It didn't ban nodes.  That instruction simply installed an ETC client or an ETH client.   With a different protocol.  It is as if you could use a bitcoin core client, and give the instruction --run-litecoin.

And transactions from one chain WERE transmitted to the other chain, which caused a lot of surprise.  But this is normal: miners wanted the fees, so they went LOOKING AFTER valid transactions (not on the network, but on the block chain !).

No, this is not true.  You only have no say with Segwit.  If 51% of the miners implement segwit, all of them have to follow or get orphaned, and there will be only one chain.  Whether your node supports segwit or not, only one single chain will be produced.  No choice.  Only miner majority.  Core is nice to not activate before 95%, but they don't have to.  51% is enough.

However, with BU, you have a choice.  BU being a HARD fork, (but backward compatible), it can make a NEW CHAIN forking off the normal bitcoin chain if it has 51% mining hash rate or more (if it has less, it will, being backward compatible, always be orphaned as it makes invalid blocks for the majority, but the standard chain is accepted by BU miners, which is the longest one).

So if BU goes beyond 51%, it makes a new chain WITH A NEW COIN, call it butcoin.  Former bitcoin holders now hold their former stash of bitcoin, and a new, equal stash of butcoin.  Bitcoin has forked.  If exchanges include this butcoin, people can exchange butcoin for bitcoin and vice versa.  The market cap of bitcoin will split over bitcoin and butcoin.  If butcoin's market cap remains over 51% of the total, miners will stay in the majority with butcoin.  We now have two coins: the original bitcoin, and an altcoin, butcoin.

However, if ever people sell off their butcoin for more bitcoin, and the market cap of butcoin drops, miners will move back to bitcoin (lower difficulty, higher market price).  If now, butcoin becomes minority, a major clusterfuck happens.

Indeed, more miners on bitcoin means that sooner or later, the total PoW in the bitcoin chain will overtake the total PoW in the butcoin branch.  From that moment on, butcoin miners will now accept the bitcoin chain as the valid chain, and mine on it (just to get orphaned each time by the majority: bitcoin's protocol being more severe, it is as if the former bitcoin protocol is a soft fork of butcoin so the majority wins).  It is only if they implement a full hard fork that makes the bitcoin chain incompatible with the butcoin chain that the butcoin chain will not undergo this major orphaning.

But with a BU split, the market cap will decide, and as long as the market cap of butcoin is larger than bitcoin's, it will stay alive next to bitcoin.  And if BU becomes fully incompatible with bitcoin, it will be an entirely different coin.

No, this is a normal SOFT fork mechanism.  OF COURSE it 'bans' non-soft-fork blocks: they are INVALID according to the softfork protocol.  That's proper to a soft fork.

A soft fork never makes two chains.  It simply orphans the prongs of the minority if it has a majority.  This has nothing to do with nodes and so on, only with miners.  If a majority of miners applies a soft fork (no matter what soft fork, just ANY extra condition on top of the normal protocol) then minority miners will always get orphaned, until they join the majority, and no matter what node software you run, you will only get the soft fork valid chain.

For instance, if the soft fork simply consists in "including a transaction from Joe's address is considered invalid", and if a majority of miners applies this condition, then the chain that EVERYBODY will see, will never contain a transaction from Joe.  Those minority miners that do accept Joe's transaction, will make blocks that get orphaned by the majority.  So minority miners can chose not to make blocks that contain Joe's transaction (and hence, "apply the soft fork") and be included, or systematically get orphaned.  So in the end, only a chain without Joe's transactions will be available.  Whether or not people run nodes with or without this restriction, doesn't matter.  They will only get a chain without Joe's transaction.

Segwit is the same.

You are entirely confused over this.  With a full hard fork, you have 2 chains, 2 coins.  Call them X and Y.  A node running protocol X, will recognize chain X as valid, and will consider chain Y as invalid.  So this node will only accept chain X, and its wallet will show you your holdings in coin X.  A node running protocol Y will recognize chain Y as valid, and will consider chain X as invalid.  This node will only accept chain Y, and its wallet will shwo you your holdings of coin Y.

