Bitcoin XT - Officially #REKT (also goes for BIP101 fraud)

[Zarathustra]

Big market (makers?!) here..

Is that really the same cypherdoc that accused me of not understanding the network effect?

it's called Metcalfe's Law.  "value" of the network is squared by every new user.  iCE would rather keep it strangled down to him and his Myrcea buddies.

I wonder how the network value of that 6-member circlejerk forum compares to BitcoinTalk (544282 Members) and /r/bitcoin (173,242)?  

In fairness to frap.doc, that place is still better than Ver's shitty bitcom.com.  

A notorious liar. More than 200.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg12619823#msg12619823

Ah, you deleted your promise to disappear. Hard life when someone fights a fight against himself.

[muyuu]

Big market (makers?!) here..

Is that really the same cypherdoc that accused me of not understanding the network effect?

it's called Metcalfe's Law.  "value" of the network is squared by every new user.  iCE would rather keep it strangled down to him and his Myrcea buddies.

I wonder how the network value of that 6-member circlejerk forum compares to BitcoinTalk (544282 Members) and /r/bitcoin (173,242)?  

In fairness to frap.doc, that place is still better than Ver's shitty bitcom.com.  

A notorious liar. More than 200.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg12619823#msg12619823

[Velkro]

At first i liked XT, but too many undocumented changes happened there.
BIP101 is also bad :/, won't use it.

[RoadTrain]

Pools are masters, and miners are slaves. Yes, miners can change their masters, but they can't get free. In the end, the pools that give the most (more income due to natural reasons) will attract most miners.

Just imagine an extreme situation with ~8Gb (read: very large) blocks. In this case, apparently the most effective configuration would be 1 single pool, or a couple pools located in the same data-center. And you miners wouldn't be able to do anything with this centralization.

Hogwash.  Anyone with sufficient capital can afford to solo mine, even today.  For a few thousand dollar investment one can purchase miners that will score a block in under two years, on the average.  The risk involved is that this won't happen and one will lose their investment, but if they are not poor and living in their parent's basement this will not be much of a problem.  Other people may even consider this situation beneficial, if they consider it a form of gambling.  

As to the single data center idea.  I suggest you do the math.  There are two costs here, the node cost and the orphan cost. To get the total node cost, calculate the cost of running a single node and multiply it by the number of pools.  The node costs consist of storage cost, processing cost, and bandwidth cost.  These all relate to the number of transactions the network processes, so you can calculate a node cost per transaction.  (You can look at prices quoted by Amazon AWS, etc.)  Now multiply this cost by the number of pools.  I think you will find that there can be quite a large number of nodes that can easily be supported by existing transaction fees, far more than the number of pools of significance today.

The orphan cost can also be estimated, but it depends on the protocol design and network topology between the pools.  The question of one data center vs. multiple data centers comes down to the speed of propagation. The speed of light can not be avoided, but the block size need not affect the results significantly provided an efficient protocol is used.  There is no need to "store, verify and then forward" blocks, but even if this is done the orphan rate will still be low with 4 GB blocks if the data centers are connected by 10 Gbps pipes and the number of hops is kept low.  Much better designs are possible, as would be known to any networking expert or even bittorrent user.

I do not expect to convince any small blocker, which is why I am not putting out any numbers (a.k.a. targets). Rather, I hope that some fence sitters might do their own calculations and reach their own conclusions.  My conclusion is that some work is needed before there can be a large increase in network transaction capacity, but this mostly involves improvements in the bitcoin network protocols and in the processing efficiency of the network hardware.

I don't know if you read the context of my message. I have read all your replies to me, and you didn't say anything I hadn't thought about before. You dig into technical details, but that doesn't challenge my original claim. I don't think I can add anything here because I'm not the one willing to do the math (my claim is orthogonal to actual numbers).

[coalitionfor8mb]

There's too much conspiratorial accusations on both sides here. I'm not inclined to think Peter R wants to "kill Bitcoin." But I'm also not inclined to think BlockStream is trying to "block the stream of transactions," so it's hard for me to get too upset about people accusing Peter R of trying to "kill Bitcoin."

But Peter R, I can't imagine why you thought this animated gif was a good idea. I know it's supposed to depict a "possible future" that you want to help bring about, but someone not following the issue could easily think that XT has grown to be competitive with Core, which isn't true at all. And the fact that you keep reposting it in various venues is -- well, it makes me wonder what you think you're accomplishing. And calling it a "Nash Equilibrium"? Why? Is there some mathematics supporting the gif?

Someone against XT could  make a similar gif depicting a "Tyson Equilibrium" that would show XT growing to about 10% with Core being close to 90% and then the Core part of the pie chart could grow fists and beat the XT part silly until it bleeds and cries and gets overtaken. This wouldn't prove anything, but it would be funny and arguably a more accurate representation of the current situation.

But I have to say, as someone who's relieved that XT hasn't gained traction, those of us against XT could be a bit more gracious. Maybe Peter R's gif is just an indication that he's in the denial stage. People dancing on XT's grave probably isn't helping.

