[neㄘcash, ᨇcash, net⚷eys, or viᖚes?] Name AnonyMint's vapor coin?

[TPTB_need_war]

CoinCube add:

4) A large base of users already using it as a currency and enjoying freedoms it provides. And doing it within my block chain design (or Iota's if you accept the flaws I alleged) where the control over the mining is in the hands of the users, not professional miners.

Which was sort of the point of my prior post. So seems we are in agreement. I am just not sure if I am going to proceed. Not sure if we have enough awareness in the community as to what needs to be done and whether people are excited about it. I am testing the waters now in the Aeon thread to see what people think about actually trying for mass adoption. I am being obnoxious and loud to try to see if people will realize we are not doing anything about mass adoption in the altcoin arena (other than perhaps Dogecoin).

[1715185765]

1715185765

[TPTB_need_war]

One last point and I will stay out of the thread unless I have something more concrete that can impact Aeon.

I am thinking that even we could reach mutual understanding on marketing and development thereof, the problem is the distribution model I have in mind won't fit with Aeon's distribution and preexisting investment, thus it is impossible for me to work with this community on the solution.

As much as I would like to get some help and race forward with more synergies (this can also be more social and fun if plans/personalities are aligned), I think it is really difficult to realign the priorities and thought processes of others. Perhaps if I had more energy for discussion and salesmanship.

Thanks for entertaining my interjection of points about marketing to other markets.

Realistically I only have two choices it seems. Push on alone (as quietly as possible) and risk failure due to the resources required to implement such a plan and the plan itself being very risky and unsure, coupled with the facts of my personal circumstances. Or quit crypto.

Indeed everyone is correct to doubt that progress can be made in mass markets because it is difficult to create market where the potential users don't have a primary need (or at least don't realize how they could have given certain changing  ecosystem landscape of available apps and such). Which comes first, the egg or the chicken. Answer: both.

Difficult to be methodical in the face of imminent bankruptcy (some months from now), potentially terminal/pathological chronic illness, entering the decline of age 50s, global crisis on the verge of worsening, totalitarianism spreading, etc..  The stress is far too much even for a healthy younger man.

But damn it, I don't see other good options. I guess I could leave the Philippines and return to USA try to get socialized medical care and then that might restore me to the level of function where I could hold a daily software engineer job again. Psychologically I seem incapable of making that move. I don't even have the energy to devote to thinking out that option and its impacts.

I pretty much spend my days just coping and trying to get something productive done, even if that is just trying to work out algorithms and understandings of flaws in other designs, such as my recent breakthrough of conceptualization of the math issues for a DAG/Iota. Then it is disheartening when disingenuous Dash supporters will try to claim that the math insights and other enumerated flaws are irrelevant.

This is where as a man one wants to "JUST DO IT" and prove them wrong and the best way to prove people wrong is in the marketplace because it is difficult to argue with Mr. Market, as the results are self-evident. Losers don't gain the huge ROI and profit.

So without further long-winded diatribe, I conclude this message. Good luck to us.

For better or for worse, I have decided to continue developing by myself, since it seems I won't be able to find a suitable developer and community to support me while I struggle to try to make my envisioned solution a reality. There are many times where I don't think I can do it, because I seem to be battling some kind of problem with food digestion and concomitant autoimmunity, perhaps bile duct blockage but the symptoms from what I read point more towards cancer (e.g. very itching skin and no severe pain as one would expect for a gallstone). When I had the acute peptic ulcer in 2012, my abdomen had bloated up like a balloon (and horrific pain that can't be described) because the acid was leaking into my abdominal cavity and was burning my organs (according to my doctor). I'm tempted to go for a checkup here (there are MRI machines in Davao), but I don't even trust the doctors here in terms of diagnosis and certainly I would not trust them for any invasive procedure. Also I am trying to conserve funds and I have no medical insurance.

So the net effect is that I am always unsure about my energy level and mental state because this illness impacts everything including the brain. Also I am not even sure what I have, could even be a problem with my colon or even complicated because the peripheral neuropathy symptoms started as early as 2008 (as documented by my old emails complaining about swollen, numbing feet and then by 2010 full blown relapsing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), which I suspect was brought on by a high # strain of HPV infection my ex-wife gave me in one last ill-fated meeting in 2006 in the USA (we broken up in 2002 due to her drug use). And then I suspect I was infected numerous times with strange pathogens because I was still quite sexually active from 2007 - 2012 when I succumbed to that sudden intensive care hospitalization.

