ShortCoins, knock off the faux reasonable act.  Stop trying to play the victim here.  You have been rapid-fire creating new topics all week, all converging on the same general idea; and here, you posted a partly duplicative thread only ten minutes before this one.

(There:  Alleging that “The value of crypto comes from the fact that electricity, man hours, and hardware are destroyed in order to create. We are essentially destroying resources...”  Here:  Speaking of how “crypto” is “wasteful” and “destroying resources”.  Your other near-simultaneous thread was also a copypaste of one of your other posts from yet another thread; and if you truly sought “stimulating discussion” as you claim, you would have replied to the the quite reasonable question I asked you.  [Edit:  The copypasted post plausibly appears to have been a mistake; I’ll take that up in the other thread...])

It’s also only a forked tongue hanging out of your head when you say, “let us talk about improving crypto and the world”.  You’ve been doing nothing but preaching the evils of “crypto” since Saturday night.  Twelve hours before this thread, you asked, “☠☠☠ Is Crypto A Rip-O? ☠☠☠”  How stupid do you think people here must be?

As for your allegations of “stalking and harassing”, you already threatened that you will “take action”.  So, have at it.  Or maybe look up what those words mean.


(I will leave aside that you’re here pretending to make some revelatory observation, whereas you give a shallow retread a topic which has been discussed repeatedly, everywhere, for about the past nine years.  Beating a dead horse would be something I simply ignore.)

Folks, please read this before you buy into this junk, or even bother arguing about it.  ShortCoins is a spammer on a prolific FUD binge.

ShortCoins didn’t even bother to respond when I replied to the exact same text he posted on another thread:

Two new ShortCoins threads with overlapping subject matter, posted 10 minutes apart.  Somebody does not know when to stop.  (I tried to edit my OP so as to not bump this; but on preview, all the numerous links showed up broken.  Looks like an SMF bug; not the first time I’ve seen that.  Sorry.)

2017-12-14 15:24:56	☃☃☃ New Crypto Idea! ☃☃☃ (“One thing I personally don't like about Crypto is how wasteful it is when it comes to resources like electricity and man hours.”  Partly duplicates/restates argument set forth in topic started ten minutes before, i.e. that “crypto” is based on waste.)
2017-12-14 15:14:24	✨✨✨ The Reason We Use Money ✨✨✨ (some contorted argument dividing “money” from “crypto”, against the latter; duplicates post made in another thread)

Say what?  I quoted enough to provide sufficient context; but what I am really interested in is this:  “Money is a future claim on the world’s resources (including labor and services). You can use that money at a future point to collect in on what you are ‘owed’.”

From where do you believe “money” derives that claim?  In itself, and/or in contradistinction to “crypto”.

(I leave aside for now the nasty myth that “crypto” derives its value from “electricity, man hours, and hardware are destroyed in order to create.”  That’s patently untrue; but to understand why, first you must have a clear definition of “money”.)

So, ShortCoins now has a supporter, Dorkie.  Among other activities, Dorkie has accused theymos of being part of an “inside job” hacking forum accounts.  Replete with a Bible quote, to warn theymos about Judgment Day.

After the mess documented at the top of this thread, I thought those who read this could use a chuckle.

Oh-ho!  ShortCoins has rattled an “I will have to take action” type of sabre at me via PM:


Text:


I wasn’t laughing before; I was upset that the forum was getting clogged with (even more) garbage.  Now, I am laughing.  In n.a.n-a.e., they call that a “cartooney”.

As for the above replies:  In the other threads, I was providing counterarguments to ShortCoins largely in the hope of preventing newbies from being fooled.  A few other reasons, too; but none of them was a desire on my part to waste my time arguing with ShortCoins.  Here in Meta, well—anybody over the age of 30 (and most under) can see straight through the faux reasonable pretense of somebody who got called out for doing bad.  The above-referenced threads are there for review.  I think the mods have seen such things a myriad times (as has anybody who’s dealt with e-mail spam…).  I needn’t explain further.

---

Edit:  This is what I was trying to say.  “Playing the victim.”

Well, I didn’t dig very far into “ulterior motives”, which certainly make this spam in substance as well as frequency.  ShortCoins’ very first post, here preserved in case it gets deleted (subject: “✨✨✨ Time To SHORT For Massive Profits!! ✨✨✨”):


After I casually questioned the legalities of FUDding Internet forums while holding a short position on a regulated exchange, ShortCoins started repeatedly, vehemently denying that he holds a short position; e.g.:


…and several others I can’t be bothered to link now.  “Doth protest too much.”

