thats alot of electric to power a industry of plastic poker chips,

let alone all the skyscrapers, offices and bank branches of thousands of financial firms powering FIAT

start a bitcoin business.
idea one:
retailer
either using a dropshipper to handle the stock on your behalf or buy stock direct.
in many cases you can make 10%-50% profit on the difference between the cost-retail.

keep the profit as bitcoin and buy more stock in fiat. trying to get the supplier to accept bitcoin to avoid the 'cashing out' to replenish stock.
rinse and repeat.

if business improves, hire someone and delegate them to run that business and then start a different business offering different produce/services.
do the same thing. but now you have 2 businesses with 2 income streams which reduce the risks of your products going out of fashion or not having demand.

expand into different product ranges and find the one that gets most attention, if one product range dies down then the employee delegated to it can get delegated to manage several product ranges that are managable, or you can cancl his contract if you feel you can manage it all alone.

keep finding the best produce to sell.

idea two:
meetup/conference
find suitable meeting rooms/conference arena's in an area where you know there is some bitcoin enthusiasts. start small like getting people to meet at a bar/pub. set up a fiat bar tab and get the other enthusiasts to pay bitcoin (indirectly to you) for the drinks and the bar/pub uses the fiat. if popular and regular get the bar/pub more involved and set them up to accept bitcoin direct. (you can still be the background exchange if you want).
use this as your sandbox to generate ideas and socialise while making a little bitcoin on the side. expand on this by hosting other meetups in different locations and get to know how many people are enthusiasts in the area.
find out what businesses those people work for and develop business deals with their employers. if there seems to be a few hundred enthusiasts and possible business interests in the area upscale to a conference. if thousands upscale to a convention

in the UK the royal family.. as someone who shant be named would say.. owns the country by right. and has then due to the peoples wish formed 2 oligarchies. the house of lords and the house of commons.. to have the authority over the country and manage her estate. and they would par-lay(negotiate) in a meeting place called parliament.
the queen invites her chosen people into authority in the lords chamber and the people choose their desire for who has authority in the commons chamber.
the queen still reigns over parliament and has veto power over any consensus agreed in parliament

this is still not good because there is still a power house that can become onesided.

many people now want local councils to have authority of their own area's while coming to a general agreement of national issues within parliament. without the oligarchy of 2 chambers.

american version would be the senators meeting at the senate to discuss U.S. national issues and come to an agreement, while still having local powers to do their own thing within the national rules.

however i see no point in one guy "presiding" over the senate, one women reigning over parliament with veto powers over any consensus made

not sure why this has turned into a market valuation of gold debate. but.
the stability of gold is actually based on 2 things
1. the reserves of a country are known. unlike a bitcoin exchange that does not show the reserves and there are definitely not all ~16mill coins are on exchanges, thus supply metric cant be fixed/known very well in bitcoin
2. the countries are mainly day trading each other where fractions of a percent are profitable trades. so everyone is happy using bots to trade in fractions of a percent.
3. when you see larger blips(over 1%) in the price this is where large selloffs/buyups from country to country occur where one country has alot less in their reserve. and another has more which is something again that cannot be seen clearly on bitcoin exchanges.

some say the gold market is more stable.. i say its more predictable.

but with all that said the price of gold has nothing to do with bitcoins utility, security. so we should not compare bitcoin and gold especially when talking about bitcoins utility

the mining pools want more capacity but they are not even going to enter the civil war until the nodes sort themselves out.
after all a mining pool is foolish to make changes if the nodes are not going to accept them.

some lemon fruitloop tried to do a rekt campaign on mining pools by suggesting (falsely) that pools were planning a controversial split to scare the community into a mining civil war. but the mining pools quickly shouted the campaign as utter fud and that they would not do anything that risked the network or the security or even risk their own rewards.

mining pools want the extra capacity and some do 'have faith' that core will eventually do it. but this is not unconditional faith.

the solution many have come up with is
nodes: code, review implement THEN flag desire (taking XXweeks/months) to get to 95%
mining pools: code, review, implement at this same time.
when nodes get to 95%. there is then a grace period
THEN
mining pools: continue code, review implement THEN flag desire (taking XXweeks/months) to get to 95%
when pools get to 95%. there is then a grace period

by this point over 95% of nodes and over 95% of pools are all onboard. and pools then test out the water making a block of 1.001kb and see its orphan risk.
if deemed safe they slowly increase, until comfortable.