So okay that is my daily struggle and explains to some degree why I talk too much. Because sometimes or often I feel talking is all I can do as well as I used to code. Anyone who codes knows (or should know if they've ever tired coding with a really bad throbbing headache and head flu) that coding requires a lot of concentration. Actually there are very few normal, non-chronic flus or illnesses will can allow a person to feel the legathy of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the head impacts of autoimmunity type dysfunction. So any way, after years of battling each day, I sometimes feel I am worn down to a frazzle. And also I don't get enough coding accomplished to feel I have the sort of momentum that I used to where I would still be coding and solving challenges in my mind when resting and awake with solutions and charging forward. Instead I often forget everything and wallow in damn insomnia (which screws up normal recovery patterns) or other extremely frustrating deleterious effects.

Yet despite all of this, I can still code sometimes effectively. And perhaps I just need to believe in myself and believe that if I focus every ounce of my discipline on fighting each day. Even my gf said to me last night that I am pushing myself too hard to the point of abnormal. She said that when I insisted on running last night before sleep after I had been awake for 36 hours (to try to rotate my sleeping pattern back to night instead of working through the night yet I woke up 4am this morning and couldn't fall asleep again). Past few days I been craving different foods such as yesterday I ate canned salmon with mayonnaise and Ritz-like crackers. First time I allowed myself to eat bread and mayonnaise in many months. Perhaps my digestion is improving, but I am always wary to claim any improvement because oscillated degree of symptoms is the regular pattern for the past 3.5 years (and less continuous symptoms for years before that as stated above).

In short, I am a mess. But I think if I shut my mouth and just try my best, maybe I can accomplish enough in spite of the obstacles.

I can't keep up with normal things because there just isn't enough daily energy to spare for all things. I have to prioritize. So I didn't sell all my Bitcoin for cash last year > $400 so I was fearing the price had crashed and I had missed the boat, but I heard the price is still over $400 but still I have been afraid to google the price because that is the only money I have left to survive on. And I am also hoping someone didn't hack my password interim and steal my Bitcoins. I had been too afraid to check because I have a long laundry list of things I need to do and often I can't organize in my mind everything or it is difficult to explain the feeling from this illness it causes psychological problems such as combinations of extreme nonchalance combined with fear. Confidence and organization is lost because can't keep up with daily life.

Any way maybe I can get organized. Stop typing in forums will help and free up a lot of time. I just hope I can keep my sanity because I can't always do things I want to do otherwise because I don't have the energy or good feeling to do it, so often the forum had been my outlet to remain active and not just sitting there doing nothing or wasting time staring at code because my mind wouldn't kick into high enough gear to code effectively. Because Davao is boring and nothing much to do here besides gym and beach and when I don't feel up for doing those activities then not much I can do to relieve my stress or boredom. So often my mind just stays stuck on the forum topics.

Any way, one reading this would say it is all an issue of discipline, concentration, and will power. Sort of. But chronic illness mucks things up in ways that is very difficult to explain to those who haven't experienced it. And even those who have experienced often (typically) don't even fully comprehend the psychological effects of their own chronic illness.

Long-winded diatribe.

In short, I am going to try to push on. And work smarter and more quietly.

There are many times where I don't think I can do it, because I seem to be battling some kind of problem with food digestion and concomitant autoimmunity, perhaps bile duct blockage but the symptoms from what I read point more towards cancer

Obvious question - why aren't you seeing a specialist? Self diagnoses will lead nowhere good.

I think I explained that in my post:

But damn it, I don't see other good options. I guess I could leave the Philippines and return to USA try to get socialized medical care and then that might restore me to the level of function where I could hold a daily software engineer job again. Psychologically I seem incapable of making that move. I don't even have the energy to devote to thinking out that option and its impacts.

I'm tempted to go for a checkup here (there are MRI machines in Davao), but I don't even trust the doctors here in terms of diagnosis and certainly I would not trust them for any invasive procedure. Also I am trying to conserve funds and I have no medical insurance.

In short, I don't expect a quick solution. And maybe the prognosis will make me totally depressed. And I don't have the resources to deal with the problem in a way that I feel is safe.

The filipino surgeons butchered my eye. I could still see after being attacked in 1999, but they gave me an intern to do the first surgery on my eye at St. Luke Hospital in Manila.

Also when I was in my doctor's office after the hospitalization for the acute peptic ulcer, a younger (30s) American man was also awaiting checkup and he was grimacing with pain. My doctor had performed a "J-pop" (something about removing part of the colon and sewing together or something like that) on him some years before and had screwed him so bad that now the young guy was on permanent morphine.

The attitude of doctors here is callous, unprofessional. For example, in Sept I got an eye checkup at an ophthalmologist and he said poked at my right blinded eye and said something like "you might as well just remove that" or something derogatory to that effect. Also he poked at it very hard which didn't feel like it was good for the eye. I told him that the pressure in that eye oscillates depending on my overall health (and remember I was in horrible condition in August/September).

