That's not only condescending, but just plain stupid. In the history of Bitcoin, there have been exactly two people who have given up the keys to the castle. One was Satoshi. What was the other one's name...?

It was decided in your absence solely because you left the conversation. You self-selected not to participate. Suck it up, buttercup.

Yeah - it's imprecise. I am integrating by eye. But it is close. What line would you draw as a linear interpolation of this data?

Yeah, it could be. But probably is not. How close to maximum theoretical capacity do you think is realistic?

No. I don't. I'm pretty sure this is the new normal.

Looking at the 7-day average of market cap, we are about to hit that measure's high water mark. (Currently at ~$10.2B USD and climbing fast, was only larger than this for less than ten days in Nov-Dec 2013, with max of ~$10.9B USD on 2013 Dec 12 - https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap?timespan=all&daysAverageString=7) With this significant event coming to pass, there will be renewed interest in the popular press. With renewed interest comes an influx of new users. With an influx of new users comes additional transactions. All competing for the same limited block space.

Many will turn away in derision when The New Magic Internet Money does not seem to deliver on its promises of fast & near free. But some will suck it up and deal. Net: more usage of the blockchain. More delays in getting your transactions processed. More fees per transaction. And more stuck transactions in an ever-increasing backlog.

While all this is unfortunate, what really sucks is the forestalling of The Wave Of Adoption That Could Have Been, were it not be for a stupid maxblocksize limit.

Not at all. Last two quarters? I was around when Ver's early advocacy made a huge impact on Bitcoin adoption. BTAIM, my point is that singling out a single individual out of a large group that agree on one point, and ascribing one statement that that individual made to the group as a whole, is ludicrous.


You are the one with the outlandish claim. Proving it is on you. So let us substitute the text you assert you meant then:

You seem to be stating that you view Ver's verbal statement of "difficult to support segwit" as synonymous with "[primarily Roger Ver and ViaBTC have been] fighting for blocking scaling via Segwit and pro a fork."

Nope - I'm not seeing how that is any closer to being synonymous. It still says more about you than it does of Ver.


Exactly. Now do you see how ludicrous your suggestion seems to someone who supports scaling via emergent consensus of maxblocksize?


No. "Mainstream people should not be trying to decide technical limits though" is not a statement of fact. It is dogma.


Except we are not speaking of random people. We are speaking of emergent consensus of the very people who have something at stake. The exact set of interests who have invested in the the Bitcoin network and technology. As opposed to a handful of devs who may or may not have anything at stake.


1MB maxblocksize is an economical limit only because it is being imposed upon the system.

Leaving aside the fact that cherry-picking some random rich dude and attributing an entire movement to that person is ludicrous...

You seem to be stating that you view Ver's verbal statement of "difficult to support segwit" as synonymous with "[primarily Roger Ver and ViaBTC have been] fighting for blocking scaling and Segwit and pro a fork." This says more about you than it does of Ver.


No. You (core, et al) just implement emergent maxblocksize and continue promoting/preaching what you are already doing. It causes no harm but helps move forward (at least a bit).


Now see, that is what is known as an opinion. Dogma really. Spare me the 'holier than thou' shit. I do not agree. There was a time when the prevailing attitude within Bitcoin was that our money was to be free of arbitrary limitations imposed by others. Further, it is not a technical limit. There is some limit that technology imposes, but it sure-the-hell-ain't 1MB (good thing, as The SegWit Omnibus Changeset implements a sliding scale for maxblocksize that can be as large as 4MB). No. What we have here is a centrally-imposed limit within the code. Indeed, this limit was not put in place to begin with to deal with a technological problem, and its realtion to any underlying technological limit is tenuous at best.

Why? Wouldn't do him/her any good. I've read the entire thread, and you have provided exactly zero evidence to support an assertion that the Chinese government is controlling the Bitcoin miners.

Do you realize that relying on the fees paid in the previous block as an indicator of fees needed for the next block is not deterministic?

And that is even if miners were not completely free to choose for themselves which transactions they will collate to mine upon.

Fascinating. Quote?

Certainly appears as if you have. Where's your rationale for stating that "BU proponents, ... have been fighting for ... a fork"?


Well, no. I've not been following Ver's comments lately. Should I? Has he somehow come to speak for BU proponents? I don't recall a referendum on that position. AFAIK, BU has no official spokesperson. We have a secretary, but they are not chartered with any advocacy such as that of which you speak.

How about you provide a link to a quote so I can know what you're talking about?

Further, I tend to stay away from the cesspool that is Reddit, unless I find a link to it from some other venue that piques my interest.

And again, we're not for "blocking scaling and SegWit"*. We BU-ers are for implementing scaling through the emergent consensus of the entire network having control over maxblocksize. Unfortunately, at this juncture, supporting this approach to scaling precludes supporting segregated witness (let alone The SegWit Omnibus Changeset).

