Analysis and list of top big blocks shills (XT #REKT ignorers)

[johnyj]

>you have an exchange for Beanie Babies
When people see Beanie "value rise 400% per year," they'll build exchanges. Same as Bitcoin.

>Being able to produce bitcoin by yourself is a very important aspect
Oh? You mean one can spend $100 to mine $20, that sort of a thing? Because that's roughly what non-factory miners can expect.
If you want, I could create Giant's Place, a Beanie Cloudmining website, where you can pretend that you're mining Beanies while I return $20 out of each $100 you give me.
How would that be different from Bitcoin?

At higher level of abstraction, these are good questions. From this point of view, all the financial products can be regarded as Beanie Babies for majority of the investors, you just need to find some way to promote its value and set up an exchange then you can pump and dump them

That's exactly why bitcoin is different, since you can choose to mine bitcoin instead of purchasing it. Your figures of home mines' profitability is off. In fact many home miners have large advantage against industry miners, since they might have free electricity, or even use miners as a heating device, so that the running cost is almost zero, and they can use already ROIed hardware so that the initial cost is also zero

My 400% price figure is just a metaphor, in reality the figures will be more likely in 20-50% range per year, this is still extremely high investment return so the most attracted users will be investors

[johnyj]

Perhaps true, however the reason why many people invest is because they see a longer term vision of a highly usable currency.  If you're only investing because you think others will see it as a store of value, then it becomes ponzi-like.

Even in future bitcoin is a highly usable currency, people would still not spend it often, simply because it is always rising in value against fiat money, so the usage pattern will quickly switch to save it and spend inflative fiat money instead

Suppose that I have a currency that increases in value almost 20% per year, should I spend it? No way, I would accumulate more of it. And when I want to spend, I will get fiat loan to spend, since the interest cost of a fiat loan can be simply paid by the value appreciation of bitcoin, and I still be able to get a few percent extra

[Quantus]

I do not think higher fees would substantially hinder the growth of the community or its network effect as long as those fees stay between 1 and 5 USD, in the distant future when we have a better internet and a better tor network and a better bitcoin network (with stable fees) then by all means go wild.

I think the most exciting aspect of bitcoin is that everyone without permission can be a central bank and start to create money, and let others to use their money. However that's not an easy task since this is a highly competitive market. But still if you lose the possibility to get bitcoin through mining, then bitcoin will lose its most fundamental advantage against fiat money

Sorry for mixing this up.

Quantus thinks this, Johnyj thinks that, I think something else, and we all have in common that is completely irrelevant what we think.

Yes, allowing everybody to print money without permission WAS one of the most fascinated thing of bitcoin; but I was equal fascinated that Bitcoin is anonymous (pseudonymous), decentral and that you can send splits of a cent in seconds round the world and many more things. There is not that ONE aspect of bitcoin that needs to be preserved on cost of other aspects. There are so many aspects and so many usecases, and instead of saying "Bitcoin is made for this" we should watch with amazement what people are using bitcoin for.

You think higher fees wouldn't hinder bitcoins growth. I could present you a dozen of counter-arguments why fees between 1-5 Dollars would hinder bitcoin's growth immesively and would make bitcoin at this moment useless as a store of value.  But in fact I don't know it and maybe those fee would work.

But I know such fees would cut out some usecases I'd love to see emerge (for example, searchtrade*). So in my view cutting usecases should be more like a last resort than an option.

Edit: *if micropayment will work as private and secure with lightning, I'm completely ok with it.

Great post, I think we would both agree Bitcoin is both inspiring in its endless possibilities and also very poorly understood by its users. I agree that high fees are not ideal and that if fees should hit even 1$ in value it would be a huge blow to many use cases but its not as if we are playing chicken with a brick wall. When we hit the 1MB limit and we will (The community will not accept a fork till we do and then find out what happens) fees will not shoot up dramatically overnight. We might have a selloff, perhaps as much as 20% but after the fear passes people will see very little has changed.
I personally look forward to the day we hit the 1mb limit, we can learn so much from it. And if the results are bad we will have plenty of time to take action. And one day many years form now when transaction volume is much higher, 10k times higher then today we can again have lower fees, larger blocks and micro transactions. Until then block size should be determined on the basis of whats best for the network we currently have and not the network we want or will have at some unknowable time in the future.

