Forks are bad.  They are foolhardy attempts to attack Bitcoin.  But Bitcoin is stronger than all attackers, thus leading to an observed rule in practice:

You fork, you die.

Genuine Bitcoin has crushed numerous forks and attempted forks:  “Bitcoin XT”, “Bitcoin Unlimited”, “Bitcoin Classic”, and the “New York Agreement” (misnamed “Segwit2X”; nothing to do with Segwit), to name but a few.  These no longer exist.  For the current outbreak of forks, if you wish to claim some fork coins, then dump them in exchange for real Bitcoin, and enjoy your free bitcoins.  Otherwise, simply ignore.  Anything from “Bitcoin Cash” to “Bitcoin Super Diamond Plus2X Plutonium With Ponies” is only a scam; and these scams will die sooner or later, just as did their antecedents.


There are many pretenders to the Bitcoin title.  However:

There is only one Bitcoin.

So, I see I’m not the only one discussing the United States gold ban in this context.

We live in interesting times.

Affected smugness is a poor cover for the envy of “sour grapes”.  Of course, all the people who didn’t buy Bitcoin for $1000 or less now are eager to lecture others about tulips—as if that were some obscure bit of history.  (My, you look so smart….)

Damn straight:  This is the 90s in Bitcoin, and more broadly, in so-called “cryptocurrency”.  There will be a big shakeout.  Most altcoins and all ICOs will die deservedly painful deaths, by analogy to your stock in pets.com and omigoshimadeawebsite.com.  But you know, that “Web” thing didn’t exactly go away.

People who compare Bitcoin to the 90s Web are paying Bitcoin a high compliment.  Of course, I fully agree with that assessment.  I oft compare the 2013 Winklevoss investment in Bitcoin to buying Amazon.com stock in 1995.  I think buying Bitcoin at $18–20k now is roughly tantamount to investing in Amazon in 1999.  If 2017 is 1999 for Bitcoin, imagine what Bitcoin will look like 18 years hence!

Oh, yes, enjoy your smugness.  These grapes are mighty sour.  You don’t want them.  Be glad you missed out.  If you’re even old enough to remember that time, you are probably also glad you were smart enough to sneer about tulip bulbs at all the people buying Amazon.com stock in 1999.  That’s totally worthless now, you know.

I think the pertinent existing concept is merged mining.  A special form thereof, blind merged mining, is part of the Drivechain proposal for sidechains.


Quoted, because you can say that again!

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OP, the problem you sketch is part of why some of the better altcoins chose to start with their own POW algorithm, not (then yet) used by any other coin.  For example, Zcash uses Equihash; so Bitcoin miners with SHA-256 ASICs can’t suddenly redirect their hashrate to attack and overwhelm Zcash.  Given the breathtaking size of SHA-256 hashpower currently in existence, this is quite important.  Any altcoin which uses a SHA-256-based POW is incredibly foolish, and not only for reasons of a potential “51% attack”; see what happened with miners gaming BCH’s DAA before their November hardfork.  (Though in that case, the vulnerability was by design; in essence, it was a de facto premine for Jihan & Co.  I focus here on the technical issues and possibilities.)

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To subject line, on multiple levels:  Yes, there can be only one Bitcoin!

Observe the address in my signature; as of this writing, it starts with a “3”.  That is a Segwit address.  It was generated by me, and is controlled only by me.

For Electrum, the following procedure for generating backward-compatible Segwit “3” addresses is tested by me.  See the linked references for more information.

Incorrect.  Satoshi’s greatest innovation was repurposing “Hashcash” to build a Byzantine fault-tolerant decentralized database, which solves the double-spend problem without need of any trusted central authority.  The whole purpose of mining is to solve the double-spend problem.  The double-spend problem was resolved in 2008; you are behind on the news.


Say what?  Somebody has not been following the activation of Segwit and the roster of upcoming new technologies which Segwit will enable:  Lightning Network (needs Segwit’s tx malleability bugfix), Schnorr signatures (to be implemented without fork via Segwit’s script version system), MAST (same)....  Longer-term, I myself am looking forward to the R&D for mathematically provable advanced smart contracts with Simplicity (PDF).

