so his vistomail.com Email address still works. 

1000  @  0.06

I hope i understand how it goes. And i hope i can raise my bet when i see i am not wining anymore.

Jesus Christ! People on this forum are functionally illiterate. And no, it's not just 23. Four more have hit my PM in the last 24 hours. It's 27 now. LOL

We keep bumping the thread causing new scammers to knock at my door. I think the ones openly responding in the thread are sig campaigners and the ones only PMing are scammers.

The underlying crimes in the cases don't matter. The point is that the "it wasn't fiat" defense didn't fly, so it's pretty darn reasonable to assume that if you're breaking some law or failing to comply with some regulation, you will not be able to use the same "I wasn't using dollars" defense to get off on a technicality. Morality hardly matters; the letter of the law/regs matters.

In the specific case of these asset-exchange platforms, those issuing equity equivalents onto them should probably be aware that the SEC has about 80 years worth of securities regulation on file, and they aren't gonna ignore that just because the securities are being issued in a way that doesn't touch dollars.

This is why Overstock's CounterParty-issued shares proposal came with the simultaneous announcement of the retention of a team of (expensive) Perkins Coie lawyers to get it all approved by the SEC.

File your S1s, kids.

Some early buyers might also sell or give gold for many different reasons.

Consider this:
A careful reading of the rulebook of the king's wisdom shows that there is an incentive to spread the wealth, especially for those who might collaborate on common goals simply because high amounts of gold produce less stone per gold than lower amounts of gold.  Therefore multiple collaborators can produce more by working together than can a single player working alone with the same amount of gold.  It is a built in cooperation incentive for the wealthier subjects due to the decreasing returns on hoarding.

However in deference to your concern, I will forgo bidding on this auction.

1000 at .08

If alot of people take interest, could we limit the amount of gold 1 person can get(so new people have a better chance to try out game early)?  Kinda sucks if one single person can bid a high amount and take everything since I think too much gold was sold to some people at the start already.  Higher adoption means the game will grow faster, and less big monopolies are good for the game in the long run.

Now define "right". Is it simply a block size which grows/shrinks dynamically with real world bandwidth over time? What if usage demand is far higher? What if the BTC exchange rate experiences unending volatility due to uncertainty about usage capacity (ie its user base)?

In other words does not needing future bandwidth adjustment automatically mean "right"?

Not according to these people. They think 1MB is the right answer for "many more years" and until we know it's "safe" to change. Can't you see any answer given is subjective? With that being the case doesn't it make sense to adopt a solution which can fit the most common perception of Bitcoin's promise, which certainly includes global usage, and can win popular support?

This is one of those instances I'm talking about regarding people thinking differently.

You and I seem to fundamentally think differently here, and who is to say who is right? I believe whatever hard fork change we make, if we make one, it will be locked in quite probably forever more. It won't be subject to adjustment. Whatever it is future users will have to work with, sort of like we simply have to work with 1MB if we can't adequately change it. This is due to an ossifying of the protocol, again, as I mentioned above.


Define "wrong".

IMHO, this is the most salient point on this whole thread.  Sometimes you just have to think deeply and clearly to see the truth.  

The core dev team are more than just experts in computers, they are also experts in human relations.  It's why Gavin and others have so much respect in the community, and certainly why they have my respect.  Bitcoin is all about free will and voluntary participation.  Every aspect of bitcoin must be in philosophical alignment with those concepts.  I'm not worried, I believe the consensus around the principles that bitcoin embodies will continue to grow.  This thread has been a great discussion.  Some of alternatives to Gavin's plan just don't work on the philosophical level.  Therefore, they cannot function on a technical level.

back to the Bitshares thing.  i now realize that it has its own blockchain and is just a variation of the same POS scheme.  sorry, i don't study these alts.

the fact that Daniel Larimer keeps changing the protocol is concerning, not to mention his public nature and those required of the delegate nodes.  the merger with Ethereum indicates to me that both are struggling to come up with a viable solution perhaps never to be found.

Yes, we very much want to avoid doing something reasonable for today and pass this point along to future generations.  Hard forks are not nice and having a committee decide on an appropriate maximum block size every so often is out of the question (a central point of failure).

Unfortunately, there's no easy way of doing what you'd like.  Bitcoin itself has no conception of a market agent; it certainly can't distinguish between them or count them.  Bitcoin itself can't know if the system is highly decentralised or if all the addresses and all the hash power are controlled by a single party.

We might be able to come up with a probabilistic or economic solution but no algorithm can measure decentralisation with certainty.  Perhaps some blockchain-based metric may suggest that the system is decentralised (or under attack by an economically irrational agent) with high probability.  However, I expect that any such algorithm, no matter how subtle, will yield an equally subtle attack where a single agent attempts to appear to be many agents.

I never said I believe Bitcoin is doomed to fail, although my questioning it's viability may strengthen with developments. That should be everyone's position, because Bitcoin is an experiment. Those who think Bitcoin is guaranteed to succeed in serving the world are misunderstanding the situation. This doesn't mean it can't succeed at that, only that it's not guaranteed (how could it be?).


My position isn't Bitcoin needs central authority. My position is Bitcoin needs a viable solution. If you read the post I made above you'll see I asked whether the majority community could be convinced to accept Gavin's proposal or one more like what you're crafting. My position was one of adopting a viable solution.


Who has claimed any authority? Where? All I see is people putting forth their suggestions.


