research hyperledger.

as to why banks are using it.
here are some reasons

1. instead of one centralised database needing security guards and vetting staff just to be in the building.. the data secures itself and is spread out so no single location can be attacked.
EG bank employee at smalltown branch cant hack the data compared to, if the old style database was distributed.
EG IT guy at centralised HQ where single copy database(not distributed) also cannot hack it.

thus. HR employees that vet staff can be sacked. security guards, IT guys, and many more staff sacked.

2. along with security no longer needing 'labour'. it also no longer needs much maintenance. you just buy a pc load a ISO disk of the operating system that includes the node. and your done. meaning more labour can become redundant

3. due to being distributed it reduces bandwidth compared to 95,000 banks connecting to a centralized server. where each bank branch has 10 employees blasting requests to that central server.. now 10 bank branch employees blast their requests to the bank branch node which then only communicates to another node. which due to relay effect the doesnt require terrabyte fibre connections to a central point
so now servers, internet, electric costs are now reduced, while significantly improving security.

4. auditing becomes easier. so meeting regulation and financial obligation becomes manageable with less labour/equipment.

5. banks actually have "homeland security" staff monitoring threats that can cause issues to the banking system (yea they were useless with 9-11 and the 2008 internal bank terrorism against customers) but now they can be sacked too

6. in short banks can remove their sky scraper HQ buildings and run more efficiently and more securely with just bank branches relaying to each other

there are probably loads of other reasons, i just listed the obvious ones anyone can think of, im sure the banks internal thinktank can think of more. maybe best to ask Gmaxwell what his contract conditions are and if he is open to talk about his employers(the banks) reasons for wanting hyperledger

the final release version (not this version but the one only public after activation) will require deposit addresses to change for merchants using segwit, due to the new HD segwit compatible seed addresses.
this can affect alot of exchanges who decide to have full node status in the background and may require some maintenance downtime and informing customers of changes

also some of the RPC calls have changed so merchants will need to tweak their webserver to interpret the new RPC's and then translate them into a form that resembles the API quiries the webserver normally sends out to users. but please note some RPC's may give more info and as such some merchants may actually use the updated info from the RPC's, which means the user has to adjust to the new information.
but that all depends on the merchant and what API you are needing. best to check with the service your API calling.

there are a few other things to note. but i feel some fanboys are ready to pounce and declare segwit to be utopian perfection and that no one should worry, and simply sheep follow and obey.
so ill let them get their idolizations out the way before hinting at other issues

as for his other questions about bitcoin utility.
he mentions bitcoin is worthless for buying real produce/ day to day spending.

but strangely says remittance is expensive
if trying to put indian rupee in, to get dollars out.. id agree
BUT when thats the case.... the opposite is true the other way round
its better for dollar in and rupee out

lets take someone working in america wanting to send $100 to his families homeland in india
forex says that dollar<->INR is $100<->₹6795
lets see if we can better that and get the indian family more then 6795 rupee

first having $100
1.a)converting it to bitcoin, lets take the cheapest $739/btc
using ACH bank account 1.8% (1.5% deposit and orderbook 0.3% swap)
$100=0.132882273
(other exchanges have cheaper orderbook fees but higher wire deposit fee EG krakens US$ deposit is $5 and higher spreads too)
1.b)converting it to bitcoin, lets take the krakens $745/btc
using ACH bank account $5 +0.42%
$100=0.12698121

next sending that to someone in india becomes
2.a)0.13278227 standard tx fee
2.b)0.12688121 standard tx fee