Certainly, Bitcoin is technologically conservative.  Core can’t afford to make a mistake with experimental technologies, drop a few hundred billion dollars worth of value on the floor, then say “oops”.  Bitcoin shall have no moment of meditating, “The DAO is empty;” and in Bitcoin thus, code shall remain law  But this does not imply a lack of innovation.  In the future, cutting-edge innovation will happen on sidechains as well-proved ideas get added to the main chain more slowly.


He’s an altruist.  A philanthropist, dripping with the milk of human kindness!  He desires to help people avoid the curse of being rich.

Thanks for the kind words.  It can take me awhile to write an in-depth reply; and I keep adding to this in pieces, as new replies accrue.  Apologies that the result came out somewhat disjointed and rambling.

By way of preface:



For a very rough conceptual analogy, imagine that gold is still used for everyday currency.  But gold has some problems:  It’s cumbersome; it’s heavy; it’s difficult to carry around.  These problems are intrinsic to the nature of gold; they can’t be solved by changing gold itself.  So somebody invents paper notes which are redeemable on-demand for gold.  These can be used for convenience when purchasing cups of coffee.

However, this is where the analogy departs from the reality of anything yet seen.  Unlike real-world paper gold notes, these paper notes are magical.  They are not issued by any central authority; you yourself create them by hooking your gold storage wallet into a “payment channel”.  They require no trust, and impose no counterparty risk.  They are mathematically verifiable to represent actual gold; they are not promises to pay gold; they can be magically transformed back into gold at any time, whenever you wish to do so.

That would be an approximate description of gold’s version of the Lightning Network.  Now, tell me:  In your opinion, “would you really be using [gold]” with such a system?

Also relevant:  Many users (mostly n00bs) are already using off-chain transactions, but in an abysmally inferior way.  There are major exchanges which act exactly as an obsolete bank:  They give you an account, and they keep all the actual money for you.  All accounts’ coins are typically kept in one pool, with on-chain transactions only used to send/receive outside funds.  Transfers between users of the exchange are treated as intrabank transfers, made by changing some entries in an internal ledger.  This has all the centralization and counterparty risk which Lightning avoids.  If the bank fails, you have Mt. Gox.  Also, the bank can arbitrarily deny you access to your funds.

In your opinion, are people who use these exchanges right now “really [using] Bitcoin”?  My opinion is, not really—not in the fullest sense; though they can still transact in actual Bitcoin with people who really use Bitcoin per the motto, “be your own bank”.  At least they can, if the bank deigns to so permit.  I hear that Coinbase closes the accounts of people who send to or receive from addresses disliked by Coinbase.


Sort of.  Literally, I am saying, “We can’t scale on-chain capacity because that would increase on-chain Bitcoin usage (to the point of overloading nodes).”

But that is a non-problem.  Why is it desirable to have “widespread consumer use of on chain bitcoin transactions”?  Emphasis added.

I realize here that, as you stated, we are moving from the technical discussion to its inseparable nontechnical counterpart.  But first briefly, on the technical side, it must be understood what an awe-inspiring achievement was Satoshi’s creation of a Byzantine fault-tolerant decentralized database, and his application thereof to solve the double-spend problem for a new form of money.  Very smart people had been breaking their heads over these problems, for about two decades.  Now, very smart people have been trying to outdo Satoshi for the past nine years.  Perhaps someday, an ingenious new invention will obsolete Bitcoin’s way of doing things.  But thus far, nobody has proposed a replacement which improves performance and capacity without compromising on decentralization and trustlessness.

I find myself linking this ACM Queue article quite oft of late.  It provides a good bird’s-eye view of not only the technical problems solved by Bitcoin, but also the academic history of those problems.  That will provide much necessary context for this discussion.

Satoshi’s BFT database has a few problems; principal among the ones hereto relevant:  Its performance is awful, and its capacity is very limited.  Fortunately, we can appeal to the Wheeler-Lampson Fundamental Theorem of Software Engineering, “All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.”  (See also RFC 1925 Section 2, (6), (6a), and also (8).  Also, (1) and (2a).)  Enter Lightning Network and sidechains.

