I'm sorry it's so difficult for you to follow, Carlton, but it hasn't changed.

If there is noticeable support for a proposed fork, someone had coded something and a reasonable number of people appear to be behind the idea, there's literally no choice but to let the market decide.  No devs are "in control" or "own" the entire network.  Any dev can submit code.  Everyone runs what they want.  That's how it always has worked, that's how it always will work.

After a fork has occurred, the minority chain doesn't get to steal the name from the majority.  That's just going to further confuse the uninitiated, who may find it complicated enough to climb what's already a fairly steep learning curve to begin with.  There's nothing stopping them from trying to steal the name, perhaps, but the majority are going to make their presence felt and inevitably deny them.

This doesn't fall into either of those categories.  If you're a lone wolf with an incompatible, barely conceived idea that goes completely against the permissionless ethos of Bitcoin, like kicking people off the network for example, then it's pretty obvious you need to go create your permissioned chain somewhere else.  But sure, if you want to set the precedent that we're suddenly okay with banning companies we might disagree with from Bitcoin, you go right ahead.  Why not add some blacklisting and a new supply limit while we're at it?   

More ideology over practicality, then?  Whatever ideas, schemes or plans you come up with, they won't be compatible with Bitcoin.  I suggest you go play in the altcoins subforum if you're that desperate to have your ASICectomy coin.  You're more of a threat to the security of the chain than any manufacturer could ever hope to be.  You'd happily sacrifice everything to vanquish your chosen foe, even if that meant putting the chain in danger.

Technically, there was no such thing as a "non-mining node" when the whitepaper was written.  I suspect the CPU -> GPU -> ASIC arms race evolved far more quickly than Satoshi envisaged.  The original idea was that everyone running a full node would be mining and everyone else would be using SPV.  But, as with seemingly all economies, we had to go and invent the "middle class".  Thus, non-mining nodes came into being.

This is why some people proposed re-writing the whitepaper to make that distinction clearer.  Non-mining nodes are important because mining began to centralise at too rapid a pace.

So much this.  I'm sure it has some novelty value, but it's not even remotely conducive to providing useful information about financial matters.  

If anyone is taking serious investment advice from Snapchat advertisements, then, to be blunt, you've got bigger problems in your life and you've taken a major wrong turn somewhere.  Reevaluate your priorities immediately if you would even consider putting money into something because an in-app ad told you it was a good idea.  If you're that easily manipulated, or your impulse control is that poor, you need to put the device away now and not use it again until you've got your shit together.

Alternatively, it could be bad news for Mr Schiller now that he has placed his Nobel-winning reputation on the line with his remarks.  His opinions might not be taken seriously by investors for much longer if it turns out he was wrong.  All these "experts" should be more careful what they say, given the number of times over the years people have tried to write off Bitcoin.  But after all that's been said, Bitcoin doesn't care.  It carries on churning out blocks, completely undistracted by whatever criticisms are thrown its way.

Somehow I thought this topic would be more active.  It's safe to say the "war on cash" just took a big hit.  Hopefully this serves as a timely wake up call for all those who think centralised systems are safe.  People won't appreciate being pushed towards cashless payments if they can't trust the card provider.  Millions of people have just had their confidence in the establishment shaken.  

*obligatory meme*

Seeing reports that millions of people currently aren't able to use theirs cards for purchases all over Europe.  Maybe people will finally start to understand why centralised systems are vulnerable to failure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44335804
https://news.sky.com/story/visa-card-problems-hit-uk-customers-and-businesses-11392087
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/visa-card-payment-down-mastercard-not-working-broken-payment-shop-a8379381.html

<Insert "Bitcoin user not affected" gif here>


//EDIT:  Even though I posted this first, one of the forum mods has started a thread for this, so I'll redirect everyone there:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4398048.0

At least they can't say they weren't warned, heh.  I think in 20 years from now, many of them will regret not heeding this advice.  It's nice to see those outside of the community acknowledging that what we're doing really does present a legitimate challenge to the established order of things and we're not going away or giving up.  This is the kind of publicity we should be seeing more of as things continue to mature.  The less talk of "bubble"/"ponzi"/"tulip" nonsense we get, the better.

