None ever has.  The only counter "arguments" fall in two classes:

- "he must be a FUDDER of the other camp", "he must have an agenda" or something similar
- he's wrong, because he's wrong.  (include in this, too: others already said he was wrong)

No technical taking apart of any aspect has ever been presented that wasn't obviously logically wrong in itself, like "look how well the UASF menace worked".

But, in its most succinct form, my argument is what Satoshi writes on page 3 of his paper, and comes down to what I already said:

"if consensus were to be established by node count (IP number count), it would be easily sybilled.  This is why node count shouldn't matter, and why consensus should only be based upon proof of work voting, not on number of nodes voting".   So whether Joe's node in his basement "votes against a block chain",  and whether even a large majority of online nodes vote against that block chain, shouldn't have any influence on the construction of that block chain (the consensus).  Bitcoin was designed that way.  And if that's true, Joe's node, nor his majority of peers, don't keep anything "in check", and certainly not the miners voting over the next consensus.

That's exactly what I'm saying too.  A million nodes don't do anything. Whether they are "UASF" nodes, Joe nodes, my sybils or miner sybils. They don't affect the functioning of the system.  They don't matter.  Happily so.  And bitcoin was designed with that in mind.  Thanks for understanding.  Finally.

More colloquially formulated: "one doesn't give a shit".

+2 of no arguments.

You see, ad hominem is all you can bring.  You don't enter into a well-argumented technical argument.  Nobody ever did.  As I said, no single logical counter argument.  Like usual.  This is what confirms my understanding of the system.  Nobody ever succeeded in giving a logically built counter proof to the evident thing I'm saying, because I'm just repeating a basic design aspect of bitcoin, as it was presented in the original paper.

There WERE some valid arguments that have some validity to have sufficient full nodes, and these are:
- some advantages for the user himself (but that doesn't have external influence of course)
- in case of a massive crack-down or other catastrophe, to have some guarantee that "the blockchain will survive the cataclysm" (higher probability that at least one copy will survive)
- some resilience of routing through P2P if ever there were a global attempt to isolate the mining industry (the multi-server) from the users (clients).

But the argument that "full nodes keep miners in check" is totally false, is never contradicted by any logical argument. It only attracts ad hominem, which is a proof of its solidity.

As to whether this is off topic in this thread, no it isn't.  If one doesn't even understand the fundamental data flow and structure of the "layer 1", it is somewhat ridiculous to go and talk about the network properties of layer 2.

The fundamental network structure of layer one is a client/multi-server structure.  Users vs a backbone of mining nodes.  It is because some people argued about the importance of full nodes, that the discussion came about.  It is hence essential to talk about this.  Because in as much as a true P2P system has scaling problems, a client/multi-server structure doesn't.  The client/multi-server structure of bitcoin scales perfectly. This is what Satoshi explains in his second e-mail on the nakamoto institute document server, and what happened in reality.  I'm only essentially explaining again what Satoshi said back then, and what is obviously observed in reality.

In fact, that should be good news.  The fact that this basic observation (that Satoshi saw this in 2008, and that the system indeed, evolved this way) is met with such vehement ad hominem resistance, is remarkable, and in need for an explanation of course. That explanation seems obvious to me: where Satoshi had in mind a "P2P network of mining nodes" that would count still hundreds or thousands of nodes, in reality, this reduced to something like 10 or the like.  In as much as you can still sell the religion of decentralization of a P2P network of hundreds or thousands of mining nodes, with a reduction to 10 or so, that becomes hard to sell.   So one was in need to save the religion with a narrative.  The point is however, that we also observe that this higher loss of decentralization doesn't have, after all, negative effects.  Even though the mining pools are only 10 or so, bitcoin continues to work correctly.  Satoshi's P2P network of decentralized mining nodes is much smaller than he thought, but it is still there.  So this client/multi-server system, even though it is much less decentralized than initially conceived, is working quite well and scales even more easily.  The only problem it faces, is that the belief of its value proposition was attached to "decentralization".  People are forgetting that decentralization was a TOOL to make the thing work.  It turns out to be much less decentralized than anticipated, but it turns out that visibly, this decentralization is not needed for it to function correctly.  However, now that one has sold bitcoin everywhere as being special because decentralization, and that decentralization is the fundamental belief tenet, it is quite annoying that it isn't there in reality.  Even though we see that it isn't needed to make the thing work.

