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

[TReano]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/01/19/r-i-p-bitcoin-its-time-to-move-on/?postshare=691453395532622&tid=ss_tw

[ChartBuddy]

Coin


Explanation

[billyjoeallen]

riddle me this, cripplecoiners:

1. How do you grow network effects without scaling?
2. How do you attract new users by increasing fees and slowing service?
3. How do you reduce friction by increasing complexity?
4. How can you call a network dominated by a handful of miners in a totalitarian state decentralized?

Do you think code developers have or should have any accountability to the people who actually use their software?  If it's open source, shouldn't we have the right to modify it in any way we see fit?

[r0ach]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/01/19/r-i-p-bitcoin-its-time-to-move-on/?postshare=691453395532622&tid=ss_tw

Someone like Wences or Keiser should waste a few thousand with paid for media blowing the lid off the fact that Mike Hearn was not an actual core dev.  It would probably really fuck Hearn over and make him wish he never wrote that blog post if it appears that he was misrepresenting who he actually was.  He's not a complete idiot, but his authority figure status over Bitcoin is more similar to some random guy like Peter R than Satoshi.  The articles all pretend like he was running the show.

[ImI]

The answer to your question of attacking one of the chains seems to be valid, still.

I don't think so...

When a fork is proposed, like XT or Classic (with 75% trigger and a few weeks of grace period between the trigger and the switch to new rules), I think that:

* Before the fork, holders should pray that it resolves neatly and quickly as a non-event, and keep quiet or voice their preferences quietly, so that it does not upset the price;

* If the proposal gains some support, but neither reaches 75% nor drops back to zero, and it looks like the impasse may continue for a while, they may want to speak out for one outcome, to help break the impasse -- but that may make things worse if they themselves cant agree on which side to support.   They may want to sell while the price is still OK, justin case; but that may cause the price to crash.  Or they may choose to bet on the price recovering later, and keep holding.

* If the proposal gets little suport and seems to be a sure fail, the holders shoul shout it down.

* If the proposal gets 51% and keeps increasing, the holders should cheer it along.

* If the proposal gets the required support and triggers, the holders should upgrade their clients accept it, and do what they can to convince the remaining miners and players to accept it too.

* If the change has triggered, but at the end of the grace period there is still a non-negligible fraction of the miners that refuse to accep it, then the holders should try to convince the exchanges and other services to boycott the minority chain and refuse its coins, and convince the miners to sabotage the minority chain.

When a minority can veto, we have what amounts to a game of "chicken". In the game of chicken, the side perceived to be the craziest and most hell-bent on winning at any cost (including their own destruction) is the side that wins.  This right now is the side of the smallblockers, unfortunately.  That's why I think this will take a while to play out, longer in fact than it will take to fill the blocks and hike fees. Possibly long enough to get a network congestion failure. 

There won't be a "congestion failure". If blocks are full a order of importance builds itself, those TXs that are more important are paying more and those that are not important are paying less/nothing. You dont have to agree with this fee market evolving and its perfectly fine to be in the bigblockers-camp, but this "congestion failure" is just bullshit cause it paints a situation that will never occur.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Bitcoin was interesting when it was an experiment, when it ran. It’s crawling now, crawling toward instability.

http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-for-the-masses-or-against-the-state/

Even the cheap rags are onto us. 

[CuntChocula]

...
There won't be a "congestion failure". If blocks are full a order of importance builds itself, those TXs that are more important are paying more and those that are not important are paying less/nothing. You dont have to agree with this fee market evolving and its perfectly fine to be in the bigblockers-camp, but this "congestion failure" is just bullshit cause it paints a situation that will never occur.

So... Each time I transact via Bitcoin, I make a wager (that the tx fee I paid is sufficient to have my transaction included)?
Sort of like a blind auction?
On that like white on rice, the wackier & more probabilistic my money is, the better

[billyjoeallen]

The answer to your question of attacking one of the chains seems to be valid, still.

I don't think so...

