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

[billyjoeallen]

All the other bigblockers are making better arguments than me. Maybe I should just shut up for a while. Carry on.

All of your arguments are equally specious ... and not just you, but all of them should learn some humility and know when to shut up.

You can't say Bitcoin's Network Effect prevents competition while limiting the size of the network.

What you guise have totally missed in all your big-block bullrage is that scalability does not mean what you think it means. The network of transactions can grow exponentially while the blocksize may only need to grow linearly or not at all. Blocksize is NOT the only measure for the size of Bitcoin's Network Effect (and yes we all want to get-rich-quick from Bitcoin's fabled Network Effect peter_r-Metcalfe-pretty-coloured-gif). Bitcoin the currency can have many different layered solutions that will scale the total transaction capacity and currency network effects without loading it all onto the core bitcoin network infrastructure (that is not ready for it and will never handle all the world's current transactions for decades anyway).

The necessity of splitting out the various functions of the original satoshi prototype client, mining, network-transport, validation, wallet into an ecosystem of layered technologies is a natural manifestation of bitcoin's success. It needs to be done anyway and will be done at some point. Layered architectures are totally uncontroversial and well-understood approaches to scaling up and broadening out network capacities using stacks of technology instead of monolithic clients that do all functions and end up full of magic hard-wired constants and temporary hacks (like blocksize 'bumps'). We need to solve the hard problems now and not delay it with the seemingly easy, quick, cheap fix that will risk killing bitcoin in the future, near or far.

tl;dr rethink your premises, blocksize is not equal to network size.

Blocksize determines the number of trustless peer-to-peer transactions. If it's not peer-to-peer, it's not Bitcoin. It's like people trading gold-backed dollars in 1971 thinking they were trading gold. There weren't. Nixon proved that in a way that was rather unpleasant to anyone long USD.

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[Richy_T]

This. They think scarcity alone will bring value (price appreciation) if it is done decentralized.

Think of it this way. Rather than that weird parcel analogy alexGR is using, 1mb blocks are like the traditional taxi system. Prices are regulated and supply is limited by a restrictive and expensive badge system. When you're wanting to get home and it's a big night out like new years eve, you can't get a taxi because everyone else wants one. A sane, free market system would bring more taxis out but you can't because the supply is limited and there is no way to adjust the supply.

Removing the block size limit is like Uber.

The genius part of Bitcoin is that is more than an engineering work, the design understands basic economic and psychological principles (game theory), and unite them in an environment, where everyone can join voluntary.

Yes. This is exactly what drew me to it.

[Richy_T]

All the other bigblockers are making better arguments than me. Maybe I should just shut up for a while. Carry on.

All of your arguments are equally specious ... and not just you, but all of them should learn some humility and know when to shut up.

Watch out everyone, Oscar Wilde in the house...

[billyjoeallen]

Do you really believe those chart buddy numbers?

So you're calling me a liar. Either

1)Prove it

2)Apologize.

3)Show the world that you're a man of no honor.

I think that I already elaborated on what I had meant in my earlier posts regarding the reason for my chartbuddy comment, and again I have not been calling you a liar.. nor accusing you of any purposeful attempts at misrepresentation.  

I will apologize to the extent that my words may have been read by you and possibly others as implying some level of purposeful misrepresentation coming from you, because so far, up until now, I have not witnessed any such attempts from you to purposefully misrepresent in regards to chartbuddy.


Anyhow, I believe that there is a need for all of us to retain a certain amount of thicked skinnedness when dealing with some of these forum matters and comments that we receive that may seem to be criticsms and reflections of non-appreciation, and surely over the years, I have received my fair share of what I would count as selective and emotional unwarranted attacks on me (and others may assert that I deserved every single bit and maybe even more of some of those attacks that I received)... hahahahaha       Can we make up?  

You got more out him than I did, Richie. JJG either gets punched out a lot or he cowardly limits calling people liars to online forums.  