anyone doomsday shouting that "it will be 1.999mb blocks in 2 days" is just someone that is trying to prolong a civil war.

its worth noting that some pools already have ceded reviewed and tested and implemented their new rules. but are not stupid enough to make block beyond the current limit for obvious rational reasons. they are just waiting it out until the nodes get consensus, before even flagging a pool consensus

pre-emptive strike before then releasing the banks "hyperledger"

better to compare bitcoin now to visa 'XX' years ago and paypal 'X' years ago. (when thinking about user adoption)
then in a few years compare bitcoin then to visa 'TX' years ago and paypal 'T' years ago. (when thinking about user adoption)

trying to assume bitcoin has 1billion users right now is a flaw. and a rhetoric to push an agenda
much like trying to say cars should fly now, because in 50 years, x,y,z

bitcoin wont have 1billion users any time soon. so judgements today should be thinking about short term future. and revisit the judgement later when the reality of the future can be seen rationally. rather than 10-100 year hypotheticals, and doomsdays, which delay rational short term goals.

judgement should be made on reality and scope of logical and rational proposals that are not due purely to economics and politics. but rather bitcoins utility and security

this is where doomsday theories rather than rational thought comes in.
some want 4mb (core) some want more. some want onchain some want 100% use offchain. thats where compromises come in and finding the acceptable level.
this "terrabyte block" doomsday has been shot out the park last year. the current compromise is 2mb bas 4mb weight.
the everthing has to be offchain has been shot out the park. the current compromise is expand onchain and allow offchain for freedom of choice.
i dont know why anyone is talking about terrabytes, apart from the doomsdayers who want to twist the future to distract the present
i dont know why anyone is talking about only offchain will work, apart from the doomsdayers who want to twist the future to distract the present


there is misunderstandings and our misrepresenting of what a hard fork is.
ethereum was not a consensus hard fork it was a controversial fork.
ethereum bypassed consensus orphaning mechanism and literally banned communicating with nodes of different rules to avoid orphaning the minority. "--oppose-dao-fork"
it is actually Gmaxwell of blockstream that proposed that BU should split, rather than use the consensus mechanism which BU(ver) wants.

a consensus mechanism is what the community want to happen. rather than a dictatorial split.
consensus, everyone wins and everyone continues.
controversial, dictator wins and everyone else f**ks off

or to flip it on its head.
if devs get involved and help each other out no matter the brandname. and start working as a community rather then a fight for dictatorship
then consensus would move forward faster.

rather than having a merchant service such as coinbase/bitpay in one jurisdiction. those services should set up 'mirror' sites in multiple locations.
so that if they receive a cease and desist order. they can continue uninterrupted using their .au or .uk domains. (out of the orders jurisdiction)

same goes for this forum. and other communication platforms. to reduce the few days of setting up alternative domains.

as i said some smart pools have a few servers running to use as redundancies/backups. scattered over a few countries. again to reduce the delay in getting users back up and running.

we should not be throwing code (github), communication(irc server host) and community(forum) all into an american jurisdiction and then lean to american government to give permission of use.
we should remain worldwide, involving distribution and diversity to not REQUIRE permission.
apathy is the worse thing to have in regards to security and functionality.
but instead utilise the diversity to gain government acceptance to not cause any delays/distractions, on our open and borderless terms

governments cannot take down the network because the IP's are vast.
but lets not get lazy and think we are safe. apathy leads to vulnerability. by not keeping the network as secure as possible.

so lets be realistic and not have an apathetic utopian mindset.

worse case scenario:
(1) governments can take down this forum. the subreddits, github, and some IRC channels, and a couple other bitcoin sites/exchanges to cause some drama.
because that is only under 10 places to hit.

this will take more then a few days for people to try communicating with each other via social media to re establish a new assortment of collaboration of minds, code, markets.

