you mean obviously couldnt have "gigabyte blocks" and "segwit".. but then there was never actually a proposal for "gigabyte blocks" that was project fear designed by core..
however the network could handle segwitx2, which was a compromise that the community could agree on and did agree on in 2015, before alot of core members backtracked out of due to the roadmap.

thus the AVOIDANCE of using consensus and instead the employment of BLOQ to make an altcoin to throw all the x2 offtrack.

i think you need to look up what the consensus mechanism for bitcoins evolution actually is.. because it certainly is not altcoin creation.

consensus is if you can imagine a country.. about finding an agreement to change rules the community can agree on.(democracy) . yet what actual events happaned was more like deportation of those opposing a monarchy, and if you do your research it was not the opposition that decided to split. it was the monachys cousin(bloq) that arranged the deportation.

even the king of the monarchy realised that his opposition would refuse voluntary deportation

hense needing to use BLOQ to implement the deportation and avoid a democratic agreement, thus a monarchy wins by default by suddenly going from 30% at the poles to 95%


i dont need your signature to send you funds onchain. onchain is a PUSH method.. or more like a throw money at you method
LN is not a PUSH. its a handshake method.
time it seems that many need to do their research and realise just how much bitcoin has changed and will change that has gone against the ethos of bitcoin.
but hey i bet many wont because all they care about is FIAT profits.

so lets word it this way. if bitcoin loses tomuch of its original purpose(take scarcity: the idea of adding millisats which then expands sharable units to then make sharing units of bitcoin less scarce)
no one will want it, because it becomes no better than fiat, no more scarce than fiat

anyway. it seems many people still think core should remain king. and thus decentralisation is dead, but long live distribution

theres already a group of core devotees wanting to call LN.... wait for it....  bitcoin 'cache' to disrupt bitcoin cash
afterall opening a channel is like putting funds into a vault(cache)..

i think it was kimdotcom that first 'coined'(pun) the phrase because he wanted to use LN for his megaupload, and the core fanboys took it a stage further

in my view.. there is no wife..
many girlfriends all agreeing to share the same bed and compromising on what direction is best for all those on the bed.
just remember. when you decide to marry, you are no longer free and on the open market. your then tied to  someone and start needing their permission if changes in the place you live need to be made

take LN.. its not permissionless.. its multisig. you need a counterparty to sign and agree to a payment arrangement.

i stand on neither side of any camp. which was the funny part of many years.. those standing on cores side kept trying to pigeon hole me into "the other camp" .. to me. there should be no camps.. if anything needs to be decided consensus will decide..
but consensus was not used.

as for your first statement.
"By that logic the original Bitcoin ceased to exist as soon as the first people other than Satoshi started contributing."

no. because they were contributing.
funny part is the github now moderated by a single team is not the same codebase as satoshi's sourgeforge codebase. yep satoshi never used github.. but even though satoshi used sourceforge and others used github they all agreed and found compromises to work on the SAME RULES and evolve equally at the same time on the same network.

no altcoin was created because of indicision between the contributors back in satoshi's day. even when there were many codebase sources on many different platforms and many different languages.

but now that many deem only bitcoin core is the 'trusted' source of network protocol rule selection... thats all changed
as soon as the band camp aruments of 'if its not core its not bitcoin' started.. thats when decentralisation died

evolution. is different than man made mutation

for instance instead of going for the ban hammer/IP banning of nodes and altcoin creation.. if instead they actually used consensus properly where by the community agreed to a single set of rules.. yes a true compromise. of say 2mb base plus segwit.. and then all DIFFERENT teams stayed on the same network but then used the same rules.. then that is evolution..

but using BLOQ to misdirect peoples choices into not being a consensus but a split, under the pretense of bloq pretending to be on unlimited side while actually being paid by the same investors as blockstream.. was just politics of ruining bitcoins 2009-2014 ethos

bitcoin core is not the same bitcoin as 2009-2014. its not evolution. its man made and controlled mutation

now then. if a future team was to develop and go against the grain of blockstreams roadmap.. and instead of using consensus to find a compromise.. instead forced another altcoin creation event. then that is just advertising those that defend core are centralists who dont care about bitcoins ethos and only care about btc token profit (two different things)

though bcash is not used by merchants that say "we accept bitcoin"

bitcoin core cannot honestly say that they are the original either..
line for line of code bitcoin core is far from the original 2009-2014 codebase
and bitcoin cash does have more similarity

but from the point of view of "the original".. neither are.. the fork split and 2 different codebases of rules were activated
though bcash has more lines similar to the original 2009-2014 codebase.. NEITHER are the original

this is not about defending either. but to be realistic and to make people realise that bitcoin core. although 'distributed' is not decentralised
especially when pretty much every post above would secretly agree that if the code is not released by "team core"(centralised) then its not bitcoin

by even having the mindset that anything not core should be treated as an attack and as a future altcoin if it goes against the blockstream roadmap is an admission that bitcoin core is not decentralised.

