By that logic, you're going to be multiples slower than with TOR vs non-TOR, regardless of the blocksize.
No. With higher blocksizes, disadvantage of TOR mining increases. It is possible to run a mining rig over TOR to a node that can be a mining pool or solo mining pool. The bandwidth required over TOR is minimal because of the design of the Stratum protocol. The blocksize can be small or large, as determined by the full node and your mining rig(s). The bandwidth required between your site and the mining pool is independent of block size and independent of your hash rate, or even number of mining rigs if you use a local stratum proxy. Yes, that's a legitimate use-case. I honestly have been talking about solo-mining, which anyway seems to be marginal nowadays. Unless you 're an ASIC manufacturer, or a huge fan of the sport/hobbie (and can afford to of course), then SOLO mining is a thing of the past of where we get to tell other people that: I remeber once I used to solo-mine.... This I agree with |
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You do realize bigger blocks encourage mining centralization don't you?
We've discussed this ad nauseum. GPU mining caused centralization. Pools caused centralization. ASICS caused centralization. Capitalism causes centralization because capital increases productivity and there are fewer people with capital than without. The only way around that is to leave the free market and that causes an even worse form of power centralization. Growth causes centralization. I think you know this, but unlike you I think a certain degree of centralization is preferable to no growth. There is an important distinction. The existing mining centralization comes at little cost to nodes precisely because the blocksize cap is there to limit the resources required to process the blocks mined by miners. You are perfectly correct that the hash rate centralizing is already a reality but lifting the cap or increasing the limit by too much too soon only precipitate and encourages this phenomenon at the loss of individuals running nodes. This is important because it increases the cost to access governance of the network and consequently centralizes it into the hands of more wealthy people. |
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Discussing gold's "utility" value is absolutely a non-starter. Such a thing was scarcely considered in its history of human adoption as a store-of-wealth. That's because no other metal was as recognizable, divisible, rare, etc. Cryptocoins are all more or less equally fungible, recognizable, divisible, portable and rare. That's absolutely not true. For starters, no other coins can rival Bitcoin security which is what basically guarantees its fungibility property. At this point in time, any POW coin that suggests to be a threat by Bitcoin could be trivially attacked by the network of Bitcoin miners. ALL cryptocoins are censorship resistant and some are more so and also more deflationary. See response above. Bitcoin has an history and infrastructure that cannot be easily replicated. At the risk of pointing out the obvious: 5<5000
also, there are no limits on gold transactions/second. A throttled network capacity makes Bitcoin digital fool's gold.
At the risk of repeating myself also: Network effects didn't save MySpace. I'm starting to think all those talking heads on the idiot box who said Bitcoin was too new, experimental and would be replaced by a better crypto maybe had it right.
Yes. Obvious is obvious. In crypto 5 might as well be 5000 when referring to the competition. Your point about gold's transaction throughput is laughable. The limits on gold transaction and its very real cost is considerable given its physical nature. Even 7 tps accross the world is better than the transportability of gold. Comparing Bitcoin's network effect to MySpace where there is essentially no cost to the users for switching networks confirms you as just another simple noob. Did you buy this account? You can't have possibly registered in 2011 and utter such idiocy. |
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Im not saying that a 9 MB has been minted. Im just seeing on tradeblock.com that there are currently more than 8k transactions with a size of more than 9 MB since the last block. I dont know if I see anything wrong?!?
Absolutely nothing wrong there. |
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#1 smoking gun problem with Bitcoin, not enough distinct miners make up 75% of hashing power. It is making me want to no longer be a HODLER as I think about it.
I'm thinking the same thing. I can't decide if these cripplecoiners are really that stupid or just plain evil. My inner conspiracy nut suspects that they are just waiting for us hodlers to dump and then they will suddenly see the light about block size and scalability. You do realize bigger blocks encourage mining centralization don't you? |
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 Did Fatman sell his account to Lambchop or something? Why?? Do you think that pointing you out as a fool should be a monopolized industry as well "Speak of the devil...." |
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do we really want Bitcoin to compete with Visa or is there another, possibly more valuable, use case for Bitcoin? What about digital gold? That sounds like an area where Bitcoin could thoroughly outcompete other players in its current state, with little to no change necessary. Why are we targeting to replace payment processors when we could somehow attract the incomparable value that resides in precious metal markets, offshore saving accounts and general safe havens? That sounds like a much more interesting moonshot if you ask me.