So one has introduced a whole narrative about a false form of decentralization, which brings with it a lot of technical difficulties (and unnecessary solutions), just to keep up that narrative, because its belief system, and hence its "value" is thought to be linked to that belief.

And the kid that says that the Emperor has no clothes, gets an ad hominem reply.

It would be more constructive on your part to give arguments, not ad hominem, but I know you have no arguments.

What else does your "checking node" look like from the outside, else than a talking IP socket ?   How do you hope that that talking IP socket is going to influence the Byzantine agreement ?  How do you justify the claim that "a big majority of nodes imposes its will on miners/keeps miners in check" apart from counting them ?  And what exactly do you count, apart from IP numbers ?



If I present you two different block chains, which one are you going to accept ?  The one with most PoW, right ?  If that's not a vote, I don't know what it is.  If you have a given group of miners, divided in two groups, each making their own prong of the block chain, which one is going to win ?  That prong that accumulated the largest amount of hash rate (PoW), right ?  It is because most PoW voted for that prong, that it won.  That's the essential principle of Byzantine agreement with PoW: of all different proposals, the proposal where most PoW put its vote on, wins.

How, in case of consensus disagreement (two blocks propagated in parallel), consensus is reached again ?  By the PoW vote of the next block.  The following block is mined on top of one of both.  So the block that got voted for by the next miner, and puts its weight of PoW on top of it, wins.  The block that is not voted for, is orphaned, because its prong now has less PoW voting for it.  If ever some other miners vote for the second block, there's no tie break, until one of the two prongs clearly wins the PoW accumulated vote.  That chain that has most PoW voted for it, wins.  And the property of PoW is that you can only use it once, that's why it is a "voting token": an amount of waste that cannot be re-used.

I guess that if even that is not clear, there's no point to discuss this further.  

I hope you understand that "Byzantine agreement" is all there is to bitcoin, deep down.  Bitcoin is nothing else but the fact that there is an established, unique, unfalsifiable Byzantine agreement over what coins were rightfully created, and how they were transacted.  There's nothing else to it.

You are perfectly right that "all else" (that is to say, nothing of importance) is done by nodes.

Those deciding on that Byzantine agreement are hence bitcoin.

That said, there IS indeed an important point that will give true power to full mining nodes, and I neglected it to some extend: the need to keep up the belief in decentralization even when in reality it is gone.    The belief in decentralization (whether the system actually IS decentralized or not doesn't matter) is the driving force in people pumping money in this thing.  If you somehow could too obviously see that that belief is bogus (while it is, but as long as it makes for a story for the gullible, one can convince), you may kill the very religion that makes the stake holders rich.   So in a way, stake holders like miners need to PRETEND to be kept in check by nodes, so that the node owners continue to BELIEVE they have power and the belief in decentralization can be propagated.

This is a bit akin to wanting your kid to keep believing in Santa Claus because that's how you can make him behave the rest of the year.  You're obliged to play Santa Claus in order to maintain his belief, and you have to give him the presents he asked Santa, even though of course it seemed that you had the full power not to: if the belief in Santa by your kid is necessary, you have to act as if Santa were real.

In a way, then, it is true that nodes do keep miners in check, because miners have to act like they do so to keep the belief up, like you have to act like Santa exists to keep your kid believe in it.   This is a game-theoretical aspect I didn't realize.  

In as much as it is true, bitcoin is now entirely open to a Sybil attack by nodes.  Because miners have to pretend being kept in check by nodes, and nodes can easily be sybilled.  In as much as miners have to keep up the appearances, they will have to do what the sybil nodes tell them to do.  Like Dad has to do what Santa tells him - or blow the illusion apart and tell the kid that Santa doesn't exist.

(that's what I called earlier: social systems based upon lies and deceit - all social systems - eventually crumble when they hit the wall of inconsistency).

Nodes are "vote by IP number", which is what Satoshi wanted to nullify by vote by PoW.  Third page of his paper.  There's no link between the number of IP numbers you control and your market stake.  The last is not called "vote by full node" but proof of stake (which IS a sensible way to do things).  Read the bloody Satoshi paper !

So of course, given that this is so obviously evident that "vote by IP number" cannot be considered of any importance in a system that was from the start, designed to avoid it, there must be another reason.  People very knowledgeable of that system cannot ignore the basic design principles of that system, can they ?  So there must be a deceptive reason for telling this, given that it is objectively wrong.

What is amazing in this, however, is how elementary and fundamentally wrong it is.  It denies the very design of bitcoin !

