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

[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

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.

If bitcoin is the only solution out there you can't compare it to todays centralized solutions. There is a premium on using a decentralized system, even though it is a discount currently.

What would the competition be? What does competitive mean to you? What is the cost of security in tomorrows world where trust of government finally starts to fall? These are the things you need to consider when trying to understand this concept.

The problem with creating such an alternative is that without an upgrade in innovation (one which we have yet to see, although I'd argue DPOS might be one tentatively) that there would need to be a tradeoff between security and performance/lower fees which aligns more with the needs for society at the time. If such a thing becomes accepted, bitcoin would be able to adapt itself however at that point I would agree that bitcoin could be challenged.

Also what are the chances that a fork community can come up with this innovation before bitcoin does? Perhaps bitcoin has a harder problem with software development consensus because it is the top dog and harder to change code unless they are soft-forks while competitors don't have this roadblock to deal with, but this is discounted by the fact that the community of bitcoin is so much larger. The ability for the larger community to solve problems in a way that benefits the larger audience may be a pro rather than a con... a trustless voting mechanism might help with this roadblock.

[iCEBREAKER]

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

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

Laughed so hard I almost puked coffee.  Eyes excreting liquid mirth.

[sidhujag]

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.

I've always said that a valid fork would be one where average joe would understand the need to use, no other fork currently does that unless it provides value add in other ways, other than send/recv coins. Perhaps with all of the 2.0 coins some may provide sufficient value add that average joes start to believe that they are decentralized enough to replace bitcoin's transfer mechanism to this new technology. Although we still haven't counted for the stronger development power that bitcoin possesses, it may cause bitcoin to adapt and change for the better (whatever limited chance of that happening is). Today average joe's don't understand bitcoin and thus have no chance in trying to switch to a fork without even trying the base.

[knight22]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

[iCEBREAKER]

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?

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.

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.

Yes, the "bargaining stage" framework is a great fit for explaining the current actions of some notable remaining Gavinista dead-enders.

It's the classic "well at least XT died accomplishing its mission of [Noble Cause]."

The stages of grief also explain the contradictory narratives we observe Team XT promulgating.

Those still in the denial stage put out the spin doctor "XT isn't dead; it's waiting in the wings.  Wait until December, then you'll see!" fantasy.  Zarassthua and Benighted22 are stuck in this initial stage.

PR, sgbett, Frap.doc, and Hearn@signint.google.mil have moved on to the bargaining stage, wherein XT died as a sacrificial egg to make the #ScalingBitcoin omelet.

You say us grave dancers could "be a bit more gracious" but your mercilessly spot-on 'grieving stages' analysis twists the knife in their bellies more cruelly than our lighthearted clowning ever could.

Nice job!   

[sidhujag]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

[sgbett]

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?

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.

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.

Yes, the "bargaining stage" framework is a great fit for explaining the current actions of some notable remaining Gavinista dead-enders.

It's the classic "well at least XT died accomplishing its mission of [Noble Cause]."

The stages of grief also explain the contradictory narratives we observe Team XT promulgating.

Those still in the denial stage put out the spin doctor "XT isn't dead; it's waiting in the wings.  Wait until December, then you'll see!" fantasy.  Zarassthua and Benighted22 are stuck in this initial stage.

PR, sgbett, Frap.doc, and Hearn@signint.google.mil have moved on to the bargaining stage, wherein XT died as a sacrificial egg to make the #ScalingBitcoin omelet.

You say us grave dancers could "be a bit more gracious" but your mercilessly spot-on 'grieving stages' analysis twists the knife in their bellies more cruelly than our lighthearted clowning ever could.

Nice job!   

How dare you!? I am most certainly in the "just you wait until december" camp, my xt-nodes blazing as a futile show of dissent!