Are you sure that Peter Rizun is just incapable of thinking rationally? You're alluding to the implausibility of that notion when you concede that you cannot understand Peter's motivation for using misleading graphics or fantasy mathematics.

This thread moves too fast for people like me.

My impression is that Peter R is approaching this like a political campaign of sorts. He develops some talking points and then repeats them over and over. He tends to write a paragraph supporting the current talking point (and in the latest case a gif) and then cuts and pastes that paragraph into responses on different forums. The responses may have some other texts before and/or after the cut and paste. Obviously it's difficult to have a dialogue when one party is approaching the conversation this way. It's possible he wants to be a politician and this is him practicing in a small community.

I mentioned Peter R being in the "denial stage" as an offhand comment. Now that I've looked it up the stages of grief it might fit what we're seeing from XT supporters. In this thread, along with many others, there's been no shortage of "anger." The new "goal" of just wanting there to be competing implementations seems to fit the "bargaining" stage.

After seeing Peter R's animated gif (where XT temporarily gets ahead of Core) I must admit that his P.R. skills have definitely Rizun, something that Mike couldn't have possibly Hearn, but don't worry we will get through this, now that Adam is Back!

This thread reminds me of the Monty Python's Flying Circus Argument Clinic, where we have gone through "a whole lot of abuse", "lengthy arguments with contradictions", "plenty of complaints", "beating over the head lessons" and subsequent "moderating and censorship". Flying Circus it is!



Hope everyone enjoyed the ride!

[muyuu]

There's a new piece of LULz titled "bigger blocks = higher prices", I shit you not. Guess who made it.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Bigger Blocks = Higher Prices: Visualizing the 92% historical correlation

[muyuu]

[QuestionAuthority]

That is hilarious!

I always knew that Nicolas Cage was a piece of shit. lol

[brg444]

There's a new piece of LULz titled "bigger blocks = higher prices", I shit you not. Guess who made it.

I do believe this is a new low for him.

[hdbuck]

There's a new piece of LULz titled "bigger blocks = higher prices", I shit you not. Guess who made it.

I do believe this is a new low for him.

ayy lmao at that correlation with nicolas cage! #ReKT

[muyuu]

https://archive.is/YkBkd#selection-2485.0-2505.77

This man is a physicist. I don't even.

[knight22]

Higher prices generates higher transaction volumes which generates bigger blocks.

It can hardly be more obvious IMO. 

[brg444]

Higher prices generates higher transaction volumes which generates bigger blocks.

It can hardly be more obvious IMO. 

Here, for you noob :

"Higher transactions fees = Bigger market cap"


https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&timespan=2year&scale=1&address=

https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd?showDataPoints=false&show_header=true&daysAverageString=1&timespan=2year&scale=1&address=

[sidhujag]

Higher prices generates higher transaction volumes which generates bigger blocks.

It can hardly be more obvious IMO. 

Bigger marketcap = acceptance = willing to wait for tx
Bigger marketcap = higher fees = willing to pay to reduce wait

[knight22]

Higher prices generates higher transaction volumes which generates bigger blocks.

It can hardly be more obvious IMO.  

Bigger marketcap = acceptance = willing to wait for tx
Bigger marketcap = higher fees = willing to pay to reduce wait

This is true only if bitcoin remains competitive in terms of fees and delays. At some point, if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive, people will just switch to other cheaper and faster systems so it will lose market shares. 

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-dynamics.asp

[RoadTrain]

92% correlation? Well, if you count from 2009, then maybe. I'd be interested if Peter did this calculation over the last 2 years:
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=2year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?timespan=2year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Because counting from the beginning can only produce good propaganda, it seems it's what Peter is trying to do.

[sidhujag]

Higher prices generates higher transaction volumes which generates bigger blocks.

It can hardly be more obvious IMO.  

Bigger marketcap = acceptance = willing to wait for tx
Bigger marketcap = higher fees = willing to pay to reduce wait

This is true only if bitcoin remains competitive in terms of fees and delays. At some point, if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive, people will just switch to other cheaper and faster systems so it will lose market shares. 

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-dynamics.asp

You havent factored in intangibles in dynamics like technology improvements and development prowess.
would a competitor be just as secure and decentralized? If so then maybe, but again you cant predict a future point on a exponential curve with unknown variables.

#commonsense

[knight22]

Higher prices generates higher transaction volumes which generates bigger blocks.

It can hardly be more obvious IMO.  

Bigger marketcap = acceptance = willing to wait for tx
Bigger marketcap = higher fees = willing to pay to reduce wait

This is true only if bitcoin remains competitive in terms of fees and delays. At some point, if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive, people will just switch to other cheaper and faster systems so it will lose market shares. 

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-dynamics.asp

You havent factored in intangibles in dynamics like technology improvements and development prowess.
would a competitor be just as secure and decentralized? If so then maybe, but again you cant predict a future point on a exponential curve with unknown variables.

#commonsense

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created. 

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

[RoadTrain]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.