Thank you for stating it in a far more eloquent fashion than I can normally manage.  I've been saying something along those lines (admittedly with more insults included) to franky1 for weeks now.  I don't know if it's just willful ignorance on his part, or if his brain just isn't wired up in a way that allows him to comprehend it.  Bitcoin is working as intended.  There's no conspiracy.  There isn't an all-powerful entity pulling the strings behind the scenes.  It's just people freely choosing to run code that does what they want it to do.  I'm pretty sure that was Satoshi's original idea, so all is well.

How can they be operating at a loss if they're saving money by cutting down on their own on-chain transaction fees?  Something tells me you need to research this stuff a little more before you go saying stuff that sounds pretty dumb.



As a proportion of the coin's value, that's hardly an impressive achievement.  Those crapcoins you're talking about are only worth a tiny fraction of a penny.

$0.000129 USD is the current value of a single Mintcoin.  That means you'd have to spend 0.1 mintcoin as a transaction fee.  Imagine if Bitcoin's fee was 0.1 BTC?  Not exactly what a sensible person would call good value for money.  Go back to hyping up your worthless Shitecoin in the altcoins subforum and leave the LN discussion to the grown-ups.

So which developers have highlighted the issue that they've put a hold on innovation?  Because that sounds like something you're making up.  Stick to highlighting things that are actually true and I won't call you out on them.  It's really not that difficult to understand.  If you don't spread misinformation, I'll have no need to correct it.  And since you failed to answer last time, I'll ask again:

If there is more innovative code out there, would you care to point us to it?  Clearly there's a gap in the market if BTC's development has stagnated.  Where's all the exciting progress being made right now?  What revolutionary concepts do you have to share with us, franky1?  Nothing?  Thought as much. 

Or are you just trying (and failing) to recruit members for your little hate campaign because you got ridiculed that one time?


Bitterness does strange things to people.  Maybe you should see a therapist or something? 

No it isn't.  You just need to stop being paranoid about them.



Many idiots, maybe.  Real innovations don't merely involve tinkering with a few static variables and pretending that's somehow going to solve all the problems.  Surely if innovation was on hold, someone would be able to come up with something better?  If you think there's more innovative code out there, would you care to point us to it?  

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"

If Satoshi had stopped to explain to every single person who didn't get it, they never would have got anything done.  Sometimes you just have to get on with it and allow for other people to get there on their own.  The opportunity is there, but if people choose not to take it, that's up to them.

Yes, here we go again.   

It's a perfectly fair comparison to make when you keep trying to turn BTC into BCH.  You're the one bringing it up each and every time you obnoxiously declare that we should be doing things like other coins are doing.  There is already a chain that have placed the sole focus towards on-chain scaling.  This chain isn't doing that.  There is no point in having two chains both following a similar roadmap.  That would be redundant.  It's better to try divergent paths and then see which one turns out to be correct.  My bet is on the BTC chain, supported by Lightning.  You place your bets wherever you want.  Whether you call Lightning a "layer" or something else entirely, doesn't change the fact that this is what we're doing.  You don't have to like it, you don't have to use it, but STFU if you think you can stop it.  None of your weasel-words can change what is already set in motion.

If BTC users eventually decide they want more on-chain scaling, then that's what will happen.  Until then, you need to accept that, on the whole, they don't want more on-chain scaling right now.  Consensus has been reached no matter how much you cry foul on exactly how that came about. 



How about realise that we already know that.  You talk as though you're revealing some sort of greater truth to us, like we're total simpletons who don't get it.  We know what we're doing.  It's what we want to do.  You're the one who doesn't get it.  You think that just because you want to do something else, we can't do what we've already started doing.  The onus is on you to forge your own path if you can't reconcile your differences with us.  We are many, you are few.  You can tell us we're wrong all you like, but you can't stop us, so your words are falling on deaf ears because you can't come up with a convincing argument.

The idea of cryptocurrency is that it's trustless, but as soon as you introduce a commodity, you're back to trusting someone to hold that commodity securely.  All you really have is an IOU and a hope that it means you can actually redeem your tokens for physical gold.  In which case, why not just hold the gold if that's what you really want?

Also, it's normally the governments of the world who are holding most of the gold, so how would a cryptocurrency bring the government down if it's backed by the same gold the government itself is holding?

Similar, perhaps, but it's not exactly a direct comparison.  If they buy a company, they're in direct control of that companys direction.  When you buy altcoins, you're mostly at the mercy of the developers and the direction they choose to take the altcoin in.

If they do have big plans for Polo, as figmentofmyass alluded to, it's still baffling why they would buy something and let it fall apart while they move other strategic pieces into position, rather than just building something from scratch to coincide with the rest of the plan coming together.

Okay then.  It initially seemed like a fair amount of infrastructure was needed for it to work.  But aside from the optional card, it's also a standard Lightning wallet which is compatible with other Lightning clients?  That part I can get behind.

