Bitcoin halving to be canceled?

[Nemo1024]

Once must understand that halving is an essential part of the Bitcoin protocol, aimed at approximating the natural increase in scarcity, observed in other money systems, like gold (as opposed to currencies, like dollar, which can be printed ad infinitum)

The problem is that Bitcoin itself is not natural. As I have said elsewhere (and been attacked by assclowns of all stripes and denominations, lol), Bitcoin, in this aspect, is no different than any other fiat money out there (or currency, if you please), my point being that mimicking scarcity (or any other quality) of its counterparts such as gold doesn't endow it with the resilience and robustness due to their inherent value (entrenched deep in the minds and nature of people)...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Scarcity is part of what gives both gold and bitcoin value. The only reason anything has any value at all is that everyone believes it to be true. This is true of bitcoin, gold, and fiat. Confidence in the particular monetary system is what bestows value, and part of the confidence in bitcoin is the built in scarcity of a hard cap and halving block rewards along the way. If that confidence is undermined, then the value/utility of the monetary system is going to fall, and that's true of gold and fiat too.

Well put. I can recommend as casual reading Stephen Baxter's and Terry Prattchett's "Long Earth", where the authors explore the "parallel Earths" opening up, and (in a sub-plot) the sudden unlimited access to gold from all those instances, devaluing gold pretty quickly.

[deisik]

If no, why not then give me half of your earnings?

Because you are making a logical mistake here. Why should I? You are transferring to a personal level a global market. When halving occurs, everything else, the rest of the Bitcoin economy, is indexed to that pretty quickly.

It is not my mistake. You shouldn't, but this is exactly the same situation why you wouldn't (want to) give half of your earnings in favor of some vague concept you called a global market. Money is always personal, wtf. And I'm highly dubious that you actually mine Bitcoin these days...

But you are welcome to leave a message on the blockchain

[SebastianJu]

Once must understand that halving is an essential part of the Bitcoin protocol, aimed at approximating the natural increase in scarcity, observed in other money systems, like gold (as opposed to currencies, like dollar, which can be printed ad infinitum)

The problem is that Bitcoin itself is not natural. As I have said elsewhere (and been attacked by assclowns of all stripes and denominations, lol), Bitcoin, in this aspect, is no different than any other fiat money out there (or currency, if you please), my point being that mimicking scarcity (or any other quality) of its counterparts such as gold doesn't endow it with the resilience and robustness due to their inherent value (entrenched deep in the minds and nature of people)...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Scarcity is part of what gives both gold and bitcoin value. The only reason anything has any value at all is that everyone believes it to be true. This is true of bitcoin, gold, and fiat. Confidence in the particular monetary system is what bestows value, and part of the confidence in bitcoin is the built in scarcity of a hard cap and halving block rewards along the way. If that confidence is undermined, then the value/utility of the monetary system is going to fall, and that's true of gold and fiat too.

What you write about the value is not fully true. There is the intrinsic value too. Gold for example has many usecases in electronics and more places. This means it has a value that comes from being gold alone. Not from the value it has from speculation or believe. So gold might crash but there should always be a bottom value. Of course the question is if so much gold can be used at all. But there are other items that are used as a kind of currency that has it's own value. Let's say cigarettes in war times. Some smoke them away, because they are stupid, some sell them for a warm jacket and are allowed to life because of that. But even when no one would want them, their value would be none for others, there is still a value in using it. (If you can say that at all about cigarettes. )

The same can't be said about bitcoin. You have nothing than some virtual flags if the value is crashing and everyone believes it is nothing worth.

[SebastianJu]

The problem will solve itself. The reward over time is only as low as many miners take part in the mining game. Lower the reward and many miners will switch off their unprofitable miners. Which means the remaining rewards will be split through the remaining miners, which means they will earn more.

