The spv verify opcode looks to me like to me to be in the class of a generically useful inclusions which anyone is free to use for a variety of developments or optimizations of existing developments.

Do you suppose that anyone involved with Bitcoin dev had any ideas or involvement in efforts which could have made use pay-to-script-hash when it was integrated?  I don't remember you pitching a bitch about that.

I'm sure we are going to hear howls of rage from you if/when there is call for a hard-fork to raise the transaction rate cap because someone involved in Bitcoin dev might also have involvement in a tangential effort which might benefit by increased transaction rates.  Right?

A reasonable hypothesis explaining the resistance to sidechains is that the failure of crufty old Satoshi-esque code and ad-hoc unencapsulated network transport is actually a very desirable thing to some and the trajectory of their strategy depends on it.  Sidechains could extend the life expectancy of ad-hoc collection of unencumbered organic solutions.

Not this bitcoiner.  I always considered it absurd due to the design of the system.

Gold is the counter-point inevitably comes up in these discussions.  Gold isn't used as a 'currency of commerce' in the least.  It sits in a vault doing nothing for decades at a time yet it has significant value and is in high demand.  Usually the vault that of a nation state.  The safest, most 'distributable', most supportable, etc blockchain would be one which mimics this use.

It is still possible (in most countries) for any Joe Sixpack to obtain and dispose of gold if they want, and very occasional he may do so in some sort of unusual transaction.  Very rare though.  I bought a house a few years back and had to prove that I had certain assets.  I went to my safe deposit box and got some of my stash, then to the real estate office down the street, showed the agent, and made photocopies.  No shit!  Obviously I didn't want to take the conversion hit of changing them to USD then back again, and didn't wish to use them to pay for the house and was expecting a batch of cash to show up in a few weeks due to some work related stuff.  The real estate agent had never heard of nor seen such a thing.  But it worked.  Crypto-currency would have been so much better.

Doing some 'commerce' I do need a 'currency of commerce' regularly and for this I use USD (me being an American.)  I 'demand' only what I need for relatively immediate use and don't have demand for much more since I don't use it as a vehicle for store of value.

It is true (albeit very pie-in-the-sky) that if BTC were even modestly used as a 'currency of commerce' the valuations would rise just to achieve the needed liquidity, but the risks are huge and I don't believe that Bitcoin could exists in a desirable form under this pattern of utilization due to design deficiencies.  It is more true that if Bitcoin can achieve and maintain trust in a 'reserve' or 'store of value' role where most non hand-to-mouth people store most of their wealth, that would elevate the valuations at least as much as this need for 'currency of commerce' liquidity demand.  'Trust' in my book means defensible against corp/gov attack which diminishes or disappears with significant use as an 'exchange' currency.

Pffft.  Bitcoin never was 'used as a currency of commerce' (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean) and it achieved a pretty significant value...though barely a tiny fraction of it's potential.  I've heard the same nonsense assertions spouted by Joe Random Nobody as though they have some position of authority for years now as have a lot of us.  Normally it's not worth the bother to respond.


Sounds to me like a couple of butt-hurt losers who got in late and are crying in your beers about it.  Commiserate away.  Sniffle.

Native Bitcoin:




Sidechains backed by Native Bitcoin:

Why, it's a decentralized decentralization decentralizer.  And legal to!  Says so right on their web site.  Can't you read?

Just to be clear, Socialism changed my Socialist views.  The only thing Bitcoin did to make me into a belated Libertarian was allowed me the financial nudge to get into a situation where I understood Socialism better as a practice.

I've the same complaints against Libertarians that I had in my battles against them on the Usenet 20 years ago as I do now, and Bitcoinland has only amplified these.

At the system analysis level, I've the same philosophical fondness for some of the Socialist aspirations that I always did...in my interpenetration of Socialism.  Socialism in practice has quashed these as a tenable end-point.  Life is full of pleasant surprises and sour disappointments I suppose.  Gotta roll with the punches and stay adaptable.


Sad but true.

That reminds me to clarify.  I consider Cypherdoc to be the proverbial and archetypal 'frenemy'.  We've got a long history and the last thing I remember agreeing on was that BTC was worth taking a chance on @$2-ish.  Probably why we are both still around.

The thing that is so endearing about Cypherdoc is that he is near completely a troll and and ass-clown, but he seems to totally miss it and seems to earnestly believe the opposite.

Anyway, this thread was made for trolling.  Look at the title and most of Cypherdoc's input for Christsake!  I personally don't consider trolling to be a bad thing in many circumstances.  I developed my theories of trolling back in the Usenet days after noticing that in order to be effective a troll had to have a subtle element of underlying truth.  To that extent a troll post has value.  Generally they also must be amusing...at least to the group of readers who share one's sense of humor.  Here again is a source of value.

LOL!  An entirely predictable tragicomedy.

Someone should collect articles such as this to help anyone contemplating joining a bunch of Libertarians on some desert wasteland, foreign shore, island, set of welded together scrap barges or ship, etc.  I would suggest as a title for the collection: 'Atlas Bugged.'