[bargainbin]

>you have an exchange for Beanie Babies
When people see Beanie "value rise 400% per year," they'll build exchanges. Same as Bitcoin.

>Being able to produce bitcoin by yourself is a very important aspect
Oh? You mean one can spend $100 to mine $20, that sort of a thing? Because that's roughly what non-factory miners can expect.
If you want, I could create Giant's Place, a Beanie Cloudmining website, where you can pretend that you're mining Beanies while I return $20 out of each $100 you give me.
How would that be different from Bitcoin?

At higher level of abstraction, these are good questions. From this point of view, all the financial products can be regarded as Beanie Babies for majority of the investors, you just need to find some way to promote its value and set up an exchange then you can pump and dump them

That's exactly why bitcoin is different, since you can choose to mine bitcoin instead of purchasing it. Your figures of home mines' profitability is off. In fact many home miners have large advantage against industry miners, since they might have free electricity, or even use miners as a heating device, so that the running cost is almost zero, and they can use already ROIed hardware so that the initial cost is also zero

My 400% price figure is just a metaphor, in reality the figures will be more likely in 20-50% range per year, this is still extremely high investment return so the most attracted users will be investors

>all the financial products can be regarded as Beanie Babies for majority of the investors
No. Most ponzi schemes, most in-game currencies, but not most financial products. Start learning about financial products here.

>many home miners have large advantage against industry miners, since they might have free electricity
No, there's no such thing as "free electricity," someone (your parents, your landlord, your school) is paying for it. Treating it as "free" is not much different than taking "free money" mom & dad leave unattended around the house.

[johnyj]

>all the financial products can be regarded as Beanie Babies for majority of the investors
No. Most ponzi schemes, most in-game currencies, but not most financial products. Start learning about financial products here.

>many home miners have large advantage against industry miners, since they might have free electricity
No, there's no such thing as "free electricity," someone (your parents, your landlord, your school) is paying for it. Treating it as "free" is not much different than taking "free money" mom & dad leave unattended around the house.

I really don't see any difference in most of the financial products, it is all pump and dump unless participants can make the products by themselves. And the master of all pump and dump scheme is fiat money, it has been tried for over 300 years since John Law's first version of fiat money, so the degree of masking is enough high to blind majority of the people

Many apartment rents include electricity cost, of course you can not run large scale operation, but that's how decentralized mining should work. In future when chip technology has reached its end due to processing nodes limitation, home miner can survive long term wise since they have their electricity cost included in the rent, or they use the miner as a heater thus use the heating cost to do bitcoin mining. Of course this will reduce the bitcoin production cost and cause more miners to sell their coins, but that's another topic

[VeritasSapere]

There is this idea that we must choose between settlement network or payment network, this is a false dichotomy, a false choice. Bitcoin can do both of these things and more, they actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion. By attempting to put one above the other you are actually breaking both.

Bitcoin is and can be many different things to different people, there are many coders and engineers who think that we can scale Bitcoin, therefore I think that we should, even if Core thinks that we should not, their reasons for not doing so remain ideological and I have a distinctly different vision for Bitcoin which also happens to align closer to the original vision of its founder as well. I am sure that there are many people that did originally sign up for this original vision and do not appreciate this bait and switch.

I appreciate most of the work done by Core but I do not want a technocratic group of engineers and coders to dictate to us what Bitcoin should become and what its economic policy should be, this should be determined by the market itself instead. I rather have the engineers remind us ideologues of what is possible so that we can then pursue our dreams to create a better world. It is not impossible to increase the blocksize limit, so I reject the notion that we must choose between settlement layer or payment network now.

[brg444]

Pseudo-free market BS. All hail the miners!

My fear is that people who want the settlement layer to be more like a payment layer are like people who want to build computer games out of an assembly language. We need payment layers, not to turn the settlement layer into something that it is not.

