Are you trolling? BTC can already use Tor as the network layer if it works on your BTC node.

It's still peer to peer (no central authority), but not one-to-one. There will be multiple routes. Irregular mesh topology over Tor.


Right, not much need for on-chain stuff except opening/closing channels. Or possibly topping them up, I am still not clear on what will happen with "refill" operations as the protocol evolves. The hubs will be "central" only in the sense of "hyperconnected, with lots of money at stake in multiple channels". They won't be able to censor transactions or tamper with the protocol - or even figure out where the coins ultimately go. Hubs can be routed around if desired or necessary. Someone else will get the fees - if any. Not that shabby, is it?

No such need, as long as you share a channel with a node (that has a channel shared with a node (that has...  ...)))) with Starbucks.  Same for Amazon. It's a mesh network. The general opinion is that there will be enough channels open to reach any relevant agent.

Actually the situation is more akin to a debit card. The max amount (channel money capacity) is low. And each topping of the card must be done with on-chain transactions. At least, this is what I found the only time I read LN's tech spec. It was a while ago, and things might have changed already.

I'm pretty sure that production updates to the LN protocol will solve all these issues: channel (money) capacity is a simple constant in the source code, being kept low on purpose in the experimental phase for security's sake. Refilling (topping) a depleted channel would be trickier, and I haven't yet figured out how it could be done.

If anyone has pointers, I'd be glad to read up.

Yes, that's what he means. I wonder what a "scientific" approach to ethics could be like.

Funny set of questions, some so vague as to be hard to answer, some flawed by the misuse of the word "orthogonal" to mean either "independent" or "contrasting", according to the phase of the moon. I think I can address about half of them with confidence, the other half with a "Uh? Whatever he wants to hear from me?"

Patience is key, indeed. I'm still keeping some just in case...

Don't worry, keep on buyin', we need moar cheap korn.

I meant within the year 2017.

I don't know how easy 400k will be, but 10k within the year looks doable.

Difference in costs and in the cost/return ratio.

Peanuts. Besides, newer hardware squashes old to the point that old rigs aren't economical. Obsolescence should be realigned, too.

Of course, but flipping "the same bits" as quickly as possible (computing power, not memory bound) is one thing. Flipping "a much larger number of different bits" as quickly as possible - but less quickly because RAM won't allow max speed (memory bound computation) is rather less energy-intensive. Physics.

Right, I can't. Even if I could, I would be wary. I'm just an ordinary guy.

Not as easy as buying miners or emulating phones. Not as economical. Not as scalable. Of course, if they have resources and want to use them, they're free to.

However, cheap electricity, newest generation chips, and other factors that are now unbalancing the game won't be that relevant anymore, and there will be much fairer competition. That's the point - not avoiding concentration, but letting concentration happen with similar ease almost everywhere. So Average David can spend 1000$, and his 1000$ are worth almost exactly as much as Goliath's 1000$.

Today, specialized and generic hardware have performances orders of magnitude away. With this equalizing move, the difference would drop to well under a SINGLE factor of 10 - probably a lot less. Any American could put up a mining rig knowing that electricity costs are not the bottleneck anymore. That would be a significant change.

We won't, if we switch to to a RAM and RAM-access intensive PoW algo. Let them try to emulate terabytes of RAM in a time efficient way. No eh? Just as I thought.

NYA signaling helped to stir things up, yes, but only because it became apparent that the miners couldn't stop it and had to swallow - oops, embrace it. Segwit is good, long-term good, but myopic miners can't see beyond their weekly revenue and were herded by selfish Chinese businessmen. Yes, I know,  our narratives on this matter differ. This is just incidental, and not my main point.


How can you be competitive at mining today? Come on, be honest in your assessments as you are flawless with your math. There maybe a few of us still doing it because of previous commitment or individual mentality, but mining simply isn't for the masses anymore*. Which was instead the point of Nakamoto's original vision. He was right on the math, but predicting the future is for wizards, not for scientists.

*Unless a change in POW helps to equalize mining power by making costs harder to scale. One RAM bank, one vote. RAM speed can't grow as CPU speed did. There are several cryptohash algorithms where you can impose a bottleneck on memory size and/or sequential memory operations. I bet this is the way POW is headed to, if any change is going to happen.

