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XMR can only go down. Forever.
The bears get to play until 0.9 is released. After that all bets are off. If one expects 0.9 to never get released then yes XMR will continue to go down forever. |
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And today we are left at a point where the bandwidth consumption of an ordinary Bitcoin node just barely fits within the 350GB/mo transfer cap of a high end, "best available in most of the US" broadband service. We cannot know to what degree the load increase was causative, but none of the metrics had positive outcomes; and this is a reason to proceed only with the greatest care and consideration. Especially against a backdrop where Bitcoin's fundamental utility as a money are being attacked by efforts to regulate people's ability to transact and to blacklist coins; efforts that critically depend on the existence of centralized choke-points which scale beyond the system's scalability necessarily creates.
The problem isn't the block data, which at the present 1 MB limit uses less than 3 percent of a 350 MB/month ISP cap. The problem is that Bitcoin Core does not provide the instrumentation and tools to allow node operators to manage their bandwidth utilization. The developers could fix this situation if they were so inclined. I interpret this situation to a question of priorities and/or lack of network performance expertise on the part of Bitcoin Core developers. This is a valid point and for once in this debate can lead to a constructive suggestion. If the choice is between contributing 350GB for a full node and closing the port effectively contributing nothing and one has a 300 GB ISP cap then closing the port becomes the only option, even though the node could very easily contribute say 150 GB. There is a very disturbing all or nothing approach to this debate that leads to a choice between two bad options at both extremes. |
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Monero because:
1) Adaptive blocksize limits together with a tail emission solves Bitcoin's 1 MB maximum blocksize / cannot scale issue.
2) Ring signatures solve Bitcoin's fungibility (coin taint) and privacy issues.
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hmm ...
My computer from 2008 has actually no problem at all keeping up with not just the Bitcoin blockchain but also the Namecoin and Monero blockchains all at the same time. Until August of this year I ran a Bitcoin node on a laptop from 2002 with a Pentium M processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 120 MB SSD. The laptop was so old that it was cheaper to replace the old PATA HDD when it failed with a PATA SSD. The laptop also has a floppy disk drive and a Windows 2000 logo.
Lack of education, indifference are part of the issue. The biggest problem is the replacement of desktop and laptop computers with mobile devices that while perfectly capable are crippled with DRM and propriety operating systems. A iPad in a good example of the latter, and can be far more expensive than a 3 year old laptop with a 1 TB SSD drive.
How much bandwidth is Core using per month? What are your maximum download/upload speeds from your ISP (and how much does it cost)? How many peers are you connected to on a regular basis? Do you have any special settings in your config file (fee rules or connection limits)? I have dedicated hardware for my node (building computers is a hobby of mine, so I probably go overboard there), yet sharing Bitcoin data with my peers is where I am having issues. I've had to limit the number of peers that my node will allow or my internet service slows to a crawl for other purposes. I pay quite a bit for top tier (enthusiast) internet speeds from a major ISP. Or, are you simply saying that your old computer can sync the chain at which point you shut it down? I have 50 mbps down 10 mbps up with no cap residential ADSL. Running all three blockchains as a full node with ports open is about 400 GB per month. Edit: I added the no cap option for an extra 15 CAD a month, The plan comes with 400 GB of data per month. Cost including a home POTS phone line is 132.50 CAD a month including all taxes. |
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The problem is that Bitcoin does not work just fine. Both sides of the blocksize debate will agree to at least that.
Edit: All of the innovations above depend on being able to confirm transactions on the main chain.
If you want your tx to confirm, simply pay a competitive fee. Or lowball and use RBF if you fail. That's precisely how it's supposed to work. The MPEX and #B-A types (among many others) don't agree there is a problem with Bitcoin, and I concur. ~Anyone can (in ~complete security) use Bitcoin to send ~any amount of money ~anywhere in the world, ~instantly and for ~free. To me, that seems like a fucking miracle on the order of life, consciousness, wheels, fire, and Teflon. Where's the issue? In exactly what way does Bitcoin not work just fine? The problem is that with 3 tx per second ~ 260,000 tx a day not even the wealthiest 0.004% of the world's population would be able to use Bitcoin just once a day. Edit: Furthermore this is hard coded into the protocol so no matter by how much the price of bandwith, CPU time, storage etc falls, this limit cannot be changed. Bitcoin ignores technological change, simply because it is hard coded into the Bitcoin protocol to ignore technological change. |
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Wrong, wrong and more wrong.
The 1MB limit was put in place in 2010, not 2008. Actual bitcoin network upload speed (the real bottleneck) measurements show upload bandwidth for nodes at edge of network is growing at closer to 17-25%. (This disregards data caps for total bandwidth available also).