I suppose it is good PR to say that this is all a debate over whether we should make Bitcoin usable or not, but let's be honest, this debate is about how we think we should make bitcoin usable. Do we try to make bitcoin itself super-usable at the potential expense of its reliability and trustworthiness? Or do we try to create layers on top of bitcoin that preserve bitcoin's trustworthiness and yet also provide usability via those layers? (A common analogy, do we try to improve the internet to the point where everyone suddenly gets that it is useful, or do we develop layers on top of the internet, like the Web, that make its usefulness obvious?)

My argument is this: Money systems depend on trust and usability, one cannot exist without the other, just as the OP said. However, if we try to merge trust and usability into one system, we risk a situation where the system lacks both. It will still be difficult to use, and yet people won't feel it is a safe place to put their money either. In other words, it will remain exactly as it is today. Modern money systems don't work that way and neither should bitcoin.

Layered tiers of a monetary system is foundational to how modern money works. The "M"s designation of different types of money --m0, m1, m2, etc -- is meant to represent these layers. The further up you go in layers, the faster the money becomes, but also the less dependable and trustworthy the money becomes. Likewise, base money, like cash, is slow and cumbersome, yet it is the most trustworthy form of money in an economy. In the modern economy, cash is considered real money and more real and dependable than bank credit. If the banking system experiences a crisis, bank credit could become worthless overnight, whereas cash will only rise in value. So there is an intrinsic tradeoff to having fast money and that is that it becomes less reliable money. Same was true back in the days when banknotes were backed by gold. The physical note was a faster, more liquid form of money. Gold was cumbersome and slow but more trusted and dependable.

"Settlement layer" is just another way of saying "base money." They are really the same thing. The reason a layer is the settlement layer is precisely because it is made out of base money, i.e., real money. If I went to you and said, "look, I promise I'll swing buy and pay you $100 in cash tomorrow" that would be the payment layer. It is fast, but it lacks trust because ultimately real money hasn't been transferred until I actually pay you in hard cash. When I do pay you in hard cash, that is called settlement. Settlement layer simply refers to people or institutions concluding all promises to pay with actual payment. So the settlement layer is actually just base money. In the modern financial system, when you pay someone with cash, you are using the settlement layer.

A settlement layer is the fundamental monetary force behind the economy. In the modern system, the settlement layer is institutionally controlled by the central bank. They are the ones who have the sole right to create cash, and as such money held in the central bank is considered as good as having cash. Only commercial banks are allowed to hold accounts with the central banks and all settlements between commercial banks are mostly concluded by transferring money held in accounts at the central bank. That is to say, for all intents and purposes, the central bank is the settlement layer in the modern system.

Bitcoin functions as a central bank. It could, in theory, replace central banks. It prints base money, called 'bitcoins,' which is then hands out to the miners who are the equivalents of the commercial banks. In the Bitcoin system, miners are bankers. The central bank, Bitcoin, then is ultimately controlled by the collection of those miners who can decide to set Bitcoin policy. This is exactly how the modern banking system works, the bankers collectively decide on how the central bank should set policy.
Many people think of banks as a place people store their money for safe keeping, and then the bank uses that money to make more money and spark growth in the economy through lending. However, what people forget is that the power of banks comes not from the fact that people give them money, but from the fact that they hold base currency. Today, most base currency held by banks comes from the central bank printing it and handing it to them, not from people depositing it. In fact, most people don't deposit cash into banks anymore, they just move bank credit around. By having large sums of base currency, banks can settle with other banks and neither bank needs to be concerned with the internal affairs of the other.

In other words, banks allow consumers and the larger economic system to use money off-chain, so to speak, that is their function, always has been. Then they settle accounts at the end of the day on-chain, that is to say at the settlement layer. It is precisely this power that allows them to lend (i.e., create broad money) and creates the varied payment networks. If all transactions had to be done through the central bank then that one bank would control everyone's money and decide who deserved loans and who didn't. It would be a centralized economy on steroids, the financial system wouldn't exist. By not trying to let the central banks do everything, the monetary system was allowed to become robust. (Obviously, it is corrosive and needs to be replaced by something better, but one can't deny that the modern financial system has been a huge success even if it is nearing the end of its days.)

