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

[johnyj]

It's possible gmaxwell has had enough abuse. Apparently he gave up commit access to the bitcoin github. I saw his last post was in this thread a few days ago.

I've found the abuse the Core devs and BlockStream to terrible. I wouldn't blame any of them for choosing to walk away. On certain (unimportant) forums there's some celebration of the idea that gmaxwell may be walking away. Reading it, I have to say that I would walk away from a community with so many evil people. Frankly, I don't want to be in a "community" with people like that either. If there were a way to boot all of them out and keep gmaxwell, I'd prefer that. If they'd just fork off and leave the rest of us with Bitcoin, things would probably be fine (after a shaking out period). Instead they seem intent on "occupying" Bitcoin.

I'm sure gmaxwell knows he has a lot of supporters in the Bitcoin community. That wouldn't change if he decided to leave. I think most people would understand.

This is very bad, bitcoin is created to prevent such kind of political disasters but unfortunately because core devs holds too much political power in deciding bitcoin's direction, the same thing happened exactly as a political fight in large enterprises: A faction with enough political expertise can use very ugly skill to make their opponents give up. In fact these core devs are the biggest target that can be compromised and the single point of failure of bitcoin, we should limit as much as possible the power from them but curretly there is no mechanism

Now only Wladimir is holding ground, he will be the next target to be compromised. I think the worst case scenario is that no consensus at all will be reached among core devs and bitcoin keeps as it is today forever, all the scaling solutions goes to offchain but that does not really matter for most of the IT illiterate people

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

It's possible gmaxwell has had enough abuse. Apparently he gave up commit access to the bitcoin github. I saw his last post was in this thread a few days ago.

I've found the abuse the Core devs and BlockStream to terrible. I wouldn't blame any of them for choosing to walk away. On certain (unimportant) forums there's some celebration of the idea that gmaxwell may be walking away. Reading it, I have to say that I would walk away from a community with so many evil people. Frankly, I don't want to be in a "community" with people like that either. If there were a way to boot all of them out and keep gmaxwell, I'd prefer that. If they'd just fork off and leave the rest of us with Bitcoin, things would probably be fine (after a shaking out period). Instead they seem intent on "occupying" Bitcoin.

I'm sure gmaxwell knows he has a lot of supporters in the Bitcoin community. That wouldn't change if he decided to leave. I think most people would understand.

This is very bad, bitcoin is created to prevent such kind of political disasters but unfortunately because core devs holds too much political power in deciding bitcoin's direction, the same thing happened exactly as a political fight in large enterprises: A faction with enough political expertise can use very ugly skill to make their opponents give up. In fact these core devs are the biggest target that can be compromised and the single point of failure of bitcoin, we should limit as much as possible the power from them but curretly there is no mechanism

Who could have thought the governance of an open-source protocol would be so political...

[johnyj]

Who could have thought the governance of an open-source protocol would be so political...

Because it's money, people will lose their mind and become animals when money is involved 

[VeritasSapere]

It's possible gmaxwell has had enough abuse. Apparently he gave up commit access to the bitcoin github. I saw his last post was in this thread a few days ago.

I've found the abuse the Core devs and BlockStream to terrible. I wouldn't blame any of them for choosing to walk away. On certain (unimportant) forums there's some celebration of the idea that gmaxwell may be walking away. Reading it, I have to say that I would walk away from a community with so many evil people. Frankly, I don't want to be in a "community" with people like that either. If there were a way to boot all of them out and keep gmaxwell, I'd prefer that. If they'd just fork off and leave the rest of us with Bitcoin, things would probably be fine (after a shaking out period). Instead they seem intent on "occupying" Bitcoin.

I'm sure gmaxwell knows he has a lot of supporters in the Bitcoin community. That wouldn't change if he decided to leave. I think most people would understand.

This is very bad, bitcoin is created to prevent such kind of political disasters but unfortunately because core devs holds too much political power in deciding bitcoin's direction, the same thing happened exactly as a political fight in large enterprises: A faction with enough political expertise can use very ugly skill to make their opponents give up. In fact these core devs are the biggest target that can be compromised and the single point of failure of bitcoin, we should limit as much as possible the power from them but curretly there is no mechanism

Now only Wladimir is holding ground, he will be the next target to be compromised. I think the worst case scenario is that no consensus at all will be reached among core devs and bitcoin keeps as it is today forever, all the scaling solutions goes to offchain but that does not really matter for most of the IT illiterate people

There is a mechanism in place to limit the power of developers, the governance mechanism of Bitcoin allows for this by having multiple alternative implementations and the ability to hard fork. We are now going through the process of developing the understanding and ecosystem to further allow this. I believe this is a necessary part of the evolution and growth of the protocol as a whole.

