Therefore, it seems to me that the argument against sidechains should focus on why these assumptions are not likely to be met (mining issues), which is a situation that will mess with the ledger (though only if people get duped into putting too much money into SCs).
that's what i am trying to do. i would also submit that a ledger that carries speculative assets (anything other than BTC) will be different ledgers as they will be less secure as they aren't likely to be MM and will be priced in the market differently. |
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sorry, but i don't agree with his assessment. precisely b/c it leaves out an understanding that the money function will get deprecated in deference to the speculative assets riding on the SC's which distract from the mechanism which has brought us to where we are today. the BTC price will drop if SC's are implemented, imo.
If by mechanism you mean mining I can see the possibility of harm and I've generally been on board with the trepidation on that front. But simply having stocks or whatever denominated in Bitcoin ledger units (whether actual bitcoins or perfect you-can-never-lose-the-2wp sidechain coins) seems fine since that's part of what money/ledger is supposed to do. I don't know that it's necessary for people to understand sound money in order to benefit from it, as long as it does take over. Anyway, if the pile on the right in the pic you've been posting (money, store of value, Forex) is way bigger than speculative assets, how can such distraction really happen? is it what Bitcoins ledger was designed to do? this is why i put this post up earlier. granted, it doesn't say it WASN'T designed to do it either but my point is that we risk everything if we're wrong: i'm glad everyone's been talking about Satoshi recently. that stimulated me to go back thru his whitepaper to see if there were any references to any of the speculative SC's functions that are being proposed by the SC proponents in this thread and elsewhere. those being listed below. they claim that SC's are a "natural and logical extension" to Bitcoin and that if Satoshi was able to be asked, he would love SC's. well, i see no indication that this wild claim is valid. see that none of these speculative assets were ever mentioned:
0 asset
0 stocks
0 bonds
0 insurance
0 smart
0 contracts
0 sidechain
0 offchain
0 separate
2 gold
5 money
it's clear to me that Satoshi intended for Bitcoin to be a new form of digital money, or currency if you will, that mimicked gold in all respects and improved upon it. i'm only aware of one isolated forum post where he mentioned the addition of smart contracts, etc but that was in the context of adding them to the MC protocol. never was there any mention of SC's nor the quack idea of separating the BTC units from the blockchain. and understandably so. by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money. this is so obvious. the last 200 pages have clearly demonstrated a myriad of ways things can go wrong with the SC proponents morphing their vision of how SC's will play out to satisfy any specific concern while promising us the moon.
Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.
leave the source code alone.
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One supposed "weakness" of colored coins (I use the quotes because I personally see it as a strength), is that the bitcoin protocol doesn't verify the "amount" of colored coins transferred. I can inspect any bitcoin output, look at its "value" field," and, provided that that TX has been mined into a block, I know that the output really contains the stated number of bitcoins. With colored coins, this property does not exist; instead I must follow the chain of colored transactions back to the original issuance of the colored asset to determine if the (e.g.) 1,000,000 stock certificates I'm about to buy is actually valid. This means that SPV nodes cannot verify transactions and that the whole transaction chain cannot be pruned. thanks. i've always wondered about this. |
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the integrity of the ledger depends on the currency unit riding on it. the greed to obtain the unit is what drives the mining incentive. w/o the unit, the ledger dies. which is why allowing the units an offramp to an unrelated speculative SC will kill Bitcoin.