You really want to know ?

This is my way to get my own ideas cleared up, confirmed, or contradicted.  I'm highly fascinated by crypto currencies, I want to understand it.  It is a mixture of deception, lies, beliefs, good intentions, underlying brilliant ideas, propaganda and some elements of truth - as such, it is a great experiment that explores the typical social structure of human (and all complex, living) societies.  Me being something like a mixture of an anarcho-Darwinist (if that word exists), a libertarian and also a scientist, I consider that all forms of official communication are tools of oppression and deceit, and that this leads to quite functional societies for a while, until they hit their wall of inconsistency.  I think that "good" and "evil" are inverted notions and the funny thing is that this is very very well experimented in the crypto world.  I consider hence that just "official" information, the thing you get answers about, concerning crypto is of course most probably totally deceptive as it should be.  That's why you cannot really learn from asking.  

Like in cryptography, and in science, you learn from finding out yourself.  But you cannot trust yourself either.  So the best way to see whether your ideas are right, is to explain them to others, while having no "official" position at all yourself (otherwise, your "priests" will "protect your holy word" and will destroy your ability to see you were wrong).  From the reactions, you can see by yourself how well your own ideas work out: are some criticisms justified, or is one essentially repeating some dogmatic mantra ?

This is exactly how science works.  You would think that scientists publish so that others learn about your work.  No.  You would think that scientists go to conferences to tell others about their work and learn about what others do.  No.  If you're at a conference as a speaker, usually you're NOT interested so much in what others say.  You're interested in how well you can answer their nasty questions after your talk.  You can see that: at a big conference, half of the audience is working on their laptop - usually on their own presentation.  They couldn't care much about what's being said.  But they play the game: "can I find something that makes the guy in front ridiculous ?".   And your stress when you give a talk, is: "is there a guy going to find a hole in my presentation, and make me look like a fool ?".  Scientific conferences are a horrible arena where scientists try to slaughter one another.   The same game is played in writing: it is called "peer review".   This is how you learn: from nasty questions at conferences, and from rejections and nasty comments when you submit your work to peer review.  Scientists are battle-hardened by exposing their ideas and see how people try to find LOGICAL holes in it.  That's how you find out elements of truth in a "trustless" way.  Science invented trustless consensus long before Satoshi did.  That "block chain" is running for some 400 years already.

So I explain my understanding here, and I see if people can find logical holes in it.


It is not because some well-worked out propaganda scheme worked, or corresponded to what it claimed to achieve, that there is a single ounce of truth in it of course.  UASF is akin to the joke of the guy in Alaska that claims that he has invented and used a spray against elephants that works when it freezes.  When people tell him that his thing is a joke, he claims that the fact that there are no elephants in Alaska proves how well his spray worked.

As a propaganda mechanism, of course, it can work, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If the crowd is gullible enough to believe that if something totally harmless could do something, that something totally harmless can be used to obtain things from the crowd.  That's like Dumbo needing its magical wand in order to be able to fly.  

I'm fascinated by the entire lack of logic in the mantra about non-mining full nodes.  Nobody has ever replied something LOGICAL against the quite obvious claim that it is a totally erroneous understanding of the system, which is why I'm now absolutely convinced that this view is correct.  Of course, I can perfectly understand the official need to maintain that mantra, but I'm still amazed at the gullible nature of people, not being able to see the obvious joke.  That said, given that 3/4 or so of world population subscribes to one or other religion, one shouldn't be too surprised at the lack of critical thinking ; but then, religions are instilled in most people when they were vulnerable, that is, when they were children.  Most people here were not instilled with this mantra when they were vulnerable, so it remains an amazing phenomenon.  Of course, at first I considered I could be wrong myself.  

But there has never been given a logical argument why Satoshi, me, Gavin and others never understood the decision mechanism in bitcoin.

The remarkable thing is that one doesn't want to reason: one wants to know "in what camp you are".  One doesn't want to reason about how Jezus could have walked on water: one simply wants to know of what church you are.


This kind of argument is like the guy in Alaska with his spray, and there are several aspects to this:

- miners are in a game-theoretical battle amongst themselves too.  They didn't trust one another.  They were forced in a Keynesian beauty contest themselves.
- miners are highly sensitive to the market.  After all, the market is what pays them.  If they took erroneously for granted that the number of nodes represented a "market poll" they may have, like Dumbo, thought that they were going against the market.
- miners may be gullible idiots themselves, falling for a game of fear.
- miners may be intelligent people that don't want to demonstrate their power (and hence the true centralization of bitcoin), because they may kill the illusion of the story of a decentralized system, which is the "value proposition" of bitcoin in a way.