BJA... seems to be proving my point.... .. likes to stir shit and point fingers... .. and describe various of his supposed/hypothetical BTC investment strategies that make little to no sense because he is constantly a high-baller and winning like a mo fo... no matter what. yet, we keep thinking that he is leaving BTC, but in reality, he is never gonna leave cause he is going to whine and shit-stir no matter what the outcomes, even if we witness him getting his way, he will stay around, continue to post disingenuous half truth, point fingers at others and just ask for more and more of what he wants....

All you had to do to get rid of me was keep pumping the market until I had liquidated all my holdings, but no, you couldn't keep doing that, could you? Too many people saw through the smallblocker bullshit.

Anyone following my lead has made money in the last month. Anyone following yours has lost about 15%.  Who's adding value here?

[marcus_of_augustus]

All the other bigblockers are making better arguments than me. Maybe I should just shut up for a while. Carry on.

All of your arguments are equally specious ... and not just you, but all of them should learn some humility and know when to shut up.

You can't say Bitcoin's Network Effect prevents competition while limiting the size of the network.

What you guise have totally missed in all your big-block bullrage is that scalability does not mean what you think it means. The network of transactions can grow exponentially while the blocksize may only need to grow linearly or not at all. Blocksize is NOT the only measure for the size of Bitcoin's Network Effect (and yes we all want to get-rich-quick from Bitcoin's fabled Network Effect peter_r-Metcalfe-pretty-coloured-gif). Bitcoin the currency can have many different layered solutions that will scale the total transaction capacity and currency network effects without loading it all onto the core bitcoin network infrastructure (that is not ready for it and will never handle all the world's current transactions for decades anyway).

The necessity of splitting out the various functions of the original satoshi prototype client, mining, network-transport, validation, wallet into an ecosystem of layered technologies is a natural manifestation of bitcoin's success. It needs to be done anyway and will be done at some point. Layered architectures are totally uncontroversial and well-understood approaches to scaling up and broadening out network capacities using stacks of technology instead of monolithic clients that do all functions and end up full of magic hard-wired constants and temporary hacks (like blocksize 'bumps'). We need to solve the hard problems now and not delay it with the seemingly easy, quick, cheap fix that will risk killing bitcoin in the future, near or far.

tl;dr rethink your premises, blocksize is not equal to network size.

Blocksize determines the number of trustless peer-to-peer transactions. If it's not peer-to-peer, it's not Bitcoin.

Wrong. Trustless peer-to-peer transactions can be increased without increasing blocksize ... this kind of basic ignorance is why it is pointless arguing with you guise who have latched onto a simple fix and refused to keep up with all the exciting developments ... why do you think the Core devs are disengaging with the discussion when all that comes back is getting shit thrown at them from all corners, mostly just in the form of ignorant raging? It's fucking pointless at this stage interacting with a raging mob who have been whipped up by paid shills, short trolls and would be power-grabbers .... and then they get accused of "not communicating clearly". I know I've lost all my will to keep working on this project, you guys are just acting like a bunch of fucking entitled jerks no different than the beneficiaries who clamour for more welfare spending at every election.

[Richy_T]

I am not attempting to accuse you of any purposeful misrepresentation, but I do understand that empty blocks are not being counted in the chart buddy's renditions of how full are the blocks on an hourly basis.  

Accordingly, leaving out blocks (whether a more accurate representation or not) could be the reason that blockchain.info is coming up with different numbers..  

I invite you to run the numbers yourself. If you'll notice the times when the red line agrees with the solid green level, those are times when there have not been empty blocks and they do not affect it at all.

Let me turn it around a bit. One of the complaints the small blockers have with BIP101 is that despite there being a 75% of 1000 requirement for BIP101 to activate, random chance would mean that that could be achieved with much less than 75% of the hashrate. This is true. Likewise, even if on daily average, blocks appear to be much less than 100% full, random chance can (and has started to) mean that at random times, the blocks *are* full and users experience congestion. One full block is not really all that big a deal but we are starting to see, two, three and even four full blocks in a row. That's potentially a confidence destroying poor user experience. This is happening now.