I'm pretty much convinced at this stage that Circle don't have a "vision" and simply lurch from one disaster to the next, heh.  Their first attempt at an exchange was a failure.  I stopped using Polo as soon as they got involved, but everything I hear sounds like it's a worse service than it used to be.  I think it's a company where I'm going to do everything humanly possible to avoid dealing with them.

Read the whitepaper on the website, but I'm not sure where they think they're going with this.  It talks about supplying merchants with point-of-sale systems and users needing to give their physical address details to apply for a card to use it?  How is this ever getting off the ground?

That's a topic for another section of the boards, really.  You can read this blog by BitMex to understand the difference between XRP and real cryptocurrencies.

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I'd have expected academics to be smarter.  This ridiculous theory only holds true if the individuals contributing to these pools had no free will.  China are not the equivalent of "the Borg" from Star Trek.  Each person is fully capable of thinking for themselves and directing their hashpower accordingly.

Worse still is when people who claim that China are a threat to decentralisation decide the best course of action is to resort to a centralised solution to neutralise that supposed threat.  But in reality, it is they who are the bigger threat to decentralisation.  There are some people (who I would call utter fuckwits) on this forum who genuinely believe that because they are personally uncomfortable with China's level of contribution to the hashrate, that we should change Bitcoin in an attempt to prevent the use of ASICs or pools and to change Bitcoin's proof-of-work mechanism to something totally experimental and untested.  I'd have thought it went without saying that Bitcoin is not centrally planned in that way, so no one should be in a position to determine what percentage of Chinese hashpower is "acceptable".  These things are meant to be permissionless.  Contribute as much or as little hashpower to the network as you desire, but don't try to restrict others from doing the same.

If we set the precedent that someone gets to decide when any particular region is contributing "too much" to the hashrate, something has gone badly wrong and freedom is under threat.  It's also just a touch sanctimonious to be making arguments about China's totalitarianism if the person saying that would be resorting to the same tactic to fight them.  

It's not a complicated problem.  If the average person wants to rebalance the distribution of mining power, sink some money into mining equipment, start hashing and contribute to a pool in your own locale.  If China have achieved dominance, it's because they're willing to invest their time, money and effort into mining.  The cheap electricity also comes in handy, obviously.  But if you've got no skin in the game, it's not your call.  Either match the time, money and effort that others are putting in, or quit your bitching.

If Trump's White House think Ripple is a better alternative, then they're even more braindead than I thought.  Please put all your eggs in that basket, idiots.  Please.  It would prove beyond all doubt that Ripple is centralised (in case that wasn't already crystal clear).

Liquid and Lightning are designed to perform different roles.  There's a decent article here about the launch, which does a good job of highlighting Liquid's purpose.  The crucial distinction is that Lightning involves sending transactions off-chain, whereas Liquid is a pegged sidechain.  Liquid transactions are recorded on a blockchain, but not the same one as Bitcoin.  The companies listed in that article are basically maintaining their own blockchain.

Is it exactly the same, though?  Aside from the obvious point about 1 USDT being currently worth ~$0.97 instead of $1.00, I mean.  The terms and conditions set by Tether seem to point to them not being equal at all.  If the peg fails dramatically and USDT value tanks versus the dollar, then they are not the same as holding USD.  No one appears to be covering that potential loss of value in the eyes of the law.

"Able" and "willing" are two very different things.   

Unless by "Binance" you mean "Bitfinex", then no.  Binance are not guaranteeing the value of Tether, so they will not owe their users anything.  I'm pretty sure there was something in the fine print that said even Tether themselves aren't guaranteeing the peg.  If you lose all your money in Tether, it is your fault.  Don't treat it differently to any other coin, because I don't see any greater likelihood of someone bailing you out than with any other coin.

Having checked Tether's Legal page, even living in "certain US states" (although they neglect to mention which ones) is already enough to invalidate any claim you might think you have.

//EDIT:  and further down the page:


So yeah, in plain English, if it goes to zero, don't expect any handouts.  

Roubini has been saying the same thing for years.  He's in dire need of some new material.  Many cryptocurrencies are worthless, but that doesn't mean they all are.  Just be careful to choose the right ones.



If it's the "exact text", then you need to credit the source, which I assume is this article.  People get banned from the forum daily for not crediting the source.  Don't be one of them.

Concurred.  I suggested this back in April.  While it's unlikely that a forum denizen would download an outdated wallet just because they happened to see MultiBit mentioned there, it's better if we don't take any chances.

Good point.  It's not the fiat price of Bitcoin going up, it's Tether losing value and failing to maintain the peg it's supposed to keep to the US Dollar. 

But since Tether is very closely associated with Bitfinex and both share the same CEO and other senior executives, if one has a problem, then naturally so does the other.  Users who hold Tether will also have a problem, as they are effectively creditors to Tether with very few options for recourse if something goes seriously wrong (or if it's already too late and something has gone seriously wrong). 

People need to remember that Tether is more of a company than it is a cryptocurrency and you're placing a large amount of trust in that company when you store your wealth in USDT.