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These guys haven't quite figures that 10,000 coders aren't remaking the financial system in their spare time only to have it regulated into unusability by plonkers from ABC agency. Any bitcoin regulation is merely one github fork away from irrelevance, they just shouldn't waste everyone's time by vain attempts at unauthorised control.
+1. Well said, but I caution against over-confidence. If Bitcoin reaches beyond the beginnings of a threat level the push-back will be forceful. I am sure of that, and also sure that most users (and devs for that matter) do not fully appreciate the forces that can be brought to bear if need be. Bitcoin has the potential to make a big difference but there is no more sure way to lose a war than to become overconfident and not understand one's opponent. Remember that we are still at Satoshi's 7 TPS setting so, notwithstanding the significant off-chain load bearing that is occurring, we are still very near birth on this thing. Whilst it is true that the regulation of Bitcoin is only what is in the code. There really isn't a safe place on the planet for "Satoshi Nakamoto" to stand. The governments have the guns, the lawmakers, the judges, the jails, and the uncontested right to use all of those any way they please. For as long as we are made of meat and not code, we are vulnerable to those things even if Bitcoin isn't. |
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where does he get this?:
But 50% per year growth is really good. According to my rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, my above-average home Internet connection and above-average home computer could easily support 5,000 transactions per second today.
That works out to 400 million transactions per day. Pretty good; every person in the US could make one Bitcoin transaction per day and I’d still be able to keep up.
After 12 years of bandwidth growth that becomes 56 billion transactions per day on my home network connection — enough for every single person in the world to make five or six bitcoin transactions every single day. It is hard to imagine that not being enough; according the the Boston Federal Reserve, the average US consumer makes just over two payments per day.
Using 5,000 tps and an average transaction size of 512 bytes ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Network), that is 2.44 MB/s, which would require a 19.53 megabit/s connection, which is indeed reasonable. Signature verification can be handled by a 2.2GHz i7 at a rate of 4k tps, so 5k isn't too far out of the water for a high end CPU. So yes, he's right that his computer can handle the throughput. What he doesn't mention is that this amount of data fills up ~206 GB of hard drive space per day while it is also saturating your bandwidth and CPU throughput. I may have a ridiculous setup with 6 hard drives and way more storage than I need, but even I can't handle 1TB of information every 5 days without laying out serious cash on a network storage solution for my mining computer to utilize to store the blockchain. This one is a battle I am fighting as best I can. I have made several proposals which are objectively better than Gavin's, and he has read them, but is unwavering. and then there is this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=300809.msg3305064#msg3305064At which point I ought to just laugh, but instead I worry. |
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Unfortunately that doesn't address my question, which is specifically: how do we check if the random number chosen by A is known? Verifying signatures is obviously supported, but how do you go about first requiring a number be known without already knowing it (hash it I'd guess), and then what OP code do you use to verify it?
jgarzik was kind enough to put the recipe in cookbook form here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=112007.msg1212356#msg1212356 |
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i hate articles like these, esp from guys like J Levin who i think is generally respected in the community b/c of his Oxford CS training and Coinometrics. i however have not been impressed with his previous thinking as he is one of the geeks who doesn't fully get Bitcoin: https://medium.com/@jony_levin/i-love-the-blockchain-just-not-bitcoin-354c511ad3e5same reason, same hate from me: he implies that the Bitcoin currency unit can be changed or that it can somehow be replaced or added to with another token (currency unit). he then doesn't even mention how tx fees can make up for lost blockchain security incentives after a block halving which is a disingenuous and incomplete discussion. a mention that tx fees "need and can" increase to compensate for decreasing block reward would have been totally appropriate and complete. this is still a problem i have with making protocol changes; how do you insert a protocol change that doesn't favor a certain group of ppl or disadvantage the ppl that have come before the change? b/c Bitcoin is an open community, outside voices are allowed to be heard loud and clear. however, we never know to what extent they are personally invested in the former rule set (protocol) as opposed to the new rule set they are proposing. Don't you understand? Its still gold even though it looks like paper... see you can trade it in for gold and its easier to carry! You can trade it in only if you are in the right place during working hours and can prove its you and that you haven't stolen the paper and aren't a criminal or said anything bad about people who you aren't allowed to say bad things about, and that none of your relatives are either, and we decide to let you |
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good, thanks.