Bear in mind, we *don't* have RBF, we *don't* have Lightning Network and we *don't* have segwit. What we do have is a fairly straight-line log plot that showed this was coming and warnings from several people, ranging from 2-5 years ago that this would have to be addressed.

[ChartBuddy]

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Explanation

[Richy_T]

That is a decent explanation regarding how you are attempting to represent what is going on accurately and without bias, but for some reason, even though you have been explaining in various posts, readers still seem to be a bit confused about what some of the indicators mean.

Can we click on chartbuddy and receive your various explanations concerning what the various numbers, scales, dots and charts represent in a kind of one stop shopping location?

Don't get me wrong, because I am not trying to bust your balls on any of this.  I think that you have been doing a great service to this thread with your creation and updates of chart buddy through the years... and by taking on such tasks, you are likely to receive various unwarranted and comments of non appreciation.

I did explain it at one point but it probably does need to go in the explanation link, probably with an explanation diagram.

[AlexGR]

This. They think scarcity alone will bring value (price appreciation) if it is done decentralized.

Think of it this way. Rather than that weird parcel analogy alexGR is using, 1mb blocks are like the traditional taxi system. Prices are regulated and supply is limited by a restrictive and expensive badge system. When you're wanting to get home and it's a big night out like new years eve, you can't get a taxi because everyone else wants one. A sane, free market system would bring more taxis out but you can't because the supply is limited and there is no way to adjust the supply.

Removing the block size limit is like Uber.

The "problem" here is we have 53-58% more taxis available than actual demand (1mb blocks vs 620-650kb avg use)

1-block inclusion for every single transaction that isn't mid-to-high priority is the only way this could work out.

There is no way that a spammer can activate a bot, generate 100mb of txs in a few minutes and then expect to be served in 1 block, whether that block is 1, 2, or 20mbyte. If you have a situation like that, with spikes, it doesn't prove that you need ...bigger blocks. The fees will take care of how txs will even out and get processed.

[DefendKebab]

Btc down.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

BAHHHH!

Why do I ever leave this thread?

[Meuh6879]

Removing the block size limit is like Uber.

  ... you don't monitoring you bandwidth usage, right ?

decrease the minimal fee relay on your node ... and you can cry about upload black hole.  

PS: Uber map & service use more than 2Gb of mobile bandwidth ... it's not free !

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[TReano]

my opinion: Sideways from here on if it doesn't dump further at some point.


Everybody was hyper bullish on Bitcoin and the Chinese Stock exchanges where crashing hard and we still weren't really able to break the 500$ target even after several attempts the buy-power was simply exhausted...

It will be interesting to see what Bitcoin will do once the S&P 500 and all the other indices start dumping. At least they are all at the edge of the next big financial crash which could be much worse then the one in 2008...


But I don't expect much action in Bitcoin in the near future. Chop and sideways best case.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Sorry, but this is really good. Just a big share. IDK. BAH.

Isn't it?

https://medium.com/@BitFuryGroup/keep-calm-and-bitcoin-on-4f29d581276#.89z3s67sc

By Valery Vavilov, Co-Founder BitFury

I grew up in Soviet Latvia and witnessed firsthand the elimination of my parent’s life savings. All of their dreams were gone when the Soviet Union and the banking systems collapsed in 1991. Then, like a nightmare, my own investment dreams were shattered in the global financial crisis of 2008. I knew as a child, and I know even more now as an adult that we, as a global technology community, can and must do better.

I wrote my first computer code when I was 8 years young. Mathematics is the language I speak and trust. Enter the emerging idea of Bitcoin. I discovered this exciting open source technology in 2010. Together with my business partner, Valery Nebesny, we realized this new way of processing and transferring assets could actually make our world a better and fairer place for people everywhere — in developed and developing countries — all through the use of math, cryptography and thoughtful programming language based on the fundamental value of trust. Fast forward 5+ years, and the world of Bitcoin has advanced beyond our wildest expectations and continues to be a dynamic innovative ecosystem that is evolving every day.