Gold has utility value. Even so, it has become a financial backwater. A "barbarous relic". At least gold can be used for jewelry, dental fillings, electrical connections, etc. It's been a poor store of value this century. Bitcoin doesn't even have those advantages. Without the blockchain, Bitcoin is just another crypto and those are in infinite supply. How can a cryptographic token be a store of value without any utility value? No micropayments? No remittances? no irreversable consumer payments? The thing about Swiss bank accounts was that they were bank accounts, only secret. There are several cryptocoins that are better at anonymity: Monero, Dash, etc. The thing about gold is that it is not in alpha or beta, but has a five thousand year history. After Gox, Silk Road and all the other thefts and scams, you really think Bitcoin can be seen as a safe haven? With no utility value?? Are you fucking insane?  Still don't get it do you. Discussing gold's "utility" value is absolutely a non-starter. Such a thing was scarcely considered in its history of human adoption as a store-of-wealth. How can you pretend Bitcoin has no utility value? Censorship resistant deflationary store of wealth is not good enough for you? You sound like a troll bringing up Gox & Silk Road against Bitcoin. Whatever happened to the people who lost any Bitcoin from these event is entirely up to them. It was their responsibility to properly secure their wealth and by all accounts, against all principles of Bitcoin, they didn't. Too bad for them but fortunately some people are smarter. At the risk of repeating myself, "a cryptographic token" gains value by attracting trust in its sound economic nature as digital gold. Why is it this trust can not be replicated in just any other altcoins you ask? Because: "Trust is a very organic process which takes an enormous amount of time". Bitcoin has 5 years of history for that trust to build on. |
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We should absolutely avoid the danger of instilling into Bitcoin users some kind of belief that they have a right to free transactions. Nothing in life is free and the costs of security & decentralization cannot forever be externalized to nodes & miners.
In that sense it is perfectly reasonable to suggest we should strive to keep block size limit as close as possible to actual network demand. Flex cap proposals are interesting in this aspect.
Those transactions aren't free for the user even if the miners eat the cost. They STILL have to suffer exchange rate risk while using bitcoin. If they have to pay a fee higher than nominal WHILE BITCOIN IS STILL IN ALPHA, for the vast majority of people, that just isn't worth it. Miners have to subsidize transaction costs to bootstrap usage or this baby will die in its crib. That's why you're getting the goddamn block reward. I am the customer. I am the user who buys your fucking coins. What am I getting for my money if I have to take this monster risk and have to pay a fee anyway? VISA gives me cash back for chrissakes. They are your competition. If you can't beat them, you won't earn their customers. Don't you small block fuckers know how business works? This post is full of misguided assumptions. It should come as a rational observation considering the shortcomings you have pointed out that there exist absolutely no incentive to purchase bitcoins to make purchases. No amount of scaling is going to incentivize mainstream consumers to go through such hoops for a low-cost/free transactions as most of the time they don't pay for the transaction anyway, merchants eat them. You are correct that there is absolutely no way for Bitcoin to compete with VISA as a consumer payment processor and again, no amount of blocksize scale is going to change this. The reasonable thing to ask then is do we really want Bitcoin to compete with Visa or is there another, possibly more valuable, use case for Bitcoin? What about digital gold? That sounds like an area where Bitcoin could thoroughly outcompete other players in its current state, with little to no change necessary. Why are we targeting to replace payment processors when we could somehow attract the incomparable value that resides in precious metal markets, offshore saving accounts and general safe havens? That sounds like a much more interesting moonshot if you ask me. As is yours. Making the assumption that bitcoin was never intended to be a transaction system is probably the biggest assumption of them all. Why would I want to use Bitcoin for transactions? 1) I don't have to go to the bank to get a cashiers check or a deal with questions to withdraw cash for my son's college car. 2) As a business owner I loathed paying fees to credit card companies, so I help other businesses as much as possible by using cash, I use bitcoin when they support it because I know the business will take in more money. Bitcoin has ALWAYS been a system for transactions, that has never changed, suggesting otherwise is ignoring history and inventing a new future for Bitcoin. Frankly, I am not really caring where this blocksize debate lands, but being dishonest about Bitcoin and its history with transactions is absurd. Were do I mention that Bitcoin is not intended for transactions? There are plenty of legitimate use cases for transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. The purchase of your son's college car might be a good one. Surely you wouldn't mind paying some extra fees to secure this purchase without having to rely on any third party? As for your hardships as a business owner I am sorry to hear this but rest assured necessary technology will evolve using Bitcoin as a settlement layer and should be able to accomodate you transactions needs in a more efficient, faster and private way than you could ever hope for on the Bitcoin blockchain. Suggesting that Bitcoin is better at processing large value transactions should not be interpreted as an assumption that Bitcoin "was never intended to be a transaction system". |
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Did Fatman sell his account to Lambchop or something?
