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

[brg444]

Because those who dont allow such huge blocks in their client simply contine on the chain with their choosen maximum blocksize. Although there may be many compelling chains with diferent maximum blocksizes, it doesnt make much sence to using the one what has little support.

At least this is how I understand it, and it is step from today central planning to more freedoom for everyone with the associated responsibility - if you choose wrong blocksize value, you might not be using the chain most Bitcoiners are on.

If this is truly the case and we are talking about chains splitting because of votes, then BU is worse than XT. Then I'm also starting to grasp the idea behind BU. The question is who hired the supporters?

BU is quite possibly the most retarded idea ever and might challenge XT as the worst alt coins of all time.

[Peter R]

Bitcoin Unlimited is on the rise.

BU is intriguing. Where do I learn more? Is the client a fork of Bitcoin Core? Are all pulls publicly traceable?

We have a rough website up.  You could start by reading this:

http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/articlesOfFederation

Yes, it is a fork of Core.  And yes the pulls are publicly traceable.  There is a link to the GitHub repo on the download page:

http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/software

And here is a description of the changes that were made to Core (there's only been one BUIP so far):

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip001-unlimited-inspired-extensions-to-the-bitcoin-client.222/

[johnyj]

You are saying that a hard fork is mutually assured destruction? That is hyperbole, the ability to hard fork and split is what ensures the continued freedom of the protocol. If I believed what you did I would instantly leave Bitcoin because I would realize that it was doomed, fortunately I have a different understanding of how this works.

This is also why Jeff Garzik call a hard fork an extinction level event

Recently I noticed another post https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3t4kbk/forkology_301_the_three_tiers_of_investor_control/

It says that investors can already bet on the fail of one fork by sign a future contract to sell one coin for another coin at a certain exchange rate before the fork (for example, one contract is based on the sell of 1000 XT coins for 1000 core coins, and the actual execution rate might be 500, so that you get only 500 core coins for 1000 XT coins due to too many XT sell order than buy order). Thus the fate of that fork is more or less already decided even before the fork, to make sure those sure losers giving up the idea of fork (When you know for sure that your fork will die, would you still do that?)

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

Because those who dont allow such huge blocks in their client simply contine on the chain with their choosen maximum blocksize. Although there may be many compelling chains with diferent maximum blocksizes, it doesnt make much sence to using the one what has little support.

At least this is how I understand it, and it is step from today central planning to more freedoom for everyone with the associated responsibility - if you choose wrong blocksize value, you might not be using the chain most Bitcoiners are on.

If this is truly the case and we are talking about chains splitting because of votes, then BU is worse than XT. Then I'm also starting to grasp the idea behind BU. The question is who hired the supporters?

Lauda, when you firm up your opinion on Bitcoin Unlimited please post. theZerg (Andrew Stone) seems to be running the project and forum with help from several others. In particular Peter Rizun from Ledger. A list of other members is here. It seems to be an interesting experiment but still early days.

[VeritasSapere]

You are saying that a hard fork is mutually assured destruction? That is hyperbole, the ability to hard fork and split is what ensures the continued freedom of the protocol. If I believed what you did I would instantly leave Bitcoin because I would realize that it was doomed, fortunately I have a different understanding of how this works.

This is also why Jeff Garzik call a hard fork an extinction level event

Recently I noticed another post https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3t4kbk/forkology_301_the_three_tiers_of_investor_control/

It says that investors can already bet on the fail of one fork by sign a future contract to sell one coin for another coin at a certain exchange rate before the fork (for example, one contract is based on the sell of 1000 XT coins for 1000 core coins, and the actual execution rate might be 500, so that you get only 500 core coins for 1000 XT coins due to too many XT sell order than buy order). Thus the fate of that fork is more or less already decided even before the fork, to make sure those sure losers giving up the idea of fork (When you know for sure that your fork will die, would you still do that?)

I would not bet on the outcome of such a fork, and I would not be so sure of the outcome either. Having prediction markets for this type of thing is interesting though. I would be happy as long as either side can have the Bitcoin they want regardless of the support that they gain. I do not see any reason why two chains with the same genesis block can not live side by side in peace.

