No proof, but last time micgoossens did send me an extra prize for my explanation (I was off a couple of days actually). The contest is legit.


I disagree with the pressure to move the ATH game to a separate thread. This thread is on topic loosely enough to fit all the contest related posts as highly relevant. OK, there's a bit more noise than usual when the contest starts - and then it's just a series of daily updates, which could become new classics à la Jimbo's "Good morning Bitcoinland." When an ATH gets near, there's a bit of additional chatter - but it's cheerful I think, and pleasant enough for me.

Thanks micgoossens!  

Correct, but elsewhere in the world the judicial power is actually decoupled from the executive (government). Which in Spain it actually isn't - as per la Constitucion, not by some murky deal. So the court order smells like politics, and it looks a bit awkward from abroad. Luckily, actual beatings, brutality and killings were ultimately avoided - not like in Italy (G7) or France (crazy banlieues).

"Decoupled" judges, however, wouldn't probably have ordered anyone to shut down the referendum. Rather, in a normally functional country (which Spain totally is), they would have tried to stifle the effectiveness of the vote by declaring it "void of effects" or something like that.

Then  Then it would have become a matter of negotiation.
And then the EU. You can fill their line yourselfif you get my gist.

Uh... but it would smell like Franco, stir more shit. Bad move, too. Because the promoters have ample support - not total, granted, but you can't just "punish one to educate one thousand."

Inflexible negotiation with unfavorable financial accounting, that is the soft way.

With current USA gun laws, if a foreigner comes and smacks anything precious out of the houseowner's hands, are you really sure it is the trespasser who's going to laugh last?

"At first I only kneecapped him, but then he grabbed the hammer and threw it at me... I was really afraid for my (my wife's/my children's) safety... so I kept on shooting until he stopped moving... honest, officer."

Yes, opinions apart, he's one of the few on the "other camp" who can sustain an informed argument - one that is worth debating. Math spot on, even with misguided qualitative views.

At any rate, I only saw gentle teasing and unbearable service talk, which seems quite acceptable    

I guess they were rehearsing for the fork. 

Your car example is spot on. CPI is one of the very bogusest statistics, everywhere in the world. One of the best ways for guvments to obfuscate the real inflation rate.

... and because abnormal block production rate due to fickle difficulty adjusting mechanisms. Let's tell it all.

But I have a question for you, or whoever else may be able to answer:


(Namely, including coins from a post-fork transaction in the "splitting" transaction. Can't find jbreher's other post for a proper quote.)

Apart from a coinbase transaction, which outputs would qualify? In other words, can a simple guy set up such a splitting transaction without access to a freshly mined block?

Thank you. Reading it up.

This is what would happen to B2X if there were 2-way mandatory replay protection. If they actually fork (which still remains to be seen IMO), we'd better split and sell quickly.

What's a TK cross? Is "the Cloud" an Ichimoku cloud?

This. Your reply came while I was writing mine.

I understand, and you have a point. Opening a channel for each person on earth isn't reasonably possible at the current rates. But that is only the ultimate goal. How many people have VISA today? At the moment, it is more important to expand the network cautiously with the means we have. L2 will be a formidable tool for this, with micropayments and all that. When Average Joe gets used to pay bitcoin at Starbucks, adoption will be so wide in the "rich west" of the world that BTC will be unstoppable.

I trust the developers - I'm not talking about Core only. Third-party L3 solutions could be piggybacked on top of L2, for example. Hardware progress might give us the bandwidth and storage improvements btc needs to be ubiquitous and censor-resistant, so a non-contentious blocksize increase might be much more feasible than it is today. But we can't possibly figure out exactly what the future will be like. We have more than enough on our hands, given what BTC is now. Let us keep it safe and resilient.

On the contrary, LN and similar Layer2 technology can do much. Given a sufficiently large number of channels, kept open for a sufficiently long time, the transaction rate (summed over all open channels) can grow almost without limit. In reality, there will be practical limits on channel number and channel lifespan, so a block size increase will likely be needed at some point in the future. How big an increase, and when? I think we should find out by looking at real LN transaction flow numbers.

Yes, I noticed immediately and edited my post. Thanks for the heads up anyway!

As I wrote elsewhere (the Wall Observer thread), I read about two ways to split:

1) Mix freshly mined coined into your transaction.  Mined coins only exist on ONE chain, so you're safe your transaction ends up on that chain.

2) Timelocked black magic? I'll be looking for some more info about this. Clues anyone?

Ah! Fluidjax has one more trick to share. Thanks Odalv!

EDIT: oops - the 3BITxxxxxxxxx address in Fluidjax's example is valid on both chains. No worky.

That's by design, for maximum disruption. A hostile takeover attempt by any reasonable standards.

I think splitting BTC-B2X will require mixing freshly mined coins into one's transactions. The landing chain of the transaction will be the chain where the fresh coins were mined. I still have to figure out how to do that.

There seems to be a different way invoving timelocked transactions - but I won't have a clue about this bit of magic until I research the matter. BTW, for the technically knowledgeable: pointers would be welcome  

I think the declining BTC value of BCH (I suppose that's the altcoin you meant) indicates that a certain gang thinks their money is best burned supporting the next attack, so BCH purchases are being phased out.

Is this an hourly chart??  Doesn't look like it.

You mean LN? The transitions from-to blockchain and sidechain are cryptographically secure as any other blockchain transaction. As for cheating counterparts, planned provision of a simple bounty for guardians (in case you're offline) makes sure they have very little wiggle room. It looks very good on paper, and I'm confident it will work as advertised in reality. At the beginning, channel capacity is going to be limited to reasonable sums anyway, so the risk for pioneers is really reasonable.

My point of view, too. I guess it is the point of view of many non-politicized bitcoiners who just want an increase of utility and value, while keeping the strong points: permissionless and trustless, therefore decentralized. Non-inflationary.