ZB doesn't quite agree with you and made a very logical demonstration of why you are likely wrong, maybe you missed it It seems to me that, assuming the 2wp is perfect and permanent, if everyone moves to the sidechain, the ledger remains perfectly preserved as long as the sidechain continues working. Bitcoin is no longer serving the memory function (Bitcoin the protocol/chain is dead), but the memory function is being served by another chain (and Bitcoin the ledger lives on). The store of value function has been maintained, but not by what we'd usually want to call "Bitcoin." There are some definitional ambiguities making this difficult to pin down. The word Bitcoin is used to mean: - Bitcoin the protocol
- Bitcoin the protocol maintained by the people now known as the core devs
- Bitcoin the protocol adopted by the economic majority, or the majority of mining power
- Bitcoin the blockchain
- Bitcoin the ecosystem
- Bitcoin the ledger (who owns what percentage of the ledger)
The most notable thing about this list, I think, is that the first meanings are the most commonly used, but the last meanings are what really matter from an investor's perspective. Especially Bitcoin the ledger. A sidechain takeover threatens the protocol and the blockchain, but not necessarily the ecosystem, and not the ledger insofar as the peg is ensured and the sidechain is as sound as Bitcoin. Now whether the sidechain will be as sound as Bitcoin is up in the air. I am skeptical for now, but again in a scenario where everyone is moving to the sidechain that condition has presumably been met in a most credible fashion. To me, spin-offs are a safer and more elegant way to add functionality to Bitcoin the ledger. Perhaps if Bitcoin the ledger was recognized as the real essence of Bitcoin, rather than the protocol used for updating that ledger, spin-offs would be recognized by everyone as the obvious choice. What do you think? i don't miss anything. that doesn't mean i understand everything. sorry, but i don't agree with his assessment. precisely b/c it leaves out an understanding that the money function will get deprecated in deference to the speculative assets riding on the SC's which distract from the mechanism which has brought us to where we are today. the BTC price will drop if SC's are implemented, imo. A depreciation of someone's wealth on the ledger due to speculative assets is the gain of someone else. The ledger stays intact. SC's carrying speculative asset will be different and separate ledgers to Bitcoin. attaching these less secure ledgers to Bitcoin will devalue the entire system. remember that the Bitcoin miners will probably only be able to MM a couple of the thousands of speculative SC's that will be bolted onto Bitcoin. Absolutely wrong once again. Remember that Bitcoin miners will NOT mine speculative SCs as they can only command marginal use in the market and therefore not obtain the necessary adoption for miners to validate them with their work. Can you even provide an example of these speculative SCs ? anything not BTC. like stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts, etc. you yourself say this is the goal, to decentralize and incorporate into the Bitcoin protocol all manner of these things enabled by spvp. In that sense, you are right that SPVP is crucial to their success because it is the only way they can create these ambitious extensions of Bitcoin I'm sure they have in mind.
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But this is why I believe your statement, "the blockchain may only be applicable to bitcoin as money" is incorrect. We are already seeing very useful applications of the blockchain outside of money (which aren't possible with bitcoins current parameters) and I cannot see these slowing down or going away.
i don't know. looks like NXT is fading fast:  |
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the integrity of the ledger depends on the currency unit riding on it. the greed to obtain the unit is what drives the mining incentive. w/o the unit, the ledger dies. which is why allowing the units an offramp to an unrelated speculative SC will kill Bitcoin.
