The sidechain would need Bitcoin in order to survive. It can't kill the hand that feeds it.

Maybe I missed discussion of it, but a few thousand pages ago I noted that the bolded part above is not necessarily the case since the exchange rate can be defined by "any deterministic function". To me, that's most of the problem. I used this example before, but say a fantastic sidechain is developed with a 1:1000 exchange rate, and a limit of 100M sidechain coins. Once 100,000 BTC move over, that's it. Demand for the sidecoin no longer feeds back into demand for bitcoin because it's de-facto no longer possible to get sidecoin by locking bitcoin. Am I missing something here?

Assuming I'm not missing anything, then all pegs which are not unlimited 1:1 pegs basically just define separate alt-coins, but alt-coins which can bootstrap off of bitcoin.

the referendum is on the 31st no? anyway, could also have 0 impact. referendum lately tend not to be so game changing. scotland's independance for example...

Yes but right now the price of GOLD depends on whats happens to the Gold referendum with the CHF.

Its massive news at the moment.

[personal 'discussion' with brg444]

[answers]

thank you!

Loading tonnes and tonnes of gold onto cargo planes in the middle of the night headed straight to America. In retrospect, it seems sort of... unseemly?

Can we please stop speculating without specific reasoning in this thread? Do we have any legit TA? Double Bottoms detected? Pennants? Anyone with legit details? Thank you. 

Now's the time to paint the tape boys. Execute all buy orders now as planned.

It would be great if they sold all at once because we are not gong anywhere... it will only bring more money in in a frenzy to buy the bottom. Sadly they wouldn't do this.. they would rather sell slowly and keep the market from rising similar to gold... however once they are done.. buying pressure will take them over and we will rise regardless of their efforts.. actually its good they sell now and not later when btc is $10k

I can't speak for Cypherdoc, (and also don't agree with all of his criticisms) but I'll take a crack at expounding a bit on this one.

The different rules for the 1 million scBTC may be pretty much anything. They need not be in a public ledger or have open source code, but even if they do, you ask "Why would anybody 'convert' 10 BTC to 10 scInflateBTCx2 knowing full well that scInflateBTCx2 runs a fractional reserve system and the guy with the other 10 scInflateBTCx2 will have his exchanged for 10 BTC half a microsecond later?"

Historically the reason has been war.  This has been done many times over and over throughout history.  If you look at the creation of almost any central bank scheme, it has almost always been done to finance a war, and to pay soldiers an inflating currency because sound money is scarce at such times.

When there is conflict, folks are very willing to "go for broke".  They have become convinced by TPTB that their life, and their way of life, and everything they care about will be lost of they don't accept the new scheme... and it is "illegal" not to do so, so they get put to death, imprisoned, called a traitor or whatever if they don't comply.

If there is a geographical region that has a sound money system and a rule of law system, then the other geographical regimes that have only a rule of law system and have already pulled the con of paying their soldiers with inflation money have the military advantage.  Their soldiers are willing to die for funny money and medals, and your soldiers aren't, so they can afford more of them.


So... what has all this got to do with Side Chains?  Not a lot, other than it is one mechanism that could be used to turn Bitcoin into "Military Government Inflation Coin" and require the use of that coin within a region by force of law, which of course the monetary authority could then inflate as needed and generate more as needed, diluting the bitcoin in the chain.


The mechanism itself isn't the evil, it is just the tool.  It can be used for good or "necessary" evils.

imo, introducing the spvp into the source code, by itself, is a statement to the market that the BTC unit can be separated from its ultra-secure blockchain.  i might be wrong, but that breaks Bitcoin's sound money principles.  yes, ppl can inspect what hopefully will be open source code and don't have to move to a SC they don't like.  but to me, the potential will be there and as a forward looking person, i don't like that.  i might have to front run using my expectations and assumptions of what will be the consequences.

the other reason i don't like it and which i tried to avoid in my earlier post is the Blockstream for profit motive.  they have every incentive to encourage usage of SC's.  they say they won't construct a SC for a SC scam.  well, that's for anyone's definition.  and when there's money involved, i can't see how they won't take it when they have investors to please.  they can always use the same excuse after a SC failure "well, we didn't force anyone to use it".  yes, it bothers me that 40% of core devs + 3 of the top committers are under one paid roof.  that they could get something like this through into the source code is a clear conflict of interest and sends a bad message to the marketplace.

why do ppl, including myself, always say that Bitcoin is going to have a binary outcome?

it's b/c they understand that Bitcoin is about Money.  Sound fixed supply Money.  you know, the Money that has the chance to consume the Forex and gold markets.  in that sense, it has the chance to consume the entire fiat world; yes including stocks, bonds, insurance, just by being used as money alone.  it doesn't have to incorporate all those speculative assets directly within its protocol using SC's.  

