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

[JayJuanGee]

systems must also be adaptive. otherwise they die. life and death in this sense are also only seperated by time.

the nice thing is. we will find out, if we were too fast too slow or exactly right. other cryptos will try different settings; and one of these will probably be far superior to the settings the divided bitcoin community set for itself.

Let them do it. Who cares?

And if it's acceptable, feasible and seems fitting for Bitcoin, then Bitcoin can incorporate it down the road. Bitcoin is not currently broken in spite the many loud mouth fudding about Bitcoin supposedly being broken.

i fear, this assumption was/is wrong.

What assumption?

You mean the assumption that bitcoin is going to be able to incorporate various competitive aspects of various alts down the road?


Even if bitcoin cannot incorporate all competitive aspects of various alts, so what?  Other alts can exist, and even take away some of bitcoin's market share... It doesn't really matter that much.  Bitcoin has it's own various advantages, and that continues to be it's level of computing power and security.  If some other coin becomes more competitive in that sense, then let it happen.. it is still a long way down the road and there are a lot of things that can happen.  Accordingly, currently, bitcoin is in a very good position and has a lot to offer (in spite of ongoing fud regarding the sky falling, supposedly).

[jbreher]

It would be helpful to acknowledge that Prohashing is a scrypt mining pool for altcoin mining. What a shocking statement coming from them    Let me know when Coinbase, bitpay or any other large merchant starts recommending an alt.

Point taken. But did they used to pay out in Bitcoin? If so, it is one valid data point.

Even in a great upheaval, the movement happens at the margins. Best stay alert.

They pay out in multiple alts . If their margins are so tight that they cannot afford an extra 3-4 pennies per tx ...

Your refusal to consider what they are saying seems myopic. They are not complaining about another 3-4 cents. They are complaining about unknowable transaction inclusion times.

... many clients are dumping a portion of these mined alts for btc anyways and it is less expensive to pay 4 pennies more than any exchange fee.

You seem to believe that the only route in and out of alts -- and all use cases of alts -- involve Bitcoin. I submit to you that this is likely to be false. Over time, should Bitcoin keep ostracizing more and more use cases, this presumed partial dependency is likely to become less and less.

[bargainbin]

Hope $430 holds... On a more positive note, consolidation ~$350 would be perfectly healthy & actually good for Bitcoin

[jbreher]

I would find it pretty amusing if all the hostile arseholes squabbling in Bitcoinland were abandoned completely by the people who really count - the users.

I wouldn't. I'm somewhat invested in Bitcoin.

How do we know something like LTC or any other alt can handle the pressure?

We don't. What we do know is that there are scads of alts that are hungry for any portion of Bitcoin's current market share, and are likely to implement anything seen as a competitive advantage.

The same old shit would pop up wherever the heat was pointed.

I personally don't believe that upping the block size by some low integer value is going to be problematic. As long as max block size stays behind the rate of Moore's Postulate, this should cause no issues. If it does get ahead, I trust miners to not fuck up the system.

There should've been more vision when Bitcoin was still under the radar. All this crap is firefighting when it should have been set up to cruise into the future by this point.

This discussion has been going on for years. Core's obstinance to not address it in time for the intercept of:
    a) the max block size over time curve; and
    b) the actual block size over time curve,
demonstrates a failure of leadership.

[AlexGR]

One good thing though: there seems to be remarkably few empty blocks in the last hours.

Antpool was getting a nice ribbing today for mining empty blocks because they don't want to pause their miners for a few seconds. Perhaps they stopped , but comments on twitter suggested they will continue this practice most have avoided lately regardless of it limiting the capacity of the network. Somewhat hypocritical being they are one of the more sympathetic large pools to classic besides slush.... but as Satoshi envisioned, we should be fine with security even if miners are selfishly competing for their own self interest and care little about the ecosystem.  

Is this what the dreaded "fee market event" or "blockopolapse" is supposed to look like? My txs are immediately confirming on the next block with 4-6 pennies more than the average last week? Any more predictions for the end of the world?

Last week it was at 40-50 satoshi/byte, now it's at 60 satoshi/byte (actually the 51-60 range has 0 wait), so it's unikely you are paying 4-6 pennies more (unless your wallet is overpaying). More like 0-2.

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/

the last month in words: exponential fee rise in bitcoin vs exponential price rise in ethereum. which one do you prefer!?

Spammers don't pay exponentially higher. They are using the leftover free space, that's why fees don't go up in any serious degree.