It would be implausible to suggest that this not be a lame attempt at profit.

Please direct further discussion to this topic in Meta, so I can stop bumping your spam thread.

I applaud the forum’s policy, which generally stands tall on the side of letting people express their opinions freely.  But ShortCoins has gone over the line of excessive multi-posting and rapid, conceptually redundant topic creation (replete with emoji-laden subject lines).  In other words, ShortCoins is spamming.  Spamming opinions, regardless of any possible ulterior motives.  But nevertheless, spamming.

There is also involvement of a probable sock puppet, cryptoandmore.  See here and here; decide for yourself about the timing, the new account behavior, the writing style, and the oddity of the snatched-back post which reads exactly as a reply from ShortCoins.  Of course, ShortCoins denied it after the sock disappeared (they did not seem to be online at the same time).  Mods should be able to access decisive info.

I post here for three reasons:  (1) To ask guidance from moderators about whether this be considered reportable spam; (2) to request that it be considered such, so I can just hit the handy “Report to moderator” link, and/or that mods deal with ShortCoins in some other appropriate manner; and, (3) to place here some documentation of the matter.  I don’t recommend that existing threads be nuked, since some people (other than myself) have made insightful comments on them.

Here are pertinent stats, counting in UTC time; ShortCoins’ posts seem to be centred around midnight UTC.  Is this spam topic creation?  I think so, when all topics are conceptually similar and some are entirely duplicative:

• Morning of 12-14: 4 new topics within just over 4 hours, then a 5th a few hours later.  I presume that last was delayed because this was the time I became involved; ShortCoins got into an argument with me, then waited a few hours (perhaps hoping I had left).
• 12-12/12-13: 4 new topics within under 88 minutes.
• 12-11/12-12: 9 new topics in just over 6 hours.
• Morning of 12-11: 1 new topic.
• 12-09/12-10: 7 new topics in just over 9 hours, including 3 separate “Bitcoin DOWN OVER (x)% today!!” new topics within less than 3½ hours (!).  N.b., this appears to be timed against that big happening thing on Gemini.
• Account created: 2017-12-09 21:02:00.  Of course, we all know what market event that was the eve of.

At risk of making your eyeballs bleed, here is the list of ShortCoins’ threads thus far.  At least, the ones I know about; at least one of these seems to have been completely nuked by mods.

