Did you read this? This is crazy shit.

[Brad Harrison]

I don't see any major price change happening

[balu2]

Who the fuck is this 'Mike' anyways? And why should anyone care about him?

[Jhanzo]

Who the fuck is this 'Mike' anyways? And why should anyone care about him?

Mike Hearn is a (former?) bitcoin core developer that have a habit of coming out with all kinds of ridiculous patches. and to make it worse Gavin listens to him.

[RoadTrain]

Who the fuck is this 'Mike' anyways? And why should anyone care about him?

He is a developer of bitcoinj - a Bitcoin Java library used in many wallets. Also I believe he was the first to implement SPV in his library, but I may be wrong. I believe he's a notable developer and has been with Bitcoin since long time ago. But that doesn't give him any authority over others.

[ronald98]

It is crazy shit.  absolutely.

the sad thing is, Hearn is right.  (yeah.... the same Mike Hearn that previously said whitelisting is a good idea... the same Mike Hearn that I said shouldn't be trusted) Sadly, he is making a lot more sense and communicating a lot better than the so called core devs!

I am hopeful the community will do the right thing and move to bigger blocks in time to avert bandwidth issues.

And I think Hearn is right: the "core devs" are being stubborn and selfish and want to do things their own way.  They may be motivated as much by intellectual righteousness as by greed.  Regardless, they have failed to articulate their positions to the community (as far as I have seen) and so as much as I've had a bias against Hearn, he's the good guy right now.

Good point. You're correct that Hearn is superior at communicating. The Core Devs are not clearly articulating their positions. At all.

I am indeed in the anti-Hearn camp, yet neither can I ally myself with the stumbling selfishness of the Core Devs.

What's disheartening is that this should be a nonissue, as most everyone supports larger blocks.

This situation is similar to voting for political parties during elections. The problem is often all the people you can choose to vote for are jerks and their policies are all crap. It's a pity there are only two groups of devs to choose between. If Satoshi returned and recruited a whole new dev team I'd vote for that one.

[ajareselde]

None the less, bitcoin needs to change and solve the possible spam from happening once again.

It's debatable whether Bitcoin really needs to change this way. It's also debatable whether this is an effective solution to spam.

I don't buy the spam argument at all. As I have argued, Bitcoin withstood that attack pretty well, and functioned as intended. The problem was that not every user had proper fee estimation algorithms built into their wallets, so some users have experienced delays. Had they used proper fees, there wouldn't be any problem, apart from slightly higher average and minimum fees.

Of course that doesn't mean we shouldn't raise the limit, but the reason for this is different.

I'm not as sure as you. The spam attack did some serious damage to confirmation times, or on the other hand at the least extorted users to set up a very high fee to get confirmation in some regular time.
Bitcoin is supposed to be cheap and fast solution, but there it was either one or the other, but certainly not both. Something obviously needs to change.

cheers

[NorrisK]

I don't see any major price change happening

Ofcourse not, this has been known for ages and should not suddenly have any impact on the price because TS made a thread about it...

This pending potential fork is not enough to harm bitcoin that much that it would go to 100 USD...

[Jhanzo]

None the less, bitcoin needs to change and solve the possible spam from happening once again.

It's debatable whether Bitcoin really needs to change this way. It's also debatable whether this is an effective solution to spam.

I don't buy the spam argument at all. As I have argued, Bitcoin withstood that attack pretty well, and functioned as intended. The problem was that not every user had proper fee estimation algorithms built into their wallets, so some users have experienced delays. Had they used proper fees, there wouldn't be any problem, apart from slightly higher average and minimum fees.

Of course that doesn't mean we shouldn't raise the limit, but the reason for this is different.

I'm not as sure as you. The spam attack did some serious damage to confirmation times, or on the other hand at the least extorted users to set up a very high fee to get confirmation in some regular time.
Bitcoin is supposed to be cheap and fast solution, but there it was either one or the other, but certainly not both. Something obviously needs to change.

cheers

something sure needs to change but we should also take note of the one who is proposing the change. mike hearn only says what people wanted to hear, not the whole truth.

see my sig.

[ajareselde]

something sure needs to change but we should also take note of the one who is proposing the change. mike hearn only says what people wanted to hear, not the whole truth.

see my sig.

I am aware of the facts, but unlike you i don't care who the speaker is or what his motives are, i only care about progress being made.
You know that old one : "Even a blind chicked finds the corn at times .."  and "i don't have to like someone to agree with him .."

So whats the alternative, just leave bitcoin as it is ?

[mattiadeabtc]

https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1

This very well could be the end of Bitcoin.  In every case, it is insanely serious.  Notably: "The decision process for Bitcoin Core - is broken". 

Price to less than $100 before Wednesday.  Bet me. 

Less than 100?! This would be great for speculators,  if the price will hit 100 i will buy a Lot.
I don t think this would happen

[favdesu]

So whats the alternative, just leave bitcoin as it is ?

no, but bitcoin is fine as is. what I won't do is following 2 rogue devs and their decisions.

[Mickeyb]

You guys are overreacting, big time. This isn't the end of the world. Bitcoin will be fine.

Honestly, Bitcoin will be just fine I agree.

Indeed but bitcoin seems addicted to drama...

Haha you are definitely right there, it's never boring in the Bitcoin world! And this is turning into real soap opera, one with the happy ending I hope though!!

[RoadTrain]

I'm not as sure as you. The spam attack did some serious damage to confirmation times, or on the other hand at the least extorted users to set up a very high fee to get confirmation in some regular time.

