, and not its coins.  Maybe you pay miners in fiat just to buy some room on a block.  And the coins don't matter.  Who knows.

After all, the electricity that is spend on bitcoin is essentially producing "block chain safety".  And not so much "tokens".  If this is the most valuable aspect of bitcoin, namely the "safe chain", then this is what will be sold most expensively: room on that safe chain.  And one will forget about the "application tokens, the gas" of it, namely the coins, of which there are plenty, but cannot move without spending a lot of value to get room on the chain.

This.


That is why the only possible consensus is status quo.  And this is exactly the "immutability dynamics" that bitcoin invented.  Once the rules are laid down, it is essentially impossible to change them.  They can only be changed if they are an insignificant technical detail that the "lead devs" sneak in without a big fuzz.  But that window of opportunity is closed now for higher transaction rates, like bigger blocks.  As there are *different alternatives* out there with incompatible solutions kicking the can forward, none of them can reach consensus.   If the tension becomes too high, there should come a hard fork, but the fear of losing the "first mover" status is so big, that nobody will dare doing this.  My opinion.  So this is why bitcoin will remain what it is, until it becomes sufficiently centralized that a small cartel has all deciding power (usually with a soft fork, not to give options to the users) ; or until its first mover status is sufficiently eroded that it is just a coin amongst others, at which point a hard fork is not  a problem any more.

The fraction of transaction volume by digital cash usage is tiny as compared to the daily bitcoin volume (mainly off chain, on exchanges, with bitcoin IOU).  Bitcoin's market cap is essentially made by greater-fool speculation ; its market cap sustained by demand as a digital cash to be used to buy stuff is an extremely small portion of the market cap.  It must be a few percent at most. 

This is like thinking that gold's store-of-value does depend on the few technical and artistic usages of gold.  It doesn't.  And gold isn't used as a currency either (any more).


As a currency, that's evident.  But bitcoin is already a very clumsy currency as compared to the technical performance of a lot of alt coins.  The reason that most of the tiny "currency" application of crypto is still bitcoin is a leftover from its first mover status.  But right at this moment, bitcoin is not usable any more as a currency.  And this will only get worse. 

Bitcoin will simply be a reserve currrency, and its scarce transaction volume (which is, in my opinion, graved in stone and will not change any more) will be a precious asset, only to be used between institutional vaults. 

Ah, you found it.  Years ago, I lost exactly a wallet like that in a forum.  I have been looking for ages to where I left it.  Thanks, it must be mine.  You can PM it to me

I read this everywhere, but this is fundamentally misguided.  If "core" is "holding back bitcoin", then core is already the centralized power of bitcoin, and bitcoin is not the slightest bit decentralized.  We just have "miner slaves" and "user slaves" doing whatever core decides to program, change or decide.   If you think that core has this power, then you think that bitcoin is core's fiat money.  Maybe this is true, but then, I don't see why you are complaining that they "take the power": according to you, they already have it.

If, on the other hand, bitcoin is a truly decentralized system, then core is just an open software writer like anybody else, and if there are competing open software proposals that implement, or don't implement, the god core's wishes, then this decentralized network will quickly come to a consensus of not using core's software and rules, but just another proposal, made somewhere else, no ?  So the only thing that we need is another set of rules, with other software, right ? Well, this exists.  There is BU for instance.

So, in as much as you think that bitcoin is decentralized, and decides by consensus what its rules are, and picks, by consensus, whatever piece of open software that implements this, core has NOTHING to say, and what the consensus is, is not at all dictated by core.  So, if bitcoin is decentralized, core cannot impose its will.  And if core CAN impose its will, bitcoin is not decentralized right at this moment.   But then, core deciding that core can decide, is tautological: they can already decide, by assumption.

Bitcoin IS decentralized, and core DOESN'T dictate anything.  What you see, is the consensus mechanism at work: immutability of the rules.  Bitcoin will not change.  The 1 MB blocks are with us for ever, and Segwit will not activate.  Period.  Want to know what bitcoin will be ?  Look at what bitcoin is today, and was, a few years ago.   The same mechanism that protects the 21 million coins, will also "protect" the 1 MB blocks and will avoid Segwit.

When Evan Inc decides to organize the next pump, and can get some big money (Ver ?) sustain it.

I'm pretty confident that DASH will go sky high.  It is even under more centralized control than ETH, and look how high they succeeded in pumping that, with the Foundation even dumping a serious amount of it.  Imagine what Evan can achieve, sitting on more than half of the stash, the master nodes, and hence, the full control of the "community votes".

This is where an asset they didn't invent themselves, comes in, like gold, or, bitcoin.

You must be sitting on a huge bag of bytecoin, aren't you 

This is absolutely right.  And for those users, there is.... fiat.  There's no reason to get involved in anything crypto, if it is to be centralized, nominative, and entirely law abiding.  Because fiat, which is centralized, nominative, an law abiding is WAAAY better in these aspects, no hassle with wallets, secret keys, fluctuating prices, full blocks, pumps and dumps, fees, and all that.  A credit card is way, way way more practical if it can be centralized and nominative than any crypto out there ever will.