I don't particularly disagree with the said. In fact, I already mentioned something to that tune somewhere in the thread earlier. There are two major issues with this, though. First, this problem is apparently the flaw in design (an arbitrarily set number), at least, the way it is set up to work (if anyone begs to differ, think about how non-optimal (or, better, disruptive) the halving is/will be). Second, the disrupture in Bitcoin operation may be fatal to it, meaning it may never fully recover from this halving...

I don't see why this halving should be different. I mean even when 50 or 70% of all miners are switched off then, it doesn't matter at all since the remaining miners will earn more because they don't need to share. I think because of that no problem can arise.

[SebastianJu]

You can summarize this by a simple question.
Would you switch to a "miners-fork" where halfing is not done ?
I know I wouldn't.

I have no bitcoins at the moment (well, I seem to have been paid by bit-x today, but this is dust). I sold whatever I had at 460. If that was at the top (I didn't follow the price closely), then I was just lucky, and I'm done with Bitcoin, wtf...

So, personally, I don't care

Nah, that is normal for bitcoin. And yes, you were near the top. If you follow the price then you might have even more coins at the end. At one point in time bitcoin price will stabilize when adoption is higher.

[SebastianJu]

Well, yes mining pools have the most power. But do they have ultimate control? No. Even satoshi doesn't have that. to stop/delay the halving, we'd have to all agree to a change in the coin's source code. Which is also making a totally different coin. Something like Bitcoin XT, which isn't really working out that well. One other reason why bitcoin is so successful is it's specific amount of coins and it's unique supply. If we change this, the price of bitcoin will plummet.

So no, I dont think the halving will be cancelled.

You are right. The miner have the power but ultimately the user have the power. Us bitcoiners that can chose to use a fork of bitcoin, believing that this is the real bitcoin that holds the real value. I mean at the end the price will decide which fork wins. And the price gets established by the users and traders.

Though when i think about it, what if the corrupt miners take the forked coins and sell them all. Pushing the price of the forked bitcoin down to the bottom. Of course the forked bitcoiners could do the same. Though i wonder what the outcome of this would be.

[deisik]

The problem will solve itself. The reward over time is only as low as many miners take part in the mining game. Lower the reward and many miners will switch off their unprofitable miners. Which means the remaining rewards will be split through the remaining miners, which means they will earn more.

I don't particularly disagree with the said. In fact, I already mentioned something to that tune somewhere in the thread earlier. There are two major issues with this, though. First, this problem is apparently the flaw in design (an arbitrarily set number), at least, the way it is set up to work (if anyone begs to differ, think about how non-optimal (or, better, disruptive) the halving is/will be). Second, the disrupture in Bitcoin operation may be fatal to it, meaning it may never fully recover from this halving...

I don't see why this halving should be different. I mean even when 50 or 70% of all miners are switched off then, it doesn't matter at all since the remaining miners will earn more because they don't need to share. I think because of that no problem can arise.

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

[Kozlov]

The problem will solve itself. The reward over time is only as low as many miners take part in the mining game. Lower the reward and many miners will switch off their unprofitable miners. Which means the remaining rewards will be split through the remaining miners, which means they will earn more.

I don't particularly disagree with the said. In fact, I already mentioned something to that tune somewhere in the thread earlier. There are two major issues with this, though. First, this problem is apparently the flaw in design (an arbitrarily set number), at least, the way it is set up to work (if anyone begs to differ, think about how non-optimal (or, better, disruptive) the halving is/will be). Second, the disrupture in Bitcoin operation may be fatal to it, meaning it may never fully recover from this halving...

I don't see why this halving should be different. I mean even when 50 or 70% of all miners are switched off then, it doesn't matter at all since the remaining miners will earn more because they don't need to share. I think because of that no problem can arise.

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

The Chinese have a fairly good idea where miners are going, and what they are doing - they make them and have the biggest mining operations in the world. I'd say the Russians are in on this, 100%.

