It wouldn't regress because the attack gets cheaper and cheaper to mount over time.

Even outside of an explicit attack scenario, consistently full blocks is the natural state of the network. Whatever incremental limits you put on block size, blocks will become filled shortly afterwards.

So, raising the block size in this manner is a classic "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Block space = highly distributed, permanent storage. It is a very valuable commodity, and users will naturally want to obtain it at the lowest possible price. By allowing demand for transactions to solely determine block size, we would therefore create an endless race towards zero fees and larger block sizes. There would be no built-in check on blockchain growth.

Monero was able to solve this problem by implementing two properties: 1) A penalty function for oversized blocks which lowers the mining reward, and 2) a tail emission. This cannot be implemented in Bitcoin unless users are willing to remove the hard cap on supply.

Every method of securing those sidechains comes with trade-offs.

If they are secured by Bitcoin miners -- like soft-forked or merge-mined sidechains -- they constitute block size increases. All that sidechain bloat is a big disincentive to running a full node, which defeats your purpose.

If they are secured by federated consensus or are simply altcoin chains, they are irrelevant to the question of Bitcoin nodes. These nodes aren't part of the Bitcoin network.

If you're talking about sharding, then you're reducing "fully validating nodes" to "partially validating nodes." This greatly weakens Bitcoin's security, which is largely based on peer-to-peer redundancy.

Adaptive block size increases like this are easily gamed. An attacker intent on bloating block sizes can simply flood the network with transactions. The attack will actually become cheaper over time as block size increases, which makes it especially dangerous.

Correct, those would require hard fork changes to Bitcoin like the implementation of RingCT in Monero and/or CT on the Liquid sidechain.


True, but combined with Schnorr signatures, there are some pretty interesting applications. One could atomically swap from Bitcoin to a different cryptocurrency, but all an observer could see on the blockchain is a simple payment.

That opens up a whole new world for output mixing and amount obfuscation via private payment channels and atomic swaps.

270,000 users and yet you aren't even listed on CoinMarketCap? I'm skeptical! What listing criteria did you fail to meet?

What do you mean by "native token is available?" Didn't you already launch and distribute a token? What does it even do?

You make it sound like this is a working, successful exchange. It looks more like a failed exchange launch where the admins are now just desperate to extract some value from it.

Obviously. I have extensively pointed out how the same is true of bank payments that have already gone through interbank settlement. A court may be able to compel a new payment to be made; they cannot reverse the original one.


They can seize your bitcoin wallets and liquidate them, legally. If you hide/encrypt them, how is that any different than lining the floorboards in my house with cash, or holding bank accounts in other people's names?

If the courts can't find my money, they can't compel me to pay a judgment! This applies to all assets, not just bitcoins. None of this proves your claim that settled bank payments are reversible.


This is all a straw man argument you're constructing. I am not arguing that a state cannot seize a bank account!

This is my argument: A court ordering someone to pay damages, or seizure of a bank account, is not a reversal of the original payment.

When someone says "Bitcoin transactions are irreversible," they mean that transactions cannot be removed from the blockchain. In the same way, a court compelling someone to pay damages does not remove the original transaction from the banks' ledgers.

Here's a way to make this particularly obvious: Court judgments are generally paid by check or bank wire transfer. In the case where a defendant is compelled to repay the plaintiff due to an erroneous Visa charge, the repayment would be done via a completely different payment method. Arguing that the original payment has been "reversed" (removed from the banks' ledgers) is therefore absurd. The defendant received a transaction and was later compelled to send a different transaction.

Your fundamental argument is, "Bank payments can be refunded after the fact. Therefore all bank payments are reversible forever." Let's again apply to this to BTC in a simpler example: I send you some bitcoins. You send the bitcoins right back to me. Based on your logic, the original transaction has been "reversed" when in fact, both transactions will remain on the blockchain forever. You are conflating "reversals" with "refunds" and this is a very important distinction. There is good reason why people say that "Bitcoin is irreversible" instead of "Bitcoin is non-refundable."

Bitcoin is obviously refundable. So are bank payments. That is all you've proven!