So the observation that miners wanted to do something, and then backed off, is not a proof that this is because user nodes have power (unless, of course, by a self-fulfilling prophecy like Dumbo's wand, if miners are gullible, or miners are afraid to show their real power and kill the religion entirely).

And the PROOF of this is so very simple, that Satoshi explained it already in his paper. If it were true that node count could influence anything, the system is entirely open to sybil attacks.  That's so obviously evident, that anyone claiming anything on the basis of "node count" must have missed Satoshi's third page and must ignore why there is proof of work in the first place.  This is so ELEMENTARY that it is mind-boggling that knowledgeable people even dare to repeat this.  

The only external effect of "Joe running a node in his basement" is the behaviour of open sockets on an IP number.  If I can control a million IP numbers, I can, for all practical purposes, be 1 million full nodes.  I don't even have to copy the block chain and RUN for real, a full node behind all these IP.  I can do this with a single centrally controlled master, and sockets opened on these IP numbers.  I am not going to check a million times the very same block of course.  My 1 million IP numbers with open sockets will SWAMP all the honest Joes with their home node.  And this for the cost that is a tiny weeny bit (namely obtaining IP numbers and a very small server behind it) as compared to mining.  That's why Satoshi reverted to mining !  That's the FUNDAMENTAL IDEA behind bitcoin.  You want me to have "true home IP addresses", so IP numbers that are only really associated by home numbers (as if that were established in the node count).  Great, how much does a botnet cost as compared to installed mining hardware ?  As I said, the botnet doesn't need to do a lot of work: the IP sockets are very light, and simply MIRROR node communication.  They don't really do all the running of a true full node, but that cannot be seen from the outside.

Thinking that those providing real proof of work are at the mercy of "vote by IP number" is not understanding even the very fundamental working principle of bitcoin.  And "run your full node to keep the miners in check" is exactly that.


Yes, yes, vote by IP number wins from vote by proof of work.  That's the "basic design principle of bitcoin", sure.

Wow.  I guess this indicates the extremely low mathematical background that most of the players have, or assume of their peers - which in itself is an element which is difficult to take into account: how DUMB are the co-players ?

If you ask me to guess, in a set from 0 to 100, to be as close as possible to 2/3 of the average, and I consider that the others are *like me*, then the answer is evident, and everyone wins:  zero.  It is a Nash equilibrium in this game !

Why ?  Let us assume that the playing agents think that the answer should be X.  If the playing agents think that the other playing agents are as smart as he is, they will also find X on average.  But then the good answer is 2/3 X.  But there's no reason then, why intelligent agents should pick X: they want to win, and pick all of them 2/3 X.  But then the average is 2/3 X.  So the winning answer is (2/3)^2 X.

Now, you quickly understand why agents will go through that iteration N times, and will find (2/3)^N X.  In order to win, you should replace N by N+1.  But if you repeat that, you'll end up by reaching infinity.  And then you have 0.  And guess what ?  If all agents guess 0, then they all have won too, because 0 is also 2/3 of 0.

If the average, in this game, is 33, then this means that on average, people can only reason one single step and are not able to iterate recursively.  Indeed, you take the other people for total first-order dumb asses, you think they will say just anything, and their average is then 50.  In a perfectly dumb setting, the average would be 50, and the winning number would be 33.  Now, you think that most people have just a single brain cell, that can think this, that the others are complete dumb asses, and that they are way way smarter, so they think that people will say "50" and so they say 33.   If the average IS 33, that means that most people take their peers for total dumb-asses, but can think one step ahead.

I would have said 0.  But it seems that it is much more favourable to assume that most people think that others are complete morons ; or that most people think that most people think that others are complete morons.  

I can start to see why crypto-pyramid games have such a success !

This.  It is just a speculative bubble popping, like they always pop. You can look for specific reasons, like you can look for the specific movement that started an avalanche.  But the reason for the avalanche was that there was a whole lot of unstable snow on a slope, just waiting to come down.

