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

[Tzupy]

wall street money pouring in.

Yup, currently 3.2 thousand dollars bids at Gemini, this looks sooo bullish...
The bid sum / ask sum ratio is about 20$, might be an insight into the future of bitcoin...

[iCEBREAKER]

I wrote a few other reports and analyses here on bitcointalk, but nothing deep enough to be worth submitting to a journal, unfortunately.

I enjoyed your take on the "religious schism" between Core and XT playing out in fast motion...the inquisition...the banishing of the heretics...etc etc.  What I would love to see--although it would be difficult and perhaps infeasible at this point in time--is a scholarly article addressing the politics of Bitcoin governance.  How do we come to consensus?  What does "consensus" really mean in the context of Bitcoin?

You should be asking me those questions.  Unlike Prof. "I think XT will win" Stolfi, my predictions about XT's fate ("gonna get rekt like Stannis on the Blackwater") were proven exactly correct.  Obviously, Stolfi couldn't recognize a socioeconomic majority even if one bit him on the ass.   

I was the first to observe the obsequious suits vs GFY cypherpunks doctrinal conflict coming to the fore and invoke the "Great Schism" frame.

Bitcoin's net-worth overall will increase regardless of transaction volume simply because it has the 1st mover, digital reserve currency advantages and status.  It doesn't need, nor should we seek, a monopoly on digital currency, because a Nash distribution is of more economic utility than top-heavy ones.  Bitcoin has a natural monopoly on high-value wealth preservation and transfers, not retail point-of-sale, paywalls, or tipping.

The hubristic Bitcoin2 project seeks to sacrifice current use cases and users for the hope of gaining future uses and users.

That is trading a bird in hand for two in the bush, and fixing what is not broken.  Two famously bad ideas.

Relying of the desirability of future pruning/compression mechanisms still in the vapor stage to fix 20MB blocks' undesirable effects is also a bad idea.

This logic of "we have to break the network to save the network" is appalling.  We need to get this right, not rush and act in haste.

First, we must wait and see how the infrastructure and ecosystem react/adapt to scarcity.   Without this crucial empirical data, we cannot make informed future decisions about ideal block sizing.  We cannot risk a civil war between BTC1 and BTC2 camps by forcing the issue prematurely (but if I were actually anti-BTC and pro-alt, I'd relish such a Great Schism).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=941331.msg10400700#msg10400700

BTW, that post also coined the (blocksize) "civil war" phrasing ultimately used by Szabo in his interview.   

How telling that PR would rather query Professor Buttcoin for incorrect but pleasing opinions, rather than ask someone with a demonstrated record of competent hypotheses creation for answers which risk discord with his prejudices.

PR should teach law school, since he's got the all-important 'Never ask a question you don't know/want the answer to" lesson down pat.   

[muyuu]

I stand corrected. But it is Blockstream who is "selling" soft forks as if they were completely safe and different from hard forks, even though there is no technical diffrerence between them -- especially since the possibility of miners cheating, hiding, or changing their mind about their preferences, before and after the fork, is no longer just a theoretical possibility.

Just because you say so in terms you just defined on the spot, it doesn't mean they are equally severe in all respects. There are real differences that cannot be obviated.

I agree that hard forks are not strictly more severe (it depends on each case). But the distinction is meaningful and there are technical differences between them that one shouldn't ignore.

[Fatman3001]

wall street money pouring in.

Yup, currently 3.2 thousand dollars bids at Gemini, this looks sooo bullish...
The bid sum / ask sum ratio is about 20$, might be an insight into the future of bitcoin...

And those are probably just nerds from this forum "Taking Part in History!!!".

[JorgeStolfi]

I agree that hard forks are not strictly more severe (it depends on each case). But the distinction is meaningful and there are technical differences between them that one shouldn't ignore.

As I explain in the linked post, there is no technical difference.  As the two events are usually defined, in both cases after the fork there are two versions of the rules, "permissive" and "restrictive"; and what happens next depends only on which version has the majority of the hashpower (which of course may change after the fork, and in principle could even go back and forth several times). 