Needless to say, it was disappointing to see Mike Hearn, a prominent contributor to the Bitcoin developer community, recently offer a lengthy blog post stating that the industry was dead and that bitcoin was a failed experiment. Perhaps the road for Hearn has come to an end, but for me and my many colleagues and fellow Bitcoin Blockchain experts, it is safe to say that we are just beginning down this incredible road and we see a promising future. https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.35zknj7jk

While Mike is entitled to his own opinion, of course, I thought I would take a moment to address a few of his points with my views. I will caveat that much of what is happening in the Bitcoin space is highly technical and fairly difficult for those who have not immersed themselves in the math and science of late to fully understand.

With that, let me lay out a few facts:

FACT 1: Bitcoin Is Not an Electronic Payments System Like PayPal

Many Bitcoin newcomers view the network as yet another electronic system for instant payments, like PayPal or Visa. Right here we have a very substantial difference in opinion. Bitcoin was never designed to confirm instant payments and believing that is its function is a mistake.

As Nick Szabo, the renowned author of smart contracts wrote: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nick-szabo-if-banks-want-benefits-blockchains-they-must-go-permissionless-1518874v

“Visa and PayPal already exist, and within national borders they do what they do quite well. It’s silly to try to turn Bitcoin into yet another Visa and PayPal.”

I believe, based on the way the system was designed and developed by Satoshi, that it would be disingenuous to expect instant transaction confirmation from the Bitcoin network — it is simply not wired that way. No increase of the block size limit could help make instant Bitcoin transaction confirmation a reality.

Does this mean that Bitcoin cannot be used for instant payments? Not at all. You simply need an additional system operating on top of the Bitcoin Blockchain (with the Blockchain acting as a settlement layer). These systems already exist in custodial wallet services and Bitcoin exchanges. But the larger point is that the potential of Bitcoin is so much greater and transformative than simply hoping it can compete with PayPal.

FACT 2: Bitcoin Is Not and Should Not Be Free to Use

While the Bitcoin network dramatically lowers the cost of transactions, the reality is that the Bitcoin Blockchain is not free to use. The Blockchain is secured with an enormous amount of computing power, and transaction fees are an important incentive to keep contributing that power.

As the Bitcoin network continues to evolve, transaction fees need to grow in order to maintain a high level of security within and for the network. As BitFury has outlined in our white paper on Bitcoin security incentives http://bitfury.com/content/4-white-papers-research/bitfury-incentive_mechanisms_for_securing_the_bitcoin_blockchain-1.pdf, the transaction fee market is currently actively developing. The percentage of transactions satisfying a market-based fee margin has grown from 22% in March 2015 to nearly 40% in October 2015.

Just like with instant payments, expensive on-chain Bitcoin transactions do not mean that one cannot use Bitcoin for cheap value transfer. Overlay networks, such as Lightning and sidechains, can successfully deal with this challenge while in-service ledgers already do.

FACT 3: Bitcoin Transaction Processing Is Not Presently Clogged

There is no observable evidence that Bitcoin transaction processing is presently clogged. Key statistics gathered by Statoshi http://statoshi.info/ for the past few months show the pool of unconfirmed transactions has held relatively steady at about 10,000 transactions — a significant decrease from over 75,000 unconfirmed transactions during “the stress test” performed in September 2015. Most of these transactions, according to CoinTape http://www.cointape.com/ pay zero or near-zero transaction fees.

For Bitcoin wallets with proper fee estimation logic, the clogging challenge simply does not exist. According to web-based fee estimation services, such as CoinTape, as of January, 2016, the optimal transaction fee for an average transaction is less than 0.1 USD — quite small for most use cases. The issue we do face is with “free riders” — applications with a business model relying on non-existent Bitcoin transaction fees.