If people get into an asset because they see the price rise, and their only reason to join, is to buy low and sell high to a greater fool, it booms, and then busts, because at a certain point, there are not enough greater fools any more.  When people that bought in quite high, hoping for MUCH higher, suddenly start making losses, they can do two things:
1) sell quickly and accept their losses, which puts extra downwards pressure on the very high price
2) hold, just to see their paper losses increase and increase

Depending on the bag holder's attitude, the crash is quick and brutal, or comes in slices and can take a long time.  Last time, it took 1.5 years to go down from $1200 end of 2013, all the way down to $200 in February 2015. 

There is of course, at the same time, a slight upward pressure from "buy-the-dip".  However, if you bought the dip, and it goes lower, you're burned too.  So after a few burns, you refrain from "buying the dip", and you wait for the bottom.  But you can be wrong.  Sometimes, what looks like a bottom, is only a temporary resistance.  A bull trap gives hope of "MOOON" again.  But alas, from the moment it rises, bag holders, that have been sitting out their paper losses, see their paper losses diminish somewhat, and jump on the occasion to get out, eat their losses and run far away from this circus, crashing this bull trap again.   

Essentially, all burned greater fools of the previous ATH need to sell, or to be ready to sit this out until $0.  Only then, the bubble is over and we can start the next one.

Mmm.  I think you've been buying the domain "bitcoinrevocation.com" 

It is true that the thing I argue for, is not the classical PoS.  Classical PoS that wants to play the same game as PoW has indeed a problem of principle, because both approaches are wanting to adhere to a property that is, when you think about it, quite crazy.  It is what I said before:

"suppose that an entity E is presented with a set of potential consensus propositions X (containing the "true one" A) and entity F is presented
with another set of potential consensus propositions Y (also containing A), how to make sure that both will elect A, assuming E and F don't trust anyone, and have no previous information (weren't online) ?"

In absolute terms, PoW can provide a solution, by spending more than half of planet earth's energy and hardware on the true consensus A.  Any set can only contain consensus documents with less PoW, so "maximum PoW" will elect this A for sure.    But this is madness.

If we define PoS in a very similar manner as PoW, that is, a block chain with rewards by stakers, to stakers in a similar way that PoW works, then there's no way to satisfy the above condition.  Indeed, if A was the "true" chain, there can be an infinite amount amount of different chains that can be just as well chosen.  Any selection procedure that picks "the best" chain out of a set, can be tricked in picking a chain that is different if you are allowed to propose chains.   I can make easily hundreds of chains that will all be preferred over the "true" chain, no matter what is the deterministic selection function.  This is the main reason why people say that PoS is not trustless secure.

Indeed, I can always make a new genesis block, giving me the first coins.  As I'm the only staker at that point, I can make the second block, and win coins.  I can now transact from myself to myself.  I'm still the only staker, but it looks like there's two of us.  And so on.  I can make an entirely new chain from scratch, and I'm the full owner of all coins. I could decide to transact to "real users" on the original chain. Depending on the deterministic selection function, I can steer that in such a way, that my chain will be preferable over the the original one, and that I and all my addresses, remain nevertheless stakers for all blocks according to the rules at hand.  As such, I can give myself a big chunk of coins, while leaving some of them to others.  If ever I publish this entire chain, all nodes should switch to it, and forget the original true chain.

However, we saw that PoW is only solving the issue when we accept madness: wasting more than half of humanity's energy on it.

So something has to give in.  Some trust must be allowed for.  If we accept trust in the genesis block, and a given client software, it becomes harder... but now, the founder of the chain has all the power to do what I proposed and/or if this genesis block is checked for in the software, the software signer can do so.  These guys can screw the entire system if they want to, but at least, ONLY they can do so.

But PoS as presented is not at the end of its problems.  Former owners of stake, that have transacted their coins later, and are, on the true chain, not stake holders, were potential stake holders in the past.  There are ways for them to construct a new chain from a point after they became legitimate owners, as stake holders, and so they can, as stake holders, remove the transaction where they weren't stake holder any more.  Of course, any sensible pseudo-random stake selector will try to avoid to allow same stakers to stake successively.  But as our former stake holder can put in new transactions of his former holdings (to himself), and is also winning new blocks, and can include or exclude as many other transactions as he wants to, he can tweek the stakeholder choice function (a pseudo random generator) in such a way, that nevertheless, he's allowed to make every successive block with all the stuff he has.  This requires some "proof of work", but you can easily see that if, say, in total, there are 1 billion potential stakers in the system, of which he holds, say, 100 addresses, you only need on average to try 10 million different configurations (order, date, whatever the pseudo random generator is sensitive to as source of entropy) to always have it fall on one of YOUR addresses "by coincidence".  So that's the PoW equivalent of a meagre "10 million hashes" or so, each time to "be lucky" and be allowed to be the next preferred staker.

