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

[knight22]

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.



Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients.

Here again:

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.

It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins.

The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview:

Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.

I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use  it.

Yeah sure but the real question is how much money they will be willing to pay when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the exact same features around the corner?

Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure.

[coalitionfor8mb]

I will put the summary here again.

Bitcoin can leverage its network effect gained from the first mover advantage in order to play it safe with regards to its limit on block size as the cost to switch would be the highest, but other systems would need to stay within the confines of the home networks in order to provide the same core value proposition to compete with Bitcoin properly.

Bitcoin needs to move only when it absolutely has to, there is no reason to do this at the moment.

[knight22]

I will put the summary here again.

Bitcoin can leverage its network effect gained from the first mover advantage in order to play it safe with regards to its limit on block size as the cost to switch would be the highest, but other systems would need to stay within the confines of the home networks in order to provide the same core value proposition to compete with Bitcoin properly.

Bitcoin needs to move only when it absolutely has to, there is no reason to do this at the moment.

It is more imminent than you might think.

[brg444]

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.



Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients.

Here again:

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.

It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins.

The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview:

Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.

I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use  it.

Yeah sure but the real question is how much money they will be willing to pay when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the exact same features around the corner?

Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure.

So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money?

Where does your delusion stops  

[brg444]

I will put the summary here again.

Bitcoin can leverage its network effect gained from the first mover advantage in order to play it safe with regards to its limit on block size as the cost to switch would be the highest, but other systems would need to stay within the confines of the home networks in order to provide the same core value proposition to compete with Bitcoin properly.

Bitcoin needs to move only when it absolutely has to, there is no reason to do this at the moment.

It is more imminent than you might think.

I'm guessing you're seeing this in your crystal ball  ?

[coalitionfor8mb]

I will put the summary here again.

Bitcoin can leverage its network effect gained from the first mover advantage in order to play it safe with regards to its limit on block size as the cost to switch would be the highest, but other systems would need to stay within the confines of the home networks in order to provide the same core value proposition to compete with Bitcoin properly.

Bitcoin needs to move only when it absolutely has to, there is no reason to do this at the moment.

It is more imminent than you might think.

As recent reports show, Bitcoin has already saturated the average bandwidth level of home networks in some countries, so any competing system would have a hard time squeezing in. Anything that doesn't run from home cannot directly compete with Bitcoin by definition.

[knight22]

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.



Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients.

Here again:

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.

It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins.

The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview:

Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.

I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use  it.

Yeah sure but the real question is how much money they will be willing to pay when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the exact same features around the corner?

Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure.

So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money?

Where does your delusion stops  

A cheaper proposition doesn't need to be sponsored by anybody. Do you know how cheap it is to copy open code and tweak it? The economics and incentives at play will just work by itself.
Do you know how many altcoins are there waiting to catch some spectrum of the market bitcoin would miss? http://coinmarketcap.com/

Bitcoin is not alone and will never be. It needs to compete in terms of value proposition in all. possible. ways. or it will just lose that market share.

Which means it needs to stay fast, cheap, private, secure etc

Remove one of those attribute and you'll lose that market share and not being cheap enough endangers to lose them all.

[Peter R]

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

If the economic pressure is relieved by people leaving (or never entering) the economic system, then I think this would result in a decline (or a levelling out) of Bitcoin's market cap.

So again, if the "economic pressure from deadweight loss gets relieved somehow" theory is true, then not only does it mean that we can't use the protocol to artificially increase fees, but it also means that any attempt to do so will instead have either no effect (the code will fork around it) or a negative effect (growth within the Bitcoin economy will stall or reverse [rather than fees increasing]).

Food for thought!

[coalitionfor8mb]

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

If the economic pressure is relieved by people leaving (or never entering) the economic system, then I think this would result in a decline (or a levelling out) of Bitcoin's market cap.

So again, if the "economic pressure from deadweight loss gets relieved somehow" theory is true, then not only does it mean that we can't use the protocol to artificially increase fees, but it also means that any attempt to do so will instead have either no effect (the code will fork around it) or a negative effect (growth within the Bitcoin economy will stall or reverse [rather than fees increasing]).