3.a) hoping that the receivers of 0.13278227 is the highest indian exchange rate of 60,300 the recipient gets 8006.77 INR
lets say its not. and instead the exchange rate was 56,000 gets 7435.81 INR
3.b) hoping that the receivers of 0.12688121 is the highest indian exchange rate of 60,300 the recipient gets 7656.97 INR
lets say its not. and instead the exchange rate was 56,000 gets 7110.95 INR


an $ to ₹ via btc gets you ₹7110-₹8006 yet forex says they should only get ₹6795

but yes other way round ₹6795($100 forex value) wont get you anywhere near $100 via bitcoin
but then you can always trade rupee for dollar and then buy bitcoin. rather the rupee->bitcoin direct
and ofcourse because you can make a profit. you can sell that bitcoin for rupee and repeat the process until the price settles down due to arbitrage (india gains more supply)

eg
receives ₹7110 to then forex exchange for $104
buy bitcoin with $104  -> ₹7390
receives ₹7390 to then forex exchange for $108
buy bitcoin with $108  -> ₹7670

you got it wrong..
thats 4mb of data.. not 4x transactions.

the baseblock is still 1mb... and still limits capacity..

which if utilising segwit converts to about a maximum expectation of about 1.8mb of complete transaction data at best.

expect the average ~2500 transactions per block now. to be ATBEST ~4500 transactions.

the 4mb total weight is 1mb base and 3mb separate section(partly used by segwit signatures(the 0.8mb accounted for in the underline above))
the rest of the 2.2mb empty buffer space which core are allowing is not for more transactions. but other mundane data and features later on.

later on when new features are added.
it will still be ~4500 transactions but room to include payment codes and mundane data in that transaction.
eg
legacy 1mb= txid - inputs - outputs - value - signature  = total 1mb of 1mb for 2500tx
segwit 1mb= txid - inputs - outputs - value... 0.8mb -Witnesstxid - signature  = total 1.8mb of 4mb for 4500tx
future 1mb= txid - inputs - outputs - value... 0.8mb -Witnesstxid - signature... 2.2mb otherfeatures = total total 4mb of 4mb for 4500tx

you wont see the red (baseblock) change to allow more than 1mb.

though many would wish for:
segwit 2mb= txid - inputs - outputs - value... 1.5mb -Witnesstxid - signature  = total 3.5mb of 4mb for 9000tx
future 2mb= txid - inputs - outputs - value... 1.5mb -Witnesstxid - signature... 0.5mb otherfeatures = total total 4mb of 4mb for 9000tx

but that would require core to join a logical consensus and not back out and prevent that.. with something like 'we paid for the consensus round table to discuss possible bips, we organised who gets to attend. we even called it consensus, but when we turned up we pretended to just be janitors that cant code a solution so that after the agreement we didnt have to do what had been agreed at the consensus discussion'

just checked out other indian sellars on local bitcoins

then checked out more centralized exchanges
localbitcoins seems to be at ~59,000
centralized exchanges ~56,000
your own listing ~60,300

seems its only you that is the highest, and your complaining about how high it is..
maybe connect to the centralized exchanges buy some at 56,000-57,000 and sell at 56,900-57,900 for a 1% profit(after cost).
instead of 60,300 which is a 7-8% profit

then based on international trends. the price would appear as only a 15% rise instead of a 23% rise.
you could also go deper into the arbitrage game and see if you can get more then $740 for less than 56,000INR and be able to get more btc, for less.
and if you stick to a 1% profit you can become an even better offer to people at even less than the 15% method i first suggested or the 23% your currently offering

---

but i have a question for you. totally separate from the exchange rate..
i want your opinion on the utility of bitcoin in india

knowing using.. yes, just using bitcoin is an 7cent(american) 4.76(INR) tx fee
do you see that nearly 5INR per transaction seems more then just annoying to spend?

would you think that going higher then 5INR per use can lead to bigger barriers of use, than any temporary price drama of exchanges.
EG would you use bitcoin to buy an apple from one grocery store, a drink from another grocery store and pay lets say 3 hours lablour to buy some clothes in another store. if it cost you 5INR per transactions.

i genuinely am interested in the reply to your opinion about the 5INR tx fee

transparancy
no "fee":
but the middleman profit is in the exchange spread, users have to settle for the exchange rate handed to them which can be very different than what they expect.(much like localbitcoins exchange rate offers have different values)
its like not having to tip your waitress anymore but your coffee is now 18% more expensive as standard menu price

a co-founder:
can you trust a guy with this smile?

