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

[Soros Shorts]

that does not change the ultimate reality which is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust.

At what point do you draw the line to stop Bitcoin from becoming fiat by economic majority?

[VeritasSapere]

that does not change the ultimate reality which is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust.

At what point do you draw the line to stop Bitcoin from becoming fiat by economic majority?

I do not think this will happen because the economic majority would be disincentivized to change parameters like the supply of Bitcoin for instance. The truth is that nobody really knows because there is no historical precedent, theoretically at least this is how it should work. This is the game theory and psychology that Bitcoin relies on for its continued operation after all.

If this did happen however because it is what the economic majority chooses then we can always still find refuge in an alternative cryptocurrency or a chain fork of Bitcoin. If such a change was introduced it would most likely cause a chain fork after all. Love it or hate it, this is what freedom looks like.

[muyuu]

He seems to want majority fiat, or sufficiently aggressive minority fiat 

Some warped minds in the XT side.

[Carlton Banks]

The nodes should determine what the value is, not the developers. But the software itself in the nodes should make the determination, not the node's human operators. I've been saying this all along; dynamic blocksize limit is the best solution to me. And that's not what you're saying at all, Peter.

You are essentially saying that people should not have the free choice. Someone does have to choose however, you can not escape this fact, under the scenario you describe it is obvious that the Core developers would choose for us. They would effectively control and decide on the future of Bitcoin under this model. I strongly disagree with this approach. I do think that this might be at the crux of our disagreement. It most certainly is an ideological disagreement, even if you disagree with that and claim truth and scientific validity it does not change that for me this is an ideological issue. In political thinking the question is often asked of whom decides, in the case of Bitcoin I think that the people or what is referred to as the economic majority should decide.

In order to achieve what you are suggesting you would have to either radically change the protocol and take the freedom out of the protocol, which i think is actually impossible to do since people can still choose to run it or not, unless you combine Bitcoin with the power and force of the state. The other way to achieve what you think would be the ideal governance model of Bitcoin would be to convince enough people that they do not have a choice or that they should defer their decision to the experts or authority instead. Neither of these scenarios seems particularly appealing to me so I definitely favor a bottom up approach where ultimately it is the users/peers that decide on the future of Bitcoin collectively in a distributed and decentralized manner, even if that means that we might sometimes not be able to agree with each other which would most likely lead to inevitable splits in the future.

This is the price of freedom, I can see how having a totalitarian approach can be appealing, no politics just centralized control by the technocrats, no splits just complete consensus and everyone has to agree with the center all of the time and for the rest of time. If enough people believed this it could work, but I am a freedom loving person so I would not want to be part of such a totalitarian construct.

Well, let's let extend your approach. Shall we give users control over:

• The RAM size of the transaction pool
• The 21 million coin limit
• What the interval is between average block times
• Which transactions they're willing to permit in the blockchain
• The dust output threshold

 

If you let users vote on those things with their bitcoin nodes, I predict "Bad Things". The consensus rules are chosen carefully by the developers because of the effect they have on Bitcoin's monetary properties, your suggestion to allow an open vote on those rules is just an invitation to bad actors to promote self-destructive rules.

Oh, you're saying Bitcoin has failed if it can't withstand that kind of vector for self-determination? Well, that's why that vector doesn't work now and never has, and what protects the network and it's userbase from that method of attack is the strength of the consensus rules. Anything that threatens the consensus rules is not so great when they're the primary protection from bad actors altering the monetary properties of Bitcoin out of recognition. Funny how you keep pushing that this is somehow not a problem, somehow the most positive thing that could happen.

Your solution should really be to launch a competitor to Bitcoin that shares your vision. You have been in a slim minority for some time, and no-one really wants what you're selling. Why not move on and convince people with this great version of Bitcoin that you're wanting to change to? Remember that arguments about how XT is somehow the "original" don't wash; it's small/shrinking and always was, it needs a hard fork in the blockchain whereas the supposed interloper currently has no hard forks proposed. Why won't XT stand on it's own, if it's so appealing? Why the need to assimilate the Bitcoin miners?

