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

[mindrust]

"We don’t want our transactions being decided by the Chinese government. The solution is to adopt a new hybrid PoW system, possibly with a PoS combination, and choosing algorithms that are very easy and simple to build ASICs for. " -Cobra

This is where I get confused a lot. I mean... PoS?? Wtf? Wouldn't that mean removing the hard cap?

If he seriously considers PoS/PoW hybrid algo over our current PoW then its probably best to wait so the markets sort things out by itself.

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[ivomm]

Laszlo Hanyecz of Pizza fame and history does it again with Lightning mainnet

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/2018-February/001044.html

But this time is like a non-event  

About price: how long until Batman pattern will be followed by that of Superman?

From what I read on twitter shorts are rekt. They hoped for the price to fall below 9K. This is not happening for now, so they are forced to buy at the same levels 9.5K-ish they sold. The next week I expect some upward movement which may be extended in the week after that up to 15K range. If bears want to cause more than 20% drop they will need volume which is clearly lacking right now. From 15K they can try to  retrace to 12K and if lucky to 10K. Anyway, everyone has an interest that the lows are getting higher and higher, so the next ATH remains possible this year.

[flynn]

A different question, now: how do you invest in precious metals? Do you actually buy silver and gold ingots to store, or do you purchase ETFs? I would like to include some general silver indexes in my portfolio.

If you can't lick it you don't own it. (Applies to both gold and bitcoin) Never trust 3rd party. Fuck ETFs

I need to tell my wife about this

[Icygreen]

I'm very interested in GPU mining discussion and bitmain centralization.
As bullish as I've become on bitcoin due to learning about the fundamentals from here and others, it still lacks a pure decentralized method that would put me at ease. I think mining needs to be much more simple and perhaps built into wallets. Sort of like running uTorrent or similar p2p network where information is shared and validated among users. It seems GPU mining could be one answer in diluting the mining cartels.

  If BTC is not validated and mined natively between users, I fail to understand how we can achieve true decentralization.

[HairyMaclairy]

I think the belief is we will figure it out and get back there. 

[realr0ach]

A different question, now: how do you invest in precious metals? Do you actually buy silver and gold ingots to store, or do you purchase ETFs? I would like to include some general silver indexes in my portfolio.

It's 100% pointless to purchase metals if you don't buy physical.  All the unallocated metals are rehypothecated so there's 500+ owners per ounce.  They're just meaningless derivative contracts.  When the Comex blows up, or when the govt has to revalue gold and silver exponentially higher to extinguish the debt bubble, you will either receive $0 for your contract, or they will cash out your contract at $20 an ounce of silver right before revaluing it to hundreds of dollars an ounce.  In other words, paper owners miss out entirely on the once in a lifetime avalanche of profits.

What is the purpose of this paper hedge then?  Nothing!  It's an insurance policy that doesn't pay out.  Paper metals are worthless.  As for allocated metals instead of the unallocated variety, maybe you will get lucky, maybe not.  If the organization has any type of serious weight like that Texas bullion depository, the govt will probably try to seize it.  Things like the ETFs have a good chance of being seized, but I doubt they will attempt seizing private holder's metals again.

For one, they know zero people will give them up since nobody trusts the govt now.  Secondly, they've already done a stealth confiscation by rigging the markets 10x more than usual post-2008 and having entities like JP Morgan take delivery of the physical as an agent of the US govt at the suppressed price.  The only type of paper metals worth bothering with would be miners, but I have a feeling the govt will nationalize all assets in the ground as "deep storage" and leave anyone holding shares holding the bag.

TLDR:  Buy either Canadian Maple Leafs, 10 oz Sunshine mint bars, or kilo bars

[Icygreen]

From my current prospective, we either solve energy or we solve distribution. Perhaps both at once.  

[Jacques_Bittard]

This is why GPU/CPU mining is a lot better than ASICs i think.

GPU companies have to build&sell GPUs no matter what because gamers need to game. CPU manufacturers have to build&sell CPUs no matter what because there will be a demand whether people mine crypto or not. Nvidia/AMD/Intel will be making hardware no matter what. They can't be deceived by evil crypto criminals.

But ASICs? This is cancer.

There is no way Nvidia/Intel build HW and mine Bitcoin without getting noticed but Bitmain can. Because that's their only job. Nvidia and the others can't run a 2 businesses at once. They are making GPU/CPU's and we are exploiting their business. Good for us.

Maybe Cobra is right. Better late than ever.

Exactly! Bitcoins mining has been idiotic since the coming of ASICs. An industry created to solve a problem that doesn't even have to exist. Billions wasted for nothing, just to follow this blind greed. With PoW, CPU mining would be the best. Access to CPU processing power is most widespread and CPUs can be utilized to a lot more tasks then just so solve one task. This would be A LOT more energy efficient and less costly to the users of the network. But because the bitcoin community is mostly one big echo chamber, this hasn't been exactly discussed.
Now, even if bitcoin would switch to CPU mining and improve by this, then it would still be the inferior technology to newer PoS models that are being developed.
The religious people of the bitcoin community are dragging down the development by setting up stupid dogmas, that wont let constructive criticism through. The rest are growing around this new idea of cryptoassets, while the bitcoin community is sitting on their dated whitepaper and singing hallelujah..

