Actually, the code "BTC" is itself a problem as it does not fit the ISO standard. "BTx" is reserved for the Himalayan country of Bhutan. (where x is a code letter for any of its present or future currency units). Gold is XAU and silver is XAG. " XBT" is probably the most appropriate ISO code for Bitcoin. A real ISO code is needed in order for it to be traded on the world's FX systems and seen on Bloomberg and Reuters. It would be a major coup for Bitcoin to get recognized currency status. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217 |
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I hesitate to call SatoshiDICE spam or dust, but the vast majority of those transactions are small transfers going back and forth between the same 2 addresses. It would be a very bad idea if we created a hard fork just so people could transfer one BTC back and forth constantly. Absolutely! SD is just over 50% of the vols, but unless it voluntarily closes down, (and no similar sites pop up) then the mathematics have Bitcoin hitting a self-imposed limit this year. Perhaps SD should internalize their transactions to give more time for the 1Mb limit to be addressed. Note that SD also pays a lot in fees. None of this is a black-and-white issue. |
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No!
Bitcoin is the ultimate democratization of currency, precisely the opposite of what any "elite"/controlling group would want.
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Didn't you see the date on this thread?
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Trading platform = shorting.
3 or 4 medium sized corporations with 3 or 4 multimillion shorts puts the prices in $10 or below in no time.
The ability to short doesn't magically allow the price to be driven down longer than the term of the loan contract. They have to rebuy the units they short-sold within the time limit, and if the rest of the market hasn't agreed with them during that period of time, they lose money on the short.
And further. All the ability to short on a market does is provide stability to the market price, because shorters become buyers during a price dip (as they are taking profits). Stupid politicians think that shorting makes things crash faster, hence the regular bans during recessions. Bitcoin must be the world's No.1 high-growth financial instrument, with a four-year track record which demolishes even gold's performance. Anyone/corporation attempting a long-term short would be totally insane. They would get more of a kick from sticking an electric eel up their trouser leg (it would be far cheaper!) |
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Ripple is a big unknown for most people, so is Bitcoin. Combining them together is like unknown 2. I don't see how this helps. Ripple should be able to prove itself in the fiat domain first. In fact its usage should be growing fast with conventional currencies. Then it might be shown to complement Bitcoin. This brings me to the reason why I can't see myself ever using Ripple: money destroys friendships. If I need to borrow money, I want that separated from my social life. So I go to the bank and deal with them. If I fail to pay the loan back then it is my problem with my bank. It is dirty washing which I do not need flapping in the faces of my friends. With my friends (people I might theoretically trust with money) I play golf or go fishing. But as soon as money is actually changing hands in the relationship, it is not much fun anymore. Ripple is probably a killer-app in India and its satellite countries on the subcontinent, as they have Grameen (micro) banking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen. In Western countries people want their financial affairs separate from their social life. I just can't see that changing. |
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 The latest snapshot of the situation developing on Earth-13, which always seems to have the worst luck... |
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i sold out to the highest bidder, i lost my bet, whats done is done... i can't take it back and theirs no use being in denial anymore. bitcoin is being is now being priced by real big shot investors. we will continue to move up... 50$ is a given 100$ is inevitable and 1000$ is the target  Spoken like a true perma-bull. Welcome to the herd. |
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Before, I support the change to protocol in a carefully planned way to improve the end user experience, but recently I discovered that you can double spend on both original chain and the new chain after a hard fork, then it means the promise of prevent double-spending and limited supply is all broken, that is much severe than I thought
That simply means that, after a very short period of chaos post-fork, simple economic incentives would VERY quickly force a consensus on one of the chains. The chaos would not be permitted to continue, by anyone, whichever side they personally want to "win", as it would cost them too much. Or there could be two chains - each with its own pros and cons. While all us early investors would be able to spend on each chain, it should function like a stock split where though we have twice as many 'shares' each one is only worth 50% of the original value. It could be 90/10 or 80/20 though, or any two percentages summing to 1. If you wanted to favor one chain over the other, you could sell your coins on one and buy coins in your preferred chain. No. It wouldn't happen. As soon as a fork occurred the fx rate of new coins mined on the "weaker" chain would collapse to a few cents as all the major businesses, websites, miners, exchanges would automatically side with the "stronger" chain. If anyone thinks that they can double-spend bitcoins on different websites, after a few hours, (some accepting one fork, some the other) then they are living in dreamland. |
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So yes, I think that there is AT LEAST a key 10% of the Bitcoin user population (including me) that will veto any such changes.
Phew, for a moment you had me worried, but with 90% following one side of a fork - then worries over. da2ce7, please consider that nearly everyone on this forum has bitcoin's interests at heart. That it why thousands of posts debate the minutiae of any software change. Then consider how much progress there would be if 100% agreement was needed before any action took place... |
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I like the idea of taking a bandwidth metric, like propagation time, of all connected nodes and using that to determine max block size. Done properly, the bitcoin network should be able to optimize itself to whatever the current average bandwidth happens to be, without overwhelming it.