What you call the "insane Raspberry Pi fetish" is the David-against-Goliath guarantee that verifying and keeping the big guys in check has a cost small enough for anyone to be able to afford it! No mining rig required. That's exactly the point of decentralization.

You want greater adoption? You're not alone, jbreher. We all do, of course! But if adoption comes at the price of pushing Joe "David" Average out of the loop, it's just Visa-like adoption, not financial freedom-adoption. Can't you see that? That's what I meant when I half-jokingly invoked Jeff Bezos' role as a Deus ex machina savior - "Here's adoption for you my children (in a celestial Amazonesque voice)... now go in peace and stop the silliness about big blocks... (epic THX thunder)."

If big blocks are what you really think you need, you've got BCH already. What's the point of S2X then?

Shown where? Bigger blocks are indeed a problem if usage ramps up. Latency, bandwidth and mass memory requirement would skyrocket for simple Joe "David" Average verification, not only for mining. Censorship resistance would be seriously impacted.

I refuse to believe you don't see that - you're too smart not to. That's why I was asking for your true motives.

I guess you just don't want to tell us.

Spot on.

That's why I say a word from Amazon (or a "pay with BTC" button, even better) can close the matter. The inertia of single users is nothing compared to that of organizations. Just imagine what happens with all the merchants when they must switch to a different token, with a different value, that they can convert into fiat or into the other token only at certain exchanges.

Of course, Amazon's strength is its mass adoption, which would quickly transfer to the chosen method of payment. Other economic actors, while not that powerful, could sum up to a similar effect over a longer time.

You mean: Core would abdicate by refusing to code for a project (S2X) that they don't subscribe to.

You mean: we abdicated by exiting the arms race for mining.

Actually, these are different actions - the first already historical (by user "inaction"), and the second hypothetical, only possible if S2X "wins" and "takes over". The difference is that the first abdication - we, the users giving up mining - was more or less unavoidable, given the financial and existential investment in becoming a pro miner. On the other hand, Core's abdication would be a political-economic switch to one of two sides - voluntary and totally avoidable, therefore closer to the meaning of the verb "abdicate." Not exactly spot on, though: while "abdicating" S2X, the developers would probably continue to code BTC, likely adding some kind of software retaliation to burn bridges.

Your rhetoric use of the same verb for the two actions is sophisticated all right, but it feels like by way of this sophisticated rhetoric you're trying to deflect my attention. Come on, please!

The reason I like arguing with your "trolling" (not my definition ehehe, I'm only quoting someone else O:-) is that I want to understand the ultimate reason why you support your claim. What do you expect the normal user could gain from something like S2X? Or maybe you're not a normal user? If so, who are you in terms of financial-social goals?

A word from Jeff Bezos could nail S2X inside its coffin.

Right. We differ on that, it's understood.

the consensus victor...

... which they said they won't (of course it remains to be seen if they keep their word)

Under all these assumptions
(whose plausibility could be debated, but we know better than to engage in that right now, or at least I do)
that's right, they wouldn't be.

(But has it ever begun?)

There used to be a social pact of sorts until the 70's-early 80's whereby a big corporation, after sucking the parent's blood for a lifetime, would employ the child on the elder's retirement. This pact has been broken with the crisis of the 80's, and never resumed thereafter. So the frail socio-economic cohesion of Japan is going to the dogs. Socio-cultural cohesion is still quite strong, though. Maybe it's an island thing.

I didn't know about that. I read up a bit. Very interesting.

Yes! The grass eating kids, or "vegetarian men" as it gets translated into English. And as Ibian points out further down, this at least is not an "island thing."

Sorry gwoplock, I thought you were fishing for sarcasm.

The attack is officially meant to double the blocksize (hence the 2x part of the name) while keeping SegWit, unlike the altcoin BCH, aka BitcoinCash (hence the ticker S2X). On paper, the motivation and the supporters are the same as the NY cartel. However, no proper replay protection has been implemented by the attackers. This is intentional, so the supposed fork is actually an attack. There has been open talk about "attacking" and "strategies" on some well-known Reddit subs. The real goal is replacing Core with more - say - malleable developer(s). Some kind of replay protection can be attempted post-fork at the user's risk. The token for the replay-protected resulting altcoin S2X is available for trade on a few selected exchanges, and is valued at a small fraction of the BTC price.
 
In the meantime, several original signers from the infamous NY coven have retracted their support. A couple of major exchanges are trying to keep a foot in two shoes.