it seems you take some majoritarian view. there may be some merit to that, however, i don't understand how one can oppose a 51% attack on a technical level and also support a 51% attack on a political level. either we value consensus, or we don't.

there is economic incentive to achieve larger blocks, yes. that's why it will likely eventually happen. but miner incentives, like price discovery, do not play out overnight. scaling cannot be an overnight process.

i am not re-defining bitcoin. bitcoin already is. in order to hard fork the protocol, a new consensus must be achieved. you can't write off the blockchain that miners are currently mining, lol.

if consensus goes from 95-100% --> 75% or 51%, indeed, many will feel betrayed, and we will have a civil war on our hands. those who assume that a simple majority can force the rest of the market into a contentious hard fork put far too much faith into their linear understanding of miner incentives, and are obviously not versed in game theory.

in such a situation, we will have multiple blockchains. whatever view you take on the block size debate, it is of utmost importance that we prevent such a situation. in that case, it's possible that bitcoin will never again comprise a "single" blockchain. security on all chains will be crippled, as will trust in bitcoin.

exactly. i don't know why bitcoiners have this obsession with investing their bitcoins. most investment schemes are outright frauds, and those that aren't are highly speculative. bitcoin itself is already highly speculative. makes more sense to me to ride BTCUSD as an investment and swing trade the market. much safer than dealing with dodgy schemes.

why would that matter to consumers? i use bitcoin all the time. that doesn't mean im stupid. banks and credit cards aren't going anywhere. credit cards net me better incentives ---> i use credit cards over bitcoin any day of the week. with credit cards, i also have no problem with bank holidays or security checks. all instant. and credit cards are actually accepted everywhere, unlike bitcoin.

cool story. so any time an issue sees more controversy, we betray one of the founding principles and security measures of bitcoin in order to force the question? despite technical controversies?

controversy is natural. agreement will never be total. that doesn't mean betraying what bitcoin is and always has been to meet your meaningless definition of what it should be, is acceptable.

to the bolded: this was 2 months ago. you're just making up arbitrary time lines about when consensus [automatically] becomes impossible. and you are suggesting that by definition, it becomes impossible. you offer no evidence of this.

core devs =/= "small blockists".....fact that you're still throwing around these misnomers tells me i should probably not waste my time discussing anything with you.

it resolves as every past issue has been resolved.

whether or not more companies accept it, this doesn't give consumers a reason to adopt bitcoin. as it stands, there are little to no consumer incentives (even with Gyft i can get better cash back with my credit cards).....for whatever reason people will adopt bitcoin---imo mainly hedge against fiat/store of value/investment vehicle. merchant adoption has zilch to do with that.

sorry, but the burden of proof is on you here. it sounds like you are just throwing around the phrase "impossible to achieve" willy nilly. why, just a few months ago, miners achieved 95% consensus to implement BIP 66. wtf are you talking about?

there is no reason to prove that consensus is impossible; firstly, you can't prove a negative. secondly, previous forks (including one as recently as july) are solid evidence that you are wrong.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=958036.msg11785195#msg11785195

how is it impossible? as far as i know, there is only one active fork of the blockchain. that's the point of consensus. what's your definition?

any other past hard forks are long dead. we already have consensus. you are just trying to redefine the word so you can say "it will never work, so let's change bitcoin through politics." sorry, but no.

actually, by the definition of consensus, the status quo = the consensus. we have one blockchain---that blockchain is "bitcoin". consensus has been achieved. let's see if another fork can achieve consensus, then, shall we?

i have no problem with forking bitcoin. most altcoins are bitcoin forks. i don't mind.

but i don't agree with your approach. the one that should be left in the dust is the one that can't achieve consensus.

fair enough, fair enough. i'm just throwing it out there, half-joking. i've been lurking these forums a long time, and have ample reading experience when it comes to these things.

i think we have good reason to believe that it is, in fact, the real Tradefortress.

TF was clearly tied to operating hashie.co---and he was just found to be sending coins that came from hashie.co to Quickseller. (the fact that he also used his usual 1GLados change address as the change address isn't evidence of anything, though it is his usual MO)

his continued trolling of tspacepilot as of < 2 weeks ago, and his continued "scammer accusations" against others (while simultaneously being a scammer himself) are classic TF as well

hmm, well unfortunately in this community that can only go one of two ways: 1. awkward geeks behind computer screens will start hitting on you. 2. you'll be labelled a scammer for trying to take advantage of said awkward geeks.

i'd leave gender out of it.

baa-dum-tsss. well played.

short answer: u.s. residents have a culture that praises stupidity and ditziness. knowledge for its own sake is only sought after by a minority. the latter, of course, is true in much of the world. but it is exacerbated in the u.s. because here, intelligence is actively stigmatized.

to be fair, there wasn't any mention of "any action against TradeFortress".....

just this:


i mean, i would assume there are no actions pending against him. but do we know this for sure?

i hope he dumps it all on bitstamp. i got huge bids waiting at the $0-$10 range. not really expecting them to ever get hit.

but that's where they are when i'm in fiat, in case, you know, satoshi dumps it all.

^^ anyone posting in this thread about how they are currently paying for cloud mining or looking to start---this is what you will sound like. everyone of them eventually shuts down and runs with everyone's money. and you're never getting it back.

nah, block size has been debated since like 5 years ago. people have just been creating this irrational sense of urgency by introducing a protocol that is capable of a hard fork.

he's probably just slow-selling a bit of coin on the off-chance that XT succeeds. very small chance, very small number of coins moved.

you know, it pains me to say. but a lot of the pro-XT camp came off this way. all this rhetoric about "what if bitcoin is adopted by a billion people 12 hours from now?" it really comes off like kids screaming "moon"....infrastructure and coding developments, progress on the block size debate---these are positive things. they continue to happen. that =/= real organic adoption, and we don't know what that looks like or how it will play out/over what time period.

that sounds problematic. i'm fine with what bitcoin is and what it has become. i'm not sure i like the idea of any "leader" having some kind of dictatorial control -- other devs and hashing power need to keep that in check. what if he had been co-opted? what if his vision had changed to something that we, the community, do not support?