big news if true

right

there's a very important reason why people buy 1 cigarette: they don't have the money for a 10 pack. When you're right at the bottom of the economic ladder, spending minimum absolute amounts is far more important than multi-buy value. There's a small spending window you gotta fit all your needs into somehow.

And there's more people like that than anyone else, Bitcoin needs them as adopters as much as it needs the millionaire class. TV commercials are targeted at those people more than they are to anyone else, and that's because that same millionaire class needs the bottom decile of economic status, they're the ones buying most of the mainstream corporate products (ironic huh?), and they're the largest economic group by headcount.

Arguably, that's a function of the non-viability of microtransactions using current tech. But even today, micro-transactions is a use case. People sell e.g. single cigarettes, and people buy them. Can you today sell single cigarettes using BTC on-chain? Not really.

I'm not saying people will buy single cornflakes if they suddenly get the chance, just that if you only want 1 nail, then that's what you'd prefer to buy, even if the rate you're paying is 5% the price of 100 nails. Both parties are happy; the retailer gets that warm satisfaction of a 500% markup, and the customer doesn't have the problem of holding on to 99 nails they don't have a use for.

If a currency or payment system existed that made that economically feasible, the Bitcoin network might lose that business to it (lightning channels could handle it, but they're denominated in subdivided satoshis in order to do so, which was my original point after all)



You're thinking about this as if the current dynamic of small coins being "silver to Bitcoin's gold" can persist indefinitely, yet there's already a possibility of that relationship breaking down. Coin devs won't stop coming up with new ideas, so it's puzzling to me that you've become so set on the way this market worked back in 2013.

superficially, there are similarities, but they really are separate concepts IIUC

my advice to research this would be to find Peter Todd's original thread here on Bitcointalk (there might even be in that thread a younger version of me, probably not adding much to the conversation ), also try to look through the bitcoin-dev mailing list archives to find a corresponding thread.



not in any detail. I know so little about tree-chains and DAGs that it's better I don't comment right now. But you can make a basic observation: no-one's developed any separate cryptocoin using either concept that has seen any notable success. The most prominent was IOTA, and it suffered the typical crpyotcurrency life-cycle; ICO flavor of the month -> slow decline in interest/relevance.

Possibly there's some interesting research in these areas too, but I'm not aware of anything that's caught fire at all.

it may never submit your node hardware to the load that mining does, but for a node routing 100-10,000 payments per day, I dunno, maybe the w/h might start to become significant. Difficult to judge at this stage, as there clearly aren't enough payments over Lightning to expect that kind of load, but in time that kind of routing volume will be possible. We also don't know how efficient routing algorithms will become, or exactly how the network will stratify along the lines of routing v.s. non-routing nodes (the need for the "trampoline node" concept implies this will happen to some extent)

you can also use Bitcoin Core team's HWI: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/HWI

guide here: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/HWI/blob/master/docs/bitcoin-core-usage.md


There's a big change to how the wallet sub-system works that's probably going to make it into Bitcoin 0.20.0, at the moment creating a watching wallet is pretty painless (although it will take a while to scan the blockchains for tx history), but spending using Bitcoin's GUI isn't yet possible. Continuing to use the separate Trezor apps is still the only way to do it (or use the cli tools for HWI)

Ultimately though, using Trezor's web wallet as the front end is less satisfactory as a solution than using an integrated tool with Bitcoin's GUI, both for how streamlined the process and how secure/minimal the system will be. But the earliest possibility of using that is gonna be 0.20.0, and that's not scheduled for release till May 2020. The watch-wallet scanning may well receive a big performance boost with BIP157-based utxo querying. Again, that'll be in 0.20.0 at the earliest (but you can enable the filters for BIP157 now if you're using Bitcoin 0.19.0+)

it will always exist, and in fact provides a useful example to those that can recognize it. This makes the overall concept of deception more vivid, and gives people an improved insight into the imaginative process that generates deceptive strategies. This cuts both ways; the deceptive can use it to refine their ideas (or to recognize when an idea is too easy to detect and contemplate novel alternatives), but it gives honest and/or co-operative people a chance to do their own contemplation, and preempt attempts to deceive themselves and others before it happens.