not really..
blockchain is not a top notch security thing alone.. in short its just the same as "table relationships" in terms of the old database mechanisms.
most of the blockchains are not using strong hashing algo to secure the blocks(tables) they are not using PoW either.
nor will they be fully public or distributed openly.

its just an excuse to have tax rightoffs to appear up to date. much like updating a company logo every 10 years.
from a users point of view not much will change.

after all if it was near impossible to get a doctor to sign a piece of paper to certify birth in certain places in africa.. being digital wont change the real world problem. something still needs signed whether paper or digital. so these services still have the real world problem that simple paper could not solve. because paper or computer was not the problem.. going digital has only removed the need of paper, but not solved why paper certification failed.(hint remote villages/home births where doctors are not readily available).

9needs are in the need of medical/identity databases, not a funding platform.
they obviously have a banking partner (barclays africa) so bank accounts and international funding is not the issue. their needs are about medical and identity.

as for bitcoin africa.. 7cents in america.. is worth alot of sweat and tears in africa.. bitcoin has priced itself out of third world countries already due to the transaction fee alone being a barrier of entry to bitcoin.

as for africa's financial need
mpesa is cheaper
mpesa is more user friendly
mpesa is more accessible
bitcoin has become something that is no longer better than the old africa fiat system or current mpesa system. dont expect much bitcoin action in africa.

its why hyperledger (sidechains/LN) is the bait and switch for the african unbanked. just a shame that it will not settle back to bitcoin, but instead divert to hyperledger for the third world users.
ofcourse africa needs blockchain ID.. how else will a future cheap hyperledger do its KYC checks

i am optimistic about bitcoin. i am just a realist and aware of the adversaries to bitcoin.
i dont just sit back and take one for the team(blockstream) and have "hope" the team will rain their silky "liquid"(another blockstream alt) over us to give bitcoin more utility.

too many people sit on their hand and let bitcoin lose its ethos and lose its open nature and freedom of use/innovation, waiting for something inspiring to happen

oh you do know that 0.13.1 (released) is not fully segwit active. you will be required to download yet another version when active to actually use a segwit wallet features.

and then...

changing your funds from lagacy keypairs to new HD segwit compatible seeded addresses has risks
eg exchange/merchants needing to replace everyones deposit addresses and reaudit funds

changes to RPC calls has risks

this is why i laugh when people are screaming to just run segwit on mainnet and "trust" the devs have reviewed it. though only as an altcoin (testnet/segnet) not as a bitcoin mainnet node

dont expect smart people to run it blindly. they will all do independant tests. move funds, audit funds warn customers of different deposit addresses..

in short dont expect anything to change by christmas, or expect ~4500 instead of ~2500 transaction before spring.. well lets call it summer before anything actually starts to be noticable

he's reading from a script. not speaking from his heart.
like someone is telling him what to say.

---

now lets see gmaxwell talk about his companies agenda when someone mentions bitcoin having a dictating leader.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SeHNXdJCtE

"for wallet behavior, clients non normative stuff, yes sure go fork, please go fork, stop bothering me." (context of the community wanting him to join consensus, and him saying no)

"we are vulnerable to people wanting to jam bitcoin, either traditional money system or another cryptocurrency system" (context of dictatorship control)

and ofcourse gmaxwell loves his altcoins(monero) aswell as being paid to make hyperledger(bankers cryptocurrency system) and being part of the group that owns bitcoincore, bitcoinj XT, knots green address, bloq and many more bitcoin wallets

---

when the horses mouth(maxwell) is telling you that if you want change that is not dictated by those paid by bankers, requires forking off to an altcoin to get momentum.. you start to see the problem

bitcoins single most best security feature is not the blockchain or PoW. its consensus.
the funny thing is gmawell hates consensus in bitcoin but loves it and concentrating on in in hyperledger
the funny thing is gmawell hates dymantic blocksize in bitcoin but loves it and concentrating on in in monero

funny how he pretends to say it keeps him up at night(context of banker takeover). yet he could always resign from blockstream and stop playing with altcoins and just do something positive for the bitcoin community. but im guessing he sleeps like a comforted baby and to use his words is looking forward to "the experiment failing".