If you could propose a sound reason for the importance of on-chain scaling, I would be curious to see that.  I’ve never seen such a reason given, other than handwaving and emotionalist argumentation.  For my part, to answer your question, yes!  I would love to use Bitcoin off-chain.

Bitcoin has a serious existing flaw in my eyes, lack of transactional privacy (unlinkability).  I myself lost a substantial proportion of my Bitcoin by trading it for a privacy-oriented altcoin, for purposes of private long-term value storage.  I dearly wish that instead, I had been able to store genuine Bitcoin on an appropriate Bitcoin sidechain.  Sidechain Bitcoin would be Bitcoin, redeemable on-chain at a 1:1 ratio.

Moreover, the inherent slowness of Bitcoin transactions is unacceptable for exactly the kinds of “cup of coffee” consumer transactions as you mention.  Lightning Network is and will be incomparably more secure than zero-conf on-chain transactions; in my overall assessment, proper use of Lightning should be even more secure than single-conf on-chain transactions.  (Small reorgs do happen!)  When all “best practices” are observed, it’s not even feasible for one person to buy a cup of coffee on chain—even if that were the only transaction occurring at that time worldwide.  As it stands, on-chain, either the merchant takes a risk, or the customer waits somewhere between 10 and 60 minutes.  With Lightning, both the wait and the risk are eliminated.  This is besides the matter of scale.  Why wouldn’t I wish to do such transactions off-chain, where I can use real Bitcoin (instead of toy money such as Visa or Ripple) and the experience will be superior?

Aside, I note that if you’re selling 0.0001 BTC cups of coffee with Lightning, then you’re not creating a permanent, globally archived historical record of each and every purchase of coffee from you.  Besides not bloating a global shared resource (“tragedy of the commons”), this also enhances privacy for both customers and merchants.  Instead of forever recording each and every purpose, Bitcoin’s global public ledger will keep a permanent record of some occasional bulk settlements.

Thus as you can see, I don’t deem on-chain scaling to be important.  What is important is:

0. To keep on-chain transaction processing decentralized, outside the control of any person, entity, corporation, cartel, clique, or government.  This in turn requires that any person of modest means must be able to run a full node.  It is unimportant that the “little people” be able to use on-chain transactions to buy cups of coffee.  It is an imperative absolute rule of Bitcoin that the “little people” must be empowered to run full nodes.  If a full node were to require more resources than can be provided with an ordinary PC and a residential Internet connection, then that would not be Bitcoin anymore.

1. To enable decentralized off-chain consumer transactions.  (0) enables this.  (0) is a prerequisite for this.  If and only if we have a decentralized settlement layer, we can use that as a foundation to add new layers vertically (Lightning Network) and horizontally (sidechains).

Conclusion:

“Bitcoin” as a currency unit means a currency which can be settled and redeemed on-chain, anytime and on-demand.  “Bitcoin” as a technology is now growing to encompass a new ecosystem of Bitcoin applications which use the main chain as their foundation.

---

This exact idea and many of its variations are regularly raised on bitcoin-dev, almost as if on a schedule; and it’s just as regularly shot down, yes.  A pointless discussion can here be obviated by asking, what would be the advantage over running pruned nodes?  Pruned nodes already do internally more or less what you describe, on the level of an individual node rather than of the whole network.  The only meaningful difference I can see is with initial sync, which only needs to be done once.

People who can’t afford to keep a few hundred gigabytes of data stored in perpetuity should enable pruning; and the vanishingly small number of people who are unable to make a one-time download of the blockchain should instead use an SPV client.  But really, almost anybody can afford to run a full node without pruning.  This is a solution in search of a problem.

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Edit to add:


Well said, generally.  That’s the right mindset for approaching these problems.  But please also observe that off-chain layers act as a multiplier of something.  If Lightning Network winds up averaging x off-chain transactions per on-chain transaction, for some impressively large x, then doubling on-chain capacity could add up to x capacity to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

That said, I do think that Segwit, Schnorr signatures, and MAST will suffice for on-chain capacity improvements for the near to medium future.  After Lightning begins to mature and sidechains (somehow) become a reality, then we will better know what more is needed on-chain.