And how pump-n-dumps are.  Just sayin'

I was just trying to gauge where Justus's head was at.  Sometime's it's hard to tell with his type.  Adam says he's OK, but I'm not so sure.  His response tells me that he's probably mostly just another pumper.

Oh well...old stackers like the doc and I, if we are being honest with ourselves, recognize that we owe a lot to the pumpers and the 'principled Libertarian' shtick is hands-down the most effective in Bitcoinland for whatever reason.  Justus rocks here.

Hey J-man:  You pump 'em and I'll dump 'em homey.

The cool thing is that someone else is paying him at least enough to keep his pantry stocked with Top-Ramen, though with Monetas/Concentric/whatever it seems quite possible that it may be me in one of those 'your tax dollars at work' type of deals.

So then you are aware that Bitcoin has effectively no long-term support potential as a foundation in it's presently advertised form and are not just another clueless dupe.  Good for you!  I can understand how it's one of those 'Houston, we have a problem' things that one would wish to defer dwelling on for whatever reason or set of reasons.  Chief among them until one has pocketed what one calculates to be the maximum potential profit.

For my part, I took some profits in case the shit hit the fan in an unpleasant way, but I also retained a bunch on the hopes that something would come along to rescue the system.  Sidechains seem to me to have that potential and do so in a way that preserves the aspects of Bitcoin that I like.  Centralization under a handful of large corp/gov players could also end up making me a dime, but I'd prefer the former route for philosophical reasons.

That makes no more logical sense than to say it's 'artificially fixed' to where everyone can use of for 'free'.  And nothing in this world is 'free'.

The fact is that it's always going to be relatively expensive to have every transaction transmitted nearly instantly and stored indefinitely on multiple
autonomous systems.  You can try to subsidize it, but in the end all you are going to have is consolidation as the fixed rates and cost of doing business increases lineally without bound.  I'm willing to pay for this since I understand the value and it is valuable to me.  Most people bought into the hype so now we have tension.

The real 'costs of doing business' have not even started yet because Bitcoin is still to small to be a noteworthy threat to anyone.  Some of those who it might threaten are almost certainly keeping an eye on things, and likely influencing things such that they can win the upcoming battles if they need occur, but these are largely on the horizon.

In the mean time I think that you guys swim in a pool you are not even aware of.  That is, you take it for granted as an artifact of the natural environment that there exists a relatively free global network that you will always be allowed to use as a playground.  Ever seen the pictures of the rusty ships in the desert in the former Soviet Union?  Whoever build those thought there would always be a big pool of water there for them to float in and probably didn't really anticipate the plug being pulled on the dams that created the artificial sea.


Why don't you, cypherdoc, and whoever else be a sport and answer my theorem for a change:

  "Bitcoin mining will always approach non-profitability due to unlimited supply."

It does not matter how fast the solution grows or how profitable it might be in certain periods.  It is beyond absurd to say "we just need to get to 1x10^{n} hashes and everything will be cool."  This has vast ramifications for almost everything about Bitcoin, and it's been studiously ignored.  I suspect that it simply blows any conventional conceptions and efforts built upon them out of the water.

The best hope is that Bitcoin valuation growth happens in a linear manner, but this puts it at best on terms with modern Keynesian monetary systems which rely on centrally planned inflation to keep the game alive.  It doesn't seem likely with Bitcoin absent central control, and that is something I personally don't wish to see.  At all!

More likely what will happen is that mining will be profitable only to those who both employ economies of scale and who tap other value streams.  The most competative will be a handful of very large player who got very large by playing nice with the powers that be and who only survive by the grace of said.  We've seen this game before and see it all around us at present.

Sidechains have some hope of mitigating the inevitable disaster by requiring that Bitcoin itself become subsidized by mutable pool of sidechains no group of which are critical to the value core.  The also provide an outlet for the (again, inevitable) oversupply of sha256 hashing power which will otherwise if little to do and little to lose by attacking the very solution they were supposed to support before being powered down forever.

You guys should read the Greek myth about Syphilis.  That is an outstanding proxy for sha256 hashing in support of Bitcoin.  A much better long term solution for proof of work would have been significantly more sophisticated, but getting there from here probably does not involve Satoshi's Bitcoin at this time.  It may or may not include data residing in the blockchain however.  Sidechains provides the best bet of not ever finding out whether or not that is the case.

I've mainly ignored the massive storm of flotsam and jetsam in the crypto-currency sphere for other interests but just spent a few minutes looking at Monetas due to entries in this thread.

I must say, it kinda seems like Monetas (or whatever) is kind of targeting the big Kahuna.  That is, to BE Bitcoin on the basis of having a better implementation in bctd (and I would not doubt that they do.)

If that ends up coming to pass then ya, the world would truly be your oyster and I one could certainly say "no one else will be able to do the things that our software does."

That would be a best-case scenario to me (with the caveat that I would accept a modest and simple increase based upon quality forward looking analysis.)

Relatedly, and even more importantly, it would allow Bitcoin core to basically freeze as a codebase.