he has lost all care for bitcoin and is happy in the banker camp of hyperledger who are slowly taking over and gaining ground with having ownership of well over 51% of code

---

as for segwit. its november 16th and after core said it needs 18 months for any other big thing to beactivated.. core are saying segwit by christmas. with code only pblicly usable ON BITCOINS MAINNET!! for a couple weeks.

as for the malleability fix.
does it fix double spends. nope. RBF, CPFP now allows double spends
did it ever have an issue for LN. nope because LN is a dual signing process. so a tx cannot just be manipulated after broadcast to then override the first tx. due to it needing second party signing on the second manipulated tx. thus the dual signing alone countered that.

as for linear/quadratic fix.
is there ever a need to have 1000 signatures in one tx? um no.. so limiting sigops could have solved it.

as for the 2mb debate.
is setwit preventing bloat to be well under 2mb. nope. it can go upto 4mb due to enough buffer space for payment codes and other features. BUT still hindering the transaction capacity growth.
yep 1.8mb block for ~4500 is the new expectation. the other 2.3mb buffer is for mondane non transaction capacity bloat features like confidential payment codes and mundate data to pair to a hyperledger sidechain

unicef gives money to african company https://9needs.net
african company gives money to a company http://consent.global/our-team

consent.global are using a blockchain that is part of the hyperledger(banker blockchain), but used for identity, not "value"

nothing bitcoin related.. moving on

use a bitcoin ATM
https://coinatmradar.com/country/105/bitcoin-atm-italy/
hope there is one near him

alternatively use something like circle or coinbase

from 2009 there were many independent people working on bitcoin, they were compiling their own implementations and helping each other with new features and bug fixes. where sourceforge was one of many, but the most popular location of the code. but some had their own locations too, which was advisable

as it approached 2010 more people joined and helped.
satoshi disappeared by the end of the year when bitcoin gained negative press as drug currency and devs were being slated as government plants.

in 2011 github became one of the locations aswell as sourceforge and other places as the main download locations.

by the time it got to 2013 (2 years after satoshi left) github became the popular download location. but people still had their own versions in other download locations.

2013 github.com/bitcoin got rebranded into bitcoin core, and suddenly they seen themselves not as independent individuals but as a power house. between 2013-2015 several people got peed off that it was turning into a power house and some left for different reasons

a few notable names were either pushed out, deemed negative to the power house, moved off as a bait and switch. and many other dramatic things.

mike hearn: owned bitcoinJ and started up XT with other devs and sourced some VC funding (hindsight: was a bait and switch when the bankers were trying to gain control of bitcoin they linked themselves to blockstream, bitcoinj and XT).
it was a bait and switch because blockstream-core devs were attacking XT as banksters(hindsight: attacking their own), to at the time hide/distract cores involvement with bankers by pretending something not core was the banker enemy.

gavin andresen: moved away from blockstream-core due to the banker politics. and joined XT, but soon found out they too were still part of the same banker politics, so he moved out again and formed his own dev group in classic.

other names: J garzik moved to bitpay, then formed bloq, then joined the bankers...,
others moved over to MIT, blockchain.info, or other bitcoin related developments.

even today luke JR is trying to brand his implementation as Knots, as an alternative to core, while being paid by the same bankers that contract devs in core, bitcoinj, and xt.

independent code and non-banker funded implementations are becoming harder to find. even green address and other bitcoin standalone or web based /app based implementations ar coming under the same banker control.

so far the main one not attached to bankers is BU (even gavin seems to be tied to bankers now, due to his ties to bloq). but that hasnt stopped the bankers diverting banker intentions of core, by attacking BU as being the saboteurs. as the latest bait and switch to try getting users into the banker dominance camp (wolf calling a sheep a wolf, to scare the sheep into the wolves mouths)

you do know the "team" your talking about are all under analogy: 'one roof'.. you do know the dozen paid devs are paid by bankers. and their 90+ unpaid interns are hoping to appease the paid devs in the hopes of landing a job with them.