Jeff Garzik does actually support hard forking in order to increase the blocksize, he has also even recently spoken out against Core pointing out some of the same grievances we have. I would recommend that everyone reads this:

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html

[johnyj]

I would not bet on the outcome of such a fork, and I would not be so sure of the outcome either. Having prediction markets for this type of thing is interesting though. I would be happy as long as either side can have the Bitcoin they want regardless of the support that they gain. I do not see any reason why two chains with the same genesis block can not live side by side in peace.

Jeff Garzik does actually support hard forking in order to increase the blocksize, he has also even recently spoken out against Core pointing out some of the same grievances we have. I would recommend that everyone reads this:

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html

There are several reasons that makes a hard fork without super majority (e.g. two parallel chains) dangerous


1. It broke the promise of limited total money supply
After each fork, the amount of total bitcoin in the whole ecosystem almost doubled. This is even worse than FED, they never double the money supply in a single day! So people will find out that no matter whatever reason, this bunch of developers are not any more trustworthy than central bankers, they better return to their fiat money and forget about bitcoin altogether


2. Suddenly increased money supply will destroy the long term perspective of bitcoin
Once forked, you have hyperinflation, the promise of long term deflation is broken, the coin value start to drop long term wise, and there is no hope it will pick up again: Who knows some day these guys will bring another fork and double the amount of money supply again?

3. It broke the promise of trustless network
Now people will understand, by forcing a fork without other's consent, you can change any rule in the current system, including the money supply schedule, network communication protocol, or even who can spend your coin. The fate of your bitcoin barely lies in the hands of a few developers, you have to trust them and worship them not ruin the whole thing

Basically a controversial hard fork destroy the trust in bitcoin and then no one will be interested in it any more

And just because of this, anyone who understand a little bit more about bitcoin will strongly against it. So they will prevent the hyper inflation by instantly sell the weaker fork into alt-coin level value and once that coin's value has crashed, miners will immediately leave it due to the loss of mining worthless coins, it will end pretty quick


Jeff supports a hard fork with super majority, I think 2MB is the easiest to reach, or at least everyone can live with (1MB is currently the super majority)

[VeritasSapere]

I would not bet on the outcome of such a fork, and I would not be so sure of the outcome either. Having prediction markets for this type of thing is interesting though. I would be happy as long as either side can have the Bitcoin they want regardless of the support that they gain. I do not see any reason why two chains with the same genesis block can not live side by side in peace.

Jeff Garzik does actually support hard forking in order to increase the blocksize, he has also even recently spoken out against Core pointing out some of the same grievances we have. I would recommend that everyone reads this:

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html

There are several reasons that makes a hard fork without super majority (e.g. two parallel chains) dangerous


1. It broke the promise of limited total money supply
After each fork, the amount of total bitcoin in the whole ecosystem almost doubled. This is even worse than FED, they never double the money supply in a single day! So people will find out that no matter whatever reason, this bunch of developers are not any more trustworthy than central bankers, they better return to their fiat money and forget about bitcoin altogether


2. Suddenly increased money supply will destroy the long term perspective of bitcoin
Once forked, you have hyperinflation, the promise of long term deflation is broken, the coin value start to drop long term wise, and there is no hope it will pick up again: Who knows some day these guys will bring another fork and double the amount of money supply again?

3. It broke the promise of trustless network
Now people will understand, by forcing a fork without other's consent, you can change any rule in the current system, including the money supply schedule, network communication protocol, or even who can spend your coin. The fate of your bitcoin barely lies in the hands of a few developers, you have to trust them and worship them not ruin the whole thing

Basically a controversial hard fork destroy the trust in bitcoin and then no one will be interested in it any more

And just because of this, anyone who understand a little bit more about bitcoin will strongly against it. So they will prevent the hyper inflation by instantly sell the weaker fork into alt-coin level value and once that coin's value has crashed, miners will immediately leave it due to the loss of mining worthless coins, it will end pretty quick


Jeff supports a hard fork with super majority, I think 2MB is the easiest to reach, or at least everyone can live with (1MB is currently the super majority)

You are wrong, first of all when Bitcoin splits it does not increase the supply of Bitcoin, that remains the same, they just become two separate currencies. In the same way that the Zimbabwe dollar does not make the US dollar more inflationary, and altcoins do not make Bitcoin more inflationary.