[muyuu]

I'm defending the only Bitcoin that ever existed vs the esoteric ideal you have that I frankly don't think it would ever work, but you are free to try it on your own blockchain.

I am defending the original Bitcoin, your concept of top down governance is not how Bitcoin works technically, you might be able to enforce it through a culture of believe, but that does not change the ultimate reality which is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust. You can deny this all you like but the truth is on my side.

Since day 0 Bitcoin has worked like this. The very concept of Bitcoin consensus is that if you choose to ignore it you are left out. It used to be even stricter than this when nodes were all miners, then it directly lost them money to try to disagree with the dev-imposed code. Bitcoin was even MORE strict in the beginning than it is now, that protocol rules have some degree of freedom thanks to the hard work by Core.

You seem to have no idea how parameters and characteristics have ALWAYS been set in Bitcoin.

I think that Bitcoin should be governed through a bottom up approach since this is what most closely resembles the principles of decentralization and freedom. I also think that this is how Bitcoin was designed to function and how it technically functions today. This can be subverted purely through the culture and believe of its participants, it seems like you are now actually advocating such a believe by saying that individual users should not make these decisions for themselves independently.

At least it is clear now where you stand, you want their to be top down governance of Bitcoin, I want bottom up governance. These are fundamentally incompatible concepts. I advocate freedom of choice which could lead to a split when fundamental disagreements arise. You seem to be advocating totalitarianism, tyranny of the majority or even tyranny of a minority, since without using proof of work as a way to measure consensus, consensus will be whatever Core says it is. Their governance might be benign but I refuse to entrust the future of Bitcoin with such a small technocratic elite.

People can decide for themselves what kind of a Bitcoin they want and by extension what kind of a world they want. Even if you insist that people should not have this choice over the future of Bitcoin it does not change that people do have this freedom of choice. So everyone please choose wisely, consider the advantages of freedom.

More ramblings and taking ideals out of context.

If you cannot predict what will Bitcoin's characteristics be in a year's time, then it's shit as money and as a store of value, no matter the degree of agreement redditards achieve. Blocksize fortunately doesn't go so deep, but still if you don't know whether desktop nodes will survive next year, that uncertainty is definitely very damaging for the credibility of the system. The current levels of scalability, we knew them all along.

Your understanding of monetarism seems extremely superficial. Free markets are not dominated by sufficiently aggressive minorities, that would make them non-free by definition.

It's not just Core saying no to BIP101 or XT, it's the miners too, and the vast majority of the nodes. The message couldn't be clearer, are you suggesting it's fairer to have a sufficiently aggressive minority overrule that?

You are changing the subject, the majority of miners do support an increase in the blocksize, this however is irrelevant in regards to us discussing what we think Bitcoin is and should become.

I do not mean to be so dramatic but these two opposing conceptions of Bitcoin governance are the equivalent between totalitarianism and freedom. I am confident that I am on the right side of history.

LOL "changing the subject". Also, XT's governance is a lot more totalitarian than Core. You are defending totalitarianism, and being a dramatic cry-baby about it.

[VeritasSapere]

He seems to want majority fiat, or sufficiently aggressive minority fiat 

Some warped minds in the XT side.

Says the person who wants a top down approach to Bitcoin governance, I wonder if you see the irony of your position. You are mischaracterizing my views, I do not want fiat and I do not want a minority fork. Giving people the choice certainly does come with inherent problems but it is still much better then any top down approach, since a top down approach does invalidate some of the advantages of Bitcoin which are inherent in its open and free design. Top down governance might seem fine now but over the long term it will cause massive problems that a bottom up approach would have avoided. Which is why the trend in political thought over the last few centuries has been to further divide power and distribute it, the ideal of democracy is that power does come from the bottom up, this ideal is often not realized in modern democracies for more complex reasons but these principles do remain. If Bitcoin is money for the people by the people then power does need to come from the bottom or grassroots upwards which would then be reflected by multiple client implementations which the people would then be free to choose from.
 

[hdbuck]

^this guy is a bot.

