Please go back to Reddit instead.  You will feel more at home among the trolls there.

You may want to read this article about how the consensus works, but I doubt you really care.

Ah, you obviously don't understand how the rules work.  You can make the rules stricter.  I.e. a majority of nodes will no longer accept blocks or transactions which were previously valid.  This is not a problem, because all nodes will still work.  All blocks which are valid to the majority will be valid for all.  Some transactions will just seem to never confirm for non-upgraded nodes.  Satoshi did this many times, e.g. by limiting the blocksize.

Removing or changing rules to be more permissive, is impossible.  If a majority of nodes start accepting blocks where more coins are generated, are larger, or violate the hard rules in some other way, the rest of the nodes will simply not accept their chain, and continue their own valid chain.  This is how altcoins are created.

This is what makes Bitcoin safe from e.g. a government takeover or hostile developers.  If government want to change Bitcoin by e.g. making it deduct a tax from every transaction, they could easily mandate that if it was possible to change the rules by convincing some developer to do so.  Coinbase are even trying to prove they can by launching a forks and convince idiots to use it, but the majority is not that easily fooled.

And Gavin proved to be wrong.  We are still far from hitting the limit for normal transactions, even during peaks.  No block size, not even Gavin-sized blocks, can withstand malicious spam attacks.  Gavin doesn't have a solution for that.  Only the current Bitcoin developers are working to solve the problem, and provide real scalability to Bitcoin.

Don't be a fool.  BIP 109 is a plan to make matters worse through a hostile takeover.  No blocksize can prevent spam attacks.  Gavin hasn't contributed meaningfully to Bitcoin for years.  He is busy collecting money from Coinbase to create diversion and prevent privacy improvements to Bitcoin.

If the goal was to increase capacity, why not reduce the transaction size instead?  It can be halved by using different addresses and signatures.  This is a hard fork as well, and the deployment will be equally hard.  But it is a harder sell, because it isn't as intuitive as a block size increase to the uneducated masses who think larger blocks will prevent spam.  To take control over Bitcoin, Coinbase needs a solution which is easier to sell to the uneducated masses.

Short version: If you want a dictator to own your money, just give them to someone.  You don't need Bitcoin for that.

With Bitcoin you have your own money, controlled by hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.  The rules are enforced by every node in the entire network, and to change the rules, e.g. to steal all the money and take taxes for the dictator, you have to change every single node.  This is not doable in practice.  Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules, and the powers of the developers are limited.

This is not the place for ELI5s of how bitcoin works.  See Satoshi's whitepaper.

The systems have been developed, but depend on a soft fork which hasn't been deployed yet.  It will be released next month, and deployed as fast as safely possible.

First of all it has already been trivially shown in this thread that a blocksize increase won't solve the problem at hand.  If you think every bitcoin user in the world can just switch to different software yesterday evening, and use bigger blocks by now, you are having fantasies.  Fortunately noone suggest anything like that either.  Deploying larger blocks will take much longer, since every single node in the world has to upgrade.  Unless you plan to deploy an altcoin, which you are free to do of course.

I have no need to.  I pay normal transaction fees, and am therefore not affected by the current spam attack.

There are hundreds of implementations.  See the altcoins part of the forum.  There are two separate implementations of the Bitcoin consensus model as well.  Bitcoin Core and libbitcoin.  Those are kept in sync by independent developers.

Go ahead and embrace all the altcoins you want.  Just don't pretend it is Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is built on consensus, which is incompatible with dictatorship.  Attempts to change the hard rules of bitcoin will result in an altcoin.

How high was he when he wrote this?  Every soft fork has been deployed with a 95% hashrate support so far, and no real opposition (except for P2SH, which was opposed by one developer).  And he is attempting a hostile takeover at less than 75%?  He should try rehab instead.

And attempting a hostile takeover of Bitcoin through a hard fork is the work of angels?

The better solution is freedom.  Make it possible to choose between different mechanisms.  Lightning, if you want instant secure confirmations. Use a sidechain if you want larger blocks with the possibility of other features like shorter times between blocks.  I'm sure you can get all of the big block supporters to agree on a sidechain to use.  Diversity is not a problem, because you are free to move bitcoin between different sidechains and the main chain.  Use the blockchain directly if you want to use the most limited resource, but expect to pay to use everyone's diskspace.  Just don't try to force your "solution" upon everyone, a "solution" which every schoolkid in the world can see won't solve any real world problems.

