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

[AlexGR]

Today it is not uncommon people have 2 TB with minority of nerds having 8 TB/16 TB.
It is not unreasonable to expect in 6 years replace the terms in the sentence above with 10 TB, 50 TB/100 TB. This is what I meant. Sorry for confussion if you thought average 55 TB in 6 years.

In theory, Bitcoin will scale even to visa level txs and beyond based solely on technological advances. The probability of that happening is actually 100% unless we somehow fail as a civilization, have a 3rd world war, a meteor hits earth etc etc. Otherwise, in 20-30-40 years, a 10gb block will be the equivalent of a 1mb one. It's like PCs went from kilobytes of ram, to megabytes, to gigabytes and home connections went from a few bytes per second to megabytes per second.

There are however some issues on the hardware market. Issues like the fact that CPUs are not advancing the way they should, given that AMD is lagging and Intel doesn't have to push too much (a 9 year old quad core is currently cheaper and quite competitive with low end chips of today by AMD and Intel. This would be impossible between, say, 1991 of a 486 @ 50MHz and 2000 with a low end Celeron or K6 running 300-500 MHz)

Optical drives are also stagnant. If someone saw the CD->DVD progression of the 90s, where DVDs had capacity near what a hard disk had at the time (in '95 a CD was ~700mb and a disk was ~500-800mb, in 98-99 a disk was ~4-10GB and the DVD was 4-8GB) you'd expect we would have >1TB optical discs right now but they are buried in some lab, despite having read about such advances multiple times. We didn't use to have ...HDDs for "storage", we had floppies, then CDs, then DVDs... now we have HDDs - which in a way is artificial demand for HDDs and still HDDs don't offer cost effective ways of storage.

I bought a WDC 1TB 7200rpm (blue / ealx sata2) around 5 years ago for ~62 euro and its price is not much different currently (59 euro). In the 90s, if I paid the same money I paid on my wdc 80mb in 92, I would get a Fireball of 6.4GB in 97.

If manufacturers were running full speed we'd be seeing a whole different market. Now with the content stored online, you download a movie, see it, erase it. 10-15 years ago, people hoarded videos etc and stacked them in DVDs, etc. Then they run out of space and started buying HDDs and external HDDs. Then they stopped hoarding, just downloaded and erased. So no motive for HDD manufacturers to go dramatically lower on $/GB, plus they have a cartel nowadays that works as inefficiently as the cpu one.

TLDR: While it's a mathematical certainty that over a long-enough timeline bitcoin will scale as technology evolves, in the short-to-mid term, we have to face some market anomalies that create an artificial slowdown in significant (and affordable) increases of cpu power and hdd storage space.

[iCEBREAKER]

If you prove we will not see over 10 TB HDDs in mass production in the following 6 years, then you can get some big blockers more sceptical about scaling above 2 or 4 MB. So go ahead.

You said 10-100TB, which implied a tenfold increase in 6 years. This is not likely.

All we have to do is loudly demand 100TB hard drives be available in 6 years.

Obnixious repetitive complaining will force those lazy, stubborn, greedy bastards at Seagate and Western Digital to come up with a solution.

That's how engineering works, right?   

How dare those bastards censor us! We will start a new subreddit r/100tbHardDrives and show them what everyone wants. Nevermind that the engineers have told us repeatedly told us they can't make 100TB+ HDD's at this time, WE WANT IT AND WE WANT IT NOW.

Ever notice that hard drives are only made in big centralized factories?  What's up with that elitism?  Can't we try a more fair, democratic approach?  

What is so difficult about increasing the platter/bit density by a factor of 20 with no trade-offs in terms of price, performance, and MTBF?  

I heard Seagate can put out 100TB drives any time they want, but are sensor-shipping them in order to force us to buy more smaller ones!!!11!  

[watashi-kokoto]

It's amazing that so many really really smart users are working on the so called small block problem.

It's great because the solution would be discovered really soon.

[bargainbin]

If you prove we will not see over 10 TB HDDs in mass production in the following 6 years, then you can get some big blockers more sceptical about scaling above 2 or 4 MB. So go ahead.

You said 10-100TB, which implied a tenfold increase in 6 years. This is not likely.

All we have to do is loudly demand 100TB hard drives be available in 6 years.

Obnixious repetitive complaining will force those lazy, stubborn, greedy bastards at Seagate and Western Digital to come up with a solution.

That's how engineering works, right?   

How dare those bastards censor us! We will start a new subreddit r/100tbHardDrives and show them what everyone wants. Nevermind that the engineers have told us repeatedly told us they can't make 100TB+ HDD's at this time, WE WANT IT AND WE WANT IT NOW.

