Sorry, I should have defined the difference between "new owners" and "current owners"...

- what I mean is that the "current owners" are incentivized by profit, hence their incentive to sell.

The "new owners" in this scenario, would be individuals or state-level actors that are not incentivized by profit. (Indeed, who would run unprofitable hardware except some "otherwise-incentivized" participant?)

These "new owners" would have no profit margin, no scenario in which they could turn a profit, thus their only motive now is to attack the network. Their only incentive for running this specialized hardware at a loss would be to harm the network.

Makes sense?

"Could you eleborate on that scenario?"

Sure.

"At a certain point in time, a group of mining pools decides they earn too little for letting their computers run.
So what option do they have? "

As a profit-mined miner myself, I would expect that the best option is to sell non-profitable hardware to the highest bidder.

Once the hardware is sold, the new owners of said hardware can mine whatever blocks they want. They can include or exclude any transactions as they see fit.

Are you beginning to see the problem?

"So yeah, we probably need laws against those people."

"laws" that can't be enforced are useless. If you are expecting to rely on force of government and enforcement of "laws" ,  you're gonna have a bad time...

Because having and following "laws" is what bitcoin's all about, right?

I think you might underestimate the amount of sha-256 horse-power that might be leveraged against the network once mining becomes unprofitable.

If mining is no longer profitable, mining hardware will be sold at clearance prices.

 It all contributes to diminishing the security of the immutable ledger.

I remember a time when forum participants like Mr. Mucus were considered trolls.

Mr Mucus, I must tip my hat, you've nailed it on the head, directly.

This illusion of "voting" and "mattering" is just that, an illusion.

The only votes that matter are cast by the ones that control the mining of the blocks, they run the show, but they only run as far as the incentives will lead.

As soon as the reward incentives paid per block are reduced to less than the potential reward for attacking the network, the security agreement will end. Miners have no incentive to be loyal. They have no incentive to secure your record of transactions without sufficient monetary compensation.

The question I leave for electric mucus,  (and anyone else who'd like to respond - excepting BJA,  I've grown tired of his lack of intelligence) is:

How do you propose that the miners are incentivized to protect the security of the blockchain if there is no scarcity enforced on the size of the Blockchain?

Wait a minute, they sent you double bitcoin? I'm going to assume you weren't the only person this happened to. So what happens if they sent you double and you had no fiat or bitcoin left on account?

These kind of mistakes do not inspire confidence, I must agree. (Gives new twist to "double spend" though )

Average user cpu mining might get around 20 mh/s if they're lucky (see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Non-specialized_hardware_comparison#CPUs.2FAPUs)

The current network hashrate is estimated at nearly 400,000 TH/s - meaning, you need about 20 billion average users to mine bitcoin with their computers...

Somehow, I don't think that everyone (techsavvy enough) will have even the slightest effect.

Although I don't mine my own blocks, I can choose which pool to direct my hash rate.  As demonstrated by fake nodes, the only voting that can not be faked is either voting by mining blocks (proof of work) or voting by signing messages with private keys that prove how much bitcoin you have control over (proof of stake).

The process of mining is what makes the Blockchain secure. The security is what gives it value.

Bip100 =>> http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf

It's quite ambitious actually, and not quite ready yet? (I think there's a compatibility problem with the headers first thing, but I need to look closer) - but I'm fine with the miners deciding the blocksize.

There is a symbiotic balance between the miners and the nodes, but do not kid yourselves, it is the miners that are running the show. You cannot force the miners to do anything. The best you can hope for is coercion. Meanwhile, if the miners choose one direction and the nodes disagree, the nodes are stuck, they cannot make transactions without mining. (Unless of course they all just switch to proof of stake :-/ could happen, who knows?)

Yo, Adam, check it out. This guy totally stole your idea...

http://wallstreettechnologist.com/2015/08/23/articles-of-bitcoin-constitution-a-genesis-block-of-governance/

Or like trying to charge money for an infinite resource?

