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

[ChartBuddy]

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[hdbuck]

There is nothing radical in not supporting XT. Being on the fence as in "half adopting" XT is simply a disingenuous stance. Sort of like the "atheism is a religion" argument. Or being on the fence about the Pol Pot genocide because opposing all murders is radical, "let's compromise and murder just half of the opposition and their families".

Problem is, the public argument pretty quickly turned into a binary choice of sorts, pro XT vs. pro status quo. Given that choice, anything other than being on the fence would be naive.

XT is a bit of a red herring. It's more about BIP101 (and friends) and more broadly, it's about how the protocol is managed.

it's about what bitcoin is.. metaphysically speaking.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

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Would be nice to see a little pump to around 255. It's not much in the large scale of things but it'd be good to consolidate above 250, it's kind of a psychological barrier.

[brg444]

Turning the Blockchain into a pure high-stake clearing network before it had a chance to establish itself as a useful, reliable tool for smaller transactions is not without risk either.

The XT approach was pretty odious but no more odious than the twitching whack jobs who believe the planetary population will skip Christmas so they can afford those gorgeous Bitcoin transaction fees.

They won't have to, they'll use open source payment layers.

[Cconvert2G36]

I'm sure closed source, pay Blockstream per month, federated chains, using multi sig secured collateral have a place in the ecosystem. I welcome them and applaud the effort in their creation.

However, there is a real concern regarding the motivations of veto wielding devs. Are they making decisions that would be best for Bitcoin, or decisions that might mold Bitcoin towards an environment that benefits Blockstream software products?     

[ChartBuddy]

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[gentlemand]

However, there is a real concern regarding the motivations of veto wielding devs. Are they making decisions that would be best for Bitcoin, or decisions that might mold Bitcoin towards an environment that benefits Blockstream software products?     

There must be no shortage of people waiting to spot one undeniable example of that bias. It'll be interesting to see whether they've got the balls to address it.

[Cconvert2G36]

However, there is a real concern regarding the motivations of veto wielding devs. Are they making decisions that would be best for Bitcoin, or decisions that might mold Bitcoin towards an environment that benefits Blockstream software products?     

There must be no shortage of people waiting to spot one undeniable example of that bias. It'll be interesting to see whether they've got the balls to address it.

I can think of 21 million reasons for them to not state that bias explicitly and publicly, we do have that whole actions/words cliché tho.   

[brg444]

I'm sure closed source, pay Blockstream per month, federated chains, using multi sig secured collateral have a place in the ecosystem. I welcome them and applaud the effort in their creation.

However, there is a real concern regarding the motivations of veto wielding devs. Are they making decisions that would be best for Bitcoin, or decisions that might mold Bitcoin towards an environment that benefits Blockstream software products?     

Their Bitcoin-related solutions surely would benefit from what is best for Bitcoin, wouldn't you think?

[Fatman3001]

I'm sure closed source, pay Blockstream per month, federated chains, using multi sig secured collateral have a place in the ecosystem. I welcome them and applaud the effort in their creation.

However, there is a real concern regarding the motivations of veto wielding devs. Are they making decisions that would be best for Bitcoin, or decisions that might mold Bitcoin towards an environment that benefits Blockstream software products?      

This was the last I could find from Wladimir. He's responding to a question regarding whether he is still against "raising the blocksize limit immediately".

“Yes. [my previous opinion remains]

I mostly have a problem with proposals that bake in expected exponential bandwidth
growth. I don’t think it’s realistic. If we’ve learned anything from the 2008 subprime
bubble crisis it should be that nothing ever keeps growing exponentially, and assuming
so can be hazardous.
It reduces a complex geographical issue, the distribution of internet connectivity over the
planet for a long time to come, to a simple function.

On the other hand a hardfork is extremely hard to coordinate. Even one that just involves
changing one parameter. Everyone with a full node has to upgrade. This is not something
that can be done regularly. Certainly not with such a near time horizon.

Changing the rules in a decentralized consensus system is a very difficult problem and I
don’t think we’ll resolve it any time soon.”

What is very clear is that this way of thinking makes it very difficult to change course when things change. There is no reason why they couldn't just implement BIP101 and simply change the blocksize limit again if the assumptions behind BIP101 turns out not to be true. Except for his/their fear of doing something "wrong" and get the blame for it.  So he wants it done "right" this time. Which is ok, unless knowing what's "right" requires certain knowledge of the future. And it looks like it might.

So what if he/they make a decision sometime late 2016/early 2017, and it turns out to be the "wrong" one? Will they spend three years to change that as well?


Source: http://coinjournal.net/who-asked-wlad-what-does-bitcoins-lead-developer-say-about-scaling-debate-exclusive/

[JorgeStolfi]

I am sure this is a possibility but any seizures in the future would likely result in auctions a few years down the road right. Doesn't it take that long for the process to play out?

The Australian government also has a bunch of seized coins (some 20'000?) that it plans to auction.  And the Mt. Gox trustee still hasn't defined whether he can return the ~200'000 BTC as BTC, or will have to aution them for JPY.

(In fact, the Mt. Gox trustee is still trying to determine which of the former victims' claims are valid and which ones are bogus.  It seems that some of them are quite outlandish...)

[muyuu]

Then, again, miscommunication -- unless you consider the likes of Mircea Popescu "not status quo", which would be just plain twisting of words.

I don't have any idea what his opinion is about this.

In other subjects in the past he's been completely right about the subject matter, excessive in his language. Something that has happened also to Luke. This doesn't make them any less right when they are right.

[brg444]

There is no reason why they couldn't just implement BIP101 and simply change the blocksize limit again if the assumptions behind BIP101 turns out not to be true.

Oh please 

[brg444]

Then, again, miscommunication -- unless you consider the likes of Mircea Popescu "not status quo", which would be just plain twisting of words.

I don't have any idea what his opinion is about this.

In other subjects in the past he's been completely right about the subject matter, excessive in his language. Something that has happened also to Luke. This doesn't make them any less right when they are right.

Then again, how exactly is status quo an irrational stance?

[gentlemand]

So what if he/they make a decision sometime late 2016/early 2017, and it turns out to be the "wrong" one? Will they spend three years to change that as well?

If it can't offer enough people usability then other systems will and it'll die. It's a trillion miles away from being 'too big to fail'. I can see why they'd grind to a halt but it doesn't exist in a vacuum and the world is a fast moving place that don't give a shit about Bitcoin's nobility.

[Richy_T]

Then again, how exactly is status quo an irrational stance?

It depends on how you define the status-quo.

I would define it as we currently have more than ample space in a block for genuine transactions. I'd like to keep it that way.

[brg444]

So what if he/they make a decision sometime late 2016/early 2017, and it turns out to be the "wrong" one? Will they spend three years to change that as well?

If it can't offer enough people usability then other systems will and it'll die. It's a trillion miles away from being 'too big to fail'. I can see why they'd grind to a halt but it doesn't exist in a vacuum and the world is a fast moving place that don't give a shit about Bitcoin's nobility.

This works only under the presumption that Bitcoin competes only on the basis of transaction throughput which it does not.

[brg444]

Then again, how exactly is status quo an irrational stance?

It depends on how you define the status-quo.

I would define it as we currently have more than ample space in a block for genuine transactions. I'd like to keep it that way.

We also have a valuable limit used to avoid spam filling up blocks, I'd also like to keep it that way.

[Fatman3001]

So what if he/they make a decision sometime late 2016/early 2017, and it turns out to be the "wrong" one? Will they spend three years to change that as well?

If it can't offer enough people usability then other systems will and it'll die. It's a trillion miles away from being 'too big to fail'. I can see why they'd grind to a halt but it doesn't exist in a vacuum and the world is a fast moving place that don't give a shit about Bitcoin's nobility.

This works only under the presumption that Bitcoin competes only on the basis of transaction throughput which it does not.

No, that's not what's being talked about. We don't know what the decision will be, nor how it will play out technically. The "what if" scenario just presumes that whatever the decision is, it doesn't work. It's the decision process we're talking about.

[ChartBuddy]

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