Granted, arguendo.  If, as you posit, women have a superior ability to “make connections that don’t come as naturally to men”, then would you also allow the possibility that men have abilities “peculiar to men”?  Such may be the cause of men’s overwhelming predominance in mathematics, science, engineering, and a hundred other fields of endeavour.  Otherwise stated, the fields themselves may be “biased towards [men]”.


Wait—did you just say that men earn most of the money, and women spend most of it?

I finally understand what happened to the Bitcoin Forum:  Somebody hardforked the English language without consensus.

Irvinn, may I suggest, before wolves, that your autotranslate-bottle site is not as good as you believe it to be.

I retire to my usual adjustment.

“Though you wouldn't want to.” → I would suggest not making unwarranted assumptions about OP’s private, personal peccadillos, or lack thereof.  He seems the type.

Also, thanks for giving me a new argument against people who object to Bitcoin on the basis that “you can’t hold a bitcoin in your hand.”

That’s only one story which made international news.  /r/Bitcoin and this forum are perpetual witnesses to a stream of people who lost fortunes small and large.

There are also “Bitcoin destruction” addresses which people deliberately use to make coins permanently irretrievable.  Do not send coins to these addresses:  1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE currently holds a balance of 13.1785403 BTC, currently worth over $250,000.  1111111111111111111114oLvT2 (Hash160 of all zeroes) now has 65.22316743 BTC, currently worth over $1.2 million.  1QLbz7JHiBTspS962RLKV8GndWFwi5j6Qr (Hash160 of all ones) now has 0.01249511 BTC, currently worth about $238.  Never again can these coins be touched.

Bitcoin is merciless.  Logical, emotionless, governed solely by mathematical cause and effect.  That is one of the things I love about it!  In that aspect, it is alike to a force of Nature.

With Bitcoin, only you have the power over yourself; with Bitcoin, only you have responsibility for yourself.  Those two principles are inseparable; and it is impossible to have freedom if there exists any higher authority who has override powers.  Nobody can freeze or seize your bitcoins; likewise, if you mess up, nobody can help you.  To handle one’s own coins is not for the weak or the stupid, nor for those who care not for their own freedom.


.2 BTC is currently worth over $3800!  Fees would certainly not be prohibitive of “cashing in” (exchanging to dollars).  However, I would suggest that you should hold it.  Make multiple redundant secure backups of your private keys, and hold it tightly.  Nowadays, few people have a whole 1.0 BTC; I personally do believe there will come a time when anybody with 0.2 BTC will be considered quite wealthy.

If you’re “shaking your head” over however much Bitcoin you had in 2012–13, don’t make the same mistake now.  You likely could have been by far the richest person you’ve ever met.  If you ignored it till now, your residual old Bitcoin is something you can think of almost as if it’s free money.  Unless you’re starving, just keep that 0.2 BTC and see where it goes!  Better still, earn more Bitcoin to add to it.  (For receiving new coins, to cut down on your future sending fees, create a new Segwit wallet—and back up your wallet seed, a common theme here.)

Aside, I always find it curious when I see old, long-dormant accounts resurface.  Most of the time, it is a matter of a sold or hacked account; but your post history makes it evident that you’re the same “claire”.  If it would not compromise your privacy, perhaps you may consider writing up a post telling (some appropriately abbreviated version of) why you left Bitcoin, and why you returned to Bitcoin.

Now that you’re back, I think you have a chance to be one of the people not having regrets ten years hence.  Having used Bitcoin in 2012–13 is like having used the Web in 1995!  The present time is—a few years after 1995, by analogy.  Now, consider the trajectory the Web took thereafter.  As happened with the Web, I predict that Bitcoin will see continued explosive growth, turmoil with fortunes made and lost, rapid technological advancement—and ultimately, like the Web, Bitcoin will become a mainstream part of everyday life.  Now is really the last chance to get (back) in before that happens.  Such is my opinion.

HTH.

Be this how vaidotas starts his one-man newbie account war against Bitcoin, he will end resting in pieces.

(Your turn.)