I don't trust the system here. And my mother has reminded me that I am unlikely to get along well with the doctors in the USA because I always want to ask questions and I don't like being dictated procedures until I fully understand them and get perhaps 2nd and 3rd opinions. But none of that I can afford.

And I certainly can't afford the lengthy down time.

My life options are very stressful. My rope is short. Difficult to explain to others who are healthy and in other circumstances. Sounds like an excuse until you walk in the other person's shoes. It is a self-inflicted circumstance, so I don't fault anyone but myself.

Let's return to the technical discussion.

[TPTB_need_war]

[...]

I am contemplating for my coin's symbol/logo to be a lightning bolt, ⚡, superimposed upon a faint letter 'e' (either drawn with dotted lines or thin strokes) if this works at a small size.

Edit: a quick rendering but needs more work:

[TPTB_need_war]

There are many times where I don't think I can do it, because I seem to be battling some kind of problem with food digestion and concomitant autoimmunity, perhaps bile duct blockage but the symptoms from what I read point more towards cancer

Obvious question - why aren't you seeing a specialist? Self diagnoses will lead nowhere good.

I think I explained that in my post:

But damn it, I don't see other good options. I guess I could leave the Philippines and return to USA try to get socialized medical care and then that might restore me to the level of function where I could hold a daily software engineer job again. Psychologically I seem incapable of making that move. I don't even have the energy to devote to thinking out that option and its impacts.

I'm tempted to go for a checkup here (there are MRI machines in Davao), but I don't even trust the doctors here in terms of diagnosis and certainly I would not trust them for any invasive procedure. Also I am trying to conserve funds and I have no medical insurance.

In short, I don't expect a quick solution. And maybe the prognosis will make me totally depressed. And I don't have the resources to deal with the problem in a way that I feel is safe.

The filipino surgeons butchered my eye. I could still see after being attacked in 1999, but they gave me an intern to do the first surgery on my eye at St. Luke Hospital in Manila.

Also when I was in my doctor's office after the hospitalization for the acute peptic ulcer, a younger (30s) American man was also awaiting checkup and he was grimacing with pain. My doctor had performed a "J-pop" (something about removing part of the colon and sewing together or something like that) on him some years before and had screwed him so bad that now the young guy was on permanent morphine.

The attitude of doctors here is callous, unprofessional. For example, in Sept I got an eye checkup at an ophthalmologist and he said poked at my right blinded eye and said something like "you might as well just remove that" or something derogatory to that effect. Also he poked at it very hard which didn't feel like it was good for the eye. I told him that the pressure in that eye oscillates depending on my overall health (and remember I was in horrible condition in August/September).

I don't trust the system here. And my mother has reminded me that I am unlikely to get along well with the doctors in the USA because I always want to ask questions and I don't like being dictated procedures until I fully understand them and get perhaps 2nd and 3rd opinions. But none of that I can afford.

And I certainly can't afford the lengthy down time.

My life options are very stressful. My rope is short. Difficult to explain to others who are healthy and in other circumstances. Sounds like an excuse until you walk in the other person's shoes. It is a self-inflicted circumstance, so I don't fault anyone but myself.

Let's return to the technical discussion.

I attempted to make an appointment or walk in the clinic of a gastroenteritis / internal medicine doctor today. I proceeded to Brokenshire Hospital, Davao City at 11am and again at 1:30pm, and both the doctor Paolo Buenaventura and his receptionist failed to show up on the posted hours of M - F, 1 - 4pm.

The only other doctor was Alcasid which is the doctor who attended to me at Adventist Hospital in May 2012 during the acute peptic ulcer that I explained in more detail in the full version of the quoted post above. He office looks like toilet room (not even a bathroom). It is down in the basement and the office/clinic isn't even appropriately furnished (and the receptionist was addicted to her mobile phone and wouldn't even make eye contact). He is the one who screwed me up in 2012, because I told him about all the ongoing lower abdominal pain and issues and he said, "you must just be fatigued". No blood tests, no MRI, nothing. He screwed up another foreigner real bad as I documented in the full version of the quoted post above. He has offices at several hospitals and is always doing rounds at patient beds.

Also note I did make a special trip to Cebu in November 2012 to try to get a better doctor and testing. Unfortunately I was unable to locate a doctor that was available and so they did some general blood tests and other STD tests I requested. The blood test showed my lymphocytes were sky high. The STD tests had to be sent to Manila. I returned to Davao and they were supposed to email the results. They never did. I had to return to Cebu just to get the results, which were negative.

