Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[matt4054]

its time we face the music, we must split the blockchain, its the only way, there can be no consensus, we must agree to disagree, and part ways amicably.

So, what are you waiting for? 

the fork.

Then make it happen by following your candidate, and let everyone happily do so.

You can even support both candidates if you feel like it, unlike in an election. How cool is that?

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[Killerpotleaf]

its time we face the music, we must split the blockchain, its the only way, there can be no consensus, we must agree to disagree, and part ways amicably.

So, what are you waiting for? 

the fork.

Then make it happen by following your candidate, and let everyone happily do so.

You can even support both candidates if you feel like it, unlike in an election. How cool is that?

yes i know, very cool. 

[ErisDiscordia]

It has to do with the issue of trust. It should come as no surprise, that people in the ecosystem of Bitcoin - an invention with the stated purpose of not having to trust a single central authority - will not trust central authorities. You might be convinced of technological superiority of core's approach (for the record: I am on the fence about this) but failing to realize this simple issue about trust isn't helping anyone and keeps fostering an unnecessary divide in the community.

I don't understand this argument at all. How exactly is Core a central authority and how do you solve this perceived problem of trust by instead trusting this other 'central authority' called BU? I don't need to trust Core at all, I don't worry they're going to break Bitcoin one day since the consensus rules are not easily changed and requires the entire ecosystem to pretty much agree. If BU was the main software that ran the network I would be very worried though, since with them I am not so sure the consensus rules wouldn't be changed on a whim. By the way Core is not a company or corporation and doesn't speak with one voice, anyone can contribute to it and a great number of developers with diverse opinions about many Bitcoin related issues do and peer review each other. Let's not throw away what we have here because we're impatient about scaling Bitcoin or disagree on how to do it exactly.

Is it really that hard to understand, that people are going to be skeptical of centrally mandated policies? Especially when they are coming from people who have been shown to engage in censorship and breaking promises, while being funded by the very financial institutions their product is officially meant to replace?

How does Core exactly engage in censorship and breaking promises? They have done none of these things, it's this kind of talk and theories that fuel the flames of division. Say it often enough and people start to believe it. I've seen a lot of open discussions about how to scale Bitcoin and in the end it all boils down to a simple thing. Most Core developers but also many experts outside the Core community believe that it's important we keep nodes relatively cheap to run in order to keep the most important aspect of Bitcoin which is decentralization. Onchain scaling therefore is limited and will never be able to support global adoption without sacrificing decentralization, so true scaling to meet global demand needs to come from 2nd layer solutions like lightning. I personally fully agree with this. There are people who disagree however and don't think it's a problem if nodes can only be run in big datacenters, and although I think that's very dangerous it's perfectly okay if someone has that opinion. However you don't need to be a rocket scientist to see that this is a very contentious issue and there's no way that Bitcoin can just hardfork to satisfy these people. So why the need for all the strife and division? We can all just agree to disagree here, we've discussed this long and hard enough by now. Complaints about censorship on a Bitcoin subreddit does not change anything. I have pretty much seen and heard all the arguments for and against a hard fork for a simple increase to 2MB, Segwit as a soft fork or Segwit as a hard fork (+ increase). Segwit as a soft fork is the only viable option here that has any chance to be accepted any time soon, and then hopefully a hard fork later if enough people calmed down again to allow consensus to form for another increase. People just need to learn to not get caught up in the drama that's mostly instigated by those who see Bitcoin as a threat and want it to fail.

Thank you for taking the time to elaborate this position and remaining civil in doing so. It certainly gives me something to think about.

I admit, I am at times guilty of conflating core with blockstream due to the major overlap of their publicly active members - some of which also engage in moderating r/bitcoin, where the censorship I alluded to sometimes takes place. Having them reply like you just did would serve their case much better than shutting down debate of alternative proposals, as has been done in the past. That just makes me suspicious as to their motives, just like the origin of their funding - which you haven't addressed at all. Maybe it just isn't an issue for you but it certainly does raise my suspicions further. I have to point out that I am continually trying to assume goodwill with all people involved (the BU crowd included) yet remain skeptical.