FACT 4: Miners Embrace Bitcoin’s Popularity

Bitcoin miners and transaction processors such as BitFury, are likely the biggest supporters of the Bitcoin ecosystem and any suggestion otherwise is simply ridiculous. Bitcoin miners invest enormous amounts of money and efforts into developing and maintaining bitcoin mining hardware. As the Scaling Bitcoin conferences have shown, miners are generally in support of cautious increases of the block size limit — just not abrupt increases — because such sudden change could undermine the foundation of the Bitcoin network. BitFury has detailed these points in our white paper http://bitfury.com/content/4-white-papers-research/block-size-1.1.1.pdf

FACT 5: Bitcoin Mining Is Decentralized

Most existing mining pools are public. This means that they consist of tens of thousands of independent users who are free to join or leave the pool at any time. Private mining pools are frequently operated by firms that publicly sell mining equipment, including BitFury (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitfury-to-mass-produce-new-nm-chip-and-sell-to-public-1452010171).

Even if there were merely ten entities controlling Bitcoin mining (which there are not), this would still not be a threat. There are many Bitcoin nodes not controlled by miners, which would act as a barrier against rogue miners’ misbehavior. However, a rapidly rising block size could put most of these nodes out of work because they would simply have to switch off due to a lack appropriate hardware to perform transaction processing), paving the road to the real centralization (see [The Decentralist Perspective] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/decentralist-perspective-bitcoin-might-need-small-blocks-1442090446).

FACT 6: Mass Rule is Not Appropriate for Bitcoin

The pipe dream of some in the Bitcoin community is to govern the system by having ordinary users vote for changes by adopting the corresponding full node software. This approach is not only impractical, it is also not desirable. Most ordinary Bitcoin users do not own a full node and ironically, if they did, it is quite possible they could not afford its maintenance after a hypothetical abrupt block size increase. Users of Bitcoin should most certainly have a say in the direction of this technology, but in order to appropriately and continuously secure the Blockchain, it is responsible for all of us who are knowledgeable about the science to take a leadership role where and when it is necessary.

FACT 7: Bitcoin XT Would Not Have Solved Bitcoin’s Challenges

Bitcoin XT was considered by some a remedy for perceived problems with the Bitcoin ecosystem. However, upon closer inspection, XT leaves at least some of these challenges, and the reality is that XT would not have made transaction confirmation immediate and would not have reduced the risk of double-spending for unconfirmed transactions.

...
Bitcoin XT and its predecessor — Bitcoin improvement proposal (BIP) 101 — were not supported by the Bitcoin community simply because they contained too many controversial features in the areas where each mistake could cost the most in terms of Bitcoin value. These proposals were hard forks, meaning that their implementation could break Bitcoin as a system for value transfer (http://wallstreettechnologist.com/2015/08/19/bitcoin-xt-vs-core-blocksize-limit-the-schism-that-divides-us-all).

CONCLUSION

I believe in Bitcoin. I believe in the Blockchain. I know that the vast potential is just being realized. We wish Mr. Hearn all the best as he commences his work with our friends at R3CEV. It is important that we respect various input but simultaneously resist the temptation to give Mr. Hearn’s voice too much weight.

Bitcoin is not an instant payment network and not a fancy replacement for PayPal or Visa. It is first and foremost a decentralized system, which sacrifices speed in favor of security. A key feature provided by decentralization is permissionless entry for users and developers — and it is thanks to this component that Bitcoin has grown into much more than a currency and has become a platform for Blockchain innovations.

Most importantly, Bitcoin is a new world created for anyone — especially for someone like me — who didn’t grow up in a world where “trusted emissary” was a reality and the idea of “asset security” was something other people in other parts of the world enjoyed.

I believe in Bitcoin because I believe in democracy and I believe in open societies. And as Winston Churchill once said: “Democracy is the worst form of Government, except for all the others.” Open source projects are not perfect, but they unite the best and most innovative thinkers, and I am honored to be a part of this mission.

[knop]

short term price action bearish? looks like 2600 rmb is the key level

[JayJuanGee]

Do you really believe those chart buddy numbers?

So you're calling me a liar. Either

1)Prove it

2)Apologize.

3)Show the world that you're a man of no honor.

I think that I already elaborated on what I had meant in my earlier posts regarding the reason for my chartbuddy comment, and again I have not been calling you a liar.. nor accusing you of any purposeful attempts at misrepresentation.  