This is really getting quite absurd. Chargebacks are reversed transactions.

Until final interbank settlement occurs, chargebacks can occur. After interbank settlement occurs, transactions are irreversible.


No. As a cardholder, you actually legally lose the right to dispute transactions after a certain period of time. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you have 60 days to dispute a credit card transaction. After that, you lose all legal protections. Under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, you have only 2 days to dispute a debit card transaction before becoming liable for up to $500 in fraudulent activity. After 60 days, the bank has no obligation whatsoever to hear your claim.

Furthermore, Visa and Mastercard enforce 60-120 day time limits for disputes in their cardholder agreements, which cardholders have already contractually agreed to. After these settlement windows expire, you have no legal basis to hold Visa/Mastercard or your bank liable for billing errors, processing unauthorized charges, etc.

So, there is actually no legal basis whatsoever for what you're saying. You're just claiming that a bunch of stuff would happen, when it actually wouldn't.


Again, nobody is disputing that banks hold custody of account holders' money. What I am disputing is your claim that banks can arbitrarily steal each other's money ("reverse transactions") after final interbank settlement has already occurred.

Andrew Poelstra presented a similar idea at the L2 Summit in 2018. Once Schnorr signatures are implemented, atomic swap mixing transactions become practical.

The end result:



I think the pricing mechanism will be difficult to implement at scale. Without some kind of incentivized decentralized market making, I'm not sure how it would work.

If two parties simply agree on a price though, it's fairly simple to implement.

It is not arbitrary. All financial institutions in interbank settlement systems contractually agree to the same final settlement conditions.

Some payment methods have far shorter settlement windows. Wire transfers can be permanently settled within minutes or hours. If you are defrauded into sending a bank wire that was settled through Fedwire, there is no way to reverse it. Your only choice is to pursue the fraudster in court and hope you can get a judgment forcing him to pay you back.


Go ahead and prove otherwise. That's how bank settlement works. The terms are agreed to by account issuer and account holder. Once final settlement occurs, the transfer becomes irrevocable and unconditional because the involved financial institutions and the interbank settlement system (like Fedwire or CHIPS) all have contractual obligations to honor final settlement.

If one bank customer screwed up and didn't dispute/cancel a transaction in time, nobody cares. The customer needs to pursue justice through the court system. The transaction will not be reversed.


That's not true.

My bank will not allow your bank to steal money from my account just because of some dispute from 1990, as you suggested. You would need to file a lawsuit against me, and at this point, the statute of limitations would likely have run out too.


What does that have to do with reversing transactions? Nobody claimed that the banking system is not based in trust -- completely separate issue. Now you are just conflating "trustless" with "irreversible."

You were claiming that bank payments can literally never be settled, and are always reversible forever. I am disputing that claim.


A judge ordering a defendant to pay damages ≠ a chargeback. It's ridiculous that you would suggest that.

You're just refusing to address my arguments, while repeating (in different ways) that bank payments can always be reversed forever.


I can't even decipher what you're saying. My point here still stands:



We can agree to disagree if you'd like, but I don't think you've even begun to prove your claims. I would reiterate:

If you take chargebacks out of the equation, what situations are you even talking about?

You're painting this situation where Visa (or any bank) can arbitrarily reverse payments from years or decades into the past. That's preposterous. No bank could ever trust the validity of any payment, ever, if that were true.

Payments cannot be reversed after interbank settlement occurs because banks do not have the authority to steal each other's money.


The bank isn't "reversing" anything. They are paying the damages ordered by a court judgment. That's an entirely new transaction.

Let's apply this to Bitcoin: If BitPay charged me incorrectly and a judge ordered them to repay me, the same logic applies. BitPay would initiate a new refund transaction, not attempt to reverse the original one. Using your logic, this BitPay refund would indicate that Bitcoin is reversible back to the genesis block simply because past payments can be later refunded. Of course, we know that isn't true.