Bip 101 timescale:

Year.  Size.  Reward.  blockchain size (rough estimate)
2016  8MB.  12.5.     40GB
2020  32MB  6.25.     3.4TB
2024. 128MB  3.125.  16.8TB
2028. 512MB  1.5625.  70.56TB
2032  2048MB  0.78125.  285.6TB
2036  8192MB  0.390625.  1145TB

How many individuals do you think will be incentivized to store more than a petabyte of data with no compensation? The good news is that Gavin's plan is preposterous and will never gain traction, so fortunately there's nothing to worry about.  

When the longest chain is then later abandoned, you can lose a lot of money being on the longest chain. You do remember the fork in 2013, don't you?

Larger blocks do not make it easier to come to consensus, they make it harder. An 8MB block will take longer to propagate, making it more likely that small forks and orphans occur. Also since you are now locked into exponential growth, in two years my well connected mine in northern Europe can mine and quickly propagate 16MB blocks which will take longer for the Chinese miners to download and validate, giving me an advantage (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and also an incentive to pack blocks full of junk transactions (which is necessarily a bad thing) - if the nodes are all following the rules of bip101 they have to accept my garbage filled 16MB blocks, as they are perfectly valid. 

By allowing these much larger blocks to be created, you increase the effectiveness of selfish mining and thus, increase the incentive to act in a malicious manner.  Satoshi might not have realized a block size limit was necessary when he was drafting the white paper, but it sure didn't take him long to implement one once the network was up and running.

For anyone who is still struggling to understand why bigger blocks might not be such a good idea, I thought this was a nice, succinct, and humorous explanation of XT from a rather unlikely source.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-23/what-bitcoin-xt-primer-everyone

Enjoy. 

Did you make some bad bets Mr decentral banker? You seem awfully bitter as of late.

I hope not professor, looks like there's not a lot of money lying around for useless eaters.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-21/brazil-has-yet-another-big-mess-on-its-hands-after-state-default
"The state (Rio Grande do Sul), proportionally the most-indebted in Brazil, is in such distress that it didn’t pay salaries to public workers in July."

I hope professors don't rely on public money in Brazil, though I'm sure you've seen this all before and you'll be fine. After all, government fiat money is good, bitcoin bad, right?

As long as their free choice does not change the fundamental rules that the consensus network agrees on, they can run whatever client they like. XT, core, electrum, armory, etc... but when it comes to making a change to the fundamental rules of consensus, I would argue the best approach is to make this process as hard as possible.

Making a change like bip 101 that involves ballooning the block size to 8MB and eventually to 8GB is reckless and can bring about problems and attack vectors that we can't know or predict. They (Gavin and Hearn) are spreading fear and panic and preying on your fear of what might happen if we don't change [1] while they pay no heed to all to the consequences and real danger that could occur from such a drastic change to the fundamental rules that balance incentives and keep bitcoin secure.

[1]even though we've seen from the spam attacks that it's not a problem and bitcoin deals with full blocks just fine... In fact, it may even be desirable to be in a constant state of full blocks so that a fee market can emerge. Remember that the miners must continue to get paid as the reward continues to diminish)

Surprised it took so long to see Monero mentioned. If something "bad" happens to bitcoin it will likely be due to government taking advantage of the transparent and non-fungible nature of bitcoin to attack or co-opt it. In this scenario, Monero is the obvious choice as it would be resilient against such attacks.

To be accurate, shouldn't that last number be 100,000,000 instead of 100 ?

How is this appreciably different than the way it already works today? If 90% of the miners want to do whatever, no one's stopping them.

Bitcoin is not a democracy. It is a system of voluntary consensus. Miners are financially motivated to follow the rules and also to enforce those rules upon everyone else that wishes to participate.

You are free to go ahead and fork your own democraticoin at any time. No one can stop you; just as no one can force a change upon the bitcoin network against the will of the participants.
  

Fine. But I've been saying this since June...


Now, as we reach the end of summer, I expect that the price will remain below 330 so long as this whole XT nonsense remains unsettled.

 Better?

Interesting... inverse correlation?

Bitcoin price


XT nodes


Coincidence? I think not!