Bitcoin also had a 250kb limit at the time, implemented as a soft-rule by miners rather than a hard protocol rule. If you take the current system with a 2010 client (and much less a circa 2010 computer) it will likely not keep up with the network (if you try, let me know in a month when you complete the initial block download...   ). The limits then were already set in a forward looking manner and we have been scrambling to keep up with the network as it's grown into them. get real. you can buy a 1TB harddrive for $50 today and store BIP101-enabled blockchain onto it for years to come. then pay $50 more for a 4TB drive to handle a few more years of growth. or are you still using the same computer you owned in 1999 with its 1.6GHz singlecore, 512MB ram, and 60GB HDD (all cutting edge)?
This is ignorant of the total costs of operating a reliable production grade system in a commercial environment... including the need to be nowhere near capacity at any time even when run on underspeced/io-starved/misconfigured mystery-meat hosting in order to make sure that nothing especially clever or difficult is required so that you can employ commonly available ham-sandwiches as devops. This may not be as true for businesses that really consider Bitcoin to be central to their business-- but, as a bitcoin-seriousness proxy, how many non-mining Bitcoin companies do you know of that mine and participate in the network consensus? (I know of only one, ahem; and it seems like in not to long the same may apply for running full nodes)... Ultimately if the system is only usable in a way that preserves its political and security properties by those who are those who are the "most serious" (and politically motivated) then it will not be a success as a decentralized system. It's not good enough to be accessible to some, to achieve decentralization it has to be broadly accessible. There are many factors standing in the way of that; including indifference and a lack of education but resource impacts absolutely play a part of it. You don't see people widely outsourcing their DHCP daemons, though they're incidental to their business. Why isn't a Bitcoin node as invisible as a DHCP server? Go show me a DHCP server that uses tens of gigs of storage, hundreds of gigs of transfer, gigabytes of ram, significant amounts of CPU, etc. and all these demands constantly growing. One of the reasons I think that XT has been as much of a flop as it has, so quickly, is that many of the people persuaded by the eloquent rants of misleading simplicity went and actually ran a Bitcoin node; and encountered the same costs and annoyances that users have been complaining about heavily since the soft limits were cranked... and lost their conviction. I know this is true for some, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a more general pattern.(I also suspect that many, though probably not all, the people complaining about DOS attacks weren't just seeing the ordinary load that every other node sees; including the "attack like" traffic from people trying to trace transaction origins-- even I thought someone was attacking Core nodes and changed to identify as XT and saw no difference in traffic)... plus the whole, "unlimited blocks are great, so long as someone else is paying the cost", which doesn't actually work... hmm ... My computer from 2008 has actually no problem at all keeping up with not just the Bitcoin blockchain but also the Namecoin and Monero blockchains all at the same time. Until August of this year I ran a Bitcoin node on a laptop from 2002 with a Pentium M processor, 1 GB of RAM and a 120 MB SSD. The laptop was so old that it was cheaper to replace the old PATA HDD when it failed with a PATA SSD. The laptop also has a floppy disk drive and a Windows 2000 logo. Lack of education, indifference are part of the issue. The biggest problem is the replacement of desktop and laptop computers with mobile devices that while perfectly capable are crippled with DRM and propriety operating systems. A iPad in a good example of the latter, and can be far more expensive than a 3 year old laptop with a 1 TB SSD drive. |
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... Going along with your anthropomorphism, I don't see Bitcoin "ignoring" technological change. Quite the opposite, in fact. I see Bitcoin as the cutting edge of technology, at the forefront of software's attempt to eat the world. It's got the relay network for now, and IBLT on the horizon. It's got RBF, so fee markets can mature in the (inevitable) context of tx backpressure. It's got CLTV, so sidechains and payment channels may enable Visa-scale coffee purchases. Confidential TX are coming too. I don't agree with writing predictive/speculative Bitcoin obituaries, regardless of how excited I am about a certain 2nd gen coin (cough, XMR) and a particular 3rd gen smart-chain (cough, ETH). Those consequent efforts benefited from the hindsight provided by their 2nd/3rd mover status, and they will continue to learn from Bitcoin's trailblazing efforts if we don't fuck it up.They will benefit less than otherwise possible if we meddle with the Bitcoin experiment by prematurely altering control variables like 1MB max_blocksize, 10 minute blocktime_target, SHA2 PoW, and the 21e6 coin max_coins limit. “Normal people ... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.” -Scott Adams Let's also remember technological change doesn't happen in a vacuum and is subject to the Lindy effect, so Bitcoin's critical socioeconomic mass may be as important to the future as the QWERTY keyboard's was (Dvorak and Colemac notwithstanding). So long as Bitcoin works just fine, there will be no popular appetite for changing its basic parameters simply for the sake of appeasing a noisy minority. The problem is that Bitcoin does not work just fine. Both sides of the blocksize debate will agree to at least that. Edit: All of the innovations above depend on being able to confirm transactions on the main chain. |
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Yes; however I usually sync it and I keep several up to date copies on various computers.
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One possibility is to create confusion and dissent from within the Bitcoin community. This is a talk where this kind of action against a FLOSS project is attributed to the NSA in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jQoAYRKqhg |
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I do not accpet the premise the Bitcoin was not designed to pay for a cup of coffee since it is equivalent to saying that credit cards were not designed, back in 1949, to pay for a cup of coffee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_InternationalThe argument that it is prohibitively expensive to maintain multiple copies of the ledger (keeping track of the cups of coffee) on computers and devices owned by private indivduals today is far less compelling that making the same argument back in 1949 for a single ledger (keeping track of the cups of coffee) held by a bank using the data processing technology of the time. As for BIP101 moving the blocksize from 1 MB to 8 GB over 20 years, this is actually equivalent to moving from the punched card (80 bytes) in 1965 to a computer with 640 KB of RAM in 1985 and saying that the latter should be enough for anyone. Diner's Club was created not for schmucks buying cups of coffee, but rather for rich (Masonic?) lawyers/financiers eating fancy meals in exclusive cosmopolitan restaurants ("33 West 33rd Street, 33 steps from the Empire State Building"). Even today, your neighborhood micro-roast provider may charge 50 cents extra to account for the friction of a small debit/credit payment. So please stop with the bogus proxy allusion to Moore's Law Observation. Satoshi said Bitcoin may be used for micropayments "eventually." That eventuality comes after Bitcoin breaks the bankster monopoly and restores sanity+honesty to the financial/political realms. Until then, it is an engineering requirement Bitcoin be above the law. You'll get your coffee payments eventually (when it is safe for full nodes to be relegated to data centers), but Sorry, Not Tonight Dear. You are correct. Diner's Club was initially conceived as a way for very wealthy individuals to pay for high margin goods and services from high end merchants. The merchant is charged a high fee upwards of 5% in order to cover the cost of maintaining the ledger with the technology of the time. The merchant gladly pays the fee because the card company facilitated a sale with a very high profit margin. The same model was also used by American Express when they started in 1958. Now Diner's Club had 0.2% of the credit card market, and 0% of the debit card market, while American Express had 8.2% of the credit card market, and 0% of the debit card market in 2013. http://www.nilsonreport.com/publication_special_feature_article.php. The winner in 2013 was VISA 48.5% of the credit card market, and 70.5% of the debit card market. What happened is that the Bank networks (VISA, MasterCard) starting in the late 1960's and 1970 with credit cards and in the 1990's and 2000's with debit cards saw the benefit of the plunging cost of keeping the ledger including even tracking the "schmucks buying cups of coffee" due first to the mainframe computer, then the PC, Internet, mobile devices etc and adapted. At the same time Diner's Club and to a large extent American Express stuck with their business models that were based on the costs in the 1950s of keeping the ledger using punched cards and tabulating machines. This is the key lesson from the history of credit and later debit cards for crypto currency. Bitcoin is making the very same mistake in crypto currency that Diner's Club has made over the past 60 years with credit cards namely: Ignoring technological change. It is destined to a similar fate if it survives. Litecoin is also doing a similar thing following in the paths of American Express. There is another alt-coin that has a good chance of becoming the VISA of crypto currency because it has both adaptive blocksize limits and a tail emission. This will allow it to: Adapt to technological change. My prediction is crypto currency will be used for micro payments furthermore many copies of the blockchain will be stored on computers and devices (including mobile) under the control of individuals. These computers and devices will also have Terrabytes and Petabytes or more of storage (no need for data centres). The real question is which blockchain will be stored on these computers and devices. Unfortunately here my prediction is that it will not be Bitcoin unless some real drastic change does occur. We can discuss which alt coin in the alt coin section.  Edit: As for the banks I suspect they will still be around. There is no need for them to be put out of business for the above to happen, because technology will democratize the "keeping of the ledger" even way more than today. This is the lesson of history. |
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One of the negative impacts of the 1 MB limit has been to encourage vertical intergration of ASIC production and mining in China. A higher limit would have encouraged the export oF ASIC hardware from China since China itself is an edge case for Internet bandwith and latency because of the great firewall of China.
Did I read that wrong  How does that follow again? It happens that China is the cheapest place to make Bitcoin ASICs but also has a lousy Internet connection to the rest of the world. If one increases the blocksize this puts miners in China at a disadvantage. It leads to decentralization because there is now a strong incentive to sell and export the ASIC hardware rather than for the manufacturer to just operate the ASIC hardware themselves creating vertical intergration. |
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I am using the 50% figure for bandwidth from the reference I provided. I do not know where the lower 25% figure comes from. With respect to the great firewall of China affecting Internet latency, this is no secret to anyone who has actually researched Bitcoin mining. As to my Internet connection I actually live in a smaller centre, in a larger centre in the same province I could get 1 Gbit/s download and upload http://urbanfibre.ca/ rather than the 50 Mbit/s I get for approximately the same price. |
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...
Wrong, wrong and more wrong.
The 1MB limit was put in place in 2010, not 2008. Actual bitcoin network upload speed (the real bottleneck) measurements show upload bandwidth for nodes at edge of network is growing at closer to 17-25%. (This disregards data caps for total bandwidth available also).
So you have made a case for 8 MB rather than 1 MB. As for data caps I currently have a residential Internet connection with no data cap. I got this a little over a year ago when it was first offered. When Bitcoin was first released it had an effective 32 MB blocksize limit. On a related note. One of the negative impacts of the 1 MB limit has been to encourage vertical intergration of ASIC production and mining in China. A higher limit would have encouraged the export oF ASIC hardware from China since China itself is an edge case for Internet bandwith and latency because of the great firewall of China. There are valid arguments against BIP 101 but decentralization is not one of them. |
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The OP makes some excellent points.
Why does it matter that Bitcoin can't do micro transactions when there are 1000's of alt coins that can? If the market demands high price Bitcoin the network backing it must be strong enough to handle it while micro -transactions can be done on less robust and secure alt-coin networks. The cost of providing security must be compensated for the system to remain viable. If Bitcoin errs on the side of "high price" transction when the market demands low price/micro ones then another coin will fill that void. I would think since Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin as open source he must have expected, perhaps wanted, alt coins to follow along behind Bitcoin and to be ready to fill any voids or to pick up the flag if Bitcoin falls.
I do agree the void will be picked up by one or more alt-coins. Many alt-coins have blindly followed Bitcoin with fixed blocksize limits; however there are a handful that have adaptive blocksize limits, and an even smaller subset of the latter that also have a tail emission. The only long term solution to this issue I have seen requires both. As for how the market will value both Bitcoin and the one or more alt-coins that address this issue only time will tell. |
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...
As per Satoshi's "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System": P2P is a 'prerequisite' for the system to 'enable' electronic cash.
It does not work the other way around.
But these spammers dont even care about decentralization, so boring.
The decentralization argument is bogus since it ignores Nielsen's law, Moore's law etc. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/ 1MB in 2008 when Bitcoin was first announced is actually equivalent to 17 MB today. (50% compounded per year for 7 years). |
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I do not accpet the premise the Bitcoin was not designed to pay for a cup of coffee since it is equivalent to saying that credit cards were not designed, back in 1949, to pay for a cup of coffee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diners_Club_InternationalThe argument that it is prohibitively expensive to maintain multiple copies of the ledger (keeping track of the cups of coffee) on computers and devices owned by private indivduals today is far less compelling that making the same argument back in 1949 for a single ledger (keeping track of the cups of coffee) held by a bank using the data processing technology of the time. As for BIP101 moving the blocksize from 1 MB to 8 GB over 20 years, this is actually equivalent to moving from the punched card (80 bytes) in 1965 to a computer with 640 KB of RAM in 1985 and saying that the latter should be enough for anyone. |
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bitcoin =/= bitstamp
They are not the only ones that announced that they will follow BIP101. What exactly does it mean when Bitstamp says they will 'follow' BIP101? I mean, the BIP only addresses the generation of blocks, right? And Bitstamp (as far as I know) does not generate any blocks. I get the expression of support, but I don't see how they affect the adoption (or not) of BIP101 at all. It means if there is a fork say BIP101 gets over 75% they will follow the BIP101 chain rather than the Core chain. Old (pre fork coins) will of course work on both chains. Edit: So would all the other corporate BIP101 supporters. So if you wanted to pay with Bitcoin at a BitPay or Coinbase merchant you would have to use BIP101 coins or old pre fork coins but not the post fork Core coins. |
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