[VeritasSapere]

Who could have thought the governance of an open-source protocol would be so political...

Because it's money, people will lose their mind and become animals when money is involved  

People are political animals. Money is power, and Bitcoin changes the fundamental nature of money.

Man is by nature a political animal.

[johnyj]

Who could have thought the governance of an open-source protocol would be so political...

Because it's money, people will lose their mind and become animals when money is involved  

People are political animals. Money is power, and Bitcoin changes the fundamental nature of money.

Man is by nature a political animal.

The centralization of the knowledge is the problem here, if everyone could easily understand what is going on then there will be no problem, so it is extremely important to keep the solution easy to understand for majority of users, e.g. decentralize the knowledge. And from this point of view, 2MB block is the most viable solution that can be understood by majority of users

[marcus_of_augustus]

Who could have thought the governance of an open-source protocol would be so political...

Because it's money, people will lose their mind and become animals when money is involved  

People are political animals. Money is power, and Bitcoin changes the fundamental nature of money.

Man is by nature a political animal.

The centralization of the knowledge is the problem here, if everyone could easily understand what is going on then there will be no problem, so it is extremely important to keep the solution easy to understand for majority of users, e.g. decentralize the knowledge. And from this point of view, 2MB block is the most viable solution that can be understood by majority of users

The problem seems to be that the number of vocal users outweighs the IQ and experience of the node operators. A type of "Long September" effect as bitcoin edges into the mainstream. In earlier times there was never any disagreement on the way ahead because it was logically apparent to all concerned (not that many of us).

It's the flaw of democracy when you let it run it's natural course, you end up with things like politicians legislating the numerical value of Pi.

[johnyj]

The problem seems to be that the number of vocal users outweighs the IQ and experience of the node operators. A type of "Long September" effect as bitcoin edges into the mainstream. In earlier times there was never any disagreement on the way ahead because it was logically apparent to all concerned (not that many of us).

It's the flaw of democracy when you let it run it's natural course, you end up with things like politicians legislating the numerical value of Pi.

Politicians can not legislate the value of PI because it is a simple fact that almost anyone can verify. However, when it comes to if time space travel is possible given relative theory or the cat is dead or not before you open the box, we really enter the technical politics world: When a knowledge becomes  so complex that only a few understand (and no one can prove that they really understand), politics will take over

So it is very important to keep to the simplest solution that gains majority of understanding. A brilliant solution without understanding will just be trashed by the majority, unless you find a way to bribe the majority to accept your solution, and that become politics

This kind of knowledge and time barrier even exists in core devs: None of the core devs have enough time to thoroughly understand a complex proposal by another core dev, so they just go ahead and promote an even more complex solution which no one will understand, and polish it with lots of end user benefits

[tvbcof]

It's possible gmaxwell has had enough abuse. Apparently he gave up commit access to the bitcoin github. I saw his last post was in this thread a few days ago.

I've found the abuse the Core devs and BlockStream to terrible. I wouldn't blame any of them for choosing to walk away. On certain (unimportant) forums there's some celebration of the idea that gmaxwell may be walking away. Reading it, I have to say that I would walk away from a community with so many evil people. Frankly, I don't want to be in a "community" with people like that either. If there were a way to boot all of them out and keep gmaxwell, I'd prefer that. If they'd just fork off and leave the rest of us with Bitcoin, things would probably be fine (after a shaking out period). Instead they seem intent on "occupying" Bitcoin.

I'm sure gmaxwell knows he has a lot of supporters in the Bitcoin community. That wouldn't change if he decided to leave. I think most people would understand.

Interesting (if true.)  Maxwell mentioned that it may be unwise for any American to have a lot of sway in Bitcoin.  It would not surprise me if he had a variety of 'personal issues' to deal with here, but of course this is wild speculation.

I find Maxwell to have the best combination of skills, dedication, ethics, etc, though of course my visibility is limited and judgement subject to error.  I'll certainly track whatever repo he suggests (with a shrug about the dev commit makeup aspects of this post.)  If it's Blockstream's, fine.  Maxwell can (purportedly) walk away from Blockstream at his leisure and little loss which is confidence inspiring.  If it's some other repo, that's fine to.  So happens I'm occupying myself building a new machine upon which to do some crypto-currency related stuff among other things.  It makes little difference to me what repo(s) I pull from functionally.