Furthermore, a global central bank, Bitcoin, is simply not going to work unless it is trusted by everyone. And it won't be trusted by everyone unless it is considered fair. Trust in a global central bank is not going to be there if it is perceived as being controlled by someone untrustworthy. If someday the majority of miners work for the Chinese government, how much trust can there really be in bitcoin by people living in other countries? Decentralized control is the only way to achieve a global central bank. But my understanding is that increasing the block size can potentially lead to increased incentives for mining centralization, precisely the opposite of what we want. And once a high degree of centralization occurs, since the miners must approve future changes, what can get us to reverse course? This would weaken the inherent trust in the base currency that comes from the decentralization of control. Put simply, raising the block size limit threatens to undermine the foundation of the bitcoin system which is decentralization, resulting in a less trusted base currency. Since trust is the most important feature of base currency, this isn't something people should take lightly.

Off-chain transactions, payment layers, allow for the growth of a more decentralized ecosystem around the base layer as well as the emergence of cryptocurrency banking and lending, and more widespread use of 2.0 tokens and currencies built on top of bitcoin. By creating payment layers you will far outstrip what base bitcoin can ever achieve in terms of usability left to its own devices. This is because the whole role and purpose of payment layers is to increase usability, and if that is how they are financially incentivized, they will come up with the best solutions and thus open the doors for mass adoption. You get both a profoundly trusted base layer, and a decentralized, competitive market for payment layers and usability, all rooted in a non-state, non-institutionally controlled currency. By not constricting the system to ONLY base money, broad money creation can allow for an explosion in the bitcoin ecosystem and innovation around the use and control of that broad money.

On the other hand, raising the block size limit increases mining centralization, reducing trust in the base currency, but doesn't increase incentives for profiting from innovation around increased usability solutions, thus limiting banking and lending innovation. Essentially, it keeps bitcoin where it is today, stagnating under the weight of the fact that people don't really need it and it is not really a safe place to keep your money. The killer app for bitcoin hasn't been invented yet, raising the block limit helps to assure that it never will be. This is precisely because the future killer apps are the payment layers and all that comes with them. When Bitcoin achieves a profound level of usability from the payment layers, and a high degree of trust from its decentralized base settlement layer, it will be completely unstoppable. But if you water down the decentralization and think the current system, just with a larger block size limit, is good enough as a payment system ... we will never get past where we are today.

[Quantus]

There is this idea that we must choose between settlement network or payment network, this is a false dichotomy, a false choice. Bitcoin can be both of these things and more, they actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion. By attempting to put one above the other you are actually breaking both.

Bitcoin is and can be many different things to different people, there are many coders and engineers who think that we can scale Bitcoin, therefore I think that we should, even if Core thinks that we should not, their reasons for not doing so remains ideological and I have a distinctly different vision for Bitcoin which also happens to align closer to the original vision of its founder as well. I am sure that there are many people that did originally sign up for this original vision and do not appreciate this bait and switch.

I appreciate most of the work done by Core but I do not want a technocratic group of engineers and coders to dictate to us what Bitcoin should become and what its economic policy should be, this should be determined by the market itself instead. I rather have the engineers remind us ideologues of what is possible so that we can then pursue our dreams to create a better world. It is not impossible to increase the blocksize limit, so I reject the notion that we must choose between settlement layer or payment network now.

I think we all want the same thing we deffer only on how to get to that promised land. For some the path is clear, larger blocks. For me and others the path we walk of larger and larger blocks with insufficient fees leads to network collapse.

[johnyj]

There is this idea that we must choose between settlement network or payment network, this is a false dichotomy, a false choice. Bitcoin can be both of these things and more, they actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion. By attempting to put one above the other you are actually breaking both.

Bitcoin is and can be many different things to different people, there are many coders and engineers who think that we can scale Bitcoin, therefore I think that we should, even if Core thinks that we should not, their reasons for not doing so remains ideological and I have a distinctly different vision for Bitcoin which also happens to align closer to the original vision of its founder as well. I am sure that there are many people that did originally sign up for this original vision and do not appreciate this bait and switch.