As an engineer, I appreciate well constructed, well documented, and elegant code.  Also as an engineer, I've lived with utterly shit code (often enough of my own creation) because of priorty and risk profiles, and because it worked for it's intended purpose and was reasonable well understood.

I was a fan of alternate implementations in earlier phases of Bitcoin's existence.  I even provided modest funding to the guy who was dicking around with an erlang implementation/joke.  Times have changed, and a realistic expectation of sidechains are THE main change.  This relegates the need for experimentation and elegance to the dustbin.


Likewise, and I think that is a great thing.  This because they are, as best I can tell, experiance professionals many of whom have fought in the trenches on the right side of the historic battles.  Fairly demonstrably so.  To a large degree their instincts and mine seem to align on a lot of fronts and this one in particular.


Wrong again Bob.  With sidechains, native Bitcoin is available to anyone who wants to pay what it's worth.  Anyone!  What you want is to model the ubiquitous welfare state structure that abound with plebs being subsidized by powerful institutions who leverage economies of scale to drop their own costs while milking the herd for different kinds of value streams.

What I see sidechains doing is giving everyone the opportunity to enjoy the kinds of freedom that current Bitcoin allows, but in an honest and robust manner rather than in the sneaky subsidized manner that logically must be the end-game when trying to make native Bitcoin be the one-size-fits-all solution under anything remotely resembling the current system of support.

Sounds like Monetas will soon be more of a customer of Blockstream.  Paying them to consult on how to make whatever they are trying to cook up into a viable sidechain.

After the likes of Justus's attacks here, there is at least one person who wouldn't touch Monetas's stuff with a 10' pole even when it is just another sidechain.  That would be me.

Cypherdoc encounters Coinlock on Reddit:

I do see it as a consideration, but don't dwell on it as much as other more interesting and pertinent considerations.

I don't see this as a big threat because I always anticipated native Bitcoin being my long-term value store where sidechain coins be what I use day-to-day.  I have a higher tolerance for risk here because it would normally be a relatively small fraction of my holdings and something I can walk away from in a worst-case scenario.

Secondly, I would be looking favorably to an implementation which would allow me to bail back to Bitcoin more-or-less whole (with, possibly, some degree of slop) if the solution simply evaporated.

Thirdly, I anticipate that under a lot of potential failure modes there would be some early warning of potential problems which would allow me to make a more clean exit.  Here again, I would be looking toward implementations which foster this sort of a scenario.

---

Relatedly but slightly different, I could imagine situations where Bitcoin itself failed or took on attributes which I and a majority of users felt to be intolerable, and the strongest contender as a replacement was itself a successful sidechain.  That might be a concern which is driving an undercurrent of Sidechain fear here in the ecosystem but the detractors are to chicken-shit to fess up.  Hard to know.  Whatever the case, I'm relatively fearless about such things and don't have any sort of spiritual or fundamentalist attachment to Bitcoin in and of itself.  Although I like Bitcoin just fine, I've always felt that if something better comes along, or is promoted to that rank by a failure of Bitcoin, that's something to be thankful for in the scheme of things.  Indeed, I think just such a failure is more likely than not as people naively seek to 'enhance' native Bitcoin to provide capabilities that are effectively impossible.

edit: clarify as 'native'.

Not necessarily.  I went to USD and paid a shit-load of taxes.  Had I found a way to convert directly into gold it's not clear that my hit would have been so heavy.

BTW, please forgive me if I don't hang on your every word with respect to what the future holds.

The Bitcoin Foundation is 'non-profit' in the same way that nearly every other 'non-profit' is these days.  That is to say, most participants are profiting nicely in one way or another.  At least at the higher levels.  There are often plenty of drones in the lower levels who make it all possible and never knew what hit them.  And an even greater number who want nothing to do with the scammy organization but get sucked into the vortex in one way or another.

BTW, being called a blasphemer is one of the highest complements one could bestow on me.  So, Thanks!


You are still the broken clock who is right twice a day.  And looks like 2014 won't be one of those periods.  Perhaps 2015 will turn that frown up-side-down for ya.  I wonder how many other people followed Goat's lead and cashed in for gold a year ago.  They'll be smiling now I dare say.

Sorry dude, I cannot imagine you making that strained argument with a straight face in light of the fact that we already rely on 'trust' in Bitcoin itself in exactly the same manner.  Lots of people are scratching their head about where you are coming from due to obviously nonsense statements like this.

This is especially the case in light of the fact that Gavin is paid, and relatively handsomely, by what a plurality of folks seem to now recognize (so it seems) as a loathsome institution which downsizes mainly when crooks get caught and belatedly kicked out.  It is no stretch to consider the Bitcoin Foundation as being blatantly crooked insofar as it takes funds and supports frauds like inputs.io, and just as bad, seems highly prone to such conspiracies as 'red-listing' which is near universally considered an abomination.  All under the cloak of quasi-secrecy, and god only knows what happens in the real core of the organization.

Even having two shit-bag organizations fighting one another is preferable to having only one, and I see a high likelihood that Blockstream will be anything but.  My only hope is that Blockstream stands up to the Bitcoin Foundation machinations and call them out as needed.  And hopefully bury them eventually.