The grapes are sour, anyway.


Liar.


If you want to use Bitcoin the most secure way, the way which puts you fully in control, then there is a cost to that.  Duh.  Otherwise, just use Electrum or another reputable light wallet.  Last time I tried Electrum, it took about two or three minutes to sync with the network the first time—and that’s through Tor (much slower).


You’re a moron if you believe that a hypothetical quantum computer which may possibly come to exist in the future makes Bitcoin insecure now.  You’re also a moron if you’re worried about quantum computer attacks on Bitcoin, but you don’t worry about the security of the banking system and the whole Internet; those are much more vulnerable to quantum computers than Bitcoin is.  Actually, you’re simply a moron, period.  It is self-evident that you are grossly deficient in useful knowledge of security, cryptography—and orthography.

Quoted for truth:



So what?  Yawn.  There are always unknown future legal risks in any store of value which does not derive directly from the State—as well as those which do derive from the State, and can be devalued or seized by the State at any time.  That’s not an argument specific to Bitcoin.  It is an argument that you are manifestly ill-equipped to handle the risks inherent to the state of being alive.

On a related note, here attempting to pull something sensible from your conflated non-argument about gold:  I should inform you that gold has been banned in the United States.  “Hoarding” individual wealth in gold was banned from 1 May 1933 until 31 December 1974.  Vast amounts of gold bullion were confiscated from people, who were forced to accept instead the Monopoly Money known as “United States Dollars”.  Numerous individuals were criminally prosecuted for attempting to keep their gold.  This is an historical fact; and if it happened before, it could happen again.  Now, why don’t you go FUD gold.  In “the land of the free”, gold could be banned again, too.  Gold is an insecure peace of shoot!!  Gold has no value!!  Everybody who buys gold will lose all their money!!  The sky is falling!!

P.S.:


To be clear, I am being rude to you.  I am so doing, because I despise imbeciles; and I find it mildly amusing to insult them.  Please take it personally.

This is a Technical Support question.  If you could be helped, then you would probably get more help over there.  I was recently involved in a thread which pertained to an erased drive.  The owner of the drive was looking into professional data recovery services.

But, no; alas, I don’t think you can be helped here.  If you cannot recover a copy of your wallet file newer than your last backup, than you cannot recover the money in addresses newer than your last backup.  For older-style, non-HD wallets, you should consider that to be an absolute rule.  (Tech note:  What you really need is not the addresses, but the private keys associated with the addresses.  Private keys control all in Bitcoin.)

If and only if you still have the drive, there may be a chance here.  Has the drive been heavily used since then, or sitting on a shelf?  Even if the drive was “erased”, even if it was reused, there is a chance that your 2013 wallet file could be found using data recovery methods.  It would be not unlike a forensic examination of the drive.  This would require a large effort, gambled on the possibility of recovering useful data.  Whether that be worthwhile, is a question of how much Bitcoin you lost.  If it was a sufficient amount, I or others may be willing to help for a fee (payable only upon successful recovery).  If you have the drive and you’d be interested in discussing this, feel free to PM me.

For future reference, this is why you should always use an HD (Hierarchical Deterministic) wallet.  A single backup of an HD wallet will allow restoration of all money in current and future addresses.  This is neither magic, nor time travel:  As its name implies, the HD wallet generates new addresses deterministically from a single high-entropy “seed” value.  Then, you only need to back up the seed value.  A backup of your new wallet file will contain the seed.  Alternatively, certain clients permit backup up the seed as a mnemonic phrase of random words; some people write the seed words on a piece of paper locked in a safe, or even write it into a Last Will and Testament.  Ever thereafter, all their coins can be recovered from the magic words.

HD wallets were invented for this reason:  Many people lost money the same way as you did.  Old-style wallets absolutely must be backed up each and every time you generate a new address, and that’s just not practical.


Yeah, right.  Good luck with that.  As of this writing, each BTC1.0 is worth $19,042.40.  How famous does his band need to be, for him to be able to repay you?

At least you didn’t throw 7500 bitcoins in the garbage (currently worth over $142 million).  Look on the bright side!

