Countries do have such lists.  They serve different purposes and are approved by different ways by different groups. 
Again it is a local variable.

Some #import the BIS lists for purposes of Foreign Exchange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_for_International_Settlements

In the USA, I can take Rubles, Euros and Yen to my bank, hand them to a teller, and they will credit my account for Dollars.
I can also make any exchange with any of these with a willing recipient.

In California, Bitcoin is considered "Lawful Money" by the state, but an Asset, by the Fed.  So these are taxed differently, even though it is just one tax form that goes to state and fed.  It gets complicated to follow all the rules.

Law is a matter of geography, and who has the uncontested right of enforcement in that geography.
Your question makes very little sense with that in mind.

There are many hypothetical definitions of bitcoin and there are many existing ones in different bodies of law.  These are not consistent even in overlapping jurisdictions (city county state and federal in USA).  They are also not consistent between differing branches of the same government.  

You should think of "legal definitions" as local variables, if that helps.

Thank you.  You saved yourself a lot of time.  I had enough socratic in law school.  And we'll set aside ossification for your benefit even though it cuts against your position here.

Yes, I disagree. 
Both Block size and transaction fee may be better tools than Nielsen's law, the combination may be even more so.  Dismissing inquiry on the matter, is a missed opportunity.

Having worked in multinational telcos for a few decades designing resilient scalable systems serving 193+ countries, managing teams of security software engineers, and responsibility for security and capacity management, the concepts are not so foreign.  The benefit of something like the block chain to provide consolidated data to rightsize applications over time for their audience, is a ripe fruit.


Neilson's law is less fit for purpose. 
1) It has measured fixed line connections.
- Usage demographics have changed over the period of history it covers.  More connections are mobile now than previous, and telco resources and growth have shifted.  There are other shifts to come.  These are not accommodated in the historical averages, nor are they factored into the current ones under Neilson.

2) It is not a measure of the average enthusiast.
- It measures a first world enthusiast, whose means have improved with age, in a rich nation with good infrastructure in time of peace.  This is not average with respect to place and time through history.

3) Following bandwidth growth is not the only function of max block size, though tying it to the average enthusiast capabilities (if that were possible) would be a suitable way of addressing other functions.
- ultimately it must accommodate the transactions of sufficient fees to maintain the network, and to not constrain reasonable commerce.  These will be business decisions which may be depending on the capacity and cost of the Bitcoin network and its associated fees.  These may radically bend the curve in one way or another.  A fixed non-responsive rate can not be flexible to a changing environment.  Avoiding a requirement for central decision makers to accommodate (or not) puts perverse incentives on Bitcoin developers.

I get that the core devs, (and former core devs) do have do deal with a lot of crazies.  But what is not needed is the "either you agree with me or your are stupid, crazy, or lazy" dismissals of doing real science instead of merely technicians work.  Science is hard, but it is often worth it.

I recall Gavin's talk in San Jose in 2013 being a lot more nuanced on this matter, and it looked like there were real solutions coming, with a future-proof market sensitive approach.  That conference was better in many ways than TBF did this year in Amsterdam.

That earlier stance was optimistic and well founded, it was abandoned.  The explanations for why it was abandoned don't seem compelling at all.


In my first proposal in this thread, I replicated Gavin's Nielsen's law approach with a simple algorithm that replicated it in effect, but took its cues from the block chain to accomplish that (so growth would stop or accelerate if real world circumstances changed).  This was simply an exercise to show that it would be easy enough to do so.

I think you should do it.
Davad Latapie manages the Bitcoin Castle in Estonia.  You should contact him.  It's purpose is for such things as this, and is very fit for the purpose.

The Socratic inquiry is a bit pedantic, don't you think?
Skip to your point please.

Yes.  Though you should also recognize that block size and bandwidth use are not so tightly tied.
Network and disk compression can compress data, the block size is measured after decompression.

There are WAY more people working on the adoption issue, than there are on this one.  If you point is that I should go do something else.  Granted.  If this is done properly I would certainly be doing something else.  But consider that doing it properly, is a matter accretive to adoption as well.

In the later days, Bitcoin will be supported by its tx fees.  Currently the fees support 1/300th of the miner payment.
We are doing about 1 tx per second or so, the limit is about 7tx per second, so now is the time to address this.

It takes time to do things right.  The alternative is that we just patch it and move on, sweeping the problem under the rug for the next time it needs to be patched.  I think that it is likely, and that we (or our children) may regret that.