Ever notice that hard drives are only made in big centralized factories?  What's up with that elitism?  Can't we try a more fair, democratic approach?  

That's because today's techno-industrial complex doesn't espouse decentralization as its guiding principle.
Unlike Bitcoin.

What is so difficult about increasing the platter/bit density by a factor of 20 with no trade-offs in terms of price, performance, and MTBF?  

I heard Seagate can put out 100TB drives any time they want, but are sensor-shipping them in order to force us to buy more smaller ones!!!11!  

As mentioned earlier, Seagate could, if demand existed. Currently, there's no demand for 100TB drives. No demand, no point making them. DCs are fine with hot-swappable disk arrays, makes for much simpler maintenance.

TL;DR: No flying dog houses because low demand, not technological obstacles.

[hdbuck]

 WHAT U MEAN ´NO DEMAND'?!!

I DEMAND IT!!1

DEMoCRACY DEMANDs IT FFs!!!

[Lauda]

In theory, Bitcoin is will scale even to visa level txs and beyond based solely on technological advances. The probability of that happening is actually 100% unless we somehow fail as a civilization, have a 3rd world war, a meteor hits earth etc etc. Otherwise, in 20-30-40 years, a 10gb block will be the equivalent of a 1mb one. It's like PCs went from kilobytes of ram, to megabytes, to gigabytes and home connections went from a few bytes per second to megabytes per second.

Bitcoin will never scale to Visa levels or beyond if you're talking about on chain transactions. Never. Even with the foolish BIP101 Bitcoin would only reach the same transaction capacity of the 2015 Visa in ~2030. By then Visa would be handling a much higher amount of transactions and thus Bitcoin would be always behind. Decentralized solutions do not scale efficiently as centralized ones; thus we need to work on the second layer with technologies such as LN which will enable exponential growth.
Someone did make a good point about why this political fork is bad (can't recall who was it). It feels like someone is testing if a political fork can be successful. Once we do this once, who's to say that it won't happen again?

[watashi-kokoto]

WHAT U MEAN ´NO DEMAND'?!!

I DEMAND IT!!1

DEMoCRACY DEMANDs IT FFs!!!

I demand time travel machine.

Post written at 17.5.1983 at my typewriter.

[AlexGR]

In theory, Bitcoin is will scale even to visa level txs and beyond based solely on technological advances. The probability of that happening is actually 100% unless we somehow fail as a civilization, have a 3rd world war, a meteor hits earth etc etc. Otherwise, in 20-30-40 years, a 10gb block will be the equivalent of a 1mb one. It's like PCs went from kilobytes of ram, to megabytes, to gigabytes and home connections went from a few bytes per second to megabytes per second.

Bitcoin will never scale to Visa levels or beyond if you're talking about on chain transactions. Never.

If you make an assumption of ever-increasing technological means, it will *definitely* happen. The only question is "how long before it does?".

Home connections in the 80s/early 90s, were like a few hundred bps to 1200-2400 bps. That's bits. Now there are fiber 1gbps connections in some places.

CPU processing abilities that are now in a simple smartphone, used to be "supercomputer" stuff that filled up entire rooms: http://pages.experts-exchange.com/processing-power-compared/

Obviously, you can just sit and wait for the day when tech will allow you to do more, or you can optimize your modus operandi to make the most of what you have right now.

[Lauda]

If you make an assumption of ever-increasing technological means, it will *definitely* happen. The only question is "how long before it does?".

It won't happen. You obviously have little knowledge on the scaling of large systems (distributed vs centralized vs decentralized). I'm not saying that we will never be able to process a lot of transactions; I'm saying that we will never be able to process more than a centralized and well expanded system like Visa (on chain transactions). I have no idea why some people think that we can. Their TPS is already a few thousand times higher than what Bitcoin is doing.

[AlexGR]

If you make an assumption of ever-increasing technological means, it will *definitely* happen. The only question is "how long before it does?".

It won't happen. You obviously have little knowledge on the scaling of large systems (distributed vs centralized vs decentralized). I'm not saying that we will never be able to process a lot of transactions; I'm saying that we will never be able to process more than a centralized and well expanded system like Visa (on chain transactions).

I disagree on the "it won't happen" part, because, well...maths... It's not a matter of if. Only a matter of when. It could be 30 years or 60 years, but at some point even 1GB or 1TB blocks will be peanuts for the standards that exist in future time-space coordinates.

