If I may add, up to this point in time, bitcoin had battle and survived. Scalability, competition from other cryptocurrencies, governments among others. We all know that one issue that keeps plaguing us is the block size debate. I will not get into details. I just touch base on it because I believe this is critical if bitcoin will be mass adoption and be used globally and survive.
The block size will not change. Bitcoin will remain what it is. And no, people will not use bitcoin on the block chain. But they will use bitcoin IOU by financial institutions. Bitcoin and its block chain itself will become institution's backings, and no ordinary citizen will use the bitcoin block chain: too expensive, no agreement with miners to get your transaction processed. Bitcoin will be simply the reserve currency used by financial institutions and other big players, who have agreements with miners. You will use bitcoin IOU at your bank. You will get a bank account denominated in bitcoin if you want to. And a bitcoin credit card. But you will not use bitcoin as such any more. Blocks full, fees too high for non-agreed users, transactions filtered. In the same way that people using dollars used to think that it was actually silver. And the price of bitcoin will be incredibly high. But those that you hold in a wallet, will never be transacted. Unless you sell them to your bank. |
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All i can think is.. Currency.
Well, this period seems to come to a close for bitcoin. Bitcoin is not really useable any more as a currency, with the full blocks, the long delays, the high fees and the uncertainty of getting your transaction in a block. Agreed its bullshit that they can't come to a agreement on this it's like they are waiting for BTC to crash and burn I don't get everyone knows the blocks are full instead of the Chinese miners and the core devs bickering back and forth put it up for everyone to vote on they aren't the only ppl who care and use BTC. It is not the fault of a specific person or group. It is the immutability dynamics of bitcoin itself which prevents that it changes. Not the fault of the Core guys, the "chinese miners", ... The consensus of immutability makes that nobody can change the fact that there will be 21 million bitcoins. There will never be total agreement over changing this, because it is an economic scarcity parameter. The block size now also became a scarcity parameter, installing a "fee market". Some people profit from that. In the same way that miners are, by competition, forced to come to consensus over the immutable block chain, they are forced to respect this other scarcity parameter. So bitcoin will not change. It might hard fork (BU), but most probably not. Segwit will not be adopted either. Bitcoin is locked into what it is, today, and its very mechanism that makes bitcoin trustworthy, is the same mechanism that will prevent any change. You can read more about it here: Every single altcoin will face the same issues. It looks like people can't grasp the reality that fleeing to an altcoin != solution. It equals to shifting the problem from location A to location B. The scamcoins like ETH, Dash, et. al are another story.
Well, there are altcoins with hard limits, like bitcoin ; there are altcoins with extensible blocks too, without hard limits. The first ones will face exactly the problem bitcoin is facing, but only when they "get filled up". The second ones will be able to accommodate until they hit smoother, and more practical, technology-related issues. Some alt coins have centralized decision infrastructures that can modify things in a centralized way, deciding one way or another. But the biggest difference between bitcoin on one side, and altcoins, on another side, is that there's (for the moment) only one bitcoin block chain, and there are MANY alt coins. While the number of bitcoin chains is limited (to 1), the number of altcoin block chains is essentially unlimited. So when bitcoin is "filled up" and reaches its limit of transactions (that's about right now), an altcoin can still "fill up". When that altcoin is "full", yet another altcoin can start filling in. And so on. Bitcoin's legendary immutability will make it what it is today. Exactly the same forceful immutability and consensus mechanism will make it impossible for bitcoin to do anything else but remain bitcoin. I seriously doubt that the block size will change, that Segwit will get accepted, or that any other important change will ever happen to bitcoin, because of, exactly, bitcoin's legendary immutability. Bitcoin has a huge first mover advantage, and a huge "moral high ground", which is why, 8 years later, bitcoin is still number 1. But it is hitting its technical limits, as they were laid down long ago. Alt coins have been living in bitcoin's shadow for most of this time, even though many of them are now technically superior, because they could implement solutions to bitcoin's shortcomings that bitcoin cannot implement (because of its immutability). Bitcoin being "full", this will start eroding bitcoin's leadership ; alt coins will be able to fill in the room that bitcoin cannot take. I'm not saying that a *single* altcoin will overtake bitcoin. I'm saying that once bitcoin's unique position as first mover is being eroded sufficiently by practical problems (full blocks, high fees, long delays, no privacy, Chinese centralization...), *several* altcoins will fill in the gap, and bitcoin will be a crypto like any other alt coin in the long run, after its first mover edge has been eroded away. Even though every single block chain will run into capacity problems, *a lot of independent block chains* are able to scale: just add more chains. and here: Hard fork the longer chain wins but the older clients could choose to keep their chain if they want to. The fork with the most users is the fork that has value, that's democracy.