Whether one chain has more PoW or not doesn't matter to a node for which that chain is invalid.


They don't co-mingle, NOT BECAUSE THEY BAN EACH OTHER.  But because transactions of ETH are not valid on the ETC chain and vice versa.

There WAS a problem when people transacted on the ETC chain, and generated also a valid transaction on the ETH chain, because they used pre-fork UTXO.  This transaction got included in the ETH chain too, and these people had against their wishes, also transacted their ETH holdings.  With ETH this could be solved with a smart contract.  Bitcoin can't do that.  But what you can do, is to obtain some freshly mined coins on one chain, or on the other, and mix them in your transactions.  Then, these coins exist only on one chain, and this transaction is only valid on one chain.  Mere mortals can't do this, but exchanges can.  They only need to make a transaction with some dust included from one after-split coinbase or the other to split the pre-fork coin into an X-coin and a Y-coin.


That is ridiculous.  I don't know clams.  But if clams wanted, it could install a bitcoin full node, READ THE BITCOIN BLOCK CHAIN, and include all transactions on the chain in its chain, because the signatures are, according to your saying, correct.


This is again, ridiculous as a safety technique.  Of course clams can see these transactions, they are on a fucking public block chain !

I fully agree with you, except that 1. is now also important: it determines the fee market.


However, you proposition is not going to be accepted, because the second coin (obtained by burning bitcoins) will not be seen as bitcoin, but as an altcoin, and the first chain (true bitcoin) will keep on living.  Nobody is going to burn a real bitcoin to obtain an altcoin.

What will Lightning Network nodes with sufficient transactions (a big network hub) look like, you think ?  

The problem is fundamentally that if there's a whale that owns 80% of the stash, he can manipulate it in just any direction.  No coin, "however cheap" for the rest of the 20% that is available, is believable if someone owns 80% of it.

This is also the problem with DASH: most probably half of the stash is in the hands of Evan Inc.  And a smaller but similar problem exists with ETH.  With bitcoin, if Satoshi has still his keys, this is a problem too, but most probably, these coins are dead.

I had the impression that there are no monero whales of that size.  That there is a power distribution of possession is normal: all assets are power-law distributed after a while.  But there should be an upper limit to the amount that is in the hands of a single entity, so that it cannot entirely manipulate the market.  Pump and dump, sure.  Unavoidable.  But not at a level that was the case with Bytecoin.

That said, with segwit, bitcoin BECOMES a banking industry...

Bitcoin is designed to produce 1 block of transactions every 10 minutes.  The size of that block is now limited to 1 MB.  That comes down to a transaction capacity of about 2-3 transactions per second.  Bitcoin is now reaching this transaction rate, and hence, people have difficulties getting their transactions confirmed (written in a block by a miner).

Back in the old days, Satoshi had put this limit to 32 MB, but it was lowered later to "avoid spam".

As you can see, the block chain is now full:

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

and the number of transactions is now limited:
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block?timespan=2years

The fact that there is now more demand for transactions than the bitcoin block chain can provide, is now monetized by the miners, who take only those transactions with the biggest fees.  This establishes a (rising) fee market.  

https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd

This makes that miners are not very keen on "solving the problem": they would slaughter the hen with the golden eggs.  It also makes that small bitcoin transactions make no sense any more: only large transactions, on which one pays large fees, will get through.  Small wallets will be frozen for ever.  The guy with half a bitcoin will soon not be able to transact any more.  But the venture capitalist transacting 1000 bitcoin will have no problems paying a high fee to get his transaction on the chain.  A very lucrative thing for miners at first sight: only big transactions, big fees, and small blocks.  No ordinary people paying a book or a second-hand i-phone in bitcoin.

Nevertheless, there are several solutions proposed to this problem.  One is simply to increase the block size again.  BU.  However, in order to do so, one needs a HARD FORK.  New blocks (bigger than 1 MB) will not be accepted by old protocol.  As such, chances are that two different coins emerge: a "big block BU bitcoin", and a standard bitcoin.  Like ethereum split in ETC and ETH.  

