And this (Not Bitcoin XT) is exactly why contentious hard forks are doomed. Andresen and Hearn should grow a pair and bootstrap their own altcoin from scratch instead of trying to piggyback Bitcoin Core's network effect.

Satoshi would never be in favor of a contentious hard fork supported by only two devs, one of them very eager to bend to state agencies (Gavin) and the other pushing for blacklisting and anti-Tor policy (Hearn).

All other bitcoin experts, including Nick Szabo who is the most likely candidate to be Satoshi (up to +80% probability if you do a thorough, rational and objective analysis of both their works and their writing style), favour a more gradual block size increase among other things because increasing the block size x8 is a huge security risk.

Considering that this message comes from the email address used to discuss Bitcoin for the very first time as back as 2008, and that the email headers confirm that it was not spoofed, it is reasonable to think that this message might very well have been sent by Satoshi himself. If its not, no big deal: just rememember that all these quotes coming from his posts are also unsigned, and they are stored in a centralized database that has been hacked a few times in the past....

I speculate that Satoshi never cryptographically signed any communication on purpose: he is looking for plausible deniability, and that's a way of ensuring no absolute power by a single, central authority who could irrefutably prove his identity.

The important thing: Bitcoin the protocol gives zero fucks about all this controversy.

I don't see why, considering that Satoshi never cryptographically signed any communication, despite of what uninformed journos are writing on mainstream media.

Te lo explico en en una palabra compuesta: "hiperinflación".

FACT 1: Someone claiming to be Satoshi writes that he might have no choice but to declare Bitcoin a failed project because of Hearn's and Andresen's hard fork.

FACT 2: Real Satoshi or not, zero fucks were given by Bitcoin

FACT 3: there is no evidence of satoshi (at) vistomail.com having being compromised.

SPECULATION + OPINION: The message is consistent with Satoshi's writing style, which at the same time is inconsistent with the writing style of the guy who hacked satoshin@gmx.net + past obvious impostors. Taking into consideration this and other factors I believe that it is reasonably possible that the message comes from the real Satoshin but, real or not, my opinion on his message won't change: I agree with him, Bitcoin was designed to be protected from the influence of charismatic leaders, but I really don't understand all this drama. Bitcoin *needs* to evolve even in times of strong disagreement, and thankfully enough it is an open source project, which means that forks are expected.

Just consider XT a new alt-coin, promoted by two charismatic Bitcoin Core devs using aggressive marketing tactics. If this new alt-coin brings any good and replaces vanilla Bitcoin is yet to be seen (I honestly doubt it), but is nevertheless an interesting development to watch unfold and yet another test to the resilience of the Bitcoin concept. I certainly think that such a change in the block size, which could be a huge security risk, is better to be tested on an alt-coin such as XT than on Bitcoin Core. The only block size change proposal I've read so far and that I consider sane and reasonable enough to be implemented in Core is Sipa's "Block size according to technological growth".

Típico dump sobre novatos, agravado por el hecho de que es relativamente difícil mandar los ETH al exchange. Precio infladísimo, los primeros compradores han sido esquilmados.

It simply can not. A decentralized shared ledger without an economic incentive to be securely maintained by individuals around the world is either NOT secure or just NOT decentralized. No different from an excel file shared through dropbox.

The folks that are saying "bitcoin is useless, but blockchain will save the world" do not understand this basic fact - that's simply mind blowing. There's no "blockchain" without Bitcoin (the currency).

Just sell.

My 0.0000002BTC: I've been doing transactions during the spam fest with no problems at all. Normal fees, multiple transactions, using Bitcoin Core, Armory, Electrum and Mycelium. No delays whatsoever, all transactions were confirmed in the very next block.

Bitcoin is quietly working as it was intended.

Could we say that 0.11 is not affected by the fork problem, as stated by the sticky at the top of this forum?


Also, could we use 0.11 as a wallet, if we do not enable pruning (which if i understood correctly is not enabled by default)?

The sticky at the top of the forum do not mention 0.11 as a "safe" client - I guess it should be amended ASAP?

It's just because having smaller blocks with faster propagation times is more profitable for them, or at least it was until now. Be sure that if allowing more transactions per block turns out more profitable they will just adjust.

And it begins.

Yesterday I made a few transactions with Bitcoin Core, with a moderate transaction fee ("estimated to begin confirmation within 12 blocks"). No drama whatsoever, all transactions confirmed within the next block.

I guess the network is more resilient than many think.

I guess Theymos should decide what's the role of staff members in the first place.

If I'm not mistaken this has already been discussed in the past, and it was established that the role of staff is to prevent spam - no further policing whatsoever, and no protecting users from possible scams.

This is what I remember, and if it is like this the trust system is quite flawed indeed - but I really don't see how this should be dserrano ''s fault,

This is the best post in the thread IMO - this is exactly how I see it.

Thanks, Stephen.

Please go read the bitcoin-dev mailing list. Most technical guys are against such an abrupt change because it can lead to centralization pretty quickly. The conflict of interest thing is pure BS. Many pools, especially the chinese ones which have difficulty to access 100Mbps connections behind the great firwall are very worried about their orphan rate skyrocketing and thus are against such an abrupt change, it's all on the bitcoin-dev mailing for everybody to see.

The fact is that there are many questions left unanswered, there's a very real centralization threat, but still most agree that they would support a more gradual change, even to 5MB or 8MB. That is x5 and x8 the current capacity, why in the hell are Gavin & Hearn (who has a track record of pushing for many very nefarious features, see blacklisting for example) pushing for a x20 increase in block size? Why not going for a gradual approach? The "we don't want bandaiding this over and over" is pure BS. I think the risk of centralization is too high to be reckless, it is much better to bandaid a couple of times than to just kill bitcoin by making it centralized.

1) Never use passwords that are "easy to remember" for you - no matter how complicate they seem.
2) Always use long, complicated random-generated passwords (or even better: dice-ware passphrases)
3) NEVER re-use passwords or passphrases or any combination of them.

Just follow strictly these 3 very simple guidelines and you will be safe.

Considering all the FUD about Bitcoin-XT and the block size hard fork this is not a bad time to hedge a bit and sell some BTC.