It seems like franky1 has warped his mind so badly with his own propaganda that he no longer remembers events as they actually occurred.  

Hey franky1, maybe tell us how many miners were still actively producing legacy blocks on August 1st?  The main thing I remember about August 1st was that BCH forked out of nowhere with barely any support and they couldn't even find a block until much later in the day.  Everyone was expecting drama and fireworks, but it was more of a sad, disappointing, wet fart.  



True enough, miners certainly had a fairly big role to play as well, so I'll edit my post to include that.  But the users ultimately agreed with the miners and elected to go for SegWit.  If the miners had activated SegWit and the users didn't want it, the chain wouldn't have lasted very long.  Plus, it was the /BTC1 client (which was not maintained by the Core team, so it's baffling as to how franky thinks it's their fault) that got the ball rolling.  



For the record, I was never personally a fan of the UASF, to put it mildly, heh.  That's not quite what I meant when I said it's the users who make the decisions.  Miners can't make changes unilaterally without users -and- users can't make changes unilaterally without miners.  Well... either can try, but probably won't get far.  There's an equilibrium to maintain.

I'd only encourage a UASF to witness the spectacle of it falling flat on its face.  

"Waaaa!  Core did this!  Waaaa!  Core did that!"

NO.

Users and miners made a conscious decision to run code that rejected blocks that weren't signalling for SegWit, therefore it was the users and miners who made that happen.  It doesn't matter where the code came from, or who made it, because code is completely meaningless if no one runs it.  The network participants make the decisions, not the devs.  I don't know how many more times you need it hammered into that thick head of yours.  If the users didn't agree with the effects of that code, it wouldn't have happened.  Come back when you have the first clue what you're talking about.

Found two in the same thread, both from the same sig campaign, [GREENISHCOIN].  Not exactly how they should be aiming to promote their coin.  Only noticed because one of them copied my post, heh.

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User kim_min888  [BANNED]

Copy:


Original:

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User joker19  [BANNED]

Copy:


Original

Any coin that doesn't have a strong hashrate might be vulnerable.  There are certainly some Proof-of-Work coins that might "die" because they fell victim to a 51% attack (which, it should be stressed, isn't the most accurate name, since it's possble to carry out an attack with less than 51%, it's just harder to do). 

There's a balance to be struck between the market value of the coin in question and the hashrate it will need to keep it relatively safe.  Coins which aren't particularly valuable won't need as much security, because there's little financial incentive in attacking those chains.  Conversely, valuable coins necessitate greater security and more hashrate.

The low fees are good news, but the way in which news.bitcoin.com is attempting to rename the Bitcoin chain using their articles is bad news.  I'm not giving them any further traffic unless they stop doing that.  I'd suggest others do the same.

It's also disingenuous to state that less people are using the Bitcoin network, since, with the advent of Lightning, it's no longer possible to keep count of all the off-chain transactions being made.  It's impossible to tell how many people are using Bitcoin now.  I'm not reading the full article, but I assume it's another pitiful attempt at promoting BCH via manipulative means.

You can't take anything on that site at face value anymore.

And I'm highlighting the hypocrisy that Ver thinks it's okay to rename Bitcoin when he doesn't like other people renaming Bitcoin Cash.  Selective quoting much?  You left that point out entirely and decided to make an entirely unrelated point.

The full quote was as follows:

Don't skirt the real issue here.  You don't get to tell other people what to call their chain.  I literally could not care less about how centralised you think Bitcoin is, or how much you think that one developer is in total control, or that you don't like the way in which bitcoin.org promote the BTC chain.  None of that means you get to tell anyone what their chain is called.  That's not how it works.

I don't own "Bitcoin Core" because that's a dev team.  If you try telling other people that I do own "Bitcoin Core", I'm going to tell you you're wrong.  Because you are.  I own some BTC and some BCH.  I can tell them apart because they each have their own unique names.  I can explain the difference to other people without changing those names.  I don't own a dev team, so stop telling me I do.