Not at all. Hard fork means that the chain is now two independent chains. On each of these two independent chains, there is consensus. There's no interaction any more between the two chains, they are now two different crypto currencies. The market cap of the original chain will now be split over both prongs. Of course, users and miners might all flock to one of the chains, and abandon the other one. Or not. In the end, the users will decide upon the market cap split, and the miners will follow. Soft fork, blocks are created that are not rejected by older clients but are meaningless to them, forcing them to upgrade. That's not democratic. There is no option to keep their own chain, there is no choice. That's not democracy.
That is exactly democracy: the majority imposes its will on the minority. What you call "democracy" is what is called "consensus". As long as the soft fork doesn't have a majority OF MINERS behind it, it doesn't impose its will on the others. Once it does, there's NO FURTHER OPTION. What is important to realize, with a soft fork, that is are not the *users* but the *miners* who impose their majority on everyone. With a hard fork, even if only 10% of the miners continues on the old chain, maybe 90% of the users prefer the old chain, and the old chain coin will get 90% of the market cap. This is extremely lucrative for the 10% of miners, and the miners that chose the new pron (90% of them initially) will revert to the old chain because it is more lucrative. In the end, the mining distribution will follow the market cap, determined by the users (they determine, on exchanges, how they value the new coin versus the old coin, of which they hold, initially, equal amounts after the hard fork). This is not the case of a soft fork. When a majority (51%) of miners, and miners only, whatever users think, applies the soft fork, it is imposed on everyone: the minority of miners have to follow, there is only one chain, and the users have only one token and cannot "vote with their money" as there is no other token to buy. and: They said exactly that of the ETC/ETH case. No miner did so. Because he's not crazy. He wants to maximize his profits, and not waste his hash rate on an attack while his buddies take profit. If he uses his hash rate, he wants profit from it. If he uses his hash rate on the minority chain, that is to earn minority chain coins that are worth more on the market per "unit of hash rate" than in the majority chain where the difficulty is higher, and hence the reward for hash rate is lower.
As he doesn't know what way the MARKET will go, there's no reason to destroy minority coins that may be easily mined, and maybe worth a lot on the market.
ETH & ETC did not have segwit & LN to content with. That has nothing to do with it. Segwit is a SOFT fork. So this doesn't apply. We're talking about a hard fork (BU). A hard fork can be pulled off from the moment you have 5-10% or more miner support, and will give rise to two coins if you have less than 90%-95% of miner support. If you are lower than 5-10%, your chain will not live ; if you are higher than 90-95% your new altcoin will replace the previous coin. With a soft fork, there are no two coins. So the ETC/ETH situation doesn't apply to the Segwit situation. We are only talking about the BU situation. The reason is that you mentioned that BU is waiting to have "51% of miner support". But for a hard fork, "51% of miner support" has no meaning. It is "more than 10% of miner support" and "more than 90% of miner support" that are the meaningful numbers for a hard fork. 51% has no specific meaning. Less than 10%, you can't pull it off. More than 90%, you will keep one coin (the altcoin). In between, you will create 2 coins, the old one, and the new altcoin, and both will live. During their life, market forces will determine the respective market caps, and HENCE the miner ratio. Like ETC/ETH. Whether the BTC Unlimited Guys would actually do it , who knows.
Again, BU will NOT HAPPEN, simply because if it were, it would have happened already. With 25% of miner support, the hard fork is viable. And segwit will not happen either. Nothing will happen. Bitcoin will remain stuck where it is. |
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I think that if you want to play the best greater-fool game, you should invest in those coins that are most centralized. ETH and DASH come to mind. Centralized coins, mimicking as crypto, have a lot of advantages, as they can much more easily manipulated by their central authorities (for ETH, it is Vitalik, for DASH, it is Evan Duffield). As long as these people will pump and dump, if you synchronize well, you can make a lot of money. Of course, in the end, they will cash out finally, and then you better cash out too, but as long as they have the ambition to get out more for themselves, you are in good company.