Primarily the limit is a safeguard, a backstop.  It is not meant to be a constraint on legitimate commerce.
It also serves to facilitate adoption and decentralization by keeping the ability to participate affordable.
Backstops are beneficial when hit, if they are protecting grandma from getting hit with the ball.

I read it, I offered some criticisms in the thread by that title a while back.

It is nice and theoretical.  There are practical things it misses (such as the zero cost mining that does occur in the real world from time to time when the equipment is not owned by the person controlling it)
There are also non-economic actors that do things for reasons other than money, and those working in larger economies (in which Bitcoin is only a minor part) with different agenda entirely.

It was a nice blog post and explained things in a simple way under ideal conditions.  I would refer people to it that need a primer on the matter.


In basic physics we give students problems that assume they are operating in a vacuum.  Basic economics also does this.  The real world is more complex.

Are you simply unaware of the other ways scalability is limited and only focused on this one?
We can go into it if you like.
I was looking to keep this discussion on the more narrow issue.

No, I am not confused on this matter.  I don't know why you would imagine this.  
It seems weird and bizzare (as if you imagine anyone that disagrees with your proposal must obviously be confused or insane...)


Visa today is about 2000 tx per second in average (non-peak) times.
Yes, I think Bitcoin can surpass this.  There are other problems with the way that scalability is limited than the block size to get there, this is just one.
And we agree on the purpose of the block size limit.  Just not on how to set it.

You don't know what the future market will look like.  You don't know what bandwidth or storage will be available.  Neither do I or anyone else.

This new paid signature campaign you've signed up for is enticing.
It seems designed well, with attractive colors, and will surely help to lower ad costs for the gambling ad sellers through the perversity effect of counter cultural memetics.
Those ad guys are wicked smart.  They know how many of us believe the opposite of whatever is advertised.  Now they have all the sides covered.

Yes... and the orphan risk rate also decreases with bandwidth availability.
I continue to maintain that market forces can rightsize MAX_BLOCK_SIZE if an algorithm with a feedback mechanism can be introduced, and that doing so introduces both less centralization risk than an arbitrary patch, and less risk of future manual arbitrary adjustments.
Fix it right, fix it once.

Or it has been sold and resold many times, as its value steadily increased?

Oh how we long for the one and only original QA, who will forever be sorely missed.

2000 @ .22

It matters not.
No one wanted to harm Princess Diana, but that didn't save her from the negative effects of notoriety.
Let it go.

This.

Also the addition of the decentralized check point function was just a new idea that came out of some few moments thought by folks outside the dev team (who have more important things to do than FUD management).  There was not much concern of an attack happening, but the consideration of of an attack generated an improved way to decentralize more authority.
To the dev team's credit, such an innovation was a simple task for them and fully deployed within the 72 hour initial challenge window.  Impressive.

It also served the purpose of using the attention from the FUD for something positive that benefits the whole community of crypto, so that this particular flavor of FUD won't be as much of a concern to anyone that implements this.

We have less of a crisis than a request for comment.
Fears over lack of consensus are rhetoric to encourage people to accept shoddy work out of a mistaken sense of urgency.
So far there have been some well considered comments, though the responses by the requesters seem assumptive and tersely dismissive, as if comment were not honestly sought?
Frankly I'd expected better.  This is how science happens.  Peers review proposals, and both experts and consensus must be challenged to accomplish this.
It takes a mere engineer or technician to craft a patch, science produces novel results.  If we reach a crisis ahead of science happening, we can always patch.  Consensus is congealed in crisis, but crisis decisions are often also ill-considered.  For this I am grateful for Gavin's proposal.  I see it as a back-up plan in case these better solutions do not mature.

Richard Feynman in 1966 taught us that:
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." -

Essentially an "expert" may have well formed opinions, and ignore options due to confirmation bias.  Revisiting assumptions often proves valuable.

It is not time that hinders consensus, so much as quality.  The BIPs flow like water when they are solid improvements.

Waiting for the next auction will mean that your workers will miss some days of quarrying stone for the grand edifaces you may be planning.
Delay does come with a cost.

The rumor's of CryptoCrypt.org's invite only and more private and functional forum are true.  Not only does it curate the best of Reddit and news, it serves as an alternative to BCT for high value conversations,.  It is a troll free zone without signature advertising and also prohibiting ad hominem by social convention and banhammering.  It seems to have cultivated a valuable population.  It is sort of what BCT is hoping to accomplish with forum software updates, but with a somewhat more elite userbase.

Some have simply shifted discussions to there.