There's nothing contradictory because you deliberately ignore my other examples.


No. Anything before 0.9.5 are not safe because they are not doing full validation. You need to wait for 30 confirmations if you are using anything before 0.9.5, according to https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-mining . The warning is STILL valid as of this writing.

This is NOT true.

The old rules allow me to put anything I want in coinbase but now I must put the block height as the first item. (BIP34)

The old rules allow me to format the signature in many ways but now it's heavily limited. (BIP66)

The ability to "add rules" means the ability to "add bad rules". Adding bad rules is removing "good attributes" from Bitcoin. A softfork could: a) require a centralized service to sign all blocks; b) blacklist addresses; c) burn dormant bitcoin; d) reduce the max block size to 500 bytes; and more. Are you happy with any of these?

Alternatively, with the ability to remove rules, hardfork would allow us to remove "bad rules". If someone managed to introduce bad rules with softfork, the only hope for us is to hardfork and stay away from the bad chain.

--------------------------------------------------

As a Bitcoin expert you should know this fact: full nodes not upgrading after a softfork just PRETEND they are doing full validation. They are just slightly secure than an SPV client. Miners not upgrading after a softfork are just mining fool's gold.

Having said that, I still believe softfork (with super-majority miner support) is a safer practice than hardfork because the new fork will constantly attack the old fork, and it won't create 2 sets of trading tokens.

please define Crypto-Paypal

Try opening a post with the censored keyword in title. One has been moved to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1150450

I just have some ideas for a new block header format.

Targets:
1. Existing ASICs must survive the new format. Otherwise, miners won't agree to upgrade
2. To allow more information included in the header
3. Include height in the header so we could have a monotonic indicator in the header.
4. Headers not being too big for SPV clients

To archive all these targets a hardfork is needed

The header will have the following fields:
1. version (2): unsigned integer. Voting is moved to coinbase. 65536 versions should be enough forever.
2. prev_block (32): hash of the previous block
3. merkle_root (32): Root of merkle-sum-tree for fee, tx size, sigop counts, etc, so compact proofs could be produced for these parameters.
4. timestamp (5): unsigned integer. Enough for >34,000 years.
5. nonce (9): While a 1TH/s miner will exhaust 5 bytes of nonce in 1 second, we won't need longer nonce until miners become 4 billion times faster. (Current ASIC is only 1 million times faster than CPU, so we are taking about >10¹⁸ times faster than current CPU. This may happen only if SHA256 is partially cracked but then we need another algorithm)
6. coinbase (varint): the coinbase will become part of the header, which includes:
6a. height (4 currently): same as BIP34, consume 4 bytes for the following 300 years.
6b. bits (4): target in compact form
6c. arbitrary data: voting for fork proposals, merge mining, etc.

The max header size at the beginning is 160 bytes, which will allow 160-2-32-32-5-9-1^#-4-4=71 bytes of arbitrary data.
(^#To calculate the header size, the length indicator for coinbase is also counted)
The max header size is allowed to double every 4 years so more info could be included in the future.

Block hash is calculated as follow:

d-SHA256(version|prev_block|d-SHA256(merkle_root|coinbase^*)|timestamp|nonce)
(^* without length indicator)

In this way, the change is transparent to existing ASICs because they will still think they are hashing a 80-bytes header.

You know how Chinese people survive under the oppressive Great Firewall? They will replace those "keywords" with *** and the stupid firewall won't find it.

There is nothing suicide in my post. It just tells people how to segregate their coins. How do people spend the coins is a different issue

Because it's only BS if not signed by Satoshi's public key

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
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=3FTe
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Houbi and BTCChina support 8MB: http://cointelegraph.com/news/114577/chinese-mining-pools-propose-alternative-8-mb-block-size

Yes, you just need to "taint" your bitcoin with newly generated bitcoin. After the first >1MB block is generated,

1. Ask someone to send you some bitcoin (1 satoshi is enough) which is generated on the new chain after the fork (or taint bitcoin created with this method)

2. Using an upgraded client (e.g. Bitcoin XT), create a new address and send all your bitcoin to yourself . Most importantly, the transaction input has to include the bitcoin from step 1. Wait for several confirmations.

3. Now you have 2 independent sets of bitcoin. You can safely send your old bitcoin to other people using an old client, e.g. Bitcoin Core 0.11.

Note:

a. It is very important to make sure the bitcoin from step 1 is truly taint bitcoin. Use a block explorer to follow the history of the coin, to make sure at least one of its ancestors is a coinbase transaction AFTER the first >1MB block is generated. A merely activation of BIP101 (i.e. 750 out of 1000 blocks support) is not enough. The fork does not happen until the first >1MB block is generated

b. If you send your old/new bitcoin to someone before step 2 is done, you are at the same sending your new/old bitcoin to that person.

c. If the fork is really successful, it is unlikely that you will be able to spend your old bitcoin, because no miner will be mining the chain. Even if a few miners are running, the small block size won't be able to handle your transaction.

 

Yes, it's at ATH but still nothing significant

I ran Bitcoin Core for >3 years, and I turned it off today

I am now running Bitcoin**Censored**

Any new OP codes (including signature checking codes) could be introduced by soft fork (Consider P2SH-like technique)

155XBT bought in July 2015

Search "casino dice" on google

This tx is obviously invalid, as the reason you mentioned. Except the 25BTC reward for each block, any attempt to generate bitcoin out of thin air is invalid.

A block containing any invalid tx is simply invalid. Miners mining invalid blocks are just wasting time and energy.

I think standard-ness are just relay policy and not necessarily defined in BIP

There is no reason to allow invalid public key being recorded in the blockchain. It's an abuse of the system.

English video:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20150801_05.html

It should be. But how about 10 years? 100 years? This is a tough question as that means every rule change in the future must be backward compatible forever.