Thanks to people who support 1-2 MB blocks - great idea u fools...

[brg444]

We are getting away from the original argument though which is that Bitcoin is more durable than gold. Now the Bitcoin network might be compromised or inaccessible temporarily yet private keys remain.

So let's get back to that (and forget about silly asteroids of gold).

Again - gold has survived since the earth was formed but Bitcoin has only been here since 2009.

If the governments of the world decide that they don't want an "internet' as we have had so far (which is looking very likely) then Bitcoin might be dead in only a few years (but gold will still be here).

My advice to any investors would be to diversify between gold, property and Bitcoin (and in that order - and notice I did not list *fiat* at all).

What if the governments of the world decide that they don't want gold circulating either?

To be quite honest I'm not buying the premise of the internet somehow getting closed down or made inaccessible. Provided Bitcoin the blockchain remains small enough (another important reason to keep the block size small) it will be able to operate on low latency network and as it propagates and gains adoption will create even more incentives to make the internet more resilient to government attacks (mesh networks, etc.).

Even if we are to ignore durability there are still numerous aspects of Bitcoin which make it more desirable to hold than gold. While you might argue that the physical nature of gold make it more resilient to certain attacks it certainly renders it vulnerable to a whole range of issues (theft, seizure).

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[CIYAM]

Even if we are to ignore durability there are still numerous aspects of Bitcoin which make it more desirable to hold than gold. While you might argue that the physical nature of gold make it more resilient to certain attacks it certainly renders it vulnerable to a whole range of issues (theft, seizure).

So I think you are admitting that your argument about durability is not a strong one.

For sure I think Bitcoin is a great investment but I wouldn't put it above gold now (let's see how things pan out in the next ten years).

[brg444]

Even if we are to ignore durability there are still numerous aspects of Bitcoin which make it more desirable to hold than gold. While you might argue that the physical nature of gold make it more resilient to certain attacks it certainly renders it vulnerable to a whole range of issues (theft, seizure).

So I think you are admitting that your argument about durability is not a strong one.

For sure I think Bitcoin is a great investment but I wouldn't put it above gold now (let's see how things pan out in the next ten years).

Not quite. Conceptually, Bitcoin private keys being an idea (maths) it is irrefutable that they are more durable than a physical asset which can deteriorate, be transformed, hell even vaporized.

Can you destroy a Bitcoin private key?

[pereira4]

VISA 100%.

If Bitcoin is used universally in day to day life, it would make a huge impact on the global standard of living. There are so many life changing applications that Bitcoin can accomplish when used in such high volume, and the outcome would be phenomenal.

And either way, we would all be filthy rich. If Bitcoin was so overwhelmingly successful as to replace VISA or gold, it doesn't really matter which is worth more at that point.

There is a lot more money invested in gold than invested in fiat, so I would say gold. Gold market is bigger than visa and PayPal combined. If we got only a small % of gold-invested money into the Bitcoin ecosystem the price could go to 5K+ easily. Just think about all the trillions of dollars in countries where people would be interested to move their funds overseas but are stuck on there because moving gold is inconvenient as hell. This reason alone puts Bitcoin potential marketcap of hundreds of billions if not more.

Of course, ideally we should aim at covering both, and Lightning Network can help us with that.

[CIYAM]

Can you destroy a Bitcoin private key?

Without a blockchain a Bitcoin private key is just a random number (and you can create those very easily).

So the value of not being able to "destroy" a random number is exactly what?

[brg444]

Can you destroy a Bitcoin private key?

Without a blockchain a Bitcoin private key is just a random number (and you can create those very easily).

So the value of not being able to "destroy" a random number is exactly what?

Blockchain can not be destroyed either, just temporarily out of service 

[disclaimer201]

OP calls anyone supporting small block sizes fools. I suppose he doesn't have any substantial amount of Bitcoins nor does he care about running a full node. Doubling the blockchain size seems possible while giving the network more room for growth. How much space is needed to keep BTC alive? Will a large blockchain be "the solution" for all of Bitcon's problems? No, it will not suddenly be used by everyone and it doesn't need to be. Bitcoin's future is bright even without large blocks.

In my view Bitcoin itself will never be "widely" used as a currency except for large sums. Almost everyone buys or mines Bitcoin to hold it as an investment/asset. Sure, it's technically a currency but essentially an asset. If everyone's hopes are correct, it will become so expensive that it will grow and flourish without adoption by "the masses". Quite frankly, all BTC needs is adoption by large organisations, not the little man on the street. Instead, alternative currencies, which you can buy and sell for Bitcoins will be used by everyone and his mom.