When a fork is proposed, like XT or Classic (with 75% trigger and a few weeks of grace period between the trigger and the switch to new rules), I think that:

* Before the fork, holders should pray that it resolves neatly and quickly as a non-event, and keep quiet or voice their preferences quietly, so that it does not upset the price;

* If the proposal gains some support, but neither reaches 75% nor drops back to zero, and it looks like the impasse may continue for a while, they may want to speak out for one outcome, to help break the impasse -- but that may make things worse if they themselves cant agree on which side to support.   They may want to sell while the price is still OK, justin case; but that may cause the price to crash.  Or they may choose to bet on the price recovering later, and keep holding.

* If the proposal gets little suport and seems to be a sure fail, the holders shoul shout it down.

* If the proposal gets 51% and keeps increasing, the holders should cheer it along.

* If the proposal gets the required support and triggers, the holders should upgrade their clients accept it, and do what they can to convince the remaining miners and players to accept it too.

* If the change has triggered, but at the end of the grace period there is still a non-negligible fraction of the miners that refuse to accep it, then the holders should try to convince the exchanges and other services to boycott the minority chain and refuse its coins, and convince the miners to sabotage the minority chain.

When a minority can veto, we have what amounts to a game of "chicken". In the game of chicken, the side perceived to be the craziest and most hell-bent on winning at any cost (including their own destruction) is the side that wins.  This right now is the side of the smallblockers, unfortunately.  That's why I think this will take a while to play out, longer in fact than it will take to fill the blocks and hike fees. Possibly long enough to get a network congestion failure. 

There won't be a "congestion failure". If blocks are full a order of importance builds itself, those TXs that are more important are paying more and those that are not important are paying less/nothing. You dont have to agree with this fee market evolving and its perfectly fine to be in the bigblockers-camp, but this "congestion failure" is just bullshit cause it paints a situation that will never occur.

The more important Bitcoins becomes, the more likely a congestion failure will be absent a scaling solution.  Let's assume half the transactions are either not important or urgent. Then what happens if that number grows by a factor of five? This is not unprecedented.  There is no way the price will sustainably go up without attracting new users EXPONENTIALLY and the network won't be able to handle them no matter how much in fees they pay. 

Let's use a hypothetical example: Imagine that the Chinese government announces that they will soon close the loophole that allows their citizens to avoid capital controls via crypto. This could cause a mad rush to the exits, particularly if the economic conditions inside China deteriorate. If one tenth of one percent of the Chinese try to get their money out through bitcoin, that's (1,600,000,000)X(0.001)=1,600,000 so at only one transaction each, we're looking at over four times the total daily network capacity IN ADDITION TO all the other traffic.  That's just one example. I can think of dozens more. Hyperinflation in a third world country. another Cypress type banking crisis.  A terrorist attack on the Bank of International Settlements. SWIFT or ACH getting hacked. etc.

The mempool has already been over 10MB for two days straight. We are looking at a permanent and growing backlog of transactions. 

[CuntChocula]

Bitcoin was interesting when it was an experiment, when it ran. It’s crawling now, crawling toward instability.

http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-for-the-masses-or-against-the-state/

Even the cheap rags are onto us. 

"One could even go so far as to claim the current banking system is more decentralized than bitcoin at this point. The Federal Reserve is composed of 12 banks across the country which then lend money to the nearly 7,000 banks in the country, not to mention the thousands of credit unions as well.

On the other hand, bitcoin (although still in its infancy) is currently managed primarily by four large mining pools, all out of China. While these pools are networks of many individual miners, there is uneasiness about this predisposition."

http://s2.postimg.org/dbb1ohovd/neigh.jpg

[Fatman3001]

The retard journalist (https://twitter.com/AaronvanW/status/690120783281156097) has published his article: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/f-pool-chinese-pools-will-stick-with-bitcoin-core-1453395328


Long story short: F2Pool and HaoBTC.

No real news then.

[CuntChocula]

... The mempool has already been over 10MB for two days straight. We are looking at a permanent and growing backlog of transactions.  ...

