if the difficulty was only 0000
one computer can find a solution in 0.001seconds

meaning if you made a block of data, i can also make a block of data.
lets say you made a block and waited 2 seconds before making another.
i can make 2000 blocks in that time you waited. and thus everyone follows my chain of blocks because i have more blocks then you. so your data will get dropped. you then have to try to catch back up by constantly working at it to overtake me

however
by making it require the strength of lets say 125,000 specially configured machines to need to take 2weeks to make 2016 blocks
no single computer alone can do it faster for them to have more blocks then the combined hashpower. thus trying to override that data becomes extremely hard.

especially if that single computer has to also build a new set of 437310 blocks just to get to the count right now before even trying to overtake

banks version will not be as strong as bitcoin, but instead of a single SQL database, by having duplicate 'databases' that can corroborate each other by simple showing each other a hash value of any piece of data. they know that none of their own staff have tweaked the data without the bank authorized permission.

savings can be made by sacking internal auditors and HR investigators, internal affairs officers, etc, etc. which saves them millions of dollars a year.

i agree the banks wont be using all 10 of bitcoins security features but.. by having lets say 94,000 bank branches in america alone. banks distribution within its closed network can actually be more distributed just in america more so then bitcoins ~5000 nodes.
so although they know its a closed network that is not going to have the POW difficulty of bitcoin, knowing each bank branch employee cannot maliciously create themselves a billions dollars to a secret account and then resign to the Bahamas. is a good thing to them.

so its swings and round abouts.. less secure than bitcoin but more secure than their old SQL system.
last thing to note. even bitcoin stores the data in a database. (using LevelDB)
its more about how the database is secured and how it avoids corruption that matters

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work

Example

Let's say the data that you are going to do work on is "Hello, world!". Your target is to find a variation of it, where you SHA-256 hash the data to a hash value beginning with '0000'. You vary the data by adding an integer value to the end called a nonce and incrementing it each time:

"Hello, world!0" => 1312af178c253f84028d480a6adc1e25e81caa44c749ec81976192e2ec934c64
"Hello, world!1" => e9afc424b79e4f6ab42d99c81156d3a17228d6e1eef4139be78e948a9332a7d8
"Hello, world!2" => ae37343a357a8297591625e7134cbea22f5928be8ca2a32aa475cf05fd4266b7
...
"Hello, world!4248" => 6e110d98b388e77e9c6f042ac6b497cec46660deef75a55ebc7cfdf65cc0b965
"Hello, world!4249" => c004190b822f1669cac8dc37e761cb73652e7832fb814565702245cf26ebb9e6
"Hello, world!4250" => 0000c3af42fc31103f1fdc0151fa747ff87349a4714df7cc52ea464e12dcd4e9

Finding a match for "Hello, world!" takes you 4251 tries to have zeroes in the first four digits)
4251 hashes on a modern computer is not very much work (most computers can achieve at least 4 million hashes per second). Bitcoin automatically varies the difficulty by:
requiring more zeros at the start, which requires more attempts if the results are being found too fast over a 2 week period
requiring less zeros at the start, which requires less attempts if the results are being found too slowly over a 2 week period

this adjustment is done by checking how fast 2016 blocks are created. if it is under two weeks it has to become harder, if over two weeks it has to become easier.

this 2016 blocks and 2 week average requirement, is what calculates down to be roughly a block every 10 minutes on average.
but a 10minute rule is not coded into bitcoin. only the 2016 block on average a fortnight is.

so one block can be solved in [random but lets say]10 seconds the next block can be solved in [random but lets say]2 hours the next block solved in [random], the next block in [random], next block in [random], etc,etc. but when added together should always be near to 2016 blocks taking 2 weeks.
if not then the difficulty is adjusted to try getting it to that 2 weekly average

blockchain is just an umbrella term. it is just 1 security measure of the 10 security measures that makes bitcoin bitcoin.
all "blockchain" means is that each block contains the hash of the previous. thus linking blocks together.
as you say 'tying them together'
a blockchain is not defined by how its linked together either. meaning it doesnt need POW+SHA256 it doesnt even need SHA256 alone..a blockchain can be build using crappy MD5 and nothing else..
a blockchain doesnt even need to be distributed

however hyperledgers blockchain is using sha, but the lock is more so POA (proof of authority) where each hash is signed by a keypair.rather than POW.
so no, no random people will be mining it. but the banking cartell will be signing hashes to secure the chain. and distributing it on many systems internally as a way to offset tampering by their own employees by having it in separate locations instead of one single copy.

