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

[lottery248]

..... (seems darknet is being physically cracked down)

What do you mean by physically cracked down? I have nothing to do with the darknet so I have to get news of anything happening to it here. The last big news I remember was when evolution closed because it said there was a new way for the feds to attack it. Have they devised another new way to attack the darknet?

idk, i just assume about the phenomena of the net. sorry if i just guessed incorrectly here.
FYI, IS could be a factor to push down the trust of the bitcoiners - hackers for the the bitcoins could be them.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[coins101]

....
There is something called the "future" which is important to take into consideration when thinking about stuff.

And that future is HD and 4k on demand video that will hog the internet and ration access to bandwidth intensive applications:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1333366.msg13604998#msg13604998

[AlexGR]

They look like more than 75% full right now. That could create problems if you need a transaction confirming quickly. You could probably average the blocks out over a few hours to make it look like the average is below 75% full, but that doesn't help people who need transactions confirming quickly right now. There are times when the average is below 45%, and other times when it's above 90% (which is creating problems).

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?showDataPoints=true&timespan=30days&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&address=

0.71mb = there's an extra 40% capacity.

Ane people are still paying peanuts for the bulk of transactions (free or near free): http://www.cointape.com/

....with not much "urgency" in their tx confirmation - otherwise they'd bump their fees up by a few satoshis.

On the other hand those that pay more normal fees, get included in 0-1 blocks.

There is something called the "future" which is important to take into consideration when thinking about stuff.

The future is kind-of-accounted for (considering the problems of BTC in scaling, which are much deeper with current technology than a change in block size) through

a) devs working on scaling
b) fees that will eliminate a lot of dust/spam that are now processed when they shouldn't

Blocks getting full is a meaningless factoid without seeing the quality of transactions and fees involved. We could have 2 mb blocks tomorrow morning and someone could activate a script and fill them up for peanuts. He wouldn't be in any hurry of course for inclusion, so he'd pay the absolute minimum he could get away with. After all even if 500kb legit transactions are ahead of him and he takes the last 1.5mb of the block with zero/near zero fees, the effect for an outsider would be that "...oh my gawd blocks are full - even after we went from 1mb to 2mb... Oh shit we need 4mb!!!"

If you see threads back in 2013, you'll see they anticipated that given the size used they were expecting a problem in 2014 or so and some were like, bullshit, it's just a lot of spam by satoshi dice and similar stuff. Those who went with just the quantity of data failed to predict that we'd be still running in 2016 with 40-50% capacity to spare, those who examined the quality of data knew there was nothing to worry about. That's not to say that an increase is not needed. Of course it is. Multiple increases will be needed. But nothing will happen even if blocks are full 100% of the time with junk. We've seen emulation runs with the various "stress tests". All normal txs went through with a fee, spam stayed in the queue. The fullblockalypse that never was.

[ghandi]

flatlining once more...let's hope for some breakdown!

[coins101]

...fullblockalypse....

That's a great title for a film, tv series and or t-shirt....but it is proof that you're just making stuff up on the hoof 

[kehtolo]

Nah.. I've been seeing 'Fullblockalypse' around for a while now...

[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%.

They look like more than 75% full right now. That could create problems if you need a transaction confirming quickly. You could probably average the blocks out over a few hours to make it look like the average is below 75% full, but that doesn't help people who need transactions confirming quickly right now. There are times when the average is below 45%, and other times when it's above 90% (which is creating problems).

I recall RichieT going into some detail explaining difficulties with averages, and even reasonably arguing that averaging over an hour would give a better rendition of block clogging potentials, rather than averaging over a day, which may not adequately highlight block clogging potentials.

Does anyone know whether the below linked blockchain.info chart is averaged over 24 hours, and thus apparently providing us with much lower numbers of around 60% ish? Rather than finding ourselves with strings of frequent  shorter term blocks of between 74% to 98%,  as depicted in the above post.



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

[BldSwtTrs]

They look like more than 75% full right now. That could create problems if you need a transaction confirming quickly. You could probably average the blocks out over a few hours to make it look like the average is below 75% full, but that doesn't help people who need transactions confirming quickly right now. There are times when the average is below 45%, and other times when it's above 90% (which is creating problems).

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?showDataPoints=true&timespan=30days&daysAverageString=1&scale=0&address=

0.71mb = there's an extra 40% capacity.

Ane people are still paying peanuts for the bulk of transactions (free or near free): http://www.cointape.com/

....with not much "urgency" in their tx confirmation - otherwise they'd bump their fees up by a few satoshis.

On the other hand those that pay more normal fees, get included in 0-1 blocks.

