But if there was an ideal topic for him to derail, it's this one.  I mean, clearly he can't "read the room".  It's basically post after post of "CSW = bad" and yet he wants to be the lone voice saying, without a hint of irony, "but... but...  Core are teh bads" and it's so totally against the tone of the thread that no one could ever take it for anything but the fantasy it is.

In my view, it's better to quarantine him to topics like "CSW = bad: number 472958bajillionandtwelve" rather than spoiling a topic that has the potential to be considerably more informative and useful.  I don't see much worth protecting in this topic aside from gmaxwell's rebuttal. 

Good topic:  report him
Crapfest:  let him flail about harmlessly like a loon

I see, so when you're asking for people to offer resources to support your project, you're talking about them mining a sidechain.  Not sure why you couldn't have just opened with that.

You'll have to pardon my skepticism, but this just sounds like more of the same vapourware from you.  You always have plenty of grand ideas, but nothing ever actually happens.  I suspect because your ideas are a little bit too grand for you to handle.  Start smaller.  No one else comes storming in claiming they can magically change a significant pillar of Bitcoin's reward mechanism without consequence and without a fork, so why do you think anyone is going to believe you when you say you can do it?

What choice do you leave us?  

You keep saying we can't have soft forks because you don't approve of it.  But we can and we will.  Not your call.
You keep saying we can't have flag day activations because you don't approve of it.  But we can and we will.  Not your call.
You keep saying we can't disconnect incompatible nodes because you don't approve if it.  But we can and we will.  Not your call.

All the lack of understanding is coming from you.

Stop telling us what we supposedly can't do and we'll stop telling you to piss off, how about that?  You are welcome to be a part of this network, but if you can't abide by what other users are doing and are willing to spend the rest of your life complaining about it, it's only natural people are going to get tired of your shit and tell you to go away.  Try being less obnoxious and maybe we'll learn to tolerate your presence a little better.

It's a honey badger, surely:



//EDIT:  Put a tiny amount of effort in to it.

If Bitcoin doesn't meet the approval criteria of the establishment, that's a win in my book.  If you view it from a fundamentally flawed mindset, of course it's not going to look how you think it should.  But if you understand why fiat currencies inevitably collapse given sufficient time, Bitcoin starts to look pretty damn sensible.

I remember MicroGuy, too.  Not exactly what I'd call a trusted source of information.  It's hardly surprising someone like that would be defending Craig "Scammer" Wright.

And onto my distrust list he goes.

Let's approach this another way.  Your wallet software displays things in a way that a human can easily comprehend.  But at protocol level, a block doesn't contain a list of entries saying "this user now has a balance of 0 coins and that user now has a balance of whatever".  Just because your wallet is telling you that your balance is 0, that's not how the network processes it.  The network deals with inputs, outputs and signatures.  It doesn't see "coins" or "balances".  Those are just abstract concepts to make things user-friendly.

I can understand why you might want to provide a simple explanation, but if the person who started the thread wants to understand how this works on a technical level, it doesn't help if you're just describing "what it looks like" once your wallet has translated the information into something easier for humans to read.

KYC doesn't ensure customers' safety, though.  If a legitimate customer jumps through all the necessary hoops and provides all the documents to validate the account, but then someone malicious hacks in and steals the funds, there are no details on record for that malicious party (aside from possibly an account number if they stole fiat currency).  KYC doesn't help you track down thieves and phishers.  They simply subvert the system.  It's highly unlikely any crypto funds would ever be recovered.  It makes no difference whether you have the legitimate customer's details or not.

All KYC does is create a treasure trove of personal details for criminals to steal and potentially use to break into other accounts elsewhere.  If anything, KYC is a leading cause of security breaches.  The only reason they try to convince you it's for your benefit is because they want to monitor your financial transactions without you realising what the real intent is.

Currently 12.5 and some time next year will be halved again.



The only way it ends is if all miners stop mining and no new miners step in to take their place.  There's no limit on the number of blocks.



Transactions are merely a set of one or more inputs and one or more outputs.  The inputs refer to the previous transaction and the outputs are an instruction on where to send the BTC and in what quantity.  In plain English, you're telling the network what you'd like to send and where.