I appreciate most of the work done by Core but I do not want a technocratic group of engineers and coders to dictate to us what Bitcoin should become and what its economic policy should be, this should be determined by the market itself instead. I rather have the engineers remind us ideologues of what is possible so that we can then pursue our dreams to create a better world. It is not impossible to increase the blocksize limit, so I reject the notion that we must choose between settlement layer or payment network now.

In reality if you want to travel fast then you have to pay more, an airline ticket is always more expensive than a boat ticket. But still many people travel by air because they can afford that ticket. And if you have a capacity problem in traffic, you encourage people to use public transport, e.g. trusted 3rd party service provider that can provide volume traffic at a competitive price

[bargainbin]

>all the financial products can be regarded as Beanie Babies for majority of the investors
No. Most ponzi schemes, most in-game currencies, but not most financial products. Start learning about financial products here.

>many home miners have large advantage against industry miners, since they might have free electricity
No, there's no such thing as "free electricity," someone (your parents, your landlord, your school) is paying for it. Treating it as "free" is not much different than taking "free money" mom & dad leave unattended around the house.

I really don't see any difference in most of the financial products, it is all pump and dump unless participants can make the products by themselves. And the master of all pump and dump scheme is fiat money, it has been tried for over 300 years since John Law's first version of fiat money, so the degree of masking is enough high to blind majority of the people

Many apartment rents include electricity cost, of course you can not run large scale operation, but that's how decentralized mining should work. In future when chip technology has reached its end due to processing nodes limitation, home miner can survive long term wise since they have their electricity cost included in the rent, or they use the miner as a heater thus use the heating cost to do bitcoin mining. Of course this will reduce the bitcoin production cost and cause more miners to sell their coins, but that's another topic

>I really don't see any difference in most of the financial products
That's because a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. If you're unwilling to learn, you'll have to take that on trust. Same goes for fiat money. It may not be something you understand, though not everything that you don't understand is a scam.

>electricity cost included in the rent
This doesn't mean that it's free electricity & you're free to run a cable to the aluminum smelter next door and make a killing.
If not obvious, you should also buy your own toilet paper, instead of taking rolls from restaurant bathrooms "because it's free." Same for sugar, salt, pepper, and napkins.

[johnyj]

>all the financial products can be regarded as Beanie Babies for majority of the investors
No. Most ponzi schemes, most in-game currencies, but not most financial products. Start learning about financial products here.

>many home miners have large advantage against industry miners, since they might have free electricity
No, there's no such thing as "free electricity," someone (your parents, your landlord, your school) is paying for it. Treating it as "free" is not much different than taking "free money" mom & dad leave unattended around the house.

I really don't see any difference in most of the financial products, it is all pump and dump unless participants can make the products by themselves. And the master of all pump and dump scheme is fiat money, it has been tried for over 300 years since John Law's first version of fiat money, so the degree of masking is enough high to blind majority of the people

Many apartment rents include electricity cost, of course you can not run large scale operation, but that's how decentralized mining should work. In future when chip technology has reached its end due to processing nodes limitation, home miner can survive long term wise since they have their electricity cost included in the rent, or they use the miner as a heater thus use the heating cost to do bitcoin mining. Of course this will reduce the bitcoin production cost and cause more miners to sell their coins, but that's another topic

>I really don't see any difference in most of the financial products
That's because a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse. If you're unwilling to learn, you'll have to take that on trust. Same goes for fiat money. It may not be something you understand, though not everything that you don't understand is a scam.

>electricity cost included in the rent
This doesn't mean that it's free electricity & you're free to run a cable to the aluminum smelter next door and make a killing.
If not obvious, you should also buy your own toilet paper, instead of taking rolls from restaurant bathrooms "because it's free." Same for sugar, salt, pepper, and napkins.

I have an economy degree but I think all those things on books are just to mask the truth. If you try to understand the financial system from those books, you will be more confusing than average Joe. Try to become a miner and see through the money creator's view

[jonald_fyookball]

He clearly states "as of this moment," and cites the data he's relying on by linking to the poll. Better than most, I'd say

With 'as of this moment' he meant that the data is present and not outdated. However, I do agree that it is better than most. Polls on this forum are of near zero value considering the amount of votes and people with alts/shills. A single user could easily manipulate a poll if he or she wanted to.