As for spending my hodlings, I'll be sure to be tainting anything I might cash in for fiat at Coinbase.  There is no reason a fork cannot happen at an opportune point even if that point ends up being sometime in the past (e.g., the last revision representing input by /u/nullc.)

Greg, if you are reading this, let us know where we might keep tabs on your thoughts and plans.  I, for one, am with you...although given the makeup of the ecosystem that might be taken as faint praise...

[brg444]

Greg, if you are reading this, let us know where we might keep tabs on your thoughts and plans.  I, for one, am with you...although given the makeup of the ecosystem that might be taken as faint praise..

+1

[johnyj]

There is a mechanism in place to limit the power of developers, the governance mechanism of Bitcoin allows for this by having multiple alternative implementations and the ability to hard fork. We are now going through the process of developing the understanding and ecosystem to further allow this. I believe this is a necessary part of the evolution and growth of the protocol as a whole.

Unlike other open-source project, bitcoin is money, everything happens here have direct economy impact, so it is suicide to do a hard fork without major consensus, since that is simply Mutually Assured Destruction - MAD

Imagine that Blockstream devs and chinese exchanges formed an alliance of no block size increase, while Gavin and western exchanges formed an alliance of BIP101. The moment following a hard fork, all pre-fork coins can be spent on both chain. So chinese miners will dump all their pre-fork coins on Bitstamp/Coinbase (which will be running XT by that time), and western miners will dump their pre-fork coins on BTCC/OKCOIN.

It seems the money supply only increased by 100% following a hard fork, but currently only less than 10% of the coins are in circulation, over 90% of them are hoarded as long term storage. Daily net sell volume on all exchanges combined is estimated to be around 5000-10000 coins. But after a hard fork, those hoarders suddenly get a double of their coins over night, so they will immediately sell their coins on the chain that they don't support. Putin said: "when a fight is inevitable, you hit first"

Then exchanges will face a sell volume counted in millions of coins, 1000x larger than the daily sell pressure, this will quickly send bitcoin value back to cents or in case of lack of liquidity, zero. And game over

Then investor confidence for bitcoin is all gone, no one will talk about it in years, and banks all laugh about the miserable fate of decentralized currency. And even if you managed to pull up another coin which prohibiting any hard fork to core protocol, it might still never succeed because the public image of cryptocurrency is totally destroyed, it will become the biggest scam in human history (instead of fiat money )

Anyone with a little bit literacy will understand this scenario, so let's hope it will never happen. However, if bitcoin succeeded and start to threaten banks, they would really like to see this happen. So any attempt to divide the core devs and trying to persuade some major exchange to use different forked versions can be regarded as highly malicious. And I doubt those exchanges really fully understand this yet, otherwise Bitstamp would never claim to support XT

[iCEBREAKER]

Thanks to /u/bitcoinworld for demonstrating /r/btc is a haven for witch hunting, public lynchings, and mob rule.

How silly of btcdrak to assume otherwise and cast his lot with Bitcoin Judas.

btcdrak -39 points 2 days ago

/r/btc is not a political platform. If that's what you want, I suggest you go elsewhere. This is a community for Bitcoin, not politics.

WRONG!  /r/btc *is* a political platform, specifically a pro-XT/101, anti-Core organ of aggrandizement.  That is obvious to everyone who ever existed and even most fictional characters.

btcdrak -20 points 2 days ago

You are welcome to your opinion, but you should be polite and courteous to all you communicate with. There's no need to be uncivil. Users who behave like this are not contributing positively to the environment.

tldr, you will get banned if you attack others.

WRONG!  Attacking others in /r/btc is a good way to get them removed as moderator, and sometimes replaced by the attacker.

btcdrak -11 points 1 day ago

|  Did you support, or were you involved in, the DDOS attacks on xtnodes.com or slushpool?

No and actively spoke out against them on several occasions.

You should have supported the resistance to XT, and this is why instead of shedding tears for you I laughed my ass off as you got thrown under the /r/btc bus (and backed over, twice).

[–]btcdrak -10 points 1 day ago

/r/btc has the potential to be a positive environment for Bitcoiners old and new but there appear to be some obstacles in the way behaviourally. Quite simply, it seems some people think they can behave in ways that wouldnt be acceptable IRL.

BWAH HAW HAW!!!  Tell us more about the "potential" of Bitcoin Judas's rump sub for malcontent Gavinistas!   

btcdrak -15 points 2 days ago

What matters is that /r/btc become a place where balanced discussion can happen and where people behave in a civil manner towards each other.