Like I said above, it seems you're arguing from a position of ideology. You seem to see resolving the block size issue as divided between those who tend toward centralization and those who demand absolute decentralization, even to the point of seeing people establishing positions they haven't. That is the reason I question Bitcoin's viability. It's because people have their own thoughts about how things should work, or how things can work, and even if there is a solution which can work (I'm not saying which) it may not be possible to get everyone to agree, because it's not possible to do a Vulcan mind meld and have everyone understand everyone else's thoughts, conclusions, and informing information. People think differently (and with differing abilities). In the absence of some deciding force (usually a leader or authority as you call it) the result may be no clear decision whatsoever.

I'm simply seeking something which can work, something a majority can agree upon, nothing more.

Not silly to anyone who understand the concept of opportunity cost.

Nice but I don't believe it.  The definition of "Ebola free" is the lack of a reported Ebola case for three weeks.  But I bet some people are not reporting their illness (or it would not surprise me).

data associated with the Congo outbreak indicates that people possibly exposed to Ebola should remain in isolation for as long as 31 days.

i agree with this idea
gavin is correct !

I completely disagree with this. Believe it or not it's actually not that easy for the Fed to adjust monetary policy. I mean all things considered, it's exceptionally easy, but they still have to get their board to go along and sell the public on what they're doing. That's a task made harder as they try more extraordinary things (like now) and the public becomes more astute to the way money works and its importance (like now), and that's a center driven design.

Bitcoin is designed from the ground up to be the opposite. It's extraordinarily hard to implement changes affecting the whole without consent from the whole. I sincerely believe after a certain point of adoption it will be impossible to make changes to Bitcoin, even ones not so controversial; if there isn't a do or die mandate behind the action (like a break in SHA256) I don't see consensus from millions and millions of independent thinkers coming easily. Somebody's going to think differently for some reason, even if it appears irrational. People call this ossifying of the protocol.

Think how hard this 1MB issue is. There was a time when Satoshi simply told everyone to start running a protocol change without question. He knew there was a severe bug allowing excess coins, but people simply upgraded and now the fork ignoring that block is locked in.

Bitcoin isn't the first to come up with decentralization. That was actually the idea behind America. Instead of power reigning down from monarchs it would be vested within all the individuals. However, the founders even then recognized authority by committee wasn't always ideal. It would be a clear disadvantage if attacked since the battle might be lost before it was decided what to do. That's why the president has full authority to respond militarily in case of attack.

It sounds like you're objecting for reasons more ideological than practical. While that's admirable and understandable I hope you also recognize that's not automatically best given the circumstances.

Absolutely, but scaling the block size according to the projected bandwidth growth rate (based upon the recent bandwidth growth rate) means that 1GB blocks are still many years away, mid-2020s. Storage shows phenomenal potential for further growth and durability. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/jul/17/5d-superman-memory-crystal-heralds-unlimited-lifetime-data-storage

In ten years time the block reward will be 3.125 btc, and the fees market much healthier, such that a dynamic "soft" limit could be introduced, if that is considered needed. You mention doing the right thing for future generations of Bitcoin users. We all want to do the right thing for them, but we have to concede that they will have far more information to make design and scaling decisions. What is important now is to introduce *some* scalability, ideally so that the ecosystem can grow, as much as computing technology (in the hands of a hobbyist or semi-professional bitcoiner) will allow, in the meantime.

I haven't seen anyone disagree with this point.  Bitcoin is a true digital asset as is btsx.  Bitassets are IOUs.  The point you are missing is that bitshares provides the safest and most secure form of trading and storing these IOUs in a digital format.  It is a replacement for futures markets, ETFs, ect. 

You have it in your mind that we are proposing that bitgld replace bitcoin.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  However, there is and will be demand for a decentralized, trustless, digital currency redeemable for gold on a 1 to 1 basis.  Bitcoin could acheive this with side chains utilizing m of n oracles to decentralize the system.  If so, then great.

Let take a step back and consider why we even have the option for transaction fees in the first place?  In this post I attempted to outline four possible reasons:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=669243.0

If there is no scarcity in block space and it is not to incentivise miners then the primary reasons for the transaction fee seem to disappear.  In reality this is not the case, transaction fees are an integral, necessary and crucial part of Bitcoin.

The market for transaction fees can be considered in some ways which make it appear to look fundamentally different from a “normal” market from certain perspectives, however I understand many viewpoints expressed which imply it is a “normal” type of market.  I personally struggle with both of these concepts a lot.

Lets consider again the two primary “reasons” for the transaction fee: (Once the block reward becomes low)



All users of Bitcoin benefit from a secure network and a tragedy of the commons type problem could occur, in the sense that “Why should I pay a transaction fee for my transaction, when others could pay the higher fee to incentivise miners?”  This problem clearly occurs for the second "reason" and not the first.

A market based mechanism could work for the first “reason” for the transaction fee, but not the second.  This is why I propose that an artificial scarcity is required, this would manipulate the otherwise “normal” market for transaction fees, such that mining incentivisation occurs as an indirect benefit of users wanting their transactions included in blocks.  The arrow in the above image represents the transactions fees being used to incentivise an activity/"reason" which the users are not directly paying for.

I understand that in many people’s minds, the distinction between “reasons” for the transaction fee is not necessary or relevant and mining is just mining, whatever the "reason".  However, I think the above illustrates the economic dynamics of the transaction fee is not as simple as some people think and the network can be analysed in a number of valid ways.  When the block reward does fall to an economically low level I do not know what will happen, but it is important to try to look at the system from many different angles now to prepare for this.