Such a fork can only really take place when there is a fundamental disagreement, I am not sure what you are even suggesting as an alternative, the tyranny of consensus? I even expect Bitcoin to split, if not over this blocksize debate then it will be over something else in the future, I see this as being of political necessity.

If you truly believe that Bitcoin would be broken when there is a split then you should probably leave now, even a minority could bring about a hard fork and a split and there is nothing anyone could do to stop it. According to your own logic Bitcoin is therefore already broken.

It is also wrong that you say that people are forced without their consent, this process of hard forking is exactly what allows Bitcoin to remain voluntary and consensual even when developers make controversial changes, people can choose not to adopt these changes, or conversely introduce changes that the "reference client" refuses to merge. It is this mechanism that ensures the continued decentralization and freedom of the protocol, it protects against the tyranny of the majority and minority, it protects our right to self determination. If it was not for the ability to hard fork and split I would not even be interested in Bitcoin, since for me it is this that solves certain critical governance issues.

The ability to hard fork is the very mechanism that is meant to keep any development team in check. If you think that hard forks and the possibility of splitting are the equivalent to mutually assured destruction, then you basically end up with centralized technocratic control over the protocol by Core. What I am suggesting is decentralized governance of the protocol through proof of work, the ability to hard fork is critical in this conception.

One of the things that I always loved about Bitcoin is the concept of "trust" without centralized authority, and that Bitcoin is freedom. If what you are suggesting is true then Bitcoin would no longer represent these things, fortunately I do not think that you are correct and I am confident that the original vision of Satoshi will triumph.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

[johnyj]

And just because of this, anyone who understand a little bit more about bitcoin will strongly against it. So they will prevent the hyper inflation by instantly sell the weaker fork into alt-coin level value and once that coin's value has crashed, miners will immediately leave it due to the loss of mining worthless coins, it will end pretty quick

You are wrong, first of all when Bitcoin splits it does not increase the supply of Bitcoin, that remains the same, they just become two separate currencies. In the same way that the Zimbabwe dollar does not make the US dollar more inflationary, and altcoins do not make Bitcoin more inflationary.

Such a fork can only really take place when there is a fundamental disagreement, I am not sure what you are even suggesting as an alternative, the tyranny of consensus? I even expect Bitcoin to split, if not over this blocksize debate then it will be over something else in the future, I see this as being of political necessity.

If you truly believe that Bitcoin would be broken when there is a split then you should probably leave now, even a minority could bring about a hard fork and a split and there is nothing any one could do to stop it. According to your own logic Bitcoin is therefore already broken.

It is also wrong that you say that people are forced without their consent, this process of hard forking is exactly what allows Bitcoin to remain voluntary and consensual even when developers make controversial changes, people can choose not to adopt these changes, or conversely introduce changes that the "reference client" refuses to merge. It is this mechanism that ensures the continued decentralization and freedom of the protocol, it protects against the tyranny of the majority and minority, it protects our right to self determination. If it was not for the ability to hard fork and split I would not even be interested in Bitcoin, since for me it is this that solves some very fundamental governance issues.

The ability to hard fork is the very mechanism that is meant to keep any development team in check. If you think that hard forks and the possibility of splitting are the equivalent to mutually assured destruction, then you basically end up with centralized technocratic control over the protocol by Core. What I am suggesting is decentralized governance of the protocol through proof of work, the ability to hard fork is critical in this conception.