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Bitcoin has evolved since the whitepaper was written. It gives a good introduction to the overall concepts, but the whitepaper gets many of the details wrong
Name one detail it got wrong (and I don't mean one detail that it omitted). Sure, easy: Satoshi makes no distinction between miners and nodes. How is this an error? The network is composed of nodes. Some nodes mine, some don't. (I could also be pedantic and say all nodes mine but some have zero hash power.) I don't see how this is an error. This is absolutely an error because it ignores significant game theoric scenarios such as the one we are experiencing now which is that not all miners validate themselves their transactions causing the SPV mining fiasco we've recently experienced. This is a perfect example of Bitcoin evolving in a way Satoshi did not think of. |
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Bitcoin has evolved since the whitepaper was written. It gives a good introduction to the overall concepts, but the whitepaper gets many of the details wrong
Name one detail it got wrong (and I don't mean one detail that it omitted). Sure, easy: Satoshi makes no distinction between miners and nodes. |
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The entire paper is about transactions occurring on the Blockchain. ...Maybe we ought to admit that there are intricacies about Bitcoin that Satoshi had no possible ways to know about when he laid the groundwork? I believe nullc was quick to point out a couple of these to you on reddit the other day. Consider for example the 21 million limit which was not specified (and actually not even enforced in the original code).
Satoshi does mention a limit to the number of coins:  Satoshi does NOT mention a block size limit AT ALL, regardless of what nullc says. I see you've replied to the post I was going to quote but I'm gonna post it here regardless since it pretty much address in a succinct way all that is wrong with your recurring tendency to point to the white paper as some sort of holy scripture. Bitcoin has evolved since the whitepaper was written. It gives a good introduction to the overall concepts, but the whitepaper gets many of the details wrong
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Why is that better than forcing the fee directly, and ensuring that the capacity is well above the demand? (I ca think of several reasons why it is much worse.)
It's not. In fact, Nicolas Houy shows in this paper that a block size limit is economically equivalent to a minimum fee: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400519One criticism of the minimum-fee approach is that it would be possible (albeit awkward) for miners to refund fees out-of-band. I think this paper was quite helpful, however, one thing it did not consider is the fact that miners may have their blocks orphaned, thereby forfeiting the block reward. This orphaning risk serves as a production cost for our new economic commodity called block space. In this paper (which I know you've seen), I build from Nicolas Houy's work to show that if orphaning is included, that a healthy fee market would exist without a block size limit. I bought into Bitcoin because I thought I WAS buying block space by buying bitcoin. If I have to include fees, and am limited in my ability to use the block chain for title transfer and recording, timestamps and microtransactions, then it is analogous to buying raw land only to discover I am not allowed to build on or develop the land and also have to pay property taxes. Have I been duped? Are the haters right when they say this is a scam? Scarcity means nothing if their is no utility value also. There are only 21 million bitcoins, but a potentially infinite number of cryptocoins. What makes BTC better than the rest? Network effects did not save Myspace. What makes Bitcoin better is the trust that investors have put into it. Trust is a very organic process which takes an enormous amount of time and cannot possibly be replicated so easily. You will never be limited in your ability to use the blockchain but one day you might be lead to ask yourself: does this transaction necessarily require the full security and trustlessness of the Bitcoin blockchain or could I compromise some trust and use such a service which promises to be more efficient and will eventually settle on the blockchain anyway. Do you really care if some of your daily expenses are not all sanctified into the holy blockchain? What you've bought is digital gold that is outside of the reach of any authority or censor. You can use this digital gold for a variety of use cases that all present different security and trust pre-requisites. What you need to consider is that the ultimate security and decentralization of the Bitcoin base layer comes at great cost which must be paid for. It's a trade-off like most every decisions you make in life. |
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Did we ever consider what Satoshi insinuated by "cash"?
...
It makes sense considering his design of the system that Bitcoin can not ever reach the ubiquity of cash in transactions worldwide. This would necessitate such as scale as to effectively centralize Bitcoin and therefore defeats the original attempt to remove trust….
Perhaps not as ubiquitous as cash transactions worldwide, but it is crystal clear from the 3rd sentence in the Introduction of the Bitcoin white paper that Satoshi expected Bitcoin to be more useful for small casual online transactions than Visa, PayPal, etc:  Sure, does he necessarily imply that these should take place on the mainchain or did he not envision (and maybe couldn't at this stage) that Bitcoin would spawn an entire ecosystem that would serve all use cases he describes using Bitcoin as the settlement layer? It's been 5 years now since the paper was released. Maybe we ought to admit that there are intricacies about Bitcoin that Satoshi had no possible ways to know about when he laid the groundwork? I believe nullc was quick to point out a couple of these to you on reddit the other day. Consider for example the 21 million limit which was not specified (and actually not even enforced in the original code). |
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We should absolutely avoid the danger of instilling into Bitcoin users some kind of belief that they have a right to free transactions. Nothing in life is free and the costs of security & decentralization cannot forever be externalized to nodes & miners.