Food for thought!

Oh, that one is simple!

The PoW nature of systems in question must prevent their uncontrolled duplication, so there will be only a few worth considering switching to. Plus the network effects of money in general will preserve the economic pressure from leaving the strongest networks in the field (which is again defined by manageable costs of running a full validator from home networks without permission).

And other security models aren't real honey badgers to be of any interest to many.

[brg444]

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.



Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients.

Here again:

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.

It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins.

The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview:

Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.

I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use  it.

Yeah sure but the real question is how much money they will be willing to pay when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the exact same features around the corner?

Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure.

So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money?

Where does your delusion stops  

A cheaper proposition doesn't need to be sponsored by anybody. Do you know how cheap it is to copy open code and tweak it? The economics and incentives at play will just work by itself.
Do you know how many altcoins are there waiting to catch some spectrum of the market bitcoin would miss? http://coinmarketcap.com/

Bitcoin is not alone and will never be. It needs to compete in terms of value proposition in all. possible. ways. or it will just lose that market share.

That is precisely why you are abjectly wrong.

A ton of altcoin exists right now with enormously more transaction throughput yet not one of them is challenging Bitcoin.

I'm starting to figure you will never understand this but the people who give Bitcoin its value, the holders, the "bitcoin rich list", could not careless about the transaction throughput or higher transaction fees. They will not be driven away from their investment because some noobs complain that they have to pay more than a penny for their transactions to go through.

Without these people it doesn't matter if you altcoin can do 1 trillion transactions a second because it is worthless as no serious investors has any interest holding it on the long term.

[Peter R]

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

If the economic pressure is relieved by people leaving (or never entering) the economic system, then I think this would result in a decline (or a levelling out) of Bitcoin's market cap.

So again, if the "economic pressure from deadweight loss gets relieved somehow" theory is true, then not only does it mean that we can't use the protocol to artificially increase fees, but it also means that any attempt to do so will instead have either no effect (the code will fork around it) or a negative effect (growth within the Bitcoin economy will stall or reverse [rather than fees increasing]).

Food for thought!

Oh, that one is simple!

The PoW nature of systems in question must prevent their uncontrolled duplication, so there will be only a few worth considering switching to. Plus the network effects of money in general will preserve the economic pressure from leaving the strongest networks in the field (which is again defined by manageable costs of running a full validator from home networks without permission).

And other security models aren't real honey badgers to be of any interest to many.

I'm not sure I'm following.  Are you saying that the path of least resistance is to fork the protocol to raise the block size limit?  Or that you think the system can permanently exist in a state where Qmax is to the left of Q* (economic pressure to create a fork exists yet the fork never happens)?

[VeritasSapere]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility. This in my opinion is not correct, people do care about the cost of the transaction and the present holders of Bitcoin is not all that matters. For Bitcoin to grow and survive it needs to attract more users. When better and cheaper alternatives exists people will choose those instead of Bitcoin. Bitcoin should be able to compete with other cryptocurrencies and I believe that it can as long as we do not allow the Bitcoin network to become overloaded which would lead to transactions becoming unreliable and over the long term prohibitively expensive.

[coalitionfor8mb]

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

If the economic pressure is relieved by people leaving (or never entering) the economic system, then I think this would result in a decline (or a levelling out) of Bitcoin's market cap.

So again, if the "economic pressure from deadweight loss gets relieved somehow" theory is true, then not only does it mean that we can't use the protocol to artificially increase fees, but it also means that any attempt to do so will instead have either no effect (the code will fork around it) or a negative effect (growth within the Bitcoin economy will stall or reverse [rather than fees increasing]).

Food for thought!

Oh, that one is simple!

The PoW nature of systems in question must prevent their uncontrolled duplication, so there will be only a few worth considering switching to. Plus the network effects of money in general will preserve the economic pressure from leaving the strongest networks in the field (which is again defined by manageable costs of running a full validator from home networks without permission).

And other security models aren't real honey badgers to be of any interest to many.

