regulators gonna regulate.  any company with a CEO or known founders could be a target and that includes companies like Blockstream and to be fair 21.  this is why i say that if you're gonna invest in Bitcoin, buy the currency unit.  it's the safest place to be with the highest likelihood of an extraordinary return:

http://www.coindesk.com/fincen-director-examiniation-digital-currency/

everyone who disagrees within that thread gets bombarded.  that thread is a coordinated planned event.

it's a shameful tactic.  right up theymo's alley.

i'd like to know who is behind the "Bitcoin Expert" handle flair that you brought to my attention last night.  it's been brought out specifically for that one thread.  since theymos is apparently against the block size increase and runs /rBitcoin, it probably is him:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/354qbm/bitcoin_devs_do_not_have_consensus_on_blocksize/

the Blockstream devs seem to forget that pools consist of individual users who are willing to aggregate their hashing power together to the pool operator.  any operator who abuses that privilege will get shafted; just look at how ghash has been punished down to a mere 3% of the network despite what guys like gmax have been raving about for years.  attempting what i think is a stupid technical attack of bloated blocks makes no sense as it would be quite costly and risky.  no, gvts won't walk in the doors of several of these pool and force them to conduct this attack.  there already exists a legal basis for running mines which can be used by the operators to defend themselves from such blatant illegal collusion.  plus, most of the operators are dedicated Bitcoin believers who want to get their hands on as many BTC as fast as possible before the next 10x ramp just like their users.  they would more likely do a Ladar Levinson (Lavabit) that would embarrass any gvt as well as punish that same gvt thru legal action.  think back to the 0.8.1 fork where miners, lead by Eleuthria, did the ultimate to save the network.

yeah, that is a revealing thread.  Raystonn is angry and i don't blame him.

the devs, all Blockstream except for Todd (who has for years been at odds with Gavin & just about every other core dev until now), are wanting to let the 1MB ceiling be hit to force up tx fees. as discussed here, i think that is a bad idea in that the Bitcoin user base is still tiny and immature.  this inconvenience and breakage of Bitcoin likely will cause even dedicated users, like Raystonn, to abandon Bitcoin for another altcoin as well as prevent any new users from adopting.  the key thing here is that none of the alternatives that they're suggesting are even close to primetime; SC's, Lightning, payment channels.  thus, they offer no immediately viable alternatives.

also, they're constructing a boogie man scenario whereby large miners might collude to fabricate spam-like "large" blocks that cause smaller miners to struggle processing it thus potentially driving them out of business.  i think that makes no sense at all.  in an open system such as we have, a miner doing this will be immediately detected.  if it's IP can be identified and the process itself causes any problem at all (debatable), that miner can be sealed off from the network if necessary.  but more fundamentally, i say they won't try that, at least on the consistently needed basis required to drive out competitors.  it's too risky and they stand to lose a ton of money trying this.  not only from detection but a game theoretic basis.  i foresee miners continuously doing a look back of maybe 1000 blocks or so measuring the avg size of blocks coming thru the network.  they will try to stick close to that size and continue to make them as small as possible so that when solved they can be propagated thru the network as fast as possible to capture the reward.  remember, the real prize right now is capturing those 25BTC so that is priority #1.  large blocks are the antithesis of this goal as their large block can be orphaned by latency not to mention dicking around with constructing such a large cumbersome block.  and even if they happen to get one largish block thru, they would have to be able to sustain such an attack for quite a long time to drive any competitors out of business.  an attacking large pool like this has no idea of the financial condition of any of their smaller competitors such as capitalization, access to ultra low electricity, business acumen of founders, and overall technical ability to counteract such a stupid attack.  a large pool miner will instead continue to take the honest route in constructing avg size blocks to go after the reward.  if they're 30% of the network, they know with certainty they will make 30% of the block rewards plus tx fees.  that is calculable and known and most importanty the safe thing to do.  attacking smaller miners, whom they know nothing about, is foolish and extraordinarily risky and most likely will fail and result in their own bankruptcy.

all the objections that i'm hearing from these guys are mostly political and economic, areas which i do not have confidence that they understand.  not to mention that almost all of them have an economic conflict of interest.

interestingly, we're getting some whiffs of deflation in the futures markets tonite.  the invisible hand has about 6h to reverse this or there are going to be fireworks tomorrow.  get out the popcorn.

how about this?

pwuillie, gmax, luke, and corrallo are spreading Blockstream SC FUD.  what, they don't care if the protocol breaks at 1MB full blocks coming soon?  what a bunch of communists.

yep, all the Blockstream devs spreading their FUD.  and i'm in the thick of it.

that is not bad.  not bad at all.  how about this:

"We will know if the blockchain is applicable to more than money only when after Bitcoin is well established as money".-majamalu

last minute stick save $DJT +12.9.  still concerning.  we're very close.

we all have our indicators, methods with which to analyze the markets.  i like Dow Theory and cycle analysis so we'll see.

big, big trouble:

well, waddaya know.  i just plunked in GBTC into my TOS and got this!  $550/BTC!!!

everything US going down now.  that should only mean one thing for Bitcoin, UP:

$DJI catching down to the $DJT with $DJT about to go off the cliff.  get out the popcorn:

my sense is that major financial institutions and payment processors understand that Bitcoin is not scalable at 1MB.  therefore, they don't feel particularly threatened; yet.  this leads to investors large and small similarly being skeptical.  by lifting the limit, or by taking a baby step to 20MB, suddenly Bitcoin can be shown to scale.  once that realization kicks in, i suspect you will see a flood of investor capital into the coin itself, driving the price up, and subsequently encouraging an entirely new round of investment in merchant providers and mining companies.

i put this video up last month where Gavin clearly telegraphs what is happening now.  he said he might have to throw his weight around which is what he is now doing.  and he has the credibility to do so.  but you have to back up around 2y to understand why he's doing this.  my conspiratorial mind says this is when gmax first hatched the idea of Blockstream and started working on gathering up most of the other core devs into the scheme.  since that time, nothing substantial has gotten done around the core protocol as solex pointed out above. i say it's b/c Blockstream stands to make billions if tx's are forced off MC to SC's.  it's also the time when gmax started hitting Reddit and the forum about the SC idea.  while Gavin has always been respectful and even slightly positive about SC's, i don't think he's fully on board with the idea and i've pointed out subtle examples of such.  and for good reasons as i, and you, have tried to articulate in many settings.  but my point is, this is the setting around which his blog posts are occurring;  it's now time to open up Bitcoin to the masses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIafZXRDH7w

more Gavin:

http://gavinandresen.ninja/big-blocks-and-tor

getting worse:

you know what i'm thinking, right?