More wishful thinking.  You can't polish a turd; you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.  Etc.


And for Le Grande Finale:

btcdrak -18 points 2 days ago

Let me be laser focused. I believe 99% of this reddit are decent people. There is a small contingent of bad actors. BUT let's do a thought experiment.

If 10% of the subreddit were genuinely working towards the betterment of Bitcoin and creating a warm environment for many newcomers, whereas 90% were bitter trolls. You've completely wrong if you think I would accept the 90%. It's a free world, if there are so many of them, they can go and create their own community...

If you think you're entitled just because, think again. No society in the offline world tolerates bad behaviour. It's just not socially acceptable. Why should it be different here?

It's time people got the message, the days of the few running a muck over the majority of good people in the Bitcoin community are drawing to a close, certainly in /r/btc.

No, it's time you got the message about collaborating with Gavinista shitlords like Bitcoin Judas.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?   

[MbccompanyX]

Thanks to /u/bitcoinworld for demonstrating /r/btc is a haven for witch hunting, public lynchings, and mob rule.

How silly of btcdrak to assume otherwise and cast his lot with Bitcoin Judas.

btcdrak -39 points 2 days ago

/r/btc is not a political platform. If that's what you want, I suggest you go elsewhere. This is a community for Bitcoin, not politics.

WRONG!  /r/btc *is* a political platform, specifically a pro-XT/101, anti-Core organ of aggrandizement.  That is obvious to everyone who ever existed and even most fictional characters.

btcdrak -20 points 2 days ago

You are welcome to your opinion, but you should be polite and courteous to all you communicate with. There's no need to be uncivil. Users who behave like this are not contributing positively to the environment.

tldr, you will get banned if you attack others.

WRONG!  Attacking others in /r/btc is a good way to get them removed as moderator, and sometimes replaced by the attacker.

btcdrak -11 points 1 day ago

|  Did you support, or were you involved in, the DDOS attacks on xtnodes.com or slushpool?

No and actively spoke out against them on several occasions.

You should have supported the resistance to XT, and this is why instead of shedding tears for you I laughed my ass off as you got thrown under the /r/btc bus (and backed over, twice).

[–]btcdrak -10 points 1 day ago

/r/btc has the potential to be a positive environment for Bitcoiners old and new but there appear to be some obstacles in the way behaviourally. Quite simply, it seems some people think they can behave in ways that wouldnt be acceptable IRL.

BWAH HAW HAW!!!  Tell us more about the "potential" of Bitcoin Judas's rump sub for malcontent Gavinistas!   

btcdrak -15 points 2 days ago

What matters is that /r/btc become a place where balanced discussion can happen and where people behave in a civil manner towards each other.

More wishful thinking.  You can't polish a turd; you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear.  Etc.


And for Le Grande Finale:

btcdrak -18 points 2 days ago

Let me be laser focused. I believe 99% of this reddit are decent people. There is a small contingent of bad actors. BUT let's do a thought experiment.

If 10% of the subreddit were genuinely working towards the betterment of Bitcoin and creating a warm environment for many newcomers, whereas 90% were bitter trolls. You've completely wrong if you think I would accept the 90%. It's a free world, if there are so many of them, they can go and create their own community...

If you think you're entitled just because, think again. No society in the offline world tolerates bad behaviour. It's just not socially acceptable. Why should it be different here?

It's time people got the message, the days of the few running a muck over the majority of good people in the Bitcoin community are drawing to a close, certainly in /r/btc.

No, it's time you got the message about collaborating with Gavinista shitlords like Bitcoin Judas.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?   

i think that already the fact that each message doesn't have a positive score speaks for itself about the fact that nobody trusts what this btcdrak wrote and again, about xt/bip101 that now is becoming a real pain not because is still alive but because people decides to make more chaos for nothing real.....

[danielW]

Greg, if you are reading this, let us know where we might keep tabs on your thoughts and plans.  I, for one, am with you...although given the makeup of the ecosystem that might be taken as faint praise..

+1

+1


The influence of the reddit XT fanatics and their venom should not be overestimated though. Its just a very small but vocal part of community. Most average users just want some reasonable compromise and do not have any of these extreme views. They like all devs and their contributions.

Most of the fanatics dont run nodes, dont have many coins, dont contribute much and therefore their influence in Bitcoin is minimal. They are just loud.

The tiny popularity of XT; nodes, hashing power, development is evidence for their low influence.