but what i say above wont affect the bitcoin network at all.
however,
(2) governments take down the mining pools internet. because there are only ~20 pools.
causing block creation delays while mining pools switch servers.
this is a short term delay of under an hour. because pools do (well some should) have multiple servers(within their control but in different jurisdictions) to allow miners to "pool hop" to another server quite quickly.
some pools dont have a couple servers. meaning it will take more then an hour to allow their asics to "pool hop"

but what i say above wont see much interruption/delay on the network.

by "realbitcoin" mentioning my name causes me to get involved. like a self fulfilling prophecy.
much like asling people to do an intentional split because the asker is afraid an intentional split will happen is also a self fulfilling prophecy.

anyway
i am open to both sides. i am not in the blockstream camp nor the classic camp. i am in the bitcoin consensus for everyone camp.
i just hold a sceptical mind about many things. not a utopian dream and not a dictatorial desire.

i have said that LN and sidechains have a place in the community. but people need to know the reality of what they are handling and that we should not be pushing for everyone to use offchain. even done subtly to pretend its not being done. especially when pushing false doomsdays.
doomsdays such as "that in 10 years the blockchain will be many terrabytes big so that no node will be able to run it, except centralized data centers." are false doomsdays made by blockstreamers to push their offchain agenda.

there is a balance. a compromise. and although some are presenting 8,6,32 proposals now..
i personally feel 2mb base 4mb weight is a good compromise everyone could agree with, and everyone gets what they want.. IF they put their political party ambitions aside.

forcing false doomsdays to coerce people offchain,(even done subtly) causes less people to want to become nodes(for security). less reason to want to become miners(for security). and turns bitcoin into a less secure system.
thus moving people to sidechains permanently the agenda. (much like "realbitcoins" rhetoric last year involving the altcoin NXT being bitcoin 2.0)

bitcoin needs to continue having an open and fair choice to continue doing onchain transactions for the immutable security. or offchain for the faster convenience.
there should not be an all or nothing debate.(though blockstreamers want all or nothing)

bitcoin is an open network that should have no barriers of entry and no dictatorship in central authority. this should not change.
by barrier of entry i mean. today sticking with 1mb blocks is a barrier to entry. jumping to obscene block sizes of "terrabytes" is a barrier of entry
thus a safe and workable compromise and agreement by the community is the best option to continue bitcoins ethos.

ok drop the "upgrading at the same time". that is your failure of understanding.
because nodes are running right now and users will stagger their upgrades over time until there is 95% upgradeded. followd by grace periods. followed by mining pools upgrading at a staggered time period until they too have 95%. followed by a grace period.

knowing nodes will be running for a long time before blocks are made bigger. rules out alot of things. as it would be coded, reviewed, tested and implemented long before consensus..

after all many implementations are running already right now. no one is waiting for 2017. they have the code running now. code can be reviewed by anyone new wanting to use it now. and then run it way before anything actually happens.

but lets put the "upgraded at same time" rhetoric to one side. because as i said majority would have upgraded over a staggered period

but lets take something comparable to your subtle hint of a future bug
lets say your talking about a bug where going over 1mb reveals something no one realized before that only pops up when miners go over a certain number of bytes.(1,001kb for instance)
well then. we have..year 2013:
the 500k db bug, while the nodes had a 1mb consensus in place. in 2013
majority of nodes had double capacity consensus rules but as soon as miners made a block over 500kb. a bug appeared in the way nodes stores a block locally.

if there was a bug then miners just go back to making under 500kb blocks where there was no issues and a fix is found before trying again to go above 500kb again.
hmm.. wait.
2013 there were over 7000 nodes. and bitcoin still exists. blocks are bigger than 500kb

now replace 1mb for 2mb, replace 500kb for 1mb and replace 2013 for 2017
is that what you are talking about?

your doomsday about exceeding a Xbyte block revealing a bug has played out 3 years ago and bitcoin still exists.
care to take off your blockstream utopian hat off and put on a sceptical hat and deal with the if/when segwit has a bug.
and describe how that will play out.
or will you brush it aside and uphold sgwit as a masterpiece of bug free utopia.

if you wish to be open minded and be sceptical.
atleast take into account that segwit (though socially required rather than technically required) will also require 95% acceptance before things change.

i truly hope you put the skeptical hat on and plough out a segwit doomsday. especially emphasising segwit would be at 95% acceptance.