This is why many people consider the bare bones PoS system to be profoundly insecure.  But that is because this kind of PoS imitates bitcoin's PoW, that mixes up coin creation, consensus voting online, and "consensus proof after-the-fact".   Pure PoS that way is simply not secure, and this is why people say that it is IN GENERAL not secure.

The first thing to remove, is coin creation.  As PoS doesn't require a huge effort, there's no reason to be rewarded a fortune over it.  In fact, this rewarding can actually induce you to try to attack the chain, just to be able to stake and reap in the rewards.  

The second problem, which is common with PoW, is the silliness of rewinding far back in time.  Uncertainty over reached consensus comes from splits of the group, so that two or more parts independently, and honestly, each come to a different consensus in their own partition of the group.  Whenever the group joins, one can only see that others came visibly according to the rules, to a different chain of consensus decisions.

If one defines an absolute consensus rule that has no notion of time, then this problem seems "easy": of different proposals, find the "best" one.  As I said before, no matter what PoS system, it is always possible to invent a "better" chain than a given one.  In as much as in PoW, the decision is easy (even though terrible for the part that truly lost) and the attack expensive, in PoS, pretending to be a "lost piece of network" and winning over everyone is easy.  

But this is in practice not thinkable.  The rule that one should accept a risk of attack and rewind over a long period, because of the theoretical possibility of a long net split, is stupid.  The net doesn't split in separate big parts for days of weeks - most probably not even  for tens of minutes, apart maybe catastrophic events.  As such, there is no reason to allow a "rewind" for a long period.  In reality, a network consensus can be reached in real time in a period of several minutes.  It is totally ridiculous to accept attacks that "redo past consensus" for long periods, when it is obvious to all parties online present, that this winding back is an attack.   This is also why many clients have "fixed points" in their code.  But this is nothing else but a very slow PoS kind of consensus, by a centralized signature, that of the dev.  
This is even something that makes PoW also much, much more secure.  Indeed, "overtaking the chain" in PoW usually takes time, unless one has an IMMENSE amount of extra PoW hardware over the rest of the network.  If there are "PoS" signatures of consensus that don't allow one to wind back, these attacks fail.  But then, instead of having such a clumsy and centralized way of "certifying past consensus by dev signature" in the code, it is much smarter to make this certification the real consensus fixing rule.  If, after a reasonable time lapse by which all network propagation times are largely taken into account, a network consensus is reached, it would be pure madness for an online entity to accept to wind back the consensus it witnessed, for many epochs, by some or other silly rule, in the same way that the devs will not re-consider their "fixed points in the past" in the code.

So my idea is that when one drops the unnecessary and illusionary requirements, and one looks at the practical mechanism of consensus, one can arrive at a much, much lighter and in for all practical purposes even more secure way to do things, avoiding the huge disadvantages of many current systems.

Sorry for having been thick 

Here we go again.  And, if they do so reject them, they stop.  And nobody cares.  Because the 10 miner pools are connected by their own backbone network, and don't need your or anybody else's node to receive a block from one of their 9 competitors.  A full node is just a proxy, nothing more.   If your full node is switched off, nothing special happens to bitcoin.  The only nodes that need to remain up and running, are the light wallet servers (which can be run by mining pools who have their own distributed, although centralized) net of nodes of course, and the nodes of exchanges.   Whether there are still 10 000 other Joe's that run nodes or not, doesn't make the slightest difference.  If they switch off their nodes, nothing dramatic will happen, and the miner pools, nor the exchanges, will notice.

If miners decide, from block N onward, to have a change in the protocol your node doesn't like, then your node will reject block N+1.  It will wait for a "good" block N+1.  But no miner will make it.  Miners are OK with their block N+1.  So they make a block N+2 (which you also reject of course: it is not OK, and it is not on top of the last good one, N).  And they'll make N+3.  And N+4.  And N+7000.  And your node is still waiting for a good block "N+1" that is never broadcast.  One year later, while miners are working on N+52000, you're still waiting for the good N+1.  As do all your peers that ran the same software.  Nobody made an N+1-bis block for them.  So they wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Newcomers will not connect to you: your node is not up to date.   They will connect to a node that has N+52000.  And they will find it on the network of the miners.

