The quadratic hashing issue is a non-problem. Any miner that creates a block that takes inordinate time to validate will find himself bankrupted by other miners who continue hashing on the same parent to find a peer solved block. Such a peer solved block will validate well before the aberrant block, leading to the aberrant block being orphaned. 'Problem' solved. With the incentives as they exist today. Unchanged.


Merely an unneeded approach to a non-problem. See above.


 If you are going to (try to) rebut the article, how about you actually rebut what it contains? There are exactly zero mentions of 'slim block submission' in the article. Do try to keep up - I don't think you have any idea what Xthin is.


Emergent consensus is -- once you strip away all the trappings of centralized planning -- the exact security model Bitcoin has enjoyed since day one.


Not exactly - reward and halving are not calculated to occur on specific dates, but rather block heights. We speak in terms of rough dates merely to simplify cognition for us humans.


You're slipping Lauda - your statements are usually at least semi-defensible from at least one narrow angle. This one is downright ludicrous no matter what viewpoint you come at it.


The only way that statement is not a lie, is be re-defining what Bitcoin actually _is_. The fact that you are trying to paper over this obvious observation is what is pathetic.

inb4: haha! you're pulling a slick willie!

WHile that may be the likely outcome, we still have almost a full month for the price to pump on the ETF rumors, first.

Perhaps Blockstream never wanted SegWit adoption. That 95% activation level seems to have been designed to fail from the get-go.

If you're running the GUI, you can set EB and AD from the Preferences dialog:



I don't know whether or not a restart is required.


Read 'em and weep, Lauda.

Probably the latter. If the ETF is approved, I would expect the official websites for purchase to be:
schwab.com
fidelity.com
vanguard.com
etrade.com
scotttrade.com
...
etc.

Which, of course, is why ETF approval would likely be bullish.

If bitcoin market cap were to equal that of gold's (today), that would be about the price.

#justsayin

Except $1080 is not moon. Accordingly, if 'moon and three sad kitties' has any validity at all (as if), we'd currently be existing the small drop after the booster stage.

Again - $1080 is not moon. $3 was moon in its day, as were $32, $266, and $1117. Today, moon would be somewhere around $7669.

To build upon BurtW's work, it may be worthwhile to ask ourselves 'what is a reasonable share of the world's power production for Bitcoin mining to consume?'.

The Financial industry currently accounts for about 9% of US GDP.

Lacking any data one way or the other (i.e., as an initial conjecture), let us posit that this industry consumes power proportional to its share of GDP. Accordingly, let us posit that this financial sector consumes 9% of the world's (I made a leap there from US to global) power.

As Bitcoin increases in value, it seems absurd to think that it could do so without cannibalizing a fair share of the financial sector's share of GDP. Just as a hypothetical, let us assume that Bitcoin (i.e. direct p2p finance) can displace half of the financial industry.

Accordingly, let us allocate 4.5% market share -- and thereby power consumption -- to each of Bitcoin and legacy finance.

That would put us somewhere in the middle of era 3 for $500,000 per BTC, without increasing carbon footprint. Not too shabby.

Obviously, there are several SWAG proportion guesses that need analysis. But this framework may be helpful for sorting 'how bad is Bitcoin for the ecology?' issues.

Or from and alternative viewpoint, if Bitcoin were to increase to $250,000 per in the next several years, the issue of unemployed bankers would be a bigger problem than anthropogenic global warming. Oh-the-huge-manatee.gif

No. As has been pointed out over and over (and over and over and over and...), the fact that Bitcoin accommodates only about 250,000 transactions per day means precisely that Bitcoin accommodates only about 250,000 transactions per day. Period. No matter the fee, no more than about 250,000 can be processed per day. All others are (manifestly obviously) being pushed away. 'We don't want your business' is a pretty strong message. Say it often and long enough, and people start to believe it. So they'll take their business elsewhere. Obviously.


Bald assertion unsupported by facts.


Basement dwellers with their meager resources working 5.687/3 (maybe longer if the owners are not too stoned to shut down QT for some quality gaming) are more valuable to security than robust systems running 24/7? Get a grip!