[Last of the V8s]

here's bitmain's address btw https://blockchain.info/address/1KwA4fS4uVuCNjCtMivE7m5ATbv93UZg8V if any one cares
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/qr8mqj4ylud5tkcx3598lesupf86jzxlfcl09h5wr7 is the funny money addy

now utterly bored of CNBC fud, Bernstein report fud (which I cannot find), cobra and lukejr fud, decentralise all the things crapola, paid shills jumping on any tard bandwagon they can find circus etc.

watching this now

[flynn]

Regarding this POW problem, instead of replacing the SHA-256 POW by something else, we could change Bitcoin so it accepts two POW algorithms at a time, lets say a CPU one and we keep SHA256 also, each algo having its own difficulty, a block being valid if signed by either algo.

This way ASICs would have to compete with CPUs with a fair ratio, and probably disappear after some time because of the costs.  

[mindrust]

Regarding this POW problem, instead of replacing the SHA-256 POW by something else, we could change Bitcoin so it accepts two POW algorithms at a time, lets say a CPU one and we keep SHA256 also, each algo having its own difficulty, a block being valid if signed by either algo.

This way ASICs would have to compete with CPUs with a fair ratio, and probably disappear after some time because of the costs.  

Excellent idea.

[Icygreen]

Regarding this POW problem, instead of replacing the SHA-256 POW by something else, we could change Bitcoin so it accepts two POW algorithms at a time, lets say a CPU one and we keep SHA256 also, each algo having its own difficulty, a block being valid if signed by either algo.

This way ASICs would have to compete with CPUs with a fair ratio, and probably disappear after some time because of the costs.  

Nice thought!  It's fairly clear that the current ASIC mining industry will change in the future. I wonder if this could be done in soft fork fashion?

[somac.]

Mem pool almost empty again.  

It is amazing to see. going from over 200k down to under 100 at certain points.

I don't think an empty mempool is a bullish sign, but, hard to tell since most of those 200k transactions at the height were spam.
 

[somac.]

Regarding this POW problem, instead of replacing the SHA-256 POW by something else, we could change Bitcoin so it accepts two POW algorithms at a time, lets say a CPU one and we keep SHA256 also, each algo having its own difficulty, a block being valid if signed by either algo.

This way ASICs would have to compete with CPUs with a fair ratio, and probably disappear after some time because of the costs.  

Wow, brilliant. Start spreading that idea wherever you can. I will be.

[flipperfish]

Regarding this POW problem, instead of replacing the SHA-256 POW by something else, we could change Bitcoin so it accepts two POW algorithms at a time, lets say a CPU one and we keep SHA256 also, each algo having its own difficulty, a block being valid if signed by either algo.

This way ASICs would have to compete with CPUs with a fair ratio, and probably disappear after some time because of the costs.  

Maybe one could even use PoS to vote on the ratio...

[HairyMaclairy]

Mem pool almost empty again.  

It is amazing to see. going from over 200k down to under 100 at certain points.

I don't think an empty mempool is a bullish sign, but, hard to tell since most of those 200k transactions at the height were spam.
 

To me, an empty mem pool is bearish.  Shows low volume.  Big spikes seems to mean big price movements. I am associating very high priced fee movements with price drops (panic sales) and big spikes without high fees as pumps (organic exchange transactions).

[somac.]

Mem pool almost empty again.  

It is amazing to see. going from over 200k down to under 100 at certain points.

I don't think an empty mempool is a bullish sign, but, hard to tell since most of those 200k transactions at the height were spam.
 

To me, an empty mem pool is bearish.  Shows low volume.  Big spikes seems to mean big price movements. I am associating very high priced fee movements with price drops (panic sales) and big spikes without high fees as pumps (organic exchange transactions).

seems reasonable, I'll keep an eye on that myself

[shizuska]

A different question, now: how do you invest in precious metals? Do you actually buy silver and gold ingots to store, or do you purchase ETFs? I would like to include some general silver indexes in my portfolio.

It's 100% pointless to purchase metals if you don't buy physical.  All the unallocated metals are rehypothecated so there's 500+ owners per ounce.  They're just meaningless derivative contracts.  When the Comex blows up, or when the govt has to revalue gold and silver exponentially higher to extinguish the debt bubble, you will either receive $0 for your contract, or they will cash out your contract at $20 an ounce of silver right before revaluing it to hundreds of dollars an ounce.  In other words, paper owners miss out entirely on the once in a lifetime avalanche of profits.

What is the purpose of this paper hedge then?  Nothing!  It's an insurance policy that doesn't pay out.  Paper metals are worthless.  As for allocated metals instead of the unallocated variety, maybe you will get lucky, maybe not.  If the organization has any type of serious weight like that Texas bullion depository, the govt will probably try to seize it.  Things like the ETFs have a good chance of being seized, but I doubt they will attempt seizing private holder's metals again.

For one, they know zero people will give them up since nobody trusts the govt now.  Secondly, they've already done a stealth confiscation by rigging the markets 10x more than usual post-2008 and having entities like JP Morgan take delivery of the physical as an agent of the US govt at the suppressed price.  The only type of paper metals worth bothering with would be miners, but I have a feeling the govt will nationalize all assets in the ground as "deep storage" and leave anyone holding shares holding the bag.

TLDR:  Buy either Canadian Maple Leafs, 10 oz Sunshine mint bars, or kilo bars

As a large holder of silver (about same ammont as crypto) i do not agree with your point of view. I looked into buying physical silver and compared the prices, even if i had bough a decent amount i would have paid about 7-8% extra and i live in a country where there is no VAT associated with buying silver as an investment. Other problem is that total ammount in kgs would have been around 300kg, so storing would have not been easy aswell.
 
Instead i chose to buy SIVR ETF which gives investors direct and pure exposure to silver by holding the physical metal in HSBC vaults. It has tracked the spot price of silver perfectly at a low cost for the precious metals segment.

I pay around 0.3% per year maintenance fee and could not be happier (well 40 $ pound would make me happier ), i would have paid around 25 years of fees if i had bought physical.

[flynn]

Regarding this POW problem, instead of replacing the SHA-256 POW by something else, we could change Bitcoin so it accepts two POW algorithms at a time, lets say a CPU one and we keep SHA256 also, each algo having its own difficulty, a block being valid if signed by either algo.

This way ASICs would have to compete with CPUs with a fair ratio, and probably disappear after some time because of the costs.  

Maybe one could even use PoS to vote on the ratio...

If you want an ASIC block every T1 minutes and a CPU block every T2 minutes, the ratio between the two is k=T1/T2
That ratio "k" may be chosen by the community or computed another way.

Once k is chosen, this can be proven true :

T1 = 10mn*((1+k)/k)  and T2=10mn*(1+k)

with k=1 (as many ASIC blocks than CPU blocks) that gives the obvious result : T1=T2=20mn
with k=2 (twice more CPUs than ASIC)  T1=15mn and T2=30mn

Technically no problem.

[explorer]

A different question, now: how do you invest in precious metals? Do you actually buy silver and gold ingots to store, or do you purchase ETFs? I would like to include some general silver indexes in my portfolio.

It's 100% pointless to purchase metals if you don't buy physical.  All the unallocated metals are rehypothecated so there's 500+ owners per ounce.  They're just meaningless derivative contracts.  When the Comex blows up, or when the govt has to revalue gold and silver exponentially higher to extinguish the debt bubble, you will either receive $0 for your contract, or they will cash out your contract at $20 an ounce of silver right before revaluing it to hundreds of dollars an ounce.  In other words, paper owners miss out entirely on the once in a lifetime avalanche of profits.

What is the purpose of this paper hedge then?  Nothing!  It's an insurance policy that doesn't pay out.  Paper metals are worthless.  As for allocated metals instead of the unallocated variety, maybe you will get lucky, maybe not.  If the organization has any type of serious weight like that Texas bullion depository, the govt will probably try to seize it.  Things like the ETFs have a good chance of being seized, but I doubt they will attempt seizing private holder's metals again.

For one, they know zero people will give them up since nobody trusts the govt now.  Secondly, they've already done a stealth confiscation by rigging the markets 10x more than usual post-2008 and having entities like JP Morgan take delivery of the physical as an agent of the US govt at the suppressed price.  The only type of paper metals worth bothering with would be miners, but I have a feeling the govt will nationalize all assets in the ground as "deep storage" and leave anyone holding shares holding the bag.

TLDR:  Buy either Canadian Maple Leafs, 10 oz Sunshine mint bars, or kilo bars

As a large holder of silver (about same ammont as crypto) i do not agree with your point of view. I looked into buying physical silver and compared the prices, even if i had bough a decent amount i would have paid about 7-8% extra and i live in a country where there is no VAT associated with buying silver as an investment. Other problem is that total ammount in kgs would have been around 300kg, so storing would have not been easy aswell.
 
Instead i chose to buy SIVR ETF which gives investors direct and pure exposure to silver by holding the physical metal in HSBC vaults. It has tracked the spot price of silver perfectly at a low cost for the precious metals segment.

I pay around 0.3% per year maintenance fee and could not be happier (well 40 $ pound would make me happier ), i would have paid around 25 years of fees if i had bought physical.

HSBC?  Good to have it stored with a trustworthy organization.  I'm sure all is as it should be.