Why am I not worried? How about the fact that there is no such thing as Bitcoin blockchain master key? Duh.

They claim to seek the impossible. Not sure if they are stupid, or just engaged in some public misdirection. Probably the latter...

I don't know. Looks like sig farming spam to me, so I'm ignoring it on general principles.

Why? Increased energy Bitcoin mining efficiency would not result in less consumption of electricity. Seems counterintuitive, but only at first glance. As proven by BurtW several years ago, the amount of electricity expended on Bitcoin mining is driven solely by the relationship between the prices of Bitcoin and of electricity. From any given equilibrium point:
 if energy efficiency goes up, profit goes up
 if profit goes up, more hashpower is deployed
 if more hashpower is deployed, electricity consumption goes up
And we hit a new equilibrium - where the money earned by Bitcoin mining again equals the money spent on electricity, plus some depreciation and some profit.

It is also not hard to avoid intentionally misrepresenting the position of those you do not agree with in order to ridicule their position.

I think all y'all are missing the maiden source of the economic benefit. Which is that, through the Qrator/Amp mechanism, content developers are compensated for their efforts.

FWIW, Litecoin is already available on Coinbase.

Yes.


No.

Allow me to explain. The miners have exactly as much power as they have (is that a tautology?). The outcome of this will not change the balance of power. The fact of the matter is that in the system that Satoshi designed, the only power that stands against the miners making any changes they so desire is the power of the users to abandon the chain, making it worthless.


Kind of. Not exactly. I regret that I did not fully understand Satoshi's design back in the early days of ASICs / late days of FPGAs. I -- along with the vast majority of the community -- abdicated my role within the power structure of Bitcoin. All the more regrettable, as I once participated as a (not insignificant) miner. But the simple fact is that we collectively ceded our power to a small collection of specialists.

But just as DiscusFish once had the clout to 51% the network on their own (which, BTW, they chose not to do), this too shall pass. As Bitcoin continues to grow in world monetary scale, it will eventually attract a new class of silicon vendors. Ones that exist already to sell silicon in general terms - not to specialize in the arcane details of the merchant Bitcoin mining business. With their own leading-capability fabs, they will be able to outcompete BitMain's model of outsourcing their fab production. And these high-volume silicon vendors will sell their wares to manufacturing powerhouses, who will in turn sell their mining systems to the populace at large on open terms. And we will all be able to get back into small-scale mining. Harvesting the waste heat to useful ends (residential water heaters being an obvious first target of opportunity?). Collectively outweighing the centralized mining houses. Likely still dependent upon pools, but not captive to the whims of the mining company CEOs.


Not really. There are some aspects of The SegWit Omnibus Changeset that I like, others that I think would be better solved in other ways, and others that I dislike. But I'm not against it just for the sake of being against it.


No idea. Other than pretty much everyone that I know would be downright astonished to learn the value of my Bitcoin holdings. Read into that what you will.


Absolutely.


While not particularly literate in Bitcoin tech (i.e., I've not studied to the point where I would be a competent Bitcoin dev, though with study it is certainly not beyond my capabilities), I am indeed tech inclined. My day gig is in a significant tech position with a significant tech company.

Thanks for considering my position on its merits.

How, pray tell, does one validate a transaction, if one does not possess the signature data?


Exactly. The SegWit Omnibus Changeset renders them non-fully-validating. In my view, that does not comport with 'backwards compatible'.



I did not say that The SegWit Omnibush Changeset creates new pressure to use fewer addresses. I merely point out that any benefit to UTXO set size of The SegWit Omnibus Changeset is marginal at best.


Yes, '1' is a variable. However, there is indeed a neutral option. And it is '1'. Because what is being paid for is space on the chain, in the form of bytes contained in a transaction.


I have yet to see a cogent argument which supports your case. Or does your position not include an implication that Lightning is the step-function scalability jump that is enabled by The SegWit Omnibus Changeset? Regardless, the challenge is to your assertion that "As to why Bitmain would complain about it,  I am aware of no sensible reason."

Well, that's not quite true either.

In satoshi's lexicon, 'nodes' are mining entities. While the language has since been altered to include 'validating wallets' in the definition of 'node', there is little support for this terminology in the whitepaper (the caveat being nodes that have simply 'switched off' their mining capability).