[SebastianJu]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

You are right: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

Though you see the constant trend right? And you know how easily and without high costs it is possible to fill these blocks up to 1MB? Now imagine what happens in the case of a fast adoption of bitcoin. Like amazon accepting bitcoins directly. Bitcoin blocks would be full instantly and bitcoin would practically die in the same time. Since all the new users would have a terrible user experience. Bitcoin would not confirm most transactions and nobody needs a currency that even lost such a crucial advantage. Why should anyone use an unreliable currency like that?

There are a lot of holes in your logic.

The most obvious one being that Amazon accepting Bitcoin would have little effect on the adoption of Bitcoin. If you still hold true to these beliefs it seems there are lot of things you need to learn before addressing the block size issue.

Unfortunately your answer doesn't contain anything valid as an argument that i could go against. Only a personal attack that i need to learn to understand the block size issue. Surely not constuctive.

But i will explain it more in detail. Let's assume amazon decides to accept bitcoin. Maybe they even advertise it as a cheap way to earn money without risk for them. Then let's assume that the amount of transactions jumps up 200% from now. I'm pretty sure you can imagine what that would mean at the end. It would mean that a lot of new bitcoin users would come and use bitcoin but their experience would be horrible. Since by design 33% of all transactions would never be filled. (Assuming we are at 50% filled blocks now in average.)

So now explain me why that would not be a problem for bitcoin please.

Simple, a fee market would take hold whereas those interested the most in getting their transaction through will pay the necessary fee.

Those that can't bother paying extra fee just to give a online shopping transaction higher priority will be left contemplating better, more efficient alternatives and realize that the "Bitcoin payment network" is not all it was cracked up to be.

The fact is that a large majority of Bitcoin users are not interested in using their holdings for casual internet shopping. There are numerous valid reasons behind this and one should be wise to realize that Bitcoin is not an interesting option for consumer spendings. In that regard credit cards are largely more efficient and secure for the mainstream population.  It is counter-intuitive to presume that people are going to rush to Bitcoin if somehow Amazon would begin to accept it. What incentive is there for them? Why go through all the hassle of purchasing Bitcoin just to.... make purchases. Fiat works well in that regard and while some here would like to pretend otherwise, regular joes are perfectly comfortable with their current situation.

Of course Amazon already acknowledges this which is why they feel no urgency adding Bitcoin as a payment option.

And you totally forget that everony wants his transactin to confirm. So everyone will pay more and STILL 33% of all transactions will never confirm. That is a unbelieveable feature for a currency. It would be so unreliable that it would be stupid to even think about using such a system. The fee market would mean everyone pays more and more and still 33% would lose. Great plan indeed.

The average user is not using bitcoin because the use cases are limited. Now guys like you come and give up, claiming that bitcoin will never make it... let's give up guys. Only because adoption by users and markets isn't so wide spread yet doesn't mean that this will not happen. But it will happen for sure when your fee market will break bitcoin.

If Amazon would accept it then Amazon would have it's reason. Maybe they even give a discount. It doesn't matter why amazon would do it. Point is, in the event of a thing like that happening, bitcoin would die.

You sound like you are not bitcoiner at all. Why use bitcoin? Well, if you think bitcoin has no advantage then why are you here? It obviously has advantages, and that is why you are here. Why do you think every average joe must be stupidier than you and not getting it at all?

[SebastianJu]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

you're really not very smart if you think we have several years before we hit the limit.

The adoption rate of any technology, including bitcoin, is exponential.

So we don't have nearly as much time as you think.

So what do you suggest? Surely not a linear increase in block size? Or should we make it exponential as well?

I suggest dropping that limit completely. Fighting spam with minimum fees and such. There simply is no need for crippling bitcoin that way. There was no problem with full blocks until the spamming started. And the spamming would not have been started with unlimited blocks. Way too expensive and spam would be useless.

Do you understand the consequences an unbounded block size would have?

Such a decision would inevitably lead to a sudden and surely exponential increase in the cost of running a full node.

Do you want Bitcoin to be run in datacenters?

Well well, again the story of the suddenly appearing spamtransactions hundred fold of the actual amount of transactions.

