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

[BitUsher]

And yet you see Blockstreams influence over Bitcoin as entirely benign?  I cannot fathom how you maintain such a balanced one-dimensional view.

Who suggested that? I have a healthy amount of skepticism for everyone , including them. The fact that I keep repeating we should have multiple implementations working with coopertition should give you a hint, but no , they aren't the Illuminati or lizard people plotting to destroy bitcoin.

  I am not buying any ethereum at the moment, but I may consider buying if they reach a sustainable market cap over a billion for 6 months or more or they become better linked in terms of liquidity and ways to get in and out...

Ethereum has no future. Please investigate into the details before buying any.

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

[blockstream], they aren't the Illuminati or lizard people plotting to destroy bitcoin.

But you are suggesting that very thing to explain Microsofts interest in Ethereum?

Do you think that maybe there is a possibility this isnt their intention?

[JayJuanGee]

And yet you see Blockstreams influence over Bitcoin as entirely benign?  I cannot fathom how you maintain such a balanced one-dimensional view.

Who suggested that? I have a healthy amount of skepticism for everyone , including them. The fact that I keep repeating we should have multiple implementations working with coopertition should give you a hint, but no , they aren't the Illuminati or lizard people plotting to destroy bitcoin.

  I am not buying any ethereum at the moment, but I may consider buying if they reach a sustainable market cap over a billion for 6 months or more or they become better linked in terms of liquidity and ways to get in and out...

Ethereum has no future. Please investigate into the details before buying any.

Hahahahaha... Thanks for your further clarification, and I will also further clarify that I really have no intention to buy any ethereum, but I mentioned some conditions that may cause me to consider the matter of whether to buy Ethereum which I doubt that Ethereum will be come close to even being able to meet some of my various other unstated conditions anytime in the near future, which like you suggested is either passing the smell test or giving some sense that there could arguably be some kind of monetizeable future that would allow it to keep anywhere near it's marketcap value...

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[BitUsher]

[blockstream], they aren't the Illuminati or lizard people plotting to destroy bitcoin.

But you are suggesting that very thing to explain Microsofts interest in Ethereum?

Do you think that maybe there is a possibility this isnt their intention?

Goodness gracious , does it really need to be explained?
No, MSFT isn't evil, they aren't the  Illuminati or lizard people bent on destroying Vitalik. They are simply a for profit corporation. I am judging their behavior based upon a very long history of past behavior. Yes, there is a small chance MSFT will simply buy ETH from Vitalik and the other 16 year old investors at grossly exaggerated prices... a 0.0000001% chance , sure ... but doing so would be irrational and against their interests. The most I could see them doing is, possibly forking the ethereum chain adding their own patents to it, and possibly poaching a few devs  away from ethereum.

Embrace , Extend, Extinguish.

It is their usual policy. It isn't evil, but smart and cutthroat. I am not attacking them, just waking up some naive investors into the likely outcome. If Ethereum is to succeed they need to expect to compete with MSFT eventually. If Bitcoin is to succeed , it will have to compete with at least some fiat currencies. (unlikely to dominate over fiat ever or anytime soon )

Blockstream also is a profit motivated company. The employees have set up the corporation differently however to insure their motivations are aligned with Bitcoin by locking up their large holdings of BTC. This doesn't mean that their vision or plans are necessarily correct.(I believe they do have a better roadmap, but time will tell) . This also doesn't mean they aren't also motivated to make tons of profit from selling consulting services and other sidechain products. We should be on guard with this and support many implementations (Bitcore, libbitcoin, ect...) and be very careful there are multiple payment channel solutions that are open source and equally accessible to all users. This means Bitpay needs to immediately finish developing "impulse" channel and WTF is coinbase doing without at least investigating a payment channel solution, and sitting by allowing people to steal from them with their weak 0 conf algo's that are easily defeatable.

[Morecoin Freeman]

Anyone else thinking that we will see some serious price action on the exchanges within 48 hours?
It has been quiet for too long...

[2015Bubble]

I'm getting tired as fuck of this slowpoke action.
DUMP OR PUMP PLEASE IDC!!

[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.

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.