One of the things that I always loved about Bitcoin is the concept of "trust" without centralized authority, and that Bitcoin is freedom. If what you are suggesting is true then Bitcoin would no longer represent these things, fortunately I do not think that you are correct and I am confident that the original vision of Satoshi will triumph.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

It is very misleading claim that bitcoin users do not need to trust centralized authority, in fact every one uses bitcoin is trusting this centralized protocol originally designed by Satoshi: Every miners, nodes, exchanges, merchants, users, no exception

You can use what ever alt-coin you like, but those coins do not have any meaningful value, because they are inflation in cryptocurrency world. In order to have limited total money supply, you can not have more than one coin, otherwise there will just be endless inflation in the name of fork freedom, what is the purpose for anyone participating in such endless money printing game?

And the analogy of Zimbabwe dollar vs US dollar is wrong, since they are two different economy. Now we are talking about increase the money supply in existing ecosystem, equal to double the amount of USD in US.  It is not another alt-coin,  because all the pre-fork coins can be spent on both chains, thus a double of the existing coin supply overnight, but you can not double the economy overnight, so the result is a total crash of the whole monetary system or one of the fork die immediately

Regarding the governance of the protocol, I think it is not very difficult to reach a consensus if it is a simple fact and everyone understand it. However if you go the radical or complex route, then your fork will just become orphaned

You can look at Litecoin, having a different hash mechanism and higher block rate, theoretical higher transaction capacity, why it is still minimum in market capital? Because it is inflation in cryptocurrency world

[valiz]

Bitcoin should never be changed. It should remain as unchanged as gold.

Hard fork = altcoin.

Fork off already. I don't care 

[VeritasSapere]

And just because of this, anyone who understand a little bit more about bitcoin will strongly against it. So they will prevent the hyper inflation by instantly sell the weaker fork into alt-coin level value and once that coin's value has crashed, miners will immediately leave it due to the loss of mining worthless coins, it will end pretty quick

You are wrong, first of all when Bitcoin splits it does not increase the supply of Bitcoin, that remains the same, they just become two separate currencies. In the same way that the Zimbabwe dollar does not make the US dollar more inflationary, and altcoins do not make Bitcoin more inflationary.

Such a fork can only really take place when there is a fundamental disagreement, I am not sure what you are even suggesting as an alternative, the tyranny of consensus? I even expect Bitcoin to split, if not over this blocksize debate then it will be over something else in the future, I see this as being of political necessity.

If you truly believe that Bitcoin would be broken when there is a split then you should probably leave now, even a minority could bring about a hard fork and a split and there is nothing any one could do to stop it. According to your own logic Bitcoin is therefore already broken.

It is also wrong that you say that people are forced without their consent, this process of hard forking is exactly what allows Bitcoin to remain voluntary and consensual even when developers make controversial changes, people can choose not to adopt these changes, or conversely introduce changes that the "reference client" refuses to merge. It is this mechanism that ensures the continued decentralization and freedom of the protocol, it protects against the tyranny of the majority and minority, it protects our right to self determination. If it was not for the ability to hard fork and split I would not even be interested in Bitcoin, since for me it is this that solves some very fundamental governance issues.

The ability to hard fork is the very mechanism that is meant to keep any development team in check. If you think that hard forks and the possibility of splitting are the equivalent to mutually assured destruction, then you basically end up with centralized technocratic control over the protocol by Core. What I am suggesting is decentralized governance of the protocol through proof of work, the ability to hard fork is critical in this conception.

One of the things that I always loved about Bitcoin is the concept of "trust" without centralized authority, and that Bitcoin is freedom. If what you are suggesting is true then Bitcoin would no longer represent these things, fortunately I do not think that you are correct and I am confident that the original vision of Satoshi will triumph.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

It is very misleading claim that bitcoin users do not need to trust centralized authority, in fact every one uses bitcoin is trusting this centralized protocol originally designed by Satoshi: Every miners, nodes, exchanges, merchants, users, no exception

The difference is that there are not any people at the center of power, the power to change the rules of Bitcoin should be determined in a bottom up fashion, not top down.

You can use what ever alt-coin you like, but those coins do not have any meaningful value, because they are inflation in cryptocurrency world. In order to have limited total money supply, you can not have more than one coin, otherwise there will just be endless inflation in the name of fork freedom, what is the purpose for anyone participating in such endless money printing game?