You mean "malicious spam"? >>>/dev/null

[Sitarow]

Bitcoin was interesting when it was an experiment, when it ran. It’s crawling now, crawling toward instability.

http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-for-the-masses-or-against-the-state/

Even the cheap rags are onto us.  

"One could even go so far as to claim the current banking system is more decentralized than bitcoin at this point. The Federal Reserve is composed of 12 banks across the country which then lend money to the nearly 7,000 banks in the country, not to mention the thousands of credit unions as well.

On the other hand, bitcoin (although still in its infancy) is currently managed primarily by four large mining pools, all out of China. While these pools are networks of many individual miners, there is uneasiness about this predisposition."

#1 BTC = Global, not a single country.
#2 BTC = Public Ledger and distributed, Unlike banks that don't even trust one another's books.
#3 BTC and its participants can migrate to a better horizon solution at a moments notice. Unlike bank that don't have a trusted backup that they would ever agree on due to political situations and commitments.

The list goes on. It is unfortunate to see this disingenuous type of approach to sell sensationalism while masquerading as journalistic reporting.

[AlexGR]

The mempool has already been over 10MB for two days straight. We are looking at a permanent and growing backlog of transactions.  

Check http://cointape.com

Tell me those who are waiting, how much they are paying in fees.

To help you with the math: 1 satoshi = $0.0000040927

From what I see, most want to pay <30 satoshi per byte with a lot of transactions being in the <10 satoshi per byte or 0 satoshi.

Most txs right now who are waiting, are paying <0.05$ - with the bulk paying <0.02$

First block inclusion is at 0.08$ right now.

Such Fullblockalypse... Very fees... WOW

[billyjoeallen]

Bitcoin was interesting when it was an experiment, when it ran. It’s crawling now, crawling toward instability.

http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-for-the-masses-or-against-the-state/

Even the cheap rags are onto us.  

"One could even go so far as to claim the current banking system is more decentralized than bitcoin at this point. The Federal Reserve is composed of 12 banks across the country which then lend money to the nearly 7,000 banks in the country, not to mention the thousands of credit unions as well.

On the other hand, bitcoin (although still in its infancy) is currently managed primarily by four large mining pools, all out of China. While these pools are networks of many individual miners, there is uneasiness about this predisposition."

#1 BTC = Global, not a single country.
#2 BTC = Public Ledger and distributed, Unlike banks that don't even trust one another's books.
#3 BTC and its participants can migrate to a better horizon solution at a moments notice. Unlike bank that don't have a trusted backup that they would ever agree on due to political situations and commitments.

The list goes on. It is unfortunate to see this disingenuous type of approach to sell sensationalism while masquerading as journalistic reporting.

#1 majority hashpower is in China. Chinese mines can be controlled or shut down by the People's Bank or the government.

[ChartBuddy]

Coin


Explanation

[billyjoeallen]

The mempool has already been over 10MB for two days straight. We are looking at a permanent and growing backlog of transactions.  

Check http://cointape.com

Tell me those who are waiting, how much they are paying in fees.

To help you with the math: 1 satoshi = $0.0000040927

From what I see, most want to pay <30 satoshi per byte with a lot of transactions being in the <10 satoshi per byte or 0 satoshi.

Most txs right now who are waiting, are paying <0.05$ - with the bulk paying <0.02$

First block inclusion is at 0.08$ right now.

Such Fullblockalypse... Very fees... WOW

This is just the beginning. In the future, we'll have to throw in fees and HOPE they are high enough for our transactions to be included.  That makes it impossible to build a business model because of the unknown variable.

As a miner, would you rather get a 26BTC reward @$600/BTC or a 35BTC reward @ $200/BTC? This may not be a hypothetical question.

[AlexGR]

#1 majority hashpower is in China. Chinese mines can be controlled or shut down by the People's Bank or the government.

If the chinese can produce something domestically, they do.

Why "import" BTCs for dollars, from foreign miners, when they can produce them locally?