QuestionAuthority, please question the “authorities” who make such.  The whole “terrorist financing” bug-a-boo is a pretext, as is money laundering by drug dealers.  Compare the “Four Horsemen of the Infocalpyse”, in the context of arguments to ban strong crypto or require key escrow.

Surely, terrorists and drug dealers and other bad people do use money.  The smarter ones probably use strong crypto, too.  I suspect that most of them probably use this newfangled contraption called the “Internet”.  All of them also use automobiles, food, and air.

By definition, criminals break the law; and the powerful, organized ones are quite adept at so doing without ever getting caught.  I should think that professional money-launderers love AML/KYC/FinCEN stuff; such things make their services valuable to professional terrorists and drug dealers, and help lock out upstart competitors.  Ultimately, in this and every other way, when privacy is outlawed, only outlaws have privacy.

The American obsession with money-control is only about mass social control:  Control of everybody who isn’t a professional money-launderer, and lacks access to the services of one.  Not even people-control:  Cattle-control.  Like control of communications and transportation, total control of money is one critical part of an unlimited tyranny.  When every move you make, every word you say, every book you read, every interpersonal association you have, and every dollar you spend are all tapped, traced, tracked, and permanently databased, then each individual is left with only two choices:  Either submit as part of the ovine herd, with a status lower than that of any slave in history; or go straight to the slaughterhouse.

Bitcoin is the money which nobody controls.  It is imperfect; in this context, the linkability of transactions is a serious problem.  But first and foremost, nobody controls it.  Nobody can enforce a requirement that you meet “KYC” requirements to open a “Bitcoin account”.  Nobody can freeze or seize your coins—not by peremptory order, in general; and not by any means whatsoever, if nobody knows you have those coins.  And nobody can stop you from protecting your privacy with whatever technical means may be available.  Bitcoin is cypherpunk money; and it’s in the initial stages of taking over the world.

Thank you, Satoshi Nakamoto.

(I have some replies in mind for earlier posts on this thread; perhaps another time.)

This is a textbook example of begging the question.  Tell me, have you stopped beating your wife?

For my part, (1) I don’t think there is a bubble at all; therefore, (2) I don’t think there is such a thing as would burst.  I’ve heard the term “hypermonetization” suggested to explain Bitcoin’s extraordinary growth; but I am lukewarm about that.  I’m studying the evidence and working out my own theory.  Also, (2) I have never beaten my wife—(1) assuming I have a wife; here, that is compound question-begging just like yours!

Forks are bad.  They are foolhardy attempts to attack Bitcoin.  But Bitcoin is stronger than all attackers, thus leading to an observed rule in practice:

You fork, you die.

Genuine Bitcoin has crushed numerous forks and attempted forks:  “Bitcoin XT”, “Bitcoin Unlimited”, “Bitcoin Classic”, and the “New York Agreement”, to name but a few.  These no longer exist.  For the current outbreak of forks, if you wish to claim some fork coins, then dump them in exchange for real Bitcoin, and enjoy your free bitcoins.  Otherwise, simply ignore.  Anything from “Bitcoin Cash” to “Bitcoin Super Diamond Plus Plutonium With Ponies” is only a scam; and these scams will die sooner or later, just as did their antecedents.


Listing on Coinmarketcap.com means nothing in this context.  As of this writing, they list 1360 different “coins”.  Total market cap: $580,115,213,787.  Bitcoin market cap: $329,169,132,530.  Otherwise stated, Bitcoin holds a greater market capitalization than all other so-called “cryptocurrencies” combined (56.7% of the total market).  Hundreds of the listed “currencies” have no current market cap at all; they are worthless, zeroes.

The least-valuable “active” currency is currently Applecoin (APW), ranked #805, with a market cap of $17.  Not a price of $17:  Each 1.0 APW is worth $0.000195, less than 2% of 1¢.  Adding up all those near-centipennies, it has a total market cap of $17.  Does APW seem to be a viable, or even credible “currency” to you?  That should tell you all you need to know about what it means that the Bitcoin forks got listed on Coinmarketcap.com.  It’s simply an objective information resource listing a bunch of numbers, not a guide for endorsing investment recommendations.