I am going to look for some other doctors at Davao Doctors and San Pedro Hospitals perhaps on Monday.

To elaborate on why I am hesitant to proceed with the doctors here in the Philippines notice how for this man who had pancreatic cancer the doctors were not able to be sure he had cancer until they had cut him open for surgery. Even with MRI, endoscopy, and ultrasound, even the Western doctors apparently can't see that area of the body well enough to see the tumor. And I don't know if I should trust a filipino doctor to do endoscopy on me. Maybe he will perforate my colon or organ in the process and make matters worse. I just have a huge lack of confidence in the doctors here.

Back in 1990s I broke my hand really bad when I punched a concrete wall after some local politician was acting very condescendingly to me in Moonlight bar in Davao (formerly owned by I think the daughter of Mayor Duturte who is now running for President this May). A doctor at San Pedro Hospital tried to make stint and cast for me, but this hand has never been okay since. He didn't even put metal stint or do the things really required to make sure it healed correctly. So unprofessional and nonchalant.

I still have a 1" hole in the top of my skull where I was hit with a hammer by a neighbor when  I used to live in the squalor area (when my ex-wife made a fight about a hammock

Note that my feces is not light colored, nor oily. And my urine is not very dark, thus not precisely the symptoms for some pancreatic cancers. Yet there are other pancreatic cancers which have different or no symptoms (until they spread to other organs).

So my point is it seems nearly pointless to proceed on diagnosis while I am in the Philippines.

And I don't think my funds are sufficient to go seek diagnosis outside the Philippines.

[TPTB_need_war]

Monero pumpers are difficult to control even by smooth:

Both posts were continued back-and-forth attacks and were deleted. Without commenting on the merits of the statements made they are off topic for the thread. Please take it elsewhere

Please refrain from posting about how wonderful your crypto currency solution is until such a time as you have working code.  You spam various threads with your delusional attempts at promoting yourself with nothing tangible to back up your claims.  Anyone who gave any credence to your musings in the past has by now figured out you are full of hot air and nothing else.  Your constant criticism of everyone else along with your delusions of grandeur are getting old and boring.

Smooth asked you to please stop posting drama. I complied but you didn't, thus forcing me to respond to your pumping attempt drama.

Discussing the facts of technological designs is new information and is absolutely necessary so as to not waste time creating useless software. ArticMine sent me a PM and said he was looking at my posts and he would post later.

You however are just a pumper and creating useless noise posts. I don't care how you deal with your insecurities by convincing yourself that more useless code is irrelevant. Coding smart is more important than coding stupid.

I want to further reply to this (Polish-like family name for a username) asshole:

Please refrain from posting about how wonderful your crypto currency solution is until such a time as you have working code.  You spam various threads with your delusional attempts at promoting yourself with nothing tangible to back up your claims.  Anyone who gave any credence to your musings in the past has by now figured out you are full of hot air and nothing else.  Your constant criticism of everyone else along with your delusions of grandeur are getting old and boring.

There is an old joke, how many Polish men does it require to change a light bulb. The answer is 5, one to stand on the table and 4 to turn the table. Monero has like 5 core devs right and they produce useless code right. Working smart versus working stupid.

What you perceive to be delusions of grandeur has been the daily struggle of fighting the total body dysfunction due to some sort of chronic illness of the digestive system, as documented in my posts recently above. You have no idea how much I have struggled on a daily basis. This is no where near my normal self. It is trying to be productive while hanging from a thread or shell of what I was formerly before becoming chronically ill. Nevetheless I have tried to focus my mental efforts on the most important design challenges and now I am being rewarded for that strategic prioritization.

You are damn lucky that I haven't been healthy. But I tell you this, your shithole attitude motivates me incredibly to try to get healthy so I may shove your words up your asshole with my coding prowess. Believe me, I am since last night thinking very out-of-the-box on my health and research last night reveals that actual Phase 1 medical human trials have shown that bitter melon and curcumin (possibly also moringa) actually shrinking pancreatic tumors and they are also known to be general agents for improving chronic digestive dysfunction. I had not yet tried taking these in high doses and I am now preparing to do so. Fortunately these dried powders are manufactured locally here in the Philippines so I can get this straight from the farms and processing plant. I am ordering it now and I am determined to get healthy.

As far as I know, you are just a person who speculates with his money and isn't actually in the trenches doing the coding and design theory work. Thus for me you are irrelevant. You want to think you have some special insight and that someone like me is irrelevant, but the reality of the serendipity of life is very likely to bite you in the ass. As it should be, because you Monero brow-beater assholes are so fucking overconfident and disrespectful to everyone.

The failure of Monero couldn't be more appropriate. Although Dash-tards may be more unethical and less technologically talented, the Monero-tards are the most inflated egos on the planet.