In that sense it is perfectly reasonable to suggest we should strive to keep block size limit as close as possible to actual network demand. Flex cap proposals are interesting in this aspect.
Those transactions aren't free for the user even if the miners eat the cost. They STILL have to suffer exchange rate risk while using bitcoin. If they have to pay a fee higher than nominal WHILE BITCOIN IS STILL IN ALPHA, for the vast majority of people, that just isn't worth it. Miners have to subsidize transaction costs to bootstrap usage or this baby will die in its crib. That's why you're getting the goddamn block reward. I am the customer. I am the user who buys your fucking coins. What am I getting for my money if I have to take this monster risk and have to pay a fee anyway? VISA gives me cash back for chrissakes. They are your competition. If you can't beat them, you won't earn their customers. Don't you small block fuckers know how business works? This post is full of misguided assumptions. It should come as a rational observation considering the shortcomings you have pointed out that there exist absolutely no incentive to purchase bitcoins to make purchases. No amount of scaling is going to incentivize mainstream consumers to go through such hoops for a low-cost/free transactions as most of the time they don't pay for the transaction anyway, merchants eat them. You are correct that there is absolutely no way for Bitcoin to compete with VISA as a consumer payment processor and again, no amount of blocksize scale is going to change this. The reasonable thing to ask then is do we really want Bitcoin to compete with Visa or is there another, possibly more valuable, use case for Bitcoin? What about digital gold? That sounds like an area where Bitcoin could thoroughly outcompete other players in its current state, with little to no change necessary. Why are we targeting to replace payment processors when we could somehow attract the incomparable value that resides in precious metal markets, offshore saving accounts and general safe havens? That sounds like a much more interesting moonshot if you ask me. |
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I think a fee market that is relative to demand for blockspace is perfectly reasonable... but not today. We're too small to sustain the demand in the face of countless competitors. Bitcoin doesn't have the benefit of the periodic table, if we don't capture share while miners are subsidized and incentivized to secure and process transactions... it becomes like rpietila's castle game, with you and a few thousand others trading pogs back and forth.
Again you seem to confuse what it is you'd like to or perceive Bitcoin should compete with and what Bitcoin's unique value and properties are. If we can't agree on this I guess we can never agree on the rest but my opinion is we want Bitcoin to compete with gold, offshore saving accounts, safe havens of all sort , therein lies the value (and the "moon" valuations), not competing with VISA/Mastercard or Square. I didn't reply with a hope to change your mind. But I do hope we can build a bridge from the middle of the river  I'm just thinking you are hoping to sell 1. the wrong people onto Bitcoin using 2. the wrong "features" of Bitcoin. This necessarily creates a steep obstacle to the "adoption" you are wishing for. To be quite honest I have been guilty of this in the past and have long maintained this delusion that Bitcoin was somehow this fantastic payment network that would replace credit cards, etc etc. Until I finally came to sense and understood what the true value of it was. Note that you shouldn't forego your dreams of moon because of this. The markets I am suggesting we target are enormously more valuable than replacing simple payment processors! Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System vs Peer to Peer Electronic Wealth Storage System I think we've distilled it down. I also think it can be both, but the former facilitates the latter. Every thread seems to be a mixed topic thread recently
A $5 variation in price for days on end will do that. I was hoping you'd bring this up. Did we ever consider what Satoshi insinuated by "cash"? Is it because of the ability to be easily transferable at low cost or because of its nature as a bearer instrument free of censorship from authorities or third parties? After all, Bitcoin is proposed as a solution to the Byzantine Generals problem isn't it? I think Satoshi makes it pretty clear the essence of his proposition is to remove trust from transactions. It makes sense considering his design of the system that Bitcoin can not ever reach the ubiquity of cash in transactions worldwide. This would necessitate such as scale as to effectively centralize Bitcoin and therefore defeats the original attempt to remove trust. Even the proposition to remove trust is admittedly naive. There exists inherent trust in Bitcoin as it exist. We currently trust a handful of miners to behave according to everyone's interest and game theory suggest they should do so provided with the right incentives but what happens if they somehow become coerced into taking a different road? |
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There is nothing wrong with a fork. Let's just make sure the exchanges allow the exchange of both. If there are exchanges that intentionally block one over the other, the exchange is not a supporter of free markets.