So I disagree that it's categorically a problem, the opposite in fact (and reality doesn't conform to your assertion anyway, it's a fantasy). However, when deceiving and cheating people becomes a dominant behavior, that elicits a negative feedback loop, then it truly does become more destructive than instructive.

supposedly, the amount of nicotine you ingest can be higher when using vapes. And nicotine isn't so healthy even without all the other toxic substances you're exposed to through smoking.

But if you can get some assurance that certain producers of nicotine solutions for vaping are at a given (low) concentration, you could probably get what's actually promoted with vaping, instead of swapping low nicotine product for a high nicotine product.

---

The whole thing seems a little ridiculous to me overall. Smoking is that embodiment of "I just don't give a fuck, watch me prove it by inhaling addictive toxic smoke". Vaping is saying "I'm an addict, and I don't have the willpower to give up, and don't get that it looks a bit desperate"

Smoke or give up. Anything in between comes across as psychological weakness. Either you give zero fucks and can control yourself and your will, or you can't.

anyone notice that this coincided with (slightly) more widespread reporting that several small Chinese banks were recently subject to runs on deposits, and subsequently nationalized? (which seems conceptually bizarre in China, how on earth do you open even a small bank without a huge amount of party political influence at operational and board levels?)

Looking at the overall picture, it's one of the Chinese state trying to hold the banking system together as it unravels, while simultaneously trying to squash anyone heading for any escape hatches (and Bitcoin isn't the only or necessarily the preferred method) Not that it seems like it's hitting panic territory especially, but more that the overall trend is picking up some momentum.

And I concur on the interest in comments from genuine Chinese people on these issues, but I expect they know (or fear) something we don't; what are the chances that simply getting caught talking about this stuff would buy you a lifetime residency getting tortured in some modern gulag for "spreading malicious rumors" or somesuch

that almost sounds convincing, but I get the feeling something else is going on. I mean, they do check out the viability of any service before offering it, typical fractional reserve isn't possible, unless the banks intend either to denominate the BTC in fiat (!!!) or to eventually default on their deposit obligations. The chances that defaulting debtors can actually repay BTC is so unlikely in this kind of immature market that I just can't see how it could possibly work, the collateral for the loan would need to be so secure that barely anyone would be either eligible or willing to borrow.

Other derivatives could work, but what's the likelihood they get too greedy and screw it all up?


I second the call for more sources on this story. It seems the only reason they'd really do this is: desperation. I'm sure there are at least a few Bitcoiners who got into it as gambling addicts, looking for a way to boost their money pool (and possibly to pay off some lingering debts). That's also a pretty good description of modern banking as an institution, so maybe this could be true, and that they simply can't stand the sweet smell of hot profits any longer (and have a few little cash-flow issues that need handling at the same time )

not for brand new businesses

You're talking about established businesses, who are more conservative as they have something to lose. People just starting out with fresher ideas are already risking everything on the venture e.g. openbazaar is gradually filling up it's search listings with exactly that kind of business

seems the same as 0.18.1 to me


this could be a coincidence based thing. It's somewhat random which 6 blocks were last when you quit the Bitcoin app, and they'll be the same 6 Bitcoin checks when you start it up again. Those blocks could (by sheer chance) be slow to verify. This could be because the blocks are all larger than average, or more subtly because they contain transactions with scripts that take alot of time to evaluate.

The following are typical causes of degraded disk performance:

• encrypting the disk
• allowing a Copy-on-write filesystem to become more than 60%-80% full
• allowing any disk that's also the main system disk to become 80%-90% full
• compressing the disk

if any of those factors came into play recently, they'll make a difference to Bitcoin's disk based performance

oh, but you should be one of the enlightened ones that gets to live?

the arrogance and ignorance of this viewpoint is breathtaking. I'm gonna show some compassion here, and say that you don't deserve to lose your life, despite your position.

Maybe though, instead of being so fatalistically unimaginative, you might consider that this is not the first time that someone has concluded that mass-killing is the only option for world peace And, that they always said "this time, it's different, there really are just too many people".

