I'm sure he's not ignorant of alternative consensus methods. There just don't exist any yet that can come close to providing the security that proof-of-work does.

Federated consensus may have uses but it doesn't solve the Byzantine Generals' Problem and it requires a lot of trust. The point of Bitcoin was to eliminate trust, not to trust an elite group of validators to do the right thing.

Same here. I also have Oreo on Android with Gboard fully updated. Looks like they haven't added this to the Android app yet, which seems like a very odd move for Google.

It's like they wanted to roll this out to as few people as possible.


I was just thinking the same thing. It almost seems like a joke...

I don't think the concern was about AsicBoost, but rather validationless "spy mining." Spy miners connect to competing pools, so when a competing pool finds a block and forwards the block header hash, they can start mining on top of it before validating. This prevents wasted idle hashing time.

The reason it produces empty blocks is because of Bitcoin mining's Poisson distribution -- sometimes a new block can be mined mere seconds after the previous one. This doesn't allow enough time for full validation. The spy miner can't risk including any transactions from the mempool, because they may have already been included in the previous block. Their only choice to secure the coinbase reward is to mine an empty block.

Supposedly more than half of all miners were spy mining in 2016. I'm not sure about now.

Not all crypto is necessarily energy intensive like Bitcoin. There are proof-of-stake, hybrid proof-of-stake and other designs that are much less so, but it comes at a cost. If you want payment settlement so reliable that you can call it "irreversible" then you need to use proof-of-work.

Proof-of-work may be energy intensive, but what's the context? The legacy banking and gold production industries are very energy intensive, too. Nobody seems to mention that in these analyses. Why is everyone so hung up on Bitcoin? Like Musk says, Bitcoin's structure is quite brilliant. The whole design hinges on the fact that mining carries costs.

It's strange that it's only for iOS. I have Gboard on my Android and it's up-to-date, but no Bitcoin symbol to be found. I would have expected the update on Android first.


I much prefer the iOS keyboard myself. Maybe I'm just used to it. I doubt you'll find many people willing to switch over for this.

Dementia is not the only concern. What about a blow to the head that causes memory loss? Or sudden death for whatever reason? There should always be some sort of fail-safe in place. Unless you're happy with the idea of someday donating to the rest of us with your lost coins.


Good choice.

Blockchain.com obviously eclipses them in size, but that's not the important issue.

There seem to be two important questions. Is Blockchain.com's brand associated specifically with cryptocurrency exchange services? That's what Blockchain.io is doing. I've always associated Blockchain.com with wallet services.

Second, can the word "blockchain" be trademarked, especially in the context of cryptocurrency services? I doubt it.

I think this whole thing is an effort to shake down Blockchain.io and scare them into submission. I don't think there is a strong legal case.

There's a great thread about that one, definitely worth a read: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=296217.0;all

I remember reading a few years back about a case like this. The whole thing unfolded on Reddit and I'm pretty sure the guy ended up communicating with the pool that mined the block they returned his coins. I can't find the thread now, though.

It must really depend where you live. I live in the states, and everyone loves cash here. Literally everyone I know always carries some crisp bills in their wallet. All the gas stations list different cash and credit prices on their signage. A couple of my local restaurants only accept cash. There's also a huge food truck / food cart industry here and those are mostly cash only. My auto mechanic knocks 3% off my invoice when I pay him cash. And with so many undocumented immigrants here and also big grey markets like cannabis and hemp production, that adds huge demand for a cash economy. There are also things like laundromats, street vending, nail salons, etc. that are predominantly cash businesses.

I've also noticed that people here are becoming increasingly skeptical that service workers are receiving tips via apps and credit cards. There is a big culture of tipping service workers in cash for that reason.

Draper lives in California so he shouldn't be ignorant to this stuff. He's either acting completely delusional or has some other motive for saying things like this.

The design for Bitcoin was always dependent on users paying fees. Not to mention the fact that you need to buy (or mine) bitcoins first in order to use them. There have always been -- and will continue to be -- upfront costs just to use Bitcoin.

Once you've paid enough fees for two (or four or six) onchain transactions to open Lightning channels, you can make far more offchain transactions than that. Paying less fees for more transactions, with a security model that leverages Bitcoin's blockchain -- what's to complain about?

