.

[Bobsurplus]

So what's the plan Bob?
You're going to buy a shitload?

Got my orders set at $100-$150 to catch that last bounce worth catching.
Besides that
I'm out of btc and ltc completely and all in on Fiat!

What's your next move?

[YarkoL]

So what's the plan Bob?
You're going to buy a shitload?

Got my orders set at $100-$150 to catch that last bounce worth catching.
Besides that
I'm out of btc and ltc completely and all in on Fiat!

What's your next move?

I don't play these games, but if I did, I'd set my buy limit
higher than that. When miners switch to Classic, users to
Unlimited and Core has eaten its share of humble pie,
things are starting to look bright again.

[jonald_fyookball]

Hearn is definitely correct.

If you disagree, I suggest: get your head out of your arse and READ what he's saying:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.9mmfs7o10

REAL problems with Bitcoin community... thankfully this:

Still, all is not yet lost. Despite everything that has happened, in the past few weeks more members of the community have started picking things up from where I am putting them down. Where making an alternative to Core was once seen as renegade, there are now two more forks vying for attention (Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited). So far they’ve hit the same problems as XT but it’s possible a fresh set of faces could find a way to make progress.

[btcusury]

Hearn's article is almost entirely inaccurate/misleading FUD.

Has anyone with high technical knowledge taken the time to deconstruct his post point-by-point? He does make some interesting points that even I (not by any means a "big blockist") feel should be addressed.

It's possible that there will be some turbulence if we can't scale fast enough, but the Core devs have a plan that I think will probably alleviate problems in the short-term, and will almost certainly allow for massive scaling in the long-term. This plan includes an effective max block size increase to 2 MB in ~April. If any serious problems occur, it will be due to altcoins-in-disguise like XT and Classic trying to move Bitcoin development from something based on technical merit to something based on dictatorship or popularity.

You mean "democracy"? (dictatorship+popularity)

Someone who could very well be Satoshi said:

I have been following the recent block size debates through the mailing list.  I had hoped the debate would resolve and that a fork proposal would achieve widespread consensus.  However with the formal release of Bitcoin XT 0.11A, this looks unlikely to happen, and so I am forced to share my concerns about this very dangerous fork.

The developers of this pretender-Bitcoin claim to be following my original vision, but nothing could be further from the truth.  When I designed Bitcoin, I designed it in such a way as to make future modifications to the consensus rules difficult without near unanimous agreement.  Bitcoin was designed to be protected from the influence of charismatic leaders, even if their name is Gavin Andresen, Barack Obama, or Satoshi Nakamoto.  Nearly everyone has to agree on a change, and they have to do it without being forced or pressured into it.  By doing a fork in this way, these developers are violating the "original vision" they claim to honour.

They use my old writings to make claims about what Bitcoin was supposed to be.  However I acknowledge that a lot has changed since that time, and new knowledge has been gained that contradicts some of my early opinions.  For example I didn't anticipate pooled mining and its effects on the security of the network.  Making Bitcoin a competitive monetary system while also preserving its security properties is not a trivial problem, and we should take more time to come up with a robust solution.  I suspect we need a better incentive for users to run nodes instead of relying solely on altruism.

If two developers can fork Bitcoin and succeed in redefining what "Bitcoin" is, in the face of widespread technical criticism and through the use of populist tactics, then I will have no choice but to declare Bitcoin a failed project.  Bitcoin was meant to be both technically and socially robust.  This present situation has been very disappointing to watch unfold.

Why would Satoshi not sign his post, thus proving that it really is him? Surely that would be a big blow to the ph0rkers, no?

[mexicantarget]

I've been around this forum for near 6 years. I've read/seen bitcoin's death at least 20 times or even more, can't even remember anymore.
Do you know what happened after any "big scale" drama occurred? Price would go bonkers.

Most of this FUD happens for a reason.
Wait for $310, then sell your wife, sell your kids, because we're going for a new ATH.

[AZwarel]

Hearn is definitely correct.