[brg444]

^this guy is a bot.

that's what I'm thinking.

IP address probably links to one of these filipino bot farms

[MbccompanyX]

^this guy is a bot.

that's what I'm thinking.

IP address probably links to one of these filipino bot farms

Or maybe best sure option is that is an account directly controlled by the XT devs, this explains why doesn't give up at the end

P.s. i seriously hope this thread will end soon because is becoming a pain to see and try to say opinions thanks to veritassapere going around as i told and without giving a damm

[brg444]

^this guy is a bot.

that's what I'm thinking.

IP address probably links to one of these filipino bot farms

Or maybe best sure option is that is an account directly controlled by the XT devs, this explains why doesn't give up at the end

P.s. i seriously hope this thread will end soon because is becoming a pain to see and try to say opinions thanks to veritassapere going around as i told and without giving a damm

I wish I had set the thread to self-moderation so I could censor him 

[VeritasSapere]

The nodes should determine what the value is, not the developers. But the software itself in the nodes should make the determination, not the node's human operators. I've been saying this all along; dynamic blocksize limit is the best solution to me. And that's not what you're saying at all, Peter.

You are essentially saying that people should not have the free choice. Someone does have to choose however, you can not escape this fact, under the scenario you describe it is obvious that the Core developers would choose for us. They would effectively control and decide on the future of Bitcoin under this model. I strongly disagree with this approach. I do think that this might be at the crux of our disagreement. It most certainly is an ideological disagreement, even if you disagree with that and claim truth and scientific validity it does not change that for me this is an ideological issue. In political thinking the question is often asked of whom decides, in the case of Bitcoin I think that the people or what is referred to as the economic majority should decide.

In order to achieve what you are suggesting you would have to either radically change the protocol and take the freedom out of the protocol, which i think is actually impossible to do since people can still choose to run it or not, unless you combine Bitcoin with the power and force of the state. The other way to achieve what you think would be the ideal governance model of Bitcoin would be to convince enough people that they do not have a choice or that they should defer their decision to the experts or authority instead. Neither of these scenarios seems particularly appealing to me so I definitely favor a bottom up approach where ultimately it is the users/peers that decide on the future of Bitcoin collectively in a distributed and decentralized manner, even if that means that we might sometimes not be able to agree with each other which would most likely lead to inevitable splits in the future.

This is the price of freedom, I can see how having a totalitarian approach can be appealing, no politics just centralized control by the technocrats, no splits just complete consensus and everyone has to agree with the center all of the time and for the rest of time. If enough people believed this it could work, but I am a freedom loving person so I would not want to be part of such a totalitarian construct.

Well, let's let extend your approach. Shall we give users control over:

• The RAM size of the transaction pool
• The 21 million coin limit
• What the interval is between average block times
• Which transactions they're willing to permit in the blockchain
• The dust output threshold

 

If you let users vote on those things with their bitcoin nodes, I predict "Bad Things". The consensus rules are chosen carefully by the developers because of the effect they have on Bitcoin's monetary properties, your suggestion to allow an open vote on those rules is just an invitation to bad actors to promote self-destructive rules.

Ultimately the people do have control over all of the parameters of Bitcoin.

Here we go again, you are saying that if we give people the freedom of choice bad things will happen, I am sorry but you sound like a dictator attempting to scare people away from freedom.

Oh, you're saying Bitcoin has failed if it can't withstand that kind of vector for self-determination?

This is what I think indeed.

Well, that's why that vector doesn't work now and never has, and what protects the network and it's userbase from that method of attack is the strength of the consensus rules. Anything that threatens the consensus rules is not so great when they're the primary protection from bad actors altering the monetary properties of Bitcoin out of recognition. Funny how you keep pushing that this is somehow not a problem, somehow the most positive thing that could happen.

I see so anyone who questions the current status quo is a bad actor, I am starting to understand your viewpoint more and more, still seems like a totalitarian mentality to me however.

