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

[adamstgBit]

the liquidation of my assets for BTC has begun

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0

[billyjoeallen]

Low fee transactions could take days to confirm. Zero fee xactions may never confirm.

Sounds like it will finally work like it should be.

The blockchain is too valuable a resource to be wasted by zero and ridiculously low fee txs.

And it's not only scaling but usability too. If I have a 100mb block size and it takes me a couple of hours just to sync the last day or a day to sync the last week (before I send a payment), will this be usable? Or will people say, ah yes, now you lost the ability to run bitcoin-qt, just use a thin client...

That's either stupid or dishonest. Nobody is proposing 100 MB blocks and won't unless bandwidth gets much much greater. The design is for block reward to subsidize miners until the network grows big enough to be supported on fees. How is that possible with ~ half million xactions/day? 

This is supposed to be a peer to peer network for the people, not <1 million elitists, criminals and middlemen.

We have different interpretations of stupidity.

When I have a system that has a hole in it (bloat in blockchain through low or no fees, that can be abused as an attack vector and kill bitcoin usage and adoption in the long run), I will not go and make it larger so that someone else can sink my boat. *That* is stupidity.

Scaling is not an issue right now. Not the processing of transactions. If you want to make a legitimate transaction, you'll pay a normal fee and you'll be processed in one block.

If you enlarge the block before scaling becomes an issue, then you open the attack vector wide open for further abuse (because it is already abused with over half the transactions being dust and spam). This is beyond idiotic.

I believe when the time comes, and the need is real, the block size can be increased. If it doesn't, there will be just some fee competition that prevents a lot of low and very low value tx. So what? This is certainly the lesser of the two evils involved here.

So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest?  A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds?  Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[poncho32]

the liquidation of my assets for BTC has begun

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0

That link only leads to the auctions board in the marketplace. I had a quick look and found this thread auctioning a $ 1,025,637.26 BTC account.

$ 1,025,637.26 BTC account for sale.

That isn't you is it?  

What are you selling, in which threads, and how many BTC are your total assets likely to fetch?

edit

I found this thread where you are selling what looks like a physical Bitcoin to me. You won't sell it for less than one Bitcoin will you, as it looks like it's worth that already?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1283727

[Ultrafinery]

And downloading terabytes of blockchain bloat will?

Bitcoin is a protocol and while it is true that scaling issues exist, they are being worked on to find solutions. But nobody says we all have to use just one blockchain for storing everything, and doing so with zero cost.

Having a second blockchain does absolutely nothing to reduce bloat. In order to use a federated blockchain in a trustless manner requires the user to download the entire bitcoin blockchain plus the entire federated blockchain. This can be no smaller than the bitcoin blockchain would be if all transactions were done in bitcoin. What's the point?

Multiple blockchains do not reduce bloat on aggregate, they multiply it. However, you only download the blockchains you want. You are not forced to use 1000 blockchains if there are 1000 altcoins. You only download and use those that you like.

So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

[conspirosphere.tk]

So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest?  A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds?  Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".

the only stupid around seems to be you, given your self-contradicting issues. If Tx are going to be free or almost free, who's going to make a buck of it?

[AlexGR]

Low fee transactions could take days to confirm. Zero fee xactions may never confirm.

Sounds like it will finally work like it should be.

The blockchain is too valuable a resource to be wasted by zero and ridiculously low fee txs.

And it's not only scaling but usability too. If I have a 100mb block size and it takes me a couple of hours just to sync the last day or a day to sync the last week (before I send a payment), will this be usable? Or will people say, ah yes, now you lost the ability to run bitcoin-qt, just use a thin client...

That's either stupid or dishonest. Nobody is proposing 100 MB blocks and won't unless bandwidth gets much much greater. The design is for block reward to subsidize miners until the network grows big enough to be supported on fees. How is that possible with ~ half million xactions/day? 

This is supposed to be a peer to peer network for the people, not <1 million elitists, criminals and middlemen.

We have different interpretations of stupidity.

When I have a system that has a hole in it (bloat in blockchain through low or no fees, that can be abused as an attack vector and kill bitcoin usage and adoption in the long run), I will not go and make it larger so that someone else can sink my boat. *That* is stupidity.

Scaling is not an issue right now. Not the processing of transactions. If you want to make a legitimate transaction, you'll pay a normal fee and you'll be processed in one block.

If you enlarge the block before scaling becomes an issue, then you open the attack vector wide open for further abuse (because it is already abused with over half the transactions being dust and spam). This is beyond idiotic.

I believe when the time comes, and the need is real, the block size can be increased. If it doesn't, there will be just some fee competition that prevents a lot of low and very low value tx. So what? This is certainly the lesser of the two evils involved here.

So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest?  A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds?  Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".

The vulnerability is that one can make bitcoin unusable and centralized through a very low cost attack vector if the block size is increased.

I wouldn't mind large blocks (even 20mb) if there was an adequate fee structure in place that prevents abuse.

Let's say I'm the US government and want to shut down BTC... what kind of attack vectors do I have?

Some examples:

a) Built an expensive NSA farm to get the 51%. Doable but it will cost me a few hundred millions. The reward would be to wipe off competition for the USD.
b) Bribe or hack centralized mining systems that tend to have lots of hashpower.
c) Coordinate attacks that allow a 51% attack to go through by preventing others from hashing.
d) Start stealing people's private keys through the use of monitor equipment in people's hardware (that would 'burn' that option from future use, and make it publicly known)
e) Make various DDOS / DOS attacks that have low cost
f) Bloat BTC to infinity, if BTC allows itself to be bloated in this way (and it will with large blocks), again at very low cost. Thus it will become difficult to download, adoption will be hampered and you get it to a much more centralized and vulnerable point.
g) Accumulate or confiscate stashes of BTC to manipulate price and through market manipulation, destroy the BTC market. You can also "use" various exchange owners after they get an offer they cannot refuse ("please cooperate or else you'll be thrown in jail for decades with charges of assisting money laundering").
h) Do mass damage to unsuspecting people and then claim it's BTC's fault, so you need to ban it. Stuff like mass hacking of PCs, encrypting their data and blackmailing people. Or media attacks, association with criminal activities etc etc.
i) Ban it, but then it will flourish elsewhere. So you pressure various governments to do the same. But, that too, shows desperation and panic so it's better not to ban it and go more "subtly" about it (GOTO other attack vectors).

- stuff like that.

(f) is an avoidable attack vector.

[conspirosphere.tk]

So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

whatever you want. either you agree to accept the others' coin, or you recur to a third party exchange. Is "do whatever the fuck you want" bad?

[Ultrafinery]

So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

whatever you want. either you agree to accept the others' coin, or you recur to a third party exchange. Is "do whatever the fuck you want" bad?

It's not great. Certainly doesn't make for frictionless commerce.
Pretty much the opposite of what Bitcoin (and money in general) is about.

[AlexGR]

And downloading terabytes of blockchain bloat will?

Bitcoin is a protocol and while it is true that scaling issues exist, they are being worked on to find solutions. But nobody says we all have to use just one blockchain for storing everything, and doing so with zero cost.

Having a second blockchain does absolutely nothing to reduce bloat. In order to use a federated blockchain in a trustless manner requires the user to download the entire bitcoin blockchain plus the entire federated blockchain. This can be no smaller than the bitcoin blockchain would be if all transactions were done in bitcoin. What's the point?

Multiple blockchains do not reduce bloat on aggregate, they multiply it. However, you only download the blockchains you want. You are not forced to use 1000 blockchains if there are 1000 altcoins. You only download and use those that you like.

So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

Let's say I accept DASH but you only have LTC or DOGE. At that point there are several solutions:

1) I use an exchange account for deposits of coins that I do not regularly receive, so you do nothing but send your LTC or DOGE. I then convert those to DASH which I accept and withdraw them to my wallet.
2) You first convert your LTC or DOGE to DASH which I accept, in some exchange, and send them to my wallet.
3) We use a payment processor

(in the future)
4) We use some kind of decentralized currency exchange and this process of alternating between blockchains becomes seamless, with minimal risk compared to current exchanges.

[billyjoeallen]

So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest?  A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds?  Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".

the only stupid around seems to be you, given your self-contradicting issues. If Tx are going to be free or almost free, who's going to make a buck of it?

Anyone spamming the network with dust is going to have to pay fees unless they run the risk of not getting confirmed. Miners don't have to include feeless xactions in their blocks. So basically a spam attack amounts to throwing money at the network.  That's a weird vulnerability.

As for who makes a buck, the miners who get the fees from the dust. Nobody else makes money, but users SAVE a buck by making (nearly) free xactions.

Worrying about blockchain bloat when the whole damn thing can fit on a microSD chip is either stupid or disingenuous. You should be worrying about how our project is only getting 200,000 transactions/day six years in.  You should be worrying about how <0.1% of people who know about bitcoin actually use it.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[aztecminer]

So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest?  A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds?  Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".

the only stupid around seems to be you, given your self-contradicting issues. If Tx are going to be free or almost free, who's going to make a buck of it?

for now on when you use your debit card or cash, send me .02 btc as well.. see how that works out for both of us.

[Ultrafinery]

...
So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

Let's say I accept DASH but you only have LTC or DOGE. At that point there are several solutions:

1) I use an exchange account for deposits of coins that I do not regularly receive, so you do nothing but send your LTC or DOGE. I then convert those to DASH which I accept and withdraw them.
2) You first convert your LTC or DOGE to DASH which I accept, in some exchange, and send them to me.
3) We use a payment processor

In short, no different from you accepting only rubles, and me having only pesos. This sounds like the worst of both worlds, no?
Also, in all the options you have offered, how does Bitcoin factor in?

(in the future)
4) We use some kind of decentralized currency exchange and this process of alternating between blockchains becomes seamless, with minimal risk compared to current exchanges.

How would that work?

[billyjoeallen]

Low fee transactions could take days to confirm. Zero fee xactions may never confirm.

Sounds like it will finally work like it should be.

The blockchain is too valuable a resource to be wasted by zero and ridiculously low fee txs.

And it's not only scaling but usability too. If I have a 100mb block size and it takes me a couple of hours just to sync the last day or a day to sync the last week (before I send a payment), will this be usable? Or will people say, ah yes, now you lost the ability to run bitcoin-qt, just use a thin client...

That's either stupid or dishonest. Nobody is proposing 100 MB blocks and won't unless bandwidth gets much much greater. The design is for block reward to subsidize miners until the network grows big enough to be supported on fees. How is that possible with ~ half million xactions/day? 

This is supposed to be a peer to peer network for the people, not <1 million elitists, criminals and middlemen.

We have different interpretations of stupidity.

When I have a system that has a hole in it (bloat in blockchain through low or no fees, that can be abused as an attack vector and kill bitcoin usage and adoption in the long run), I will not go and make it larger so that someone else can sink my boat. *That* is stupidity.

Scaling is not an issue right now. Not the processing of transactions. If you want to make a legitimate transaction, you'll pay a normal fee and you'll be processed in one block.

If you enlarge the block before scaling becomes an issue, then you open the attack vector wide open for further abuse (because it is already abused with over half the transactions being dust and spam). This is beyond idiotic.

I believe when the time comes, and the need is real, the block size can be increased. If it doesn't, there will be just some fee competition that prevents a lot of low and very low value tx. So what? This is certainly the lesser of the two evils involved here.

So the vulnerability as you see it is that people can throw money at you? You don't feel safe unless you're wearing a money-proof vest?  A money-proof vest that weighs 100 pounds?  Yeah, I'd say we do have different definitions of "stupid".

The vulnerability is that one can make bitcoin unusable and centralized through a very low cost attack vector if the block size is increased.

I wouldn't mind large blocks (even 20mb) if there was an adequate fee structure in place that prevents abuse.

Let's say I'm the US government and want to shut down BTC... what kind of attack vectors do I have?

Some examples:

a) Built an expensive NSA farm to get the 51%. Doable but it will cost me a few hundred millions. The reward would be to wipe off competition for the USD.
b) Bribe or hack centralized mining systems that tend to have lots of hashpower.
c) Coordinate attacks that allow a 51% attack to go through by preventing others from hashing.
d) Start stealing people's private keys through the use of monitor equipment in people's hardware (that would 'burn' that option from future use, and make it publicly known)
e) Make various DDOS / DOS attacks that have low cost
f) Bloat BTC to infinity, if BTC allows itself to be bloated in this way (and it will with large blocks), again at very low cost. Thus it will become difficult to download, adoption will be hampered and you get it to a much more centralized and vulnerable point.
g) Accumulate or confiscate stashes of BTC to manipulate price and through market manipulation, destroy the BTC market. You can also "use" various exchange owners after they get an offer they cannot refuse ("please cooperate or else you'll be thrown in jail for decades with charges of assisting money laundering").
h) Do mass damage to unsuspecting people and then claim it's BTC's fault, so you need to ban it. Stuff like mass hacking of PCs, encrypting their data and blackmailing people. Or media attacks, association with criminal activities etc etc.
i) Ban it, but then it will flourish elsewhere. So you pressure various governments to do the same. But, that too, shows desperation and panic so it's better not to ban it and go more "subtly" about it (GOTO other attack vectors).

- stuff like that.

(f) is an avoidable attack vector.

Your forgot the rough consensus attack which is to divide the community and prevent consensus on necessary upgrades.

[adamstgBit]

the liquidation of my assets for BTC has begun

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=73.0

That link only leads to the auctions board in the marketplace. I had a quick look and found this thread auctioning a $ 1,025,637.26 BTC account.

$ 1,025,637.26 BTC account for sale.

That isn't you is it?  

What are you selling, in which threads, and how many BTC are your total assets likely to fetch?

edit

I found this thread where you are selling what looks like a physical Bitcoin to me. You won't sell it for less than one Bitcoin will you, as it looks like it's worth that already?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1283727

i sell physical Bitcoins

[conspirosphere.tk]

on the contrary: it's a free market of monies, kinda crypto-Forex.
IMHO if BTC will be kept clean of spam/crap/b/s/sabotage/treason it will remain the king/most accepted. Alternatively a competitor with those attributes will emerge. End of story.

So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

whatever you want. either you agree to accept the others' coin, or you recur to a third party exchange. Is "do whatever the fuck you want" bad?

It's not great. Certainly doesn't make for frictionless commerce.
Pretty much the opposite of what Bitcoin (and money in general) is about.

[AlexGR]

Worrying about blockchain bloat when the whole damn thing can fit on a microSD chip is either stupid or disingenuous.

It can fit because it has a 1mb limit in place, and not, say, 20mb. It would require just 50 blocks to fill 1 gb if someone made a script to do just that.

You cannot have a multibillion dollar currency that has such an issue looming over its head.

If you have a currency where someone can throw 1 btc in fees to fill a 20mb block, then with 144btc spent you get around 3gb of bloat per day.

In a month you will need 4320 BTCs to fill 86.4gb, and in a year you'll have exceeded 1 TB for a cost of 51840 BTCs (21mn USD at current prices, much less in terms of USD if the government has hacked them or confiscated them).

Even if one is paying the fees, and is not basing his approach on waiting to confirm a lot of low fee or no fee transactions, the price is way too low for destroying a multibillion dollar currency / making it unusable / rendering it centralized.

If I were threatened by BTC and had the resources, I'd go for it. It's pretty cheap compared to what you get in return (a bloated system and the perception that "ah crap, crypto is done, it can't scale because it's way too bloated). What more could I say?

What we *really* need is to fit way more transactions in the same amount of space. And we also need a much higher fee structure, implemented ...yesterday if possible.

[Ultrafinery]

on the contrary: it's a free market of monies, kinda crypto-Forex.
IMHO if BTC will be kept clean of spam/crap/b/s/sabotage/treason it will remain the king/most accepted. Alternatively a competitor with those attributes will emerge. End of story.

So if I download blockchain A (and the Bitcoin blockchain), and you download blockchain B (and the Bitcoin blockchain), what do we do if, for some weird reason, we want to do business?

whatever you want. either you agree to accept the others' coin, or you recur to a third party exchange. Is "do whatever the fuck you want" bad?

It's not great. Certainly doesn't make for frictionless commerce.
Pretty much the opposite of what Bitcoin (and money in general) is about.

I think you're missing the context. That being AlexGR's claim that altcoins are a solution to Bitcoin's blockchain bloat. My point was that they're only making Bitcoin less relevant (people use alts, so they don't use Bitcoin as much).
I'm not against alts at all.

[jbreher]

And downloading terabytes of blockchain bloat will?

Bitcoin is a protocol and while it is true that scaling issues exist, they are being worked on to find solutions. But nobody says we all have to use just one blockchain for storing everything, and doing so with zero cost.

Having a second blockchain does absolutely nothing to reduce bloat. In order to use a federated blockchain in a trustless manner requires the user to download the entire bitcoin blockchain plus the entire federated blockchain. This can be no smaller than the bitcoin blockchain would be if all transactions were done in bitcoin. What's the point?

Multiple blockchains do not reduce bloat on aggregate, they multiply it. However, you only download the blockchains you want. You are not forced to use 1000 blockchains if there are 1000 altcoins. You only download and use those that you like.

So you're saying... don't use bitcoin then? Great! Scale bitcoin by not using it!