I'm not sure I'm following.  Are you saying that the path of least resistance is to fork the protocol to raise the block size limit?  Or that you think the system can permanently exist in a state where Qmax is to the left of Q* (economic pressure to create a fork exists yet the fork never happens)?

Ok, now we are getting to the gist of it.
The are only two LARGE limiting factors that should keep the whole crypto-ecosystem "pressurized".

1) First, is the bandwidth factor. The main target here is home networks, but I assume that we might eventually have a system one layer up from there for as long as it remains permission-less enough to operate in that space, though I'm not sure if it's going to be Bitcoin or any other system to get there (if any at all).

2) Second, is the costs to duplicate excessive hash-power to produce many successful PoW systems (and only these contribute the most into the core value proposition here as other security models gradually lose their entropy over time).

What I'm saying is that the competition within this field (of PoW coins) would force each system to fork and increase its limit in order to stay in the game, as the bandwidth factor would continue to increase due to technological innovations allowing the playing field to continue to expand.

From the perspective of any one particular system, it's like a combustion engine really, first the limit "pulls" the volume of transactions, then the volume "pushes" against the limit, as the network effect and the costs to switch (for that particular system) prevent the economic pressure from leaving. The volume should build up enough pressure and "spark" at some point in time for that system to decide to go for the higher limit (and repeat the whole cycle later in time) or risk losing its "precious" pressure to the closest competitor. The exact timing for these kinds of events would become the most interesting part of the game to follow.

[erik777]

I suggest you read Hayek's Road to Serfdom.

Totalitarianism under the urge to follow a "strong" leader by steering the sheeps against a "common enemy" is not giving choice to the market.

Having the requirement in place that 75% of the miners have to agree with this change first is in fact giving the choice to the market, considering that the miners would most likely not implement such a change without the economic majority also being on board as well. Hayek also defined totalitarianism as the desire to organise the whole of society and attain a definite social goal, this is also certainly not the case with XT.

You completely and conveniently ignore what I'm saying.  This is a POSSIBLE PATH that could come about IN THE FUTURE.  So, saying that it isn't in XT today doesn't counter anything.  You are arguing with yourself.  Here, I'll agree with you...  "what could become the future is not true in the present."

What is factual is the relationship between these possibilities and the XT creator's past proposals.  In other words, it is based on what the "benevolent dictator" could do if he had enough control over Bitcoin clients and miner code. 

The question isn't whether you have free choice today to not install XT.  If you didn't, I wouldn't spend my time typing this.  It is whether you can lose that free choice by trusting future releases of XT loaded with its patches (e.g., blacklisting) and other protocol changes.

As a crude comparison, since you are hooked on the tyranny concept, Hitler didn't start out his political campaign with a proposal to exterminate people.  He started it with proposals the people wanted to hear... to restore Germany to its former glory and prosperity.  Those who trusted him in the beginning began a journey that years later seemed regrettably unstoppable until Germany lost the war.  Tyrants can be very benevolent and seemingly benign in the beginning.  In 1933, Germany had a choice. 

How can we loose that free choice if anyone is free to release an alternate client the same way XT would have. If it get enough support it will simply be adopted.

Hitler political campaign was not an open source project... Or are you are saying that bitcoin can be controlled with the same kind of propaganda tactics?

You are oversimplifying and presuming that the current state of Bitcoin will always be true.  Think of XT nodes as an army.  If acquire a majority of miners and full nodes, and they change the protocol to have anti-forking measures, your freedom dissipates. 

For instance, checkpoints could be used to make fork attempts more difficult, while rogue (non-XT) nodes could be thwarted with blacklists. Who do you know proposed using checkpoints and blacklists? 

Of course, this depends on XT obtaining critical mass, and people trusting it long enough to be blindsided before they realize it is too late to turn back the clock. And, this hasn't happened, yet.  Let's hope it doesn't.

And why do you assume all of this would not be possible to do within Core?