ZB doesn't quite agree with you and made a very logical demonstration of why you are likely wrong, maybe you missed it It seems to me that, assuming the 2wp is perfect and permanent, if everyone moves to the sidechain, the ledger remains perfectly preserved as long as the sidechain continues working. Bitcoin is no longer serving the memory function (Bitcoin the protocol/chain is dead), but the memory function is being served by another chain (and Bitcoin the ledger lives on). The store of value function has been maintained, but not by what we'd usually want to call "Bitcoin." There are some definitional ambiguities making this difficult to pin down. The word Bitcoin is used to mean: - Bitcoin the protocol
- Bitcoin the protocol maintained by the people now known as the core devs
- Bitcoin the protocol adopted by the economic majority, or the majority of mining power
- Bitcoin the blockchain
- Bitcoin the ecosystem
- Bitcoin the ledger (who owns what percentage of the ledger)
The most notable thing about this list, I think, is that the first meanings are the most commonly used, but the last meanings are what really matter from an investor's perspective. Especially Bitcoin the ledger. A sidechain takeover threatens the protocol and the blockchain, but not necessarily the ecosystem, and not the ledger insofar as the peg is ensured and the sidechain is as sound as Bitcoin. Now whether the sidechain will be as sound as Bitcoin is up in the air. I am skeptical for now, but again in a scenario where everyone is moving to the sidechain that condition has presumably been met in a most credible fashion. To me, spin-offs are a safer and more elegant way to add functionality to Bitcoin the ledger. Perhaps if Bitcoin the ledger was recognized as the real essence of Bitcoin, rather than the protocol used for updating that ledger, spin-offs would be recognized by everyone as the obvious choice. What do you think? i don't miss anything. that doesn't mean i understand everything. sorry, but i don't agree with his assessment. precisely b/c it leaves out an understanding that the money function will get deprecated in deference to the speculative assets riding on the SC's which distract from the mechanism which has brought us to where we are today. the BTC price will drop if SC's are implemented, imo. A depreciation of someone's wealth on the ledger due to speculative assets is the gain of someone else. The ledger stays intact. SC's carrying speculative asset will be different and separate ledgers to Bitcoin. attaching these less secure ledgers to Bitcoin will devalue the entire system. remember that the Bitcoin miners will probably only be able to MM a couple of the thousands of speculative SC's that will be bolted onto Bitcoin. |
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I am going to repeat this ad nauseam until you get it : Blockstream's business model is not dependent on SPVP and its core integration and neither is this proposition conferring them any advantage whatsoever considering its neutral, open source nature.
You are as stubborn as a mule...
talk about a contradiction. you're like a chameleon: In that sense, you are right that SPVP is crucial to their success because it is the only way they can create these ambitious extensions of Bitcoin I'm sure they have in mind.
 I should've expect that reply, you are much too shallow to understand intricacies in an argument. These extensions to Bitcoin I'm referring to that require SPVP are of the open source domain. None will be proprietary to Blockstream or their client. Blockstream's goal is to build these decentralized platform to allow the open source community to create innovative services/chains on top of them. If in the end SPVP is not integrated, which IMO would be a considerable loss to the ecosystem, then they will model their services around federated sidechains which is likely to be, anyway, the preffered choice of their clients. hmmm, you sure talk like you're an insider to Blockstream. is that you Greg? how would you know that the spvp enabled SC's will be open source? that's up to whoever contracts with Blockstream to build them. the rules will be whatever they want. i've already pointed out how you love to throw the term "open source" around to drive all the juices and get support of the devs reading this thread but the fact of the matter is that Blockstream will be paid good money to construct as many SC's, be they federated or spvp related, for any willing buyer. i have $21M that says i'm right. |
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i'm against them only in the sense that i think they will die competing with Bitcoin so the sooner everyone comes to that understanding the better. but i understand that they want to compete head to head and speculators will always try to make a buck so who am i to argue with that as long as they are competing fairly and not trying to alter Bitcoin source code to their advantage. But many of them are not competing directly with bitcoin as sound money, they are providing other distinct features that bitcoin is unwilling to match, that you do not wish it to match, in it's quest to provide said money. How is it that all those useful features will just "die" when bitcoin is not willing or unable to provide equal features? give me an example. I really don't want to bring up nxt again but you asked for an example. The Nxt FreeMarket (decentralized marketplace)for example. This cannot be built on top of bitcoin. The closest is OpenBazaar but it is not built on top of bitcoin, it simply uses it. In the coming months users of the FreeMarket will also be able to buy and sell using bitcoin directly anyway. The fact that this platform is built on top of a blockchain offers some important privacy benefits that OpenBazaar will be unable to match. For instance, OpenBazaar will be require you to have a node running at all times for your shop to remain visible to other users, which I believe is a huge privacy flaw. How would such a feature just "die" because of bitcoin? It has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with a new method of secure communication using the blockchain. lets be clear here. my arguments in the past have been against altcoins but only in the sense that i think they will die by trying to compete with Bitcoin as a form of money. the open market stuff, sure, they might survive as long as they provide a valuable service. i doubt they survive if they depend on an altcoin. in that sense, i would hope they would try to build their service on top of Bitcoin instead. |
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the integrity of the ledger depends on the currency unit riding on it. the greed to obtain the unit is what drives the mining incentive. w/o the unit, the ledger dies. which is why allowing the units an offramp to an unrelated speculative SC will kill Bitcoin.