2017-12-14 08:12:27	☃☃☃ The #1 Factor Driving Bitcoin Prices ☃☃☃ (“The Number #1 Factor Driving Bitcoin Prices Is: Greed” (red highlight in original))
2017-12-14 04:40:29	♻♻♻ Bitcoin Strategy: Pump and DUMP ♻♻♻
2017-12-14 03:34:22	☠☠☠ Is Crypto A Rip-O? ☠☠☠
2017-12-14 00:55:46	✨✨✨ FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out Is Driving Bitcoin Prices ✨✨✨
2017-12-14 00:24:28	☃☃☃ Is Bitcoin An Empty Promise? ☃☃☃
2017-12-13 01:13:43	☠☠☠ Will High Transaction Fees Be The Downfall Of Bitcoin? ☠☠☠
2017-12-13 00:29:56	✨✨✨ Minimum Investment Size For BTC ✨✨✨ (“I no longer see investments under 0.1BTC being that practical because of fees.”)
2017-12-13 00:00:31	☠☠☠ Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitcoin Messiah, is a Fraud ☠☠☠
2017-12-12 23:46:36	☃☃☃ The Most Important Question About Bitcoin ☃☃☃ (“Everyone is too focused on when to buy. Waiting for dips to enter into the market.  That is great, but the much more important question is:  When to sell bitcoin?” (boldface in original))
2017-12-12 03:12:26	⛔️⛔️⛔️ Using a Stop-Loss for BTC Investments ⛔️⛔️⛔️ (“What if bitcoin crashed 80% would you still hold on?”)
2017-12-12 01:09:21	✈✈✈ How High Will Bitcoin Fees Get? ✈✈✈ (“Bitcoin fees are skyrocketing!!!”)
2017-12-12 00:37:10	☘☘☘ Futures Will Increase The Volatility Of Bitcoin ☘☘☘
2017-12-12 00:22:19	✨✨✨ How expensive will the last bitcoins be to mine? ✨✨✨
2017-12-11 23:44:12	⚠⚠⚠ Bitcoin is like the lottery combined with religion ⚠⚠⚠
2017-12-11 23:28:01	☠☠☠ Is Politics A Threat To Bitcoin Success? ☠☠☠
2017-12-11 22:57:03	☃☃☃ The .01 Theory ☃☃☃ (“Most people own less than .01 BTC […] My theory is the fees will become so high that most people will just hold onto their BTC rather than sell.”)
2017-12-11 21:56:11	✨✨✨ Are we wasting resources to make digital currencies? ✨✨✨
2017-12-11 21:09:24	♨♨♨ Top 10 Reasons To Sell Bitcoin Now ♨♨♨ (“PLEASE DONT Spam the board with anything except reasons to SELL BITCOIN. There are other threads for that” (red colour in original))
2017-12-11 07:10:45	♨♨♨ Bitcoin Fees Are Outrageous ♨♨♨
2017-12-10 06:49:41	♨♨♨ Is Bitcoin A Giant Ponzi Scheme?♨♨♨
2017-12-10 04:23:20	⛔️⛔️⛔️ Is It Time To Cash Out The Profits? ⛔️⛔️⛔️
2017-12-10 03:55:22	♨♨♨ Bitcoin DOWN OVER 16% today!! ♨♨♨
2017-12-10 01:24:13	♨♨♨ Bitcoin DOWN OVER 15% today!! ♨♨♨
2017-12-10 00:29:54	♨♨♨ Bitcoin DOWN OVER 10% Today!! ♨♨♨
2017-12-09 23:16:17	⛔️⛔️⛔️ Is The Current Price Of Bitcoin Practical? ⛔️⛔️⛔️ (“I think a niche group (first 1% of population) who see the vision and the future of crypto have artificially driven this price up so high that it isn't likely the remaining population of the world will buy into it (at the current levels).”)
2017-12-09 21:34:26	✨✨✨ Time To SHORT For Massive Profits!! ✨✨✨

Mods, thank you for your time.

So again, you claim that “ShortCoins” has not shorted any coins.  Sure.  [Edit to add:  “ShortCoins”, who created an account and first topic “✨✨✨ Time To SHORT For Massive Profits!! ✨✨✨” on the eve of a huge market event, surely has not shorted coins.]

You are spamming the forum.  These are not “your boards”.  Get lost.

Of course, you’d deny it—especially once I mentioned the potential legalities.  But it’s awfully incredible that you created an account named “ShortCoins” on the eve before the historic date of 10 December 2017, then started promptly spewing cheap propaganda which transparently screams “SELL”.  Surely, “ShortCoins” has no short position in any coins.  [Edit to add:  “ShortCoins”, who created an account and first topic “✨✨✨ Time To SHORT For Massive Profits!! ✨✨✨” on the eve of a huge market event, surely has not shorted coins.]

P.S., try educating yourself as to the meaning of the term “strawman”.  That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

I suppose you realized that other post was essentially an admission.  I was preserving it when you wrote this, ShortCoins:

“cryptoandmore” made a second post (second post ever for that account), which promptly disappeared.  It is here preserved in full, for the record:


I will take that as an admission that this is a ShortCoins sock.

So, let’s see:  FUD (possibly to manipulate prices in one’s own favour on a regulated exchange), spamming, and now sockpuppeting.  Is there anything else you wish to add to that, ShortCoins?

---

Edit:  Add screenshot:

I’m going to call a presumptive sockpuppet here.  The one and only post on the account of “cryptoandmore”, registered less than a half-hour before—and pulling in a theme from one of ShortCoins’ earlier FUD spam threads:


Similar style, too.  (It’s rather formulaic, actually.)  ShortCoins, is that you?

Thanks for that.  It’s refreshing to read a post by somebody who knows more than I do about a subject.  Though I look forward to the video, I haven’t yet put an hour of dedicated focus to it; I appreciated your brief summary.  Garret’s thesis as you describe it is fascinating, as is Lloyd’s paper.

This seems to intersect; I presume that Garret was taking aim with his “post-Simulation Hypothesis”:  “Because you asked: the Simulation Hypothesis has not been falsified; remains unfalsifiable”.


What evils have been wrought by the wrong metaphors!  (Pseudo)scientifically, and otherwise.  It is the twin sin of asking the wrong questions.