As for ethereum it has more serious issues in terms of scaling than bitcoin.

[BitUsher]

Your refusal to consider what they are saying seems myopic. They are not complaining about another 3-4 cents. They are complaining about unknowable transaction inclusion times.

If they used a modern wallet that calculated the dynamic fees than they wouldn't need to worry. I can use a normal priority setting with bitcoin core and get within the next block every time, no concerns(even with this probable spam attack).

You seem to believe that the only route in and out of alts -- and all use cases of alts -- involve Bitcoin. I submit to you that this is likely to be false. Over time, should Bitcoin keep ostracizing more and more use cases, this presumed partial dependency is likely to become less and less.

You seem to be under the impression that I'm a bitcoin Maximalist, which isn't the case. I have been quit clear my objections to Ethereum(and it has little to do with bitcoins network effect) and would be perfectly happy giving up bitcoin for a better suited alt if the need arose.

[podyx]

Etherum taking over? What the fuck is this shillcoin even doing at a marketcap of $600mill

[jbreher]

Lol... The last 4 LTC blocks (the equivalent of 1 BTC block), LTC had 4-2-3-6 txs, of which 4 are the block rewards (so actual txs = 11).

Last BTC block had over 2000 txs. It's averaging between 2k and 3k txs per block (last 6: 2165/3079/2496/2300/2782/3012).

Why the lol? No... really.

Are you trying to make the case that the only reason LTC has only processed 11 transactions in that time is because they are limited to that number? Would that be by design or by flaw?

Point is, while Bitcoin has captured a paltry $6B market cap (as compared to global monetary base), pointing your finger at another even smaller entity (~2.4%) and laughing makes you look the petty bully.

[AlexGR]

Your refusal to consider what they are saying seems myopic. They are not complaining about another 3-4 cents. They are complaining about unknowable transaction inclusion times.

Transaction inclusion can never be a given. You could hit 2 miners mining empty blocks because that's what they want to do - even if you pay 5$ in fees.

Transaction confirmation time can also never be a given, because the 10 minutes are an average. A block could be delayed 2 hours or you could have 5 blocks found in 20 minutes, due to variance..

That's the nature of bitcoin.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Etherum taking over? What the fuck is this shillcoin even doing at a marketcap of $600mill

Give it a few months. Should be funny to see the inevitable avalanche of a dump.

[BitUsher]

Etherum taking over? What the fuck is this shillcoin even doing at a marketcap of $600mill

Exactly , I am being generous to even entertain hypothetical practical future usage cases of ethereum and have yet to hear someone mention one example. Seems like many speculators are gambling with their btc for a chance that MSFT or IBM starts buying ethereum... little do they know if these corporations ever do start seriously using ethereum it will be on their own fork.

Embrace , Extend, Extinguish.

How soon they forget. MSFT buying into a sell wall of greedy 16 year olds or selling their own fork which has a much higher level of trust and brand recognition than Vitaliks org?

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[AlexGR]

Lol... The last 4 LTC blocks (the equivalent of 1 BTC block), LTC had 4-2-3-6 txs, of which 4 are the block rewards (so actual txs = 11).

Last BTC block had over 2000 txs. It's averaging between 2k and 3k txs per block (last 6: 2165/3079/2496/2300/2782/3012).

Why the lol? No... really.

Are you trying to make the case that the only reason LTC has only processed 11 transactions in that time is because they are limited to that number? Would that be by design or by flaw?

Huh? I'm not making that case at all. It's well known LTC has 4x capacity (1mb blocks 4x more frequently) than BTC yet the market is not using it.

[bargainbin]

Your refusal to consider what they are saying seems myopic. They are not complaining about another 3-4 cents. They are complaining about unknowable transaction inclusion times.

Transaction inclusion can never be a given. You could hit 2 miners mining empty blocks because that's what they want to do - even if you pay 5$ in fees.

Transaction confirmation time can also never be a given, because the 10 minutes are an average. A block could be delayed 2 hours or you could have 5 blocks found in 20 minutes, due to variance..

That's the nature of bitcoin.

That's the best thing about Bitcoin -- not like legacy finance, NOT BORING.
  
  "Bitcoin's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." --brainyquote.com

[jbreher]

Your refusal to consider what they are saying seems myopic. They are not complaining about another 3-4 cents. They are complaining about unknowable transaction inclusion times.

If they used a modern wallet that calculated the dynamic fees than they wouldn't need to worry. I can use a normal priority setting with bitcoin core and get within the next block every time, no concerns(even with this probable spam attack).