The more I understood the problem, the more clear it became, there is no waste, a Hard money will create efficiency in all other areas of the economy, and these efficiencies will come in waves that ripple through the economy, most product lines take years to plan and build, each stage will have 4 years to adjust and plan for, and there will be 2 cycles one of growth in Bitcoin value, flowed by a decline in bitcoin value and a growth in economy, this cycle will go on until the transformation hits equilibrium.

I would be against SCs if they broke sound money.  But they don't.  Gold is still sound money even though paper gold exists.

I didn't say "that we should trust Blockstream devs to incorporate any popular function back into the MC".  In fact I am scared that Blockstream will release their SC-capable test alt-coin and never "bother" to merge it back.  

With altcoins we have that fear.  But with Sidechains we don't even have to merge popular functions back into the MC, because they use a token scBTC that is pegged to BTC.  So if the sidechain becomes popular, it creates demand for BTC to be locked and represented by scBTC which drives up the price of BTC.

The real "off-ramp" here is if that peg doesn't exist.  Because then someone must SELL BTC to buy the altcoin.

  USD use internationally increases the value of a dollar without us having to import every foreign product to America.  Flying to the EU and exchanging your USD for Euros does not increase the dollar.  The Bitcoin blockchain will remain the "gold" standard, the authoritative source.  You fear that some sidechain will "take over" by getting (say) 90% of the market.  How is that going to happen if that sidechain isn't distributed, open source, transparent, sound money?  Nobody would move their coins.  But if a sidechain is invented that is truly better than BTC in all respects then at least you can always move your BTC to it at any time.  There's no rush because BTC will always == scBTC.

  But if an altcoin does the same thing, you'll have missed the boat.


There's no stopping "off-ramps" and its counter to the purpose of money (to facilitate trade) to do so so we shouldn't try.  If someone wants to sell BTC for GOOG they will do so.  The difference is can you do it directly or do you have to go thru USD first?  In other words, is BTC the most liquid most usable currency or will it still be USD?  And can you transfer it in a revolutionary trustless p2p fashion or do you need the old centralized intermediary model that has spawned the current highly flawed overly powerful financial system?

This has nothing to do with Austrian vs. Keynes or sound money.  Its about making BTC a better sound money...

it's becoming clearer to me everyday that what we are dealing with is Keynesian vs Austrian philosophy with this SC's debate.

heretofore, what has brought Bitcoin to where it is today is its Sound Money function.  and its been brilliant at that.  instant liquidity and transportation worldwide and p2p.  continuous growth in the economy and stellar, but volatile, increasing SOV.  gvts everywhere scrambling to figure out what this is and what role it has for their futures.  investment groups everywhere diving into a variety of Bitcoin investing schemes.  Bitcoin is the "Technology Singularity", as Daniel put it in the video above, that is the culmination of 4 decades of work by the cypherpunks.  we have achieved acceptance as a global, digital, cash money system that, imo, is in the process of replacing gold's function for the last 5000 yrs.  to me, an Austrian leaning Bitcoin proponent, that's all we should strive to be.  that's all we need to be.  my goal is to have Bitcoin have its own ticker symbol on the Forex exchange.  from there, as the only true Sound Money in the world, it can consume all fiat currency AND gold, which will take us To The Moon and way beyond as the sole globally accepted currency.  there only needs to be one money and Bitcoin can be "it".  the problem is, if it is even a problem, it will take time and some long hard fought battles.  the Keynesians don't want to help us.  they don't want to "buy in" to the system which would take the price up logarithmically.  they think a price of $376 is "too expensive".  well, to me the other view is that they just weren't paying attention back in 2009 and tough luck, that's how technology disrupts financial systems, as it has with many other industries.  i say "buy in" now and you can still join us on the way to the Moon.  we haven't even really taken off yet.