There are many altcoins; some of them are honest alts, which at least have the decency to make their own names.  There are also many pretenders to the Bitcoin title.  However, all in all:

There is only one Bitcoin.

You’re welcome; and yes, indeed!  From the Electrum Version 3.0 Release Notes:


Always be sure to download the latest version of Electrum directly from the official site at https://electrum.org/, to avoid fake sites which may infect you with coin-stealing malware.

Though that’s a really stupid policy, and it will cause plenty of damage, I somehow doubt it could cause “the end of bitcoin in the USA”.  If nothing else, there are too many rich Americans who are too deeply invested in Bitcoin at this point.  I think the rules over there say that nothing will get completely trashed if that would upset too many rich people.  That’s in the U.S. Constitution, or something.  On the other hand, sometimes even that rule has been blatantly broken; is this 1933 all over again?

The Priyabrata Dash article cited by IBTimes.com says:


Yes.  Probably.  The little guys might get crushed.  Meanwhile, even more USAian users will be shepherded into the Coinbase playpen where their use of “Bit Coins” is supervised by a nanny.  So they don’t inadvertently hurt themselves, you know.  For their own good.  Toddlers sometimes swallow coins.  How could a doctor even find a “Bit Coin” on an X-ray?

But I doubt it will result in a total ban, whether de factor or ultimately de jure.  Unless, unless....  1933 U.S.A., meet 1984 Oceania in 2017!


They already have an “Internet kill switch”!  Politically undesirable sites can be mysteriously hit with such large and sophisticated DDoS that they get forced behind Cloudflare; thus, they will become dependent on staying in Cloudflare’s good graces.  Oops!  Now, Cloudflare has the kill switch.

“If a private party does it, it’s not censorship.  Only governments can do censorship.”  Repeat that nonsense ten times like a good little libertarian.  The U.S. government can never, ever censor a website which does not otherwise break U.S. laws, due to the First Amendment of its Federal Constitution.  Huge, centralized private parties with quasi-governmental de facto censorship powers are a loophole in the First Amendment.

And if you want for ordinary people to actually be able to find you?  For the past 15 years or so, you have already needed the Holy Imprimatur of Google.  Another “private party”.  Get delisted by Google, and the only traffic you will get is mysteriously large and sophisticated DDoS.  Well, I guess that’s plenty enough traffic for one server, anyway.

Looking further:  Domain registrars.  Backbone providers.  “Last-mile” providers (your local ISP).  You are dependent on so any different “private parties” for your “free flow of information”.  They are all in substance public utilities, and should be regulated as public utilities.

The point of this FCC ruling is to go in the wrong direction.  “Net Neutrality” rules were regulating ISPs as if public utilities.  Those rules required ISPs to provide fair service on equal terms to all traffic, with none of the discretion of “private parties”.

Oh, yes—add this, too:


Did you read the article?  Among other things, it says that AT&T has been “AT&T has taken particular interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole, patenting a number of technologies that would utilize the digital tokens in unique ways”.  Patents provide an awful lot of censorship and suppression power to private parties who, of course, can never “censor” or “suppress” anything because they are private parties exercising their Intellectual Property rights.

I’ll tell you what’s coming next:  SOPA/PIPA by the backdoor, implemented by “private parties”.  Remember how SOPA wanted to stick its fingers into the workings of the DNS?  Well, the registrars and registries will do that so the governent needn’t worry about it.  Not that they’d be prohibited from taking actions the U.S. government would enjoy seeing.  That’s their free choice!

Does the U.S. government dislike you?  Well, then, Cloudflare might decide to dislike you, too; and they’ll throw you to the DDoS jackals (none of which are intelligence agencies acting covertly—oh, no!).  Not that Cloudflare would ever take the U.S. government’s opinion into account, of course.

Do you have an awesome new technology which will make Bitcoin more decentralized, more robust and ”anti-fragile”, more private—more difficult to control?  Well, just wait till you see the thicket of interlocking, overbroad patents which will cover any and every possible new feature for anything deemed a “cryptocurrency”.  The U.S. governent will not be tyranically suppressing your invention.  Rather, AT&T will be exercising their Intellectual Property rights.  What are you, a pirate or something?