[deisik]

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

The Chinese have a fairly good idea where miners are going, and what they are doing - they make them and have the biggest mining operations in the world. I'd say the Russians are in on this, 100%.

I assume that the Bitcoin network will be paralyzed (at least temporarily) if 70% of miners (i.e. mining pools) decide to call it a day and be done with that

[CoinHopper]

Your OP is quite confusing. The Bitcoin halving cannot be canceled unless the whole bitcoin community agrees for an edit to the bitcoin source code that we all use. Then we all have to start using a new or updated bitcoin wallet. This will not happen, as it has been tried, with Bitcoin XT. Most people will reject this change, as when someone holds 21 BTC, they hold a millionth of all the bitcoins there will ever be.

[deisik]

Your OP is quite confusing. The Bitcoin halving cannot be canceled unless the whole bitcoin community agrees for an edit to the bitcoin source code that we all use. Then we all have to start using a new or updated bitcoin wallet. This will not happen, as it has been tried, with Bitcoin XT. Most people will reject this change, as when someone holds 21 BTC, they hold a millionth of all the bitcoins there will ever be.

Okay, but IIRC, the Dogecoin had nevertheless been uncapped at some stage of its life course. So, what is made by one human can be unmade by another

[SebastianJu]

The problem will solve itself. The reward over time is only as low as many miners take part in the mining game. Lower the reward and many miners will switch off their unprofitable miners. Which means the remaining rewards will be split through the remaining miners, which means they will earn more.

I don't particularly disagree with the said. In fact, I already mentioned something to that tune somewhere in the thread earlier. There are two major issues with this, though. First, this problem is apparently the flaw in design (an arbitrarily set number), at least, the way it is set up to work (if anyone begs to differ, think about how non-optimal (or, better, disruptive) the halving is/will be). Second, the disrupture in Bitcoin operation may be fatal to it, meaning it may never fully recover from this halving...

I don't see why this halving should be different. I mean even when 50 or 70% of all miners are switched off then, it doesn't matter at all since the remaining miners will earn more because they don't need to share. I think because of that no problem can arise.

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

That was because the stresstests. Someone created piles of junktransactions with a sligthly higher fee than legit transactions so that miners included the more expensive transactions and normal transactions got stuck. The problem was not that too view miners exist but that each block only can hold transactions worth 1mb of data.

By the way... the last days we have full blocks without spam attack. Many transactions are not confirming for a long time even though they have a good enough fee. Only because some people think we should not raise the blocksize limit.

The empty blocks are normal. Some miners do that all the time. The idea behind is that a block with only one transaction can be propagated faster through the network. Reaching >50% faster and maybe orphan other blocks that are big and can be propagated slower.

But there is a network to spread big blocks in 2 seconds or so. Every miner using it will not need empty blocks anymore. It is no argument anymore that you need to use empty blocks for an advantage.

[SebastianJu]

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

The Chinese have a fairly good idea where miners are going, and what they are doing - they make them and have the biggest mining operations in the world. I'd say the Russians are in on this, 100%.

I assume that the Bitcoin network will be paralyzed (at least temporarily) if 70% of miners (i.e. mining pools) decide to call it a day and be done with that

That would be true only for a short time until the difficulty adjusted. If really so many miners stopped instantly, which would not happen in one day timeframe, then it could mean that new blocks are only found every 25 minutes or so. Then when the difficulty adjusted then it should be again at 10 minutes.

[deisik]

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

That was because the stresstests. Someone created piles of junktransactions with a sligthly higher fee than legit transactions so that miners included the more expensive transactions and normal transactions got stuck. The problem was not that too view miners exist but that each block only can hold transactions worth 1mb of data

This is what I had been told. But it's cold comfort, given that I got caught personally (for 2 days, Carl!) and generally don't believe such stories, lol. The theory of the more expensive transactions crowding out normal transactions doesn't hold since it fails to provide a viable explanation for empty blocks...