Where should these transactions come from suddenly? They never happened since satoshie proposed the 1MB block size limit. They only happen now when it is financially somehow rewarding to spam the network. Be it for raising the fees for miners, and getting some or all of your investment back, or to promote the need or nonneed of a block size increase.

I think there are more clever ways to deal with spam. I mean why should someone spam 20 MB blocks? It would be stupid and useless because the next block would be 20MB and that's it. The network will work like it ever did. And the spammer only lost money.

All this fearmongering...

And centralization? There are already ways to be a node without having to store the full blockchain. As well as mining became centralized to the point that the might miners have over bitcoin should be not acceptable for a decentralized currency. But it happens and is not avoidable.

I always wonder how someone can stay around and claim that we need 1MB blocks, knowing, that it will kill bitcoin with unconfirming transactions and high fees, and is trying to cramp the protocol in a cage that is way too small for it already. That is so backwardsighted, it's unbelieveable. Well, except one assumes other monetary interests behind.

In no way are the previous spam attacks financially rewarding for whoever is responsible for them. That's pure nonsense.

I'm afraid you simply lack imagination   The bloat I'm referring to is not necessarily your typical spam attacks. Anyone interested in using the blockchain as some sort of database or for de minimis transactions of little monetary value has had to deal with the cap as a deterrent. The transactions never happened precisely because of the 1MB block size limit.

If we choose to remove this limit then we leave the blockchain open to all kind of abuse from people leeching its resources without consideration for the people shouldering the load : the nodes. Please don't be naive: if you build it, they will come. Ever heard of supply creates its own demand? Surely you've read about the "Fidelity problem" and how they are supposedly planning to leverage Bitcoin's blockchain for their project? If such reports are true then we can safely presume other projects have similar interest. How much bloat do you believe it would be reasonable for the network to support these projects?

If Fidelity requires 20mb blocks to satisfy its use case would you be comfortable accomodating them with these resources?

In short: assuming the demand for transaction is infinite and that Bitcoin adoption tends to grow exponentially do you accept that under an unbounded block size the resources required to participate in the network as a peer (run a full node) will follow this exponential growth?

All this fearmongering...

I always wonder how someone can stay around and claim that we need 1MB blocks, knowing, that it will kill bitcoin with unconfirming transactions and high fees, and is trying to cramp the protocol in a cage that is way too small for it already.

 

The spam attacks can be financially rewarding when a conglomerate of big miner corporations is sponsoring it. No one would ever know if they did since i'm sure the spammer can receive anonymous bitcoin payments.

And it will only be easier the more the blocks are filled. Less costs, higher fees. I'm sure you can see the connection. And hopefully the risk too then.

You speak as if the current blocks are full of "using the blockchain as some sort of database or for de minimis transactions of little monetary value has had to deal with the cap as a deterrent". Where are these? Why it doesn't happen when the blocks mostly aren't even full? And why should it happen suddenly when there is not only 50% free space but 15% free? Maybe because of the minimum fee?

It's pure speculation that something that is not done yet, with 500KB free space in EACH block, would not be done now but suddenly with 15.5MB free space. That's fortune telling and not even smart one since reality shows that it would be possible now, but it doesn't happen.

You might say they will create huge transactions and pay only the satoshies per Byte... fine, i don't like the current handling not too. You can't go to the post office and put a big box of letters on the table and await that the box is paid with the price it would when you would send the box to one address. But in bitcoin you can await that all the letters are sent to different locations for the price of shipping the box to one address. That surely is not cool. There should be a minimum fee per output. Simple as that.

Didn't hear about fidelity yet. Though if they have to pay fees then they might think about it. They surely would not bloat the blockchain to the point of damaging bitcoin since they rely on the service then. Destroying would destroy their business model. Wouldn't be smart.

Like i said, if they want to store they would have to pay. Per output. If their business model still works then fine. It could not be avoided then, regardless of blocksize. It would happen anyway.

I'm still standing behind what i said. When a big part of legit bitcoin transactions never will confirm, then this is the dead to bitcoin. I don't care then about some other altcoin that still uses bitcoin. I would search a better system. I'm not sure why you can't see the problem. Or do you?

[SebastianJu]

Unfortunately a compromise needs to be meet between wanting to go all on-chain and wanting to stay decentralized.

If you want to have all on chain decentralization of nodes is lost. This is the least wanted possibility. Therefore, we must do all things possible to not end up like that.