To quote from the Bitcoin Wiki:

So, in essence, adding more transactions doesn't make the job any harder than it already is.  The mining hardware just keeps hashing away until the correct solution is found.  Plenty of invalid attempts will be made in the process, though.



"Coins" are simply a relatively easy way for humans to interpret the values involved.  At protocol level, everything is dealt with in satoshis, but 1 BTC is generally considered easier for a person to comprehend than 100000000.  The network doesn't actually know what a coin is.



I can't say I ever noticed that, heh.  I'll have to re-read it.  It scans more easily if you just remove "in a coin" altogether:

"Once the latest transaction is buried under enough blocks, the spent transactions before it can be discarded to save disk space."

The statistic I'm interested in is how many times we've had this topic over the years.  It feels like it comes up fairly often, but maybe I'm just showing my age.  Apparently this place has always been dying, even though it clearly isn't.

We'll have to start a 'bitcointalk obituaries' to go along with the regular 'bitcoin obituaries'.  

It's certainly disheartening to witness LocalBitcoin's fall from greatness.  Back in 2013, it's unlikely I would have got seriously involved in Bitcoin if they had operated then the way they do now.  I'm also a little surprised about the lack of contenders looking to fill this gap in the market.  I would have thought it would be fairly lucrative to launch a service similar to how LocalBitcoins used to be, without all the KYC.  Is it likely that such services are having issues with the fiat transfer side of things where banks start blocking transfers to and from the escrow accounts if there's no KYC in place?

Credible to whom, exactly?  The very fact that these companies are seeking permission to launch a Bitcoin ETF means they already see it as a credible asset.  And naturally all the people using Bitcoin peer-to-peer as intended already see it as a credible asset.

MAST also sounds like part of the package, so although it's not a huge change, it's a stepping stone to other features and shouldn't be overlooked.



Just to point out that he's now banned from the Development & Technical Discussion subforum, so it's not worth getting into a huge back-and-forth with him around technical matters, as tempting as it might be.  He's clearly not interested in an honest debate.  Also, this topic isn't about the pros and cons of UASF, so let's keep it to discussion of Schnorr and Taproot.

Only if you mean trading on a stock exchange.  Genuine cryptocurrency transactions are peer-to-peer and don't rely on the SEC or other government bodies for approval.  As such, trading cryptocurrency is unstoppable.

If you're not a licenced bankster, it doesn't affect you.  They need permission to get involved in Bitcoin.  You don't.

The way to avoid scams is by using your brain, not placing trust in central authorities. 

But if you want to persist with such a terrible idea and pay some people to do this job, go right ahead.  Or did you think they're going to do it for free?  Or that someone else was going to pay for it?  Think it through, please.

It seems the spam bots aren't without a sense of irony.   

Honestly can't tell if it was deliberate or just a glorious fluke.

I'm conflicted on this one.  While it's probably healthy to maintain a reasonable distrust of governments, it doesn't necessarily mean we should place boundless trust in corporations either.  Sure, they're free to do it, but I also believe we have a responsibility to warn potential users about the dangers of such a service (should it ever get off the drawing board). 

Think of it this way.  If any individual on this forum launched a centralised service similar to Libra, where they had total control over the funds and people started to put their personal wealth into it, some here would naturally question if it was a scam.  Or they would question if the security was robust enough.  Or ask what safeguards are in place to prevent the service itself interfering with their transactions.  Why is it suddenly perfectly safe for a big-name company to do it and why should anyone trust them with their wealth?

It's worth pointing out that Facebook have already demonstrated security weaknesses.




But would Libra really counter it?  Considering that they need permission from governments to go live, I'm sure there will be many of the same restrictions as you'd be subject to in fiat currencies, which rather defeats the point of Libra being an alternative.  There are also numerous privacy concerns.  They already get a vast trove of information about their users via Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, so then add to that users' financial transactions and spending habits as well?  It sounds like a recipe for disaster.

It's a nice idea, but it seems like when most people think about how to improve money, they simply conclude "have more of it" and get into the speculation side of it.  The problem is greed.  Only a small number of people recognise the inherent flaws with traditional money and genuinely want to fix some of those problems.  We'll just have to pin our hopes on future generations being smarter.