The arguing about the relative merits of this change in language is probably fruitless. However, there is significant disagreement about how much power validating wallets have - either in the singular or in the aggregate. 'Bitmain and friends' merely point out that validating wallets mean essentially nothing to the network as a whole.

To misrepresent this as 'only miners should run nodes' would seem to belie either a willful ignorance or maliciousness.

While I have some empathy for your position here, your assertion is not quite accurate. As just one counterpoint, parallel validation renders the quadratics situation a non-issue. It does this by orphaning any and all blocks that require an inordinate amount of time to validate. All by a simple code fix - no change to the protocol required.

Well, no odder than the UASF-ers (gleefully) announcing that they plan to allow that, should their chain depth overtake the legacy chain depth, all transactions ont he legacy chain would be rolled back.

Tellingly, the so-called 'selfish' mine is a direct defense against the above contingency.

It 'fixes' the incentives only in cases where nodes throw away data needed for any future validations of the transactions. Whether or not this 'pruning' is a good idea is a matter of reasonable debate.


Turning fully-validating nodes into non-validating nodes is a rather funny definition of 'backwards compatible'.


UTXO set size is some function of (# users) * (# of addresses holding value per user). As far as privacy is concerned, best practice dictates distributing your value across several addresses. Are we to follow The SegWit Omnibus Changeset with a recommendation for each user to hold all their Bitcoin on a single address? Privacy be damned?


Introduction of a new fixed centrally-planned variable? Preferential incentive for offchain transactions over onchain transactions? Myopic much?

Incorrect.

Answer is the same as it ever was. Hodl.

Article is light on details. Still, if it is what I think it is....


Buy it!? It will be Bitcoin, pure and simple.

And the pre-mine? Not a pre-mine of new coins on a new blockchain. A means of invalidating any progress the UASF makes.

The removal of the precise centrally-planned amount of witness discount is perhaps the removal of the most odious aspect of the SegWit Omnibus Changeset.

While I need to look further into details, I am very encouraged about this development. Big blocks, improved version of segwit, removal of the biggest bug Bitcoin has (the artificial constraint on system capacity), what's not to love?

And the funniest part is that this is nothing but the obvious* solution to the UASF-ers 'threat' to roll back the non-UASF chain.

* (like, duh)

I've not been this encouraged about the future in months.

FUD. Fake ass false FUD. I just checked. Working fine.

I rather suspect the rest of your claims are bullshit as well.

Well, no. We do not all agree that BU code is crap. It has had some high-visibility bugs. All SW has bugs. The amount of detected bugs has been in inverse proportion to the size of the team. As is normal.

It is certainly possible that there are more critical bugs that will be exposed within the BU codebase over time. However, it is the only codebase in somewhat wide distribution that implements easily user-settable maxblocksize. As such, it is the only codebase that has a chance of solving the current scaling defect.

Right now, the largest bug in the entire Bitcoin sphere is the limit on transactions per unit time. BU solves Bitcoin's biggest bug. Permanently. And it is the only codebase which does so.

Umm... you do know that BTU has nothing to do with Bitcoin Unlimited, right? It is merely an intentionally crippled craptoken created so useless idiots would have something to post to try to tarnish Bitcoin Unlimited.

For the metric which matters -- hashpower as measured by block solutions -- BU hanging solid on 40%.

Like a boss.

Do I _support_ BU? Hmm... I don't so much _support_ BU, but I do _run_ BU. As far as I know, BU is the only somewhat mainstream choice of client that allows for maxblocksize to be a changing quantity subject to majority acclamation.

Well, yeah - wait - on the basis of that criteria, I damn double do support BU.

We all know it has had some implementation challenges - no need to pussyfoot around that. But the overall goals of BU are Bitcoin as I -- and, as I think Satoshi -- envisioned it.

Bitcoin needs to get out from under the forces trying to suffocate it with a pillow in its crib. Today, BU the the clear solution. There are others in development that fulfill the same vision. Bitcoin will in the end be liberated.

Wish I knew. bullioner into'd me to this metric. Makes sense when your finally ponderate upon it. I think he tracked one of the bubbles at an 11-day doubling upthread. It might be good to look into previous post-hyperbolic implosions. Maybe something to learn there.