Quick Disclaimer: 1. I'm not here to support any shitcoin. 2. We're all gathered here because of bitcoin, so it's hard for me to see it fading way. Bitcoin was designed not be fully anonymous since transactions were open permanently for the public to view. Authorities and security agencies were able to trace the bitcoin owners based metadata and transaction pattern, history and so on. Some developers understand this issue and they go ahead to create some new altcoins which they are fully anonymous by implementing new hashing algorithms on their very new altcoins such as Dash, Monero, Zcash and Zcoin. So why the bitcoin "hard fork" instead of updating the original bitcoin core? Forked coins like BitcoinCash & BitcoinGold are moving from ASICs to GPU mining for faster transactions, why not BTC? Why not update bitcoin mining algorithm to Equihash (zk-snarks) like Zcash and the next upcoming Bitcoin Gold BTG? Instead of updating the original bitcoin core to have more secure and fast transactions with lower xt fee, yet making hard forks! I think hard forks will soon kill the original bitcoin. What do you think, huh? Share with us what you think. thanks  Bitcoin Core developers have conservative approach, they keep security and stability as their prime value and any updates only go live after long periods of discussing and testing. Any new experimental improvements to cryptocurrency protocols should and are done on altcoins, there's no need install them on Bitcoin now. If time will prove that they are sound, we might see some of them at some point at the future. But more likely Bitcoin Core developers would be adding new features as a second layer, so you won't have to risk the main network and force all users to update their clients - this is much better than having hardforks every few months like some altcoins do. So, it's unlikely that alts will ever replace BTC - people value stability in finance more than experimental innovations. |
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I think the main goal of any "national cryptocurrency" is to distract people from true cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, since national cryptocurrencies are very likely to be centralized by design and may even have so backdoors. And the whole crypto and blockchain technology is still very young and has many unsolved problems, most notable of them is scaling. Even is some government wanted, they couldn't move any significant amount of their economy to crypto, because it's not able to process enough transactions, unless their "national cryptocurrency" would have dramatically different design which would mean it's 100% centralized.
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Many people, myself including, view SegWit2x as an attack on Bitcoin, but any attack can also be viewed as a test. For example, the most recent Bcash was also a test - it has proven that Bitcoin can withstand hashrate swings and that miners can't dictate community what to do - users and services didn't start switching to Bcash even though it offers much cheaper fees. As the result, both Bitcoins value and the network were not affected by competing chain. So, SegWit2x would be a similar test - it will show whether corporations and mining cartels can influence the network and its user, or if it's the users who are deciding the future of Bitcoin.
There are some pretty critical differences between Bitcoin Cash and Segwit2x from an ethical standpoint. I view Segwit2x as much more of an attack. BCH integrated strong replay protection, made no attempt to coordinate a supermajority of Bitcoin's hashpower, and presented itself from the start essentially as an altcoin. Segwit2x is being presented by Garzik and company as an "upgrade." There is only opt-in replay protection, which means many people will probably lose money. And they are trying to coordinate mining power to coerce users into migrating to the Segwit2x chain. As much as I dislike Bitmain, there's really no comparing Bitcoin Cash and Segwit2x. One of them is just an altcoin; the other is an attack. I'd only consider BCH to be an attack if LTC and all other Bitcoin forks were considered attacks. Don't forget that BCH was very rushed, the decision to create this fork was made just days before SegWit signalling period, so they had no time and opportunity to consolidate miner and service support. But if you visit /r/BTC, a lot of people there believe that Bcash is the real Bitcoin because it's true to Satoshi's vision, and that SegWit was a corporate takeover by Blockstream. So, it actually is an attack on Bitcoin, it just didn't grew big because it was based on some insane conspiracy theories with no technical proofs. And at some point more than 35% of Bitcoin miners migrated to Bcash for a short period of time, which caused some disruptions in BTC network. In my mind, anything that for some reason has "Bitcoin" name in it can be viewed as malicious brand hijacking, no matter if it's an altcoin or contentious hard fork, because this just creates confusion for newbies, which is exactly the goal of forkers. |
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First, there is no "Bitcoin Core" fork, Bitcoin Core is a client for Bitcoin network. To put this client amongst Bcash and 2x is the same saying that Bitcoin is an altcoin. And the real problem with forks is not that they are creating them or trying to install new network rules, it's that they desperately try to take over Bitcoins name in order to succeed. Honest altcoin developers create their own original projects with original names, if they want to distribute it to Bitcoin users they launch airdrop campaign. But blatant Bitcoin forks don't have any real innovation to succeed, so their aim is to create confusion and trick people into thinking that they are the real Bitcoin.
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Many people, myself including, view SegWit2x as an attack on Bitcoin, but any attack can also be viewed as a test. For example, the most recent Bcash was also a test - it has proven that Bitcoin can withstand hashrate swings and that miners can't dictate community what to do - users and services didn't start switching to Bcash even though it offers much cheaper fees. As the result, both Bitcoins value and the network were not affected by competing chain. So, SegWit2x would be a similar test - it will show whether corporations and mining cartels can influence the network and its user, or if it's the users who are deciding the future of Bitcoin.
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Most times it's better to just call Bitcoin "Bitcoin". It has many properties which can described by words like asset, money, currency, coin, cash, settlement layer, token, and so on; they can be used to emphasize some aspect of Bitcoins nature, but they can't once and for all describe Bitcoin because it can be used in so many different ways that it makes it truly unique - there's simply nothing that comes close to Bitcoin in traditional financial system.
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News sites like Coindesk like to report every $100 change to Bitcoin's price like it's some big news, and they also like to use a bit sensationalist titles with bullish/bearish/uncertain implications. In those articles they also like to use technical analysis which is extremely irrelevant in Bitcoin world - no one is able to accurately predict Bitcoins short term price, because no one knows when the price will move and how much - it almost always violates any "patters" of technical analysis, because Bitcoin's price is mostly driven by rumors, news, whales and hardcore speculators. So, if you are a newbie, better don't take those articles too seriously, don't use them as trading advice and don't try to day trade more Bitcoins than you can afford to lose.
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Garzik has no ethical standards. Is it worth bailing on BTC until this hardfork plays out?
It seems like SegWit2x are ready to do anything to force their fork upon Bitcoin community, so I wouldn't be surprised to see even more blatant and malicious stuff like switching online wallets and all funds into 2x chain. This is because the stakes are very high for them - if 2x chain will fail to get adopted by Bitcoin users, all companies and miners who actively supported if will suffer major loses.
Garzik has no ethical standards. Is it worth bailing on BTC until this hardfork plays out?
Very hard to say, with Bitcoin selling at the wrong time can be a huge opportunity loss. For example, there was a huge dip just before SegWit voting period, but it quickly recovered and it hasn't moved at all during Bcash fork - if 2x attack will be small, Bitcoin's price might barely move. |
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Also, there other big players in this game who haven't said a word about 2x;
Bitmex, Bitfinex, Bittrex, HitBTC, Poloniex, Gdax, Bitstamp. > Their 24hr volume for today is 253.266 BTC(combined).
This exchanges will also play big part in November. They usually talk and decide together. So we'll see how thing will roll at November.
One clarification to be made here: GDAX and Bitflyer are part of the New York Agreement. If you weren't aware, GDAX = Coinbase (the former is their order book exchange interface, the latter is their simplified broker interface). GDAX is the largest US exchange on the market. Bitflyer is the largest Japanese exchange on the market, and fluctuates within the Top 3 exchanges in the world for volume. That's not an endorsement of 2X by me. I'm just saying that we can't act like major exchanges "haven't said a word about 2X." Shapeshift and several major wallet services like Blockchain, Jaxx and Xapo are also signed onto the deal. That's nothing to sneeze at! Miners and some services seem to be forgetting the golden rule of business that the customer is always right - they (NYA signatories) who are supposed to be following the demand instead of trying to dictate it. What they are trying to do (if they will have enough courage to actually do it - fully move to 2x chain) is extremely risky and stupid - if community won't follow them to 2x chain, they will suffer massive loses. But community doesn't risk much - sure such exodus would be disruptive, but eventually Bitcoin will go back to normal and new miners and services will fill up the vacuum - Bitcoin community will just have to wait. |
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Op, your whole Ponzi argument is based on labor theory of value - the value of something is equal to costs of its production. So, in your mind Bitcoin should cost pennies because it was acquired for pennies. The problem is, real market doesn't care about it, people base prices on their personal feelings, costs of production is just the bottom line for a seller. It's true that some people are hodling since early days and would get insane returns when they decide to sell, but there are much more people who sold earlier, so it's wrong to say that all Bitcoins were acquired cheaply. And lastly, read the story of bearwhale - a good example how market can soak up dumps of early investors and continue growing.
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~snip
Thank you for a great reply! I'm still very curious to learn more about different private blockchains so if anyone has some links that explain how they work in-depth, I would be very grateful if you post it here. I also have some more questions: 1. Are all private blockchains permissioned or what makes a blockchain private? 2. If a private blockchain has only one permissioned entity that can append new blocks ("miner") and it doesn't do any PoW or PoS, how close this entity becomes to a traditional middleman? I understand that they can't alter transactions is they are signed by digital signatures, but what they can possibly do? 3. Are they vulnerable to some attacks that don't exist in decentralized blockchains? |
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If you want to increase your potential BTC profits, I suggest you to check out casino investing. In short, you are depositing your money into casino and it will be used to pay players when they win - in exchange you will be getting a share of total casino profits proportional to your share in casinos bankroll. Your profit is not guaranteed and you may even lose some portion of your investment if the players are too lucky, but in the long run it can be quite profitable. But it's very important to choose a good casino, and of course remember to not invest more than you can afford to lose. Here's some links: https://thebitcoinstrip.com/investing/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1796062.0https://bitcoingamblingreviews.com/bitcoin-gambling-investment/ |
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My understanding is that both miners and nodes are considered full nodes and that the nodes perform the consensus, but the miners add blocks to the blockchain and for this extra work they get rewarded in tokens. In the case of a private blockchain where there are no tokens being offered do you still need miners?
It depends on the project, as there can be many different blockchain application with different rules. It's true that when mining is permissioned it becomes closer to being a middleman, but there are still some differences. Miners can't alter any data if it has digital signatures, so their power is limited - they can refuse to add transactions to blocks, effectively freezing your account (this is also possible in Bitcoin, but since there are so many miners and anyone can join, it's unlikely that they will all agree to refuse confirming some transaction) and they might also be able to create chain splits if network rules allow it, so permissioned blockchain protocols might feature their own economic incentives to discourage miners from misbehaving - by adding PoW, PoS or other mechanism that require miners to burn something on order to get their right to append blocks. Just like in Bitcoin mining after most coins will be mined, permissioned miners can be rewarded by transaction fees to compensate for their work. |
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Sorry, I have not had time to keep up on the current state of the Forkland events. The original intent of this post is to know the status, not to extend/invite debate, thanks.
What will be the real Bitcoin (BTC) at the end of 2017? Has that been already determined or will it be fought out on exchanges and mining pools?
Are the people backing Seg2x (still) attempting to have exchanges (and the world) call that one Bitcoin/BTC?
Hashpower doesn't matter, it can switch back and forth at any time and it doesn't create value on it's own - it follows the value of a coin. But price can also be irrelevant as price is a subject to manipulation - pumps and dumps. So the real answer is community support. Both previous factors can influence it, so it's possible to have a big split in community when there's roughly equal amount of supporters for both chains - in this case people would be fighting until they will come up with some consensus of how to name both chains - maybe even both sides will abandon the name "Bitcoin". But this is very theoretical, right now the community support for 2x is nearly nonexistent, it's only companies and miners who try to push it, but they risk to suffer giant losses if people will reject their fork. So, the most likely outcome is that the current chain and client developed by Core would keep being the real Bitcoin. |
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I don't see any reason why Coinbase or any other service would be forced to support both forks. SegWit2x comes without replay protection and there also was an info that 2x clients are trying to hide the fact that they are 2x to avoid getting banned by the newest Core clients. This means that it will be very hard to use both coins separately, especially for a large scale services like Coinbase that process dozens or hundreds of thousands transactions per day. So, I think they will just wait and see what chain will "win". But Charlie Lee is right in one thing - if Coinbase would try to force SegWit2x coin upon all their customers declaring it "the real Bitcoin", than they would indeed face legal lawsuits.
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Roger Ver didn't dump his BTC for Bcash so I'm pretty sure he won't make any "bet" on SegWit2x coin - this is merely a FUD and attempt to boost morale of SegWit2x camp, as they were suffering from defections lately. And from technical point of view supporting both BCH and SegWit2x doesn't make much sense - BCH was created as an opposition to SegWit and Bcash supporters believe that it's broken and against Satoshi's vision. So, Ver is just supporting everyone who is against Core for some reason. Bitcoin gold is another upcoming hard fork that will change PoW algo to Equihash to mine it one GPU's. Forking Bitcoin is a hot trend right now. |
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The guy who bought 10,000 BTC pizza or any other person who sold Bitcoin early didn't actually lose any money, the lost opportunity to get more money which is a very different thing. In fact, every person on Earth is losing million dollars worth of opportunities each year by not investing in something that will skyrocket in value in the future - simply because no one knows the future for sure. For example, BTC increased 4-5 times since the beggining of this year, so anyone who didn't buy and hodl it has lost an opportunity to increase their value 4-5 times. So, it's really wrong to feel bad for losing opportunities, because they are all tied to risks, and fore every multi-million dollar pizza there are thousands of bad investments that result in a real losses for investors.
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Not long ago I've read the article about Putin supporting ETH and meeting up with Vitalik, and now supposedly they no longer like cryptos and want to ban them. I don't believe it. This article quotes only one minister who is against cryptos. He doesn't establish laws, but needs to persuade others to vote. With no more supporters willing to voice their concerns I don't think he'll achieve anything.
Because when it comes to government position on cryptocurrency, there's usually no single body that tells what is going to happen with legal status of cryptocurrency, it's many different people from different branches and cabinets that giver their own personal comments about cryptocurrencies - economy ministry, central banks, MP's, regulators, finance ministry and so on. It happens not only with Russia, other countries send mixed signals too - some people in the government would like to ban crypto, others want to embrace it. This is one of the reasons why so many countries haven't decided anything yet. |
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to be fair there is a good reason for not having "replay protection" even if we are against this proposal. according to https://coin.dance/blocks currently 94.4% of hashrate is signalling for NYA or SegWit2x and that means practically there won't be any other chain to replay the transactions. if this doesn't change it is going to be like SegWit part. why didn't SegWit fork have replay protection? Because SegWit was a soft fork - it is backwards compatible and even though chain splits are possible with soft forks, they are quite short lived and are resolved by the protocol consensus - the longest chain is the valid chain. This is not the case with SegWit2x because it's a hard fork, full nodes are required to switch their clients to be able to interact with a new chain. If 94.4% of hashpower will migrate to SegWit2x (which is very unlikely to actually happen), the original Bitcoin chain will continue to exist as long as there are at least some miners who will mine it. And I'm sure there will be enough of them, because there are thousands of original Bitcoin nodes creating demand for mining - unlike with SegWit2x with their 230 nodes. |
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If or better to say when Bitcoin will become fully legalized and regulated, it will help to boost its adoption as big companies and institutional investors won't be afraid that it will one day may be banned plus they will have some guarantees that they won't be easily cheated. However, it will come with additional costs like taxation and additional fees for all users of cryptocurrencies. However, many users, especially smaller customers might choose to use alternative services that does not comply with regulations, as their costs would generally be lower. It's also important to create decentralized services that can't be regulated just like Bitcoin itself - decentralized exchanges, p2p marketplaces, etc.
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