ZB doesn't quite agree with you and made a very logical demonstration of why you are likely wrong, maybe you missed it It seems to me that, assuming the 2wp is perfect and permanent, if everyone moves to the sidechain, the ledger remains perfectly preserved as long as the sidechain continues working. Bitcoin is no longer serving the memory function (Bitcoin the protocol/chain is dead), but the memory function is being served by another chain (and Bitcoin the ledger lives on). The store of value function has been maintained, but not by what we'd usually want to call "Bitcoin." There are some definitional ambiguities making this difficult to pin down. The word Bitcoin is used to mean: - Bitcoin the protocol
- Bitcoin the protocol maintained by the people now known as the core devs
- Bitcoin the protocol adopted by the economic majority, or the majority of mining power
- Bitcoin the blockchain
- Bitcoin the ecosystem
- Bitcoin the ledger (who owns what percentage of the ledger)
The most notable thing about this list, I think, is that the first meanings are the most commonly used, but the last meanings are what really matter from an investor's perspective. Especially Bitcoin the ledger. A sidechain takeover threatens the protocol and the blockchain, but not necessarily the ecosystem, and not the ledger insofar as the peg is ensured and the sidechain is as sound as Bitcoin. Now whether the sidechain will be as sound as Bitcoin is up in the air. I am skeptical for now, but again in a scenario where everyone is moving to the sidechain that condition has presumably been met in a most credible fashion. To me, spin-offs are a safer and more elegant way to add functionality to Bitcoin the ledger. Perhaps if Bitcoin the ledger was recognized as the real essence of Bitcoin, rather than the protocol used for updating that ledger, spin-offs would be recognized by everyone as the obvious choice. What do you think? i don't miss anything. that doesn't mean i understand everything. sorry, but i don't agree with his assessment. precisely b/c it leaves out an understanding that the money function will get deprecated in deference to the speculative assets riding on the SC's which distract from the mechanism which has brought us to where we are today. the BTC price will drop if SC's are implemented, imo. |
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by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money.
Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.
leave the source code alone.
Persistingly wrong. How many times and how many people need to point out the fallacy in your argument for you to finally understand that sidechain DO NOT inherently, "break Bitcoin as Money"? When are you going to address the fact that any centralized off-chain solution is considerably more dangerous to Bitcoin as Money than sidechains are? Are you going to admit that SPVP proof is just another verification model by which the allocation of coins to other chains is potentially safer and more decentralized than current solutions that exist? The Bitcoin money is its ledger. Sidechains are effectively the most secure way to accomodate any transactions that can not be processed on the mainchain while preserving the integrity of the ledger. If you are honestly worried about corruption of Bitcoin as Money, centralized off-chain solutions should be the biggest of your concerns. why should i admit that centralized offchain solutions are dangerous to Bitcoin? based on what evidence? Gox? Bitcoinica? c'mon, that would be to neglect the greater understanding that has been achieved by such unfortunate events. it is growing up. do you expect perfect behavior from children? Bitcoin is inherently a p2p money and encourages us as individuals to take greater responsibility for our money. those hard lessons have gone a long way towards strengthening Bitcoin, not endangering Bitcoin. look at all the improved security measures that have grown out of those events. we "need" those events to teach us how to interact with Bitcoin and further strengthen it. SC's are an excuse to not deal with these hard problems esp when it comes to MC development. instead of Blockstream breaking off with 40% of core devs + 3 top committers in a bid to make $millions/billions, why don't those guys work with Gavin to implement MC improvements? or if they insist on attempting to make $millions/billions off of Bitcoin, at least step down and allow some non-conflicted core devs to take over. or reorg as a non profit. Blockstream is just another for profit company that was established at the beginning of the year and is jockeying to modify the core protocol to its advantage so as to give them an edge over other companies or products like CP, Bitshares, Mastercoin, etc. What an hypocrite. Do I understand that SCs can not benefit also from this "educational" process? You are really trying to write-off Gox as irrelevant when nearly a year later we still hear about constantly from mainstream media. Are you suggesting this had no impact on Bitcoin's reputation? yes it did. but it didn't kill Bitcoin which is what is important.