[CoinHoarder]

I am a USA citizen and I can't get involved in anything like that.

Land of the free! 

[TPTB_need_war]

There are two interesting coins.  Ethereum and Monero.  I've found nothing else.

Both are fundamentally broken.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1323408.msg13518156#msg13518156 (Ethereum)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569087#msg13569087 (Block chain scaling Tragedy of the Commons applies to Monero also)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569178#msg13569178 (Monero's anonymity is unreliable/unprovable and thus useless for fungibility or other important use cases)

[TPTB_need_war]

Both are fundamentally broken.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1323408.msg13518156#msg13518156 (Ethereum)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569087#msg13569087 (Block chain scaling Tragedy of the Commons applies to Monero also)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569178#msg13569178 (Monero's anonymity is unreliable/unprovable and thus useless for fungibility or other important use cases)

"Broken" and "Success" are relative terms.  Both are broken less than bitcoin and bring attributes to the table that fiat does not.  

If you have any suggestions that are less broken ... I'm all ears.

An absolutist uses words like broken.  A realist uses terms like "best alternative".  Opening myself up to all available options those are the two answering the big questions.  Privacy, programmable blockchain and both more scalable than bitcoin.

What alternatives are less broken than these two I mentioned?

Don't you understand that "fundamentally broken" means they don't work for the features they claim that are an improvement over Bitcoin.

The link I provided to you for Ethereum explains that afaik they never solved the primary economic issue facing scaling programmable block chains, which is that every full node has to verify the block chain, thus every full node has to run the programmable script. But the problem is who to pay the gas (ether) to so that all full nodes are paid for verification? This has DDoS implications as well. In short, they never solved the core economic problem and thus Ethereum is just a fucking toy that can't actually work.

Ditto Monero as explained below (the arguments were in the links I provided to you before but again I am always forced to repeat myself because readers are so clueless about technology that they can't even understand what I write).

I think Monero is the best money to stay anonymous. It uses the ring signature. The mixing is built into the protocol.

You are a n00b and you don't do enough research to know what you are writing about. Why should anyone believe you?

Monero is not anonymous when your metadata can be correlated. One example of metadata which unmasks your anonymity is your IP address. And no, Tor and I2P mixnets do not hide your IP address from the government, in fact they are thought to be Sybil attacked honeypots that not only tell the government your IP address but also alert the NSA et al that you should come under extra scrutiny.

And IP address is not the only metadata that can destroy your anonymity in ring signatures. Other examples can include cookies in your browser and other activity you did on the web. Other examples also include telephone calls and other activity you did around that time, which have statistical significance.

I wrote about that in the link in the post I made upthread which is quoted below.

None of them will surely keep you anonymous.

Zerocash is the only design which might be very reliable, but it does not exist in any altcoin yet.

Period.

Some elaboration is at the following post (and also in the archives of my posts):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13569178#msg13569178

Ring signatures do not obscure everything. Only Zerocash can obscure everything so that then metadata is no longer a problem. I see Vitalik @ Ethereum has been reading my Bitcointalk posts, because now he has written a blog post to copy most of the points I have been making for the past months.

Additionally I have been making the point since the BCX incident that ring signatures can theoretically be unmasked by combinatorial analysis of the block chain. In the recent debate I had with Monero's cryptographer Shen-noether at Reddit about his white papers, I pointed out that his proposed solution to combinatorial unmasking was flawed. He and smooth did the usual ad hominem attack on my person, and then I rebutted them with logical facts and they were forced to finally put their tail between their legs.

Bullshit. So much bullshit in these discussions of cryptocurrency technology. Especially coming from all the Monero pumpers who haven't done their homework, because they are retarded, closed-minded, and boastfully so.

TPTB_need_war, what about ShadowCash?

Just a (arguably plagiarized) copy of Cryptonote technology, so same conclusions as for Monero.

https://z.cash/ is the only potential solution for making metadata correlation irrelevant, but all I know about it is here:

http://zerocash-project.org/

Seems the project died or stalled? Afaik they've been quiet past months or most of 2015?

Also scaling issues will probably still apply thus it is possible that Zerocash doesn't scale to world wide use, or other problems such as DDoS. I won't know until I dig deeper into it. Perhaps they discovered such issues and stopped working on it.

Anonymity is very difficult to achieve. I would guess maybe impossible once all the technical factors are considered. But I am still willing to try. I personally will come back to Zerocash's technology later, after I finish fixing block chain scaling and decentralization (which is more important priority and more realistic).

[TPTB_need_war]

ArticMine PMed me after I wrote that flaming post, and said he would reply after studying my posts. He has not yet replied. Does that mean I am correct and there is no solution for Monero. I think so.