You say that we can not have more then one coin yet the reality at the present time contradicts this statement. The advantages of fork freedom outweigh the benefit of one for all, how could everyone possible agree with the economic policy and features of Bitcoin, I think this idea borders on totalitarian, the existence of altcoins are in the spirit of decentralization and freedom, it is what guarantees that the cryptocurrency revolution will live on, no matter what happens to Bitcoin.

If you think that everyone has to ascribe to the same view points and beliefs then you are mistaken, not everyone agrees with deflationary economics for instance, some people might prefer a 2% inflation on a proof of stake currency for several reasons. I like Bitcoin do not get me wrong, but we are in a situation now where there are irreconcilable differences which can not be resolved. The only way to solve this if consensus is not found is to split, unless you suggest that one side needs to lose and leave Bitcoin, or live under rules that they do not agree with and a vision then they might not have originally signed up for. That does not sit right with me if Bitcoin is meant to be freedom.

Another alternative is that one side moves out of Bitcoin into another cryptocurrency, obviously neither side would want to do this, already being invested in Bitcoin, with the advantages of name and network effect. This is why splitting under this scenario is the more fair solution. If you insist on the altcoin alternative then it can be argued that the side which upholds the original vision of the project should stay, which is to increase the blocksize, otherwise it can be argued that by not increasing the blocksize Core is breaking the social contract. Changing the vision and underlying nature of what people initially signed up for. Obviously the ability to hard fork elegantly solves these problems, which I think is one of the greatest innovations in Bitcoin and possible governance for a long time.

And the analogy of Zimbabwe dollar vs US dollar is wrong, since they are two different economy. Now we are talking about increase the money supply in existing ecosystem, equal to double the amount of USD in US.  It is not another alt-coin, because all the pre-fork coins can be spent on both chains, thus a double of the existing coin supply overnight, but you can not double the economy overnight, so the result is a total crash of the whole monetary system or one of the fork die immediately

Cryptocurrency is part of the world economy, this economy is vast and Bitcoin is just a small drop of water in the ocean of this capital. Bitcoin is growing and an exponential rate, in almost all of the metrics. It is not true that there is a finite amount of capital in the cryptocurrency market, price discovery also does not necessarily work this way either.

You are incorrect, the coin supply is not doubled, the currency splits and becomes two. So for instance in the case of a split there would be fifteen million coins in BitcoinA, and fifteen million coins in BitcoinB. Another example would be the existence of Litecoin, Litecoin did not increase the supply of Bitcoin right? I am starting to think that you might not understand how this would work. Another example, if I had one Bitcoin before the split. Then after the split I would have one Bitcoin in both chains, however I would only be able to spend one Bitcoin per chain, the total supply of the individual chain is not increased.

The monetary "system" will not crash overnight as you claim, this is not fiat. Even if the price went down because of this it would recover eventually and the two chains would gain market cap based on their own merit and utility. I certainly would not leave Bitcoin. If anything I would become more bullish because for me this would mean that Bitcoins governance mechanism has succeeded and proven itself to function.

I do think in the case of such a split the most likely scenario is that only one chain would survive, however in the case where there is a sufficient enough division, I do think that both chains could survive and that this would be a good thing. I find it hard to understand your opposition to this considering that this is just a reflection of peoples free will.

Regarding the governance of the protocol, I think it is not very difficult to reach a consensus if it is a simple fact and everyone understand it. However if you go the radical or complex route, then your fork will just become orphaned

BIP101 is rather simple really which is one of its advantageous, Bitcoin Unlimited might be complex to understand in terms of all of the game theory, code and economics, however the underlying concepts are actually rather simple to understand, just like the Bitcoin protocol itself. Everyone has the freedom of choice.

[Zarathustra]

Because those who dont allow such huge blocks in their client simply contine on the chain with their choosen maximum blocksize. Although there may be many compelling chains with diferent maximum blocksizes, it doesnt make much sence to using the one what has little support.

At least this is how I understand it, and it is step from today central planning to more freedoom for everyone with the associated responsibility - if you choose wrong blocksize value, you might not be using the chain most Bitcoiners are on.