I want Bitcoin to scale to global level payments, and it seems something like LN is the most realistic possibility.

So? Do you think Satoshi was stupid when he believed in bitcoin being a worldwide currency of way more transactions? Did i somewhere miss the point where he wrote that at one point we need to cripple bitcoin down and use a crutch like lightning network only to let it work somehow?

You realize that satoshi wanted so many transactions to happen that it could replace the blocksize reward? Bitcoin alone. No crutch like LN.

Man, i don't get this so obvious side interests showing up. It's like an advertising company spreading fear of centralization, spam attacks and whatever. Well, i must admit it is somewhat successfull since it seems some people believe it.

LN is not a crutch, rather it is one of the only option by which Bitcoin can support ubiquitous worldwide transaction volume. Unless you are intent on having Bitcoin run by corporation and government sponsored datacenters.

Well, at the end miner corporations have the power over bitcoin now. Not what we imagined at the start i guess. But it is the case. In the near future they will merge and one or two will survive. They will work together to implement what they want to see in bitcoin.

So i don't really fear that nodes are run by datacenters. That's not really the problem here.

[SebastianJu]

I don't know how anyone who sees a relevant future for Bitcoin could argue for maintaining these small blocksizes. What would happen if Bitcoin transactions rose to a volume of just 1% of PayPal's volume? 10%? The result would be absolutely disastrous. Bitcoin adoption, moon, whatever bullshit you believe in, fundamentally cannot happen with the current blocksizes.

Bitcoin's success is not dependent on the transaction throughput of its blockchain.

The value of every transaction is more important than the number of transactions.

As it stands Bitcoin can accomodate a market cap orders of magnitude above where it currently sits. That is because most Bitcoin users understand the value of holding the asset long term and the diminishing returns involved with careless spending before its value appreciates to its full potential.

But it could not serve as a replacement for fiat or bank money anymore. And that's the vision satoshi had. The thought that bitcoin has to be switched into a high volume transfer system is somewhat strange. It's so far away from the roots of bitcoin that it is not even funny anymore. It would not be peoples money anymore. It would be corporation money or rich people money only.

I don't like that vision. And i doubt satoshi was stupid enough to not foresee the current problems.

[SebastianJu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

There's the rub. Some countries have miners with the advantage of bigger blocks and some have miners with the advantage of smaller blocks. If you get away from the hardware issue and focus on the end user, then more tps and larger blocks becomes evident.

Not really. What you describe would be some stoneage country. Every computer nowadays can deal with it. And we surely don't need to make sure that bitcoin nodes can run on a C64, don't you think? One can go too far easily...

It takes more than computing power to support larger block sizes. Some countries can't handle the bandwidth of those large blocks to propagate them.

You don't even have to look into other countries: 50% of rural americans wouldn't have the connection to handle 8mb blocks, that's roughly 30 million people in the United States alone.

In countries like Russia (not Moscow of course) and all those ex soviet countries (ukraine, belarus and so on) internet is still very limited in big parts of the population. Venezuela and all those south American countries are also stuck with really poor internet connections. We need to be able to see nodes coming from those places too.

So we need nodes in every developing internet area because? And we don't need bitcoin as a small amount transfer system because?

Something doesn't match with this argumentation. Somehow we need to have every crappy internet connection take part but at the end it doesn't matter for them with bitcoin turning into a high amount transfer system.

[SebastianJu]

Is Bitcoin more durable than gold? Yes

I don't think so - gold will still be there when the internet is not (in fact gold will still be there when we cease to exist as a species).

And gold has an inherit value for production of electronics and other things. You can do nothing with a bunch of numbers that build the bitcoin blockchain once it's value should crash.

By the way... this fee market. Why the heck should it be needed when the miners are already paid way too much? I mean it is so rewarding that the network is 100 times safer than it would need to be. And every transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 average US-households use in a day. Bigger transactions even more.

Miners need to be trimmed down, rewards need to sink. I can't hear the whining of miners that we somehow need to make up for the block halving. Trashing old miner tech was happening all the time. Deal with it. Otherwise bitcoin will have the fame of being bad for environment.

[SebastianJu]

The #1 attraction of Bitcoin is its monetary sovereignty. This is how it proposes to change people's life. Not because of free & instant transactions.

How will you reach that sovereignty when you need exchangers to change it to fiat? It would be useless then. You need it as an every currency. Spendable when you want.