It is fundamental. Afaics, you'd have to completely rewrite Moaneuro.

Rewrite Monero, is not necessary at all but some documentation on how the Cryptonote adaptive blocksize limits actually work is needed, especially given the formula in section 6.2.3 of the Cryptonote Whitepaper is wrong. https://cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdf. My response will come in time.

Sorry that won't solve the problem, which as smooth pointed out in my vaporcoin thread recently is the generlized ability to move profit to externalities (where I was already mentioning shorting as an attack on PoS coins).

Checkmate.

It seems like Shen is going full steam ahead! Some updates regarding Ring Confidential Transactions for Monero:

edit 1/9/2016: Looks like its fully funded! Thanks to everyone who funded - I've started the work (https://github.com/ShenNoether/MiniNero/commit/9ede58897808bee784dab296654b99899a58c109), and I will be posting updates here for the next two weeks as I work on this, rather than updating both here and the stickied reddit post.

edit 1/13/2016: MG sigs + demo are done (git clone https://github.com/ShenNoether/MiniNero.git, cd brief, make, a.exe (or a.out depending on system)). Most of the helper functions are there, so the rest should go a little bit quicker. Also fixed a tiny bug in Monero's keccak function.

edit 1/14/2016: ASNL + demo are done. (https://github.com/ShenNoether/MiniNero/commit/88b2d93e137bd5a2e2a2700ac11136705bd463c5) I will probably do some additional checks on these and the MG sigs once I get everything finished, however they are working as expected now.

edit 1/15/2016: spent an all nighter getting a rough version of all the code finished - I will most likely clean it up, and then make it available early next week.

https://forum.getmonero.org/8/funding-required/2450/ring-ct-c-crypto

Primer, you make it sound like a battle.

As you all may know, I now consider this to be useless development. So please do continue!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1211093.msg13514814#msg13514814
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1329136.msg13575205#msg13575205

Reddit cross post since perhaps not all of you visit there:  
  

Sometimes it can be easy to lose sight of the inevitable: a private and global financial network does already exist.

You're part of it.  There is literally no better technology on Earth... So the question is - what level will it need to balloon to in order to function properly? Because the path of least resistance is for it to inflate in value, not for it to stagnate or collapse.

The answer even laymen give me is, "In the trillions."

Ok, well what about $5 trillion? That's a nice reasonable number, right?  Then that means we are looking at a reality where every Monero is worth $300,000 each (in today's USD).

Remember: either we continue to use technologically inferior money (unlikely), something drastically better is invented very soon (unlikely), or Cryptonote networks like Monero become titanic financial juggernauts (most likely outcome).

The stock market is down... Bitcoin is down... But our future is still quite rosy. Let's get excited for a great 2016 - possibly the year we broach a new level of mainstream awareness.  
  

Typical overreaching of bagholders as the ship sinks.

Delusional nonsense that is ignorant of the technological realities of anonymity.

Also it is bordering on insanity in terms of understanding of marketing and market needs for anonymity, even if your technology wasn't mostly inadequate to the point of being nearly entirely useless.

[TPTB_need_war]

That was a rash statement on my part. Here is a more level-headed statement:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13542612#msg13542612

Btw, I didn't kill Iota. The fundamentals may (or maybe not and probably not in the short-term). That is not my fault nor decision. I stood ready to adopt their coin and stop my development work if it was sound to my expectations.

You mentioned Satoshi's security model in that post. Did you mean that model which is vulnerable to 25% of hashing power with 33% in the best conditions?

The difference between 25% and 50% is not really that significant anyway. With 25% you can easily acquire more hash rate to get to 50% or conspire with some other 25% to get to 50%.

Satoshi's method only achieves its strong security model with more highly fragmented mining (perhaps with the largest extant mining concentration at 5% or less, to choose a somewhat arbitrarily number), something that hasn't been achieved to date but not everyone rules out that the system could evolve in that manner in the future. (TPTB thinks it is impossible; I and others do not, necessarily.)

With numbers like >15% where investments in capacity comparable in magnitude to the amount already invested or small coalitions can easily attack the system, you can really only rely on Satoshi's secondary model, which is sort of proof-of-stakeish and not really very compelling.

^^^

All of which is a weakness of Bitcoin, at least in the eyes of some (informed?) beginners.  Until I see BTC issues (including risks related to concentration of mining) relatively resolved in the eyes of experts, I cannot hold more than a fairly small amount in BTC (as an "investment", yes I know that investing (HODLing) BTC is perhaps not that smart).