If this is truly the case and we are talking about chains splitting because of votes, then BU is worse than XT. Then I'm also starting to grasp the idea behind BU. The question is who hired the supporters?

To the Politbüro and its hired cheerleaders - the totalitarian traitors of a libertarian project - BU is indeed the worst of all possiblilities. XT and BU already forced Blockstream core to promise to raise the limit (to 4 MB to get 1,75MB). There is more to come beyond this joke.

[tvbcof]

...
Basically a controversial hard fork destroy the trust in bitcoin and then no one will be interested in it any more
...

Not necessarily true.  I only see a robust and defensible system as one which uses a subordinate chains architecture (which seems to be the focus of the Blockstream work last I looked.)  I would welcome a fork of the protocol and blockchain so that those of us who see this as the way forward can work on it without the bloatist baggage and the attack vectors they open up.

...
Jeff supports a hard fork with super majority, I think 2MB is the easiest to reach, or at least everyone can live with (1MB is currently the super majority)

Pfft.  That would do exactly nothing toward making Bitcoin some sort of a one-size-fits-all currency (+ dice messaging, doc timestamping, etc, etc.)  Need gigabyte blocks for that, and a lot of the existing corp/gov world would love it.  Again, I say let them have their wish.  I'm confident that ultimately the other path will bear fruit and would actually be something worthwhile.

I don't think that Garzik is an idiot so he has to see the futility.  He must just be providing the rest of the mouthbreathers and handjob in some sort of a mindless go-along-to-get-along strategy to buy some time or something like that.  Whatever the case he is fairly useless in my opinion.

[Lauda]

Lauda, when you firm up your opinion on Bitcoin Unlimited please post. theZerg (Andrew Stone) seems to be running the project and forum with help from several others. In particular Peter Rizun from Ledger. A list of other members is here. It seems to be an interesting experiment but still early days.

Well it is actually very hard to firm up a single opinion because I'm not getting short and concrete answers which is also suspicious. If, what the other member here has told me is correct, then BU is possibly one of the worst attempts at killing Bitcoin under the false flag of democracy. I wouldn't call another hostile takeover attempt an 'interesting experiment'. If it was just a experiment they would be running their own chain by now.

After all the miners and the economic majority could decrease the blocksize under BU if they deem this to be necessary, BU just takes this power away from the development teams and returns it to where it belongs.

Return it? You are implying that it was like this before and that it was changed through time.

This is an example of how the other side manipulates with words (nothing was taken away, ergo nothing should be returned to "where it belongs").
I don't see the benefit of the implementation in comparison to Core. The roadmap proposed by Core for 2016 looks pretty good aside from the fact that they are too afraid to do a hard fork to X MB (2 would be fine and would not cause harm).

[Zarathustra]

The roadmap proposed by Core for 2016 looks pretty good aside from the fact that they are too afraid to do a hard fork to X MB (2 would be fine and would not cause harm).

Translation into the real world:

The roadmap proposed by Core for 2016 looks pretty good aside from the fact that they destroy adoption by a ridiculous 'scaling solution'. At least it looks pretty good for the Altcoins:

https://i.imgur.com/eGhn2IM.png

[YarkoL]

It is very misleading claim that bitcoin users do not need to trust centralized authority, in fact every one uses bitcoin is trusting this centralized protocol originally designed by Satoshi: Every miners, nodes, exchanges, merchants, users, no exception

What is very misleading? The protocol does not rely on
any external authority that enforces it and its original creator is no longer
around. In fact miners are free to alter the protocol but they have
counter-incentive to do that in the form of block reward. To obtain that
they have to keep sure that they keep on extending the longest chain.
As for non-miners, they are interested that their transactions are safeguarded,
and that is again provided by the longest chain.

Earlier attempts at making digital cash relied solely on cryptography,
and had to implement a central trusted server, whereas Satoshi introduced
two economic incentives into the system (block subsidy and transaction fees)
which made it possible for it operate in a decentralized manner.

Just as the block reward does away with the need of central authority who
issues money and detects double spends, the existence of transaction fee market
does away with the need of a central authority who dictates the upper block size limit.