After re-reading Appendix C and other comments from this and other threads, it seems to me that atomic swaps could be executed almost "instantaneously" (1). But maybe I'm wrong.
(1) if we're considering exchanging BTC with scBTC through atomic swap, the exchange process duration should be a function of the confirmation time in btc blockchain, the sidechain's ledger
confirmation time and locktime used in the txs involved in the swap.
Almost... Well, they require sequential broadcasting of transactions (and sufficient confirmations). At least two, possibly more if there is a problem needing a refund. So not instantaneous if you want to do it trustlessly, but a lot quicker than 100 blocks. For delivery of contracted goods, these provide refunds, "consumer protection" built into the protocol. It really only works for on-chain assets though. |
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You're implying that atomic swaps apply only to scBTC and altcoin that belongs to the same chain, right?
I've gone through this thread and I find this post from Adam Back and it seems to confirm
that we can exchange coins across chains and, I dare to say, even BTC and scBTC.
You can do atomic swaps today. You can do them between bitcoin and litecoin, it doesn't take a sidechain to do it. But very few people use this feature. There is a good description of the process in the blockstream side chain pdf in Appendix C. http://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf |
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So these are still available then? They look great and I'd love to add one to my growing physical crypto coin collection. Can anybody point me towards the retailer offering them for the best price?
You can buy them here for $18.28: Agoracommodities. EDIT: Oh, it seems that they are sold out. I'm not into PM market that much, but I believe for some reason many coins got extinct within the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's the low prices though that drove many people out there to reach for some more cheap coins...  I believe that HardBTC has some in stock for global shipping. http://hardbtc.org/ocart/ |
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I think other corde devs can keep core devs in Blockstream in check. And the fact of the matter is that this company and TBF are the only things keeping paid developers working on Bitcoin. Frankly, if you have a problem with it, then shut up and put up. Put up BTC (and/or encourage others to do so) to fund a core dev. You don't need permission. Just start paying a great developer and he'll become a core dev once he proves his worth.
And there's another thing that I like about sidechains. Lately, I hear about cool technologies... for example maidsafe distributed storage, and the zen-something public supercomputer... and get excited. And then I hear about their stupid pump and dump alt-coin that you have to use and its a pretty big letdown.
look at the JLevin article i just put up. he's moving in the opposite direction as you, it appears, in regards to "tokens".
Sidechains would give no excuses to create these app-specific coins -- or what I mean is that an honest company would create a Sidechain with pegged currency to take advantage of blockchain technology but avoid accusations and temptations to pump and dump. And also, a Sidechain will avoid the likely SEC inquiry as issuing the coin before it has any use whatsoever (before your product is done) starts to make it look a lot like a security.
so what's the financial incentive for a company to create a SC with 2wp w/o a token? Yes, the concept of a blockchain is great. A single, open, universal unit of account is great, and Bitcoin will likely out-compete all others simply due to network effect -- causing alt-scam anguish in these app-coins even if that wasn't the original intention. But the blockchain as defined by Bitcoin is overly limited. Its been obvious since early 2012 that the bitcoin blockchain has a serious problem and that is it can only do trustless transfer, not trustless exchange. Therefore all the Bitcoin 2.0 stuff. Sidechains give us Bitcoin the currency, and the blockchain without locking us to one particular blockchain implementation. Financial incentive: Exactly! We can't determine the financial incentive without knowing what the company does. In other words, the financial incentive is going to be getting paid for whatever real value that company delivers, not due to appreciation or speculation of some app-coin token. Trivial example: you could create a document registration company. Company creates a registrar sidechain with some modifications to add document registration data fields and retention time. To use it every transaction has to transfer .0001 scBTC to the company, per year retained. And as a bonus no BTC dev is whining about BTC blockchain spam. Company makes additional $ with related services like testifying in court. Sounds like not much money? But e-bank statements have always been bullsh*t. "Click here" to see the bank statement today, click tomorrow and you may see something completely different because the company's web server serves the statement. Every e-statement worldwide should move to a blockchain based validation system. Those .0001 BTCs would add up pretty quickly. But if on the Bitcoin blockchain it would seriously hamper Bitcoin scalability -- note my registrar sidechain has a retention time -- old blocks can be forgotten. re: scalability. but this is what Gavin's block size expansion proposal is supposed to address. Gavin's block size expansion is a hard forking change that will splinter the community.... I don't see how you could possibly think that is preferable to a soft fork change that solves the same problem while also opening up many other exciting possibilities (such as the document timestamping service of thezerg, or a proof of storage chain, or a chain for distributed computing, or. ...). who is against increasing block size and why? I've been pretty vocally against Gavin's proposal. In this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=815712.0and in Gavin's thread. And in more public forums http://www.bizforum.org/Journal/www_journalJVP018.htmAnd on LetsTalkBitcoin http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/the-bitcoin-game-3-joseph-vaughn-perlingAnd in private emails with Gavin. And other places that I have probably forgotten about. For many very good reasons. (I think) |
