Wrong, and wrong

1.BitPay are too difficult to use, they use their own weird version of an unsupported payment mechanism. They'll "win" nothing except bad publicity, and the Great Lakes Science Center will end up cancelling the service because noone will use it

2. Most businesses are quitting BitPay, because of point 1

Years ago, this was true. Since the internet, alot more resources are available that would allow those who can teach themselves to do so. 1-to-1 tuition is still expensive, of course, but self directed learning is not.



I disagree.

In schools, children are forced to let teachers resolve all but the smallest conflicts. That doesn't help kids learn how to solve their own conflicts, as they don't become familiar with the full costs of over-escalating arguments. As a result, too many kids grow into immature adults that are too willing to start anti-social conflicts with others, in the expectation that their future experiences will be the same as those in the past (i.e. teacher will come and deal with it). So, the school system does not socialize such characters, it does the opposite.

And the glaring irony of the situation is: it's "live & let live" liberalism that gave homosexuals and religious people the freedom to live their lives without others telling them they're doing something wrong, and yet both religious people and now homosexuals too that call for authoritarian treatment of people whose lives they disapprove of!



Right, that's what attracted me to libertarianism, the "3rd choice" part. I was painfully aware that I agreed with some "left" principles, but also with some "right" principles. Anything authoritarian I disliked, and anything liberal I agreed with. But you can't be both left and right? If you're consistently liberal, you can

 

Well, they do. And guess what! They divided themselves into 2 camps: conservative libertarians, and left-libertarians!!! I'm not making this up

Are the "libertarian media" trying to take over libertarianism, to twist it's meaning? Seems like that to me, but of course, that makes me crazzzzzy for saying it, no doubt

I see, "nothing new under the sun"

How many people would refuse even an informal survey?

For instance, when enthusiastic strangers occasionally talk to me about crypto (and I can count the number of times it happens on 1 hand), I tend to feign disinterest, despite them being desperate to give me a crypto-baptism. If they talk too much about it to complete strangers, they're the wrong person to exchange any personal interests with, no matter the subject.

How many people like me d'ya think sign up for consumer polling organisations? How many people like me d'ya think are bitcoiners?

Right, in those days Alan Reiner/etotheipi was pretty active on bitcoin dev mailing lists and places like that, and I'm pretty sure he discussed the ideas with everyone. Was it actually Alan's idea to begin with? I can't remember that exactly.

Alan definitely just went ahead and implemented his design, whereas other wallets took a long time to follow.

*sigh*

First, Bitcoin users were all drug dealers and terrorists, now apparently we're all neo-nazis (who deal drugs and traffic slaves)


Get used to this everyone, stories subtly implying that freedom can only be terrible and that being a corporate serf is the best will continue forever.

There's a piece missing from Bakkt's model: what's their strategy for handling a run on BTC holdings? It's very tempting to assume that their deliberation on the subject concluded that it can only happen once, and to plan for that contingency appropriately. It's the same model as gold certificates after all; do or say anything and everything to play for as much time as you can get, then make sure you are well positioned when you default (hell, not even acknowledging the default is an option, "pivot to quantum currency" maybe? )

Another perspective would be this: if you had a choice between trading with Bakkt's model (multiple claims to the same underlying asset, but higher potential reward for higher potential risk), or using atomic swaps between cryptocurrencies, which would you choose? Both would potentially be very lucrative. And the answer has alot to do with guessing how long Bakkt might remain BTC-solvent.

Armory's wallet design was based on BIP32 in an early stage of it's evolution, I believe. But BIP32 changed after the fact, and then took a while to get adopted by wallet software.

re: Antpool and non-segwit blocks, it doesn't bother me.

• As time goes on, legacy transactions will be paying to increasing numbers of segwit addresses. The amount of legacy transactions will gradually shrink, so this is a short term phenomenon
• Antpool are keeping the average block size smaller with this practice, which has advantages too
• If pools were to consistently favor segwit over legacy, the opportunity to move BTC from legacy to segwit is reduced. Having a conservative small blocker mining pool like Antpool around ensures the freedom to switch to segwit

Let's not forget another aspect to this also; miners are beginning to designate bech32 native segwit addresses for their block reward payouts. This will create a big incentive to continue to use bech32 for any recipients of those coins, as there can be no privacy loss when using it.

I'm inclined to agree. But I would say that the top 3-5 are less susceptible to pump & dumps, precisely because they have better liquidity than any of those below them. Overall though, with so many inexperienced people playing these markets, there is a hell of a wide range in prices that whales can exploit. More people learning how to play the game well only seems to attract more inexperienced players, so the rollercoaster price dynamics will be around for a while. And I worry when I hear people say "this market's manipulated", as all that does is embolden people who want to control cryptocurrencies (as if that doesn't constitute manipulation either)

Even though segwit in blocks once hit 50%, the whole of the Bitcoin supply is mostly stored in the old address types (about 98-99% in fact). It will take time for everyone to switch over. I still haven't switched my BTC to segwit addresses yet (some, but not all), despite the wallet software I use supporting it.

Hitting 50% usage per block, then falling back to 40% is just natural variation in people using segwit. With fees still low, it makes most sense right now to move BTC to segwit addresses (which uses a non segwit transaction), and there's evidence that people are doing just that (levels of segwit address usage have been slowly rising towards 2% of total BTC)

What's the evidence that the top 20 coins are easy to manipulate? It's mostly just people saying that.

If anything, what this article says (and what you say above) adds to the case that options for manipulating the biggest cryptocurrencies and more limited than they are in the established finacial markets. Which isn't me saying cryptos aren't manipulated at all, just that there's need for some perspective on manipulation: it's harder to manipulate asset prices in markets that can be settled instantly in a practical way, as with bitcoin and other cryptocoins.

An even more targeted model might be to make the first 5-25 minutes free, then make people pay per minute for the rest. That reflects the way we judge these things naturally; give it a while to develop, then make a decision to stick or ditch. Could be very sneakily applied to pornography, for instance

There's literally no point to this. What are they using blockchain tech for?

Looks like techno-babble PR nonsense, because there is zero content explaining how this airline is expecting to benefit

Getting that answer ("average temperature is rising") depends on how you measure it. Not all methodologies of measuring the average temperature indicate a significant rise.

You're talking about an exceptionally complicated topic, but you want to make it seem simple. Weather patterns change for literally thousands of reasons, not just your personal favourite reason.

It never really existed IMO.

Liberalism is a threat to the authority of the ruling class, who don't feel secure or deserving of their position because the majority of them know they obtained it somewhat fraudulently to begin with. The natural response to this is exactly what my OP is all about: nod your head to liberalism, but never do something so stupid as to actually liberalize anything. You've got a status to protect, and your other high status friends will bring you down trying to protect their own.



It's mostly a problem of liberal ideas not being well exposed in the popular media. All you ever hear are appeals to authoritarianism of different stripes, as a reaction to the authoritarianism of various 'baddies'. This is incredibly convenient to the people in society that make up the top of the hierarchy, as they're the ones making the rules to "protect us from the baddies", and they have a strong tendency to protect themselves in their status with the rules they make to achieve that. And they're smart enough to do this in the most subtle way possible.

It's not the absolute limit unless Bitcoin survives until it's reached. The absolute maximum right now is the total mined less the total lost/burned.

I don't regularly check this topic out, but there certainly are dissenting views from credible scientists. If you're interested, you should search for them. It's actually a benefit to understand the sceptical point of view if you want to argue against it.

If you're not interested in valid antithetical-arguments, but express strong belief in the corresponding thesis, don't expect anyone to take you seriously if you make strong statements on a subject you're not interseted in learning about.



What difference does it make if NASA has a position? Aren't you interested in what's factual? Science is supposed to be about using rational methodology and measurements to prove facts, not who says what.



Yeah that's pretty much correct. You can include me: climate change is real, and CO² is a greenhouse gas, there is no doubt

What percentage of climate scientists think climate change is happening so slowly that there is no real discernible problem? And does it even matter how low or high the percentages are, when scientific facts are what actually matter?

No that's not how it works in the code.

The code handles this in one line. It defines the block reward as 50 BTC, then halves that for each whole number for which the current block height is divisible by 210,000. There is no pool.

Current block height is ~ 548,000. If you divide that by 210,000 you get  ~ 2.6 , and if you take that as a whole number, it's 2. Divide 50 BTC by 2, and you have 12.5 BTC, which is the current block reward.