What I want you to admit is these offchain solutions are inherently more dangerous to the integrity of the Bitcoin ledger (Sound Money) than any form of sidechains.
sorry, i will never admit that. you're talking about something totally separate from the sound money function; reputation which is an emotional response and immaterial to the math. we "need" those events to teach us how to interact with Bitcoin and further strengthen it. And that's exactly what sidechains propose. Note that when speaking of sidechains I am also referring to federated models. at this pt in the debate, i understand exactly what you're talking about.
I am going to repeat this ad nauseam until you get it : Blockstream's business model is not dependent on SPVP and its core integration and neither is this proposition conferring them any advantage whatsoever considering its neutral, open source nature.
You are as stubborn as a mule...
talk about a contradiction. you're like a chameleon: In that sense, you are right that SPVP is crucial to their success because it is the only way they can create these ambitious extensions of Bitcoin I'm sure they have in mind.
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i'm against them only in the sense that i think they will die competing with Bitcoin so the sooner everyone comes to that understanding the better. but i understand that they want to compete head to head and speculators will always try to make a buck so who am i to argue with that as long as they are competing fairly and not trying to alter Bitcoin source code to their advantage. But many of them are not competing directly with bitcoin as sound money, they are providing other distinct features that bitcoin is unwilling to match, that you do not wish it to match, in it's quest to provide said money. How is it that all those useful features will just "die" when bitcoin is not willing or unable to provide equal features? give me an example. |
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Sounds to me if our fight for bitcoin is to stop Ethereum all together and support Counterparty and Sidechains https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/20/bitcoin-maximalism-currency-platform-network-effects/First, an introduction to the technical strategies at hand. In general, there are three approaches to creating a new crypto protocol:
Build on Bitcoin the blockchain, but not Bitcoin the currency (metacoins, eg. most features of Counterparty)
Build on Bitcoin the currency, but not Bitcoin the blockchain (sidechains)
Create a completely standalone platform
When discussing currency network effects, he completely missed the big one: the network effect of the ledger. He talked about network effects of currency, but not about store of value. This whole Bitcoin thing has been about getting yourself on the universal ledger of civilization. That is why people invest. That is why people support it. That is why it's a big deal. It's like he has no idea that is even a thing. The closest he came is this part: Unit of account network effect (very large currencies become units of account, leading to more purchasing power stability via price stickiness as well as higher salience) – unfortunately, Bitcoin will likely never be stable enough to trigger this effect; the best empirical evidence we can see for this is likely the valuation history of gold. But this isn't really the same thing as store of value - the idea that arises in society that "we will use this ledger (or a commodity substitute) to keep track of debts from now on, by convention." This is why the ledger concept really has to be understood, and understood on the deepest level, to avoid falling into silliness of various kinds. the integrity of the ledger depends on the currency unit riding on it. the greed to obtain the unit is what drives the mining incentive. w/o the unit, the ledger dies. which is why allowing the units an offramp to an unrelated speculative SC will kill Bitcoin. brg444 continues to morph his argument by alternating his cheerleading of these speculative SC's btwn, "we don't need or want them, just utility chains" to "we should want to incorporate speculative assets into SC's to grow the economy and diversify. decentralize all the things!" but i say that the main goal of the spvp is to create speculative SC's; i have $21M in Blockstream investment that says i'm right. |
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i'm against them only in the sense that i think they will die competing with Bitcoin so the sooner everyone comes to that understanding the better. but i understand that they want to compete head to head and speculators will always try to make a buck so who am i to argue with that as long as they are competing fairly and not trying to alter Bitcoin source code to their advantage. |
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by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money.
Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.
leave the source code alone.
Persistingly wrong. How many times and how many people need to point out the fallacy in your argument for you to finally understand that sidechain DO NOT inherently, "break Bitcoin as Money"? When are you going to address the fact that any centralized off-chain solution is considerably more dangerous to Bitcoin as Money than sidechains are? Are you going to admit that SPVP proof is just another verification model by which the allocation of coins to other chains is potentially safer and more decentralized than current solutions that exist? The Bitcoin money is its ledger. Sidechains are effectively the most secure way to accomodate any transactions that can not be processed on the mainchain while preserving the integrity of the ledger. If you are honestly worried about corruption of Bitcoin as Money, centralized off-chain solutions should be the biggest of your concerns. why should i admit that centralized offchain solutions are dangerous to Bitcoin? based on what evidence? Gox? Bitcoinica? c'mon, that would be to neglect the greater understanding that has been achieved by such unfortunate events. it is growing up. do you expect perfect behavior from children? Bitcoin is inherently a p2p money and encourages us as individuals to take greater responsibility for our money. those hard lessons have gone a long way towards strengthening Bitcoin, not endangering Bitcoin. look at all the improved security measures that have grown out of those events. we "need" those events to teach us how to interact with Bitcoin and further strengthen it. SC's are an excuse to not deal with these hard problems esp when it comes to MC development. instead of Blockstream breaking off with 40% of core devs + 3 top committers in a bid to make $millions/billions, why don't those guys work with Gavin to implement MC improvements? or if they insist on attempting to make $millions/billions off of Bitcoin, at least step down and allow some non-conflicted core devs to take over. or reorg as a non profit. Blockstream is just another for profit company that was established at the beginning of the year and is jockeying to modify the core protocol to its advantage so as to give them an edge over other companies or products like CP, Bitshares, Mastercoin, etc. |
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i'm glad everyone's been talking about Satoshi recently. that stimulated me to go back thru his whitepaper to see if there were any references to any of the speculative SC's functions that are being proposed by the SC proponents in this thread and elsewhere. those being listed below. they claim that SC's are a "natural and logical extension" to Bitcoin and that if Satoshi was able to be asked, he would love SC's. well, i see no indication that this wild claim is valid. see that none of these speculative assets were ever mentioned:
0 asset
0 stocks
0 bonds
0 insurance
0 smart
0 contracts
0 sidechain
0 offchain
0 separate
2 gold
5 money
it's clear to me that Satoshi intended for Bitcoin to be a new form of digital money, or currency if you will, that mimicked gold in all respects and improved upon it. i'm only aware of one isolated forum post where he mentioned the addition of smart contracts, etc but that was in the context of adding them to the MC protocol. never was there any mention of SC's nor the quack idea of separating the BTC units from the blockchain. and understandably so. by breaking the inextricable link btwn the two, you break security and therefore break Bitcoin as Money. this is so obvious. the last 200 pages have clearly demonstrated a myriad of ways things can go wrong with the SC proponents morphing their vision of how SC's will play out to satisfy any specific concern while promising us the moon.
Bitcoin should continue to focus on what got us to where we are: the Money function. that is where the problem lies today in the world of fiat and central banks. this is what i saw back in January of 2011, Bitcoin as a poison dart aimed at the heart of central banks. the problem is not stocks, bonds, insurance, contracts. those all function reasonably well. the problems we've had with them in the past, such as in 2001 and 2008, were fiat printing enabled and backed by central banks. w/o the ability to print at will to bail out bad actors, Bitcoin as Money seeks to clamp down and eliminate this moral hazard. and the network of money is ripe to be disrupted. and rightfully so. THAT is where the money is. the Forex is the biggest in the world as i've shown. the gold market is huge as well. if Bitcoin can crack those markets we will go to the Moon. Bitcoin should stay simple and non complex. it has evolved to that of a public good. no one should be allowed to corrupt its primary function of money. let alone profit off it.
leave the source code alone.