And note that fiat is more private than bitcoin.  Only your banker knows.

Nobody "needs" someone at the top, but it is interesting to be at the top, and to control this.  Bitcoin is stuck now in full blocks, and the consensus mechanism will preserve this precious scarcity, just like it preserves the scarcity of coins themselves.  As such, bitcoin will end up not be usable any more for small transactions ; one will need "good relationships" with miners in order to be able to guarantee to get one of those scarce transactions (only 2 or 3 per second world wide). 
Bitcoin will stop being a means of payment, a currency.  But it WILL be a "reserve currency" for big holders that can obtain guaranteed "slots of transactions" with miners.  Miners will fully exploit this power they have of distributing, at their likings, the scarce resource which is "transaction".  They may even make exclusive deals with banks and other financial institutions, that, against huge fees, these banks get exclusive right to their block room.  They may "rent" their blocks ahead of time to some institutions.  You, as an individual, with no particular relation to a big miner, will be left fighting for the very few "wild" blocks by those few miners still accepting random transactions (with huge fees).  No more "paying stuff on the internet" with bitcoin.  The scarce resource of "transaction space" will be sold very expensively in exclusive deals with big finance.  The mere mortal, even if he has bitcoins in his wallet, will not be able to transact them.  The only thing that he will be able to do, is to sell them to one of those financial institutions, at big loss.

But no problem he will get a "bank account denominated in bitcoin" with bank IOU.
He will be able to get his bitcoins.... but nobody will, because once the bank has transferred them to you, you can't transact any more.

So in the end, bitcoin will end up in bank vaults, and miners will be paid a lot to give exclusive block chain room to banks and other financial institutions, using bitcoin as a reserve currency amongst them.  There will be Davos meetings of bankers and miners, deciding on protocol changes (in their advantage of course).

Bitcoin's utility is not what makes its price.  Greater-fool mining is.

No, miners don't do "what is best for bitcoin" they do what is best for them.  Whatever is best for bitcoin, but is worse for them, suffers from the tragedy of the commons.

Centralization is unavoidable in the long run, it was built into bitcoin from the start.  The only question is, how long can bitcoin remain relatively decentralized ?  Centralization happens because of economies of scale in the use of scarce resources.  PoW is such a thing where economies of scale happen ; but we are now facing a much more important scarce resource: room on the blocks.  Transactions.  Transactions will become "centralized", because they will be so expensive (and so unreliable unless you have partnered with a miner) that only big financial institutions will be able to do so.  At a frozen transaction rate of the order of 2 or 3 transactions per second world wide, this is as of now the most scarce resource in bitcoin.  Hence, bitcoin IOU will allow centralization of bitcoin transaction wallets to occur in financial institutions, making deals with miners to get their transactions on the chain.

Indeed, when there's so much dissent, normally, a hard fork is best, so that each community can continue in his consensus.  But the problem is that the essential value proposition of bitcoin over all other altcoins is its "first mover" effect.  Most all the rest of bitcoin is better done in some or other altcoin, but the moral highground of being the first mover is what holds bitcoin at the top.

A hard fork turns the forked bitcoin into a mere altcoin, but with more primitive technology than its competitors.  This is why bitcoin, as long as it has this "first mover" advantage, will not fork.  The forkers will lose a significant market cap as they now have an alt coin.

The only hope for forkers is to get >95% consensus so that the original bitcoin dies, and the new altcoin can continue as "bitcoin".  But such consensus will never ever be reached again, as we are talking about scarcity parameters which are protected by the immutability mechanism that made bitcoin great.

Because you want to be a winner, or because you want to be a loser ?  Both are valuable.  Losers actually much more so than winners.  We only need a few winners, but a lot of losers.


Honestly, if you are saying this, don't you think you're on the losing side ?
Most people that trade, lose money.  Some people make a lot of money.  The reason why many people trade, and lose systematically, is that they are not capable of estimating correctly their own inability to do so.  It is similar to the Kruger-Dunning effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Bitcoin is being institutionalized.  The most scarce resource of bitcoin is NOT the coins, but the transactions.  Bitcoin's immutability will make that nobody is going to change this scarce resource.  At about 2-3 transactions per second WORLDWIDE, this is too expensive and scarce a resource to be used by mere mortals as a currency.  Bitcoin will be an "institutional vault" asset, and the scarce resource of transactions will, at high prices (fees) only be used to transfer big amounts between institutions.  The individual bitcoin value will reach incredible heights, and at the same time, people that are not institutions will not be able to make a transaction unless they pay gigantic fees.  Individual transactions of bitcoin may even be outlawed, if this is considered too precious and scarce a resource for ordinary people to waste.

And on top of that layer, banks and other financial institutions will build a fiat system.  The bitcoin ETF is part of that.