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All i can think is.. Currency.
Well, this period seems to come to a close for bitcoin. Bitcoin is not really useable any more as a currency, with the full blocks, the long delays, the high fees and the uncertainty of getting your transaction in a block. |
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I did not say that it is equal to a 51% attack in all ways. Whilst what you say is true, a 51% fork is also an attack. Anything which causes a blockchain split, especially one that is this severe, should be seen and treated as an attack.
I really don't see why a hard fork is an attack. It is a divergence in the protocols. With a hard fork, untenable tensions of disagreement, which don't allow a consensus of second order (that is, a *protocol consensus*, not a block chain consensus within a given protocol), are relieved. The market cap splits according to how "people vote with their money". No-one actually loses money, because you are double coin holder at the fork. And now, two coins exist, with different protocols, each according to their communities. There's nothing wrong with hard forking, and the "drama" of ethereum has shown us how well this turned out to be. There was an unreconcilable tension in ethereum: should one stay with the original axioms of "code is law" and "unstoppable contract" which were the value proposition of ethereum, or should one, in "unforseen circumstances, when many rich people were going to lose money, accommodate the rules" ? The split was very healthy. We have the original, unstoppable, code-is-law ethereum (ETC), and we have the "we accommodate the big investors if something totally unexpected happens because this was just a beta-test" ethereum ETH. Visibly, the market (made by the same rich people) voted for being flexible enough to get one's DAO funds back, and a small minority stuck with unstoppable contracts where code is law. I think the bitcoin tension is sufficiently high to have a hard fork too, and have an original bitcoin with 1 MB blocks, and another altcoin-bitcoin that accommodates more transactions. But bitcoin deriving most of its value from "being the first" and no other value proposition that is not filled in by an altcoin, this will probably not happen, because the "forkers" would totally lose their "first mover" value proposition, which is the sole thing bitcoin has going for it (but is important), and just be holders of just another crypto alt coin. So, until bitcoin has lost its first mover value, this will not happen. |
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They said exactly that of the ETC/ETH case. No miner did so. Because he's not crazy. He wants to maximize his profits, and not waste his hash rate on an attack while his buddies take profit. If he uses his hash rate, he wants profit from it. If he uses his hash rate on the minority chain, that is to earn minority chain coins that are worth more on the market per "unit of hash rate" than in the majority chain where the difficulty is higher, and hence the reward for hash rate is lower.
As he doesn't know what way the MARKET will go, there's no reason to destroy minority coins that may be easily mined, and maybe worth a lot on the market.
ETH & ETC did not have segwit & LN to content with. That has nothing to do with it. Segwit is a SOFT fork. So this doesn't apply. We're talking about a hard fork (BU). A hard fork can be pulled off from the moment you have 5-10% or more miner support, and will give rise to two coins if you have less than 90%-95% of miner support. If you are lower than 5-10%, your chain will not live ; if you are higher than 90-95% your new altcoin will replace the previous coin. With a soft fork, there are no two coins. So the ETC/ETH situation doesn't apply to the Segwit situation. We are only talking about the BU situation. The reason is that you mentioned that BU is waiting to have "51% of miner support". But for a hard fork, "51% of miner support" has no meaning. It is "more than 10% of miner support" and "more than 90% of miner support" that are the meaningful numbers for a hard fork. 51% has no specific meaning. Less than 10%, you can't pull it off. More than 90%, you will keep one coin (the altcoin). In between, you will create 2 coins, the old one, and the new altcoin, and both will live. During their life, market forces will determine the respective market caps, and HENCE the miner ratio. Like ETC/ETH. Whether the BTC Unlimited Guys would actually do it , who knows.
Again, BU will NOT HAPPEN, simply because if it were, it would have happened already. With 25% of miner support, the hard fork is viable. And segwit will not happen either. Nothing will happen. Bitcoin will remain stuck where it is. |
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But essentially, this means that you can pull a HF from the moment you're over 10% of miners with you. And you will probably leave the old chain alive if you have less than 90% of miners AND USERS with you. So I don't see what is so special about 51%.