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Everyone here "gets" it. This is absolutely not the argument we are having. These guys are referring to idiots and mainstream journalists who argue you can have the blockchain without the bitcoin. When they say "you can't separate" the two, that's absolutely not in reference to sidechains or other similar schemes. In fact, you can bet these guys are pretty excited about sidechains. i doubt it. we've already established these asset SC's will be speculative and therefore different ledgers. no one quite gets that yet. and they don't get that these distractions will deprecate Bitcoins primary function, that being the disruption of money. Blockstream won't even release a business plan outlining exactly how they plan to make money. once they do, i think everything will become quite clear. |
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You don't seem to give Satoshi himself much credit. He surely would have recognized the significance of slipping in the 1MB block size and commented on the commit if he felt like discussing it. I'd say he likely had something deeper in mind. But unlike our friends above, I don't pretend that my mind reading abilities are strong enough to overcome the space-time continuum.
Satoshi didn't seem to consider it a problem for bitcoin to centralize significantly: Forgot to add the good part about micropayments. While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall. If Bitcoin catches on on a big scale, it may already be the case by that time. Another way they can become more practical is if I implement client-only mode and the number of network nodes consolidates into a smaller number of professional server farms. Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical. I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.
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There's also the metzdowd quote along those lines from Nov 2008. Hearn pointed that out too. For a while I was pretty demoralized by this, but now I think that perhaps he was actually playing the burgeoning community along realizing that very few of them really had the vision and technical prowess to see beyond very far into the future. We may never know. For my part I find it hard to believe that Satoshi could have (and would have) achieved what he did just to make a PayPal-II, and I am certain that he would have seen that this is exactly what it would become under a scenario as he described. I also very much doubt that he blew it on his infrastructure capacity estimates as badly as he did (though in fairness, if he really did welcome the centralization of which he speaks it is true now 5 years later that corporate entities have plenty of capacity to run very high transaction rates...as it was when he (supposedly) wrote that.) Go read through his posts. He was a pragmatist. I really don't think he considered a significant degree of consolidation to be a systemic problem. He may not of considered it ideal, but he probably (correctly, in my opinion) considered it both inevitable and non-fatal. Part of my research btwn Jan 2011 and April 2011 before I made my first investment was talking to key people one of which was theymos. He's been around at least as long as anyone else and one of the things I clearly remember him saying was that he could see significant consolidation to large server farms as tx volumes rose. And that he didn't think it was a problem either. |
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Is colored coins not introducing an additional layer of trust?
That depends on how you define "another layer of trust". Colored coins are inherently used for tracking things outside the blockchain - that by definition means representing obligations a.k.a counterparty risk. Any technique that tracks obligations outside the blockchain will be tracking counterparty risk. But none of that has nothing to do with the underlying technology used to create the token. Colored coins as tokens are no different from other bitcoins. A colored coin token doesn't all of a sudden become less trustworthy than a non-colored Bitcoin. I define "another layer of trust" as trusting anything else but the Bitcoin network. In that regard colored coins are less decentralized than sidechains. I don't get sidechains. Will they just be alt-coins then?
In the proposed concept, they use a SPV client to settle between chains. To secure the chain they would use merged-mining which potentially lets them access 100% of Bitcoin's mining power. They are not quite as secure though as they are not accepted by all nodes.
They can also use a less-decentralized model that rely on Oracles/Federations/Voting Pools.
*the unit is technically not the actual BTC but an image of it locked in a multi-sig type of way. the peg could also be a deterministic function but that defeats the purpose and effectively creates an altcoin.
Ah. Gracias Senior:) But what's the point? there is no point if you believe, as i do, that Bitcoin is destined to become a global reserve currency. Probably. But Gavin is accepting of the idea, if not somehow working on it. Do we want slick new features? Or something  of what idea and working on what? |
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