I agree on the "we will never be able to process more than a centralized...", because, well.... p2p inefficiency.

[CuntChocula]

If you make an assumption of ever-increasing technological means, it will *definitely* happen. The only question is "how long before it does?".

It won't happen. You obviously have little knowledge on the scaling of large systems (distributed vs centralized vs decentralized). I'm not saying that we will never be able to process a lot of transactions; I'm saying that we will never be able to process more than a centralized and well expanded system like Visa (on chain transactions). I have no idea why some people think that we can. Their TPS is already a few thousand times higher than what Bitcoin is doing.

Since Bitcoin, in your opinion, won't scale well, we should forget about scaling altogether?
Why bother with segwit then? Why not go for *smaller* blocks & foster "decentralization"

[Lauda]

I disagree on the "it won't happen" part, because, well...maths... It's not a matter of if. Only a matter of when. It could be 30 years or 60 years, but at some point even 1GB or 1TB blocks will be peanuts for the standards that exist in future time-space coordinates.

I agree on the "we will never be able to process more than a centralized...", because, well.... p2p inefficiency.

These two statements make zero sense due to the fact that they are contradicting themselves. I have only claimed that Bitcoin can not catch up to Visa with on chain transactions due to the infficient way of scaling decentralized systems (in comparison to centralized). I have no idea what kind of math you're talking about here nor how it is relevant to this statement.

You obviously have little knowledge on the scaling of large systems (distributed vs centralized vs decentralized). I'm not saying that we will never be able to process a lot of transactions; I'm saying that we will never be able to process more than a centralized and well expanded system like Visa (on chain transactions).

Since Bitcoin, in your opinion, can't scale well, we should forget about scaling altogether?
Why bother with segwit then? Why not go for *smaller* blocks & foster "decentralization"

Apparently you are unable to read the fine print. Segwit -> IBLT & weak blocks -> LN -> possibly some smaller block size increases and we should be fine for quite some time. LN is a wonder when it comes to 'tps' which becomes actually irrelevant with it (number of channels will matter). The main idea behind Segwit is actually not the increase of the transaction capacity. If you had done enough research you would know that.

[CuntChocula]

...
Since Bitcoin, in your opinion, can't scale well, we should forget about scaling altogether?
Why bother with segwit then? Why not go for *smaller* blocks & foster "decentralization"

Apparently you are unable to read the fine print. Segwit -> IBLT & weak blocks -> LN -> possibly some smaller block size increases and we should be fine for quite some time. LN is a wonder when it comes to 'tps' which becomes actually irrelevant with it (number of channels will matter). The main idea behind Segwit is actually not the increase of the transaction capacity. If you had done enough research you would know that.

Able to read just fine, thanks. SegWit will less than double the throughput.

>possibly some smaller block size increases
Require a hard fork

>LN is a wonder when it comes to 'tps'
It's a Blockstream product, not Bitcoin.

>The main idea behind Segwit is actually not the increase of the transaction capacity
You're marketing it as a solution to tps, don't care what the initial thinking behind it was. I was told repeatedly by TPTB tx malleability is a non-issue, now it suddenly is?

[AlexGR]

These two statements make zero sense due to the fact that they are contradicting themselves. I have only claimed that Bitcoin can not catch up to Visa with on chain transactions due to the infficient way of scaling decentralized systems (in comparison to centralized). I have no idea what kind of math you're talking about here nor how it is relevant to this statement.

There is nothing contradictory. You can exceed all transactions globally (the accumulated credit card, bank transfers, paypal payments, cash transactions etc) but you can still be more inefficient than banks or visa.

Maths = the ever increasing technological capabilities.

Perhaps the following example is better: Say Satoshi came along and deployed BTC in 1995, the era of Pentium 100 MHz, 16MB ram, 2 GB hard drives and network speeds that were very slow over the globe. My web/ftp speeds back then were like 1.2kb/sec on my 14.4k modem on non-peak hours.

How many tx/s could that bitcoin network do, with the means of 1995?

Fast forward 2015, how many?

Fast forward 2035, how many?

Fast forward 2055, how many?

So, it's not a matter of if, only a matter of when. Time is what makes the impossible => possible. Even with an inefficient method. Technology compensates for the inefficiency.

[Lauda]

Able to read just fine, thanks. SegWit will less than double the throughput.

Initially yes; it has the potential to go beyond that though.

Require a hard fork

So?

It's a Blockstream product, not Bitcoin.

LN is not a Blockstream product and it is Bitcoin. Anyone who states otherwise is either ignorant or deluded. You might have mixed up LN with sidechains.