*Prove me wrong with a quote demonstrating this attitude even exists, let alone is predominant.


Well, blocking SegWit in the sense that at this juncture, any node running The SegWit Omnibus Changeset (i.e., at this point core 0.13.1) is a node that cannot be running BU, and vice versa. So yes - it seems clear you do not understand our reasoning. Though it should be obvious if you think about it.

But not in a sense of a Snidely Whiplash / Boris Badenov / Dr Evil sort of obstructionism. At least the BU folk with whom I am in regular contact. Which by all accounts is the mainstream. We're just fighting for what we believe is the most beneficial approach and best path forward to a more capable Bitcoin, maximizing value to the largest possible set of users.

Not at all.

1) BU proponents believe that scaling is best served at this juncture by putting control of maxblocksize in everyone's hand, making maxblocksize an emergent property of the network.

2) BU proponents are advocating that BU be activated and dominant on the network. Unfortunately, as core will not adopt an adaptive maxblocksize, they cannot get the improvement in which they believe by running Bitcoin Core. You might see it as blocking, but there is no alternative open to us.

3) BU proponents point out that BU is fully compliant with current consensus rules. As such, running BU does not create a fork. Indeed, the BU advocates I am familiar with deeply desire not to fork. We would be most pleased should the entire network join us in this new improved bitcoin with an adaptive maxblocksize.


<<See how that works? I advocated a BU position without making false claims about the desires of those who have a different vision (i.e., core proponents). I wonder why Lauda cannot make an argument without resorting to rhetorical fabrications>>

Rereading your response, I see I missed this point. Sorry.


I guess I have not discerned what you believe are 'the problems that people see in money'. Can you elucidate?

Great. You asked 'What does Bitcoin provide that fiat does not?', I answered several aspects where Bitcoin has unique benefits over fiat, and you agree. So we can put that aside, right? You concede that Bitcoin provides at least some concrete benefits over fiat?


Bitcoin has no impact upon this example job displacement one way or the other. At least I don't see how it does.

We should not be conflating general Luddite concerns (in the original sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite) with Bitcoin. The overarching question of whether or not increasing technology will render some job loss is not Bitcoin's to solve.

If you wanted to conflate the two completely dissociated issues, you might have done well to use the exemplar of a banker or other pinstriped bandit from the financial services industry. At least these jobs might be directly affected by Bitcoin. Here is an industry that is completely parasitical in nature, that has through covert capture, come to control about 8% of the resources of modern economies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization), with a coalescence of wealth far exceeding that operational share. If Cryptocurrencies truly disintermidiate finance, that would lead to one in twelve jobs being at risk.

But so what? Good riddance to bad rubbish. Maybe they can find more honorable employment as a street sweeper (OK, bad analogy given the obvious technological applications here), or mentoring underachieving youth.


Why would the Cypriot ex-taxi driver be barred from an online job? To the contrary, online jobs open up employment to anyone anywhere in the world. One no longer needs to have the accident of geography of birth in order to work in the affected industries.


In a central planning sense? We do nothing. The Luddites had well-reasoned arguments as to why the industrial revolution would lead to widescale poverty. Looking back, we can see that all their reasoning amounted to nothing, as instead of widespread despair, the industrial revolution brought previously-unimaginable improvements in the standard of living across the entire world.

Turning the question around, if production is at a high enough level to meet the needs of the populace, then freeing up excess labor is a net benefit. If it does not take 2000 hours per year out of the life of each fit adult to sustain a good standard of living for all, why is this a bad thing?

OP claims to control significant hashpower - millions of dollars worth. I don't know the veracity of this claim, but I have no reason to doubt it. I'd hardly characterize someone who has millions of dollars tied up in capital equipment as a 'loser'. You must really have a yuuuge schlong.


Well, no. The market has overwhelmingly not yet weighed in on the matter. It remains to be seen whether or not the market will adopt seg wit. If core sticks to their stated principles -- 95% declaration of adoption before activation (I note GMax is already backpedaling, laying the groundwork for simple majority) -- ViaBTC alone has enough clout to bar activation even if literally everyone else in the Bitcoin sphere adopts.


Have you seen the following?

https://medium.com/@g.andrew.stone/a-short-tour-of-bitcoin-core-4558744bf18b#.9vldpx7lq

Core has been practicing a scorched earth policy of casting aspersions at all non-core efforts for some time now. Largely to an audience that swallows anything they have to say. The reality is somewhat more ... nuanced than presented <g>.


If it was all about being conservative, then all the independent features bundled into The SegWit Omnibus Changeset would not be be rolled out all at once. Conservatism would roll out _actual_ segregated witness by itself, unburdened by all that other cruft along for the ride. Conservatism would not incur the largest change to the protocol since inception. But by all means, cling to your obvious misundsertanding.