Whilst on the subject of pseudoscientific mysticisms woven under the rubric of “educating the public”, quantum talk seems somehow incomplete without mentioning its spacetime counterpart.  One section of one webpage (plus its companion) will suffice to burn away mountains of garbage from “science popularizers” about special relativity.  It’s not even necessary to work through the equations:  Simply look at the pretty pictures of a ruler on a rotating grid.  The light bulb goes on.  Rulers never change their lengths.  Clocks never tick at different rates.  There are no paradoxes.  Those are only illusions caused by three-dimensional thinking, lack of vector maths, and too many “science popularizers”.  Of course, you probably know this...

Granted, the popular explanations sell better.  They provide an instant psychological substitute for the theological paradoxes and impossibilities of popularly fading religions.  It’s not the first time in history that similar has occurred.

As for myself:  I don’t understand special relativity.  I don’t understand quantum mechanics.  I know just barely enough to know that I would need to dedicate years of intensive study to properly claim such understanding.  I’m disgusted by the culture of “popularizers”, and the mass pretense that anybody but a few elite scholars can understand such things; these eviscerate the meaning of the word “understand”.  Attainment of actual understanding in any scientific discipline or engineering endeavour requires both innate ability and hard work.  The same applies as for any art worthy of the word.

But hey, who am I to speak?  I heard that quantum mechanics proves we have entered the astrological Age of Aquarius.  Also, it explains psychic powers.  Thanks, popularizers!


Quantum FUD®.  What a most excellent buzzword.

Greed (juxtaposed against fear of cheaters) also secures Bitcoin’s network; and it is that security, assured by the power of human greed, which gives Bitcoin its value.  It was a revelation when I realized the full implications of Satoshi’s genius on that particular point.  But it’s not a suitable topic for this thread.  I intend to write a post on it, one of these days.

Edit:  P.S., LoyceV, it’s funny you should mention Amazon.com.  Just yesterday, I was explaining to somebody that the Winklevoss brothers’ 2013 investment in Bitcoin was tantamount to investing in Amazon—in 1995.

pebwindkraft, I respect your desire for an environment of technical discussion.  I wish for the same thing.

Perhaps my patience is worn just a bit thin from people who have an axe to grind against Segwit, and do so solely with arguments from ignorance—in essence, “it’s too complicated because I don’t understand it.”  (I have never actually seen a technical argument against Segwit.  Not one!)  I also have zero respect for people who don’t read the technical answers provided—upthread, on the same page, with citations to specs and source code.  And why yes, I am an elitist who gives short shrift to ill-informed opinions.  I don’t apologize for any of that; and I do think it’s a benefit that I have no reason to be diplomatic toward anybody.

But I’ll bow out of this thread if it’s fanning the flames too much here.

Blocks are not limited to 1MB.  There is no longer any such concept as a block size limit.  Read upthread.

The average number of transactions a block can hold will depend on the transactions’ average weight—an empirical question, depending on what transactions people are actually making on the network.  You may expect the average weight to drop as more people send Segwit transactions.  You may expect it to plummet after Schnorr signatures become available—especially if/when that gets uptake from senders with very large numbers of inputs/outputs, such as exchanges.  Lower average weight is good:  That means more transactions can fit in a block, according to the simple equation from BIP 141 quoted above.

---

Valle, it was obvious that I meant “understand” on the level of neither high school physics, nor pop-science explanations—nor courses you allegedly dropped out of.  “Understand” in this context means understanding on the level of intelligently discussing implementations.  You’re a fool if based on your ninth-grade physics class, you would try to pass an opinion on engineering questions involved with maintaining and improving the GPS system, or how best to make light lase given a certain particular set of operational requirements.  Oh—and if you can write virtual memory code or a non-toy TCP implementation, I’ll eat my hat.  Serious engineering goes into such things.

But put all that aside.  You have a much more basic problem, one of first-grade reading comprehension:


Upthread (boldface added):


Why do Core people even bother trying to explain in public forums, if this is the response?

---

No discussion of Byzantine generals and their security significance, I see.  In Bitcoin, exactly 0% of that problem is solved by EC.  Nor did you catch the subtle relation between avalanche and HashCash.  (I threw that in because it’s a rather abstruse observation, so you couldn’t crib the answer by checking Wikipedia.)  I could hear a whooshing noise as the whole point of my post went over your head.