[tvbcof]

Greg, if you are reading this, let us know where we might keep tabs on your thoughts and plans.  I, for one, am with you...although given the makeup of the ecosystem that might be taken as faint praise..

+1

+1

The influence of the reddit XT fanatics and their venom should not be overestimated though. Its just a very small but vocal part of community. Most average users just want some reasonable compromise and do not have any of these extreme views. They like all devs and their contributions.

Most of the fanatics dont run nodes, dont have many coins, dont contribute much and therefore their influence in Bitcoin is minimal. They are just loud.

The tiny popularity of XT nodes, hashing power, development is evidence for their low influence.

To be honest I consider myself a 'fanatic' but this is mostly because of the minority views I hold.

The single most important thing to me is that the actual core of the system is defensible against extreme attacks.  I'm sure I've stated this 1000 times so forgive me, but the reasons are simple.  If/when Bitcoin is actually needed (which would correspond to huge value increases) it is utterly certain to be attacked with everything the world can throw at it.  At that time the global internet itself will go through abrupt and startling changes (if not before.)  This is a environment where Bitcoin (or some related backing store) will need every advantage it can get, and being 'lite and tight' would be a primary one of these.

As I always say, PayPal 2.0 is not something which interests me at all.  The threat of Bitcoin being shoved into that slot has been demoralizing enough that I've not even run the software for some time.  If/when an effort to get serious about defensibly gets legs I'm fairly likely to lend support of various types.  I kind of hoped that Blockstream would make this a focus in addition to their work on the very critical subordinate chains solutions which make Bitcoin actually usable and scalable.  I actually don't know how serious they are on such a thing in part because I've been busy with non-related things and not following them all that closely.

From what Maxwell and Back have said here and there I take it that they are fairly aware of some of the potential future threats.  Peter Todd also.  I'm sure that all of the main devs are cognizant of them with the possible exception of Gavin who seems to be a starry-eyed imbecile, and maybe lukedashjr who doesn't seem to have an eye for such things.  Certainly Hearn understands these things well...and builds his attack strategies on Bitcoin around them.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Greg, if you are reading this, let us know where we might keep tabs on your thoughts and plans.  I, for one, am with you...although given the makeup of the ecosystem that might be taken as faint praise..

+1

+1

The influence of the reddit XT fanatics and their venom should not be overestimated though. Its just a very small but vocal part of community. Most average users just want some reasonable compromise and do not have any of these extreme views. They like all devs and their contributions.

Most of the fanatics dont run nodes, dont have many coins, dont contribute much and therefore their influence in Bitcoin is minimal. They are just loud.

The tiny popularity of XT nodes, hashing power, development is evidence for their low influence.

To be honest I consider myself a 'fanatic' but this is mostly because of the minority views I hold.

The single most important thing to me is that the actual core of the system is defensible against extreme attacks.  I'm sure I've stated this 1000 times so forgive me, but the reasons are simple.  If/when Bitcoin is actually needed (which would correspond to huge value increases) it is utterly certain to be attacked with everything the world can throw at it.  At that time the global internet itself will go through abrupt and startling changes (if not before.)  This is a environment where Bitcoin (or some related backing store) will need every advantage it can get, and being 'lite and tight' would be a primary one of these.

As I always say, PayPal 2.0 is not something which interests me at all.  The threat of Bitcoin being shoved into that slot has been demoralizing enough that I've not even run the software for some time.  If/when an effort to get serious about defensibly gets legs I'm fairly likely to lend support of various types.  I kind of hoped that Blockstream would make this a focus in addition to their work on the very critical subordinate chains solutions which make Bitcoin actually usable and scalable.  I actually don't know how serious they are on such a thing in part because I've been busy with non-related things and not following them all that closely.

From what Maxwell and Back have said here and there I take it that they are fairly aware of some of the potential future threats.  Peter Todd also.  I'm sure that all of the main devs are cognizant of them with the possible exception of Gavin who seems to be a starry-eyed imbecile, and maybe lukedashjr who doesn't seem to have an eye for such things.  Certainly Hearn understands these things well...and builds his attack strategies on Bitcoin around them.

Good post! Thanks for repeating the points. I have a small question.

An anti-fragile, censorship-resistant money ought to have no single points of failure and no central authority. The state isn't the only center of power in society. Concentrated private capital is another, and in many ways the state is our protector from its excesses.

What kind of governance model do you think is best suited to protect Bitcoin from abuses by private capital (corporate interests)?