[johnyj]

Regarding the governance of the protocol, I think it is not very difficult to reach a consensus if it is a simple fact and everyone understand it. However if you go the radical or complex route, then your fork will just become orphaned

BIP101 is rather simple really which is one of its advantageous, Bitcoin Unlimited might be complex to understand in terms of all of the game theory, code and economics, however the underlying concepts are actually rather simple to understand, just like the Bitcoin protocol itself. Everyone has the freedom of choice.

I have played with several altcoins since I know bitcoin, but I quickly realized that the current cryptocurrency economy only focus on one coin, for the simple reason that people don't come here seeking for inflation. You have some mainstream economic knowledge that is weaved by banks to confuse the majority of human, so no doubt you will draw conclusions that does not fit reality (Reality is that none of the alt-coins will thrive, including banks' alt-coins)

If you look from the view of the central bank, the most important for a monetary system is trust. One of FED's mandate is moderate inflation, because hyperinflation will destroy the trust for their money

BIP 101 shakes investor trust since it is too radical, and BU is even more radical. When you are facing a change that no one has done before, you can only act conservative and prepare for the worst, not act radically and hope for the best. Thus the motivation behind BIP101 and BU is questionable: Why take huge risk when you can take less? Are those devs all illiterate in finance and don't' know how to manage risk?

[johnyj]

It is very misleading claim that bitcoin users do not need to trust centralized authority, in fact every one uses bitcoin is trusting this centralized protocol originally designed by Satoshi: Every miners, nodes, exchanges, merchants, users, no exception

What is very misleading? The protocol does not rely on any external authority that enforces it and its original creator is no longer around. In fact miners are free to alter the protocol but they have counter-incentive to do that in the form of block reward. To obtain that they have to keep sure that they keep on extending the longest chain.As for non-miners, they are interested that their transactions are safeguarded, and that is again provided by the longest chain.

Earlier attempts at making digital cash relied solely on cryptography, and had to implement a central trusted server, whereas Satoshi introduced
two economic incentives into the system (block subsidy and transaction fees) which made it possible for it operate in a decentralized manner.

Just as the block reward does away with the need of central authority who issues money and detects double spends, the existence of transaction fee market does away with the need of a central authority who dictates the upper block size limit.

The protocol indeed rely on large actors to enforces it. I would glad to see that the protocol itself is self-aware and reject any attempt to modify it, then we have a truly decentralized system without human interference. All the scaling solution will go off-chain, and I thing that will make bitcoin the most trustworthy/incorruptible monetary system on this planet

But currently the protocol is the centralized control point, if you can persuade 12 large actors (5 mining pools, 5 exchanges, 1 web wallet and 1 payment processor) to adopt one specific protocol, then you basically control the majority of this ecosystem, anyone else has neglectable influence

The reason that it gives people hope that a political move might work is because the protocol is highly centralized, if we indeed have a very decentralized system then there will not be such difficulties like we see today. But you can not have freedom in selecting protocol, since that means you just created another alt-coin which will worth a little due to its inflation nature

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

Irrelevant given that we have SW coming.

Dont be an idiot. Of course we dont. As you are fond of saying - its vaporware.....

it's actually all in code, waiting to get on testnet by end of the month and to be merged soon enough 

+<pre>
 +  BIP: x
 +  Title: Segregated Witness (Consensus layer)
 +  Author: Eric Lombrozo <elombrozo@gmail.com>
 +          Johnson Lau <jl2012@xbt.hk>
 +          Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>
 +  Status: Draft
 +  Type: Standards Track
 +  Created: 2015-12-21
 +</pre>
 +
 +==Abstract==

Yeah, its all in code, ready for deployment. Sure thing, dreamer.
The most fundamental change to the way bitcoin works, and you are ready to deploy before you even have a bip number assigned?
People are still arguing about the length of the checksum in the address, and where it goes.

But its all coded and ready to go, eh?

[iCEBREAKER]

I do not need to have a technical background to answer questions like "who decides" or what the economic policy and governance structure of Bitcoin should be.