Really, all problems for a digital currency except for Byzantine generals could be considered solved as of the 1990s.  Try reading the ACM Queue article I linked above, if you want a good overview of what complexity went into your ostensibly “plain and simple” Bitcoin.

Warning for newbies:  The tellingly-named “ShortCoins” is spamming the forum with FUD.  That’s all he/she/it does; observe the timestamps, too:

2017-12-14 08:12:27	☃☃☃ The #1 Factor Driving Bitcoin Prices ☃☃☃ (“The Number #1 Factor Driving Bitcoin Prices Is: Greed” (red highlight in original))
2017-12-14 04:40:29	♻♻♻ Bitcoin Strategy: Pump and DUMP ♻♻♻
2017-12-14 03:34:22	☠☠☠ Is Crypto A Rip-O? ☠☠☠
2017-12-14 00:55:46	✨✨✨ FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out Is Driving Bitcoin Prices ✨✨✨
2017-12-14 00:24:28	☃☃☃ Is Bitcoin An Empty Promise? ☃☃☃
2017-12-13 01:13:43	☠☠☠ Will High Transaction Fees Be The Downfall Of Bitcoin? ☠☠☠
2017-12-13 00:29:56	✨✨✨ Minimum Investment Size For BTC ✨✨✨ (“I no longer see investments under 0.1BTC being that practical because of fees.”)
2017-12-13 00:00:31	☠☠☠ Andreas Antonopoulos, Bitcoin Messiah, is a Fraud ☠☠☠
2017-12-12 23:46:36	☃☃☃ The Most Important Question About Bitcoin ☃☃☃ (“Everyone is too focused on when to buy. Waiting for dips to enter into the market.  That is great, but the much more important question is:  When to sell bitcoin?” (boldface in original))
2017-12-12 03:12:26	⛔️⛔️⛔️ Using a Stop-Loss for BTC Investments ⛔️⛔️⛔️ (“What if bitcoin crashed 80% would you still hold on?”)
2017-12-12 01:09:21	✈✈✈ How High Will Bitcoin Fees Get? ✈✈✈ (“Bitcoin fees are skyrocketing!!!”)
2017-12-12 00:37:10	☘☘☘ Futures Will Increase The Volatility Of Bitcoin ☘☘☘
2017-12-12 00:22:19	✨✨✨ How expensive will the last bitcoins be to mine? ✨✨✨
2017-12-11 23:44:12	⚠⚠⚠ Bitcoin is like the lottery combined with religion ⚠⚠⚠
2017-12-11 23:28:01	☠☠☠ Is Politics A Threat To Bitcoin Success? ☠☠☠
2017-12-11 22:57:03	☃☃☃ The .01 Theory ☃☃☃ (“Most people own less than .01 BTC […] My theory is the fees will become so high that most people will just hold onto their BTC rather than sell.”)
2017-12-11 21:56:11	✨✨✨ Are we wasting resources to make digital currencies? ✨✨✨
2017-12-11 21:09:24	♨♨♨ Top 10 Reasons To Sell Bitcoin Now ♨♨♨ (“PLEASE DONT Spam the board with anything except reasons to SELL BITCOIN. There are other threads for that” (red colour in original))
2017-12-11 07:10:45	♨♨♨ Bitcoin Fees Are Outrageous ♨♨♨
2017-12-10 06:49:41	♨♨♨ Is Bitcoin A Giant Ponzi Scheme?♨♨♨
2017-12-10 04:23:20	⛔️⛔️⛔️ Is It Time To Cash Out The Profits? ⛔️⛔️⛔️
2017-12-10 03:55:22	♨♨♨ Bitcoin DOWN OVER 16% today!! ♨♨♨
2017-12-10 01:24:13	♨♨♨ Bitcoin DOWN OVER 15% today!! ♨♨♨
2017-12-10 00:29:54	♨♨♨ Bitcoin DOWN OVER 10% Today!! ♨♨♨
2017-12-09 23:16:17	⛔️⛔️⛔️ Is The Current Price Of Bitcoin Practical? ⛔️⛔️⛔️ (“I think a niche group (first 1% of population) who see the vision and the future of crypto have artificially driven this price up so high that it isn't likely the remaining population of the world will buy into it (at the current levels).”)
2017-12-09 21:34:26	✨✨✨ Time To SHORT For Massive Profits!! ✨✨✨