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

[billyjoeallen]

The whole block size/fork war is basically about scalability vs. anonymity. Larger block sizes make it harder or even impossible to mine over TOR. (TOR is slow because the signal bounces around through an onion router) At the extreme, XT could be used to blacklist TOR nodes (if every single XT user chose to keep the feature enabled). Highly improbable but possible.

But even vanilla BIP101 would make mining over TOR increasingly competitively disadvantageous.  What will likely happen is that miners who insist on anonymity will end up mining altcoins, trading alts for bitcoin and then transacting with btc. 

That may be a pain, but it will end up happening anyway regardless of block size.
I don't think anonymous bitcoin mining will be possible for long. Mining benefits from economies of scale. Larger mines are harder to keep secret. At some difficulty level, mining anonymously becomes less practical than buying anonymously.

Cripplecoiners want to sacrifice scalability in a FUTILE effort to preserve mining anonymity.  Just mine alts and trade them, Cripplecoiners.  Nobody is buying your arguments that you are protecting the block chain from code bloat and centralization.

[findftp]

The whole block size/fork war is basically about scalability vs. anonymity.

One big psyop to bring fear to the markets.
It's working. Cheap coins.

[billyjoeallen]

The whole block size/fork war is basically about scalability vs. anonymity.

One big psyop to bring fear to the markets.
It's working. Cheap coins.

I don't think so. We are rapidly approaching the transaction limits of the network.  It will take a lot of work to patch the code with a hard fork before that happens. What will happen if consensus is not reached is that the network will bog down, transactions will not get confirmed for hours, days or even weeks, the market will crash and then we'll either fix the code with a real solution or more likely a small (2 to 8 MB) patch that kicks the can for a while and then we do the whole thing all over again later.

That would be a great time for someone to introduce WallStreetCoin and relegate us to being the myspace of crypto.

The market is reacting to real uncertainty.  

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[AlexGR]

Cripplecoiners want to sacrifice scalability in a FUTILE effort to preserve mining anonymity.  Just mine alts and trade them, Cripplecoiners.  Nobody is buying your arguments that you are protecting the block chain from code bloat and centralization.

Apparently Satoshi was also a cripplecoiner for accepting the 1MB limit in light of the potential bloat attack vector...

Thing is, since it has been implemented, a solution has not been found regarding this issue. Lifting the cap simply negates the economic and technical disincentives to make Bitcoin XT => DOA, due to bloat.

[noobtrader]

The whole block size/fork war is basically about scalability vs. anonymity. Larger block sizes make it harder or even impossible to mine over TOR. (TOR is slow because the signal bounces around through an onion router) At the extreme, XT could be used to blacklist TOR nodes (if every single XT user chose to keep the feature enabled). Highly improbable but possible.

But even vanilla BIP101 would make mining over TOR increasingly competitively disadvantageous.  What will likely happen is that miners who insist on anonymity will end up mining altcoins, trading alts for bitcoin and then transacting with btc. 

That may be a pain, but it will end up happening anyway regardless of block size.
I don't think anonymous bitcoin mining will be possible for long. Mining benefits from economies of scale. Larger mines are harder to keep secret. At some difficulty level, mining anonymously becomes less practical than buying anonymously.

Cripplecoiners want to sacrifice scalability in a FUTILE effort to preserve mining anonymity.  Just mine alts and trade them, Cripplecoiners.  Nobody is buying your arguments that you are protecting the block chain from code bloat and centralization.

actually it was cheaper, easier and safer to double or triple or even quadruple the scalability with altcoin. 

[ErikvanBreen]

So is this what the XT fanboys are resulting into.. How pathethic

[findftp]

The whole block size/fork war is basically about scalability vs. anonymity.

One big psyop to bring fear to the markets.
It's working. Cheap coins.

I don't think so. We are rapidly approaching the transaction limits of the network.  It will take a lot of work to patch the code with a hard fork before that happens. What will happen if consensus is not reached is that the network will bog down, transactions will not get confirmed for hours, days or even weeks, the market will crash

Ah, come on! You're trolling right?
There is no market except offchain speculation exchanges.

How many onchain trades did you execute last month?
We can all pretend there is a market outside the exchanges, but there isn't.

and then we'll either fix the code with a real solution or more likely a small (2 to 8 MB) patch that kicks the can for a while and then we do the whole thing all over again later.

Yes, let's adopt the can kicking forward technique, excellent.
Why not hardcode an infinite block size right away?

That would be a great time for someone to introduce WallStreetCoin and relegate us to being the myspace of crypto.

If you are really afraid, go sell your coins now it is still possible and switch to your favorite altcoin which already exists.
I will happily take your cripplecoins.


These cripplecoins are always many magnitudes better than our current quasi ifinite monetary counterpart (gold)

[billyjoeallen]

Ah, come on! You're trolling right?
There is no market except offchain speculation exchanges.

How many onchain trades did you execute last month?
We can all pretend there is a market outside the exchanges, but there isn't.

I buy gas cards through purse.io

Yes, let's adopt the can kicking forward technique, excellent.
Why not hardcode an infinite block size right away?

I've already argued that there doesn't need to be a hard coded limit at all because miners have the incentive to keep blocks small to allow their blocks to propagate across the network.  If the block is too big, they could lose their block reward.

These cripplecoins are always many magnitudes better than our current quasi finite monetary counterpart (gold)

That's true...except for capacity.  There is no limit to the number of gold transactions/second.  

[macsga]

Cross-posting for the sake of importance.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-02/china-scrambles-enforce-capital-controls-capital-flight-threatens-economy-which-grea
Where Bitcoin, replace with Litecoin...

China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls (Which Is Great News For Bitcoin)

This is why as the WSJ reports overnight, "China is imposing fresh controls to prevent too much money from leaving the country, in an effort to keep badly needed funds at home to battle a deepening slowdown in the world’s No. 2 economy."

Specifically, the PBOC said Tuesday that it would make it "more expensive for investors to pressure the yuan to weaken against the U.S. dollar by adding conditions to futures contracts."

Some of the country’s largest lenders, including Bank of China Ltd. and China Citic Bank Corp., are beefing up their internal checks on large amounts of foreign-exchange conversions by their corporate clients, according to Chinese banking executives. Meanwhile, financial regulators, together with the country’s security forces, are stepping up efforts to rein in illegal money-transfer agents who make a living by helping people move money out of China.
The reason, as explained above, is that "China—long a catch basin for the world’s money—is starting to see that money trickle out. A weaker currency generally prompts investors to look elsewhere to put their cash and would complicate the government’s efforts to generate spending and bolster economic growth."

[gentlemand]

China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls (Which Is Great News For Bitcoin)

Care to explain how capital controls are good for Bitcoin?  

Plenty of Bitcoin exchanges in China. Buy your coins. Send abroad. Sell elsewhere and store them in your offshore accounts. Millions of Chinese folks have overseas arrangements and there's not much or anything they can do to stop bitcoin transfers. Maybe that'll change if it happens in large numbers.

[ErikvanBreen]

So let me guess, in 90 days nobody remembers this XT nonsense 

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[spud21]

China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls (Which Is Great News For Bitcoin)

Care to explain how capital controls are good for Bitcoin?  

Plenty of Bitcoin exchanges in China. Buy your coins. Send abroad. Sell elsewhere and store them in your offshore accounts. Millions of Chinese folks have overseas arrangements and there's not much or anything they can do to stop bitcoin transfers. Maybe that'll change if it happens in large numbers.

How do Chinese people buy Bitcoins today?

Their government stopped them depositing money into exchanges through bank transfers. Afterwards people started buying vouchers which they could exchange for Bitcoins, but their government attempted to stop that too. I don't know how they buy Bitcoins today.

[macsga]

China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls (Which Is Great News For Bitcoin)

Care to explain how capital controls are good for Bitcoin?  

Plenty of Bitcoin exchanges in China. Buy your coins. Send abroad. Sell elsewhere and store them in your offshore accounts. Millions of Chinese folks have overseas arrangements and there's not much or anything they can do to stop bitcoin transfers. Maybe that'll change if it happens in large numbers.

See edit.

This is China we're talking about, do you suppose government officials failed to consider that people might spirit away their money by "investing" it in foreign currencies, stockes, or even Bitcoin?

Capital controls are meant to work for exporting money outside of the county. Since the Chinese will deposit money directly to a Chinese company's account, that's being taxed for every transaction, it's perfectly legal. Besides, when you hold Bitcoins right now, why should you transfer it abroad? It's where you live at anytime; I could understand diversification reasons, but would not advise BTC as a "means of fleeing capital abroad".

[aztecminer]

China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls (Which Is Great News For Bitcoin)

Care to explain how capital controls are good for Bitcoin?  This is China we're talking about, do you suppose the government officials failed to consider that people might spirit away their money by "investing" it in foreign currencies, stockes, or even Bitcoin?

its gimped: http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/jim-rogers-federal-reserve-economy-slowdown/2015/08/31/id/672878/

if the federal reserve rallies the stock market with more QE then all the money will go into stocks to ride the pump.

if QE fails and people start leaving the dollar then that is another story..

[rebuilder]

Capital controls are meant to work for exporting money outside of the county. Since the Chinese will deposit money directly to a Chinese company's account, that's being taxed for every transaction, it's perfectly legal.

Please be specific.  Which "Chinese company's account"?
Exactly how will that be done, considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country#China ?

AFAIK quite a lot of BTC are mined by Chinese miners.

[macsga]

Capital controls are meant to work for exporting money outside of the county. Since the Chinese will deposit money directly to a Chinese company's account, that's being taxed for every transaction, it's perfectly legal.

Please be specific.  Which "Chinese company's account"?
Exactly how will that be done, considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country#China ?

A. I'd indulge you to read the article here.
B. Busted. I don't live in China. I live in Greece and judge from my own country what the capital controls look like.
C. Are you suggesting that the article is wrong or you're just in denial with the concept? I don't follow. Please enlighten me.

Edit:

Which is why we would not be surprised to see another push higher in the value of bitcoin: it was earlier this summer when the digital currency, which can bypass capital controls and national borders with the click of a button, surged on Grexit concerns and fears a Drachma return would crush the savings of an entire nation. Since then, BTC has dropped (in no small part as a result of the previously documented "forking" with Bitcoin XT), however if a few hundred million Chinese decide that the time has come to use bitcoin as the capital controls bypassing currency of choice, and decide to invest even a tiny fraction of the $22 trillion in Chinese deposits...

... in bitcoin (whose total market cap at last check was just over $3 billion), sit back and watch as we witness the second coming of the bitcoin bubble, one which could make the previous all time highs in the digital currency, seems like a low print.

We're talking CHINA here. 1.2Bn people! Even a tiny portion of BTC for them makes a difference.

[spud21]

Capital controls are meant to work for exporting money outside of the county. Since the Chinese will deposit money directly to a Chinese company's account, that's being taxed for every transaction, it's perfectly legal.

Please be specific.  Which "Chinese company's account"?
Exactly how will that be done, considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country#China ?

AFAIK quite a lot of BTC are mined by Chinese miners.

The Chinese government banned direct bank transfers to exchanges, and banned vouchers with recharge codes from third-party payment services providers. I don't think it's easy to buy directly from miners there because financial institutions and third-party payment services providers are banned from dealing with bitcoin business.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/111753/legal_basics_bitcoin_in_china

The ban issued by PBOC which prevents all the third-party payment service providers to deal with bitcoin business is still valid. Some banks still have a tough attitude towards Bitcoin. Many people still think bitcoin is a scam, over-speculated, high-risky or crime-related.�

In the notice released by PBOC last year, it was stated that bitcoin could be legally traded in the form of a commodity. At the same time, bitcoin exchanges were required to register their clients ID and add supervision for money-laundering. It was believed that the notice and the following actions admitted bitcoin's legal status, yet meanwhile prohibited financial institutions and third-party payment services providers from dealing with bitcoin business.

The attitude of the authority has changed since the beginning of this year. Some banks shut down the account of bitcoin exchanges, while recharge code from third-party payment services providers is also banned. At the same time, other officials from PBOC, including some bureau chiefs, wrote essays to criticize bitcoin, claiming that it is not a currency and does not function as a currency.

[aztecminer]

Capital controls are meant to work for exporting money outside of the county. Since the Chinese will deposit money directly to a Chinese company's account, that's being taxed for every transaction, it's perfectly legal.

Please be specific.  Which "Chinese company's account"?
Exactly how will that be done, considering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country#China ?

Besides, when you hold Bitcoins right now, why should you transfer it abroad? It's where you live at anytime; I could understand diversification reasons, but would not advise BTC as a "means of fleeing capital abroad".

By that logic, Chinese people should be able to buy Euro or USD, as long as they keep it in China, right?  What am I missing?

@aztecminer we're talking about China.

right... but the election is 16 months away. .. instead of us focusing on immigration suddenly the election is about the obama's failing economy ... things china is doing probably is causing the stock market to crash .