again yes distributed.. but no to decentralised. there is a difference

you can argue all you like about how core is king and better and the monarchy of bitcoin.. but take 2 steps outside your own mindsets and realise what your actuall saying by suggesting that if any other team thats not involved with contributing to cores bips/roadmap/github should be treated as an attack

be honeet with yourself before defending core.
both core and bcash are not the original. the fork ensured that. which is the whole point of what a fork is.. NEW direction

while group A squabble and group B squabble. neither groups realised what was happening. they were both handing the reigns over to a centralised party because of "trust" "faith" "control"... all the things the bitcoin ethos did not need

the whole bandcamp argument was just smoke and mirrors to actually give a group control.
the whole treat unlimited as the enemy and then use the BScartels subsiduary Bloq to push unlimited out was under subdefuge of saying they are helping the community decide x1 or x2 was all part of the game

 what should have happened was the community refused to enter the camp debate and instead relied on network consensus to unite teams to a compromise. not avoid consensus to hand over control to a single team via altcoin creating

phillip nunn is not a crypto expert.

he has no clue about the difference between rsa and ecdsa
he has some financial knowledge, but basically he really loves pump and dumps. in the UK he is known to scam people out of their retirement funds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42776709

if you cut away december/january. and call december/january the freak of nature.. and ignore it statistically... then you will see that bitcoin is still in good position
so stop thinking tha decembers volcano eruption is the norm to then treat this months shallower movement as the emotional disaster
instead treat december as the motional shocking event. and this month as the normal daily life..


saying things like "when will it return to $20k" is the foolish mindset that bitcoin has always been at $20k. thus feeding into the foolish emotion that todays prices is the abyss that has never been seen fo 9 years.

th reality is that prices were way less than today just 4 month ago
thats right.. we have only been ABOVE $6k for 4 months of the 9 years bitcoin existed. and that period of being above $6k is happening right now, this last 4 months.. no other time before it have we been at over $6k
so chill out

if anything. we know the price can go to $20k because it has. dont treat the $20k as a historic trend. but a future possibility.  

i have spoken to many retailers and i found something astonishing.

although the tx fee was the main thing that some merchants stopped accepting or refused to accept btc. they have said although the fee's have dropped due to the mixers intentential spam attack has subsided, merchants are not going to reimplement btc because they were promised in 2015 that LN was the solution and would be available in a relaiable fully functional customer friendly release ASAP

but now the devs are saying that its going to be a couple years until there is a consumer friendly functional version without all the limitations and broken promises.

so dont expact a fast onslaught of merchant adoption again any time soon. they are all waiting for a proven customer friendly version
(and no even if devs are playing on mainnet with their code, does not mean its even in beta stage as there are still many things the devs have not even got around to testing)

firstly the +10,963btc in the second from top.. is a majority of exchange wallets
in short 10k btc went INTO exchanges

meaning that those that had funds in their own privkeys. now put their funds into exchanges 'trust' / vaults to sell.

secondly for every buyer there is a seller..
so if theres a group of people with a combined 10,000 btc. once they sell it. there will be a new group of people with a combined 10,000

the table does not reveal if its whales.
infact it could be 1 whale depositing 10k btc.. or
100 sharks depositing 100btc.. or
10,000 minnows depositing 1btc

also it doesnt reveal who is or has bought that 10,000 btc.. again it might be 10,000 minnows depositing 1btc  to sell.. but then in a few days one fiat whale BUYING all 10,000 in one gulp. or staggered in smaller bites over many days.. in short it doesnt reveal who, how big or how soon thos funds will turn into filled orders

the table only shows that 10k extra went into known large wallet addresses.
 

lesson 1. dont risk more then you can lose/live without for a long period of time EG imagine you spend $25 a week on fast food.. ($100 a month, $1200 a year)
many people wont care to lose $1200 because in reality that amount just ends up as 52 bowel movements and flushed down the toilet.

so lets use that $1200 figure as a yearly investment
if the price of BTC appears at a healthy all time LOW, its a good time to buy.. NEVER buy when its near a all time HIGH.

next dont have it in mind that you will day trade, and then hold out to only sell when you see 50%+ profit
instead notice the charts and you will see there are healthier less risky 1%(~$80) swings happning more frequently/hourly
take this week.. prices move from $6900-$7700(10%) in just a few hours

so lets say you have $1200 dont throw it all into one order.. risk only 10% per order. (emphasis: dont throw all $1200 into one order)
even if you put in $120 at $6900 and sell for $7600. thats $12 profit
if you done that 3 times a day,($36).. 7 days a week ($252) within 5 weeks you will have $1200 EXTRA, just by playing with one allotment of $120

why is this important.
imagine you bought $120 of bitcoin at $6900.. but then the price went down.. well you have 9 other 'allotments' of $120 to buy at the next cheapest price.
so you leave the first allotment to sell at $7600 and then use another allotment at the new low. then set that at a 10% profit point

or be even more risk adverse
buy $12-$120 of btc and sell even faster at 1-5% variance and repeat more often .. yes it soon all adds up, and your taking less risk because you then have more spare allotments if the price goes down, and your not waiting as long for the price to go up, because your selling at a less higher %

again dont think a one time trade for huge profit. think little and often and it addsl up over the year. the total will end up being more than $2400 returns without having to wait for one order to go to $10k-$14k/btc

EG
$12 with a 1% variance per hour = 24%($2.88 a day from one $12 allotment) or $28.80 profit a day if you have play with $120.. or $288 if you are using all 10 allotments of $120

which over a year.. well
only using 1% of your funds ($12) to make 1% rinse anad repeat profits multiple times a day($2.88) =$1055 profit next year.. from just 1% of funds at 1% per trade.. while not risking all of the rest of your funds

.. there is alot of psychology involved in it. and also controlling your greed by NOT thinking you can make even more buy increasing either how much you put per order line or increase the % before your willing to sell.

many traders if their entire investment is $1200 would never make an order of 0.17btc, and its why you see alot of order lines of 0.0017 or at most 0.017btc (as an example of todays prices and the investment example amount) because many of them small order lines are all one person that split his stash up

in short
1. dont throw $1200 into an order and wait a year hoping to turn $1200 into $2400 by waiting for todays $7k/btc to rise to $14k/btc
2. dont throw $1200 into an order and wait for weeks/months for 50% by waiting for $10k/btc
3. buy $120 of btc and sell for 10% high a couple times a day/week, knowing if the price drops you still have spare cash to buy the new discounts
or if you want to really day trade(multi trade per day)
4. only using 1% of your funds ($12) to make 1% profits rinse and repeat multiple times a day

last lesson. dont forget the trade fee.. if a buy fee is 0.25% and a sell fee is 0.25%.. and you want to do many 1% profit trades(day trading) set your sell price as 1.515% above the price you bought at (as a rough guide) to cover fee costs

edit: while writing this the price moved more than 1% in 10 minutes

firstly ebliever. you read too much reddit propaganda. and try pushing anything thats not blockstream roadmap as being fud made by 2 guys.
you need to start having some original thoughts of your own instead of just repeating the same reddit buzzwords

maybe its worth you taking off the blockstream roadmap defense cap and actually learn LN. learn the limitations.
the link you put PRETENDS that LN can remain open indefinetly and limitlessly

EG
"Together, these mean that in theory, a user can create a fixed number of channels that will last her a lifetime. She can receive her salary or payments through these channels, and send out payments back again through them, ad infinitum, without ever needing to close channels or create new ones."

but i dare you to put that into practice, run some scenarios

imagine people opened channels with $60 deposits(UTXO)

[A:60 <-> B:60]       [B:60 <-> C:60]       [C:60 <-> D:60]
firstly
it cost A 1 onchain tx to open channel AB
it cost B 2 onchain tx to open channel AB and BC
it cost C 2 onchain tx to open channel BC and CD
it cost D 1 onchain tx to open channel CD

secondly
A needed $60 funds
B needed $120 funds to be part of the routing
C needed $120 funds to be part of the routing
D needed $60 funds

now imagine A wanted to pay D $60
remember A's funds do not leave [A<->B] what happens is
A pays B in [A<->B]..  
then B uses his separate [B<->C] to pay C..
remember C's funds do not leave [B<->C] what happens is
C uses his separate [C<->D] to pay D..

result is:
[A:0 <-> B:120]       [B:0 <-> C:120]       [C:0 <-> D:120]
now
B cannot buy anything from C or D
C cannot buy anything from D

all because A raided B,C
now B C have to wait and hope for a reason to get funds back for some reason.
yep B and C have not even had chance to use their own $60 for their own spending. and its already gone due to routing. all they have left is to wait and hope or to close channels (costing them more onchain fees. to then use even further onchain fee's to open new channels to redistribute the $120 back into the 2 channels of $60.. and just hope that A wont screw them over again

remember routes only work if there is sufficient funds available by those involved in the hops
remember the funds dont actually leave the channels when the chanels are open

i do find it funny how the utopian dream of infinite, limitless usage is talking about paying salaries. can you imagine the headache of trying to give someone $1200+ when most hops are only $60
meaning for someone to get paid $1200+ they would need to have 20 channels open and raid ALL 20 channels of their $60. meaning 20 other people are out of their spending amounts

and before you even say that people will put in $1k+ into each channel.. they wont. most people will only put in an amount that they think they need to spend to cover their daily spend habits for the things they buy ATLEAST once a day (like coffee/sandwiches) because most people wont open a channel just for their monthly salary just to close the channel, to then distrubute it.