If you disagree, I suggest: get your head out of your arse and READ what he's saying:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.9mmfs7o10

REAL problems with Bitcoin community... thankfully this:

Still, all is not yet lost. Despite everything that has happened, in the past few weeks more members of the community have started picking things up from where I am putting them down. Where making an alternative to Core was once seen as renegade, there are now two more forks vying for attention (Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited). So far they’ve hit the same problems as XT but it’s possible a fresh set of faces could find a way to make progress.

I have read it, and while i do not agree with everything (there are some fact problems as well), i strongly agree with the philosophical issues he mentions: there should not be censorship AT ALL about discussing the future way (blocksize, fee "market") of Bitcoin. The mere fact, that some opinions were suppressed shows which side is the elitist control freak, and which side is not. Technically, this whole debate about nodes (and mining and decentralization) being unable to be hosted with 2/4/8 whatever >1MB blocks is false. If someone has problems running a node with 1MB blocks today, he should not run it. This is SJW cultural marxism in the form of bottlenecking the network because some people with crap internet, or cheap PC can not run a full node, or mine, or operate a company in bad environment, "so none shall run a better one".

Yes, life isn't fair, in some regions of the world you won't be able to run a mining operation 'cause of the slow internet connection. This is not different from the fact that you also won't run mining operation in areas where electricity is expensive, or it is a desert climate, but you shouldn't hamper the growth of the network, because it is "unfair", and you want the same amount of nodes in Kongo jungle as in The Netherlands, in the name of decentralization! Because small blockers just do that. They find out more and more elaborate, complex, short-mid term "solutions", in the name of "fair" decentralization. Why it is a problem, that only bitcoin users with good PC/NET capabilities (or the ones with actual technical know-how, and OMG enough money!!) running nodes? Or the network needs 1 "poor African desert tribal node" for every US/Belgian one??

The blocksize on my HDD doesn't matter for me (and i guess for a lot of people who run a node out of pure ideology). I can and will spend another 100-200$ for another few TB to store it, in exchange, the number of the network users can growth (yes, they get "free blockspace - gasp - on my expense!!), and all my bitcoins will go up 100-200$, am still in +. Or i can do it just because i want to be nice There are i think 100 millions living with 10MB/s+ internet, and if only 1 in every 100.000 runs a node, it can keep up the decentralization. And yes, poor chinese miners and their Great Firewall. IDK! They mine there, because the state subsidizes electricity! It is a market distortion in the first place. Go move to Alaska, burn that cheap oil :-)

EDIT: Okay, i know the Hearn ragequit FUD was not good for the reputation, just wanted to point out the frustration about how political this whole debate became, and that we here may know "too much" to imagine a standard user's viewpoint. The needs of the "average user" is not only technical, they grasp ideas better (or only) than network security concepts burrowed under internal mailing lists. I have no chance to explain these to real life friends who are not hardcore bitcoiners reading forums 0-24, and all they can grasp from this debate is, as i have learned is: "space running out".

[jonald_fyookball]

1.   "When networks run out of capacity, they get really unreliable".

Yep.

Although I'm not an expert on "networks", I know this:
If you run a cluster of servers, you do not want any
one machine even NEAR 50%... 25% is better.
Yet people here naively assert that
50% blocks full are ok.  We are often
hitting peak levels.

2. Transactions have been growing since the summer. 

Check the charts.  Yes, they have.

3. China is responsible for not raising the limit.

(I really don't know if this is true or not.)

4. Censorship over "XT" happened.

Appears so.

5. Gregory Maxwell doesn't think Bitcoin can or should scale and
instead should be a settlement network.

Yep.

6. Maxwell founded a company that then hired several other developers. Not surprisingly, their views then started to change to align with that of their new boss.

Yep.

7.  Maxwell and the developers he had hired refused to contemplate any increase in the limit whatsoever. They were barely even willing to talk about the issue.

Yep.

8. Bogus conferences.

Yep.  Nothing was accomplished. 