And back to the point you raised while selectively quoting, people only started talking about suing Ver when he started making people lose money by failing to make it clear what they were buying.  Now that they've changed the website, I'd only support suing him for those who have already lost money because of his actions.  There's no need to sue for future unless more people are ripped off because they were misled.  The situation should be resolved going forward, though.  Again, there's no need to keep arguing about this (aside from your moronic insistence that we need to rename Bitcoin because Ver mislead people through his own incompetence.  Keep arguing about that all you want, but you won't get anywhere), because they've now taken steps to remedy it.  Problem solved.  They've changed the website.  It's better now.  Drop it already, we aren't renaming shit.  You call it whatever you want.



Yeah, because that would definitely clear things up to people who haven't got the slightest clue how crypto works yet.  

"Welcome to Bitcoin, here are over a dozen coins that are completely incompatible with each other, but we'll leave to your completely inexperienced guesswork to figure out which one you need".

I don't see anything going wrong there.  Nope.  Not a thing.  

If certain websites have enough trouble making the distinction between just two coins, I don't think it's wise to risk the multitude of others.

On a more serious note, perhaps people should be taught that Core aren't a centralised authority that controls Bitcoin.  Maybe that message is getting lost along the way somewhere.  I don't have any arguments with that point.  You are correct that many people here on the forum seem to be under the mistaken impression that only one dev team are permitted to decide what the rules should be.  People who think that are wrong.  No ifs or buts about it.  Core submit code and if the users like it they run that code.  Other developers submit code, if users prefer that code, they'll run that instead.  That's the beauty of it.  However, no one is under any obligation to promote code they might not agree with.  Not least due to the fact it would make the learning curve much more steep for newcomers.



Yes.  And it was Ver who make a complete cock-up of that and made people think BCH was BTC.  He failed to make the distinction correctly, despite the fact that he's the one who needs to make it clear because he wants to discuss both chains.  He made people lose out because he made them think they were getting something they weren't.  His mistake, not ours.  But now, you're making the argument that, because of his mistake, we are somehow under some sort of obligation to rename our entire chain to "Bitcoin Core" even when we aren't talking about BCH?  Get a damn clue already.

I'm done with trying to be polite about this.  Fuck off.  And I mean right off.  That's not how it works.  You don't get to muddy the waters by confusing newbies and then tell us it's our job to fix it.  That's completely asinine.  It's not our job to stop other people on the internet doing stupid shit.  There are ways to make a distinction without trying to rename a chain that doesn't belong to you.  We have a distinction already, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, or BTC and BCH.  If I need to make it clear to someone what chain I'm talking about, those are the names I'll be using.

Again, I don't own "Bitcoin Core" because that's a dev team.  If you try telling other people that I do own "Bitcoin Core", I'm going to tell you you're wrong.  Because you are.  I own some BTC and some BCH.  I can tell them apart because they each have their own unique names.  I can explain the difference to other people without changing those names.  I don't own a dev team, so stop telling me I do.

Now, is there any more completely unrelated drivel about decentralisation and defence caps you'd like to throw in to try and deflect from the fact that your efforts are completely futile?  If you have to keep pissing into the wind, don't spray other people in the process.  That's what your actions here amount to and people don't appreciate it.  You're only encouraging more people to take shots at Ver for causing this whole mess.  Let it go already.

Indeed.  ETH could have it's own type of Atomic Swap mechanism, but it likely wouldn't be compatible with the Lightning implementation.  Some coins can already do Atomic Swaps without Lightning.  I recall Burst and Qora did it what seems like ages ago now, then Litecoin and Decred did it earlier this year.  So there are definitely workarounds that don't involve Lightning, but I get the sense that Lightning's method will be comparatively easier and more convenient.  

To confuse matters, apparently there's a distinction to be made between "on-chain atomic swaps" and "off-chain atomic swaps".  On-chain atomic swaps have to have the same hash algorithm for both coins.  Off-chain atomic swaps won't have that limitation.

There's probably still time for some standardisation to occur, since it's all still very much in its infancy.  With the immense network effects that Bitcoin commands, that will probably have the biggest influence on how most coins try to implement it.  It's fair to assume most coins would want to be compatible with BTC if they can.

Okay, I think you've made your point.  We've all seen it now.  Take it down a notch, maybe?  

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No single individual can redefine what Bitcoin is when there are countless users around the world who already know what it is.  You need those users to agree with your usage of the name, or it's inevitable you're going to face a backlash.  So it's not the exact same argument at all.  You have a tendency to blame the individual for circumstances that are borne of the actions of the many.  You can't blame theymos for the fact that the majority of users agree with him.  That's just how it is.  If the users didn't agree with theymos, he too would face a backlash for attempting to steal the name from the users.