the Keynesian view is that Bitcoin needs to do more to gain acceptance and grow itself.  the protocol needs to be changed to incorporate all other forms of asset options; stocks, bonds, assurance contracts, smart contracts, insurance, etc.  by allowing BTC to be transformed into speculative assets via the spvp, that is by definition inflationary.  nevermind that if Bitcoin succeeds at the Austrian Sound Money function, it will force all those assets to trade in terms of Bitcoin eventually as well.  but that would be the hard battle and there are too many fiat vested interests that don't want to see that happen.  and there are too many Bitcoiner's who are impatient and can't stand price volatility.  and there are too many devs that gotta dev and get paid (in USD's).  and there are too many of all of those who missed out.  so what do they do?  they try to change Bitcoin.  change it by changing the source code which breaks the Sound Money function.  to me, that is what the spvp does, it creates an offramp into all manner of these assets.  after all, that is exactly what the Blockstream (Keynesian's) say as well; that being that the blockchain is too restrictive, it's prevents innovation, it's too risky, it's too slow, it's not big enough, yada yada yada.  so what is wrong with using SC's to incorporate all those assets?  it breaks the Sound Money function.  Bitcoin will no longer be viewed as solely a new form of money.  it will be viewed as a "trading platform" with which you can use to move back and forth btwn assets and BTC.  it would be like a Fidelity brokerage house, you deposit your money in a cash acct and then trade all manner of assets in and out. it also destroys the time preference of what money should be.  you see, stocks, bonds, contracts, insurance, etc are long term investments.  they are to be held.  and they are not used to provide seamless, instant, liquidity type functions like Bitcoin would be if it stays in its current form as sound money.  thus, we may NEVER see those assets be converted back to BTC in the future.  or at least if we do, it won't be for a long time, and then what does that do for Bitcoins money function?  answer:  it slows it down if not outright destroys it.  if that's true, where do Bitcoin miners get the tx fees they desperately need in the future to secure the mainchain?  what do we, as current Bitcoin holders, do if we see that many ppl are using this offramp to move into all these different SC's?  how do we interpret an especially popular SC?  Zerg and others say that we should trust Blockstream devs to incorporate any popular function back into the MC. but that would be to violate one of Bitcoins core principles; trust no man.  and incorporating other assets back into MC doesn't even make any sense when you are talking about SC's that offer completely different assets as defined above.  they would have to stay as SC's and i dare say there mere existence destroys Bitcoins liquidity and money function.  

Bitcoin is a simple system currently.

 that's great for a simple money function.  we don't want complexity or risk.  but to add SC's into the equation introduces all sorts of risk and unpredictable consequences.  the price of Bitcoin has to move orders of magnitude higher to achieve its money status.  this is how miners will profit and how adoption will increase.  the only way to achieve this is to target the Forex and gold markets as a Sound Money; the exact same plan that has gotten us to where we are.  those are the Big Kahuna's we want to tap into and this is the strategy that the cypherpunks ultimately envisioned and this is what will take us to the Moon.  we need to force outsiders to buy in.  not allow them to insert an offramp to divert value into insignificant, undesirable or risky asset markets.  

if you've read this thread for any length of time, you can see that what i'm saying above is totally consistent with my positions in the past.  as well as my past memes:

"The blockchain may only ever be applicable to Bitcoin as Money".

"The BTC currency unit is forever inextricably linked to its blockchain.  you break that link and you break Bitcoin".

burterins arguments against the paper:

https://www.reddit.com/user/vbuterin

the reason this one was started was because there was no page number trunking, and you had to scroll through over a thousand page numbers links before you got to the posts.

and because people sometimes posted funny "memes" this was the serious tread ;-) only wall talk.

Ok. Even though I asked for a specific type of transaction, there are many other ways which also fullfill the "purpose". Namely:
a) two transaction outputs (either combined or separate), incoming or outgoing, to/from the bitfunder address of one of the specified amounts (0.13117745, 0.01311774, 0.00131177, 0.00013117)
b) the bitfunder address should at least show one outgoing transaction at the time or after the claim transaction

How you make that work with your particular wallet software should be a matter of personal preference. I hope the above criterium is broad enough to cover all possible wallet behaviors. In its most simplistic version you'd send two 0.13117745 amounts to your bitfunder address within the same timerange and withdraw them afterwards.

you should not move all money from that address as the bitcoin paper describes pruning of transactions from blockchain for empty addresses. if you need your proof to be preserved longterm this is a risk to be aware of