There is something called the "future" which is important to take into consideration when thinking about stuff.

The future is kind-of-accounted for (considering the problems of BTC in scaling, which are much deeper with current technology than a change in block size) through

a) devs working on scaling
b) fees that will eliminate a lot of dust/spam that are now processed when they shouldn't

Blocks getting full is a meaningless factoid without seeing the quality of transactions and fees involved. We could have 2 mb blocks tomorrow morning and someone could activate a script and fill them up for peanuts. He wouldn't be in any hurry of course for inclusion, so he'd pay the absolute minimum he could get away with. After all even if 500kb legit transactions are ahead of him and he takes the last 1.5mb of the block with zero/near zero fees, the effect for an outsider would be that "...oh my gawd blocks are full - even after we went from 1mb to 2mb... Oh shit we need 4mb!!!"

If you see threads back in 2013, you'll see they anticipated that given the size used they were expecting a problem in 2014 or so and some were like, bullshit, it's just a lot of spam by satoshi dice and similar stuff. Those who went with just the quantity of data failed to predict that we'd be still running in 2016 with 40-50% capacity to spare, those who examined the quality of data knew there was nothing to worry about. That's not to say that an increase is not needed. Of course it is. Multiple increases will be needed. But nothing will happen even if blocks are full 100% of the time with junk. We've seen emulation runs with the various "stress tests". All normal txs went through with a fee, spam stayed in the queue. The fullblockalypse that never was.

Devs work on scaling but there are several options to scale. Each option have technical, economic and ideological consequences.

To say "there is no immediate technical problem so we should wait" is a fallacy because the technical choice of doing nothing regarding the blocksize limit have ideological and economic implications.

What is at stake is not  how the transactions will be processed in the next six months but whether Bitcoin will be allowed to maximize the value it could create long term or if the value Bitcoin could create will be capped by an artificial constraint that take it's intellectual roots on a fallacious economic reasoning.

What is at stake today is the value of your bitcoins in 20 years, and if you don't want to allow that fucking blocksize limit to increase because of an ideological fallacy I have some bad news for you.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[aztecminer]

flatlining once more...let's hope for some breakdown!

its doubtful, unless something happens.. cryptsy collapse did nothing.. hearn dumped in dec.. that means lowest he got was maybe 430.. we are at 380.. hearn can buy back in at a profit here... i wouldnt be convinced this was going back under 300 .. there are a bunch people dumped at 300 ... that went exactly as planned. the part not going as planned are the HODLers who aren't dumping at 500 .

[ghandi]

flatlining once more...let's hope for some breakdown!

its doubtful, unless something happens.. cryptsy collapse did nothing.. hearn dumped in dec.. that means lowest he got was maybe 430.. we are at 380.. hearn can buy back in at a profit here... i wouldnt be convinced this was going back under 300 .. there are a bunch people dumped at 300 ... that went exactly as planned. the part not going as planned are the HODLers who aren't dumping at 500 .

Hitting $350 again would be enough for me.

And for the bad news: No trades @ kraken for 10 Minutes....

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[aztecminer]

flatlining once more...let's hope for some breakdown!

its doubtful, unless something happens.. cryptsy collapse did nothing.. hearn dumped in dec.. that means lowest he got was maybe 430.. we are at 380.. hearn can buy back in at a profit here... i wouldnt be convinced this was going back under 300 .. there are a bunch people dumped at 300 ... that went exactly as planned. the part not going as planned are the HODLers who aren't dumping at 500 .

Hitting $350 again would be enough for me.

And for the bad news: No trades @ kraken for 10 Minutes....

if he dumped at 300-320 in november then he is xcrewed with everyone else in this thread who dumped at that price. the reason people are pissed is because it was a manipulated pump. that is what is making bitcoin such a scheme... probably wont see 350 because at that price they can be hard balled... i think as long as you got cold storage then u have the bitcoin beat...  we can always leave em pissed and buy the pms while they are still manipulated down.

[uqaz]

https://i.imgur.com/OhqIX6L.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/TMcyLUh.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/ETbGPPP.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/KlN7RZT.pngCoinhttps://i.imgur.com/NisYQ1D.png

http://error
https://i.imgur.com/EDloGrT.png
Explanation

Please, can someone comment on these?

It seems that book formation on finex is getting bullish: sell orders are getting very inclinated.

[Fatman3001]

I think an increase to 2MB is reasonable.

Can I ask why any sane person wants 8MB & even bigger blocks? It makes no sense at all, what do you possibly gain from that or is it because you think a hard fork will make the price crash so you can get a cheap entry point?

