Let us put this on a row:

- ethereum is in beta test mode, so anything goes.  Is this the place to have projects with a crowd funding of hundreds of millions ?

- a single person having up to 14% of ethereum is visibly a problem, then why was a single project (the DAO) a few times larger ?

- the value proposition of ethereum and smart contracts was "the code is the law" but it isn't because you have too much money invested in a too big to fail project IN BETA TEST MODE ?

So then you guys "voted" to put a funny hack in the code to do away with "the code is the law", and to do away with the "immutability of the chain", which were exactly the two value propositions of ethereum.

Instead of the dictate of democracy where a majority imposes its will (especially its will to kill the basic tenets on which the system is supposed to be build), a fork is way, way better: those that go with "too big to fail and bailout" have ETH, and those that want to stick with "the code is the law" and immutability have ETC.  Everyone happy.

What shall we then say about the ETH fork ?  Whose project was that ?

Amen !

ETH fork = DAO bagholders cashout project.

You have several things backward.  The most important thing is this, and I already said it in another thread: ETC and ETH are the same (open source) code, up to a few if statements that were recently added to the ETH code to bail out DAO "investors" and which are absent from the (old ETH and) ETC code.  Every single development that the ETH team does, can be incorporated without the slightest effort into the ETC code.  You don't need a huge team to copy-paste code from another open source project, do you.

Concerning the miners, they will go where profit is, and hence the hash rate will adapt to the market value, and not the other way around.  If the ratio of hash rate over market value is higher for ETC than for ETH, then they will move to ETC until the equilibrium is reached.

So ultimately it is determined by the market price of ETC / ETH.  This is totally open to speculation.  Ideally, one would expect that people spread risk and go for equality, but then nobody knows.  As most ETH holders are automatically also ETC holders, they can sell their ETC for ETH, they can sell their ETH for ETC or they can keep  both balances.  One would rationally expect (but markets often do other things) that people would put the same value on both, meaning that right now, they'd buy ETC with ETH because you can get more ETC, and there are just as many of both.  That said, this can go anywhere. 
The only parties for which things are different, are the DAO hacker, and the DAO bailed out people, who have respectively only ETC and ETH.  Their respective fan clubs might dump one in favor of the other in order to influence the balance.

As technically, both chains are identical and all future smart contracts will be implementable on both, there is objectively not the slightest difference in the long term expectance, which is why rationally, people should put their VALUE 50% - 50%, meaning they should right now swap part of their ETH for ETC.
But we all know that markets don't always behave rationally.

I don't follow you here.  Given that it is exactly the same code as ETH, every development of ETH is automatically a development for ETC.  Every smart contract on ETH is automatically a smart contract on ETC.  So apart from someone regularly copying the code, what development effort is needed ?
The ETC code is the same as the ETH code, with just a few "if" statements concerning the DAO and hacker accounts less.

This is brilliant, I fully support the ETC chain !

Moreover, this is an unprecedented experiment with a genuine hard fork (that is, with two viable chains) where real money is involved - this never happened before to my knowledge.

This is "consensus" in a new daylight.  It is individual right over "democratic dictatorship", in the same way as when a region gains independence from a larger country.  This is the crypto equivalent of independence day !

Well, I know of two ways of moderation: or all messages have first to be approved, or all messages get posted until someone complains, at which point a moderator intervenes.  This can be partly automatic, by tagging certain messages on length, on specific words, .... But no.  I had comments pending, and others, on the same article, posted later, longer, shorter, posted directly.  The funny thing was that those pending all had one specific aspect: they said that 1800 coins a day should be compared to the total daily traded volume.
(BTW, now, they have been released, 2 days later).

This is not the first time that I see this kind of systematic pending of comments on a certain subject.

I noticed something on coindesk.  When I add a comment to an article, sometimes it becomes "pending".  It seems related to the content of what I write, and not to the length, the number or whatever of the comments.

Recently, I tried to add a comment saying that the halving of bitcoin, resulting in 1800 coins less a day, should be compared to the daily traded volume (and hence is tiny as an effect).  Each contribution mentioning that is pending.  Other contributions of mine on the same article aren't pending.  I had a few "long" ones, and also a few one-liners.

Is there a sensorship on coindesk ? 

This has happened before too on other subjects.  It seems content-related.  Some comments simply don't seem to make it (or only days later, when the readership of the article has diminished).

This is also known as the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

I think the possibility of miners changing the protocol not to see the halving would imply that the very next day, the bitcoin price would be about $0,-.

The whole concept of bitcoin is that it is based on a non-inflationary belief ; on the idea that there is no arbitrary central bank that can switch on the bill press at will.  The day that you see that miners can decide to change this, you can expect that a year later, they decide to double or triple their rewards.  After all, what would stop them if the first change in protocol passed ?
That would mean that the bitcoin production is unlimited and can at any moment be changed at random, if enough miners want so.

It is as if you discovered that there's a chemical way of turning sand into gold.  Who is going to buy gold now at high prices ?

So, yes, miners could, if they were totally corrupt or stupid, decide to get away from the halving protocol, and kill bitcoin that way, because then they have shown that miners can get together in a 51% cartel, and decide what they want about how many bitcoins will exist, and who will get them.  They can then overnight decide also to reward themselves one billion bitcoins each.  Why wouldn't they ?