And jeff, the value of bitcoin really comes from those who hold and does not sell. Because they believe in the value of bitcoin and store real world value in bitcoin. They sold something to get the bitcoin. If they would sell then it would mean they lost trust and bitcoin price would crash.

[brg444]

The #1 attraction of Bitcoin is its monetary sovereignty. This is how it proposes to change people's life. Not because of free & instant transactions.

How will you reach that sovereignty when you need exchangers to change it to fiat? It would be useless then. You need it as an every currency. Spendable when you want.

And jeff, the value of bitcoin really comes from those who hold and does not sell. Because they believe in the value of bitcoin and store real world value in bitcoin. They sold something to get the bitcoin. If they would sell then it would mean they lost trust and bitcoin price would crash.

I'm not going to address any of your posts since you've conveniently ignored about half of my arguments.

Better sell now, Bitcoin is dead as its block size will remain capped likely forever.

[SebastianJu]

Physical assets are subject to seizure.

You may not find them relevant but this is pretty much how every form of money was judged historically.

You don't find it relevant that Bitcoin can be divided into micro-transactions and sent all over the world while gold is hardly convenient for casual transactions and quite a hassle to store and transport in large quantity?

Um... and you are the one who wants bitcoin to be a high transfer payment system? Guess you need to decide what settings bitcoin should have.

And yes, as long as people believe in bitcoin value then the value is fine. It would change when countries all over the world would forbid bitcoin and nobody is allowed to accept it. It would be dark money then. With way less worth.

Gold can be seized if you didn't hide properly, but in case of crash it still has a value, well not really so much anymore when everyone wants to sell it to electronic companies.

[SebastianJu]

Now there might be an asteroid made of gold but I don't see any real plans to bring that back to earth in the next 100 years (we will more likely see humans on Mars first).

While bringing that gold down probably would make gold practically worthless... too much of it available.

[SebastianJu]

We are getting away from the original argument though which is that Bitcoin is more durable than gold. Now the Bitcoin network might be compromised or inaccessible temporarily yet private keys remain.

So let's get back to that (and forget about silly asteroids of gold).

Again - gold has survived since the earth was formed but Bitcoin has only been here since 2009.

If the governments of the world decide that they don't want an "internet' as we have had so far (which is looking very likely) then Bitcoin might be dead in only a few years (but gold will still be here).

My advice to any investors would be to diversify between gold, property and Bitcoin (and in that order - and notice I did not list *fiat* at all).

What if the governments of the world decide that they don't want gold circulating either?

To be quite honest I'm not buying the premise of the internet somehow getting closed down or made inaccessible. Provided Bitcoin the blockchain remains small enough (another important reason to keep the block size small) it will be able to operate on low latency network and as it propagates and gains adoption will create even more incentives to make the internet more resilient to government attacks (mesh networks, etc.).

Even if we are to ignore durability there are still numerous aspects of Bitcoin which make it more desirable to hold than gold. While you might argue that the physical nature of gold make it more resilient to certain attacks it certainly renders it vulnerable to a whole range of issues (theft, seizure).

Then what if governments decide bitcoin is bad and forbid that anyone accepts bitcoin? Exchanges, Shops... it would crash. And be an illegal currency. What would it's worth be then? Nearly nothing. Not much different from forbidding gold. You still can hide some of it most probably when the rest gets confiscated.

[SebastianJu]

The #1 attraction of Bitcoin is its monetary sovereignty. This is how it proposes to change people's life. Not because of free & instant transactions.

How will you reach that sovereignty when you need exchangers to change it to fiat? It would be useless then. You need it as an every currency. Spendable when you want.

And jeff, the value of bitcoin really comes from those who hold and does not sell. Because they believe in the value of bitcoin and store real world value in bitcoin. They sold something to get the bitcoin. If they would sell then it would mean they lost trust and bitcoin price would crash.

I'm not going to address any of your posts since you've conveniently ignored about half of my arguments.

Better sell now, Bitcoin is dead as its block size will remain capped likely forever.

Great. You are stupid so i don't need to answer. Grow up man.

I take my time to address all of your points and you simply chose the simple way. Probably you didn't even bother to read my posts so that you can claim i did ignore your points.

Otherwise let me know which arguments i ignored in your eyes.

[cbeast]

The #1 attraction of Bitcoin is its monetary sovereignty. This is how it proposes to change people's life. Not because of free & instant transactions.

You can say the same thing about any altcoin.