I suppose they could do it the same way the FBI sets people up on Localbitcoins. The police pose as traders, setting up P2P deals with high volume traders. Then they get those traders to engage in illegal deals like transacting with $10,000+ without KYC.

The Venezuelan government could set up trades, then see if traders pay the tax. If they don't, the police might come knocking on their door.

Fungibility has always been an open question with Bitcoin. We can't foresee exactly how governments are going to apply money laundering regulations, and the ledger is completely transparent. I certainly would never seek out freshly minted coins personally, but I could understand if whale investors with deep pockets want to hedge that way as an insurance plan. They want their capital to be unimpeachable. I'm sure whatever premium they're paying is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential gains they're looking for.

It doesn't look like an intergovernmental payment, just an import/export deal between two companies. A payment processor (Bitex) was used to convert the coins into pesos and deliver payment. Not exactly revolutionary, but I guess it's cool to see B2B payments happening with Bitcoin, even if the amounts are really small.

I don't mind Draper, but this statement is ridiculous. Non-criminals have very legitimate reasons to use cash. Some merchants offer lower prices for cash payment (vs. credit cards) so it can be cheaper to use. There are no fees to spend cash, so again, it's cheaper to use. Not to mention, cash is much more private than most cryptocurrencies.

And in 5 years, no less? Give me some of what he's smoking, please.

That's what people said about Bitfinex in 2016, but they only became bigger after the hack. After the 2017 shutdown of BTC-e, people said the same thing too, but after WEX launched and partially refunded users and opened withdrawals, lots of customers remained loyal.

I never underestimate the gullibility of investors. People that don't appreciate Bitcoin's technology don't even understand the risks of exchanges. And that's especially true of Cryptopia's client base. They listed the worst of the worst coins -- we're talking about Dentacoin and 1,000 other ridiculous projects. I really think you guys are giving Cryptopia's customers too much credit.

UnionPay is definitely expanding beyond China. Where I live in the US, it's becoming common to see their logo everywhere Visa/Mastercard is posted. I don't think UnionPay cards are being issued to US customers, so the Chinese tourist/expat market must be huge.

I wish I knew more about antitrust laws. I have no idea if they apply here.

I'm not sure about Gemini specifically, but they're probably just enforcing TOS against using their services for gambling. Coinbase does this, and I believe the legal rationale is to avoid direct money transmission to/from gambling sites to comply with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and the Federal Wire Act.

Show how it was redefined every couple years. Actually demonstrate it. Based on the wiki, those definitions haven't changed in the last five years. As always, you never provide any proof for your false claims.


Sigh. In quotes, to emphasize the fact that consensus -- not stupid labels about soft vs. hard -- is what matters.


There is no evidence or logic for what you're saying. You're just repeating, "It was hard! Buzz words! Baseball caps! Hard hard hard!"

It's easier to apply the definitions we've used for many years now, so we can stop wasting time on these stupid discussions. BIP148 was falsely marketed as backward compatible, which is just as bad as marketing a hard fork as a soft fork, but isn't the same thing.

I'm willing to call a bad apple a bad apple. I'm not willing to call an apple an orange. Words have meanings.


That's ridiculous. We're talking about how to define code. Software doesn't care about controversy. People run it or they don't. We're trying to describe what the network is doing, not whether a code fork is controversial according to Franky.


I will defer to the community on that one. As for your obsession, keep on keeping on!

I'm not the one who made up these definitions. They're just the definitions that everyone involved in Bitcoin development uses. Feel free to demonstrate otherwise. You are the one who is completely alone, referring to apples as oranges. You are at odds with the entire Bitcoin community. Deal with it.

As I've said over and over, the issue is whether consensus is broken -- we can agree on that. Why are you so obsessed with the definition of "hard fork?" Why does it matter one bit to this discussion?

Interesting, so transaction congestion seems to spike during midday to afternoon, UTC? I wonder what that implies about European vs. American usage and if these findings could be corroborated another way.

It would be nice to see if this were the case over the long term, but with only a months worth of data, it could be a temporary anomaly.