in 1-2 days??
are you saying that anything not blockstream:
cannot have a consensus that requires 95% running nodes, which takes time for people to code, review and run. to get to 95%
followed by a grace period, then
cannot have a consensus that requires 95% mining pools, which takes time for people to code, review and run. to get to 95%
followed by a grace period.

but instead all nodes do nothing and then magically jump to 95% and activate in 1-2days.?
funnily enough no proposal has ever proposed such a silly brainfarts.

instead realise it takes time to get to 95%.. which strangely you agree is right for core.. but strangely think is not right for anything not core.
not even sure where u are getting this 1-2 days from. but im guessing its out of the doomsday hat

you had me at the first sentance and then you lost yourself with the second one.
right now BU, XT, classic, and all the others are RUNNING NOW
people can review the code now.

secondly to activate a rule upgrade, over 95% would be already running just to get the activation going. WHICH TAKES TIME

its not about everyone suddenly jumps onboard after activation. instead they would already be onboard before activation and the activation is simply then using the rules that are already available to the network

you can run core without actually being pro core.
you can be against core and running it to test out vulnerabilities
you can be neutral and running it simply by not even caring about the 'band camps'.

but as you have shown.
https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq/  -v0.12 proposes eventual blocksize upgrade
click on roadmap.

then v0.13 relates to segwit 1mb base 4mb weight

again
out of 4427 core node:
only 1615 desire segwit (0.13 flag)
the other 2812 break down as
only 1737 that agreed to the consensus round tables segwit.. then baseblock pledge(0.12 flag)
and 1075 have not decided anything in the last year.

so dont try saying ALL 4427 nodes want segwit 1mb 4mb. especially with all the flip flopping backtracks done by blockstream employed after december last year.
if you want segwit to be active. dont blame the 16% that are not core..
blame the 69% of the network that have not agreed. or even if you want to get to the point.
blame the 63% of core users that have not agreed to segwit

tv show "start up" (fictional tv crime drama) talks about an altcoin they are making, and mentions bitcoin a few times

finally carlton agrees not to reply to me
im not paying so carlton should not reply
WIN WIN
lets hope carlton sticks to his rule of not replying

if carlton replies to my post without my expressly requiring him to answer
if carlton replies where my username appears in a post of his. or a quote of mine appears in his post
if carlton tries to bait me..
then carlton owes me.

now rational people can have conversations that include:
data, information, facts, statistics and logic.

unlike the unbacked up waffle from carlton.

have a nice day carlton.

no
you flip flopping troll.
go learn the facts for once.
its obvious you dont know the facts because you are still ignorant about the 4mb part of it, by saying 2mb is "too much bloat" (i laugh each time you say it)
its obvious you dont know the facts because you are still ignorant about how it works.

segwit is not the perfect utopia your leader suggest. it has limitations and flaws. it like LN has a place, but it is not the CAPACITY solution.
go research and stop pretending that segwit is the only solution, when we all know its blockstream your defending.. not bitcoin
its why not even a third (1615 out of 5276) have opted for it, yet you pretend its a sure thing at the current 1mb base 4mb weight proposal.

have you really jumped back down deep into the dictatorial rabbit hole. or is it just a contractual obligation where you can be a libertarian at weekends (outside of contract hours)

love the numbers. but i also love how those numbers keep adding up without the context.

smart people have done actual counts, so in context
out of 4427 core node:
only 1615 desire segwit (0.13 flag)
the other 2812 break down as
only 1737 that agreed to the consensus round tables segwit then baseblock pledge(0.12 flag)
and 1075 have not decided anything in the last year.

out of 5276 network node:
only 1615 desire segwit (0.13 flag)

saying 1615 adamant about segwit, beats 2812 other nodes in the same camp.. is wrong on so many levels.
saying 1615 adamant about segwit, beats 3661 other nodes in the network.. is wrong on so many levels.

even funnier, even amungst those numbers desiring segwit some are hoping that core sticks to the pledge of eventually raising the base blocksize.
so if it was a segwit debate with no hope of base blocksize growth, its less than 1615 out of 5276 nodes.

but have a nice day with your brushed over numbers that does not explain reality.
much like saying someone is going to vote for hilary clinton because they have bumper sticker has been there since bill clintons era.