Once again: confirmation delays was a wallet problem, not Bitcoin's. The higher fees (not very high, because you could pay anything above the spam fees to get your tx confirmed) were a direct and expected result of the attack.

Bitcoin is supposed to be cheap and fast solution, but there it was either one or the other, but certainly not both. Something obviously needs to change.

Supposed? Who decided that? AFIAK from the whitepaper, Bitcoin is supposed to be a trustless payment system with store of value. You know, even Gavin has argued for the fee market to be developed in order for Bitcoin to work long term. This fee market has been demontrated by this attack.

Some people are arguing that if the block space is not a scarce resource, the fees will approach zero in market conditions (that hasn't happened yet because of client policies of setting fees and not relaying some zero-fees txs -- not a market approach). If fees approach zero, who will pay miners when block reward dwindles?

I know there have been counter-arguments like: the block space is not free for miners even if unlimited -- it has costs related to orphaning probabilities. But then again we have a concept of Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables -- proposed by Gavin and examined by Rusty Russel -- which makes block propagation a constant time process regardless of blocksizes.

These are difficult problems, and I believe they can't be solved by changing some magic constants in code. We'd better discuss how to solve them long term without undermining built-in incentives structure.

So whats the alternative, just leave bitcoin as it is ?

We have at least two alternatives apart from doing nothing - BIP100 and BIP102. We also have a Pieter Wuille's proposal (BIP103 unofficially) and Adam Back's idea of extended blocks.

[PolarPoint]

I am open to both sides of the argument. I cannot agree with all the points Mike made, especially about businesses can speak for users. At least I can see proposals for solutions to the 1M limit. I can't say the same for the Core Devs. When is there proposed solution? When will the sidechains be usable?

[iCEBREAKER]

Running XT at this time is equivalent with running Core.

Equivalent, except for the hostility towards Tor and neutrality toward RBF.

And anything else which was 'accidentally' left out of the README's description of diffs.

[harrymmmm]

Eyes rolled as soon as I saw it's Mike Hearn.  He and Gavin don't care about 'Bitcoin'...  Not really.  They have ulterior motives with this fork.  Be careful and take what he writes with a grain of salt.  

This is quite a longshot, but Satoshi's opinion is really needed about the matter here.

I know exactly what he would say. Something along the lines of 'less politics, more compsci'.

[harrymmmm]

It is crazy shit.  absolutely.

the sad thing is, Hearn is right.  (yeah.... the same Mike Hearn that previously said whitelisting is a good idea... the same Mike Hearn that I said shouldn't be trusted) Sadly, he is making a lot more sense and communicating a lot better than the so called core devs!

I am hopeful the community will do the right thing and move to bigger blocks in time to avert bandwidth issues.

And I think Hearn is right: the "core devs" are being stubborn and selfish and want to do things their own way.  They may be motivated as much by intellectual righteousness as by greed.  Regardless, they have failed to articulate their positions to the community (as far as I have seen) and so as much as I've had a bias against Hearn, he's the good guy right now.

Good point. You're correct that Hearn is superior at communicating. The Core Devs are not clearly articulating their positions. At all.

I am indeed in the anti-Hearn camp, yet neither can I ally myself with the stumbling selfishness of the Core Devs.

What's disheartening is that this should be a nonissue, as most everyone supports larger blocks.

Agreed

What irks me most is that simple, almost insignificant compromises would just make all this go away.
For example, if bip103's start date was move back a year to 2016/1/1, that would add 17% or so blocksize extra during 2016.
And I bet everyone would be happy!

[gentlemand]

Agreed

What irks me most is that simple, almost insignificant compromises would just make all this go away.
For example, if bip103's start date was move back a year to 2016/1/1, that would add 17% or so blocksize extra during 2016.
And I bet everyone would be happy!

Nah. There'd be screams of can kicking. But any action is better than no action.

[harrymmmm]

None the less, bitcoin needs to change and solve the possible spam from happening once again.

It's debatable whether Bitcoin really needs to change this way. It's also debatable whether this is an effective solution to spam.

I don't buy the spam argument at all. As I have argued, Bitcoin withstood that attack pretty well, and functioned as intended. The problem was that not every user had proper fee estimation algorithms built into their wallets, so some users have experienced delays. Had they used proper fees, there wouldn't be any problem, apart from slightly higher average and minimum fees.

Of course that doesn't mean we shouldn't raise the limit, but the reason for this is different.

I'm not as sure as you. The spam attack did some serious damage to confirmation times, or on the other hand at the least extorted users to set up a very high fee to get confirmation in some regular time.
Bitcoin is supposed to be cheap and fast solution, but there it was either one or the other, but certainly not both. Something obviously needs to change.

cheers

The highest fee that anyone needed to pay for a fast (simple) transaction was something like 0.5 millies (15 cents?). Not exactly expensive.

[harrymmmm]

Agreed

What irks me most is that simple, almost insignificant compromises would just make all this go away.
For example, if bip103's start date was move back a year to 2016/1/1, that would add 17% or so blocksize extra during 2016.
And I bet everyone would be happy!

Nah. There'd be screams of can kicking. But any action is better than no action.

Sure. At this point there's no avoiding a fork without a quick can kick I think.
That compromise would satisfy me, at least.
You can tell yourself that something is happening with the block size limit, at least. And it agrees with the core devs ... except that extra 17% increae thru 2016.
It just sounds like the kind of almost insignificant compromise that might bring people back together if they can get out of the corners they've painted themselves into.