For some companies, like Coinbase which confiscate user funds on the basis of blockchain analysis, the increased privacy of transactions on the side is bad.  In my opinion the improved privacy is required in today's hostile environment of Big Brothers watching everywhere.  It is more in the spirit of Bitcoin.

Ehm..  Did you see how quickly that backlog increased?  Many nodes without mempool limit, i.e. before 0.12, even went down.  No realistic block size could have handled it.  The only reason why it flattened, is the fact that the spammer ran out of unspent txos to spend.  Recycling them faster through larger blocks will only make the problem worse by making the cost of running a full node in your home even higher.  (Contrary to popular belief, more nodes at a big datacenter doesn't help the network at all, due to the way Bitcoin tries to spread connections between as many netblocks as possible for sybil resistance.)


Only Lightning can solve that problem, by making instantly confirmed transactions possible.

Increasing the block size won't do anything but make the problem worse.

Segwit enables sidechains, which can have as large blocks as you want, and Lightning, which will circumvent the problem until the spammer(s) understand it is a waste of money.  Lightning will actually solve the zero confirmation problem as well.  But we will have to wait until next month for Segwit to be released, and probably a month or two more until it has been deployed by minimum 95% of the hashrate.

RBF is actually perfect for a situation like this.  As a merchant accepting bitcoin, I would just ask the customer to replace the transaction with one paying a decent fee.  I have been waiting for a feature like RBF for a long time.  Unfortunately it is hard to send RBF transactions yet, but a customer capable of sending one can certainly replace it as well.  At least Bitcoin tells me if a transaction can be replaced.

Fortunately the spammer is using a less than normal fee, so normal fee paying transactions aren't affected.  The only problem beeing wallets which will always apply a fixed fee with no regard to transaction size.

What amazes me is the fact that some people claim in public that a larger blocksize will solve the spam problem.  Obviously primary school isn't compulsory everywhere in the world. 

Increased block size will only encourage the spammer(s), and make the impact harder. 

We need lightning, payment channels and sidechains.  All will be easy to implement after segwit has been deployed in April.  If you want 2 MB blocks, you can easily move your coins to a sidechain with 2 MB blocks, and I am sure you will get Coinbase and other large block proponents to use it.  Coins can be moved back to the standard blockchain whenever you want.

Someone has switched on her spam-script again today.  It was off for a while.  It only cost about 3 BTC per hour to keep most normal transactions delayed, and someone keep doing that frequently.  I have no idea why, but suspect it is related to current events where Coinbase and some helpers are trying to gain control over Bitcoin.

Some pools filter the spam quite efficiently.  If e.g. Eligius manage to mine a block, your transaction will probably be in it.

You should sync with Bitcoin Core 0.12.  It is roughly 7 times faster than "classic".

I've fended many DoS attacks myself running Bitcoin Core on my nodes.  DoS attacks against bitcoin nodes is fairly common, and I doubt the attackers care which version you run.

Niks.  Ved sal av ei elektronisk fjernleverbar teneste, er det bustaden til kjøparen som er avgjerande.  Kjøparen er ikkje børsen, men ein annan, for deg som regel ukjend, kunde av børsen.  Lukke til med å dokumentere at denne kjøparen bur i utlandet.  Nei, kva valuta du byter bitcoin mot er ikkje relevant.  Nøyaktig dei same vilkåra gjeld, anten du handlar i norske kroner eller utanlandsk valuta.  Det er heller ikkje relevant kva land børsen ligg i, sidan det er bustaden til kjøparen som avgjer om salet er mva-pliktig.

Dette er logisk.  Elles ville Spotify, og alle andre som sel fjernleverbare elektroniske tenester i EU, til eikvar tid selje tenestene sine frå det landet som har lågast mva-sats.