When I was speaking about people being rightfully wary of central authorities mandating things I was referring to the 1MB blocksize limit which has indeed been mandated from a position of authority - even though it was Satoshis authority. Here BU brings the alternative approach of determining blocksize through hash rate. The argument that market forces would determine a more optimal limit than a dictated fixed limit is well worth considering and denigrating its proponents with hateful slurs further undermines the argument for core as it makes it seem like a strategy of someone running out of factual arguments. Which is a pity once again, because as you demonstrate, there are good, factual arguments to be had on that side.

Mostly I am just frustrated by the level of discourse surrounding the matter and I remain, as always, highly skeptical of everything which smells of centralization and abusing authority. It is my deep desire to disrupt echo-chambers wherever I find them. I obviously want Bitcoin to succeed and the proposed layer 2 solutions seem like one good way to proceed - but my mind would be more at ease if I finally saw something more than vaporware, delays and ad hominem attacks.

Also the funding...I understand we have been trained to be dismissive of anything reminiscent of "conspiracy theory" but damn...

[JayJuanGee]

i think we are reaching the end of the handle tbh

Which time scale are you looking at?

Very small handle.

Yeah... that newbie Ricky64 comment makes little to no sense...

To the extent that we are in the midst of a cup and handle kind of pattern, which is surely arguable either way..... we would only be in the beginning stages of such a handle, if such a handle is in the process of forming.

Therefore, "reaching the end" makes little to no sense.. because we have experienced a correction from $1139 to $751 (about 34%).. and we are in the middle of seeing how the correction plays out.. because we have bounced back more than 1/3 but a bit less than half of that correction) which also could mean that we float in some price range that moves up and down within 10% or 15%  of current price and still be in the beginning stages of an arguable handle, no?

On the other hand, sometimes the picture may be better viewed after it has formed (especially if we are in the middle of something, like a dinosaur but don't realize it.. hahahaha)...

[JayJuanGee]

It has to do with the issue of trust. It should come as no surprise, that people in the ecosystem of Bitcoin - an invention with the stated purpose of not having to trust a single central authority - will not trust central authorities. You might be convinced of technological superiority of core's approach (for the record: I am on the fence about this) but failing to realize this simple issue about trust isn't helping anyone and keeps fostering an unnecessary divide in the community.

I don't understand this argument at all. How exactly is Core a central authority and how do you solve this perceived problem of trust by instead trusting this other 'central authority' called BU? I don't need to trust Core at all, I don't worry they're going to break Bitcoin one day since the consensus rules are not easily changed and requires the entire ecosystem to pretty much agree. If BU was the main software that ran the network I would be very worried though, since with them I am not so sure the consensus rules wouldn't be changed on a whim. By the way Core is not a company or corporation and doesn't speak with one voice, anyone can contribute to it and a great number of developers with diverse opinions about many Bitcoin related issues do and peer review each other. Let's not throw away what we have here because we're impatient about scaling Bitcoin or disagree on how to do it exactly.

Is it really that hard to understand, that people are going to be skeptical of centrally mandated policies? Especially when they are coming from people who have been shown to engage in censorship and breaking promises, while being funded by the very financial institutions their product is officially meant to replace?

How does Core exactly engage in censorship and breaking promises? They have done none of these things, it's this kind of talk and theories that fuel the flames of division. Say it often enough and people start to believe it. I've seen a lot of open discussions about how to scale Bitcoin and in the end it all boils down to a simple thing. Most Core developers but also many experts outside the Core community believe that it's important we keep nodes relatively cheap to run in order to keep the most important aspect of Bitcoin which is decentralization. Onchain scaling therefore is limited and will never be able to support global adoption without sacrificing decentralization, so true scaling to meet global demand needs to come from 2nd layer solutions like lightning. I personally fully agree with this. There are people who disagree however and don't think it's a problem if nodes can only be run in big datacenters, and although I think that's very dangerous it's perfectly okay if someone has that opinion. However you don't need to be a rocket scientist to see that this is a very contentious issue and there's no way that Bitcoin can just hardfork to satisfy these people. So why the need for all the strife and division? We can all just agree to disagree here, we've discussed this long and hard enough by now. Complaints about censorship on a Bitcoin subreddit does not change anything. I have pretty much seen and heard all the arguments for and against a hard fork for a simple increase to 2MB, Segwit as a soft fork or Segwit as a hard fork (+ increase). Segwit as a soft fork is the only viable option here that has any chance to be accepted any time soon, and then hopefully a hard fork later if enough people calmed down again to allow consensus to form for another increase. People just need to learn to not get caught up in the drama that's mostly instigated by those who see Bitcoin as a threat and want it to fail.

Wow!!!    Very well said.


The only supplement that I want to make is that I agree with your assertion about the most reasonable and plausible direction of seg wit, and I am hoping that it either reaches sufficient consensus (that reasonable minds prevail) or that there is some kind of tweak to it (or extension of the activation period) when it comes close to a year (if it has not yet been activated).   Sure, if seg wit does not activate, then bitcoin could lose out on some advantages in a timely manner, but even in that less preferred scenario, bit coin would at least likely go on in it's current state (which certainly is not broken, either).

[JayJuanGee]

Oh gawd ... when did this place become infested with the BU idiots again?!! FFS.

It's a walking disaster, a true shit show in terms of network systems thinking and an even worse fuck-up in terms of software implementation.

When will you guys grow a brain and at some point and leave that fucking huge shillfest mess behind already?!

Word!

Too bad they are using Bitcoin-Mainnet as a Testbed for thair so called "alternative implementation" piece of shit. 

effective blocksize + relying on LN working out is using Mainnet as a Testbed too?

Sorry but Segwit has been tested excessively on Bitcoin Testnet and an seperate network...

and it does not even introduce such serious changes to bitcoin like BU does. BU changes the consensus mechanism, maybe the most important part of bitcoin ...

if you believe consensus mechanism = hardcoded limits

you're too far gone to be saved.

Doc12 speaks da true....

And, the truth of the matter is that any kind of implementation that attempts to "fix" (read "fuck up") consensus is engaging in a kind of trickery that would likely destroy bitcoin and make bitcoin into a play tool of traditionally powerful forces (government institutions and financial institutions and the status quo rich - in other words no longer decentralized)

[sidhujag]

There is no gold settlement... bitcoin is the only one. You try to goto fort knox to prove you own a rightful piece of that pie after paying for its claim. Good luck!

Bitcoin as a settlement layer would mean you'd always be dealing with derivatives of bitcoin in order to do day to day transactions that increase it's counter party risk even higher than it is now, and everyone knows bitcoin's counter party risk is already higher than metals in the first place.  There is no situation ever in which bitcoin has less counter party risk than metals, especially when you're using bitcoin derivatives.  

A normal human actually can be their own banker with metals, but with bitcoin there are a million external counter party risk factors that can implode it - like whatever a random bitcoin dev decides to do after waking up in the morning.  Then the fact that if people are going to claim bitcoin is never actually "finished", it's a centralized technocracy by default on the software side and centralized by economy of scale on the mining side.

Can you make money with bitcoin?  Sure.  But don't pretend it's actually solved any problems to make metals obsolete.  Contrary to popular opinion that bitcoin "works" because it's existed for 8 years, this is misleading.  You can start timing the date of whether bitcoin works or not from the point where all micro-transactions are forced off-chain and all on-chain transactions are settlement payments with derivatives of those settlements (such as LN) being used for commerce - with block reward also gone, surviving off transaction fees.

Bitcoin can currently derive price entirely from just being a wild speculative gamble, but the closer you get to the endgame, the more the price will be derived from if the economics and use case makes any sense - and whether economy of scale makes it completely centralized or not.  As I said above, I don't think it has a valid use case as a store of value or settlement layer, so this means it's only hope is LN + vast amounts of transactions and then it's value I guess would be held up by acting as some type of paypal-like processor.

As everybody knows, gold and silver don't really require high transaction flow and turnover, but bitcoin's price is entirely high transaction flow based.  This is why bitcoin as a settlement layer without derivatives of those settlements that are also deemed to be "trustless" has never made any sense.

It is a settlement system by design, and NOT a transaction processing system. The way you have it in your head may be thought of as a transaction processing system, the chain itself settles based on first come first serve with highest fees. You can always create proofs of spends and link those to payments via LN, they will be validated based on probability and probably insured against based on your transaction linked to your identity. In the end it will still replace credit card type players and banks which take in massive fees.. there still will be fees but much less because they will tend towards zero based on the evolution of the technology still being in its infancy. To try to persuade others that you have basically debunked the entire premise of bitcoin (and thus blockchain design for fintech) because of your knowledge today is rather presumptuous given the fact that we are still very early in the cycle of adoption and you are not a technical expert in the field. The high-level picture will change 3 or 4 times a year atleast until we mature as a community and technology to fully understand the implications of the disruption of business processes and how we will work in the future as a result. Perhaps at $10000 you will consider it a store of value rather than a processor.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Oh gawd ... when did this place become infested with the BU idiots again?!! FFS.

It's a walking disaster, a true shit show in terms of network systems thinking and an even worse fuck-up in terms of software implementation.

When will you guys grow a brain and at some point and leave that fucking huge shillfest mess behind already?!

Word!

Too bad they are using Bitcoin-Mainnet as a Testbed for thair so called "alternative implementation" piece of shit.  

effective blocksize + relying on LN working out is using Mainnet as a Testbed too?

Sorry but Segwit has been tested excessively on Bitcoin Testnet and an seperate network...

and it does not even introduce such serious changes to bitcoin like BU does. BU changes the consensus mechanism, maybe the most important part of bitcoin ...

if you believe consensus mechanism = hardcoded limits

you're too far gone to be saved.

Conspiratists argumentation detected ... good bye. Ignore

How to spot a BU supporter ? Look for a tin foil hat with "blockstream"-defense engraving.

yep, looks like we flushed another one out from under the rug. Mission accomplished, troll mode off.

I wonder how much Roguer pays these guys?

[Killerpotleaf]

Most Core developers but also many experts outside the Core community believe that it's important we keep nodes relatively cheap to run in order to keep the most important aspect of Bitcoin which is decentralization.

the problem comes when we try to define "relatively cheep".
BU says " just let the network of nodes define what is acceptable "

what's the problem with that?

if 1MB is the magic number the network will reflect that.

[sugarbaby]

Humm, I think next days will be LTC days since SegWit signaling starts in about 2 hours or so...A lot of fomo incoming

[notme]

Someone took a risk and set their blocksize larger than 1mb.  It was a foolish thing to do with the current state of the blocksize debate, but it only hurt the miner who chose that setting.

Isn't it the case that this was a *bug* in BU code, rather than the pool operator going gung-ho with larger block sizes?

AFAIK it was a bug. No need to sugar coat it.

I wasn't aware at the time, but you are correct.  However, the bug did not harm anyone except the miner who chose to run BU.  There is already a fix under review, and existing clients can work around it by reducing their configured blocksize by the size of the coinbase transaction.  The bug was that the coinbase transaction wasn't included in the blocksize calculation when producing blocks.  Blocksize was counted correctly when verifying blocks, so no other BU miners would have built on the block unless their blocksize exceeded 1000000 bytes.

This incident shows us two things:
1. BU needs more testing and better code review processes.
2. The consensus mechanism works as it should and punished the miner who attempted (unintentionally) to make a larger block without agreement from the majority of the network.

[Killerpotleaf]

core nodes are bugged.
1MB = 1024KB.
not 1000KB
this caused them to orphen a block that was less than 1MB

[Miz4r]

Most Core developers but also many experts outside the Core community believe that it's important we keep nodes relatively cheap to run in order to keep the most important aspect of Bitcoin which is decentralization.

the problem comes when we try to define "relatively cheep".
BU says " just let the network of nodes define what is acceptable "

what's the problem with that?

if 1MB is the magic number the network will reflect that.

That sounds exploitable to me, these things can be gamed if you let nodes or miners set the limit themselves. Let's just first safely increase the limit through Segwit and see from there. What's wrong with doing that?

[Paashaas]

https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/825967179463921664

[Killerpotleaf]

Most Core developers but also many experts outside the Core community believe that it's important we keep nodes relatively cheap to run in order to keep the most important aspect of Bitcoin which is decentralization.

the problem comes when we try to define "relatively cheep".
BU says " just let the network of nodes define what is acceptable "

what's the problem with that?

if 1MB is the magic number the network will reflect that.

That sounds exploitable to me, these things can be gamed if you let nodes or miners set the limit themselves. Let's just first safely increase the limit through Segwit and see from there. What's wrong with doing that?

i guess LTC might be generous enough to provide some hard data.
i dont mind segwit + LN, actually i'd prefer it as a hard fork so all aspects can be simpler/robust.
basically i want my cake and eat it too.
BU sized blocks with segwit TX fix.
most importantly i'd like to see healthy competition of ideas for all future BIPS, i feel there is somthing dangerous about 1 team getting all the "political power".

[Killerpotleaf]

 
if you've been around long enough this gif is extra funny

[r0ach]

Perhaps at $10000 you will consider it a store of value rather than a processor.

You're just being irrationally biased now.  Everyone knows metals are more fungible, more anti-fragile, and less counter party risk.  This means Bitcoin can never dethrone metals as a store of value or hope to compete with them on Exter's pyramid.  If you're acting as a settlement layer, you're attempting to compete with metals as a store of value and Bitcoin CANNOT do it.  This means Bitcoin has to derive value more from raw transaction flow and being a payment processor instead.  

This is why I think Bitcoin probably doesn't have a value proposition without large scaling.  The lightning network claims to be able to do that, but I'm not convinced it can do so in a decentralized manner when economy of scale already forces centralization in the base bitcoin network in the first place.  Bitcoin did not "solve" the decentralization problem.   Bitcoin is a centralization problem waiting for someone to solve it.

As for solving that centralization problem, to do so you would likely need to engineer it so it's impossible to practice usury in bitcoin.  The only way I can think of to do that is either unprofitable PoW (which probably can't work in practice), or by some really exotic system of decentralized captchas where anyone attempting to solve blocks requires manual human intervention and can't be automated on cruise control via CPUs as I talked about in the thread below.

You cannot have decentralization without engineering bitcoin so automated usury is impossible

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1700073.0

Whether you believe "god" is a person, quantum fluctuation, whatever, metals are a blockchain created by "god"; bitcoin is a blockchain created by people.  The blockchain created by people can never compete because it will always have more flaws or side channel attacks that render it useless.  I have a feeling anything blockchain related will forever be a Rube Goldberg machine that claims to accomplish some type of task, but in reality fails to accomplish that task (decentralization) while doing it an extremely complicated manner.

[bitwitt]

Text Bubbles speak for themselves.  A little humor...

IMAGE EDIT: 

Hey Dumb ask
 I see you found a bunch of saps that listen to your BS.
You are so full of Ship...
Did your wife leave you yet?
Your son is old enough to know your a POS.
How's the Bitcoin farm going, that you bought with the wifes 401k?

Thought you you where going to Washington State ?

I Here the company your Dad started you turned into a joke, people said you are unstable. 

Keep posting your CRAP.

XOXO

[Riddikulo]

This thread went full retard 

[Killerpotleaf]

Perhaps at $10000 you will consider it a store of value rather than a processor.

You're just being irrationally biased now.  Everyone knows metals are more fungible, more anti-fragile, and less counter party risk.  This means Bitcoin can never dethrone metals as a store of value or hope to compete with them on Exter's pyramid.  If you're acting as a settlement layer, you're attempting to compete with metals as a store of value and Bitcoin CANNOT do it.  This means Bitcoin has to derive value more from raw transaction flow and being a payment processor instead.  

This is why I think Bitcoin probably doesn't have a value proposition without large scaling.  The lightning network claims to be able to do that, but I'm not convinced it can do so in a decentralized manner when economy of scale already forces centralization in the base bitcoin network in the first place.  Bitcoin did not "solve" the decentralization problem.   Bitcoin is a centralization problem waiting for someone to solve it.

As for solving that centralization problem, to do so you would likely need to engineer it so it's impossible to practice usury in bitcoin.  The only way I can think of to do that is either unprofitable PoW (which probably can't work in practice), or by some really exotic system of decentralized captchas where anyone attempting to solve blocks requires manual human intervention and can't be automated on cruise control via CPUs as I talked about in the thread below.

You cannot have decentralization without engineering bitcoin so automated usury is impossible

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1700073.0

Whether you believe "god" is a person, quantum fluctuation, whatever, metals are a blockchain created by "god"; bitcoin is a blockchain created by people.  The blockchain created by people can never compete because it will always have more flaws or side channel attacks that render it useless.  I have a feeling anything blockchain related will forever be a Rube Goldberg machine that claims to accomplish some type of task, but in reality fails to accomplish that task (decentralization) while doing it an extremely complicated manner.

point me to the central authority which governs bitcoin TX, or stfu.