But, there are valid reasons for many of us to HODL BTC.  Its use of moving large amounts of wealth in a quiet way to other places (even to other countries) has potentially great value.

I wait for a story of some rich Chinese person leaving their country with $1,000,000 or more in BTC...  

My view (pure speculation with no evidence) is that Bitcoin's value is constrained by the relatively weak state of its mining infrastructure (and increasing hash rate does little to improve the situation because the main problem is concentration). If somehow we could magically and persistently disperse the mining, the value would increase significantly overnight, even with the current level of adoption (although the increased value would bring more adoption).

But as you say it is being used today for some things and is not completely worthless by any means despite being imperfect. Just quite small when measured by finance standards.

Note I do think there is a design that is a solution. And I agree value would increase much faster in this new design, because not only confidence, but the miners wouldn't be always dumping coins on the market (which what keeps BTC price low and siphons money away from speculators into the pockets of mining farms which have costs < $50 per BTC).

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size), Bitcoin appears to be on its death bed (but may take a while for confidence to collapse due to the  ignorance of Bitards). I wouldn't hold it long-term.



The Chinese are siphoning off our speculator money with their $50 per BTC mining costs:

Anyone know what proportion of BTC is produced in China/held in China/sold out of China ?

Without this info I don't know that I can put too much store in this theory Jorge.

There is practically no reliable info on the bitcoin economy, in particular on the flow and ownership of bitcoin by country. (This is a serious problem for would-be investors.)

We can only note that more than 67% of all new bitcoins are mined by Chinese pools, which probably comprise mostly Chinese miners; and that bitcoin has practically no use inside China, except as an instrument of speculative trading inside the exchanges.  Until last October, variations of trading volume at those exchanges did not seem to be reflected in the USD transaction volume, which may mean that there was little deposit and withdrawal at those exchanges.  

There is efficient arbitrage between the Chinese and non-Chinese exchanges. If Chinese miners sold their coins only in Chinese exchanges, that would tend to depress the price there.  Then the arbitragers would immediately move those excess coins to non-Chinese exchanges, until the prices got equalized.

So, I would guess that it does not matter where the Chinese miners sell: the net effect is that a large fraction (if not most) of the bitcoins mined in China are eventually bought and hoarded by non-Chinese investors.

[AlexGR]

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size)

There is no consensus between developers and it's the miners fault for not forking the coin to two competing coins? That's a 51% attack?

If there was dev consensus and they refused that would be a different issue altogether.

[smooth]

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size)

There is no consensus between developers and it's the miners fault for not forking the coin to two competing coins? That's a 51% attack?

If there was dev consensus and they refused that would be a different issue altogether.

The (big Chinese) miners have chosen sides here, whether they state it in those terms or not. They have stated they will use Core, which is itself not a consensus among developers, it is a small block solution supported by some of the developers.

[AlexGR]

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size)

There is no consensus between developers and it's the miners fault for not forking the coin to two competing coins? That's a 51% attack?

If there was dev consensus and they refused that would be a different issue altogether.

The (big Chinese) miners have chosen sides here, whether they state it in those terms or not. They have stated they will use Core, which is itself not a consensus among developers, it is a small block solution supported by some of the developers.

The thing works as follows. You have the code (Bitcoin) and for serious changes to be implemented you have to have a very large consensus.

The 1MB exists. Now. It's not a supported "small block solution". The question is what to do next for scaling.

Core has a roadmap with segwit and future block increases.
"Classic" says we hard fork it with 2mb.

So there is

a) what we have right now (this already exists, it's not something "planned" that needs supports to materialize)
b) two different plans for scaling which, if they don't have near unanimous agreement, will result to forking the currency because each one has different supporters.

[smooth]

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size)

There is no consensus between developers and it's the miners fault for not forking the coin to two competing coins? That's a 51% attack?

If there was dev consensus and they refused that would be a different issue altogether.

The (big Chinese) miners have chosen sides here, whether they state it in those terms or not. They have stated they will use Core, which is itself not a consensus among developers, it is a small block solution supported by some of the developers.

The thing works as follows. You have the code (Bitcoin) and for serious changes to be implemented you have to have a very large consensus.

That's a good story. If you support the status quo, that's the story you tell. But it isn't accurate.

If you have any kind of rough consensus, or even just lack of strong consensus to oppose a change, then support of the majority of miners is sufficient to make any change you want. That's the reality.

[AlexGR]

That's a good story. If you support the status quo, that's the story you tell. But it isn't accurate.

If you have any kind of rough consensus, or even just lack of strong consensus to oppose a change, then support of the majority of miners is sufficient to make any change you want. That's the reality.