[knight22]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

[adamstgBit]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

what level of decentralization opens the door to "miner regulation"...
I wouldn't be surprised to hear LTC mining is more decentralized then Bitcoin's, and node count roughtly the same.

you people place way to much value on these aspects, there's a point of diminishing returns when it comes to decentralization, and the network seems to naturally run at a optimal level all by itself. think about it, if you heard bitcoin only had 300 full nodes running, and this was dangerous would you not fire up a node? if you hear bitcoin had 10K full nodes running  and this was sufficient, would you be as inclined to run a full node???

it might even be that a extreme level of decentralization could be detrimental,  upgrading the system as a whole becomes harder and longer, TX's might take longer to fully propagate, whatever.

the balance between efficiency Vs decentralization, is unclear, but it is certainly not a case in which every single user runs a full node, just like its not a case in which every single user trusts one central point.

[muyuu]

If they're not careful at Ledger, this guy is going to single-handedly destroy their reputation with his political rants. I can see him using that platform as well for his nonsense, the guy is relentless.

[sidhujag]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem. Thus there really is no tradeoff between performance/security. It must remain fully secure and you must innovate to make it perform.

[muyuu]

If they're not careful at Ledger, this guy is going to single-handedly destroy their reputation with his political rants. I can see him using that platform as well for his nonsense, the guy is relentless.

As I said, relentless. There he goes with another "correlation" post.

[iCEBREAKER]

How dare you!? I am most certainly in the "just you wait until december" camp, my xt-nodes blazing as a futile show of dissent!

Alright, fair enough.  You are in a (supremely nutty) third camp, which believes both 'XT died for our 1MB sins' and 'XT will return for the Gavinista rapture.'

Alas, if only you could understand the superlinear relationship between tx size and verification time, we could put this civil war behind us.

Unless you are determined to destroy Bitcoin's decentralization-cum-survivability, and thus subvert the engineering requirement that it be above the law...

[RoadTrain]

The 92% correlation is remarkable! Thanks Peter for noticing that!
https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/historical/1w-p-blksize_per_tot-01071

[knight22]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

[brg444]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

How many time does it need to be repeated that the number of node is irrelevant, it's about the cost of running one.

[sidhujag]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can convert to SPV with no affect on the network assuming SPV clients are talking to full-nodes.

[knight22]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners already rely on mining pools?

[sidhujag]

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.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners rely on mining pools.

block propagation delays with bigger blocks causing miners to tend towards using networks that offer no anonymity because Tor et all increase latency. That's just one thing it does. It also increases pool to pool header synchronization (centralization) to get a head start on mining next block. The first point is stronger because if miners can't remain anon then it can be subject to a regulation attack. (not to be confused with anonymous coin transfers)

This is why I say that the time to increase blocks will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days, as it will give ample time to solve the anon problem.

[iCEBREAKER]

Everybody out there is talking about the ideas of Peter R.
Nobody is talking about the ideas of the brg and that mod.
Which is no surprise.

Everybody out there is laughing about the 'spherical blockchain' ideas of Peter R.

Which is no surprise.

Of course, that's why they are forced to censor him. Poor core devs and mods.

And you still insist on conflating moderation with censorship.  What an insult to actual victims of censorship.  Why not claim theymos is raping Peter R as well?

Your argument sucks, so you have to redefine and trivialize powerful words to make them do the advocacy work for you.  That's why XT's vaunted Streisand Effect failed to achieve much of anything.

Moderating only controls time/place/behavior.  Censorship attempts to control ideas.  Learn to tell the difference, please!

Everybody knows how censorship is defined correctly:

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3nq0bk/antonopoulos_gives_his_opinion_of_rbitcoin_at_5540/

First, private forums like BTCT and /r/ have every right to set AND ENFORCE their own rules.  Doing so is moderation, not suppression/censorship.

Second, Theymos does not qualify to be counted amoung "governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions."  He's just some dude with a BBS, not the fucking military dictatorship of Burma.  

Why not just use the proper term "moderation?"

Why be such a screeching drama queen?  Do you think such histrionic exaggeration makes your arguments more persuasive?  It doesn't, sorry...

Every time you say "censorship" what I hear is "I need to take cheap shots and use Godwin-by-proxy because my argument sucks."