That hardly seems like a solution that would work for large commercial purposes. Do you envision some poor lonely character toiling 24 hours a day, looking up an entry in an accounts payable database, checking some source for the proper transaction fee at that instant, and then handcrafting a transaction, keyed by hand, into some generic wallet?

I mean it might work for a small operation, but does not work at scale. Yes, they could craft a SW solution of their own to do this. Yet if they rely on some central fee/byte trend tracker, that's one more nexus of trustful behavior.

And again, you are ignoring what they have said. Whether or not true, it is certainly plausible that they have abandoned bitcoin for this part of their operations for exactly this reason.

You seem to believe that the only route in and out of alts -- and all use cases of alts -- involve Bitcoin. I submit to you that this is likely to be false. Over time, should Bitcoin keep ostracizing more and more use cases, this presumed partial dependency is likely to become less and less.

You seem to be under the impression that I'm a bitcoin Maximalist, which isn't the case. I have been quit clear my objections to Ethereum(and it has little to do with bitcoins network effect) and would be perfectly happy giving up bitcoin for a better suited alt if the need arose.

I was making no value judjement about you being a Bitcoin maximalist (whatever that is) - my counter stands on its own. Allow me to restore your quote that you later snipped:

... many clients are dumping a portion of these mined alts for btc anyways and it is less expensive to pay 4 pennies more than any exchange fee.

Were you not trying to imply that the larger transaction fee was less than the amount lost in converting from alt to bitcoin for the purpose of cashing out? 'Cause that's certainly what it looks like.

[jbreher]

Your refusal to consider what they are saying seems myopic. They are not complaining about another 3-4 cents. They are complaining about unknowable transaction inclusion times.

Transaction inclusion can never be a given. You could hit 2 miners mining empty blocks because that's what they want to do - even if you pay 5$ in fees.

Transaction confirmation time can also never be a given, because the 10 minutes are an average. A block could be delayed 2 hours or you could have 5 blocks found in 20 minutes, due to variance..

That's the nature of bitcoin.

You insult my intelligence. Intentionally? Or is that all the ammo you have?

The amount of determinism in a usually-full-block scenario is vastly reduced in comparison to the usually-room-in-blocks scenario. Period. You realize this, right?

[jbreher]

Lol... The last 4 LTC blocks (the equivalent of 1 BTC block), LTC had 4-2-3-6 txs, of which 4 are the block rewards (so actual txs = 11).

Last BTC block had over 2000 txs. It's averaging between 2k and 3k txs per block (last 6: 2165/3079/2496/2300/2782/3012).

Why the lol? No... really.

Are you trying to make the case that the only reason LTC has only processed 11 transactions in that time is because they are limited to that number? Would that be by design or by flaw?

...

Why the lol? No... really.

[AlexGR]

Lol... The last 4 LTC blocks (the equivalent of 1 BTC block), LTC had 4-2-3-6 txs, of which 4 are the block rewards (so actual txs = 11).

Last BTC block had over 2000 txs. It's averaging between 2k and 3k txs per block (last 6: 2165/3079/2496/2300/2782/3012).

Why the lol? No... really.

Are you trying to make the case that the only reason LTC has only processed 11 transactions in that time is because they are limited to that number? Would that be by design or by flaw?

...

Why the lol? No... really.

What do you want me to say for a "business" that doesn't want to pay a few cents and says "Altcoins are now cheaper to use than bitcoin."... like it was ever the opposite.

[Alley]

How many tx per day is ETH doing?

[BitUsher]

That hardly seems like a solution that would work for large commercial purposes. Do you envision some poor lonely character toiling 24 hours a day, looking up an entry in an accounts payable database, checking some source for the proper transaction fee at that instant, and then handcrafting a transaction, keyed by hand, into some generic wallet?

You need to catch up with the pull requests. Modern wallets dynamically adjust fees without users needing to look them up. These are old features. What wallet do you use?

Were you not trying to imply that the larger transaction fee was less than the amount lost in converting from alt to bitcoin for the purpose of cashing out? 'Cause that's certainly what it looks like.

It is simply a fact that many miners sell a percentage of their mined Alts for BTC and it usually is less expensive to pay the 4  pennies difference than exchange fees. My statement doesn't assume this will always be the case and me mentioning it was merely to reflect that if the company was trying to best serve their clients current needs they would simply tack on the extra btc fee instead of making a political statement motivated because they are likely a large altcoin bagholder.