I think you shouldn't see the denomination in dollars as something specific to dollars, but just as a more reliable measure of market value.  As I said, you could just as well express the market value of bitcoin in Big Mac: how many Big Mac can you buy for a bitcoin ?

The main difficulty is that the answer to that is probably 0, because Mc Donalds doesn't accept bitcoin most of the time.  So using an intermediate asset that CAN buy Big Macs directly and for which the price of a Big Mac is relatively stable IS a relatively good way to measure the buying power (market value) of bitcoin  - it lacking actual direct buying power for most commodities most of the time.

You also measure the market value of gold or paper assets in dollar, Euro, Yuan, Yen, ... simply because these fiat monetary assets are directly usable to buy stuff, are relatively stable in the short term, and hence have a psychological representation of market value.

(a Big Mac has a relatively stable price in fiat money).

But it is well-designed in the sense that the numerical dynamics of bitcoin corresponds exactly to the ratio of the world monetary market cap over the smallest reasonable unit of money (20 trillion over 0.01 = 2 x 10^15 which is exactly the bitcoin dynamics, that is the total number of Satoshis that will be created).  Call it a coincidence.


The point is that on the short term, the dollar has a higher price stability and has a better representation of market value than bitcoin itself.  You could express bitcoin in pizza or in Big Mac, and the variations you would see, would be pretty similar to those in dollar or Euro or ...

Because the market cap (times a velocity factor which is normally of the order of single digit) for a monetary asset determines its scope.  It wouldn't mean a lot to compare to the market cap of, say, Apple or so.  But it does mean a lot when compared to monetary market caps.

The upper limit of bitcoin's market cap is of course the world's M2 market cap.  There's simply not more money in the world (savings deposits, cash, bank accounts, ....).  Bitcoin can at most replace all monetary assets.  It can't replace production capital for instance.  It can't replace an airplane.   So that upper market cap brings bitcoin in the few million dollar of today range.
It would mean that there isn't any fiat money in the world any more.  It would mean that all fiat money in the world, on bank accounts, cash, on savings accounts has been replaced by bitcoin, and doesn't exist any more.  No more dollars, Yuan, Yen, Rubbles, Euros....  all of them replaced by bitcoin and no altcoin.  THEN, and ONLY THEN, a coin will be what is a few million dollars right now.


Indeed.  But you should realize that bitcoin can only take on their market cap if the asset under consideration has ITSELF lost its value.  So Bitcoin will replace gold's market cap when gold will have become worthless and you can exchange a kg of gold for a pizza.

If ever that were the case, bitcoin would become a genuine currency...

The fact that the numerical dynamics for bitcoin can be adapted to "replacing all the money in the world" has no relationship to the probability that that will happen of course.  It is just that the dynamic range of bitcoin is of exactly the right size to do so, and to keep as smallest denomination something of the kind of the smallest actual monetary denomination in dollar (a few cent).

The main problem with bitcoin at that point wouldn't be the scale of the smallest denomination, but the huge amount of transactions and the mindboggling size of the blockchain.

I think your time frame is about correct.  In order to reach 1 million dollars (of today), bitcoin needs to replace about half of all fiat M2 money in the whole world.  (the current world amount of M2 money is $55 trillion)  That will take a few generations at least.

The question is whether an old technology like bitcoin at that point (200 years old) will still be the dominant cryptocurrency.

If it is a "base currency" and there are more modern ones used for day to day use, then this diminishes the market share of bitcoin of course ; bitcoin could then more look like M0 money, which is 10 times less.  So then the highest possible value for bitcoin would be something of a few $ 100 000,- of now.

Indeed, the dynamic range of bitcoin was designed to be able to cover all possible values.  The highest possible value for a bitcoin is in the 1 million dollar range, simply because then the market cap of bitcoin reaches the 20 trillion dollar equivalent, which is, up to a factor 2 or 3, the total amount of M2 money in the world.

In other words, if bitcoin replaces all the M2 money everywhere in the world, and for the rest, the velocity of money is comparable to what it is now, then a bitcoin will be worth what is now a few million dollars.  (of course, at that moment, a few million dollars won't even buy you a bread, because the dollar has collapsed and is replaced by bitcoin)

You can hardly expect bitcoin to be more worth than all the money in the world.  So this is a fair upper limit of the value of a bitcoin.

This is why it was relatively wise to put 8 decimals after the comma, so that the smallest unit (the Satoshi) is then a small amount of money (worth what is now one cent).

So yes, the reasonable upper limit of value of bitcoin is what is now a few million dollars.

Yes, but a peak exactly the day of the Marshall sales ?

There can be coincidences in life, but this one is too big, no ?

How come that the bitcoin price, after a large period of stability, starts rising around the day of announcement of the auction, peaks exactly at the day of bidding, and drops afterwards ?  Who's the winner here ?  USMS, no ?  But in order for this price rise to be done since beginning of October, a steady manipulation is needed.   The idea of a sale cannot induce the market in increasing the price: indeed, the sale will increase offer.  If there were any anticipated effect of "greater visibility to bitcoin" or the like, there's no reason why it would crash after the sale - on the contrary.
The bidders themselves have not the slightest interest to have a high bitcoin price exactly on the day of bidding.
This only makes sense if we believe that part of the US government is manipulating bitcoin itself.

Normally I'm not in such "conspiracy stuff" but this is too overtly obvious.  Unless we have to go to a higher-order interpretation, and think of who wants us to think that the US governement is manipulating bitcoin.  Banks, maybe ?