Can we trust bitcoin long term with BUcoin type hard forks menacing around?

[cellard]

I like bitcoin because it's an alternative to gold, and it has features that make it better (carrying any amounts of bitcoin and being able to move it around seamlessly makes it insanely underrated as compared to moving gold which is hell)

The only problem I have is the hard fork scenario. We all know that if bitcoin unlimited fork happens, the price is going to tank, so this is not a very promising situation for long term holders.

For those of us that want to hold for 10 years in a cold storage, what can we expect? If the marketcap keeps getting divided into several different teams, it's going to end up an inflationary currency anyway. Yes the limit is 21 million, but if the hardfork happens we'll have 42 million (bitcoin and BUcoins) then imagine that some other idiots decide to create a third chain and fork again... boom, here you have it, your long term investment goes to shit (look at ETH/ETH)

I just hope that Core remains the main blockchain and the rest end up as altcoins. We need to keep 80% of cryptomarketcap, otherwise it would be bad news for anyone wanting to hold long term.

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[gentlemand]

If one contentious fork happens then I think it's effectively game over. If a small number of people can do it once, they themselves and others will be emboldened to do it again. If the miners, node operators and businesses and exchanges all go for the same option they like best then it's no longer contentious but I can't see that happening.

This is where the 'experiment' part counts and it's something a lot of people forget about. It's all still being made up as it goes along and anything can still happen.

[BillyBobZorton]

Let's just hope it doesn't happen, this is just another test to see how strong bitcoin is. The fact that we have people like Gavin cheering up for those chinese guys planning on attacking with 100million to cause the hard fork it's clear there is an agenda to damage bitcoin as a viable safe haven, notice how shit like this always happens when big price milestones are about to be hit.
They know the biggest weakness is the particular hard fork scenario since as you said, it would cause chaos and mainstream media would have juicy stuff to cause even more damage and making investors panic dump and probably flee to gold or something else. They will milk the incident for months or even years.

What doesnt kill bitcoin makes it stronger so we'll see.

[Carlton Banks]

Like it or not, the troll-forkists are abusing a legitimate design feature; if the Core team actually did compromise any decentralised sound-money principles that Bitcoin was made with, then having the option to fork away to a faction of that team (or whoever else) that still stuck to decentralised sound-money would be vital.

[calkob]

I like bitcoin because it's an alternative to gold, and it has features that make it better (carrying any amounts of bitcoin and being able to move it around seamlessly makes it insanely underrated as compared to moving gold which is hell)

The only problem I have is the hard fork scenario. We all know that if bitcoin unlimited fork happens, the price is going to tank, so this is not a very promising situation for long term holders.

For those of us that want to hold for 10 years in a cold storage, what can we expect? If the marketcap keeps getting divided into several different teams, it's going to end up an inflationary currency anyway. Yes the limit is 21 million, but if the hardfork happens we'll have 42 million (bitcoin and BUcoins) then imagine that some other idiots decide to create a third chain and fork again... boom, here you have it, your long term investment goes to shit (look at ETH/ETH)

I just hope that Core remains the main blockchain and the rest end up as altcoins. We need to keep 80% of cryptomarketcap, otherwise it would be bad news for anyone wanting to hold long term.

I think you maybe buying into the fear here,  Bitcoin will always be open to change.  thats the whole point.  But it will only ever go with majority consensus.  Bu will either stall or take over, so what if the majority of people want BU then there is no way to fight it as an individual anyway......

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Consenus will be reached eventually I think. Far too many people have far too much money invested in bitcoin to sit back & watch it all turn to shit.

It's all just posturing atm.

[manselr]

Like it or not, the troll-forkists are abusing a legitimate design feature; if the Core team actually did compromise any decentralised sound-money principles that Bitcoin was made with, then having the option to fork away to a faction of that team (or whoever else) that still stuck to decentralised sound-money would be vital.

Indeed but big blockistas are trying to exploit that feature by delivering a solution that doesn't work (BU) to content the simple minded people that just want to make bitcoin cheap and fast without caring about the consequences. Not surprised Gavin the ex-politician is involved, and also Roger Ver a guy that resembles those philantrophists with agendas to shape the world the way they think it's best.

Let's see if they actually hard fork, they are all talk no walk thus far. As a holder I dont want to see it happen since I know I will lose money, but I want the people that is supporting BU to see it fail and wake up.