You're marketing it as a solution to tps, don't care what the initial thinking behind it was.

Who's marketing it as a 'solution' to tps? Neither Segwit nor a 2 MB block size are a solution of any kind when it comes to transaction capacity.

There is nothing contradictory. You can exceed all transactions globally (the accumulated credit card, bank transfers, paypal payments, cash transactions etc) but you can still be more inefficient than banks or visa.

I agree on the "we will never be able to process more than a centralized...", because, well.... p2p inefficiency.

No further comments.

[AlexGR]

There is nothing contradictory. You can exceed all transactions globally (the accumulated credit card, bank transfers, paypal payments, cash transactions etc) but you can still be more inefficient than banks or visa.

I agree on the "we will never be able to process more than a centralized...", because, well.... p2p inefficiency.

No further comments.

Again, there is no "paradox" here.

The technology (of bitcoin) can accommodate the accumulated number of every single tx on the planet if you give hardware and network technology the necessary time to grow. Whether that time is 10 or 100 years, nobody has a clue. Perhaps some variables and constants in the software will need "enlargement" to be able to fit everything, if they are currently "downsized" for economy, but it can happen with near 100% certainty.

What is also 100% certain is that this can never be more efficient than a hierarchical system.

What VISA could do in 2015 due to being more efficient, Bitcoin will do in +X years due to the technology compensating for the p2p / decentralized induced inefficiency. Will VISA be able to transact MORE than Bitcoin at that point? YES. Will it matter? No. Why? Because human needs for transactions are finite. You don't jump from 3 purchases a day to 1000 purchases a day. So at some point VISA will be able to process, say, a trillion txs per day but there will be no trillion txs to process. So, for VISA, the technological progression is meaningless because it doesn't allow them to do more. Perhaps they could run their data centers cheaper and that's it. For bitcoin it's another issue altogether because technology unlocks the potential which is burdened by the inefficiency.

[CuntChocula]

Able to read just fine, thanks. SegWit will less than double the throughput.

Initially yes; it has the potential to go beyond that though.

Require a hard fork

So?

It's a Blockstream product, not Bitcoin.

LN is not a Blockstream product and it is Bitcoin. Anyone who states otherwise is either ignorant or deluded. You might have mixed up LN with sidechains.

You're marketing it as a solution to tps, don't care what the initial thinking behind it was.

Who's marketing it as a 'solution' to tps? Neither Segwit nor a 2 MB block size are a solution of any kind when it comes to transaction capacity.
...

So you're telling me SegWit is not a solution to scaling, there are "possibly some smaller block size increases" [hard forks] down the line, and you still want to go through with it? Even though Bitcoin doesn't need to scale?

>LN is not a Blockstream product
Who is paying for it again? Whose entire business model hinges on it?

[Lauda]

So you're telling me SegWit is not a solution to scaling, there are "possibly some smaller block size increases" [hard forks] down the line, and you still want to go through with it? Even though Bitcoin doesn't need to scale?

That statement was my personal opinion and not related to anything official. I have no information in regards to any planned hard forks at this moment. Neither is Segwit nor is Classic (2 MB blocks) a solution to scaling, they are temporary workarounds. Nobody said that Bitcoin doesn't need to scale.

Who is paying for it again? Whose entire business model hinges on it?

They have only 1 developer on the payroll working on it IIRC. This toxic community doesn't even deserve that. Their business model has nothing to do with LN. You're confusing it with sidechains.

Again, there is no "paradox" here.
-snip-

Your argument is a waste of time (no offense). This is not helpful at all.

[CuntChocula]

... This toxic community doesn't even deserve that. ...

This toxic community doesn't *want* it. Take your wooden pony & go home.

>They have only 1 developer on the payroll working on it IIRC.
Other core devs on their payroll, like Wuille and Maxwell. One's enough tho. Hard to ignore the potential for conflict of interests.

[Lauda]

This toxic community doesn't *want* it. Take your wooden pony & go home.

Then saying that the community is dumb would be a huge understatement. Bitcoin will never be able to scale to a global level without technologies such as LN.

>They have only 1 developer on the payroll working on it IIRC.
Other core devs on their payroll, like Wuille and Maxwell. One's enough tho. Hard to ignore the potential for conflict of interests.

1 developer working on LN. Mentioning Wuille and Maxwell is a straw man argument. Since you've mentioned 'conflict of interest': The Toomin brothers are working hard to make consider.it the main platform (decision wise) for Bitcoin. There's no conflict of interest there obviously.