[deisik]

I don't know how the matters stand at the moment, but in August there was a transactional glut, i.e. there were a few thousand unconfirmed transactions that didn't get confirmed in time (up to 50,000, if I'm not mistaken). I got caught too, my ~1 BTC transaction hadn't been confirmed for 2 days. I guess it was a deliberate effort by miners to stimulate the price, since I saw a lot of new blocks with only the miner's TX in them...

Therefore, it is hard to predict what the miners can be up to

The Chinese have a fairly good idea where miners are going, and what they are doing - they make them and have the biggest mining operations in the world. I'd say the Russians are in on this, 100%.

I assume that the Bitcoin network will be paralyzed (at least temporarily) if 70% of miners (i.e. mining pools) decide to call it a day and be done with that

That would be true only for a short time until the difficulty adjusted. If really so many miners stopped instantly, which would not happen in one day timeframe, then it could mean that new blocks are only found every 25 minutes or so. Then when the difficulty adjusted then it should be again at 10 minutes.

Are you kidding? It is not uncommon to see new blocks mined as rare as one per hour. If the major mining pools (which mine over 90% of new blocks) stop operation, the blockchain will be frozen

[deisik]

Are you kidding? It is not uncommon to see new blocks mined as rare as one per hour. If the major mining pools (which mine over 90% of new blocks) stop operation, the blockchain will be frozen

You are exaggerating. If 90% of the hash rate turns off, then blocks will be found on average every 100 minutes (instead of every 10 minutes) until the next difficulty change, which will be in less than 140 days.

Everything will return to normal in less than 175 days.

Okay, let's take your figures. Now we allegedly have 10 minutes between confirmations on average. I don't believe these numbers (the transaction weighted mean interval should be significantly higher, simple average being useless), but given that it is often much more than that (50-60 minutes and above), it would amount to 500-600 minutes if 90% of the hash rate is turned off. 600 minutes is 10 hours, Carl. Now we have 10 hours of waiting within which the network is essentially down, and many thousands (millions?) of unconfirmed transactions piling up...

Do you really think Bitcoin will ever recover from that glut? After a week Bitcoin will be as dead as a doornail due to escalation effects

Period	Block TIme	Duration
Current	100 minutes	< 140 days
+1	25 minutes	35 days
+2	10 minutes	14 days

I don't quite understand what this table means. Care to explain?

[deisik]

Again you are exaggerating, the block time is occasionally 50-60 minutes. So, with 90% of the hash rate gone, it will occasionally take 10 hours. The table shows what will happen to the average block time if the hash power is cut by 90%.

I'm curious why you deny the evident. Even if 60 minutes today is occasional (which is not good, mildly speaking), then it will be 100 minutes on average, right? There is a lower limit on the mean time between confirmations above which the network becomes unsustainable (transaction wise) and disintegrates. I guess just 1 hour time span would kill the blockchain pretty fast...

What is +1 and +2 in that table?

[deisik]

Again you are exaggerating, the block time is occasionally 50-60 minutes. So, with 90% of the hash rate gone, it will occasionally take 10 hours. The table shows what will happen to the average block time if the hash power is cut by 90%.

I'm curious why you deny the evident. Even if 60 minutes today is occasional (which is not good, mildly speaking), then it will be 100 minutes on average, right?

What is +1 and +2 in that table?

While 100 minute block times would cause difficulties and consternation, I don't believe it would necessarily bring down Bitcoin. People that need faster confirmation times would go elsewhere, but the effect would only be temporary

So you think that after a lot of people don't get their transactions confirmed for a few months (which would obviously crash the price, thereby essentially nullifying their Bitcoin holdings they got trapped with), peeps will continue to use it? I'm highly doubtful on this, wtf. Many folks here talked about confidence (and still more thought about it)...