It is a different story if miners disagree of course.  Miners can split.  Some miners may want to make N+1-bis.  And then there's a fork. This is how miners keep other miners in check.  But if miners keep agreeing amongst themselves, your node will never see a good block again.  So it doesn't keep anyone in check.  It simply stops, and waits and waits...

However, the mining pools are REALLY kept in check by the market: they have made huge investments in hardware that can only serve one purpose, they are rewarded in coins, and they don't want these coins to be worth nothing.  This is why they keep following the rules.  To please the market. Not because poor Joe has a node running, that will switch off from the moment that it doesn't like the sole block chain out there.

Exchanges have a lot of power too, because these are the gateways for miners to cash in on their coins.  Exchanges are the keepers of the market.  If exchanges decide to de-list a coin, their miners are in deep trouble.  So yes, miners will respect the nodes of exchanges.  

However, if ever exchanges and mining pools agree upon a protocol change, nobody will give a shit that 10 000 Joes find their nodes switching off because they don't find the "right" block chain any more, and come to a grinding halt.

This thing is not decentralized, but it works, because of profit motives.   The only reason why they talk Joes into running nodes in their basement, is because bitcoin needs a story, and decentralization sounds like a good selling argument.  Moreover, bitcoin being a kind of religion, running a node in your basement must be like turning those Tibetan pray mills.  But bitcoin is not decentralized at all.   The PoW oligarchy could technically impose any protocol change with a collusion of 3 or 4.  The only reason they don't, is the market (with exchanges being a big other oligarchy to take into account).


As I said, that's technically absolutely not true.  And if you're a small fish, not an exchange, nobody cares about your "checking miners".  Your node simply stops, and gets removed from the network.

TL;DR: Satoshi expressly designed bitcoin NOT to be sensitive to "vote by IP number" and hence NOT to take into account even a massive Sybil attack from non-mining nodes ; it is why he introduced PoW in the first place.  So non-mining nodes have no influence on the functioning of bitcoin.  Not as attackers, and not as "guardians".  

Amen to that.  I've put in bold what I'm exactly thinking too.

Not this year, I think.  I think, around 2021.

You're right, concerning gold.  Gold is THE speculative asset over history.  However, exactly its very, very long history has more or less "frozen in" the speculative value of gold.

There are two sources of value: utility and belief.  One usually takes it that "rational" value is only related to utility.  That's called the "fundamental".  Utility has to do with human joy, or absence of human suffering, in the largest sense possible.  If some good or service G provides joy, or helps avoiding suffering of another human being (or something that that human being likes, like his cat), it has economic utility: that human, in need of G, is, in his turn, ready to provide utility (joy) to another human being, if that's the only way to obtain good or service G.  The negociation/power game/.... of all humans concerning the goods and services that bring them utility vs. what they need to sacrifice for it, sets the market price, normally, of things.   The market price is nothing else but the relative ratio's of G one can obtain for other good or service H.

Humans can make plans, and some plan to make a lot of G, in order to sell it to those desiring G, and to obtain a lot of H in place.  The execution of those plans also create needs in an indirect way: production capital.  Production capital derives its value from the amount of G you can make with it, even though nobody is directly in need of that production capital.  As such, the utility of G is what is the "fundamental" of the derived utility of that production capital.  You can now promise production capital, promise plans and all that, and package this in investment assets.  Investment assets are, in principle, things that have to do with ownership and/or exploitation of future or present plans and production capital.  Of course, if it concerns plans for future production of future goods and services, it is hard to predict the future.  So people can have different value estimations of the real fundamental utility of plans and production capital.  This is the stock market.  Even though uncertainties concerning the future are what drives trading in the stock market, normally, the game is to try to be as close as possible to the "true fundamental future value" of stock.  This is "rational speculation".

Of course, at a certain point, things can become very opaque, and there can be assets of which the future estimation of actual fundamentals is extremely uncertain.  Then it is a gamble.  You can't really know.  But even in that case, that gamble is still based upon a rational expectation of, ultimately, some fundamental utility (human joy).

But there's an entirely different way in which assets can acquire value: recursive belief !  These assets can be totally devoid of any relationship to anything of economic utility, it can be that people there is a lock-in of a common belief that others will believe that this asset has value ; if it does, then it HAS value.  The ONLY reason to acquire this asset, is to be able to sell it to someone else.  At no point, we think that it is remotely related to anything of utility. We only think that the belief in its value will not wane.  