I will apologize to the extent that my words may have been read by you and possibly others as implying some level of purposeful misrepresentation coming from you, because so far, up until now, I have not witnessed any such attempts from you to purposefully misrepresent in regards to chartbuddy.


Anyhow, I believe that there is a need for all of us to retain a certain amount of thicked skinnedness when dealing with some of these forum matters and comments that we receive that may seem to be criticsms and reflections of non-appreciation, and surely over the years, I have received my fair share of what I would count as selective and emotional unwarranted attacks on me (and others may assert that I deserved every single bit and maybe even more of some of those attacks that I received)... hahahahaha       Can we make up?  

You got more out him than I did, Richie. JJG either gets punched out a lot or he cowardly limits calling people liars to online forums.  

BJA... seems to be proving my point.... .. likes to stir shit and point fingers... .. and describe various of his supposed/hypothetical BTC investment strategies that make little to no sense because he is constantly a high-baller and winning like a mo fo... no matter what. yet, we keep thinking that he is leaving BTC, but in reality, he is never gonna leave cause he is going to whine and shit-stir no matter what the outcomes, even if we witness him getting his way, he will stay around, continue to post disingenuous half truth, point fingers at others and just ask for more and more of what he wants....

All you had to do to get rid of me was keep pumping the market until I had liquidated all my holdings, but no, you couldn't keep doing that, could you? Too many people saw through the smallblocker bullshit.

Anyone following my lead has made money in the last month. Anyone following yours has lost about 15%.  Who's adding value here?

Hellrow?    don't mischaracterize my position for some cheap thrill and strawman argument.   I could give a ratt's ass about whatever is adopted regarding scaling, so long as there is some kind of vetting and non-rush into some fearmongered position.


Regarding price, it is likely affected by manipulation in these times more than anything when  we coincidentally have several stories coming out at once while there is some simultaneous dumping in an attempt to create some fear and to shake some weak hands.... Yes, surely, I hope that the current bull market does not transition into a bear market because that probably would not be good for bitcoin, but it seems that we are a ways from such a transition.. maybe we would need to experience prolonged prices below $330 before we would be able to call that bitcoin is no longer in a bull market.

[AlexGR]

FACT 3: Bitcoin Transaction Processing Is Not Presently Clogged

There is no observable evidence that Bitcoin transaction processing is presently clogged. Key statistics gathered by Statoshi http://statoshi.info/ for the past few months show the pool of unconfirmed transactions has held relatively steady at about 10,000 transactions — a significant decrease from over 75,000 unconfirmed transactions during “the stress test” performed in September 2015. Most of these transactions, according to CoinTape http://www.cointape.com/ pay zero or near-zero transaction fees.

For Bitcoin wallets with proper fee estimation logic, the clogging challenge simply does not exist. According to web-based fee estimation services, such as CoinTape, as of January, 2016, the optimal transaction fee for an average transaction is less than 0.1 USD — quite small for most use cases. The issue we do face is with “free riders” — applications with a business model relying on non-existent Bitcoin transaction fees.

I was saying upthread there is a market-gap in terms of a website that analyzes and suggests fees, lol... Cointape does that, apparently: http://www.cointape.com/

[billyjoeallen]

I don't know why this didn't occur to me until just now, but with well over 50% hashing power in China, what happens if the Communist Party confiscates all the mines? Then instead of shutting them down, they merge the pools and double spend until the price crashes to pennies.

It wouldn't even do any good to fork away from them.  They have the ASICs, so they could just jump on the new fork and double spend again.

I think this is the biggest security threat to Bitcoin right now. This is a bigger threat than pools, massive miner farms, fewer nodes, anything.   

These mines are too big to hide. If the ChiComs don't know where they all are, they could easily find out.

The Red Chinese government is the only power on earth that could shut down Bitcoin right now, but they could do it with a few phone calls.   They have reasons for doing it too, from preserving the value of the Renmimbi to enforcing capital controls, to consumer protection to regulating commerce to protecting incumbent players or even propping up their preferred altcoin (Litecoin?)

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation