the person calling it an outright altcoin is saying it i presume. for the same reason core devotee's are calling anything not core an altcoin.
even when other implementations have been running on bitcoins mainnet for atleast a year.

the base of segwits code (the concept) did not begin in 2009 from satoshi's vision. segwit began separately as an altcoin as part of blockstreams elements and then tweaked into being bitcoin compatible version

it changes alot of things 'under the hood'
how data is stored on peoples computers, how its relayed between nodes, even how the transactions and blocks are formed.
though its bitcoin compatible. its alot different to the original vision.

many say if certain things change in bitcoin. like if stupidly its suggested to change bitcoins coin cap and difficulty retarget patterns to emulate say litecoin. then bitcoin is no longer bitcoin.. even if the 7 year historic data still continues growing and all nodes are connected to that same chain of data that goes back to satoshis genesis block.

so although its not an "altcoin" in the traditional sense (separate network) the direction its taking us in is far different than imagined in say 2009-2014

(thats about as unbiased as i can word it)

you do know "second layer implementations" are paypal2.0.. right

LN is going to be pushing us away from permissionless peer-to-peer and into permissioned hubs with fee's, penalties, settlement delays, and chargebacks

permissioned: LN= dual signed multisig ...buzzword: 'bidirectional channels' managed by hubs
fee's: open channel onchain fee, LN swap fee, multihop fee, hub management fee, close channel onchain fee
penalties: not signing in acceptable time fee, denying payment fee
settlement delays: coin maturity after confirmation onchain (CLTV)
chargeback: output revoke codes (CSV)

atleast learn why CSV and CLTV are going to be used.
do you really want to close a channel (like closing a paypal account) and see the funds arrive (onchain confirm). but then it not showing as available balance for days/weeks (CLTV maturity lock similar principles to blockreward coinbase maturity lock)
where even after the close session is confirmed onchain. that unavailable balance (maturity lock) allows time for the paypal(LN HUB) to chargeback(invoke their CSV code) and make the funds theirs

oh i must add LN are conceiving to add 'demurrage' concepts to LN  (minus interest rates)

we are still early.

but it appears due to dominance from bankers in the more popular implementation, would be like saying:
"we are using netscape and netscape is the only future the internet has"

internet analogy for future bitcoin mindset
lets not blindly follow netscape and keep the internet open and flowing, as we all know what happened to netscape

lets not blindly follow one implementation and keep it diverse and expanding,

it has taken the blockstream paid devs 2 years to not even yet activate a one time boost to bitcoins capacity,
during this delaying period. they have ramped up bitcoins fee's and done other things to cause barrier of entry.
 even when the community demand a scaled approach that naturally grows due to network demand not dev control. without fee barriers of use that are expensive to third world countries.

but in just 6 months them same devs have been doing alot more for the bankers at hyperledger

you may think they wont ruin bitcoin because they are invested in it. but that is not the case their funding is FIAT
dont underestimate the hyperledgers influence to expand while they try to halt and delay bitcoin growth/usability.

this segwit boost is a "token gesture" to kep pushing the rug from under us.
the next step is pushing us away from permissionless peer-to-peer and into permissioned hubs with fee's, penalties, settlement delays, and chargebacks


permissioned: LN= dual signed multisig ...buzzword: 'bidirectional channels' managed by hubs
fee's: open channel onchain fee, LN swap fee, multihop fee, hub management fee, close channel onchain fee
penalties: not signing in acceptable time, denying payment
settlement delays: coin maturity after confirmation onchain (CLTV)
chargeback: output revoke codes (CSV)


the devs:


who they really work for and got millions of dollars investment from.. (hyperledger)

ok for everyone else

lets say for laymans quick understanding..

that for using bitcoin addresses there's technical steps involved like
A->B->C->D

a user puts in A, it goes through a few processes and get D
knowing achow is going to be pedantic i will inform him i know there are more than 2 processes in the middle.. i just dont mention them all as they have not changed.

for mr pedantics sake i will name ABCD
private->ecdsa->ripemd160->public

again its not the full list of the mechanism im just keeping it simple.

i was trying to concentrate on an easy ACD where me and him both know C has changed.. mr pedantic twists it to talk about B.. where the stuff im on about segwits new HD wallet seeds (before he got pedantic)
and how they are different than the older traditional stuff.

so lets get back to simple stuff
A-C-D
private->ripemd160->public
changes to
A-X-D
private->sha256->public

again for mr pedantics sake i know there are other bits between A and D but thats not the point and thats not related to whats changing in segwit.. so not worth mentioning and getting to complicated over.

if you want techno jargon and white papers, go to the development category.
this category is for general discussion that tries to avoid techno-jargon to help the community understand things in simple terms

edit to avoid new post and told hold for prosperity

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/10/27/release-0.13.1/
^ oh look its bitcoin cores own website ^

edit 2:
ohhh i see now.. he is thinking ECDSA keypairs.. and not the extended more secure BITCOIN KEYPAIRS that have extra things involved... no wonder!!

im ending mr pedantic's offtopic misdirecting charades .. before he makes everyone fall asleep and begin to Schnorr hint hint

---

back on topic.

or just keep an open mind and ask for both, settles the arguments.

LOL
nah what you see is most blockstream hero's try to poke the bear and start debates to side step the solution purely to make people forget there was one.

such as

you are pedantic,,

to use segwit keypairs.. you have to use different keypair creation mechanism,
then say the traditional (private key that begins with a 5 and then used ripemd160 in the middle which later results in an address ending 1)
(yes it also has other bits in the middle im just not trying to overcomplicate things by mentioning everything)

the bit inbetween changing the private to public is changing.. for segwit

segwits new high deterministic seeded keys will have the new key making mechanism where sha256 is used instead of ripemd160

in short. a segwit keypair is different to a traditional keypair.

people using traditional keypairs will need to change and fund segwit keypairs


0.12.x has bips in it that are NEEDED to have even made segwit possible.
yes 0.12.x was not a final version of segwit ready code.. but it was a stepping stone to get segwit ready.

so include the 0.12.x's into the count.. and you get 4 downloads..
you are being pedantic, megatime

can i give you a hint...
you are being pedantic, at first i thought you were just a snob because i was not buzzwording everything to a satisfactory level of techno-jargon that makes no sense to common man.

i then thought you would realise i am trying to speak layman on purpose. not due to not knowing the techno buzzwords. but because common man prefers to read common words. and what i say is just as valuable to others as it is to just you. so its best to keep things laymen for the communities sake.

but now im thinking you are the one that doesnt understand the concepts, and are just trying to defend blockstream but tweaking things and make arguments.

goodluck in life..

---

separate subject
oh and ages back i seen you and lauda take a fee from a guy who had issues with bitcoin core. i see you didnt fix his issue and instead took his funds got him to reset his wallet and give him back the funds minus a fee you shared with lauda..

called a workaround. not a bug fix

did you do the right thing and report the bug to bitcoin-core. or did you just take the fee and walk away
i hope you reported it. otherwise that makes you useless aswell as pendantic

LOL i see your: offtopic ECDSA mention
and i hint you: ripemd160->SHA256

im guessing your forgetting all the 0.12's and the 0.13's

ill leave you to argue with yourself .. just read what you wrote..
how can something be compatible, but not compatible but is compatible but isnt.. all in 2 sentances

and how many versions of segnet testnet did they go through.. 1,2,3,4 oh wait.
your talking about the first segnet back when it was the elements design..


im talking about in spring, you know march2016.. spring... you know the time after december, but before may/june... when they were thrashing about with it to get it to be bitcoin compatible.. so they could possibly use it on a bitcoin testnet

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/06/24/segwit-next-steps/

so if it was bitcoin -> segwit.. like your trying to suggest, then ask yourself..
why do segnet(testnet) first, second, third, fourth, to get it then compatible enough to then open the bitcoin testnet to then see if it would work with bitcoin transactions and bitcoin legacy nodes..

again.. if it was bitcoin first.. it would have run on a bitcoin testnet first. and then developed to be more segwit-esq later...
(chicken and egg! comes to mind.) but the observations are simple.. it was segwit first

they activated on the 13th may.. but lets see when they actually organised some proper tests

so tests didnt really start properly until the 23rd. i call that closer to JUNE than the start of may.. oops i meant december 2015(like you imply as your right answer).. but screw it im a week and a half out.. boo hoo.. now your getting pedantic..
im secretly laughing by you "hinting" it was bitcoin compatible back before the december 31st announcement.. i really am
MOST tests that could be deemed bitcoin related (bar a week and a half) were done in JUNE onwards..

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/06/24/segwit-next-steps/
they then met up on the 20th.. to discuss for 3 days what tests they should do
https://bitcoincore.org/logs/2016-05-zurich-meeting-notes.html
link is them spending 3 days reviewing code and discussing what test to do on the bitcoin testnet..
EG not doing official tests before this date

i say june.. u say december.. actual quotes say may 20th-23rd ish...before they started officially testing

and you think im more in the wrong?? please!!
december----/may/june whos closer..
im one and a half weeks out.. your... 5 months...... come on


i emboldened your words that explain my words. thank you its now self explanatory within the quotes. i even colour coded it
note the underlined future tense of achows response "will" and my future tense "after"
achow being pedantic yet again

ill add this just for fun
https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/10/27/segwit-upgrade-guide/


if there is no change to the wallet... why withhold the wallet.
https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/10/27/segwit-upgrade-guide/


how many bips needed to be activated just to help segwit along.. think about it..

yea someone in 2018 does need to download all the 0.12's and 0.13's they can skip to the latest.. but im talking about people in the past needing to in the past dowload previous releases, to push bips into activation just to get this far.


FUD??? nope. just not pedantic nazi inspector specific enough for a white paper scrutinising committee.
but im still laughing you thing it was bitcoin compatible in december 2015.. you made me laugh so i thank you and wish you a good day

dont oversell it.

that 1,8x old stat and the updated 2-2.1x new stat is ONLY TRUE. if 100% of people move funds away from legacy(old) keypairs and directs funds over to the new segwit compatible HD seeded keypairs, and 100% sticks with using segwit.

if not all users used segwit it WONT be close to your numbers. so dont oversell it

segwit was a blockstream project under the "elements" codebase, unrelated and incompatible with bitcoin in 2015-mid 2016.
 
it was put onto its own sandbox (altcoin testnet) in the spring 2016, totally not emulating bitcoin, but thrashed about until it kinda resembled what bitcoin does. it did not even get a chance to be on a bitcoin emulating sandbox (testnet) until june 2016.

this means just to get basic bitcoin-esq functionality it has only been in bitcoin-esq ability for 4 months (june to october). even the latest release 0.13.1 is not a final, fully functioning version just waiting to be activated. it requires a further download after activation..

so TKEENAN, has got some things right as do the others with differing opinions on both sides. it is not the same 2009-2016 bitcoin we knew,
it is just an implementation that has been made compatible to then divert people away from the traditional bitcoin keypairs and data store methods for those that choose to use it for that possible one time capacity boost.

---

its been 1 year since their scaling promise(that also promised dynamic blocks) and they have only released activation parameters for a onetime boost. where that one time boost is only possible if everyone drops their standard private-public keypairs and moves funds to segwit compatible HD seeded keypairs.

it has required users to download 4 different implementations to get to a stage of even being close to activating their one time boost.

lets atleast hope that by the blockstream devs saying 'its all ok'. they are currently this second preparing that 5th download to include dynamic block sizes along with the actual segwit wallet capability to actually utilise segwit. so that everyone can get what they want.

after all, they obviously have spare time to work on dynamic blocks now they believe segwit code is ready and have nothing else to do.. right!?.

user nodes cannot veto it out.
and now you see why blockstream went for a soft fork.


all blockstream needs to do is coax 15-20 pools

so far they tried it by doing fully paid all inclusive weekend meetups..
they already had 4 this last year..
unless they were hoping the 'scaling bitcoin' in Milan this October would have been enough. (should have picked somewhere warmer)

but hey, theres always the new year to plan a nice tropical spring break to kiss some ass

anyway blockstream have a year to coax pools. no need to rush.
but here is a hint listen to the community: dynamic blocksize+segwit
like promised last year
heres another hint:

dynamic blocksize: default starting at 2mb base 4mb weight.

that way its both segwit and actual scaling.
and yes 2mb base 4mb weight DOES actually mean 1mb base 4mb weight is acceptable

do it as a 2 stage consensus
1a)usernodes, 95%(yes it might take upto a year, but nothing will happen before that so no harm in atleast releasing he code to give a choice)
1b)followed by a 2 week grace period.

THEN
2a)pool 95%(yes it might take upto a year, but nothing will happen before that so no harm)
2b)followed by a 2 week grace period.

so its win win

knowing the time of (1b)->(2b) than enough time to reduce the 260(5%)nodes of 5400 that didnt upgrade at (1a) by them upgrading

yep thats right the nodes get to have a say, after all they are the ones doing the validating, relaying and storing the blockchain. only fair they get to be part of activating something by being full node ready to accept it by the time it activates.... not after

unlike segwit is doing the opposite. which is going to wait for pools to activate and then waste a few weeks twiddling thumbs before actually releasing 0.14 that actually has segwit (and wallet) features fully utilisable.

but hey..
segwit thinks christmas seems "safe".. so they should not argue about any timescales.
especially knowing a real consensus upgrade wont actually activate without node consensus, the way it should be

i feel pity for anyone that may reply to defend blockstream and the 90 unpaid interns. purely "because blockstream rules".
i feel pity for anyone that may reply to defend blockstream and the 90 unpaid interns. purely "because blockstream should dictate".
i feel pity for anyone that may reply to defend blockstream and the 90 unpaid interns. purely "because blockstream owns bitcoin".

those types of people have no clue

nope... the unit of measure has moved from X to xxxx
they would just resized the barrels. to keep an artificial human visual accounting limit of 21 million barrels. yet each barrel contains more litres.

EG
lets break it down into binary


1 sat is 00000001
you cannot go any lower!!

1btc is 101111101011110000100000000

however adding more units does not mean that 1btc stays the same
for instance, lets say.. going to millisats.

1btc - 101111101011110000100000000
becomes
1btc - 1011101001000011101101110100000000000

do you notice that although there are only 21m btc.. not just the unit of measure has changed but it also affects how
it is stored on your computer.

in short anyone holding a value of 1BTC now. would be only holding 0.0001btc if a change happened. because the immutable blockchain has the value LOCKED as:
101111101011110000100000000
which cannot suddenly be magically changed to
1011101001000011101101110100000000000
to ensure you still have the new "1btc"

the bait and switch however would be hidden in code.
it would also require people to redownload and resync the entire blockchain to store 1btc as
1011101001000011101101110100000000000
instead of
101111101011110000100000000

its not a case of having an orange and instead of selling a whole orange, your selling segments of oranges at a fraction of the price
its having a basket of oranges that you just call an orange. an then the individual (old) oranges you then call segments.

which means if you do the maths and look at the code. farmers have to farm for longer. but on the fruit stall sign you have stated there are still 21 million oranges (new baskets) but your fruitstall is more crammed (more bytes of data, more units of measure)

i understand the greed mentality of "yes i can buy one bitcoin (basket of oranges) and it will feed more people(more units of measure). the issue is that 1btc (basket) will drop in price due to supply and demand

the rule is 2.1quadrillion units of measure limit.  quantified as baskets of satoshis called bitcoins equating to a 21million bitcoin limit for easy human understanding.
the hard rule about rarity and scarcity is how obtainable individual amounts, not baskets volume.

every time the price rises someone always tries to demand that the units of measure changes to go above 2.1quadrillion exchangeable units of measure limit

here is just one of the early ones.. from 2011. pretty much within 2 months of satoshi leaving people wanted to go against satoshi's design (facepalm)


it was not the first attempt and wont be the last

its an endless cycle. price rises, people then want to be able to split up their holdings to hand out to more people (double profiting in their mind) but if it actually happened the opposite to their greed would actually result

so your blaming a dead cat connected to a rotten car battery, for why and the house of 20 people is a mess.........
................ think about it

day 1.

day 2.

day 3.

bitcoin unlimited are not proposing a fork in the way you are suggesting.
seems you need to research some more.

if you did not realise it BU has released and full code running since 2015. running on bitcoins mainnet.
core for instance have made many propositions. such as rusty russels millisats, luke Jr's tonal bitcoin both of which change the units of measure.

also its actually core making demands for BU to fork off.. (not very community spirited for what bitcoins ethos of open no barrier of entry, WAS)
anyone thinking only CORE should exist with no diverse counterpart to level the playing field are people that want a dictatorship where there are no ways to veto out bad rule changes

cores latest implementation that meant to offer extra new features is not actually running. yep. they deactivated the segwit wallet. you cannot make a segwit transaction right now. and are required to download yet another implementation after activation.

BU doesnt require you to download endless implementations.. getting spoon fed by devs in a oliver twist script of "please sir can i have some more"

core so far have had atleast 5 implementation releases concerning the ability to make segwit possible and its still not ready to run live.
also even after activation its not 100% running live. they will make you wait for the activation, wait for the grace period, then wait again until they deem it ok for users to make segwit transactions by requiring you download yet another implementation.

please research and dont preach the 'core' choir especially when you dont understand that satoshis 2009-2013 "qt" is nothing like blockstream funded employee and volunteer intern handled "core" of 2014+.

be realistic

im laughing at you blaming a possible segwit veto on BU

you do realise that even without BU's ~9%.. there are pools with HIGHER % that are not confident about segwit. for reasons UNRELATED to BU.
trying to put all the blame on BU is like blaming your dog for having a messy house of 20 people(pools)

the reality is while everyone is pointing at the dog atleast 5-15(pools) people are creating the mess you are worried about.

wake up have a reality check and get some prospective