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

[figmentofmyass]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility.

you get this impression......how? because you're still stuck in this "small blockists vs. XT" dichotomy? look, those of us who oppose BIP101 aren't unequivocally opposed to increasing the block size limit. but "competing with altcoins" is not a legitimate reason to implement just any protocol change that increases the block size limit. do you understand?

[coalitionfor8mb]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility. This in my opinion is not correct, people do care about the cost of the transaction and the present holders of Bitcoin is not all that matters. For Bitcoin to grow and survive it needs to attract more users. When better and cheaper alternatives exists people will choose those instead of Bitcoin. Bitcoin should be able to compete with other cryptocurrencies and I believe that it can as long as we do not allow the Bitcoin network to become overloaded which would lead to transactions becoming unreliable and over the long term prohibitively expensive.

Yes, but it turns out that we must let the current limit do its job in order for any new one (that we agree upon later) to be any good.
Limits are supposed to be active during certain stages of Bitcoin's evolutionary cycle in order for this system to function as intended.

[VeritasSapere]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility.

you get this impression......how? because you're still stuck in this "small blockists vs. XT" dichotomy? look, those of us who oppose BIP101 aren't unequivocally opposed to increasing the block size limit. but "competing with altcoins" is not a legitimate reason to implement just any protocol change that increases the block size limit. do you understand?

Not because I am stuck in the false dichotomy but because some people are literally saying this. Just check further up in this thread, I was just responding and commenting on this. I can also agree that increasing the block size for the sole reason of competing with altcoins is not a good enough reason to implement a protocol change. However that over the long term it should also be considered important to stay competitive within a free market of cryptocurrencies otherwise Bitcoin would most likely be superseded by a competitor over the long term. I do not think that this is a unrealistic position to hold, I suspect that we most likely both already agree with this point already.

[figmentofmyass]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility.

you get this impression......how? because you're still stuck in this "small blockists vs. XT" dichotomy? look, those of us who oppose BIP101 aren't unequivocally opposed to increasing the block size limit. but "competing with altcoins" is not a legitimate reason to implement just any protocol change that increases the block size limit. do you understand?

Not because I am stuck in the false dichotomy but because some people are literally saying this. Just check further up in this thread, I was just responding and commenting on this. I can also agree that increasing the block size for the sole reason of competing with altcoins is not a good enough reason to implement a protocol change. However that over the long term it should also be considered important to stay competitive within a free market of cryptocurrencies otherwise Bitcoin would most likely be superseded by a competitor over the long term. I do not think that this is a unrealistic position to hold, I suspect we are most likely in agreement about this point.

please point out specific examples, particularly by those who are active in the discussion. i've been watching this debate unfold for the last couple months. i see "1MBers" thrown around as a constant ad hominem, but i rarely see anyone actually defending this position. please recognize that if the answer is not 1MB OR BIP101, then another answer must be found.

i dont give a shit about other altcoins. the reason scaling (read: scaling =/= only increasing block size limit) should be considered important is because scaling is integral to organic adoption. the main questions are 1. time and 2. proper implementation.

[VeritasSapere]

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

[erik777]

I suggest you read Hayek's Road to Serfdom.

Totalitarianism under the urge to follow a "strong" leader by steering the sheeps against a "common enemy" is not giving choice to the market.

Having the requirement in place that 75% of the miners have to agree with this change first is in fact giving the choice to the market, considering that the miners would most likely not implement such a change without the economic majority also being on board as well. Hayek also defined totalitarianism as the desire to organise the whole of society and attain a definite social goal, this is also certainly not the case with XT.

You completely and conveniently ignore what I'm saying.  This is a POSSIBLE PATH that could come about IN THE FUTURE.  So, saying that it isn't in XT today doesn't counter anything.  You are arguing with yourself.  Here, I'll agree with you...  "what could become the future is not true in the present."

What is factual is the relationship between these possibilities and the XT creator's past proposals.  In other words, it is based on what the "benevolent dictator" could do if he had enough control over Bitcoin clients and miner code.  

The question isn't whether you have free choice today to not install XT.  If you didn't, I wouldn't spend my time typing this. It is whether you can lose that free choice by trusting future releases of XT loaded with its patches (e.g., blacklisting) and other protocol changes.