And if all that fails, the FCC has now ruled that ISPs can deliver services and sites they dislike at the rate of a 300 baud modem.  Or not deliver them at all.  Most observers miss the bidirectional benefits of such connections as having former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai as Chairman of the FCC.  It’s practically a corporate merger between Verizon and the United States.  Here is Ajit Pai with Verizon executive Kathleen Grillo.  Now, if the government dislikes a site—well, who is to stop Ajit from telling Kathleen his opinions over lunch?


(For the dimmer bulbs in the peanut gallery:  That last was rhetoric.  Of course the working day-to-day connections will be much subtler.  Ajit and Kathleen are VIPs, who are too busy to compare notes on what websites and services should be blocked or throttled by Verizon, which can never, ever do “censorship” because it is a private party in the free market.)

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Mitigation ideas with various pros and cons, mostly applicable to everybody and not only Americans:

0. Use Tor.

1. Study up on how people in PRC China get onto Tor.  So, American tinpots want censorship mechanisms “‘similar to what china implements’”?  Tor is banned and blocked at the GFW.  People use it anyway.  Yes, Tor is currently U.S.-based; and I am almost certain that it’s organizationally compromised.  So, see (4) below.

2. Study the technical side of Internet censorship, generally.

3. Get a satellite dish to keep up with the blockchain.  But how will you hide it from the surveillance drones?  Also in the U.S.A., “land of the free”, you’ve got some small surveillance planes running over various cities—operated by “private parties”, some of them using their aerial observations for marketing purposes (tracking cars’ shopping habits, and the like).  I guess you’d better hide that dish.

4. Other backup communication options outside the scope of a bitcointalk.org thread.  Just pretend I’m talking about RFC 1149.  Maybe I am, in the worst case.

5. Preferably, make sure that nobody knows you have Bitcoin.  Otherwise, make sure that you have Bitcoin nobody knows about.  Observe the distinction.  One way or another, protect your privacy.

6. If you live in the United States, perhaps you should consider moving.  The beauty of Bitcoin is that you can memorize a seed phrase carefully, destroy all media containing any recoverable Bitcoin keys, and then walk across the border with a king’s fortune locked inside your head.  The TSA will either physically molest you, or make a porno of you; but they won’t find your Bitcoin!  Should you be concerned about rubberhose cryptanalysis, see (5) above.  (5) is very important.

HTH.

I don’t know about the others, but Electrum 3.0 does support Segwit.  You will need to create a new Segwit wallet.  By default, Electrum will give you the new address format with error-correcting codes; those addresses will start with the letters “bc”, and only people with Segwit-enabled software will be able to send money to them.  There are also backward-compatible Segwit “3” address, such as the address you see in my signature; anybody can send money to that, even with old software.  There is a method to make Electrum generate that address type, but it is somewhat more involved; perhaps one of these days, I should write up userfriendly instructions and post them in the Electrum forum.

I should also point out, any miner other than Jihan who mines Bcash is a fool.  ASICBOOST is a security exploit in Bitcoin’s mining algorithm, which gives an unfair advantage over other miners.  ASICBOOST has been patented.  The covert, undetectable form of ASICBOOST was permanently stopped by the activation of Segwit in August 2017; Bitcoin is now safe.  But Bcash is still wide open!

There is strong evidence that Bitmain was exploiting covert ASICBOOST before Segwit was activated.  No wonder Bitmain hates Segwit and loves Bcash.

If you mine Bitcoin, then you are mining on a level playing field.  If you mine Bcash, then you’re Jihan’s patsy; and he’s laughing at you as he pays 30% less than you for the same work.

According to gmaxwell, the covert ASICBOOST vulnerability was fixed inadvertently; it just so happens that covert ASICBOOST is “significantly incompatible with virtually any method of extending Bitcoin's transaction capabilities; with the notable exception of extension blocks (which have their own problems)”.  In layman’s terms, this essentially means that Bcash can never be upgraded with new features and new technologies.  Any real upgrade to Bcash would deprive Jihan of his (not-so-)secret advantage.