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

[BitUsher]

the thing is high fee hurt bitcoin IMAGE.
thats the biggest down side

as an investor i find this blocksize debate unacceptable when the cure is so simple.

Agreed that high fees hurt bitcoins image, but you have to keep in mind there are many people attracted to bitcoin for other reasons. Node and mining centralization hurts bitcoins image even more and the LN is intended to reverse that node centralization trend and including another real problem like the insecurity of 0 conf payments which can hurt bitcoins image far more than paying a couple pennies more per tx... the sad reality is that 0 conf payments have never been secure and will never be secure. What core devs fear more isn't the problems with raising the blocksize to 2MB in itself but the precedence it sets that we can continue to kick that can and put of development on real solutions that solve multiple problems in bitcoin. This is why the 2MB HF is pushed out till next year to make sure that we can deploy the LN and other payment channels which should have been used from years ago.

It is embarrassing that payment processors aren't pushing payment channels more when it will cut down on their fraud. At least bitpay has worked a bit on impulse with Garzik when he worked there and Stephen Pair now acknowledges Core's and others concerns -
https://medium.com/@spair/what-i-learned-at-the-satoshi-roundtable-7f6ff19ac6c3#.i10adcvqa

But Brian still is hopelessly confused.

[Adrian-x]

The bloat cost creates

1) storage costs
2) bandwidth costs (as this 1gb or 10gb or 100gb must be downloaded and served over and over in the network - for decades)
3) processing costs / power costs (for decades)
4) I/O slowdowns (if the blockchain can't fit anymore in an affordable SSD you'll have to rely on a mechanical disk which is slow)
5) centralization cost as nodes have to drop out, increasing costs to the fewer nodes that remain. It's a vicious cycle where the less you have, the more the costs, plus you now become an easier target for DDOSing (more costs)

As for the problems that we may need to worry, these are what exactly? That txs without a few cents in fees won't go in in the next block? That's all there is to it.

1) storage costs are insignificant. ($300 = 6TB)

2) a legitimate constraint. (I say the market should find a balance.) FYI SegWit increases network tragic for less transactions it has positive effect of reducing the insignificant storage cost at the expense of using more of the valuable bandwidth cost.  

3) the processing cost is not a energy cost but a lost opportunity cost, time is money. (SegWit here increases this too)

4) this is such a far off concern it's not worth contemplating, already future storage technologies are coming on line daily and will be commercially available well before we expect the blockchan to hit 1TB.

5) such nonsense, nodes don't drop out because of the cost of storing the blockchanin or the cost of an internet connection, making it cheeper is not going to increase the demand to run a node. The demand to run a node is a result of wanting or needing to use and interact with the blockchain directly, running a node gives you security that your version of events is consistent with the economic world in which you interact, nodes will increase as a function of market capitalization and wealth distribution.  

Thinking the scaling issues are about transaction fees of a few cents is asinine, it's about letting bitcoin grow organically. We are all paying $5-10.00 in subsidized transaction fees anyway, we need allow economies of scale to grow to replace those subsidies.

limiting block size to what we have today with no increase in total market cap = fees/tx will need to gravitate to the $5-10 per transaction to keep the security we have today.
 

[JayJuanGee]

O.k... take for example, when a few months ago, he said that Coinbase was going to support Classic XT etc...

FTFU - Coinbase said they were going to test XT...

Ok. thanks.. I was kind of shooting off the cuff.. by memory... but what you say sounds exactly correct... and much more accurate than what I said.. but my point, in part, was that Armstrong has been increasing and increasing and increasing his involvement in the debate, rather than merely making statements regarding what his company was going to do.. he is currently seeming to be involved in an ongoing battle of persuasion to convince a lot others what they should do, too... which for me is beginning to come off as a bit much and causing me desires to remove some of my dinero from their system.

[adamstgBit]

should we wait for segwit + LN  + other improvement to scale bitcoin? SURE in a perfect world that would be gr8. but blocks are full NOW, and everyone going apeshit about it.

shareholders are getting fucked-up by Core's o'mighty principals and we all know it.

as selfish as it is, my networth has and continues to suffer gr8ly over all this BS, and i'm sick of it...

[AlexGR]

Right now, we cannot have blocksizes that can do VISA-level txs

This is said a lot, but it's actually not a problem that bitcoin has, it's a problem we all want to have and no one has a viable plan as to how to make that problem a reality - despite that disconnect we all conceive that it's remotely possible.

It can be made a reality pretty easily if we co-locate the miners and nodes into a single data center - or a few data centers well interconnected with big fat lines, in a way that even 1gb blocks at 3000tx/sec would not be an issue. But then you don't really have a peer to peer bitcoin. You have a (centralized) client/server one with plenty of attack vectors, including physical raids.

The problem bitcoin has is the block size is temporarily limited by the consensus system that's meant to prevent double spending, when in fact block size should be constrained by available technology. The Limit is temporary as Bitcoin wasn't initially conserved with the limit, and when it was added it was proposed that the limit would be increased at a point in time, first projected to be around March 2011.  

Actually satoshi said we can raise it when we are closer to needing it. That was just an example.

Bitcoin may not have a scalability problem at all. The scalability issue is based on a linear projection and a prediction that if we got VISA-level txs today we'd have a problem.

With everyday technology, current software and p2p topology of nodes all over the world, it has a scalability issue, yes.

If you centralize it, it stops having the problem. If you wait for technology to evolve, so that it can also allow bitcoin to work in a decentralized way, you can get a scalable AND decentralized bitcoin.