Thanks again

[marcus_of_augustus]

An anti-fragile, censorship-resistant money ought to have no single points of failure and no central authority. The state isn't the only center of power in society. Concentrated private capital is another, and in many ways the state is our protector from its excesses.

What kind of governance model do you think is best suited to protect Bitcoin from abuses by private capital (corporate interests)?

Craftily selected the wedge issue of governance and placed capital corporate power versus State. Knowing full well tvbcof has expressed anti-capitalist sentiments in the past?

[tvbcof]

An anti-fragile, censorship-resistant money ought to have no single points of failure and no central authority. The state isn't the only center of power in society. Concentrated private capital is another, and in many ways the state is our protector from its excesses.

What kind of governance model do you think is best suited to protect Bitcoin from abuses by private capital (corporate interests)?

Craftily selected the wedge issue of governance and placed capital corporate power versus State. Knowing full well tvbcof has expressed anti-capitalist sentiments in the past?

Probably I have for either trolling purposes or otherwise.  I don't troll as much these days since I'm getting genuinely alarmed about the days ahead.  Economically I've always been a 'capitalist' and fairly staunchly so relative to other options associated with ownership, means of production, etc, though I've been genuinely frustrated at the simplistic ways that some of these issues are cast by my Libertarian peers.  Or more that the legitimate problems which do exist in capitalist systems seem to be ignored I suppose.

With the above as a foundation, and to answer your question, the best bet as a feedback mechanism to control the propensity for the 'winners to end up with all the chips' (and thus produce liquidity problems) in Bitcoinland would be to have there be a real danger that it would fail, and fail in such a manner that it would be 'swapped out' with a different backing store.  This would not be so much a matter of trying to 'rob the rich and give to the poor' as it would be leveraging the risk management attributes of those who end up on the winning side.  In other words, they would want to diversify both for self preservation purposes and because not doing so would introduce a risk of it's own.

I've argued that the one place where privacy and anonymity is NOT very desirable is in holding the backing store associated with subordinate chains.  Basically, an entity who would put a bullet in one's head (e.g., one's government) in order to shake one out of their position is probably going to track down the stash anyway so a better defense is to be scare or powerful (in geo-political terms.)  A second reason is that in choosing a sidechain currency to use, I will pay quite a lot of attention to who provides the backing and if they can be verified to be reliable.  I assume that I will be able to fully understand the money supply of a sidecoin (else I won't bother with it) but if it is subject to large liquidity swings that would make it undesirable to me.  Thus, I would like to know who's boat I'm getting into (even if failure is mostly an inconvenience.)

Putting these two things together, it would be nice to see the most likely thing one would do with a giant pile of chips would be to make choices about sidecoin parking which would foster a stable ecosystem.  In my mental model of such a thing, I see the basic magnetic forces going the right direction to make a system work, and also enough dampening to have it not go nutso.  I could be wrong though...I often am.

[Zarathustra]

I think Bitcoin can do both, and that these different aspects of Bitcoin actually reinforce each other. I also do not think Bitcoin will become a world reserve currency without experiencing mass adoption as a currency for the people first, history also certainly supports this theory as well.

It doesn't.

Typically any form of money that is not fiat started gaining traction as a currency only because people tended to hold it as they considered it valuable.

You should check your history, gold and silver coins have been used as a currency and a commodity for the majority of our known history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_coin

You're really dense aren't ya?

Gold didn't start off as a currency but as ornament, jewelry & collectibles hence the argument that people first have to find value in a commodity and hold it before it gains traction as a currency.

Gold became money when it was demanded as tribute (tax). The war lords demanded it to produce weapons.

http://www.tutanchamun-game.de/downloads/bilderKatalog/images/dolch.jpg
http://www.goldseiten.de/content/kolumnen/download/pcm-17.pdf

Right so gold was first hoarded and collected because it made nice weapon. Thanks for supporting my point!

The foundation and essence of all kind of money is DEBT.

Dr Paul C. Martin:

Private property as de iure institution needs a foregoing state to come into existence.
The state needs foregoing power and foregoing power needs armed force.
The ultimate “foundation of the economy” thus is the weapon, where possession and property are identical
because the possession of it guarantees property of it.
Armed force starts additional production (surplus, tribute).
The first taxes are contributions of material for the production of attack weapons (copper, tin).
Thus non-circulating money begins. Taxes as “census” and money are the same.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-178#post-6388

[Zarathustra]

Thanks to /u/bitcoinworld for demonstrating /r/btc is a haven for witch hunting, public lynchings, and mob rule.

An euphemism of an uncensored place. The infiltration failed. Sensor ship destroyed.