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

[hdbuck]

[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.

But most big mining pools are already publicly known and subject to regulations. No?  Secondly, if mining pools are being regulated in a jurisdiction what stop them to move to an unregulated one? Moreover, what stop  miners to move from a regulated pool to an unregulated one? Trying to regulate miners is only a fools game IMO.

The mining pool does not know the location of the miner if the miner is anonymous. Regulating miners is an end game prospect for gov't to try to put a cap on bitcoin if it grows too big or they feel really threatened by it. Thus it needs to be avoided at all cost for survival.

I agree but miners that mine on a pool are not affected by larger blocks if I am not mistaken so they can stay anonymous fairly easily. On the other hand, how can bitcoin become so big that it threatens governments with artificial limitations that makes it uncompetitive (if we consider that blocks are being full and fees/delays rise a lot)?

That assumption is incorrect. Bigger blocks cause larger delays which remove the ability to remain hidden to be profitable. (assuming price will always lag difficulty which is a good assumption as it is worse case and realistic).

If people stop trusting government they will put their money in somewhere the government cannot control which will frustrate them because they want control to try to plan ahead. If government isn't using bitcoin themselves yet, they will try to shut it down so they can retain control of society. A corrupt politician can try to do the same thing also as another angle of attack, to persuade people to vote by saying he will reduce fees (by regulating miners).

I'm not saying fees can't rise to be unrealistic and cause uproar because people don't value security as much as they are paying.. however innovation will help fight this problem (live to fight another day).

Care to elaborate on that? Miners does not only provide hash power to mining pools? How does big blocks influence them exactly (miners, not the pools)?

Since pools share headers the miners in on the deal will benefit, the rest will fall off due to profit margins dropping. With larger blocks, more pools will have to resort to things like this to ensure margins are adequate to keep mining. This is because propagation is already too slow and will be exasperated by bigger blocks.

As these security margins tighten because of the inability to use things like Tor for miners we will have a higher barrier of entry for new pools to start up because of ever decreasing profit margins, creating mining monopolies and centralization.

Again this is assuming worse cased and realistic scenario's of price lagging difficulty which is the one we are in now.

Regulation comes into play when centralization is sufficient enough and non-anonymous to have an attack on miners to force them to conform to policies that break centralization and essentially take us back to the rules we have today except with benefits of p2p. If people are OK with that, might as well use paypal as they process transactions immediately and conform to laws, must conform to policy changes and any other corruption schemes proposed by the regime it is legislated under. The problem is humans think short-term and selfishly, so they make changes without thinking of long term consequences (they cannot think that may steps ahead and no computing model can tell them as it is speculative and subjective) and thus bitcoin is needed to eliminate the human factor of changing economic landscapes by a centralized decision making process. If everyone is on the same page, we can know what to expect. If bitcoin classifies as Ideal Money as John Nash writes about here http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~babu/nash/money.pdf, then chances are that society itself is better off to adopt and use this currency rather than ones that are susceptible to corruption. The problem is it falls below so many of the bottom lines of powerful individuals that they will try to fight to protect their wealth by way of pressuring for regulation. That would be stage 3/4.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Mahatma Gandhi

[sgbett]

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...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

You say drain, I say motivate. *poof* A BIP100 appears!

History is always revised according the viewpoint of the person recounting it. In those tricky cases where its recorded in black and white, it can be dismissed as an appeal to authority.

[brg444]

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...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

You say drain, I say motivate. *poof* A BIP100 appears!

History is always revised according the viewpoint of the person recounting it. In those tricky cases where its recorded in black and white, it can be dismissed as an appeal to authority.

Thank you, BIP100 is a great example of totally wasted efforts and focus. It never had any chance of being adopted and is nothing more than a distraction.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

COME ON PEOPLE we got centralized servers servicing US with illegal live streams of GB movies

Great British?

Grinning Beaver?

Gina Bellman?

Gerald Bunsen?

Where do I find these movies?  Will I have to register with the police after watching them?

[hdbuck]

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...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

You say drain, I say motivate. *poof* A BIP100 appears!

History is always revised according the viewpoint of the person recounting it. In those tricky cases where its recorded in black and white, it can be dismissed as an appeal to authority.

Thank you, BIP100 is a great example of totally wasted efforts and focus. It never had any chance of being adopted and is nothing more than a distraction.

so it goes with the rest of the blockbips frauds.

Bitcoin rulez, it is the most powerful ever network in the wild run and out of the reach of TPTB and its pseudo chief scientist googler propagandists.