dont think core are independent.
much like dont think Hilary Clinton is independent from Bill. yes they have different first names, different ages, different job titles, different genitals.. but obviously they are under one roof

there needs to be different codebases that can work on the same network but able to mitigate risk of one team creating a bug/dictatorship rule change without there being a logical and independent consensus agreement

alot of people are forgetting the security feature known as consensus and instead preferring the bankers single team dictatorship to pre-set and spoon feed rules out to the network. all because people "trust" leadership, rather than having an open system of no leader.

the concern is not that a USER can mess with the blockchain.. but a dictatorial dev team can.
much like you dont have to worry about someone owning an asic miner messing with block creation. but a dictatorial pool

thats why we should be aware of 51% of a pool dominance.
thats why we should be aware of 51% of a implementation of node dominance.

you are talking about 2 things.. geo.. and politics

firstly. geo
28% of nodes are in america.. lets say america systematically cut off the internet right at the ISP of 1500 ISP customers..(yes its possible)
it wont really harm the network as there are still other nodes spread out in 90 countries. so the blockchain is still distributed.

secondly..political
4400 of 5400 (83%) are running bitcoin core of different aged varieties (27% running latest version of core)
lets say there was a known bug in core.. or a trojan in core since version 0.8 that has a political reason to be there to activate when core decided the time was right.. 27-83% of nodes can get affected.

its not just about geographic diversity.. but also the implementations need to be more diverse.
3 main groups. or 8 total groups is not enough diversity

especially when core devs have been very loud about getting other implementations to fork off so that core can dominate bitcoin

your not quite talking about a 51% mining attack but a 51% node attack.
not so hard to do if over 51% of nodes are all running the same code.

though even at 51% its just going to cause a wash of orphans where some accept some reject the rule. it requires a large majority to accept it without much of an issue.
but even at over just 51% it will gt accepted once the wash of orphans counter each other until there is an ultimate single agreed blockheight
usually including the need of a large majority of miners to accept it too also alleviates the amount of orphaning before the single agreed blockheight becomes apparent

yes a softfork mechanism can be used for bad aswell as good.
especially if the softfork is being wrote by just one dev group who want all alternatives to fork off to ensure the softfork activates unobstructively

love it when lauda can argue with himself and counter his own point with his own defense

kprawn i can see your tying to wake up from the propaganda.

but here is something you need to understand about bitcoin.

bitcoin is not a single dot
.
nor ever should be
imagine it like 52 dots(i CBA to use 5200 dots for this demo, but i think you understand the idea)
.............
.............
.............
.............

out of those dots
the majority are run in separate locations by separate people

out of the dots some are fully uptodate(coloured), some are out of date(black)

when it comes to 'locations' needing to be targeted by DDoSers there are upto 52(but not exactly) dots required to hit
when it comes to 'locations' needing to be targeted by file deletion virus there are upto 52(but not exactly) dots required to hit

but,
when it comes to 'diversity' needing to be targeted by bug risks created recently, there are 17 redpurpleorgange, 4 blue, 1 green, (rest are individual)
when it comes to 'diversity' needing to be targeted by trojan risks created recently, there are 17 redpurpleorgange, 4 blue, 1 green, (rest are individual)
when it comes to 'diversity' needing to be targeted by old bugs, there are 42 redpurpleorgangeblack, 4 blue, 1 green, (rest are individual)

when it comes to groups control of rules,
42 (red, orange, purple and black) coded by one group.
6 (blue and black) coded by another group
2 (black) by another group
and the final 2 are individual

when you start to realise 52 dots are not 52 dots, but instead clusters(points of weakness) of less dot. and that instead of a 51%mining attack but a malicious 51%dev attack can happen. you start to see where the risks lay.