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http://news.goldseek.com/GATA/1415649749.phpThis is a travesty of justice and is a bad ruling for Bitcoin in USA Within the judges ruling: "Congress has been permitted “to create a money monopoly, with full powers to outlaw any and all competing currencies . . . .” " and if anyone, individual or State, assumes to supplant the medium of exchange adopted by our Government, or assumes to compete with the United States Government in this regard, a violation of these statutes would follow" The sentencing hearing will be on December 2nd. This is the first political prisoner for alternative currency in the USA with not even any allegation of money laundering or any of the more esoteric legal arguments used, merely challenging the authority of the Fed in the issuing of an alternative currency to the US Dollar. Edit: I'm sure Bernard would appreciate any support from us. I just spoke with him on the phone. It is not a good time. It also further underscores the wisdom of Satoshi in remaining anonymous.
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In this scheme, there will be only BTC buying with the fiat at exchanges. No BTC is sold to the market. Only scBTC is sold to the market but people believe the notion of the peg so they pay the same for them as they would for BTC (because after all they can be redeemed for BTC with only a 100 block delay in spend-ability).
Endgame is there are a lot of the scBTC created, reducing BTC liquidity and pumping the BTC fiat price... until it unwinds.
There is no peg.
There is no spoon.
Here is what I believe to be the flaw in your scenario : If, as you say, people believe in the peg (which they absolutely should) then they will not buy your scBTC. In reality, the market has no incentive to purchase your scBTC over BTC if they are the same price. The reason for this? Well you have suggested it yourself : the "block delay in spend-ability". What makes the best money? The most cost effective and versatile exchangeable asset. BTC is more easily exchangeable with fiat (because of liquidity) and other scBTCs than scBTC is and is also more cost-effective at doing so. No matter the 1:1 fiat peg, BTC is a more desirable unit than scBTC. BTC has better fungibility and liquidity in the economy than scBTC. Here is where you are flatly wrong. There clearly is an incentive, the time incentive. To change BTC to scBTC, you will have to wait for 100 blocks or so, whatever the confirmation time may be. If you buy them at exchange, there is no wait. This confirmation exchange value is created in both ways in the transaction. People will pay a premium for time, localbitcoin pricing is evidence enough of this. Maybe I'm wrong but don't the atomic swaps described in the paper remove "the time incentive"? Am I missing something obvious? Atomic swaps don't remove it, but they are a different sort of exchange entirely. They are a sort of middle ground, in between in terms of time and autonomy. They are p2p and negotiated (rather than something I can do on my own via exchange or SPV) They also have a time requirement, just not as long. They could be somewhat automated with a hosted order book, so they may end up being closer to the exchange model, which would give them a bit of a premium over the SPV method. The SPV folks (presumably the slowest of these three, each are more or less unused) pay in time and save in money. Thanks for the explanation. Now setting aside time consideration do you confirm that is possible exchanging BTC and scBTC through atomic swaps? (I'm asking b/c notme says is not possible) edit: slightly clarify the question. Side chains may certainly differ from each other, but I don't see any reason that it would not be possible to atomic swap so long as they support the script functions like OP_DUP, OP_HASH160, hash, OP_EQUALVERIFY, OP_CHECKSIG, SIGHASH_ALL. I'm curious what limitation notme considered. Maybe just that there is not much reason to atomic swap since an SPV is pretty much the same thing but without the phase one negotiations. Since these are already set. The main difference is that an atomic swap doesn't change the amount of currency in the chain, just changes the ownerships. Edit: Appendix C of http://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf makes it pretty clear that this is a thing. |
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They are correctly "freeze-locked" coins
Give us some more words on this please? |
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In this scheme, there will be only BTC buying with the fiat at exchanges. No BTC is sold to the market. Only scBTC is sold to the market but people believe the notion of the peg so they pay the same for them as they would for BTC (because after all they can be redeemed for BTC with only a 100 block delay in spend-ability).