so yes its not going to be as strong as bitcoin. but then it will only be used on a closed system on hardware designed to only be run by those with authority.

at the moment its blockstream coding it mainly for IBM and Digital Asset holdings(blyth masters group of banking partners) and then because hyper ledger is a sidechain concept(many chains linked together) R3's chain is then one sidechain off (added on) and then the asian banks are in the process of adding their sidechain to the hyper ledger

construction timeline
DAH came first as the 'master'(pun blythe) chain
R3 got involved in spring summer as a sidechain
asian banks summer autumn as a sidchain.

they are hoping to get something testable by spring 2017

google is a good friend
mixtures of
blythe masters digital asset holdings hyperledger
blythe masters digital asset holdings hyperledger RTGS
R3 hyperledger
R3 hyperledger
blockstream hyperledger

this link
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2016/02/linux-foundation-s-hyperledger-project-announces-30-founding
gives some of the players involved.. R3, DAH, IBM .. blockstream

though that's from February 2016 and many more banks (asian mainly) have added to the pile after that February announcement

your not a full validating node. and become reliant on the nodes connecting to you to validate a block before data even gets to you for you to be more sure it doesnt have iffy data or a badly constructed segwit transaction that would normally lead to it getting orphaned out. (still not perfect)

at 95% there is a 5% chance of orphaning. far greater than the usual 1-2% we see each day for the last ~8 years

if you are directly connected to a pool and cannot validate or invalidate a segwit transaction. you will blindly deem it ok and relay it on to your peers. which can lead to lot of nodes receiving data they are not suppose to get.

major downside is if the relayed block u get is from a legacy(old node) and that has a connection from a legacy node too.. all the way back to a legacy pool.. they all of you will get a potentially bad block if someone made a dodgy tx.

id suggest that you dont be directly connected to a pool but be a few hops(node connections) away so that they can do the orphaning of bad blocks. and also probably best to wait an extra couple of confirmations to be sure the network as a whole have deemed it ok

this is especially the case if you are handling alot of customer transactions where they are placing their trust in you.

dont like anonymity..?
then please post your bitcoin addresses and then tell us your home address real full name social security number, date of birth.
have nothing to hide and dont mind police having heat vision CCTV camera's on every street? ok well walk around naked.
dont mind businesses buying up medical records? ok then tell everyone you meet your entire medical history.

you may think you are doing nothing wrong to not care about privacy but if someone asked you to have your medical records tattooed to your body and had to walk around naked.. im sure you will see the subtle point of why even innocent people want privacy

look into hyperledger..
and yes blockstream programmed it and banks own it. including chinese banks

no its not.

venezuelans are only buying under 500btc a day TOTAL

seems the OP is just trying to push some story hoping people speculate falsely to raise the price, without the story itself having any merit to actually affect the price.

eg 500btc affects nothing. but op is trying to stir thousands of bitcoiners to over estimate the story to think it affects millions of bitcoins.
even those saying localbitcoins is small.. but so is their surbitcoin volumes too
https://surbitcoin.com/en_US/#market

sorry OP but speculative chain reactions based on rumours and misleading claims dont work like that

satoshi also suggested to move it to 2mb for ~2011. but dispeared before that. and now all the consensus back tracking and delays have caused years of debate.

funny thing is core are now the big blockers deeming 4mb bloats as safe.. yet still suppressing the potential transactions allowable within that bloat.

government is not the friend of sustainable growth for the people. just the rich. we should not let governments control bitcoin. all that will happen is requirement of $$million licences and require people to hand 10% of their income to eventually the rich

seriously the government had a monopoly for hundreds of years. bitcoin is the alternative and should remain the alternative, not join the monopoly