And, that they were always, always wrong. You're wrong too, and you won't be the last, sadly. I'm just glad that others are busy coming up with solutions while you wring your hands fantasizing about murdering people you think are beneath you (I assume that in the continued spirit of this cowardly tradition that you intend to get someone else to do your murdering for you? )

nicotine damages cardio-vascular tissue, it makes arteries less flexible in response to increased bloodflow

forget about the whole "vaping is healthy" angle, you're pretty much begging to be "helped" by government intervention that way

so can we take it you guys are volunteering as victims of this proposed 3.5 billion person genocide? No?

what should the criteria be then? I wonder if that idea, if taken seriously, would start, oh, I don't know, the biggest argument ever? And possibly the cruelest irony ever too: the fight that starts over which people should die to save the planet actually could end up in billions killed.

way to go you three that's completely redefined what I thought the least classy and most repellent human being could possibly be

why should it make a difference whether it's healthy or not?


if tax policy setters get to decide what you should and shouldn't do, is there any real point in calling your life yours? whose life are you living, if all your decisions are already made for you? there's no point in us being separate people if we have our range of choices constantly eroded closer to zero.

Where's all the creative thinking that we really need going to come from if the biggest inspiration in your life is "why can't these people leave us all alone, I'm being healthy, I'm being a good slave, can't you find a reason to pick on someone else? "

Why don't you find the inspiration to stand up and refuse, instead? You only have one life, why spend it afraid of bullies? Why waste the one chance you've got to do the right thing, just because it's easier to back down?

it won't make any difference anyway, because banning anything has never in the history of banning things succeeded. Never.

And smokers don't care about your argument. People who continued to smoke cigarettes instead of vaping say things like "vaping... it's all clean and clinical, who fucking wants that? I smoke cos I want that dirty smell on my fingers, if I wanted to be clean I'd start eating salad, become a buddhist and buy oxygen tanks"

Using a logical argument usually doesn't make sense when people want to be considered wrong or bad They KNOW it's wrong, and they like it that way. It's a kind of masochism, which is why I'm partly (PARTLY) onboard with one aspect of the Bernie Sanders lobby: abolition of prison. Alot of people in prison sort of want to be there for complicated and fucked up psychological reasons, the only people that arguably need to be there are (a) very small proportion of dangerously violent people (b) politicians, corporate CEOs and military top brass who aren't stupid enough to wind up in prison under any circumstances. Of course the Bernie people screw it all up by saying that it should be replaced with "rehabilitation", which is going to be the exact same prison system rebranded with "social conscience" or whatever. I don't see why we should pay for people to be housed & fed (or "rehabilitated") when getting punished for anything is actually what they want or need in some deeply psychologically screwy way

pffff, I thought it was already as bad as it could be.


Permission less money, turned into something that needs you to jump through multiple hoops to use. Bitpay had such an opportunity, and they've become addicted to making every possible mistake they can (and out of pure lack of respect and decency for both merchants and their customers, what sort of viable business thinks that's gonna work out long term)

you get more indifferent after experiencing a dozen of these events. The time when $250 capitulated at $70, phew, I was thinking "some super bad news could really squash the whole thing", but fortunately it turned around both very assertively and fast.

Nowadays, any movement is pretty irrelevant to me. I spend BTC when I need stuff, not when economics (or economists) suggests I should (in your face, Gresham!) The more I learn about how Bitcoin's fundamentals hold it together (and future plans to strengthen it), the less concerned I am about a black swan situation wiping it out. Which is obviously always possible, but it'll be far easier to put the whole thing down to experience in that event. I'll be proud and lucky to have been a part of a great part of history if so, I mean think on that, this is a genuinely historic phenomenon that'll actually appear in cultural dissemination years from now, whether it succeeds long term or not. And it's been said from very early on, if Bitcoin fails, cryptocurrency will still succeed, you can definitely "bank" on that

Really, the whole thing's a total labyrinth, this thread is no doubt barely scraping the surface. It's highly likely that there are multiple taxes that even tax professionals are not paying through misinterpretation or being otherwise unaware; like the statute books overall, the tax code is so vast and complex that only skilled and diligent people can find either the loopholes or the gotchas that their contemporaries do not. Which makes it a great tool for political persecution; when everyone is breaking the law (unaware or not), you can make an example of anyone if you're powerful and a particular person or group is pissing you off.