The other solution is segwit.  Segwit does several things.  It allows more transactions within a single 1 MB block by "compressing" transactions in a certain way.  But, most importantly, it prepares for the possibility to have the Lightning network on top of bitcoin.  That would make certain nodes "banks" and then you can send your transactions through these banks to your destiny, WITHOUT USING THE BLOCK CHAIN.  The block chain would only hold some collateral of these banks to keep them honest.  Segwit doesn't need big blocks (well...) as the block chain wouldn't be used much any more, and the "banker's network" on top of it would send the payments.  A bit like normal banks do when you tell them to send money to another bank's account.

What do people say about these two solutions ?  One thing for sure is that just "increasing the amount of transactions per block" (by increasing the block size, or by compressing them) only kicks the can somewhat further down the road.  So much is for sure.  The "banker's layer" is a radically new way of transacting bitcoin and can, in principle, handle WAY WAY larger numbers of transactions.

But:

1) some people say that bigger blocks will make bigger block chains and will discourage small nodes to exist, leading to "centralization".  To me, that argument is bogus.  Non-mining nodes don't matter really, but for the owner of the node.  People do not agree over this, but when one looks at the investment by miners and their centralization, then the cost of a bigger hard disk and a faster PC is not going to be the main centralizing force.   But nevertheless, this is a main argument against "bigger blocks".  For me, the main argument is that it is just kicking the can.

2) other people say that segwit and the lightning network will totally "fiatize" bitcoin, with a banker's network that can only be afforded by big bitcoin holders (to put the collateral on chain) with large computing infrastructure.    This is most probably true.  However, this kind of infrastructure is the only infrastructure that can allow BIG VOLUMES of transactions in bitcoin.  You can't have it both ways.  

3) Segwit proponents don't want the block size to increase, as this would be too much of a relief and wouldn't pressure people to accept segwit, which is why they are furiously against a block size increase.

4) many miners see the lightning network as a serious threat to their fees, as most transactions are now not on the chain.

So there is now a religious fight between both camps.

The mem pool may finally get emptied

Bitcoin can become a reserve currency.
Actually, to be a reserve currency, it *doesn't have to scale*.  I think that if bitcoin doesn't "fork to death", this is its possible fate.  Bitcoin, as coins, will be locked up in financial institution's vaults.  No mortal will ever transact on the block chain.  The block chain will be another, extremely expensive, commodity, that serves as immutable ledger for many things.  I don't even know whether the value of kilobytes on the block chain will be worth more or less than a bitcoin.  It would be mightily expensive to do a transaction of a few bitcoin on the chain.  Only large settlements between financial institutions world wide will be able to afford such transactions.   Bitcoin will be entirely fiatised, and, because of its financial importance, be totally put under international control.  Mining without a licence will not be possible.

Bitcoin can become the immutable ledger of the world.
It might also be that the bitcoin token itself becomes irrelevant, and what is the real value of bitcoin, is the room on its block chain.  If the kilobyte on the chain is more expensive than a few hundred bitcoin, say, then the real commodity is room on the chain (for other things than bitcoin transactions: that would be a waste !).  Bitcoin's coin value will then essentially plummet to zero, but will be used as an "app token" to write stuff on the chain (where you pay a miner in fiat or another token for the room taken).

The "internet money for normal people" dream will be entirely over with bitcoin.  This will be left to alt coins that have scalable systems.

Or it might be that bitcoin will fork, and fork, and fork, to make many derived alt coins.

Don't believe that market cap has much to do with "people endorsing" whatever.  By far most market cap, of most bitcoin and altcoins, are greater-fool games.  And some markets are even easier manipulated when the supply is very centralized, and locked up.

The post is self-explanatory, no.  If the white paper is already a big lie, why would one even bother.  Imagine that Satoshi told the world in 2009 that he had published his white paper in 1998, but that nobody read it, and that 80% of bitcoin is now mined, and that it has been used by big banks since a decade or so.  And then one discovers that he just did so three days ago, but has predated his genesis block by more than 10 years to do easy mining.  Do you think one single soul would even buy a pizza with 100 bitcoin ?