Again, Bitcoin has been unable to roll out a meager maxblocksize increase in four years. Mimblewimble? Maybe by the time the mining block reward expires. Maybe well before that - like 2047. Maybe.

2.5% over six days?


.... ooooh....kaaay....

If one believes that expectations of ETF approval are already partly priced-in, it makes perfect sense.

I make no statement as to the probability of the precedent conjecture.

It admittedly seems a long shot today. However, if Bitcoin does not stop pushing usage away, where do you think people will go to make transactions?


Decentralization is not measured in absolute number of nodes. It is measured in lack of barriers in becoming a first-class citizen of the network. And while you seem to be panicked over your 300 Baud modem and an old PC-xt class of processing, the more forward looking amongst us understand something about the march of technological progress.

[OK... there was sarcasm employed there. A little.]


OK, I'll bite... _what_ anonymous features? We've been working over four years on a simple maxblocksize increase.

Yeah. The fact that the cartoonist can't spell just adds to the value.

Jeeze - settle down, guys. Did you really need to extract fiat value from your bitcoin today?

This bloodbath will be over long before this day is. And then we'll resume our inexorable climb. Because -- whether or not they yet realize it -- the people of the world need a form of money that can be emailed p2p, and is free from the ravages of the vampire squid.

First, sorry for your loss. That said...


We seem to have a terminology problem here. By definition, a cold wallet is one that does not exist on an internet-connected computer. Period.


Most contemporary wallets allow generating a key phrase, which you write down and store in a secure place. Using this key phrase, you can recover all your bitcoins. Too late now, but next time use this feature.


This comes with its own risks. If you are not the sole controller of the private keys, someone else can spend 'your' bitcoins.

U R doing it rong.

What exactly do you think the 'paper' in 'paper wallet' is meant to denote?

...aaaand a partial rebuttal.


In implementing emergent consensus, BU is a near-ideal solution.


Umm, you sure you want to go with that? That's an awfully strange statement to make, while d(BUHashpower)/dt and d(BUNodes)/dt are both positive.

Nodes up over 30% in last two weeks alone: https://coin.dance/nodes/unlimited.


I can get behind that. But I don't want to face the same stupid value-destroying battle every year. BU solves this.


All right, now you've pissed me off. Who are you to tell those behind BU what its purpose is? You are 100%, categorically, indisputably, wrong in this assertion.


In full disclosure, SegWit has retaken a slight lead. We'll see where this goes.


Indeed. Absolute failure of leadership.


Inasmusch as cryptocurrency is more of a new asset class than a 'classical' currency, should we not consider the verdict still out as to its adherence to traditional money behaviors?


That's easy - they did it by giving the money they created to already-rich entities that did not need it for anything. Accordingly, it did not get spent. It merely got set aside, propping up Wall Street, thereby displaying a velocity asymptotically approaching zero.


Inasmuch as there is no objective way of looking at any given transaction, and classifying it as spam or notspam, I 'forbid' you from using this characterization. OK, 'forbid' gets a winkie: But the term 'spam' is useless.


Yup.


Yeah, I'm unsure what to think about Blockstream. I certainly hope they have the best interests of the system -- in a Nakamoto sense -- as a driving principle. But it is hard to ignore dozens of millions from the barons of fiat.

Didja see Dr. Back's discussion on r/btc yesterday? Quite a hoot!


FTFY. Until we started regularly bumping against block size limit last year, block size had been doing roughly 2x per year. BU solves this issue once and for all. Elegantly.

Today:
Buy the dip
Buy the dip
Buy the dip
Buy the dip
Buy the dip
Sell the bounce
Sell the bounce
Sell the bounce
Buy the dip
Sell the bounce
Buy the dip

Tomorrow:
Sell the bounce
Sell the bounce
Sell the bounce

Net: Same # BTC, a little fiat in pocket. Most likely resuming our upward trajectory. Loving the volatility. Not a bad day.

I do. As I point out above, hashcash was a significant innovation. That's why it is particularly galling - his position is assured without overreaching for this specious claim.

Admittedly plausible, but highly improbable.


You must have never been in the position of sifting through resumes to fill a SW Engineering slot. 'Bitcoin is nothing but hashcash with inflation control' is the type of pompous exaggeration that sends your submission straight to the circular file.