There's a double standard involved here, too.  Could you imagine if bitcoin.org did promote both chains, but insisted on calling the BCH chain "bcash" on their site?  Just visualise the total meltdown Roger Ver would have then.  That would be poor form on the part of bitcoin.org, because that chain isn't called "bcash" and BCH users generally don't want it to be called that.  The same applies in reverse, so bitcoin.com shouldn't be calling the BTC chain "bitcoin core" against the wishes of BTC users because that's equally poor form.

There's nothing stopping you from calling it Bitcoin Core if that's how you want to distinguish it from Bitcoin Cash, but you're going to need to accept the fact that all the BTC users who have literally zero interest in buying or spending BCH don't need to make that distinction.  It's inevitable they're going to keep calling the two chains "Bitcoin" and "Bitcoin Cash".  And that's literally your best case scenario here, because if you piss the BTC users off by trying to change their chain's name without their consent, they're all going to start calling Bitcoin Cash "bcash" instead.  I haven't so far, but if you keep forcing this utter futility of yours, I just might start.  

You call it what you want, we're calling it Bitcoin.  End of.



Do you walk into your local British shops and ask "Is that the Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian or British Pound?"

Of course you fucking don't.  You'd only ask about those pounds if you specifically wanted to use those particular currencies.  If we're not transacting in BCH, we don't need to make any distinction.  So give up with the bullshit already.  You call it what you want.  We'll call it what we want.  And I assure you we won't be calling it anything other than Bitcoin or BTC.

Again, there was nothing particularly negative about the billboards.  Plus, he's shown no inclination whatsoever to look at crypto in a positive way.  I doubt there's anything that any one of us could say to him that would convince him to reconsider his stance.  He's very much set in his ways, which is understandable.  It's not like he's suddenly going to "get it" one day and think it's a great idea after all.

If anything, I'd assume the billboards aren't even aimed at Buffett.  This was likely an attempt to appeal to the wider public who see the billboards and suggest that they should explore the crypto industry and not just dismiss it outright because Buffett said so.  Think of it as a publicity stunt to change the average person's perceptions, since it's clear Buffett isn't getting the message.  Appealing to him is a bit of a lost cause at this juncture.

That's my understanding.  One of the few limitations of BTCPay is that it doesn't allow you to convert to fiat right way, as tends to be common with centralised payment processors.  But the trade off is you have the advantages of hosting your own server.  So you don't have to rely on a centralised service that could shut you down.  You're also respecting the privacy of your customers by not handing their data over to third parties.  Plus, the priority for most companies, it usually saves on fees and is generally more cost effective over the long term.  If you run a company that isn't in any particular hurry to convert to fiat, it's pretty much a no-brainer.

"Consensus breaking" implies that consensus can never change.  It's fair to assume that no alternative clients have ever proposed a change with the ambition of becoming a minority chain that most users don't agree with.  But it's difficult to gauge support until users are actually running the code.  You can't put the cart before the horse and assume that every alternative client will be rejected by the majority just because it proposes a change to the current rules.

Otherwise, you play into the hands of BCH supporters who make claims that BTC development is centralised and that one dev team have total dominance over what the rules should be.  It's better if that decision is left to the users.  Which means allowing other clients to stand on equal ground and not sweeping them under the carpet as "altcoins", which smacks of social engineering.

Does that particular billboard poster really constitute "trolling"?  I figured that was just a word the media went with as a clickbait headline to attract more readers.  The wording of the billboard didn't strike me as overly provocative or inflammatory.  Mildly confrontational and direct, perhaps, but not what I'd call trolling.  And it was certainly more politely worded than anything Buffett has said recently.  This is just the internet making a big drama out of every little thing.  Abject sensationalism.

If Buffett can express his opinions, other people can express theirs in return.  Sounds fair enough to me.

Besides that, I'd imagine the guy has a pretty thick skin, being as outspoken as he is.  I'm sure he can handle it.  It's not like he's going to burst into tears because someone said "maybe you're wrong" on a billboard.