Yes, that's true. But the miners here are not changing things right now. They are sticking with the 1MB version which exists since the days of Satoshi because

a) one proposal isn't ready
b) the other proposal is nightmarish
c) if either proposal is followed without consent, you have 2 competing coins / you have doubled the monetary base / diluted coins / led to mass dumping from unbelievers of the X or Y fork / created distrust for the future of the currency because such forks may repeat again and again.

[TPTB_need_war]

Bottom line is any global constant in the protocol is not decentralization. Period. End of story.

The protocol must be able to function in a free market dynamic.

All the arguments about consensus is moving forward from 1MB slowly are irrelevant, because if constants are not decided by the protocol, then the protocol is by definition under a 51% attack always.

[AlexGR]

Bottom line is any global constant in the protocol is not decentralization. Period. End of story.

If a coin has active development and the protocol is not finalized 100% and set in stone for eternity, there will always be developer-related centralization. And btc is still ver 0.something, so, it's a work in progress.

In a sense, the more development a coin will have the more centralized it will be. The less development it has, the more decentralized it can become but it will also be less and less relevant if it becomes a dinosaur. It seems development and centralization may have an inversely proportional relationship.

[TPTB_need_war]

Bottom line is any global constant in the protocol is not decentralization. Period. End of story.

If a coin has active development and the protocol is not finalized 100% and set in stone for eternity, there will always be developer-related centralization. And btc is still ver 0.something, so, it's a work in progress.

In a sense, the more development a coin will have the more centralized it will be. The less development it has, the more decentralized it can become but it will also be less and less relevant if it becomes a dinosaur. It seems development and centralization may have an inversely proportional relationship.

Bitcoin's design is no where on the tract to removing the block size constant. And it was released ~6 years ago.

A truly centralized protocol would already be on that tract in its whitepapers and be trying to finalize its protocol within a couple of years of being popular and stress tested. This is one of the reasons I am trying to design a consensus protocol that is orthogonal to the data that is being put on the block chain. So the consensus protocol can hopefully be solidified sooner (but this is not an easy technological feat).

Decentralized consensus for a chronological ledger is a hard problem. Afaics, anonymity is an even harder problem.

Edit: design by consensus is often rigor mortis. Satoshi achieved the key design epiphanies BEFORE bringing on all the devs to do the refinement work.

[smooth]

That's a good story. If you support the status quo, that's the story you tell. But it isn't accurate.

If you have any kind of rough consensus, or even just lack of strong consensus to oppose a change, then support of the majority of miners is sufficient to make any change you want. That's the reality.

Yes, that's true. But the miners here are not changing things right now. They are sticking with the 1MB version which exists since the days of Satoshi because

Maybe. Or maybe they are just doing it because it suits their economic interests to keep blocks small, as TPTB said. I consider that quite plausible, I'm surprised you don't.

if either proposal is followed without consent, you have 2 competing coins / you have doubled the monetary base

Incorrect. (I think you meant "without overwhelming consensus' rather than "without consent"?)

@TPTB you can't really have it both ways. Either the miners hold the upper hand or the developers do. I think it is a former, and given that you don't need overwhelming consensus, there is no 'design by consensus'.

Now if Bitcoin actually worked in a more fully decentralized manner then miners would not hold the upper hand and then you might get something closer to design by consensus.

EDIT: What satoshi was shooting for by his own words was neither design decisions made at the whim of a mining cabal nor by an overwhelming consensus of developers, it was "set in stone". It wasn't even close to achieved.

[AlexGR]

That's a good story. If you support the status quo, that's the story you tell. But it isn't accurate.

If you have any kind of rough consensus, or even just lack of strong consensus to oppose a change, then support of the majority of miners is sufficient to make any change you want. That's the reality.

Yes, that's true. But the miners here are not changing things right now. They are sticking with the 1MB version which exists since the days of Satoshi because

Maybe. Or maybe they are just doing it because it suits their economic interests to keep blocks small, as TPTB said. I consider that quite plausible, I'm surprised you don't.

With the existing game theory? Nah.

Just because the limit will go to 2-4-8-20, doesn't mean they *have* to mine >1mb, or even >10kb. There is nothing stopping them from mining 0-tx blocks even if blocks go to 10MB tomorrow morning. Some are mining zero tx blocks right now.

The fees lost would be insignificant because the fee market is underdeveloped and people would have even less incentive to pay if space is abundant. Oversupply of space = no need to pay. Miners mining 0-tx blocks would definitely compensate for any lack of fee revenue by getting a few blocks first, compared to their competitors who take time to propagate their finding as they attach a lot of transaction data to their their block solution and get REKT orphaned in the process.

Incorrect. (I think you meant "without overwhelming consensus' rather than "without consent"?)

Yep.