Are a large majority of the big block enthusiasts just chancers who haven't got many/any coins & secretly want uncertainty around a hard fork so they can load up on uber cheap coins?

Anybody want to answer honestly, no trolling?

Honestly? If we introduce 8MB(+) blocks in the form of BIP101 then the market will now that this issue will not have to be revisited in the not so distant future. The only "bad" thing that will happen is that Luke-Jr and Gmaxwell will throw a hissy fit.

But Fatty: I read that some sort of max block size is necessary to prevent miners from preventing people from running full nodes by creating too-large blocks. Is this true?!?! Would 8MB do that??

sauce

I don't see this "problem" as much of a problem. The most likely scenario is that the requirements on the nodes will increase due to the natural emergence of Bitcoin on the market. If this happens more people will depend on Bitcoin and be devoted to Bitcoin. Even with both the introduction of light clients and the price kicking our teeth in for the last three years, we still have 5648 nodes running. I think people confuse "real decentralization" with running a full node being some kind of a human right. It's not.

[AlexGR]

Nah.. I've been seeing 'Fullblockalypse' around for a while now...

Yep, I can take no credit for that

[JorgeStolfi]

Even more: Adam once claimed that the LN would achieve 10'000 transactions for every blockchain transaction.  Leaving aside what that would mean for the coin lock-in periods of the channels, the rate of 1:10'000 is so close to 0:10'000 that no one would notice if the LN just dropped bitcoin altogether, and from then on just shuffled its "cryptochecks" around indefinitely, without ever settling them.

Conversely 1:10000 is so close to 0:10000 that you might as well just leave it on the Bitcoin blockchain. The benefit of not doing so would be negligible.

The LN would want to disable bitcoin settlements for the same general reasons that the US government decided to end the convertibility of the US dollar to gold or silver.

Namely, tying LN payments to bitcoin imposes many limitations on hubs and clients.  For example, a big deterrent to LN adoption is the requirement that a new user locks in advance into each new channel an amount of bitcoins sufficient to cover his payments for the next 100 (or next 10'000, according to Adam) payments that she expects to make through that channel.  VISA, on the other hand, gives a bunch of credit to the new client, so she does not have to deposit anything upfront.  The hubs cannot do the same because they would have to lock real bitcoins, not simply let her pay on credit.  if the LN could decouple from bitcoin, it could let hubs create money by credit, like banks do...

Also, one big problem that the LN is still trying to solve is what happens if the bitcoin network suffers a spam attack that delays a fraction of the legit traffic for days.  That could cause many channel settlement transactions to be delayed past the channel timeouts, effectively doing a permanent chargeback on every payment that was made through those channels. And/or it would force the receiving parties of those payments to issue extra transactions in an attempt to push their settlement transactions through with CPFP: and those attempts would eat into their profits, would make the backlog worse, and would be guaranteed to fail in a large fraction of the cases, whatever the fees they used. Again, decoupling the LN from the bictoin system would eliminate that and may other problems...

BTW, I'm pretty sure the LN people have stated that block size increases of some sort would be needed. I don't know where Blockstream stands on this. Maybe they want people to anchor their channels on their Improved Bitcoin Sidealtchain instead of Bitcoin.

My reading of history is that Greg Maxwell got pathologically obsessed with the fee market idea years ago, and won't give up on it, no matter what others say.  Some Blockstream employees, especially the guy who is working on LN, even said publicly that the LN would require increasing the limit; but Greg does not seem to be impressed.  That may be the reason why Blockstream has committed to the disgusting SegWit hack, that will provide some relief (especially to the LN, that may require humongous signatures) without touching the sacred 1 MB limit.

(There is an exchange in this forum, some years ago, where Greg says that the 1 MB limit is as sacred as the 21 M BTC limit, and he would not have put any time into bitcoin if Satoshi's design did not include it.  Gavin then points out that the 1 MB was not in the original design, and quotes Satoshi's Oct/2010 post where he explains that the limit could be lifted when needed by a simple 2-line patch and a routine hard-fork release.  I did not see Greg's answer.  Considering that he has never answered Mike's "crash landing" post either, I assume that he just shut that fact too out of his mind, since it did not fit his convictions...)

[soullyG]

Kraken just acquired Coinsetter, which means they are now able to operate in (some parts of) the US:

As a result of the undisclosed deal, Kraken’s exchange will now be available in 37 US states as well as all 10 Canadian provinces. Coinsetter had previously acquired Canadian bitcoin exchange CAVirtex in April, months after it would close citing security concerns.

[ChartBuddy]

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Explanation