But the OP is not proposing an absence of a block size limit. This is a straw man argument, and the fact that it's the second time you've made it, means you're being disingenuous.
But there IS a block size limit. It's only going to be bigger, but not infinite.
Increasing the limit to avoid raising fees is in effect asking for no limit, as the reason for the limit is to ensure sufficient fees are paid. This is a valid point. As far as incentivising fees goes, a block limit that is always just a bit bigger than it needs to be, is functionally equivalent to no block limit at all. And actually, I think I see your point that IF this were the only mechanism in play regarding how much people pay in fees, it could pose a problem. My counter is that it is NOT the only mechanism in play. ETA: R2D221, hope this clarifies it for you too. |
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YOO HOO! GRAU!!! HELLO THERE, GRAU!The OP gives a valid technical argument for raising block size limit, but is neglecting a financial argument against it.
The miners' income has to be greater than the cost of their work. Miners' income is inflation now, but is expected to be replaced by fees,
since inflation halves every four years. Purchasing power of new coins might be sustained for a while but must converge to zero in the limit.
Transaction fees exist only because there is a competition for block space. Eliminating that competition eliminates the fees and with that mining.
Therefore block space has to become and remain a scarce asset.
Your second and third paragraph contradict each other. Transaction fees don't ONLY exist because there is a competition for block space. They ALSO exist to pay the miners to secure the network, as you clearly understood before you implicitly denied it. Fees are not an either/or thing. It absolutely ISN'T a case of lifting block limit->eliminates fees->eliminates mining. We have instead a *feedback* process. LOWER fees (not ZERO fees) means LESS mining (not NO mining) which in turn means LONGER confirmation times (not COMPLETE COLLAPSE) which leads to MORE FEES which leads to mining power switching back on. It's what engineers call a negative feedback loop, designed to keep the hashing rate broadly stable, or at least oscillating within a fairly narrow range. People really must stop thinking of all the causes and effects in the world as being ON/OFF switches. They aren't. They're analogue dials. [If you're on board with the idea of bitcoin, you've probably had to deal with people saying a deflationary money supply can't work because NOBODY would ever spend ANY MONEY AT ALL. Same problem. "Less" is not the same as "none". Especially when "Less X" induces "Less Y" which induces "More X".]
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In absence of a block size limit, there is no incentive to pay fee.
Yes THERE FUCKING IS. READ, god damn you.  |
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What do you think will be The Bitcoin 2.0? What is the Bitcoin killer? I want to get in on the ground floor of the next Bitcoin so I can make a lot of money. Not fair that we have to buy our coins when everyone else got them for free? Who is going to do the next The Bitcoin, tThe bitcoin 2.0? Please tell me I need to know!
Bitcoin 2.0 will be Bitcoin... once the details of blocksize increase and blockchain pruning have been sorted out. Of course it won't actually be called 'Bitcoin 2.0'. ISTM the version number will be something like 0.12 to 0.15. |
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Oh another thing: re the concern about a huge blockchain size...
Increasing the block limit isn't the only thing Gavin and co have been giving a lot of thought to. They've also understood the (complementary) problem of blockchain bloat. I'm given to understand that several blockchain pruning schemes are out there. Note these are NOT the same idea as 'lightweight' or SPV clients. They're genuine info compression schemes. I haven't followed for a while, but one scheme I heard basically suggested that *on disk* the blockchain information up to the 'current block #X' should essentially be split into three parts:
1) A chain of block headers only up to block #X-N, where N might be a couple of thousand.
2) A database of UTXOs for all the blocks up to #X-N
3) A complete sequence of the last N blocks
The header-only chain provides the proof of the next block's valid membership of the chain. It grows linearly for ever more, at a rate of ~(640*6*24*365)/(1024^2) = 32 MB a year. Which is peanuts.
The UTXO database grows more unpredictably, but I guess broadly proportionally to global bitcoin usage. It's there so the node knows who's got what and can verify new transactions are valid.
The uncompressed sequence of the last N blocks, where N might vary by individual preference, remains fixed length for a fixed blocksize. The node keeps the last N rolling blocks uncompressed in case there's a fork.
Even if the blocksize grows, so that this tail of blocks grows, it's unlikely to gum up disk space. If it does, the node could choose to reduce N (I pick N=2000 as rather overly cautious).
Anyway TLDR: disk space is NOT a problem. Can't comment much on network propagation issues, except I'm led to believe these can be addressed by an approach such as 'send the header first, then the block info separately'.