Your solution should really be to launch a competitor to Bitcoin that shares your vision. You have been in a slim minority for some time, and no-one really wants what you're selling. Why not move on and convince people with this great version of Bitcoin that you're wanting to change to? Remember that arguments about how XT is somehow the "original" don't wash; it's small/shrinking and always was, it needs a hard fork in the blockchain whereas the supposed interloper currently has no hard forks proposed. Why won't XT stand on it's own, if it's so appealing? Why the need to assimilate the Bitcoin miners?

I want there to be multiple implementations for us to choose from, since only having a single choice is the definition of totalitarianism. I just want the blocksize to be increased, whether it is with BIP101, BIP100 or even BIP103. I do not think this is as unreasonable and radical as you are making it out to be. If Core fails to increase the blocksize I will choose an alternative implementation that does reflect my beliefs better, I do not see what is wrong with that, unless you think I should not be free to make that choice for myself.

[VeritasSapere]

I'm defending the only Bitcoin that ever existed vs the esoteric ideal you have that I frankly don't think it would ever work, but you are free to try it on your own blockchain.

I am defending the original Bitcoin, your concept of top down governance is not how Bitcoin works technically, you might be able to enforce it through a culture of believe, but that does not change the ultimate reality which is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust. You can deny this all you like but the truth is on my side.

Since day 0 Bitcoin has worked like this. The very concept of Bitcoin consensus is that if you choose to ignore it you are left out. It used to be even stricter than this when nodes were all miners, then it directly lost them money to try to disagree with the dev-imposed code. Bitcoin was even MORE strict in the beginning than it is now, that protocol rules have some degree of freedom thanks to the hard work by Core.

You seem to have no idea how parameters and characteristics have ALWAYS been set in Bitcoin.

The ultimate reality is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust. You can deny this all you like but the truth is on my side.

I think that Bitcoin should be governed through a bottom up approach since this is what most closely resembles the principles of decentralization and freedom. I also think that this is how Bitcoin was designed to function and how it technically functions today. This can be subverted purely through the culture and believe of its participants, it seems like you are now actually advocating such a believe by saying that individual users should not make these decisions for themselves independently.

At least it is clear now where you stand, you want their to be top down governance of Bitcoin, I want bottom up governance. These are fundamentally incompatible concepts. I advocate freedom of choice which could lead to a split when fundamental disagreements arise. You seem to be advocating totalitarianism, tyranny of the majority or even tyranny of a minority, since without using proof of work as a way to measure consensus, consensus will be whatever Core says it is. Their governance might be benign but I refuse to entrust the future of Bitcoin with such a small technocratic elite.

People can decide for themselves what kind of a Bitcoin they want and by extension what kind of a world they want. Even if you insist that people should not have this choice over the future of Bitcoin it does not change that people do have this freedom of choice. So everyone please choose wisely, consider the advantages of freedom.

More ramblings and taking ideals out of context.

If you cannot predict what will Bitcoin's characteristics be in a year's time, then it's shit as money and as a store of value, no matter the degree of agreement redditards achieve. Blocksize fortunately doesn't go so deep, but still if you don't know whether desktop nodes will survive next year, that uncertainty is definitely very damaging for the credibility of the system. The current levels of scalability, we knew them all along.

Your understanding of monetarism seems extremely superficial. Free markets are not dominated by sufficiently aggressive minorities, that would make them non-free by definition.

I never said that free markets are dominated by aggressive minorities, this is a failed attempt at a straw man argument I suppose.

It's not just Core saying no to BIP101 or XT, it's the miners too, and the vast majority of the nodes. The message couldn't be clearer, are you suggesting it's fairer to have a sufficiently aggressive minority overrule that?

You are changing the subject, the majority of miners do support an increase in the blocksize, this however is irrelevant in regards to us discussing what we think Bitcoin is and should become.

I do not mean to be so dramatic but these two opposing conceptions of Bitcoin governance are the equivalent between totalitarianism and freedom. I am confident that I am on the right side of history.

LOL "changing the subject". Also, XT's governance is a lot more totalitarian than Core. You are defending totalitarianism, and being a dramatic cry-baby about it.