[oblivi]

I just can't believe what Mike Hearn did. He first dumps all his Bitcoin, then he releases an article by the New York Time announcing the end of Bitcoin. Can't you believe it? This guy has absolutely no ethical value.

Hearn is definitely correct.

If you disagree, I suggest: get your head out of your arse and READ what he's saying:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.9mmfs7o10

REAL problems with Bitcoin community... thankfully this:

Still, all is not yet lost. Despite everything that has happened, in the past few weeks more members of the community have started picking things up from where I am putting them down. Where making an alternative to Core was once seen as renegade, there are now two more forks vying for attention (Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited). So far they’ve hit the same problems as XT but it’s possible a fresh set of faces could find a way to make progress.

I support BIP 101 and bigger blocks.

[theymos]

Has anyone with high technical knowledge taken the time to deconstruct his post point-by-point? He does make some interesting points that even I (not by any means a "big blockist") feel should be addressed.

Pick out a few of the more interesting bits and I'll respond to them.

Why would Satoshi not sign his post, thus proving that it really is him? Surely that would be a big blow to the ph0rkers, no?

- Satoshi never signed his posts.
- He likely wouldn't want it to look like he was dictating Bitcoin's future.

[BitUsher]

Has anyone with high technical knowledge taken the time to deconstruct his post point-by-point? He does make some interesting points that even I (not by any means a "big blockist") feel should be addressed.

Here is a detailed rebuttal ---

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1329647.0

There are so many lies that I had to break it up in 2 parts.

[Sitarow]

I haven't been following much of Bitcoin for a while now. Is what I read true that the Bitcoin network has lots of congestion and that transactions take too long?

I am not sure what your talking about as I am having no troubles with transaction speeds.

[AZwarel]

Has anyone with high technical knowledge taken the time to deconstruct his post point-by-point? He does make some interesting points that even I (not by any means a "big blockist") feel should be addressed.

Here is a detailed rebuttal ---

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1329647.0

There are so many lies that I had to break it up in 2 parts.

Good read, now finish part 2, must read!

[af_newbie]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  There are already technologies to do fast transactions, not sure why someone would want
to change bitcoin to do that and more importantly why?  You don't need bitcoin to do fast transactions.  Ask Visa.  They did it and are very successful at it.

If you want a public ledger, irreversible transactions, cryptographically secured by best, distributed network (self supported), you might look at bitcoin.

I doubt R3 will have the brain power to pull this one off.  I think their first mistake was to hire Hearn.

Network effect will eat them live. What will happen, they will burn investors money and say, well, it was a good experiment.  
But if they get 40 banks to collaborate, who knows.  They might build their private blockchain to run it among themselves for inter-bank transactions but I'm
not sure where the hashrate will come from to secure it.  Who is going to pay for it?

I know one thing, banks are the worst places to work on innovative projects.  They are users of technology, they don't create anything new.

 

[jonald_fyookball]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  

What's do you mean?

Hearn and Gavin want Bitcon to scale on the main chain,
which is a no-brainer good idea.

It's Greg Maxwell/Blockstream that 
want Bitcoin to be a settlement layer.

[BitUsher]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  

What's do you mean?

Hearn and Gavin want Bitcon to scale on the main chain,
which is a no-brainer good idea.

It's Greg Maxwell/Blockstream that  
want Bitcoin to be a settlement layer.

You are correct about Hearn , but his opinion isn't even worthy of my contempt as he is a proven liar and has betrayed Bitcoin for the banks.

You are incorrect with regards to Gavin as he supports a settlement layer along with most of the 45 Core developers .

http://gavinandresen.ninja/it-must-be-done-but-is-not-a-panacea

In fact he claims they are essential -

The “layer 2” services that are being built on top of the blockchain are absolutely necessary to get nearly instant real-time payments, micropayments and high volume machine-to-machine payments, to pick just three examples.

Why are you spreading misinformation? Repent!

[Arrakeen]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

LOL what?! And you understand bitcoin?  Who are you to know more than Hearn?

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  There are already technologies to do fast transactions, not sure why someone would want
to change bitcoin to do that and more importantly why?  You don't need bitcoin to do fast transactions.  Ask Visa.  They did it and are very successful at it.

Ok...so by your logic, bitcoin is trying to be like paypal simply because they want transactions to occur super fast.  WHO WOULDN'T?  Do you want to sit around and wait just to see if a transaction was successful?  Secondly, you're implying that Visa...is trying to be like....paypal...because they have super fast transactions....but they're successful...and okay in your book...but bitcoin?  HELL NO.  EVERYONE MUST OWN PAPER BTC WALLETS AND SNAIL MAIL THEM.

dude are you for real  

[jonald_fyookball]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  

What's do you mean?

Hearn and Gavin want Bitcon to scale on the main chain,
which is a no-brainer good idea.

It's Greg Maxwell/Blockstream that  
want Bitcoin to be a settlement layer.

You are correct about Hearn , but his opinion isn't even worthy of my contempt as he is a proven liar and has betrayed Bitcoin for the banks.

You are incorrect with regards to Gavin as he supports a settlement layer along with most of the 45 Core developers .

http://gavinandresen.ninja/it-must-be-done-but-is-not-a-panacea

In fact he claims they are essential -

The “layer 2” services that are being built on top of the blockchain are absolutely necessary to get nearly instant real-time payments, micropayments and high volume machine-to-machine payments, to pick just three examples.

Why are you spreading misinformation? Repent!

Gavin still wants main chain scaling, that was the whole Bip 101 idea.

Anyway, the most important thing is we need to implement a scalability
solution ASAP.  Until that happens, Bitcoin is in "dangerous waters"
to quote Mike... and the market apparently agrees.

[MicroGuy]

Hearn and Gavin want Bitcon to scale on the main chain,
which is a no-brainer good idea.

Yes. But Gavin is trying to predict what the network will look like 20 years down the road. While forking is actually a healthy activity that should probably be done every few years. If you can accept that logic, then BIP101 is ridiculous.

Conservatism is the best approach. We should decide between 2MB or 4MB blocks and fork again down the road as needed. All this bitcoinclassic constitution nonsense is yet another distraction that is going to create more division and more delay.

[AZwarel]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  

What's do you mean?

Hearn and Gavin want Bitcon to scale on the main chain,
which is a no-brainer good idea.

It's Greg Maxwell/Blockstream that 
want Bitcoin to be a settlement layer.

I guess this is the root of the problem, that different people want - and therefore grasp bitcoin  - different capabilities/usage. The question for me is what bitcoin can/should be used/capable off, or should one side "win", and change it to it's image? What is the goal exactly - more to just store of value, a digital gold, or a 100k txs/s payment channel?

Can we technically do both of these simultaneously or it is impossible within the blockchain and we need complementaries like LN etc.? Is allowing micro txs ON the main chain a bad or good thing? Should users compete for blockspace with fees as it is a scarce resource, and who should decide how much of it should be available (blocksize limit)? Can anyone or a group decide that at all, and if yes how?

IMO these are more ideological question than technical ones.

[af_newbie]

Hearn simply does not understand bitcoin.

He thinks it is suppose to be Paypal with super fast transactions.  

What's do you mean?

Hearn and Gavin want Bitcon to scale on the main chain,
which is a no-brainer good idea.

It's Greg Maxwell/Blockstream that 
want Bitcoin to be a settlement layer.

Why increasing blocksize is a good idea?  It will kill decentralization which is already a problem for bitcoin.  The chain is already over 60GB.

I'm not sure why they even discuss this, there is no problem.  Hearn wants fast transactions, I'm not sure why he even worked on bitcoin, he should have started his own altcoin long time ago.  I guess now he will.

You want fast transactions? You pay for it.  Problem solved.  Next.

The block size growth should be kept below decline of hardware prices.  Otherwise you pushing cost of running the network on miners and nodes.  Running a node is already a form of taxation.  Decentralization is a key feature of bitcoin and it should be protected, IMHO.