LOL

economics 101:
when someone wants to swap their yuan for bitcoin... someone else is swapping their bitcoin for yuan..
nothing changes for the yuan. nothing changes for the bitcoin. all that changes is who is holding it.
no yuan is burned/lost forever when someone converts it to bitcoin.

yuan says in circulation, bitcoin stays in circulation.

the destruction of the yuan is not, nor ever has or ever will be due to bitcoin.. but instead suitcases.

put banknotes into a suitcase and have it get lost, burned thus taking funds out of circulation..
this is why china is starting its own blockchain as part of the hyperledger, to become part of the digital revolution where funds dont go missing. and slowly let bank notes die out.

the article the OP is linking has misconceived many things and made assumptions based on badly researched opinion..

um no.. a bitcoin tax.. sorry. i dont think a mechanism to have a fixed % taken from you or me is a good idea. i feel we should remain with a free choice.
i have personally gave out lots of coins as a free choice. it should never be an imposed obligation.

what should be done is those wanting to start a social enterprise to seek funds from the actual task they want to achieve.
EG
instead of a government asking for $500billion of tax to take care of public services and hand $10bill to the poor.
government opens a national grocery chain where customers buy groceries and the income gives foodbaskets(foodstamps) to the poor.
taking the burden of the poor away from the tax payer and reducing the tax burden to $490bill

EG
instead of a government asking for $500billion of tax to take care of public services and hand $20bill to transportation so the private companies can keep all the travel ticket income for corporate vacations and bonuses
government opens a national transport system where customers buy travel tickets and the ticket income repairs the roads/rail
taking the burden of the transportation away from the tax payer and reducing the tax burden to $470bill

EG
instead of a government asking for $500billion of tax to take care of public services and hand $20bill to phone companies so the private companies can keep all the line rental income for corporate vacations and bonuses
government opens a national communication system where customers pay line rental and the income repairs/upgrades phone/cable/mobile coverage
taking the burden of the telecommunications away from the tax payer and reducing the tax burden to $450bill

and so on until no tax is required because its a sustainable system of free choice

it was actually halfway working really well in the UK in the 1990-2000's..

but then the public services started being sold off to private companies, which is the opposite to a self sustainable business..
and now while accepting tax funds in increasing amounts. Adding to the tax burden.. the private companies are keeping the profits and also increasing the sales income via raising their prices. yet not actually growing the services..
yep thats right. tax costs have increased.. private profits have increased. public services have shrunk.

the only way to incentivize positive growth is to only get paid by the growth itself.

EG say you had a fruit and veg stall you had to make $300 a week. if you were getting paid $290 in tax relief from some 'start a business' scheme. you will only sell $10 of apples just to technically classify yourself as a startup business.. and then go home when you met your $10 target.

however if you got nothing upfront. you are going to work harder and sell alot of apples and look at the community to find out what the favourite fruit and veg is desired and start promoting oranges and banana's and even expanding into selling orange juice apple juice, fruit smoothies etc to get your $300 a week.

the exponential graph on earlier pages are wrong not so much about the number.. but how he assumes that number based purely on an curve
because he didnt take into account the consensus limits.. which holds back natural growth
EG
if segwit does not activate, we will see the bloat held under the consensus limit of 1mb a block. meaning maximum bloat in 4 years for the entire blockchain will be about 300gb.

but if segwit was activated within the year followed by a year of adoption.. we will see the bloat held under the limit of ~1.8mb a block. meaning maximum bloat in 4 years for the entire blockchain will be about 300gb.

but if other features was activated followed by a year of adoption to fill the remaining 2.2mb of weight spare.. we will see the bloat held under the consensus limit of ~4mb a block. meaning maximum bloat in 4 years for the entire blockchain will be about 650gb.