Laughing about a business seeking to optimize the value of the expenditures it makes brands you as someone unknowledgeable about how to run a business. That's all.

[jbreher]

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.

Again, you miss the point. An entity that regularly needs to make hundreds of transactions is not likely to be entering each one by hand into some off-the-shelf wallet. The fact that some make fee suggestions (some wildly off the mark, by recent reports) is irrelevant.

What wallet do you use?

Several. Mostly Armory, Electrum, Satoshi, and Schildbach. Though I don't see how this is relevant - I'm not in the high-volume-transaction business.

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.

I find your assertion that you know what is best for some other entity's customers mildly interesting. The road to centralization is paved with 'better for them' intentions.

[hdbuck]

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.

Laughing about a business seeking to optimize the value of the expenditures it makes brands you as someone unknowledgeable about how to run a business. That's all.

bitcoin (and altcoin) are way too volatile to ever be of any direct utility for commerce.

but whatever, keep the crytopiate fucking up your brain.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Anyone else thinking that we will see some serious price action on the exchanges within 48 hours?
It has been quiet for too long...

i'd like to think so but can't see it happening.

There seems to be some powerful, organised resistance that caps all rallies off to $5-10, then coordinated dumps to extinguish any momo. Net effect a huge lid on any action.

[jbreher]

How many tx per day is ETH doing?

Around 20k per day. bitcoin is averaging 264k now.

antpool still mining 0 tx blocks. If they were so concerned with the tx capacity you would think they would pause their miners for a few seconds every now and than.

https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000025b366b6254a7d89c61658502b346bfc7e91cecebd96df8

About a minute after the previous block. How long did it take to arrive? We don't know. Perhaps a few seconds before they scored their block (lucky them)? Would you expect them to just not mine in the time it takes them to build a new block that excludes all transactions in the previous?

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[marcus_of_augustus]

Looks like the anomalous transaction increase that prompted the timely March 1 chaos might have subsided. I predict that in keeping with the problem-crisis-solution spook playbook we will soon see a blog post or tweet or similar controversial statement from Gavin (big block solution now super-duper urgent) with his smiling face promptly upvoted to the top of the front page on r/Bitcoin ... a  silent "beautiful settlement network you got there, be a shame to lose it ..."

[Cconvert2G36]

-snip-

Embrace , Extend, Extinguish.

It is their usual policy. It isn't evil, but smart and cutthroat. I am not attacking them, just waking up some naive investors into the likely outcome. If Ethereum is to succeed they need to expect to compete with MSFT eventually. If Bitcoin is to succeed , it will have to compete with at least some fiat currencies. (unlikely to dominate over fiat ever or anytime soon )

Blockstream also is a profit motivated company. The employees have set up the corporation differently however to insure their motivations are aligned with Bitcoin by locking up their large holdings of BTC. This doesn't mean that their vision or plans are necessarily correct.(I believe they do have a better roadmap, but time will tell) . This also doesn't mean they aren't also motivated to make tons of profit from selling consulting services and other sidechain products. We should be on guard with this and support many implementations (Bitcore, libbitcoin, ect...) and be very careful there are multiple payment channel solutions that are open source and equally accessible to all users. This means Bitpay needs to immediately finish developing "impulse" channel and WTF is coinbase doing without at least investigating a payment channel solution, and sitting by allowing people to steal from them with their weak 0 conf algo's that are easily defeatable.

Embrace , Extend, Ensnare, Enrich.

I hear this bandied about, mainly by themselves, but now by their defenders. Do you have any specific information about the "locking up their large holdings of BTC", part? I question whether it is sufficient to ensure that their incentives align with the success of BTC, the token and native network, vs Blockstream, the Corporation.

Blockstream is a for profit corporation, now with $76MM of outside equity in the company. I will eat my shoe if their "time locked BTC compensation" is one twentieth of the amount of stock equity the founders now possess. Assuming this… I'm not convinced, at all, that they would refuse to hamper the utility of transacting on-chain in order to economically favor the solutions they are working hard to provide. Years ago, a bearish gmax famously claimed that Bitcoin was fundamentally broken, Adam Back ignored it until the bubble of 2013 (familiar?), I believe this is their effort to fix it. In that sense, I don't think they are being totally dishonest about their intentions or motivations, getting filthy rich is not their main goal, just a happy side effect of "fixing" a "broken" Bitcoin.