The only problem is that CURRENTLY, real world merchants like Dish, Expedia, etc will only accept "Bitcoin". They will not bother accepting two coins, so most likely the fork with less mining power will die quickly and there will be miniscule demand for it. In the future if crypto becomes more mainstream, a fork that leaves two currencies will be more viable. Dude, no one is using Bitcoin to pay for his Dish bill. That type of use case is never going to make a difference... get some sense, won't you? Dish is definitely receiving Bitcoin payments. Yeah maybe some hardcore Bitcoin dude does it but if we are being honest this use case is negligible. Usage is negligible now; but these are the use cases that count the most for those in the Bitcoin is a currency camp. If you are in the Bitcoin is an asset camp, then you are right, who cares about the smaller transactions. I believe in the US consumer spending outweighs government and business spending combined. Tried to find some quick stats, but couldn't. Anyhow, the largest corps by market cap are all consumer oriented. Asset markets largely surpass retail/consumer use cases. Bitcoin is infinitely more valuable as a replacement to gold, offshore saving accounts & safe havens. It also happens to be this is what it is best at. If we're being honest Bitcoin as a payment system and transactional currency currently sucks balls. It is still years away from being mainstream consumer ready. Bitcoin as a currency will get all its glory and flourish once the majority of people on earth hold it and it becomes a unit of account. Until then we should expect retail use to remain marginal especially seeing as people will be increasingly encouraged to spend their inflationary fiat and save into Bitcoin or whatever other asset. |
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I think a fee market that is relative to demand for blockspace is perfectly reasonable... but not today. We're too small to sustain the demand in the face of countless competitors. Bitcoin doesn't have the benefit of the periodic table, if we don't capture share while miners are subsidized and incentivized to secure and process transactions... it becomes like rpietila's castle game, with you and a few thousand others trading pogs back and forth.
Again you seem to confuse what it is you'd like to or perceive Bitcoin should compete with and what Bitcoin's unique value and properties are. If we can't agree on this I guess we can never agree on the rest but my opinion is we want Bitcoin to compete with gold, offshore saving accounts, safe havens of all sort , therein lies the value (and the "moon" valuations), not competing with VISA/Mastercard or Square. I didn't reply with a hope to change your mind. But I do hope we can build a bridge from the middle of the river I'm just thinking you are hoping to sell 1. the wrong people onto Bitcoin using 2. the wrong "features" of Bitcoin. This necessarily creates a steep obstacle to the "adoption" you are wishing for. To be quite honest I have been guilty of this in the past and have long maintained this delusion that Bitcoin was somehow this fantastic payment network that would replace credit cards, etc etc. Until I finally came to sense and understood what the true value of it was. Note that you shouldn't forego your dreams of moon because of this. The markets I am suggesting we target are enormously more valuable than replacing simple payment processors! |
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Fees need to adapt to the ever changing reality of the system and could not possibly be forced or determined through any algorithm.
The Blockstream plan is to FORCE a particular capacity, by setting the block size limit in the consensus rules, and then let the fees "naturally" adapt to that artificially constrained capacity. Why is that better than forcing the fee directly, and ensuring that the capacity is well above the demand? (I ca think of several reasons why it is much worse.) Is it possible that the devs do not see that their plan is just as "ideologically impure" as setting the fee directly? Blocksize limit already exists in the consensus rules, nobody from Blockstream forced it into them. Again, "fees need to adapt to the ever changing reality of the system and could not possibly be forced or determined through any pre-determined algorithm." It is better because the block size limit also serves an anti-spam function and a "check" on inherent economies of scale within mining which, removed, would necessarily lead to a precipitated centralization of mining. Regular users running nodes would lose their ability to keep up with the required resources to maintain their access to , and therefore decentralize, the governance of the system. |
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I think a fee market that is relative to demand for blockspace is perfectly reasonable... but not today. We're too small to sustain the demand in the face of countless competitors. Bitcoin doesn't have the benefit of the periodic table, if we don't capture share while miners are subsidized and incentivized to secure and process transactions... it becomes like rpietila's castle game, with you and a few thousand others trading pogs back and forth.
Again you seem to confuse what it is you'd like to or perceive Bitcoin should compete with and what Bitcoin's unique value and properties are. If we can't agree on this I guess we can never agree on the rest but my opinion is we want Bitcoin to compete with gold, offshore saving accounts, safe havens of all sort , therein lies the value (and the "moon" valuations), not competing with VISA/Mastercard or Square. |
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