[Lauda]

The combination of acceptance depth and nodes setting blocksize gates causes a huge orphaning problem every time there is any adjustment in blocksize. If I set my gate with a large minority's (call it 30%) to say 5 blocks and someone mines a block bigger than my gate, then there are immediately two chains. Then for the next 5 blocks the chains diverge and people receive confirmations that they don't realize aren't reliable. Then if other nodes don't shift, or if miners agree on the opposite direction, those 5 blocks are dropped. So suddenly a transaction with 5 confirmations is back in the mempool and we have a backlog for everything left on the smaller chain.
Second, since miners broadcast their excessive blocksize and a split happens any time one is in dispute. A miner with as little as 1% of the mining power can create a block based on the median excessive blocksize and force the network into this fork/orphan situation with ease. Meaning an attacker can leave the entire network in a constant state of forking and confusion with barely any investment. The only defense is for all nodes and miners to simply bend to the will of the majority so there is "consensus" to the largest miners. Meaning the Acceptance Depth is a fake restriction on the blocksize, and powerful miners will have little o no problem kicking smaller nodes off the network by raising the blocksize. The "power" given to smaller miners and nodes actually works against them not for them.
Lastly, because these signaling and forking measures are built into the system. Let's say acceptance depth by 30% gets set to 2Mb for 100,000 blocks. Then another fork happens as soon as there is a 2.1Mb block and now we have two BU chains
The BU system builds he blocksize debate into the core protocol and worsens the already bad consequences. It will make the debate more contentious and solve absolutely nothing. The state that we see these bitter, name calling, political debate over blocksize now, will recur every time someone tries to raise the blocksize. It will be the new norm for bitcoin going forward.
It's a really bad system IMO
(Laos bitcoin magazine has a few articles by Aaron Wirdum that explain it rather well)

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5s05sn/segwit_vs_bu_where_do_exchanges_stand/ddbpsl6/
Note: I'm not vouching for the correctness of this statement.

[Holliday]

I trust Bitcoin more thanks to the potential to hard fork.

[Carlton Banks]

Gavin the ex-politician

That's an interesting piece of information, how do we know this?

Let's see if they actually hard fork, they are all talk no walk thus far. As a holder I dont want to see it happen since I know I will lose money, but I want the people that is supporting BU to see it fail and wake up.

I'm not convinced that any real proportion of the Bitcoin user base is actually behind it, but a determined adversary (with alot of money) can simply buy the hashing power to fork the chain. So it almost certainly will happen, and one might assume that those with the money and influence significant enough to do so would also choose the timing of their hardfork carefully.

[manselr]

Gavin the ex-politician

That's an interesting piece of information, how do we know this?
 

From what I remember is nothing of importance, he was involved in municipal politics:

Personal Life

Given the current and growing success of Bitcoin, Andresen admits he tries not to let it overwhelm his life. He dedicates numerous nights each year to the Amherst Town Meeting as an elected member, giving his input and time to a town that has been the foundation for many of his endeavors. Between coding and municipal politics Andresen tries to find opportunities to read science fiction, take a spin on his unicycle, or stay tuned into the musings of his friends on Facebook.

http://www.bestbitcoin.eu/gavin-andresen.html

Mayor Gavin promises great discounts in Bitcoin fees and fast onchain payments, only in exchange of node centralization!
Vote Mayor Gavin today.

[franky1]

so much fake propaganda, but soo litte proof they understand the basic concepts of consensus.

those defending blockstream are getting desperate.

all i ask is they learn the world consensus. and understand that the community want consensus. its only the blockstream defenders that want the network to split.

it is only the blockstream defenders happily giving the power to miners

firstly learn consensus agreement vs bilateral split.

too many times people only speak of the best case scenario of soft and the worse case of hard.(they know why they do it!!)
but effectively the only difference between soft and hard is who gets to vote to activate..

soft.. pool votes nodes dont.
hard.. nodes vote then pools.

but in both soft and hard. both can have consensus, both can be controversial and both can have bilateral

softfork: consensus - >94% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: small 5% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced and dead
softfork: controversial - >50% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: long big% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced and dead
softfork: bilateral - intentionally ignoring/banning opposing rules and not including them. result: 2 chains

hardfork: consensus - >94% nodes, then >94% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: 5% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced / dead
hardfork: controversial - >50% nodes, then >50% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: big% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced / dead
hardfork: bilateral - intentionally ignoring/banning opposing rules and not including them. result: 2 chains

to make an actual altcoin you need to do more then just make bigger blocks or send an erroneous transaction.. as that just causes rejects/orphans.

you need to actually make the nodes ignore the opposing data and nodes so that they are not sticking to the same data. and instead walk in opposite directions

high agreement = less orphans/rejects
low agreement = more orphans/rejects
but if you have another clause to avoid rejecting or even seeing the opposition. then you are risking creating an altcoin

core fans and paid devs are the only ones asking about splitting the network. no one else

[Gimpeline]

The majority (Core) wants to make the BU fork.... Makes sence

[franky1]

The majority (Core) wants to make the BU fork.... Makes sence

here is the blockstream CTO demanding non-core implementations split. and him proving they dont want to. the same blockstream CTO also thinks splits are good

What you are describing is what I and others call a bilateral hardfork-- where both sides reject the other.

I tried to convince the authors of BIP101 to make their proposal bilateral by requiring the sign bit be set in the version in their blocks (existing nodes require it to be unset). Sadly, the proposals authors were aggressively against this.

The ethereum hardfork was bilateral, probably the only thing they did right--

here is a blockstream defender with no clue about how bitcoin works, or knows the term consensus. sounding desparate to try getting non-core nodes to split.

So hurry the fuck up and get your fork over with, the constant droning of your lies is not worrying or irritating, it's just boring.

No-one's interested, DO YOUR FORK. You've got the hashrate, do your fork.

and now lets get back to the blockstream paid core devs.. they are are only 'team' that bypassed real hard consensus to give miners the power.. no other team have done this.
only blockstream paid devs decided giving miners ultimate power was good.by going soft. yet they cry like they are the victims

[Denker]

If one contentious fork happens then I think it's effectively game over. If a small number of people can do it once, they themselves and others will be emboldened to do it again. If the miners, node operators and businesses and exchanges all go for the same option they like best then it's no longer contentious but I can't see that happening.

This is where the 'experiment' part counts and it's something a lot of people forget about. It's all still being made up as it goes along and anything can still happen.

Yes Bitcoin would mostly end with two chains if that BU fork should go through, for a while.
And after that who knows how often these chains getting forked again because other minorities don't agree with certain things.Contentious HF can't be a solution!
This would probably end in a crazy cluster fuck.

Either we agree all to one solution ( SegWit + Blocksize increase ?) or Bitcoin stays as it is and becomes stagnant, which could mean it will get surpassed one day by another coin.

[Carlton Banks]

Contentious HF can't be a solution!
This would probably end in a crazy cluster fuck.

Either we agree all to one solution ( SegWit + Blocksize increase ?) or Bitcoin stays as it is and becomes stagnant, which could mean it will get surpassed one day by another coin.

Seriously, if someone wants to buy up 50% of the hashrate, and they've got what it takes to do that, they will. No amount of improvement to the network protocol is going to be much help, they could do it repeatedly if they wanted, once a day lol.

[Lauda]

Another thread has been 'frankied' with nonsense.

Either we agree all to one solution ( SegWit + Blocksize increase ?) or Bitcoin stays as it is and becomes stagnant, which could mean it will get surpassed one day by another coin.

There isn't a hard fork proposal that builds upon Segwit and increases the block size. There is one by luke-jr, but that actually doesn't increase the block size until a few years in the future.

[franky1]

Another thread has been 'frankied' with nonsense.

Either we agree all to one solution ( SegWit + Blocksize increase ?) or Bitcoin stays as it is and becomes stagnant, which could mean it will get surpassed one day by another coin.

There isn't a hard fork proposal that builds upon Segwit and increases the block size. There is one by luke-jr, but that actually doesn't increase the block size until a few years in the future.

lauda.
firstly stop using umbrella terms..
hard fork = empty word
try using hard consensus (what the community want)

secondly
the blockstream "bips"
are moderated by gmaxwell.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/d9e890a8f27e46806238e298a346397871fd7e87/README.mediawiki

People wishing to submit BIPs, first should propose their idea or document to the mailing list. After discussion they should email Greg Maxwell . After copy-editing and acceptance, it will be published here.

requiring people to post a topic in this forums technical section - moderated by gmaxwell
discussed in the IRC - moderated by gmaxwell
then added to mailinglist moderated by gmaxwell.
before getting a chance to be posted in the github which requires gmaxwells attention.. (as quoted above)

so your "there are no other bips" is just short sighted word twisting of
"there isnt a hard consensus proposal that gmaxwell has approved"

wake up to reality

please lauda.
spend just 30 minutes learning real things.
i dont mean this in any negative way.
just take off the blockstream defender hat. and wear a critical/logical hat..

and dont waste time with how you are bing victimised by me asking you such things in such a manner. use that fake crying victim card playing time to be of some actual use to you and learn real things.

learn consensus vs bilateral
learn soft can also have bilerateral

learn hard and soft is just about who votes first/at all.
learn the basics.

please dont waste peoples time with your old "your ad-hom victimising me". spend time learning and come back a wiser person with actual concepts  of code/scenarios of utility to rebuttle.. not the usual 'troll' social drama

[Taki]

Bitcoin is one of the most controversial investment opportunities that exist today. Over the past 5 years, the cost of Bitcoin soared 25,000%, and if you had the foresight to buy and keep digital currency, then your initial investment would have increased by 250 times. Some call it "digital gold". Of course we all here are waiting for bitcoin continue it's grow to make as much money on it as it is possible.

[jbreher]

The fact that we have people like Gavin cheering up for those chinese guys planning on attacking with 100million to cause the hard fork it's clear there is an agenda to damage bitcoin as a viable safe haven

Aiieee! The irrationality! It burns!

The $100M is set aside to kill off a minority fork, should some choose to fork off to another algo - thereby protecting the integrity of the Bitcoin blockchain.