You mention side chains, and consulting, but you omit the possibility of them operating large, well funded, and highly connected lightning hubs, why? Simply because it will be open source and Joe Blow will have a fancy hub? Both of the changes they are pushing hard lately, Replace-By-Fee and Segregated Witness, are mandatory for these products to function. SW as currently designed gives signature heavy settlement transactions a 75% fee discount. Directly changing the economics of the system with hardly a debate about it… (the discount specifically).

Less listening and swallowing what they say... more watching what they do (and don't in the case of on-chain capacity) pls.

* Cconvert2G36 adjusts green beret for marcus

[BitUsher]

About a minute after the previous block. How long did it take to arrive? We don't know. Perhaps a few seconds before they scored their block (lucky them)? Would you expect them to just not mine in the time it takes them to build a new block that excludes all transactions in the previous?

I see 2 pools doing this, Antpool and BTCC. There are various reasons you don't see other pools doing this but that is besides the point. I don't expect them to do anything that isn't within their selfish interest... but you damn sure I will criticize them when they mine tx less blocks routinely when others aren't and than at the same time criticize core for stalling on increasing capacity.

Again, you miss the point. An entity that regularly needs to make hundreds of transactions is not likely to be entering each one by hand into some off-the-shelf wallet. The fact that some make fee suggestions (some wildly off the mark, by recent reports) is irrelevant.

Who said anything about manually sending out tx's?
You understand there are off the shelf API's to ascertain the appropriate fee in an automated manner, right?

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Whoever said ETH doesn't have a future clearly hasn't been to the magical land of Etheria.

[BitUsher]

Less listening and swallowing what they say... more watching what they do (and don't in the case of on-chain capacity) pls.

My advice applies if they have ill intentions or not. We need to have a healthy amount of skepticism for coinbase/Bitpay's motivation, Garzik's Bloq, and Blockstream. One has to assume that any one of these groups can either unintentionally or intentionally cause harm to our ecosystem. The appropriate solution is to support the development of alternative implementations with separate teams of developers who aren't trying to attack the network with a contentious hardfork, and to support many payment channels developed and maintained by various organizations with a sense of coopertition. Wasting your time mudslinging or creating conspiracy theories won't get us anywhere.... assume the worst outcome is possible from blockstream , but not just them , but all of the other companies and organizations in our ecosystem and prepare and guard against these concerns.

What one shouldn't entertain is the fanciful and delusional notion that Bitcoin can scale without it becoming a settlement network. Just do the math and even If I grant you the best possible numbers you will realize that scaling completely on the chain is impossible and will leave bitcoin stunted and centralized.

Whoever said ETH doesn't have a future clearly hasn't been to the magical land of Etheria.

Ohh , don't get me wrong, There will indeed be many Dapps, they won't scale and are merely curious gimmicks. The people who disagree are caught up in some silly notion that blockchains are efficient (the opposite is true, it is an extremely ineffecient database) or that there is any need for scripts to use blockchains to run their code rather than just interact with bitcoin for a secure immutable ledger or settlement network.

If you disagree , than please explain to me how Etheria offers anything superior to simply downloading a game and networking with peers.

Edit --Gotcha ,  didn't pick up on the sarcasm because there are many Ethereum fanbois who think their dapps are innovative, but its still good that people consider the above before investing in Eth. Eth is a solution chasing a problem that doesn't exist and an act of supererogation that will grow into a monstrously inefficient database.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

I tend to be pretty sarcastic. 
Maybe the decentralized alarm clock would have been more obvious.

[bargainbin]

...
What one shouldn't entertain is the fanciful and delusional notion that Bitcoin can scale without it becoming a settlement network. ...

And to think I bought into that whole Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System load of crap... O well, settlement layer for prepaid gift card Lightning Network it is then.

Thanks for settin' me straight, BitUsher

>Eth is a solution chasing a problem that doesn't exist
*Bitcoin
You keep misspelling it.