If Chinese production of BTCs can satisfy local BTC hunger (prevents USD outflows) or even be used for "export" (USD inflows), then it's a "profitable" activity for their economy.

[pleaseexplainagain]

I get very confused by all the different views of fee growth/block size  etc.

It seems to me to be to fairly straightforward in terms of my use of bitcoin.

I have bitcoins for 2 reasons
1. as a store of value
2. to make transfers to other people in other countries and to also make transfers to companies (to buy things).

I like small or no fees but to protect the system and reward those protecting it I am quite happy to pay up to the amount that is just less than an alternative
eg for transfers say what Western Union charges which is say $20
eg for purchases it may also be about $20 (say 1% on purchases over $200)

So being selfish as an individual always is I do not care about the block size just what that result is in terms of effect on me both in terms of security and cost.

I do not think we have to worry about for example millions/billions coming out of China to get around capital controls - the rich in any country will be allowed to do it without bitcoin and make a % cut assisting the middle class to do the same.

We should be making fee and size decisions on the little guy first. he/she is after all an existing not a potential/doubtful user.

What say all?

[CuntChocula]

Bitcoin was interesting when it was an experiment, when it ran. It’s crawling now, crawling toward instability.

http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-for-the-masses-or-against-the-state/

Even the cheap rags are onto us.  

"One could even go so far as to claim the current banking system is more decentralized than bitcoin at this point. The Federal Reserve is composed of 12 banks across the country which then lend money to the nearly 7,000 banks in the country, not to mention the thousands of credit unions as well.

On the other hand, bitcoin (although still in its infancy) is currently managed primarily by four large mining pools, all out of China. While these pools are networks of many individual miners, there is uneasiness about this predisposition."

http://s2.postimg.org/dbb1ohovd/neigh.jpg

#1 BTC = Global, not a single country.

Which only makes things moar lopsidedly hilarious: Hundreds of central banks, in hundreds of countries, vs. 4 bros in Chian.

#2 BTC = Public Ledger and distributed, Unlike banks that don't even trust one another's books.

Bitcoin's core devs are at war with each other :-

#3 BTC and its participants can migrate to a better horizon solution at a moments notice. Unlike bank that don't have a trusted backup that they would ever agree on due to political situations and commitments.

"A better horizon solution at a moments notice"? Bitcoin can't even agree on a trivial issue like blocksize in ...how long has this drama been going on? A year? That's right, about a year.
Tell me more about "a moments [sic] notice."

[Sitarow]

Bitcoin was interesting when it was an experiment, when it ran. It’s crawling now, crawling toward instability.

http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-for-the-masses-or-against-the-state/

Even the cheap rags are onto us.  

"One could even go so far as to claim the current banking system is more decentralized than bitcoin at this point. The Federal Reserve is composed of 12 banks across the country which then lend money to the nearly 7,000 banks in the country, not to mention the thousands of credit unions as well.

On the other hand, bitcoin (although still in its infancy) is currently managed primarily by four large mining pools, all out of China. While these pools are networks of many individual miners, there is uneasiness about this predisposition."

#1 BTC = Global, not a single country.
#2 BTC = Public Ledger and distributed, Unlike banks that don't even trust one another's books.
#3 BTC and its participants can migrate to a better horizon solution at a moments notice. Unlike bank that don't have a trusted backup that they would ever agree on due to political situations and commitments.

The list goes on. It is unfortunate to see this disingenuous type of approach to sell sensationalism while masquerading as journalistic reporting.

#1 majority hashpower is in China. Chinese mines can be controlled or shut down by the People's Bank or the government.

If you are referring to the "manufacturing of asic hardware" than consider that the "hashpower" you refer to is soon (as in the next month or so) to be made obsolete by sources outside china.

If you are referring to pool and network computation share of the pie than what you see are the results of pool participants that can easily direct their hardware at other locations if the need arises. That hash-power is migratory.  

The changing landscape of the infrastructure that supports bitcoin is constantly evolving and to think the old rules apply is short sighted understanding.