Dette er ikkje heilt svart/kvitt.  Sidan bitcoin er deponert på den utanlandske børsen, kan du argumentere med at det er børsen som leverer tenesta til sluttkunden.  Då er det i prinsippet børsen som er mva-pliktig.  Ja, eit utanlandsk selskap som leverer elektronisk fjernleverbare tenester vil vere mva-pliktig til Noreg når dei leverer tenester til norske kundar.  Då kan du hevde at børsen er mva-pliktig, og børsen hevde at du er mva-pliktig, og dette kan de krangle om til Dovre fell, for Skattedirektoratet famlar i mørkret.  Dette er spesielt interessant for Localbitcoins, sindan børsen ligg i Finland og du som regel veit kva land kjøparen bur i.  Om du sel til ein utanlandsk kjøpar via Localbitcoins er du dobbelt sikker, og det gjeld uavhengig av om den utanlandske kjøparen betaler deg i norske eller svenske kroner.

Hæ?  Dette er sjølvsagt berre sprøyt.  Lova du refererer til finst ikkje.  Du slepp ikkje unna mva ved å bruke ein annan valuta.  I so fall hadde alle butikkar i landet skifta valuta på minuttet.

Du kan derimot selje bitcoin direkte til ein privat kjøpar i utlandet, og dokumentere dette.  Då er det rekna som eksport.  Eksport er mva-fritt.  Kjøparen kan gjerne betale i norske kroner, det har ingentig å seie.  Skattedirektoratet har ikkje svart på om sal via ein utanlandsk børs til ukjend kjøpar er å rekne som eksport.

In that case the numbers are currently 99.36% on Bitcoin's side, with only 0.64% on the fork's side.

Consensus is important among nodes, not miners.  Miners who don't follow the consensus rules are simply mining invalid coins, and ignored by the nodes.  No matter how much hashrate they have.  Miners aren't important in that regard.

Well, you have pumps and dumps of altcoins all the time.  It is pretty much what defines an altcoin.  In the past it was common for Bitcoin as well, but the economy is too large now.  I don't think anyone will be willing to risk that much money on pumping some fork.

There have been some bugfixes and improvements which achieved consensus.  Segwit is a small change, and a large improvement.  Coinbase doesn't like it, since it improves privacy and make their chainanalysis much more difficult, but fortunately Coinbase only make up a very small part of the global Bitcoin network, and many Bitcoin users dislike Coinbase's practices. 

I am only aware of one hardfork after Satoshi, and that one was a small bugfix to overcome limitations of a database library.  The hardfork is theoretical.  The other side of the fork has never mined a block that I am aware of, but if you run Bitcoin 0.6 on a node today, with no changes to the configuration, it will eventually stop syncing because it fails to validate a block due to too many DB changes.  (I don't remember the exact height.)  If wou want to, you can start mining from there using 0.6, and you will make an actual hard fork.  Other pre-fork nodes (if any) will pick it up.

Yeah, and then we can make it rain gold, and travel in time, and profit!

Most exchanges and merchants are with standard Bitcoin.  I think the exchange with the most users is Localbitcoins, and Localbitcoins are not going with any of the forkers.  This is more than enough to make sure Bitcoin will still be liquid.  I will never switch to a fork myself.  If I try to sell an altcoin as Bitcoin, I am going to get sued and ruined on the first attempt.

AFAIK only Coinbase has stated support for one of the hard forks ("Classic").  BitPay has it's own fork, but not publicly stated they will try to force anyone into using it instead of Bitcoin.  A couple of others have stated support for larger blocks, but not specified any specific solution to the problem.

It will be about 30 minutes between blocks, due to the intentional trick which makes the hard fork trigger long before it has 75% hashrate.  (And it will likely be even lower, since basic game theory says you should cheat this one by announcing support for it, and then not mine on the fork.  So there is no way to know if the fork has a mining majority at all before the fork is supposed to happen.)  30 minutes is common today.  Even an hour is quite common.  I don't think 30 minutes between blocks will stop anyone from using bitcoin.  It didn't in 2010 when someone pushed up the difficulty, and then suddenly stopped mining to show Bitcoin's weakness, and why should it this time?

You can group your receiving addresses in accounts.  Don't know if it is supported in the GUI.  haven't used the GUI for years, but I do use accounts a lot.

You don't have to use a new address each time, but it is best practice no matter which client you use.

Nah, the default keypool contains 100 addresses.  You can make 100 transactions with change or recieve to 100 new addresses before you have to back up again.  You can make the keypool larger if 100 is not enough.