The question is, how do we collect accurate data upon propagation time? And then how do we utilize said data in a way that will result in a uniform computation for the entire network? Yes, the metric is the hard part. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of the mining software so this may be an amateur question: Is there typically any bandwidth "downtime" during the ~10 minutes a miner is hashing away? If so, could a sort of "speed test" be taken with a uniform sized piece of data between nodes? EDIT: Another half-baked though -- Couldn't each node also report the amount of time it took to download the last block, the aggregate of which could be used for determining size? I think I remember Gavin suggesting something similar. The more time I spend thinking about the max block size pushes me towards concluding that block propagation and verification times are most important. I am interested to read that you have a similar view. |
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If a fork with 60% exists and one with 40% I would probably see bitcoin as a failed experiment.
My gut feeling is that the BTC fx rate is the key determinant. When BTC were worth a few cents then a 60/40 resulting in two permanent currencies was much more likely. No one has much to lose by choosing a "technically" better chain. However, with the rate at $30 then everyone would be scrambling to use the "winning" fork. The fx rate for newly mined BTC on the smaller "losing" fork would collapse to a few cents. It would be doomed. |
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I am wondering if fees are tangental and the real issue about the max block limit is block propagation/verification time as Gavin indicated at the start!
max block limit is the real question in my opinion, since that determines how much free ride could pontentially be and then the block proopagation/verification has long term effect on miner competition. Yes, but the 1Mb limit is nothing more than a psychological constraint at present, yet fees are rising anyway. The concern is about when it becomes a physical constraint (due to transaction volumes). |
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Sergio's idea sounds great, therefore I went away and examined two blocks.
SatoshiDice launched on April 24, 2012 so I randomly chose a large block two weeks earlier:
April 9, 2012
block 174997 (Tx = 154)
Fee Count
0 116
0.0005 35
0.001 4
0.00677853 1
0.01 1
CoVar = 4.00
Then I chose a similar sized block which went through in the last hour:
Feb 26, 2013
block 223287 (Tx = 151)
Fee Count
0 13
0.0005 61
0.001 70
0.0015 1
0.002 2
0.005 4
CoVar = 0.93
First, a wider analysis is warranted as this is a very narrow test. However, in the meantime I am not sure if there is a problem to be solved! In the April 2012 example most transactions did not have fees, in the block today they do. SD is paying a lot in fees. It seems bitcoin is improving its economic "health" organically, or at least through current incentives for fees. All it needs is more time to see whether the fees climb or level off.
I am wondering whether fees are tangential and the real issue about the max block limit is block propagation/verification time as Gavin indicated at the start!
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Ha, Ha, Adam just might win this bet because of the legacy of Julius Caesar!
(It was because of him that two days were taken from February to make July, and then August longer...)
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... And yet, somehow when the reward got cut in half (block fees went down) the hash rate went down. Doh! Perhaps we can agree here. The block halving to 25BTC was the most significant event affecting the hash power in 4 years and we might have predicted that it would take a couple of years for the hash power to return to end-Nov 2012 levels. Yet in a few months the peak is being attained again. Sure the few ASICs running make a big difference, but halving the hash power did not stop millions of dollars of ongoing new investment which secures the network. |
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small max block size: high fees, secure network, decentralized mining
large max block size: low fees, lower hash rate, centralized mining.
The situation is not as black and white as this because even zero fees can help secure the network by raising the BTC fx rate. Please consider my earlier post: " Actually, free transactions do earn money. They encourage new users. More people will try bitcoin, accelerating its growth. By implication this contributes a proportion to its exchange rate against fiat. So, miners that include free transactions are indirectly benefiting from them as their block reward is higher in fiat terms." I am not saying if this is good or bad. I am describing the reality of the situation that exists. Has no one heard of a loss leader? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leaderBitcoin is exponentially growing against fiat currencies and established payment systems. By accident or design some/lots of this growth is via its loss leader of free transactions. Arguably, SD abuses this facility. However, loss leading might be the best "winning" strategy that will have BTC kill off most of fiat in the shortest time (if that is the goal). When the competition is decimated all transactions can have compulsory fees (if that is the goal). Bitcoin does not exist in a vacuum and obtaining value in fiat during the growth phase is sensibly leveraging an external. The network benefits as most participant nodes would have a long-term BTC holding. Hotmail and Yahoo mail, Google search, Facebook social network, Huffpost news: all are free, all are loss leading to get market-share! Once/if they decimate their respective competition their fees will rise. Their goal is transparent. In the vernacular: to monetize eyeballs. Loss leading is essential to get there. |
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I agree with you.
I have been thinking about the wrong timing of trying to change the definition too.
Then my mind drifted onto the alternative course - instead of changing definition (may be impossible to implement even in the long term), would it not be easier to start a fork that keeps all the vital parameters of Bitcoin intact, allow merged mining with it (similar to NMC), then execute new PR campaign with new set of definitions.
That way, the new fork can develop on its own unique way, get mined and traded separately, but more importantly, will get to be seen in a different, hopefully favourable light by the broader population, good enough to convince them to look at it and use it.
I am going to repeat DeathAndTaxes because he makes an unanswerably powerful point:
MSB regulations in the US for example use the term "currency substitute". Even if one went through the totally dubious effort to redefine bitcoin as "something else" with the stroke of a single regulator pen they could
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