As a crude comparison, since you are hooked on the tyranny concept, Hitler didn't start out his political campaign with a proposal to exterminate people.  He started it with proposals the people wanted to hear... to restore Germany to its former glory and prosperity.  Those who trusted him in the beginning began a journey that years later seemed regrettably unstoppable until Germany lost the war.  Tyrants can be very benevolent and seemingly benign in the beginning.  In 1933, Germany had a choice.  

How can we loose that free choice if anyone is free to release an alternate client the same way XT would have. If it get enough support it will simply be adopted.

Hitler political campaign was not an open source project... Or are you are saying that bitcoin can be controlled with the same kind of propaganda tactics?

You are oversimplifying and presuming that the current state of Bitcoin will always be true.  Think of XT nodes as an army.  If acquire a majority of miners and full nodes, and they change the protocol to have anti-forking measures, your freedom dissipates.  

For instance, checkpoints could be used to make fork attempts more difficult, while rogue (non-XT) nodes could be thwarted with blacklists. Who do you know proposed using checkpoints and blacklists?  

Of course, this depends on XT obtaining critical mass, and people trusting it long enough to be blindsided before they realize it is too late to turn back the clock. And, this hasn't happened, yet.  Let's hope it doesn't.

You are either extremely uninformed or you do not understand Bitcoin, or you are intentionally spreading disinformation. Either way this type of propaganda tactic does seem more inline with the tyranny you claim to be arguing against. What you are claiming here is simply not true and it has no basis in fact.

If XT where to add such features than people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation that has these changes. People can not be blindsided in this case and it will never be to late to turn back the clock so to speak. It seems like you might not understand the mechanism that prevents such tyranny from forming within Bitcoin in the first place. Which in part is actually the ability to hard fork away from any development team be it XT or Core. It would be better to learn to love the fork.

It's obvious you'll never come around as you are just here to promote XT.  Nevertheless, I'll address this tired underlying assumptions that "people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation" somehow magically protects Bitcoin for generations to come:

False assumption #1: Everyone who downloads the program completely understands the code.

The vast majority of people do not understand the code, and most are not programmers.  Most of us, even those of us who program and can read code, downloaded and ran Core without having any idea about the details of what it does. (e.g., does it log IP addresses?)  The reason I take time to post on this forum about the risks of XT is so people can make a more informed decision, and if they decide to install XT, will at least hopefully be wise enough to question each upgrade.  Ditto for Core upgrades.  Hopefully, discussion like this help broaden awareness of the risks of new code. 

False assumption #2: Those who do have a better understanding of the features of the program they download are guaranteed to understand the implications of those features. 

The reality is that unless they do understand the implications, they are likely to take the purpose of the code at face value for what its author claims it will do.  Undoubtedly, there are some who installed XT who feel protected from DoS attacks because of the patch Mike put in it.  Unfortunately, had they read the thread with the Core devs when they rejected it, they would of known that (a) the only claim of a Tor attack was on Gavin's node with no evidence that any other node ever had an attack via Tor, (b) neither Gavin nor Mike provided logs or other evidence of the attack when the Core devs requested it, (c) the Core devs listed many reasons why most DDoS attacks are likely to come from non-Tor sources, (d) even Mike acknowledged that innocent Tor users would be harmed by it and (e) when the attack came from likely non-Tor sources, only Tor would effectively be blocked, not the DoS sources it was supposedly intended to counter.  Additionally, (f) this is intended to evolve, and could evolve with enough critical mass combined with XT whitelisting to make it very difficult to unseat XT as the primary code for Bitcoin nodes. 

Does the XT website discuss any of this?  No.  Not only does it ignore all concerns raised by the Core team, Mike has even publicly made statements about the process in which this patch was rejected by Core that very deceptively try to make the Core team look like the bad guys but conveniently leave out the truth of why Core rejected it.  Fortunately, the dialog between the Core devs and Mike on his pull request is very public for those interested in reading it.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6364