If you feel the polls on this forum are worthless, I don't disagree, though hardly a reason to call the poster ignorant or to suggest, albeit implicitly, that he's rigging the poll.
"As of this moment," to me, reads as: "I'm conducting a poll. As of this moment, the poll shows [...]" So ambiguous, sure.

I didn't feel he was saying I was rigging the poll, and I agree the data is far from statistically valid. 
Still, I think it does have a fair chance of giving a microcosm view that most
Bitcoiners do see Bitcoin as both a currency and a store of value.

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

I have an economy degree

You certainly do.

[fisheater22]

... I think all those things on books are just to mask the truth. If you try to understand the financial system from those books, you will be more confusing than average Joe. Try to become a miner and see through the money creator's view

[VeritasSapere]

There is this idea that we must choose between settlement network or payment network, this is a false dichotomy, a false choice. Bitcoin can be both of these things and more, they actually reinforce each other in a synergistic fashion. By attempting to put one above the other you are actually breaking both.

Bitcoin is and can be many different things to different people, there are many coders and engineers who think that we can scale Bitcoin, therefore I think that we should, even if Core thinks that we should not, their reasons for not doing so remains ideological and I have a distinctly different vision for Bitcoin which also happens to align closer to the original vision of its founder as well. I am sure that there are many people that did originally sign up for this original vision and do not appreciate this bait and switch.

I appreciate most of the work done by Core but I do not want a technocratic group of engineers and coders to dictate to us what Bitcoin should become and what its economic policy should be, this should be determined by the market itself instead. I rather have the engineers remind us ideologues of what is possible so that we can then pursue our dreams to create a better world. It is not impossible to increase the blocksize limit, so I reject the notion that we must choose between settlement layer or payment network now.

I think we all want the same thing we deffer only on how to get to that promised land. For some the path is clear, larger blocks. For me and others the path we walk of larger and larger blocks with insufficient fees leads to network collapse.

If the blocks become larger it implies that there is increased adoption and use of Bitcoin. A high volume of low fee transactions over the long run would actually pay out more for the miners compared to a high volume of low fee transactions. The idea that if we increase the blocksize over time as the technology allows as it improves would lead to the network collapsing is not supported by the facts.

If we had a sixty four megabyte blocksize limit for instance with the same fees per transaction payed out today it would already exceed the present block reward. It is not impossible to have blocks this large, in a decade from now it might even seem trivial. It would even take BIP101 eight years to reach this point, and the newly proposed Bitcoin Classic more then twelve years. Most of the other blocksize limit increase proposals are even more conservative then this, which is fine. My point being is that a high volume of low value transactions can pay for the networks security and this would not lead to the network collapsing as you claim, especially as the limit is slowly increased as our technology improves.

[Lauda]

I didn't feel he was saying I was rigging the poll, and I agree the data is far from statistically valid. 
Still, I think it does have a fair chance of giving a microcosm view that most
Bitcoiners do see Bitcoin as both a currency and a store of value.

I did not say that and not even imply it. That would mean that I have a reason to suspect/attack you which I don't. I said that anyone could rig the poll easily which is true. It does have a chance although it is a slim one.

I have an economy degree

You certainly do.

Nobody should believe such claims online without proof.

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

The example represents a severe performance bug in the bitcoin core software and should be fixed by software changes that make an inefficient operation efficient or restrict very large transactions if this proves too difficult. There is no reason to limit blocksize because of this.

This guy gets it. Unbounded memory use, as well as poorly designed propagation methods are  issues that should be addressed by code review, not by adding layers of complexity.

When you look at it from this perspective, you see how the whole 'scaling debate' is being jury rigged to deliver a fundamentally altered version of Bitcoin that suits one particular commercial interest.

[johnyj]

I have an economy degree

You certainly do.

Nobody should believe such claims online without proof.

True, you only need proof of work, anything else is just words on a piece of paper

[jonald_fyookball]

I have an economy degree

You certainly do.

i get the lolz.

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

I have an economy degree

You certainly do.

i get the lolz.