Hopefully this example shows that refunded transactions ≠ reversed transactions, and that bank payments cannot be "reversed" forever. Sorry to be long-winded, but there is a lot of misinformation around here about how the banking system works. Bitcoin's settlement time (minutes/hours) is drastically superior to Visa payments or ACH payments (months). Can't we just leave it at that?

Unfortunately, no. Sidechains are much less secure than Bitcoin.

With a federated sidechain, stealing all the bitcoins on the sidechain only requires collusion by 51% of trusted validators. With a drivechain, 51% of miners can collude to steal all funds on the sidechain.


This isn't true. The filing window on chargebacks (enforced by both Visa and Mastercard) is 120 days, maximum. The filing window for ACH payments is 90 days. That's when payments like these can be reasonably considered "settled."

You might say it's stored within your unconfirmed transaction, which is probably sitting in the mempool of various miners. Until the transaction is actually confirmed on the blockchain, the fee hasn't really been paid.

I don't think he's alluding to that. The Deputy Director was just talking tough.

FinCEN already published pretty sweeping guidance on VASPs last year. I believe it was the first time since 2013 that they had done so. Aside from the occasional enforcement action, I don't expect to hear anything new from them anytime soon.

I wouldn't worry about that. The infection is only known to spread from living host to living host -- human-to-human or animal-to-human. Scientists Link China Coronavirus to Intersection of Humans and Wildlife

Freaky stuff, though...

Again, that just proves that the losing bidders bid too low. That doesn't indicate that government-auctioned bitcoins sell for a discount.

Has there ever been a single case of government-auctioned bitcoins where the winner(s) claimed to have bought under market? I doubt it. That's probably another indication that they actually sell at a premium.

This really boils down to common sense. Why would virgin bitcoins warrant premiums up to 30%, but government-approved bitcoins warrant a discount?

More specifically, the miner who includes your transaction in a valid block may collect the transaction fee.


The Bitcoin Wiki article I linked in this post explains it.


An address the miner specifies in the coinbase transaction of a block. Usually, the entire block reward -- which includes all transaction fees -- will be sent to this address. Any portion of the block reward not claimed this way is permanently destroyed.


A transaction fee does not constitute a discrete bitcoin transaction paid to the miner. The miner collects the transaction fees from every transaction in the block and pays them to himself in a single coinbase transaction.

Look at the coinbase transaction of any block. The output address is the bitcoin address that received all the transaction fees.

In the above example, the "miner" could be a pool operator, sure. It could also be a solo miner. The distinction doesn't really matter to the OP's question.


This situation won't last forever. I expect miners to increasingly demand shared fee revenue from pools. It's only rational because the block subsidy drops and transaction fees rise over time. Miners who contribute hash rate without demanding their full share of the block reward are just being irrational.

Transaction fees are usually collected by the miner who produces the block. Any uncollected fees are permanently destroyed. From the Bitcoin Wiki:


This thread might be better off in Beginners & Help.

It's not just that it's smaller than LocalBitcoins. It's a matter of jurisdiction -- Finland and the EU vs. Australia. The latter has been extremely hands-off with regulation of cryptocurrency. While Australia did amend AML/CFT laws to apply to cryptocurrency and digital tokens, the thresholds are quite lax. Exchanges must register with the state, implement an AML/CTF program, and report suspicious activities, but KYC does not appear to be mandatory and the lowest reporting threshold I see is 10,000 AUD.

I don't even think non-custodial P2P exchanges like LocalCryptos fall under Australia's definition of "digital currency exchange provider", so the above laws probably don't even apply.


Exactly -- we can cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, it'll probably take Australia years to incorporate services like LocalCryptos into the law.

They've been around since 2015 and they have an ANN thread on the forum. They offer a bunch of stock indices and big name stocks like Apple and Amazon.

Although they don't have any active flags or sustained scam accusations against them, there has been at least one instance where they reversed all trades on a listed market without good justification. People definitely lost money because of it, so beware.

That only proves that failed bidders bid below the market rate. If anything, these bitcoins carry a premium for the same reason that "tainted bitcoins" carry a discount.

The fact that Tim Draper won every single lot in that Silk Road auction suggests he paid a premium.


According to the USMS website: