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

[becoin]

When you take away child's toy, he is upset...His reaction just shows his arrogance for the last couple of months

Thinking of upset Hearn joining R3 and arrogantly ragequitting. Now banks getting behind Garzik's "classic" fork. It is too obvious what is going on.

Banks need bitcoin blockchain but without bitcoin and that's exactly what big-blockers are doing crippling bitcoin as store of value. Hurray... free block space to every spammer!

[BldSwtTrs]

When you take away child's toy, he is upset...His reaction just shows his arrogance for the last couple of months

Thinking of upset Hearn joining R3 and arrogantly ragequitting. Now banks getting behind Garzik's "classic" fork. It is too obvious what is going on.

Banks need bitcoin blockchain but without bitcoin and that's exactly what big-blockers are doing crippling bitcoin as store of value. Hurray... free block space to every spammer!

Only dumb people think there is a need to have a blocksize limit in order to have the store of value function.

[JorgeStolfi]

IMHO Bitcoin is good as it is right now, I don't understand why people look for perfection here. Bitcoin works, I'm using it without problems since 2010

It still works fine as a payment system.  But it is no longer a decentralized trustless payment system -- because 80% of the mining is done by 6 companies, of which 4 are Chinese and 1 is Ukranian-Georgian. 

One cannot notice that detail, but those attributes were what made bitcoin different and worthwhile.  Without them, it is just another centralized payment system -- and a terribly slow, complicated, expensive, unreliable, limited, understaffed, and insecure one.

It is like a Tesla whose electric engine has been replaced by a gasoline one.  It still works fine, but...

[billyjoeallen]

  Any finite commodity like gold where you can attempt to corner the market is a pyramid scheme.

Gold isn't really finite in the economic sense. All of the gold on earth could coat the surface 8 feet thick. Only our ability to extract it is finite, and that changes with technology.  It's currently running~ 3% annual inflation, meaning the supply is growing by ~3% per year.

Most of the easily extracted gold has been mined, so what's left is more difficult/expensive to get, but we'll likely never run out.

Cornering the market in gold would drive the price up to the point where gold that was previously too expensive to extract gets mined. Bitcoin is different. A higher price will likely result in more mining activity, but not more bitcoins being mined.  Miners could sell a smaller portion of their mined coins to meet expenses, allowing them to keep more for themselves.  Basically it's a much less liquid market, one reason why it is so much more volatile.

[bitebits]

A higher price will likely result in more mining activity, but not more bitcoins being mined.  Miners could sell a smaller portion of their mined coins to meet expenses, allowing them to keep more for themselves.  Basically it's a much less liquid market, one reason why it is so much more volatile.

Those two statements don't go together. Higher bitcoin price = more mining activity = more costs per bitcoin. It will always level out, up or down. That is the beauty of mining.

[becoin]

When you take away child's toy, he is upset...His reaction just shows his arrogance for the last couple of months

Thinking of upset Hearn joining R3 and arrogantly ragequitting. Now banks getting behind Garzik's "classic" fork. It is too obvious what is going on.

Banks need bitcoin blockchain but without bitcoin and that's exactly what big-blockers are doing crippling bitcoin as store of value. Hurray... free block space to every spammer!

Only dumb people think there is a need to have a blocksize limit in order to have the store of value function.

Only dumb people think miners can pay their bills with the miserable tx fees big-blockers are willing to pay.

[r0ach]

Adam Back looks upset.

The hilarious part is:

"Alas I own not a single bitcoin which is kind of ironic as the actual bitcoin mining is basically my hashcash invention…" - Adam Back 2013

This guy is the biggest mystery of all of Bitcoin.  How can you try and preach to everyone how Bitcoin should be run when you own 0 bitcoins, and thus, don't even participate in it's economy?  He doesn't appear to be living in poverty, so he's either:

A) Lying for tax purposes
B) Economically boycotting Bitcoin for some unknown reason
C) Waiting to "buy the dip"

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

It appears that Hearn, who was an early adopter, pulled out all of his money at once making the price plummet.

But the price showed stability as far as (adoption in)/(miner out) at around $430. We will slowly climb back to that price after a while.

in the article he said he sold in December . .. i think a lot people sold in December during the marshal's pump.

What a goofball.... still spreading rumors (FUD) about some fictitious "marshall's pump" that makes no logical sense in reality.

[billyjoeallen]

A higher price will likely result in more mining activity, but not more bitcoins being mined.  Miners could sell a smaller portion of their mined coins to meet expenses, allowing them to keep more for themselves.  Basically it's a much less liquid market, one reason why it is so much more volatile.

Those two statements don't go together. More mining activity = more costs. It will always level out, that is the beauty of mining.

Right. Difficulty and exchange rate are related, but production rate is constant until the next halving.  What I'm saying is it's much easier to pump the price of BTC than gold. The question we should be asking ourselves is whether or not to expect a pump and whether or not current price is the result of such a pump already having happened.

That lack of liquidity is a huge problem. Bitcoin is basically worthless as a unit of account, even as it's utility as a store of value skyrockets because of disinflation. It's value as a medium of exchange is determined by the network capacity, which is maxing out soon unless there is an upgrade.

Unless something changes, BTC will remain a speculative commodity, not a money.

[becoin]

So - big block fans - where are the signatures of the clearly tens (or hundreds) of thousands of frustrated wannabe Bitcoin users that are only not using it because of the block size?

Of course there are none - the only people complaining about it are the payment processors hoping to get rich and those that are wanting to take control of the project.

It is good that Mike Hearn has left - but we still need Gavin to leave as well IMO (as he is not giving up trying to take over the project as is obvious from his quick change from XT to Classic).

[bitebits]

Nice write up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41ipkd/some_advice_for_everybody_at_this_point_in_time/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/41ipu0/some_advice_for_everybody_at_this_point_in_time/

(Available at your Reddit of choice)

It really is. Time for both sides to look into the mirror and do some serious self reflection. This quote does actually worry me, because he is right:

Unfortunately, I believe bitcoin development has lost touch with large-scale rollout necessities over the past year or so.
[...]
That's why I'm concerned when I'm looking at the features of 0.12. [...] What I see is instead engineering for the sake of engineering.

[ImI]

i love those full blocks! its a fckn good sign!

[BldSwtTrs]

When you take away child's toy, he is upset...His reaction just shows his arrogance for the last couple of months

Thinking of upset Hearn joining R3 and arrogantly ragequitting. Now banks getting behind Garzik's "classic" fork. It is too obvious what is going on.

Banks need bitcoin blockchain but without bitcoin and that's exactly what big-blockers are doing crippling bitcoin as store of value. Hurray... free block space to every spammer!

Only dumb people think there is a need to have a blocksize limit in order to have the store of value function.

Only dumb people think miners can pay their bills with the miserable tx fees big-blockers are willing to pay.

Do you even realize that the long term outcome of Lightning (the Holy Graal of Core folks) would be to massively reduce the amount of transaction fees versus an on-chain scaling?

[coins101]

i love those full blocks! its a fckn good sign!

Keep'em full. Cancel the mining subsidy and just release coins via faucets.

[BldSwtTrs]

i love those full blocks! its a fckn good sign!

By your (very stupid) logic we should move down the limit to 100kB or even 10kB since it would bring even fuller block and even bigger transaction fees. Why don't we do that?

[billyjoeallen]

Nice write up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41ipkd/some_advice_for_everybody_at_this_point_in_time/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/41ipu0/some_advice_for_everybody_at_this_point_in_time/

(Available at your Reddit of choice)

It really is. Time for both sides to look into the mirror and do some serious self reflection. This quote does actually worry me, because he is right:

Unfortunately, I believe bitcoin development has lost touch with large-scale rollout necessities over the past year or so.
[...]
That's why I'm concerned when I'm looking at the features of 0.12. [...] What I see is instead engineering for the sake of engineering.

The question of "who's the customer?" seems to have gotten lost in the process.

That's the money quote, IMHO. Blockstream appears to want to infect the world with a disease so they can sell the cure. I know that's uncharitable, but there is no other plausible explanation for their obstinacy other than a complete lack of business acumen.

[becoin]

When you take away child's toy, he is upset...His reaction just shows his arrogance for the last couple of months

Thinking of upset Hearn joining R3 and arrogantly ragequitting. Now banks getting behind Garzik's "classic" fork. It is too obvious what is going on.

Banks need bitcoin blockchain but without bitcoin and that's exactly what big-blockers are doing crippling bitcoin as store of value. Hurray... free block space to every spammer!

Only dumb people think there is a need to have a blocksize limit in order to have the store of value function.

Only dumb people think miners can pay their bills with the miserable tx fees big-blockers are willing to pay.

Do you even realize that the long term outcome of Lightning (the Holy Graal of Core folks) would be to massively reduce the amount of transaction fees versus an on-chain scaling?

Are you a BitPay employee? Are you horrified that merchants will set up Lightning pools instead of using your service that is dependent on ALWAYS use the dollar as a crutch to crippled Bitcoin? Do you even realize that Lightning is build UPON a base named Bitcoin? Do you even realize that a house CAN'T exist without its base? How is Lightning bad thing for minors? Lightning can't exist without bitcoin and bitcoin can't exist without minors. Is Lightning a bad thing for Lightning?!

[JayJuanGee]

i love those full blocks! its a fckn good sign!

Do you really believe those chart buddy numbers?   I mean really, if you look at Blockchain.info, you get spikes between 45% and 75%, but currently, the average is around 60%.


https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size


I believe that full blocks is a good sign, too -  of increased adoption ... so it is a decent problem to have..... even though some sky-is-falling panic mongerers are engaged in ongoing apparent scare strategies that seem to be aimed at causing quicker decisions than seems to be necessary....

I am a bit more confident in blockchain.info numbers as depicted in the above graph, and I would be interested to hear why those numbers are supposedly an inaccurate depiction of the current state of affairs or the urgency of the matter.

[Fatman3001]

When you take away child's toy, he is upset...His reaction just shows his arrogance for the last couple of months

Thinking of upset Hearn joining R3 and arrogantly ragequitting. Now banks getting behind Garzik's "classic" fork. It is too obvious what is going on.

Banks need bitcoin blockchain but without bitcoin and that's exactly what big-blockers are doing crippling bitcoin as store of value. Hurray... free block space to every spammer!

Only dumb people think there is a need to have a blocksize limit in order to have the store of value function.

Only dumb people think miners can pay their bills with the miserable tx fees big-blockers are willing to pay.

... .. . dumb people who doesn't understand that block rewards alone will keep the PoW-bit of the network super safe for the next decade (unless you strangle adoption of course)?