It doesn't matter.  If you start out with such a big, discovered lie, then there's no point to bother further.  

Concerning the botnet mining of monero, you are free to set up your own botnet, no ?

Of course not.  In order to face the same problems, they would have to have similar investment, adoption and so on.   Most alt coins are technically superior to bitcoin and would only run into the same problems at even higher levels.  Take litecoin for instance.  Litecoin has more room on the chain than bitcoin.  DASH too.  They are also "hard block chain limit" coins, but both of them can at least accommodate 4 times bitcoin's max volume.  Before they run into the same problems, they have to have 4 times more capital/adoption.... Then, they are as strong as bitcoin at that point.

Then there are other coins like monero, that have flexible block sizes, and will never hit a hard wall.

But in the end, all block chain based chains will run into problems of scale, because it is a technology that doesn't scale well.

That said, if we have many *different* chains, they can all carry part of the volume of course. 

The proofs are in the OP I linked to.  If an article published by you in 2012 is written with a pdf processor that only existed in 2014, and if that article (the "white paper") that you SIGNED in 2012 contains links to a discussion thread started in 2013, then you are Dr Who, and you are in possession of a time-travelling Tardis.

My idea is that nothing will change.  Or that bitcoin will hard fork in two coins, but I don't think that will happen before it loses its first mover advantage.

Yes.  Because a signature of a transaction of valid pre-fork UTXO is valid in both chains.  It can even be picked up from one chain (not network) and incorporated in the other one by a miner wanting your fee on his branch.


There are two ways.  The first way is to make the signatures incompatible.  That would be a serious protocol change.  It would be the best solution, but it would be a deep modification of bitcoin's protocol, much more than simply the block size.  The simplest trick I can suggest is to flip somewhere a little-endian in a big-endian convention.  That would make the signatures, hashes, and everything different, avoid backwards compatibility and be a full, clean hard fork.  You make a signature according to one, or the other branch, and the signature is invalid (and cannot even be computed without your secret key) on the other chain.  Because, be careful.  If you only WANT to transact on one chain, it is important that not only your transaction is incompatible with the other chain protocol, but mostly, that it is cryptographically NOT POSSIBLE to have others make a transaction in your name on the other chain with the information you provide on the first.  So just superficially changing some aspects that don't change the cryptographic signature, won't do.  One can still DEDUCE your (unwanted) transaction on the other chain, and produce it - to get the fee.  So you need to modify the cryptographic signature for both.

But I think that BU will not dare to do that.  So we stay with a very messy, dangerous and backward compatible hard fork.  
Bitcoin not being able to make smart contracts, the ONLY way to separate transactions is to include some dust of a coinbase transaction with a coin mined AFTER the fork.  This UTXO not existing on the other chain, you also have a non-valid transaction on the other chain.
But it is difficult to get to these new coins.  Only exchanges can probably do so, but how are you going to get your pre-fork coins to the exchange ?  If exchanges are friendly, they let you have a "joint wallet", and they do the mixing and split for you.

We don't NEED it, but the dynamics of trustless consensus leading to immutability IMPOSES it.  That's my point.  This is nobody's fault.  It is the inherent dynamics that brings immutability, that will also keep this (unfortunate) parameter fixed.


The definition of a soft fork is: the new protocol makes blocks that are all accepted as valid by the old protocol, but not all blocks accepted by the old protocol, are accepted as valid by the new protocol.  In other words, a soft fork is an EXTRA CONDITION on the previously existing protocol.  Every 1 MB block is compatible with the previous protocol that allowed blocks up to 32 MB.  But, say, a 7 MB block, that was compatible with the old protocol, is not valid any more under the new protocol.

This great piece of inquiry is enough:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740112.0

Faking white papers, faking dates 2 years in advance, claiming a launch and dark market usage 2 years ago. 
Bytecoin was launched in april 2014, claiming it was around since 2012, to "explain" that 80% was already (pre)mined.

Come on.

That is another client.

You could just as well change the hash of the genesis block.  That's how you make a bitcoin clone.  You have another coin.