At least XT is honest about development being dictatorial, the only way to free development is through multiple implementations, Core also has a singular individual who makes the final call for what gets merged, his name is Wladimir. Software development is dictatorial or at the very least oligarchical out of necessity which is why having several implementations for people to choose from solves this problem.

[hdbuck]

TBT, Core does not even matter..
Bitcoin is out. in the free.





pandora box ladies (and gents). pandora box.

[brg444]

The ultimate reality is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust. You can deny this all you like but the truth is on my side.

Do you think you're bringing some sort of novel argument here?

Here's the current reality: the economic majority has ignored XT, and it has been left in the dust. 

[VeritasSapere]

The ultimate reality is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust. You can deny this all you like but the truth is on my side.

Do you think you're bringing some sort of novel argument here?

Here's the current reality: the economic majority has ignored XT, and it has been left in the dust. 

You do realize that I am replying to the claim that the economic majority does not rule Bitcoin, which obviously is not true. I am arguing against the concept of top down governance from Core and advocating bottom up governance from the economic majority instead which ultimately is where the power lies.

[muyuu]

You do realize that I am replying to the claim that the economic majority does not rule Bitcoin, which obviously is not true. I am arguing against the concept of top down governance from Core and advocating bottom up governance from the economic majority instead which ultimately is where the power lies.

And how do you reconcile this unprecedented Bitcoin parameter and characteristic setting model with supporting XT which is much more totalitarian than Core?

[VeritasSapere]

You do realize that I am replying to the claim that the economic majority does not rule Bitcoin, which obviously is not true. I am arguing against the concept of top down governance from Core and advocating bottom up governance from the economic majority instead which ultimately is where the power lies.

And how do you reconcile this unprecedented Bitcoin parameter and characteristic setting model with supporting XT which is much more totalitarian than Core?

XT is not more totalitarian then Core, they are equally dictatorial in their decision making process, at least XT can admit to this reality. Part of the goal of XT is to further decentralize development and break up the monopoly of development that Core currently possess. Everything considered I can view XT as being the least totalitarian choice out of the two, especially considering that some of the Core developers oppose alternative implementations on principle, whereas XT embraces this concept instead.

[brg444]

The ultimate reality is that if the economic majority turns against Core, it will be left in the dust. You can deny this all you like but the truth is on my side.

Do you think you're bringing some sort of novel argument here?

Here's the current reality: the economic majority has ignored XT, and it has been left in the dust. 

I am arguing against the concept of top down governance from Core and advocating bottom up governance from the economic majority instead which ultimately is where the power lies.

Every single Bitcoin users has the choice to run whatever code he desires. Several miners and peers run different implementations & versions of the protocol­.

If they wish so they can adjust and re-compile whatever setting they desire, as long as it respects the existing consensus.

So really, when you speak of "top-down governance" and Core totalitarianism I have no fucking idea what is it you are talking about. Especially seeing as the Bitcoin Core repo is an open-source project.

[hdbuck]

Bots only aims for syntax, not meaning.

[brg444]

You do realize that I am replying to the claim that the economic majority does not rule Bitcoin, which obviously is not true. I am arguing against the concept of top down governance from Core and advocating bottom up governance from the economic majority instead which ultimately is where the power lies.

And how do you reconcile this unprecedented Bitcoin parameter and characteristic setting model with supporting XT which is much more totalitarian than Core?

XT is not more totalitarian then Core, they are equally dictatorial in their decision making process, at least XT can admit to this reality. Part of the goal of XT is to further decentralize development and break up the monopoly of development that Core currently possess. Everything considered I can view XT as being the least totalitarian choice out of the two, especially considering that some of the Core developers oppose alternative implementations on principle, whereas XT embraces this concept instead.

Please stop swallowing every lie that comes out of Mike Hearn's mouth.

Wladimir has repeatedly stated that in situations where consensus critical parts of the code would be debated he would require at the very least rough consensus amongst dev to move forward with any proposition.

Don't confuse a code repo maintainer with a dictator that just shines light on your technical ignorance.