Bring on the halving b!tchez! this is so bullish!

[sgbett]

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...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

You say drain, I say motivate. *poof* A BIP100 appears!

History is always revised according the viewpoint of the person recounting it. In those tricky cases where its recorded in black and white, it can be dismissed as an appeal to authority.

Thank you, BIP100 is a great example of totally wasted efforts and focus. It never had any chance of being adopted and is nothing more than a distraction.

*poof* as if by magic another BIP appears!

http://coinjournal.net/a-new-block-size-increase-bip-is-planned-for-the-rough-consensus-from-montreal/#

all this "wasted effort" *rolls eyes* I wonder if both sides will claim 'victory'.

[Zarathustra]

I barely have the heart to tell Zarasstua I intentionally used Cunningham's Law to get him to provide the actual lulzy figure, so we could proceed to make fun of it!

Compare the discussions of the 200+ there ...

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-56#post-2078

... with the childish behavior of the small blockers here in this thread. You can't have the same level in a discussion if a thread is full of 'censorship cheerleaders', 'consensus communists', 'childish picture and meme posters', 'competition haters', 'faked nodes  and DDoS enthusiasts', vulgar poets and alikes. That this minority will get big blocks next year and beeing forked off the game if they'll be stupid enough to clamp on funny small block implementations, should be crystal clear. Shouln'd it?

[bambou]

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...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

You say drain, I say motivate. *poof* A BIP100 appears!

History is always revised according the viewpoint of the person recounting it. In those tricky cases where its recorded in black and white, it can be dismissed as an appeal to authority.

Thank you, BIP100 is a great example of totally wasted efforts and focus. It never had any chance of being adopted and is nothing more than a distraction.

*poof* as if by magic another BIP appears!

http://coinjournal.net/a-new-block-size-increase-bip-is-planned-for-the-rough-consensus-from-montreal/#

all this "wasted effort" *rolls eyes* I wonder if both sides will claim 'victory'.

Just keeping you wackos busy. #windmilldemocracy #2weeks months years...

[Zarathustra]

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.

And U2? Experts for the most stupid analogies?

"Bigger blocks = higher prices (92% correlation)" is true a statement.

It doesn't mean that higher prices cause bigger blocks or that bigger blocks cause higher prices. It just means that the two quantities have been highly correlated with each other. A percentage increase in the average size of the block has equated with an increase in the price of a bitcoin with a strength of 92%.

(BTW: I actually do think that a higher block size limit would cause higher prices, but that is my opinion.)

[hdbuck]

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.

And U2? Experts for the most stupid analogies?

"Bigger blocks = higher prices (92% correlation)" is true a statement.

It doesn't mean that higher prices cause bigger blocks or that bigger blocks cause higher prices. It just means that the two quantities have been highly correlated with each other. A percentage increase in the average size of the block has equated with an increase in the price of a bitcoin with a strength of 92%.

(BTW: I actually do think that a higher block size limit would cause higher prices, but that is my opinion.)

[Zarathustra]

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...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

You say drain, I say motivate. *poof* A BIP100 appears!

History is always revised according the viewpoint of the person recounting it. In those tricky cases where its recorded in black and white, it can be dismissed as an appeal to authority.

Thank you, BIP100 is a great example of totally wasted efforts and focus. It never had any chance of being adopted and is nothing more than a distraction.

*poof* as if by magic another BIP appears!

http://coinjournal.net/a-new-block-size-increase-bip-is-planned-for-the-rough-consensus-from-montreal/#

all this "wasted effort" *rolls eyes* I wonder if both sides will claim 'victory'.

Yes. The idols of the small blockers will be forced to present a big block implementation and then the same small blockers will claim victory because they'll have their 'own' big block implementation, presented by their idols. That's how religion works.

[muyuu]

Those against BIP101 20-year fixed plan pulled out of Gavin's arse and Hearn's XT trojaned code that didn't make the cut in Core but he will try to push it anyway with the excuse of bigger blocks, they are not a uniform group and they only need XT to fail to claim victory.

It's really not that hard to grasp.

As for a 92% correlation strength with Bitcoin price, that's extremely unremarkable when most of it happened at near 0, and it has been completely uncorrelated elsewhere. Google searches for Layla Monroe have a higher correlation than that, simply by virtue of breaking up at roughly the same time.

This previous post lets you see how little real correlation there is:

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

The block limit is a temporary measure until some other mechanism to keep block spam and block size under control is put in place. While fees are ridiculously cheap and transactions are being included strongly under cost, we have a basic tragedy of the commons scenario. Some mechanism needs to make the bulk of the included transactions justify themselves before we remove it.