Your wishful thinking is wrong. 

Because the medium is the message, you do need a technical background to produce valid opinions about what Bitcoin "should be."

Bitcoin is in fact a reaction to soft-science/humanities people like you operating beyond their level of competence and presuming to set parameters of systems that would in an ideal world be completely removed from their control.


http://www.techworm.net/2015/12/hacker-ddos-coinbase-website-down.html (lol rekt)

Coinbase is discovering that if you try to destroy Bitcoin, Bitcoin destroys you.


https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ya0f4/remember_how_segwit_was_presented_as_this_genius/cycaifu?context=1

The issue with BU is that nodes can't actually process an infinitely sized block, so you could end up splitting the network by making a block big enough that some nodes can't process it but others can.

I don't think making it a command line flag makes sense.

Mike.Hearn@sigint.google.mil is discovering what happens when you call up full-retard levels of stupidity too profound to be controlled.

The funniest thing about "Bitcoin Unlimited" is that it's LIMITED to 16MB blocks, which is 20% below Gavin's original 20MB proposal.

[VeritasSapere]

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ya0f4/remember_how_segwit_was_presented_as_this_genius/cycaifu?context=1

The issue with BU is that nodes can't actually process an infinitely sized block, so you could end up splitting the network by making a block big enough that some nodes can't process it but others can.

I don't think making it a command line flag makes sense.

The funniest thing about "Bitcoin Unlimited" is that it's LIMITED to 16MB blocks, which is 20% below Gavin's original 20MB proposal.

From the same Reddit thread:

• 
  

  Thanks for commenting, Mike. There is some confusion that Bitcoin Unlimited (at least the version that everyone is talking about right now) doesn't have a block size limit. The default block size limit is actually 16 MB for block acceptance (and 1 MB for block creation). However, node operators can adjust these limit as they see fit. The "unlimited" is in reference to unlimited choice.
  
  Big attack blocks would be orphaned. The reason we added the "excessive block logic" was to automatically deal with a (very unlikely IMO) network split attack.

  So who adjusts the default and how do you ensure everyone adjusts it simultaneously?
  
  BIP101/XT works the way it does for a reason. I don't think making it a command line flag makes sense. Everyone still has to change their setting simultaneously. If you fix that so changing the command line flag casts a vote for a new size you end up reinventing something like BIP100.

  It doesn't sound like everyone has to adjust simultaneously. If you find you're generating an unacceptably high number of orphans, you can reduce your block creation limit. Otherwise, EVOP it up until you're satisfied. Or, check some other statistical data about current network acceptance before setting your own limit.

  Yes exactly. Be flexible about what you accept and conservative about what you generate is a classic saying in protocol design which applies here.
  
  Instead of using a dialogue-based learning process, it might make sense to begin by carefully reading my description of the patch here: https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip001-unlimited-inspired-extensions-to-the-bitcoin-client.222/
  
  And then the FAQ might cover a bunch of the more obvious cases: http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/faq
  
  And then if you question the basis of our claim that an effective block size is an emergent property of the bitcoin network, you can bit the bullet and read our detailed papers here: http://localhost:3000/feeMarket (download the PDF to get correctly represented math) and http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/1txn

  With Core and XT everyone needs the same max block limit. BU is different in that only the whole network possesses the attribute of a gently dynamic max block limit, while each individual node has an approximation, or even a value which is a lot smaller or larger. It doesn't matter, except that nodes with a too small value will frequently have the latest blocks "on probation" waiting for them to reach an acceptance depth, number of confirmations.

The sixteen megabyte limit you are referring to is just the default setting, this can be changed by anyone using Bitcoin Unlimited. We could even all agree on a two megabyte blocksize limit and then that would become the new consensus through using Bitcoin Unlimited. It is about giving everyone the freedom of choice, this was always possible before, Bitcoin Unlimited only makes it more convenient by having this implemented within the client itself and an easy to use GUI. The name Bitcoin Unlimited does not refer to an unlimited blocksize but it refers to the unlimited choice and freedom it unlocks.