There can be two types: one type is "same fool".  You know perfectly well that the asset is worthless in itself, but you firmly believe that others believe, and will continue to believe, in the SAME value (more or less) than you are going to spend it on.  Gold is of this type.  Famous old paintings are of this type.   It is a "store of value".  This is a belief that can last for a very, very long time.

The other type is "greater fool".  A pyramid game.  You know that the asset is worthless, but you expect to be amongst the early birds in a mode phenomenon, where you'll find a greater fool to sell your asset for MUCH MORE than you paid for it.  In order to stimulate this even more, there needs to be a megalomaniac story that it is ACTUALLY a very useful asset of some future important capital with strong fundamentals, but that only visionaries can see it.  Say, the "monetary system of the future".  This kind of stuff always ends in a bang.

Now, go and think: most people buying bitcoin, do they do this because there are obvious fundamentals (which are not a megalomaniac story that won't work if you think about it 5 minutes) ; do you think that most people do it to put their savings safe, without an expectation of a lot of return, just a safety against loss ; or do you think that most people bought it to sell it to much higher bidders ?  What is YOUR motivation ?

Well, then you know in what category we're playing...

Ah, I was confused by the two different references to "you".  "you" providing a service (I thought, in the LN network as a node) with "your" revocation keys only.

You meant: Jack providing a service to Joe, who can give his revocation key to Jack while Joe is on a holiday, and Jack watching whether Joe's partner is, in the mean time, not scamming him, and if ever he does, he sends a punishment transaction with the revocation key in the name of Joe.

Yes, I see now finally what you mean.  A kind of online watchdog that sends punishments only, to keep your channels open and guard them while you're on a holiday.

As you say yourself, I guess the big danger is that Jack can now run with the punishment coins.  If ever he knows who was Joe's partner, they could even make a deal !  Joe's partner sends a stale settlement, Jack sends the punishment transaction with the revocation key to a new address, and Jack and Joe's partner share Joe's part of the channel.  Hmm.  I think I'm going to set up such a service   

Bitcoin is not a currency, but a greater-fool speculative token, that is, something that you buy at price X (you fool!) with as a goal to sell it for something like 20 X to a greater fool.  It was designed that way, even though people called it a "currency".  Like with socialism, greater fool games stop when you run out of greater fools.

But greater fools come in armies.  A small set of geeks got in in 2011, financing the gains of the very very small fools that had been heating their computers in 2010.  Then it crashed a factor of 10.  In 2013, a much bigger army of greater fools financed the gains of the hodlers of 2011 and 2012.  Then it crashed a factor of 6.  And last year, the "Koreans and Japanese" financed the gains of the hodlers of 2013-2016.  How low will it crash ?  A factor of 5 ?  A factor of 10 ?   We'll see.
The question is: is there, in this world, still a bigger army of greater fools ?  There's still the whole speculative finance market to take, but beware, these are professionals!   Bitcoin has only reached a fraction of the world population.  There's maybe still room for a last big final army of greater fools, but it will take some years.

As to "bitcoin is not the absolute monopoly", this is true, but the market is REMARKABLY synchronized.  It is as if the whole of crypto was essentially a single token.  Bitcoin has remained around 33-35% of market cap during all this falling of 60% or more, give or take a few percent.  So there seems to be one single "crypto" thing out there for greater fools.

We will see.  I table on at least 3-4 years of bear market.  It might be the final one.   But I table on a very, very big bang in something like 2021 or so.
If we go below the previous ATH, that is, $1200, I think it is done.  If we remain above it by a factor of 2, I guess we're in for a long, cold winter, and in a few years, another mega bubble.  Probably the last one.  There won't be greater fools left after they've paid for the whole shebang.

In fact, in 2015 I came to that kind of number too.  You find it by having a rough estimation of the actual volume of bitcoin used to buy "goods and services" and assume a velocity similar to fiat, like the dollar.   Using Fisher's formula, you can then estimate the "currency value" of the monetary asset at hand. I looked at volumes like bitpay, added a good factor to it (dark markets etc...) and I also arrived in the few $ to a few tens of $.
I have the impression that real currency usage of bitcoin hasn't increased (maybe rather decreased since).

This is why, in 2015, I waited in vain for a bottom of a few $10.  But it never came, because bitcoin is not a currency.  That's a parasitic side effect of it.  Bitcoin is pure speculation.