Ok Dino, The higher the % of Miners, means the greater Hash Rate, Meaning the Greater Hash Rate will find more blocks at faster intervals, BTC Split into 2 chains BTC Unlimited with 55% of the previous total SegCrap with 45% of the Previous Total, Both are now mining , Due to Greater Hash Rate BTC Unlimited Pulls ahead by 20 blocks higher block height with higher Difficulty Segcrap is 20 Blocks lower and has a lower Difficulty. BTC Unlimited Miners stop mining their chain and start mining Segcrap's Chain, Not to earn segcrap coins , but using the power of a 51% attack rewrite a few blocks of their transactions and destroy any image of security they had. After rewriting the segcrap chain history, they immediately switch back to their chain and mine normally. Since BTC Unlimited has a larger over 51% of the Miners , the segcrap miners can not do the same damage to the BTC unlimited chain. Do you get it now?  They said exactly that of the ETC/ETH case. No miner did so. Because he's not crazy. He wants to maximize his profits, and not waste his hash rate on an attack while his buddies take profit. If he uses his hash rate, he wants profit from it. If he uses his hash rate on the minority chain, that is to earn minority chain coins that are worth more on the market per "unit of hash rate" than in the majority chain where the difficulty is higher, and hence the reward for hash rate is lower. As he doesn't know what way the MARKET will go, there's no reason to destroy minority coins that may be easily mined, and maybe worth a lot on the market. Attacks suffer from the "tragedy of the commons". You waste YOUR hash rate on a chain you want to kill, while your BUDDIES make money on the chain you want to protect, while you are NOT mining it. By the time you won, and wasted all your hash rate on "acts of war", the winning chain is now full of miners, and you've ruined your chances to make a quick buck, while your buddies did. |
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Stronger Chain is the one that is Longest with the Highest Difficulty, therefore it is the most Protected from an outside attack.
There won't be an attack if you are, say, over 25% of mining power. And there's no competition. A chain with "more hash power" but invalid blocks according to the protocol at hand doesn't matter. I.E.
Compare ETH & ETC
ETH =>$18.53
ETC => $1.34
This is a market choice. ETC wasn't obliterated by the miners of ETH. They put up a big mouth, and in the end, joined. You see BTW that the market shares correspond more or less to the initial voter casts. Grossly some 10% vs 90%. So a 10% HF is viable. At certain points, the ratio was closer to 1:4. Recently, ETH has been pumped like DASH. But that's the market. But essentially, this means that you can pull a HF from the moment you're over 10% of miners with you. And you will probably leave the old chain alive if you have less than 90% of miners AND USERS with you. So I don't see what is so special about 51%. |
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FYI:
@Dinofelis,
I recommend you study a 51% attack, so you can grasp the power having 51% or more in a PoW coin gives you.
See my previous post. You confuse a 51% attack within the same protocol, where both prongs are valid according to the (unique) consensus rules, with a hard fork where the other prong is simply invalid. |
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Forking with 51% -> malicious attack -> altcoin creation. Only a consensus based hard fork can be considered a network 'upgrade'.
"forking with 51%" is not the same as a 51% attack. In a 51% attack, both prongs follow the same protocol, and are in competition, but there's more hash power in one prong that has been *rewriting* the past few blocks. In how much this is an "attack" and in how much this is a "consensus decision" is left in the middle, but this is NOT what a hard fork is about. Both prongs are "valid prongs" according to the unique protocol. It is only an "attack" because it has orphaned the "good" last blocks. In a hard fork, both prongs are incompatible. As such, the two prongs are not in "mining competition". One prong is considered invalid according to the other prong's protocol. There is no "longest chain". There is no "chain with highest PoW". One chain is simply INVALID according to the protocol you adhere to. |
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They don't want to make an altcoin. They want to fix bitcoin.