I guess it is the right time they showed up (thought again)

[jaysabi]

Once must understand that halving is an essential part of the Bitcoin protocol, aimed at approximating the natural increase in scarcity, observed in other money systems, like gold (as opposed to currencies, like dollar, which can be printed ad infinitum)

The problem is that Bitcoin itself is not natural. As I have said elsewhere (and been attacked by assclowns of all stripes and denominations, lol), Bitcoin, in this aspect, is no different than any other fiat money out there (or currency, if you please), my point being that mimicking scarcity (or any other quality) of its counterparts such as gold doesn't endow it with the resilience and robustness due to their inherent value (entrenched deep in the minds and nature of people)...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Scarcity is part of what gives both gold and bitcoin value. The only reason anything has any value at all is that everyone believes it to be true. This is true of bitcoin, gold, and fiat. Confidence in the particular monetary system is what bestows value, and part of the confidence in bitcoin is the built in scarcity of a hard cap and halving block rewards along the way. If that confidence is undermined, then the value/utility of the monetary system is going to fall, and that's true of gold and fiat too.

Value of gold is set by the laws of nature, which humans cannot change at their whimsy (at least, so far). It doesn't matter where it lives or originates, since humans cannot change their own nature either (just in case you're going to bring forward the argument of subjective value and all that crap). Bitcoin, on the hand, is, like fiat monies, a deliberate brain-child of men, and, as such, it is not "bestowed" with the same level of confidence (that nature provides)...

This "confidence" is undermined by definition

No no, gold has no inherent value. It is not set by the laws of nature, it is set by human perception of its worth. The laws of nature, as you say, influence the perception of gold in that it is a limited resource, but it is still the expectation that someone else in the future will consider gold an asset that gives it value in the present.

[jaysabi]

Once must understand that halving is an essential part of the Bitcoin protocol, aimed at approximating the natural increase in scarcity, observed in other money systems, like gold (as opposed to currencies, like dollar, which can be printed ad infinitum)

The problem is that Bitcoin itself is not natural. As I have said elsewhere (and been attacked by assclowns of all stripes and denominations, lol), Bitcoin, in this aspect, is no different than any other fiat money out there (or currency, if you please), my point being that mimicking scarcity (or any other quality) of its counterparts such as gold doesn't endow it with the resilience and robustness due to their inherent value (entrenched deep in the minds and nature of people)...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Scarcity is part of what gives both gold and bitcoin value. The only reason anything has any value at all is that everyone believes it to be true. This is true of bitcoin, gold, and fiat. Confidence in the particular monetary system is what bestows value, and part of the confidence in bitcoin is the built in scarcity of a hard cap and halving block rewards along the way. If that confidence is undermined, then the value/utility of the monetary system is going to fall, and that's true of gold and fiat too.

What you write about the value is not fully true. There is the intrinsic value too. Gold for example has many usecases in electronics and more places. This means it has a value that comes from being gold alone. Not from the value it has from speculation or believe. So gold might crash but there should always be a bottom value. Of course the question is if so much gold can be used at all. But there are other items that are used as a kind of currency that has it's own value. Let's say cigarettes in war times. Some smoke them away, because they are stupid, some sell them for a warm jacket and are allowed to life because of that. But even when no one would want them, their value would be none for others, there is still a value in using it. (If you can say that at all about cigarettes. )

The same can't be said about bitcoin. You have nothing than some virtual flags if the value is crashing and everyone believes it is nothing worth.

Right, but now you're talking about utility as opposed to just perception of value. Using a resource for industrial uses gives it a value, but that value is a smaller subset of the total value which includes perception of the resource as an asset or store of value, which makes it usable as money. There are plenty of resources that are both scarce and have utility for industrial purposes but are not used for storing value or as money, and the only difference there is that they aren't widely perceived to be have a value to someone in the future. Gold is a special case, but its status is also arbitrary. It's just one of the resources that is scarce and that everyone agrees is valuable. It didn't have to be gold, but its ease of finding to early civilizations probably had a lot to do with why it was gold and not something else.