thus its not a curve.. but a curve then line, curve then line, curve then line

ofcourse thats all theory.
because segwit may not activate or may activate sooner
also everyone may move their funds over to segwit compatible HD seed addresses sooner to all use it sooner causing bloat to hit the red line in 2017 instead of 2018 and then if other features fill the remaining weight sooner causes the bloat to hit the yellow line sooner and thus we have more than 650gb of bloat in 4 years. which makes 700mb+ possible and not irrational number. even if the OP of topic didnt come to the number using a more logical/rational methodology

lauda why do you go from talking about a block of 1mb.. to jump immediately to blocks of [random number] or  22.8mb (100gb a month)..
why are you not thinking rational of what was previously consensual safe numbers of something like
2mb in 2015, 4mb by 2018.. 8mb by 2021.. 16mb by 2024

why are you always trying to push a doomsday of atleast a decade away to be a problem of today.. seriously 16 years ago people were on dialup and the largest hard drive was 4gb.. so what may seem a problem today when you scream blue murder about any randomly large number you seem to pull out of a hat.. wont be a problem in a decade. you dont seems to get the concept of natural progressive growth

if you want to talk about the possibility of blocks of 22.8mb atleast assume that we would get there in a few years and not today.
you know, like emphasis that you are speculating the year 202X and not actually talking about 2016/2017
because all your doing with your fake dooms days of 1mb today 22mb tomorrow is creating ammo to avoid safe and agreeable amounts of 2mb 4mb pushing the fake rhetoric just so that one group of devs can do their own thing.

if you actually came to the realisation that there is no need for one entity to make 5000 input/outputs in one tx. you would realise that limiting sigops and using libsecp256k1 optimisations would have solved your other fake doomsday of 'quadratics'.
you would at this point of reading this post probably want to rebut that yes quadratics wont be an issue by limiting sigops, but malleability wont be solved and double spends are still an issue.
which i would rebut that double spends are still an issue even after a malleability fix due to RBF, CPFP and other new features added to mess with unconfirmed transactions.
you would rebut that malleability also has issues for LN..
i would rebut that LN has even bigger issues to overcome first. such as the address reuse dilemma

---

i actually laughed that you were on the 2mb was bad bandwagon but now 4mb is acceptable bandwagon.
care to comment on your revelation concerning BLOAT(hard drive and bandwith doomsdays you were squawking just months ago).

also care to comment how half of that 4mb weight will be bloated with privacy features and other mundane data rather than expanding the capacity of actual transactions.
yep thats right. cores 1mb base 4mb weight. will be at most 2mb(~1. of serialised(full tx+sig included data) and 2mb(~2.2) left vacant until filled with confidential payment codes, and whatnot
EG
1mb base 0.8mb witness.... leaving 2.2mb spare for feature bloat rather than more transactions = total 4mb weight

ok lets word it a different way.
whats your future mindset proposition and propaganda preference:

1mb base 0.8mb witness 2.2mb bloat for future features, for 4500tx
or
2mb base 1.6mb witness for 9000tx

where in both cases, bloat is ~<4mb

how would you like to see 4mb of data used??

desert means deserted which means wasteland, vacant. not HOT

the term desert applies also to urban deserts/food desert. when talking about things like the distance residents have to travel to reach a grocery store

being a desert usually means cheap land value.
also being near the mountains means cooler air, thus less requirement of artificial cooling is needed

say i made a tx

1ABCDE 0.5  -> 1WXYZ 0.1
1ABCDE 0.5  -> 1ABCDE 0.4

output would show as 0.5 because thats the total used
estimated value would show as 0.1 because it recognises 0.4 went back to the sender as "change".

though the second one is not that accurate anymore, because most people do not "reuse address" so its hard to tell anymore which address is the "change" address belonging to the sender because they now use different addresses

eg

1ABCDE 0.5  -> 1HIJK 0.25
1ABCDE 0.5  -> 1LMNO 0.25

no way to know which one is the second party receiving the funds and which one is the originators new "change" address

so the estimated value, is now out of context and not a reliable observation as it would treat the second example as someone paying 2 different people and thus treat it as 0.5 going out and being spent

hmm fundraising for the "for profit ventures"

my ideology is that bitcoin offers a no barrier of entry for anyone to do things for themselves.
you dont need a bank account, you dont need to sign up to any payment services like visa or mastercard to accept funds.

you can literally be a busker on the street or selling stuff at a garage sale and all you need is a QR code on a piece of paper to accept electronic payments.

this alone should help people move forward.

as for profitable social enterprises. well they obviously think they can make a profit. so they dont need investment.
take the bitcoin foundation.

it failed because it asked for investment from members but did not use that investment. it instead took those funds and spent them on internal things like paid vacations and expenses for board members.