Endgame is there are a lot of the scBTC created, reducing BTC liquidity and pumping the BTC fiat price... until it unwinds.
There is no peg.
There is no spoon.
Here is what I believe to be the flaw in your scenario : If, as you say, people believe in the peg (which they absolutely should) then they will not buy your scBTC. In reality, the market has no incentive to purchase your scBTC over BTC if they are the same price. The reason for this? Well you have suggested it yourself : the "block delay in spend-ability". What makes the best money? The most cost effective and versatile exchangeable asset. BTC is more easily exchangeable with fiat (because of liquidity) and other scBTCs than scBTC is and is also more cost-effective at doing so. No matter the 1:1 fiat peg, BTC is a more desirable unit than scBTC. BTC has better fungibility and liquidity in the economy than scBTC. Here is where you are flatly wrong. There clearly is an incentive, the time incentive. To change BTC to scBTC, you will have to wait for 100 blocks or so, whatever the confirmation time may be. If you buy them at exchange, there is no wait. This confirmation exchange value is created in both ways in the transaction. People will pay a premium for time, localbitcoin pricing is evidence enough of this. Maybe I'm wrong but don't the atomic swaps described in the paper remove "the time incentive"? Am I missing something obvious? Atomic swaps don't remove it, but they are a different sort of exchange entirely. They are a sort of middle ground, in between in terms of time and autonomy. They are p2p and negotiated (rather than something I can do on my own via exchange or SPV) They also have a time requirement, just not as long. They could be somewhat automated with a hosted order book, so they may end up being closer to the exchange model, which would give them a bit of a premium over the SPV method. The SPV folks (presumably the slowest of these three, each are more or less unused) pay in time and save in money. |
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Asenath bids
2000 Gold @ .13
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...
Agree that having names for each of the varieties would make it easier to discuss.
I'm not fond of using the term "pegged sidechain" but that is what the Blockstream folks call them now.
I don't think a "peg" is a good thing. Currency pegs have horrible implications, almost always fail, and I think calling them this brings them down, but I didn't choose the name.
If it was mine to name, I might have gone with "coin wrappers" or something without all the bad historical connotations.
I'd suggest 'lock' instead of 'peg'. 'Peg' brings up images of a cribbage board where pegs are moved around as needed, and that is also the failure mode of many currency peg schemes (I imagine.) 'Lock' is more indicative of what is happening here. BTC are locked with high security to back a sidechain extension. As always, the security is a function of the quality of the implementation of course, but it's pretty clear to me that quality in implementation will bubble to the top (very much unlike the opaque world of off-chain extensions that we have seen to date.) I like that even better than wrapping, perhaps locking would be an SPV in the direction away from the MC and unlocking would be moving back toward MC? Wrapping and unwrapping would work, but locking is better (because it connotes that there is a key, which there is). Wrapping is a coding term for reuse of code of a different type within another set of code, so it has that technical similarity, but likely most users won't be coders at some point (maybe now). |
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Them so be it. You, they, whoever can think what they wan, it dorsnt matter to me anymore . I think SC's are a bad idea. You mean this it your position, in spite of every piece of evidence someone can produce? brg444 is not such a good advocate for side chains, which is why I'd encouraged him to stop attempting that a couple hundred pages ago. I like Side Chains, but also have a lot of precautionary concerns about them. brg444 seemed to be engaged in convincing me that these aren't going to be considered problems (and so no effort would go to solving them). If I thought that brg444 was writing from a position of some authority for SC, or even an insider of any kind, it would be VERY troubling and I would likely have flipped into also thinking that SC's are a bad idea. When starting with the assumption that there are no problems, it will terrify all the people that are hopeful that proper safeguards would be deployed, or even are hopeful that good communication to help people avoid the pitfalls will be communicated (rather than claiming that such things "go without saying"). Do you mean SC's using DMMS (SPV proof) ? It would be fine to give them some name. What do you think ? DMMS acronym meaning? DMMS = dynamic-membership multi-party signature (A block chain header) Any digital signature scheme with one or many potential signers would be an example of a DMMS. The block chain is just the most interesting one. Yes, we've been working on coming up with names for the various issues. I tried to come up with a catchy name for Cypherdoc's risk-free put scenario calling it a "Side Chain in a Fiat Hole", which is funny but probably won't catch on. There are also various kinds of side chains under discussion. For the most part when discussing SCs in this thread we've been referring to these DMMS SPV proof 2-way side chains. Agree that having names for each of the varieties would make it easier to discuss. I'm not fond of using the term "pegged sidechain" but that is what the Blockstream folks call them now. I don't think a "peg" is a good thing. Currency pegs have horrible implications, almost always fail, and I think calling them this brings them down, but I didn't choose the name. If it was mine to name, I might have gone with "coin wrappers" or something without all the bad historical connotations. |
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Their fee structure makes no sense at all although I do think a btc debit card is a really valuable service
There are other choices. |
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Cows farting do more to the Greenhouse effect than us humans
Global warming can be ended by bovine Tums? |
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Them so be it. You, they, whoever can think what they wan, it dorsnt matter to me anymore . I think SC's are a bad idea. You mean this it your position, in spite of every piece of evidence someone can produce? brg444 is not such a good advocate for side chains, which is why I'd encouraged him to stop attempting that a couple hundred pages ago. I like Side Chains, but also have a lot of precautionary concerns about them. brg444 seemed to be engaged in convincing me that these aren't going to be considered problems (and so no effort would go to solving them). If I thought that brg444 was writing from a position of some authority for SC, or even an insider of any kind, it would be VERY troubling and I would likely have flipped into also thinking that SC's are a bad idea. When starting with the assumption that there are no problems, it will terrify all the people that are hopeful that proper safeguards would be deployed, or even are hopeful that good communication to help people avoid the pitfalls will be communicated (rather than claiming that such things "go without saying"). |
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The demand is supported by the "peg".
There is a profitable trade, people will buy.
If BTC is rising faster than the scBTC, do you think people will not buy the scBTC?
It doesn't matter much what the feature the side chain adds, or whether there is demand for the feature. The feature matters less than the prices.
The losers will be the folks waiting on confirmations when it unwinds.... or if it doesn't unwind, BTC holders lose liquidity (which could cause the pump to go higher than it otherwise might).
I fail to see what the profitable trade is. You said BTC price rises faster than scBTC so one would think people would want to buy scBTC at discount but then you say that scBTC is actually going for a premium because of convenience to avoid SPV confirmations. There is money to be made simply from SPVing coins, and then selling them at exchange to anyone that wants them but does not want to wait for SPV confirmations (which will be more than the exchange will require).
Which is it  If BTC price rises faster and you are holding scBTC why sell scBTC at discount to exchange buyers when you can use the peg to claim equal value to BTC? Otherwise it sounds to me like you are describing a regular arbitrage type play. Something only speculators would take part in and I honestly don't see how this can scale to the extent that BTC would lose significant liquidity. How do you describe it "unwinding". How does those waiting on confirmation lose? It is a lot more simple than you think. The BTC price rises faster, because that is the first purchase in this scenario. Then SPV the BTC to scBTC. By the time these are confirmed, prices should have equalized (because they are pegged, right?) But... scBTC should trade at a premium on exchange because it avoids the time cost of the SPV. So both are true: BTC rises faster, and scBTC trades at a premium on exchanges. BTC doesn't have all that great liquidity now, market cap may be in the billions, but even just a few million dollars moves the market quite a bit. This process would exacerbate this issue, to the benefit of the speculator. It is interesting that you bring up arbitrage (which is somewhat different from a peg in that it is for the same asset rather than pegging two different assets). If it were arbitrage, it would raise other issues such as "wash sale" tax rules. This may be a "new" problem if scBTC and BTC are deemed by taxing authorities as the same or equivalent asset. It is already going to become an issue with the CFTC and the Winklevoss ETP soon enough. The tax authorities are complicit in creating and fostering the illusion that the paper asset is the same as the real asset. (and that a Winklevoss ETP bitcoin or a coinbase coin are the same as having bitcoin in a wallet you control). |
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