Your reasoning is unpersuasive. You do not seem to understand the fact that miners mine on empty blocks in the interval of time between the discovery of a new block, and the time they can have a new list of transactions bundled into a new block upon which to mine. There is a non-zero time during which this occurs.


You also seem to miss the concept of variance. Yes, on occasion, there are an unusually large number of transactions processed per day. So what? On other days, there are an unusually small number. Have you looked at a windowed average? The trend is clearly upward.


On Nov 8, the average number of transactions per block was 1837.
On Nov 17, the average number of transactions per block was 1864.
Latest available -- Nov 21 -- the average per block was 2132. Which is, in fact, the second highest ever (2016 Nov 3 was 2138).

Your cherry-picked dates are working to disprove your thesis.

Source: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block?timespan=all

Thank you for stating your rationale.

One question: what is a '10B level financial system'? I am unfamiliar with this term.

If you think this is anything other than there not being enough room in a maxblocksize block for all the transactions that people would want to transact, your going to have to explain your reasoning. From the number of transactions processed per day : https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30days we are clearly on an unbroken trend.

IOW, I'm saying that your assertion that this backlog is due to some sort of intentional miner control action is dead wrong.

But Bitcoin does solve problems. Just because the masses are not yet aware of these solutions, does not invalidate them. The masses are ignorant of orbital spin angular momentum, but application of this subatomic phenomenon is already solving a myriad of everyday problems for everyday people.

Two specific attributes that Bitcoin possesses, which our fiat money system does not include:

1) Known low rate of inflation (money creation)

Bitcoin's inflation rate ratchets downward every ~4 years, with smaller exponential decreases throughout the intervening years. This is a fixed known attribute of the system, encoded within its protocol. Less than a decade into the project, this inflation rate at less than 6% (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51882.0), is already lower than the rate that central banks such as FED are foisting upon us (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2) (13161-1224)/12244 = ~7.4%.

You might reply 'so what'. What the masses largely don't recognize (as of yet) is that every new unit of currency created obtains its value by stealing it from the value of every unit of currency already in circulation. As such, this inflation is a hidden tax that continually and inevitably steals wealth from the populace at large. Worse yet, the beneficiaries of this wealth-stealing are the insiders to the system, who obtain the value at the front end.

You might want to find a member of Occupy Wall Street who understands this partial reserve scam, and ask him if a money free from these ravages (OK, actually with an algorithmic shrinking of these ravages) might be something he/she might be interested in.

Further, given sufficient time, all fiat monies tend toward inflationary collapse due to this disbasement.

You may want to ask a Zimbabwean or a Venezuelan if a money with a low fixed algorithmic inflation rate might be something he/she might be interested in.

2) No central party of control.

I've said this above, and you seem to acknowledge the point. Unlike fiat money, your bitcoin is yours to use as you wish. There is no other party in control of how you may spend it. Or even if you have access to it at all. This means that you can send value to unfavored groups (e.g., Wikileaks). This also means that it cannot be confiscated by the violence of the state.

While you may have been looking in another direction, 'Bail Ins' is now the default plan for central banks for dealing with member bank collapse. In a Bail In, losses incurred by a banking institution deemed 'too big (i.e., connected) to fail' will be made up by stealing the account balances of depositors, converting them by decree to shares of the banking company. So far, this has been applied sparingly (Cyprus, anyone?). However, it appears that the world's oldest bank (Monte dei Paschi di Siena of Italy) is nearing collapse, and Deutsche Bank is looking as if it may trend to the same fate. Net: millions of depositors could have 'their' money stolen to make up losses. (Actually, ugly fact: money on deposit with a bank does not legally belong to the depositor - it belongs to the bank, and the depositor just owns a liability of the bank).

You might want to ask a Cypriot if an unconfiscatable money might be of some interest. Or, for a more recent example, an Indian, who in a land where cash transactions are the overwhelming majority of commerce, has just had its two most prominent monetary notes decreed to be no longer valid.


You seem to be laboring under the misconception that any given thing must slice, dice, and even make julienne fries in order to be successful. No technology needs to be everything to everybody in order to take off. Especially at start.

Frankly, it seems obvious to me that Bitcoin solves the specific above named problems - for essentially everybody that uses it. The fact that the masses are absolutely ignorant of the underlying nature of the partial reserve fiat money system (probably at least partially due to indoctrination (purposeful miseducation) in schools run by the very benefactors of this insidious system) just makes it take longer before the inevitable mass adoption. These attributes are obvious benefits to anyone who thinks about them. Or do you not see that?

Spin it whatever way you want, you epically missed the point of the post.