however as a social enterprise of spreading the word. the bitcoin foundation WITHOUT investment could have organised conferences and got funds from ticket sales. thus being self sustainable and actually profit from the social goal it pretended to have (spreading the word).

take anything. lets say food for the poor
a restaurant can sell food and for ever meal they sell, another meal is prepared for those in need.

this concept is why Bitmain is successful. for every ASIC it sells, they make a few other asics for themselves to keep.
imagine its greed was taken away and those 'free' asics went to homeless shelters to earn a shelter funding to pay the rent and ofcourse the heat generated from running the asic meant that shelters stayed warm without paying for heating as a separate bill.

social enterprise is great. but asking for funds upfront without showing how it will be utilised or even planning how to be self sustainable to not require endless investment like a blackhole, constantly sucking in investment. means it wont work

i would prefer self sustainability and teaching people to look after themselves to not need to rely on third parties. which is part of bitcoins original ethos.

the green glow line is not actual data.. its what could have been POTENTIAL if every block was filled from 2009.
the orange glow line is not actual data.. its what could have been POTENTIAL if the hard fork was implemented in block 210000

the funny part is that i actually moved some of the goal posts in favour of the anti-bloater. afterall satoshi wanted the hardfork in block 115000
but based on other historic things i just set the hypothetical line at 210,000

but those lines are meaningless in reality and are just showing hypothetical

anyway

actual data was the grey filled in shape.. more realistic POTENTIAL data growth is in the other grey shape

all the lines are hypothetical.. the greyed out shape is more of the actual and then expectant results based on the hypothetical lines and scenarios of delay in timeline to produce and activate features and then user adoption of those features.

here. ill throw another graph in
this time the orange glow hypothetical is based on:

and the important demonstration (grey shape data) has the assumption this time of segwit and other features never activating


not sure why anyone should actually care about the green /orange glow lines as they are just arbitrary lines. its the grey shape that should be emphasised.

reversing a tx is about BEFORE its confirmed into a block. no one should treat unconfirmed transactions as immutable.

i dont see a reasonable security need to give the masterkey to a third party as that kind of defeats the purpose of the feature
EG master key defends against strangers moving funds. so hand the masterkey to a stranger(third party).. it makes no sense from a security point of view at all.
afterall... it (sarcasm) worked so well for bitfinex and the so called third party vaults of bitGo.!..right?

though i can see the feature having utility as an independent tool for people to have their own masterkey.. to control funds if their hotkey got found out by hackers.
but then we start to see it being used by chargeback scammers as another way to double spend. and merchants yet again have to rely on confirmations to treat a deposit as settled.
things like RBF, CPFP and this feature have literally replaced the malleability issue which everyone previously hated because of its utility to cause chargeback scams(double spends) of unconfirmed transactions.

we are no further forward in devs promises of making unconfirmed transactions more trustable. we are actually taking steps backwards..
(though personally you should never trust a transaction until its confirmed anyway("if its not on the blockchain. its not a bitcoin"))

actually for onchain transactions its an average of 1.8x growth..
emphasis IF everyone moves their funds from legacy(traditional/old) privkeys to segwit compliment seed addresses and everyone uses segwit.

the ratio for bitcoin right now is about ~2500tx:1mb..
segwit WILL NOT attain 10,000tx:4mb total weight. it will always be limited to at the very very best 5000tx:2mb... estimates are more likely 4500tx:1.8mb

the other spare 2mb weight are for other addon features later(core hopes) such as confidential payment codes. which dont increase capacity but ned to add more data to a transaction to hide the value for extra privacy.

5000tx:2mb
5000tx+privacy:4mb

to get more capacity ONCHAIN can only be done by either raising the baseblock (1mb base 4mb weight) to 2mb base 4mb weight. to allow 10,000:4mb. but then that 'space' cannot then be used for other features that require the space. and it requires a consensus to make that happen which core are stalling/opposing valiantly/defiantly(depending which side of the fence you sit)  because they want other features offchain, rather than staying above bitcoins capacity growth onchain.

its like offering a coat to get a female comfortable on a rainy night, hoping it would sway her to take off her pants later