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The OP gives a valid technical argument for raising block size limit, but is neglecting a financial argument against it.
The miners' income has to be greater than the cost of their work. Miners' income is inflation now, but is expected to be replaced by fees,
since inflation halves every four years. Purchasing power of new coins might be sustained for a while but must converge to zero in the limit.
Transaction fees exist only because there is a competition for block space. Eliminating that competition eliminates the fees and with that mining.
Therefore block space has to become and remain a scarce asset.
Your second and third paragraph contradict each other. Transaction fees don't ONLY exist because there is a competition for block space. They ALSO exist to pay the miners to secure the network, as you clearly understood before you implicitly denied it. Fees are not an either/or thing. It absolutely ISN'T a case of lifting block limit->eliminates fees->eliminates mining. We have instead a *feedback* process. LOWER fees (not ZERO fees) means LESS mining (not NO mining) which in turn means LONGER confirmation times (not COMPLETE COLLAPSE) which leads to MORE FEES which leads to mining power switching back on. It's what engineers call a negative feedback loop, designed to keep the hashing rate broadly stable, or at least oscillating within a fairly narrow range. People really must stop thinking of all the causes and effects in the world as being ON/OFF switches. They aren't. They're analogue dials. [If you're on board with the idea of bitcoin, you've probably had to deal with people saying a deflationary money supply can't work because NOBODY would ever spend ANY MONEY AT ALL. Same problem. "Less" is not the same as "none". Especially when "Less X" induces "Less Y" which induces "More X".] |
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in hind sight... those poor employees.  Why? If they got paid when BTC was at~$170 then they're probably pretty happy right now. It's all about timing. And I'm guessing most of them opted for small % of their salaries to be paid in bitcoin anyway. It's called dollar cost averaging.  Holy meaningless graphics, Batman! (Dollar cost averaging is a perfectly sensible concept though) |
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The rumour I heard is that no real bitcoin transactions have ever taken place, and the entire blockchain is just an obscurely encrypted Rick Astley video.
I'd post a link, but honestly, who'd be dumb enough to click it?
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I think we need at least another seventeen threads like this before I'll be really confident again.
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I guess I'm just EDUCATED STUPID or something.
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Well now we know what would happen if BitCoin and TimeCube had a baby.
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Betteridge's law of headlines says, "No."
I think the OP preemptively undermined you by not phrasing their headline as a question. But Bitcoin's 'virality' has been and gone. There might be another wave in a few months/years I suppose. |
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I'm glad to see FC hasn't completely forgotten about shareholders. Does anyone know if he still reads/accepts PM requests here to change dividend payment addresses? I have two addresses I'd like to consolidate into one.
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I heard some american guy saying this. It came to me as a shock.
What do you think? Is that true?
Saying what? |
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stop being sheeple and using crappy exchanges as your value base when you want to do real proper trading
As deluxecity pointed out, all the big traders on LBC peg their prices to bitstamp. And for God's sake don't wake the sheeple! http://xkcd.com/1013/ |
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It is also much easier to "trade" with yourself (eg. make up trades/prices) on LBC then you can on other "traditional" exchanges as it does not require actual movement of bitcoin or money (contrary to your claim)
You sure about that? I've used LBC a lot in the past year, usually responding to ads but sometimes putting them up, and whoever puts the ad up has to pay LBC 1% of whatever trades happen. So you couldn't trade *very much* with yourself without losing a lot of fees. |
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"fiasco" is Italian for "clusterfuck".
[citation needed]
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Who Branson?  |
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What the title says. I gather I should probably be using one of the options "Create Transaction" or "Load Transaction" (what's the difference anyway?) in the Tools menu, but I haven't found anywhere that explains what I'm supposed to put in the file. ETA: oh, never mind: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=451707.0  |
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If this entire project is an elaborate joke on all the threads we've got asking what to call little pieces of bitcoins, and asking to move decimal points along in price quotes and client software, then I'm all for it. Good for a laff. (IIUC there is no actual new altcoin here? Your bitcoins aren't exchangeable for a million zibs, they just ARE a million zibs.) Whatever we end up calling it, I'm glad to see that people are favouring microbitcoins as the default unit. That was always my first choice. Hell, it's how I'm doing my accounting with them in Gnucash (although I have to call them BTN for the time being, which are apparently Bhutanese Ngultrums  ) |
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