no one woulld put their life savings into LN as their are many risks

atleast run scenarios instead of copying and pasting other peoples utopian empty promises

seems markets broke passed the mining cost resistance point and now testing the early adopter recent adopter resistance points.
miners started levelling off their costs to the ~$8k cost on the 2nd of march..
https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate?timespan=1year

as for traders.. well now they are just really reying to push to find the absolute low resistance point of a bear, before flipping to a bull again

public/private are not the right words

btc is a PERSONAL possession asset currency
bitcoin coin is a OPEN currency network

the whole private/public is more about what status a business/organisation has, if its owned by a government or not

so its better to talk about the funds as personal possession vs shared ownership vs controlled/licenced
and the network is either open(anyone can be part of) vs closed(ned to be employed or have special privelidge to be involved)

two key things

A. dont look at 3-hour charts. only look at monthly charts
B. if you see a price drop do not let the words "what day to sell" enter your mind. only think "discount buying day"

things this reveals

1. banks internal network is not secure.
2. ATM's actually have code to 'spit' out cash without a card. and also spit out more than a few hundred at a time
3. bank accounts can 'add balance' without the account checking where the funds originated

i think banks have admitted too much about how in-secure they are.

banks should take a lesson from blockchain tech about point 3. blockchain cant just add balance without showing source of funds

will people stop zooming in to the 3 hour chart and reacting at every 5%-10% movement by commenting on this forum.

unless there is a 40%+ movement in price. stop getting emotional
5-10% is natural and normal movements that happen daily. so chill out

just because a business utilises blockchain tech. doesnt mean that standard jobs no longer exist within a business

you dont actually need to know the science of blockchain if your not interested in being a dev

most employers offering non-dev jobs want
customer service people who handle user accounts.. not private keys..
want graphics designers
want office/mail room assistants
even lunchroom/dining/catering assistants for their staff
electricians, maintenance, janiters, even child care

most of the time they give training on using their systems and for customer service roles, usually have a script of commonly asked customer requests and answers.

after all do you think something like coinbase would trust their employee's with customers private keys. or want their front line staff to have deep access of their systems. so relax you dont need high end qualifications or knowledge just tho get a low end job. but if your hoping to get a high end job then ofcourse learn as much as you can to show your worthy of the bigger money

the pools get and will continue to get enough funds. they dont need more. and we should not ruin bitcoin security by by-passing the requirement of signatures to move funds so that pools can just grab funds from people based purely on a coins age.

also. this lame mindset of grabbing hoarders funds is not going to magically make the community better off.. instead its just going to make the main earners richer.

if you disagree, then if you have owned a car for 5 years. give your car away for free right now
if you disagree, then if you have owned a anything for 5 years. give it away for free right now

yep. if you own a house. just put a sign outside your door that says "first person to knock on door gets this house"
no rebuttles, no excuses why you wont do it.. if you really want to redistribute someones hoard.. start by getting rid of your own hoard..

screw it, you said "or any other time interval" so lets not make it 5 years. lets go with 1 year.. and then anyone can turn p and take your stuff

imagine. a normal drivers insurance cost.. now imagine the higher insurance cost for a taxi/uber driver.. especially if you seen how crazy some taxi drivers drive..
so imagine a insurance policy can be cheaper if their is evidence that instead of peddle to the metal overtakeing at risk to other drivers. that the other drivers are given a few pennies to have their vehicle slow down by a few mph and be a little closer to the pavement to give more room to overtake safely. eg oncoming vehicles also get a few pennies too
thus avoiding accidents and avoiding insurance premium increases. EG people earn a few pennies for giving way at a junction, thus avoiding cars getting side swiped at junctions
some companies already give 'new' drivers a little black box that records the drivers speed and gives them discounts for not going to fast. its much the same. showing evidence that other vehicles give way and the taxi/uber overtakes/manuavers junctions safely can reduce their insurance
...would you pay an extra 10cents if it meant not having a heart attack because the driver compensated 10 cars for 1cent each for letting it pass safely, avoiding heart attack car races some taxi drivers used to do


yep you get the idea exactly



i could have gone one step further where the 'acedemic credit' is the bases of money creation in a future utopia where the acedemic credits have financial value that can be traded for school resources. EG (credits get unlocked/spendable if the highschool graduate goes onto university/employment). because knowing a high school student with XXX credits has more chance of getting a degree and thus the university will 'create' more credits for the university to spend if the now university student graduates. thus it makes the education system work better at trying to get students into further education/employment rather than just doing tests for the sake of it