If you hardfork, you ALWAYS make an altcoin. But if you have full consensus, that altcoin takes over the entire market cap of the old coin, and the old coin dies (its chain is not propagated any more). If you don't have full consensus, you end up with two coins. Probably a prong with much less than 10% mining power is not viable. This is why 95% consensus is a good thing if you want to ONLY keep the altcoin and have the original die (as it has less than 5% of mining power in that case). After which you rename the alt coin with the original name. But if you are at 25%, 50% or 75% doesn't make much of a difference: you will have two coins. The market will decide about the final split in market caps, and following that, about the re-adjusted mining power that goes to each. Look at the ethereum -> eth/etc split. @Kiklo There is no "stronger chain" after a hard fork, as they are not technically in competition. Their competition is in the market, not on the chains. |
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Please tell me about bitcoin security. hasn't bitcoin been hacked??
No. |
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I think you are missing the point , if BTU gains 51% and holds it, they can release a 2MB block
But they can do this right away, and create bitcoinBU as an altcoin. What is so special about 51% ? They can make an altcoin with 25% of the mining, with 50% of the mining, with 75% of the mining. |
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For me Bitcoin is more than money, it is something innovative, it is the future..
Money is the root of all evil, Bitcoin is the beginning of the good..
You should read: evil is the root of all money (google it). |
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Actually if BTC Unlimited gains ~25% more of the mining, they could force a Fork , by Merely putting out a 2 MB Block. Wink
BTC Unlimited would have over 51%.
Cool
FYI:
Funny Segwit needs 95% to activate, but BTC Unlimited Could Force a Fork with 51% or higher and the rest of the chain would have to follow or be left behind.
This is not true. BU can even fork right away. It doesn't need any kind of majority. We would simply have two coins, like ETH and ETC. I think you have no clear view about the distinction between a hard fork, and a soft fork. A hard fork: the result is two currencies, and each currency has "full consensus". The split can happen with just any percentage of adoption, even though less than 10% is most probably not viable (the chain would simply die). A soft fork: a majority of miners imposes its will on the rest, and there remains only one single currency. They have put the condition of 95% in the current version of Segwit to avoid this "majority over minority" thing, but they could just as well not. |
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You do realize the Goal of Segwit & LN, is that in the Future ALL Transactions take place OFFCHAIN.
Miners will have No Volume, if LN with Segwit is activated.
In the long run, in any case, scaling is impossible if all transactions have to be on one big single chain. Miners will adapt difficulty to what they will earn. Maybe difficulty will go down to PC level activity again, in that case, everybody can mine again with his PC. No serious problem. Mining-as-a-business is in any case not something that is sustainable. But don't worry, it won't happen. Bitcoin will remain what it is, with 2.5 transactions per second. Bitcoin has reached its full potential (not as price, but as transaction medium on chain), and is locked in to what it is today. |
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The experiment taught us many valuable things. Now it is time to back the fuck up and start over with some more workable parameters.
Let's start with a new genesis block. A more sane approach to mining. Much faster block time. Much higher capacity blcoks. And no god-damned Blockstream dickheads trying to take-over and own the whole thing. We need some real organization at the top. Otherwise, Trump is going to create the Department of Homeland Cryptocurrency and electronic money will be forever controlled by the same politicians just like the last currency.
No more fucking around with theory, it is time to put this thing right.
Up to a point, I agree with you. There's a section on this bulletin board called "Altcoin discussion". Pay a visit. |
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Send them to me, I will keep them in a safe place. PM me for an address to send them to  |
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FYI:
Seems like the Chinese plan to control BTC much the same as they do the Yuan.
BTC=Better Trust China
Amen. BTC is now a Chinese fiat. Probably the PBoC has already the exchange wallets. Now they need to lay their hands on the miners. |
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Valid Points in a normal split,
However a working Segwit/LN fork is a direct threat to the Miners receiving Transaction fees.
Taking 3 or 4 hours to kill a segwit/LN chain , is directly stopping your competitor that will have an unfair advantage as time goes on.
As this is a SOFT fork, the argument doesn't work. There is no "second chain". If a majority of miners adopts it, the minority is forced to accept. Because there's no "other prong" to flee to. But don't worry. Normally, NOTHING will change to bitcoin. The block size issue will never be resolved, and things will stay the way they are. Because of immutability dynamics. Unless bitcoin becomes centralized (for instance, the Chinese government might impose Segwit or something). I don't think there's more chance for the block size to change or Segwit to get adopted, no more than that the final number of bitcoin, 21 million, will be increased. Because the block chain size is now an economic parameter of scarcity which implies a market. |
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