The system's evolution does not depend at all on which rules were in force before the fork (i.e. whether the fork was "hard"or "soft").  The only way to make the fork "safe" is for all miners to adopt the same version, whatever that is, before the change is activated.  If that is not possible, one must hope for a strong majority, for either version, when the fork happens; so that the minority is motivated to switch too as quickly as possible.

Moreover, the soft/hard is an incomplete picture: there are changes that are neither restrictive nor permissive. In the extreme case, a "clean fork" is when the two rule-sets after the fork are totally incompatible -- no transaction or block is valid for both versions.  IMHO, the safest forks would be such clean forks, at periodic pre-scheduled dates...

[Fiat_Hodler]

all these people crying about gemini... give it a few weeks/months to actually get online properly... rome wasnt built in a day...

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[Cconvert2G36]

all these people crying about gemini... give it a few weeks/months to actually get online properly... rome wasnt built in a day...

twasn't... it was burned in 9 tho...

[Fatman3001]

all these people crying about gemini... give it a few weeks/months to actually get online properly... rome wasnt built in a day...

They're not building Rome.

[muyuu]

I agree that hard forks are not strictly more severe (it depends on each case). But the distinction is meaningful and there are technical differences between them that one shouldn't ignore.

As I explain in the linked post, there is no technical difference.  As the two events are usually defined, in both cases after the fork there are two versions of the rules, "permissive" and "restrictive"; and what happens next depends only on which version has the majority of the hashpower (which of course may change after the fork, and in principle could even go back and forth several times). 

The system's evolution does not depend at all on which rules were in force before the fork (i.e. whether the fork was "hard"or "soft").  The only way to make the fork "safe" is for all miners to adopt the same version, whatever that is, before the change is activated.  If that is not possible, one must hope for a strong majority, for either version, when the fork happens; so that the minority is motivated to switch too as quickly as possible.

Moreover, the soft/hard is an incomplete picture: there are changes that are neither restrictive nor permissive. In the extreme case, a "clean fork" is when the two rule-sets after the fork are totally incompatible -- no transaction or block is valid for both versions.  IMHO, the safest forks would be such clean forks, at periodic pre-scheduled dates...

Of course there is a technical difference. The definition of the difference is purely technical.

And there is a major difference in what you are calling "safe". In the case of a soft fork, the miner risks mainly itself by not adopting the majority rule. In the case of a hard fork, the whole consensus on the valid chain can be at risk and there can be long chain reorgs. This doesn't happen in soft forks and this is a MAJOR difference.

[Mervyn_Pumpkinhead]

The veil has been lifted with proper rules and regulations. No simulating trades by the exchange to give impression of demand and interest. I wonder if this will cause this avalanche that I've been waiting for.

[dothebeats]

Just my opinion, I think it is already at the top now and wouldn't continue to push upwards. I don't know, gut feeling tells me that this is the top.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[noobtrader]

Just my opinion, I think it is already at the top now and wouldn't continue to push upwards. I don't know, gut feeling tells me that this is the top.

thats exactly what they want you to think.... im sure this will at least reach 270

[inca]

Just my opinion, I think it is already at the top now and wouldn't continue to push upwards. I don't know, gut feeling tells me that this is the top.

The market is zzz.

[Fatman3001]

[iCEBREAKER]

We all saw the price drop like a stone when Galvin announced his intention to make the civil war go hot.
We even trolled Frap.doc about it:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg12151832#msg12151832

You linked to a message of yours from 2015-08-15, but there was no big drop on that date.  There was just another small drop like there had been almost every day since the $296 peak on 2015-07-28.

The big drop was on 2015-08-18, and -- again -- it only brought the price to ~$230, where it was before the "Greek crisis" bubble.  The most obvious and convincing explanation is that, with the resolution of the Greek crisis, people finally realized that the Greek would NOT be buying billions of bitcoins. 

Of course the Blockstream bootlickers blamed that drop on the XT schism.  Since the schism had been developing for months, that was easy -- pick any random event in that story, and blame the drop on that event.

By the way, all this fuss abut the blocksize limit was ENTIRELY the fault of Blockstream and their idiotic plans for the "fee market".  If they had any sense, they would have implemented the raise in 2014 to be activated in 2016, with a two-line patch, as Satoshi proposed; and reminded everybody, a month before the activation, that very old versions of the software would stop working, so people had better upgrade or add the same patch to their software.  Then the hard fork would be a non-event and NOTHING bad would happen from it.

Blockstream lacks the ability to implement "the raise in 2014 to be activated in 2016, with a two-line patch."

Only the consensus of the socioeconomic majority has that power.

The big drop, which began Aug 15, was obviously caused by the Gavinista offensive escalation on that date.

FUD reached a peak on that day, when Satoshi Himself suddenly appeared and declared Galvin and Hearn's putsch attempt a "very disappointing" development.

Those two unprecedented posts were obviously not merely "any random event in that story."

Yes, the schism had been developing for months.  And on Aug 15, with the release of XT 0.11A (and the lulzy Gavinista Manifesto) it came to a head.

Of course you are trolling.  Nobody could be so stupid as to (seriously, no kidding) say the Aug 15 release of XT 0.11A, or Satoshi's subsequent domination post, was "any random event in that story."

[ChartBuddy]

Coin
Explanation

[JorgeStolfi]

As I explain in the linked post, there is no technical difference.  As the two events are usually defined, in both cases after the fork there are two versions of the rules, "permissive" and "restrictive"; and what happens next depends only on which version has the majority of the hashpower (which of course may change after the fork, and in principle could even go back and forth several times). 

Of course there is a technical difference. The definition of the difference is purely technical.

The only difference is whether the rules before the fork were "permissive" or "restrictive"; but that difference has no effect on what happens after the fork.  Only the relative amount of hashpower is relevant.

And there is a major difference in what you are calling "safe". In the case of a soft fork, the miner risks mainly itself by not adopting the majority rule. In the case of a hard fork, the whole consensus on the valid chain can be at risk and there can be long chain reorgs. This doesn't happen in soft forks and this is a MAJOR difference.

But (as explained in that linked post) which of these two possibilities happens does not depend on whether the fork was soft or hard, but only on whether the majority of the hashpower after the fork follows the "restrictive" or "permissive" ruleset. 

If the majority uses the "restrictive" ruleset, there is one "restrictive" chain with recurrent "permissive" side branches that get orphaned sooner or later.   This can happen even in a hard fork with blockchain voting, if the miners lied in their votes, or changed their minds afterwards.

If the majority uses the "permissive" ruleset, there are two persistent branches; the minority "restrictive" one grows more slowly at first, but it is still followed by any "restrictive" full clients.  This can happen in a soft fork with blockchain voting too, if the miners lied in their votes, or changed their minds afterwards.

If 100% of the miners use the same ruleset, of course there will be only one branch. By making changes be conditional on blockchain voting, with a large activation threshold, it is hoped that there will be such a large imbalance after the fork that the minority miners will prompty switch too, preferably before the fork.

However, in any case, clients who are running the minority version after the fork will be screwed or confused in various ways. If the split is not 0-100, even some clients who are runnng the majority version may be temporarily confused by the minority branches.   

A rule change is really safe only if all miners and all clients upgrade to the same version before the change is activated. 

[Cconvert2G36]

-snip-
FUD reached a peak on that day, when Satoshi Himself suddenly appeared and declared Galvin and Hearn's putsch attempt a "very disappointing" development.
-snip-

"Monero" : { Untraceable - Anonymous - Fungible - Trustless - Adaptive Blocksize - 100% PoW & FOSS - No ASIC or Premine - Wallets - Podcats - Roadmap - XMR.to }

A crippled Bitcoin surely would be advantageous to Monero? I seem to remember your compatriot AmericanPegasus asking something similar.

In any event, keep up His work in keeping the free shit army (and their dangerous opinions) out of mah P2P electronic cash neckbeard reserve system. It's mine (and yours) to HAVE.