location is diverse, but dev diversity is not.
when you realise 42 of 52 dots are coded by a team that has banking interests.
and that team are trying to get 10 dots to fork off to an altcoin. to have 42 of 42 control.. you see the problem

strangely those 10 dots. have never wanted to fork off or wanted the 42 to fork off. they just want there to not be a >51% dev attack/dictatorship.
and instead improve diversity(no >51% single control) where rules only change when the dots(not groups) can in the majority consent to a logical upgrade independently and without group dictatorship.

right now the group that coded the 42 dots, want 42 of 42 dots to all be running red software. and other dots be on a different network
right now the group that coded the 6 dots 2 dots and other 2 dots, want more groups, more diversity and more independent dots

where by each group happily communicate together on one network and change the rules when each dot is happily agreeing to a certain setting independently (consensus)

try not to cast the same brush of hearne against other devs..

hearne works for r3 too..

hearne was another bait and switch

blockstream dont care or need "bitcoin rep".. no one is paying them bitcoins to code bitcoin. they dont want rep from the bitcoin community long term.
motive:
they have $90mill and banker rep..which is their long term thing they want to keep. they see bitcoin as just "the experiment" done voluntarily and that calling it "an experiment" shows their mindset of desire to fail

as for the bitcoin community
by people supporting the idea of LN, sidechains.. people are NAIVELY supporting hyperledger(the banks), without knowing it.
(guess who is going to run the sidchains. guess who is going to dual-sign as the hub people channel to)

actions:
much of it rvved up in early spring this year with the R3CKED campaign. gmaxwell while actually paid by R3. was shouting to everyone to hate gavin, and hate all other implementations.
including classic, bu and dozen others..
Edit. i separated out hearne*, bitcoinj and xt, the next paragraph explains why

bitcoinJ is now blockstream friendly so dont expect unbasied diverse code. *hearne is part of the r3/blockstream bait and switch
blockstream also bought up a few other wallet services and blockexplorers into the banking cartel.. (check out hyperledger partners/members for familiar names)
bitcoin knots is blockstream friendly. programmed by a blockstream contractor (Luke JR) to fake an unbiased implementation but obviously coded segwit instead of his pledge for true capacity.

anyway, the plan was and still is to get all non blockstream controlled nodes to FORK to an alt. using any tactic they can to gain dominance.. gmaxwell was pushing anything not blockstream friendly as the nasty bankers or centralizers or bigblockers(hypocrisy bait and switch). fully knowing where gmaxwell was getting his own funding from and knowing his own end goals.

as for the term bigblockers.. funny that blockstream now want 4mb weight for the confidential features while still limited transaction capacity in the base at 1mb. (1mb base, 0.8mb witness, 2.2mb other features=4mb weight)

4mb is more then 2mb.. so cores 4mb is the real bigblockers

hypocrisy has been loud

here february 9th 2016
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2016/02/linux-foundation-s-hyperledger-project-announces-30-founding


started in january 2016
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1330553.0

yes blockstream R3 and hyperledger had contracts signed late 2015 even before blockstream paid and organised the scaling bitcoin event, which resulted in THEIR "roadmap" for bitcoin.

and in january they seen there were people who did not like the banker plans.. so blockstream "flipped the script" to make the ones not liking the banker plans, into being accused of being the 'bankers' to hide blockstreams own banker controls and contracts.(bait and switch)

gmaxwell even with getting r3 funding was treating non blockstreamers as banksters by getting involved on the r3cked campaign.

wanting anything not blockstream to fork off to an alt so core can dominate.
blockstreams only reason to control core but simultaneously pretend not to control core. is so they can dissolve and abolish core when the endgame has played out and keep the blockstream business unaffected by it.

anyway i digress into the future. lets get back to the past..
the whole try pushing gavin, garzick, hearne, and many others into altcoin land revved up in januray onwards
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=11425;sa=showPosts;start=260
page 14 with gmaxwell jumping in the r3cked campaign alot.

other implementations want to use bitcoins consensus of diverse majority work together to upgrade the network as a single chain, while staying diverse, decentralized and independent nodes..
but gmaxwell hates the idea of not having blockstream and 90 unpaid spellchecker interns in total dominant control of bitcoins future