[Zarathustra]

Those against BIP101 20-year fixed plan pulled out of Gavin's arse and Hearn's XT trojaned code

.... we have a basic tragedy of the commons scenario.

C'mon! Your 'language' is the tragedy of the commons. A common can't have consensus with people using such language.
They are determined to fork.

[muyuu]

Those against BIP101 20-year fixed plan pulled out of Gavin's arse and Hearn's XT trojaned code

.... we have a basic tragedy of the commons scenario.

C'mon! Your 'language' is the tragedy of the commons. A common can't have consensus with people using such language.
They are determined to fork.

The tragedy of the commons is selfish interest clashing with the common interest (talking about tx inclusion).

As for Hearndresen forking forcibly in mining minority with checkpoints, I can't wait. Bring it on.

BTW: back down to 3/1000.

[Zarathustra]

Those against BIP101 20-year fixed plan pulled out of Gavin's arse and Hearn's XT trojaned code

.... we have a basic tragedy of the commons scenario.

C'mon! Your 'language' is the tragedy of the commons. A common can't have consensus with people using such language.
They are determined to fork.

The tragedy of the commons is selfish interest clashing with the common interest (talking about tx inclusion).

As for Hearndresen forking forcibly in mining minority with checkpoints, I can't wait. Bring it on.

BTW: back down to 3/1000.

Hearndresen triggered an inflation in discussions about how to raise the limit. Which is good, because it will lead to raise that limit. Can't wait to see small blockers claiming victory when their idols are forced to implement big blocks.

[brg444]

I barely have the heart to tell Zarasstua I intentionally used Cunningham's Law to get him to provide the actual lulzy figure, so we could proceed to make fun of it!

Compare the discussions of the 200+ there ...

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-56#post-2078

... with the childish behavior of the small blockers here in this thread. You can't have the same level in a discussion if a thread is full of 'censorship cheerleaders', 'consensus communists', 'childish picture and meme posters', 'competition haters', 'faked nodes  and DDoS enthusiasts', vulgar poets and alikes. That this minority will get big blocks next year and beeing forked off the game if they'll be stupid enough to clamp on funny small block implementations, should be crystal clear. Shouln'd it?

 

Hopefully 1.1 MB, if that, is "big" enough for you

[coalitionfor8mb]

I barely have the heart to tell Zarasstua I intentionally used Cunningham's Law to get him to provide the actual lulzy figure, so we could proceed to make fun of it!

Compare the discussions of the 200+ there ...

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-56#post-2078

... with the childish behavior of the small blockers here in this thread. You can't have the same level in a discussion if a thread is full of 'censorship cheerleaders', 'consensus communists', 'childish picture and meme posters', 'competition haters', 'faked nodes  and DDoS enthusiasts', vulgar poets and alikes. That this minority will get big blocks next year and beeing forked off the game if they'll be stupid enough to clamp on funny small block implementations, should be crystal clear. Shouln'd it?

That's the difference between lifeless simulated "spherical cow" reality and the real world!

We are (Space)Block-1(MB) and We Brake For Nobody!


While little people went shopping elsewhere, The Core remains strong and the rest is just Solar Wind.

[VeritasSapere]

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)

Actually bigger blocks do not effect miners ability to be anonymous whatsoever. It does effect the pools ability to be anonymous. However today there are no anonymous pools and I do not think this should be a necessary requirement for a sufficient degree of decentralization, since pools can be setup anywhere in the world and I do not think that the powers that be will be able to bring consistent regulation to bear in every jurisdiction in the world, which is what would be required to successfully censor or suppress Bitcoin under this model. It is important to make the distinction between mining centralization and pool centralization since they are in reality very different phenomena and we would be making a mistake to equate these two issues.

[brg444]

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)

Actually bigger blocks do not effect miners ability to be anonymous whatsoever. It does effect the pools ability to be anonymous. However today there are no anonymous pools and I do not think this should be a necessary requirement for a sufficient degree of decentralization, since pools can be setup anywhere in the world and I do not think that the powers that be will be able to bring consistent regulation to bear in every jurisdiction in the world, which is what would be required to successfully censor or suppress Bitcoin under this model. It is important to make the distinction between mining centralization and pool centralization since they are in reality very different phenomena and we would be making a mistake to equate these two issues.

Look, we're a bit tired of reading what "you think". Especially considering it's mostly wrong and completely disconnected from reality. Please go away. Thank you