[BitUsher]

1) storage costs are insignificant. ($300 = 6TB)

2) a legitimate constraint. (I say the market should find a balance.) FYI SegWit increases network tragic for less transactions it has positive effect of reducing the insignificant storage cost at the expense of using more of the valuable bandwidth cost.  

3) the processing cost is not a energy cost but a lost opportunity cost, time is money. (SegWit here increases this too)
 

Are you pricing things in VPN hosting rental numbers , because many cannot and will not be able to run nodes from their home because of bandwidth limits and softcaps. The ISP's have oversold their bandwidth and with everyone torrenting and streaming HD the demand for bandwidth is higher than the supply.

Thinking the scaling issues are about transaction fees of a few cents is asinine, it's about letting bitcoin grow organically. We are all paying $5-10.00 in subsidized transaction fees anyway, we need allow economies of scale to grow to replace those subsidies.

limiting block size to what we have today with no increase in total market cap = fees/tx will need to gravitate to the $5-10 per transaction to keep the security we have today.
 

Yes, I agree that we need 5-10 USD of security per tx if not higher. Do you agree that the only way to scale is by having the mainchain be a settlement network? Have you done the math on 128MB blocks + thin/weak blocks vs 8MB blocks + LN + thin/weak blocks?

There really isn't a comparison between the two. One can scale and the other one lacks throughput and is centralized.

[AlexGR]

the thing is high fees hurting bitcoin IMAGE.
thats the biggest down side

There are no high fees in bitcoin.

[adamstgBit]

the thing is high fees hurting bitcoin IMAGE.
thats the biggest down side

There are no high fees in bitcoin.

fine then,

 the endless debate with 0 progress for years is hurting bitcoin image

better?

the simple fact that the video "what is bitcoin" where it says "no fee", which now needs to be changed to "only ~5cent fees"
is a huge setback.

[JayJuanGee]

you pretty much prove my points with your nonsensical continued attempts at ad hominem and your not even attempting to engage with respects to substance.

Just because you fail to grasp the nuanced complexity of the claim you seem to be attempting to attempt to attribute to me, a claim that I am neither attempting to make, nor have attempted to make in the past (or am in the process of currently making), don't mean my unclaimed claim ain't chock full of sense. Oodles of sense.

And if I hear ad hominem from you one more time, homie, I'll be forced to go ad baculum on your ass

You are making a point to attempt to distract and to make fun of others.  What kind of other substance is there within your stupid-ass post?  Seemingly, none, and such assessment is not my lacking in reading and/or comprehension skills as you would like to suggest..

Even though I invited you to attempt to engage in substance, you are not even trying. For example, you probably won't even answer any question regarding whether you own any bitcoin? or what kind of involvement in bitcoin you have because your apparent purpose is to provide garbage an non-sensical posts in an attempt to distract from our lovely (mostly intended to be wall observer speculation) thread, even though in recent months this thread seems to have denigrated into a largely block size debate thread... yet hopefully at some point soon we will get past such dumb topic (when prices move into the $500s and the likely soon thereafter $600s)

[BitUsher]

should we wait for segwit + LN  + other improvement to scale bitcoin? SURE in a perfect world that would be gr8. but blocks are full NOW, and everyone going apeshit about it.

shareholders are getting fucked-up by Core's o'mighty principals and we all know it.

as selfish as it is, my networth has and continues to suffer gr8ly over all this BS, and i'm sick of it...

Blocks were full for 3 days and the only thing that happened is fees went for 3 pennies to 7 -10 pennies... during an attack..
It appears that the attack may have restarted after a couple days rest.
 
Are you suggesting you care more about short term profit rather than longterm health?

[ahpku]

...
Yes, I agree that we need 5-10 USD of security per tx if not higher. ...

"I understood at last the look in his eyes. He was insane."--Brainyquotes.com

>during an attack
Which cost less than what an average suburban bank branch spends on lollipops for the kiddies.
Such Antifragile!

[adamstgBit]

should we wait for segwit + LN  + other improvement to scale bitcoin? SURE in a perfect world that would be gr8. but blocks are full NOW, and everyone going apeshit about it.

shareholders are getting fucked-up by Core's o'mighty principals and we all know it.

as selfish as it is, my networth has and continues to suffer gr8ly over all this BS, and i'm sick of it...

Blocks were full for 3 days and the only thing that happened is fees went for 3 pennies to 7 -10 pennies... during an attack..
It appears that the attack may have restarted after a couple days rest.
 
Are you suggesting you care more about short term profit rather than longterm health?

your overstating the effect of a "bandaid solution" of raising the block limit sooner rather then later.


or do you blieve 1MB FOREVER =  longterm health??

[coins101]

...I don't agree on your timeline......

Here are a few reasons why you should:

> I can walk up to kiosk and wave my credit card or bank card and pay for anything under $30 in less than 3 seconds.

> I've got several credit cards and I haven't paid a penny for them or to use them for years.  But I still get all sorts of payment protection insurance and free replacement cards whenever I want.

> My cards are linked to my bank account. As long as I get paid, I don't have to do any extra work to use my cards that give me quick and easy access to as many cups of coffee as my brain can handle before getting completely wired.

If I use Bitcoin to pay for $3 of coffee and cake, first I need to do some extra work; then I incur exchange fees; and then I have to pre-pay for the LN; before I get charged a fee for a transaction I can get for free, with less cost and for less effort.

[adamstgBit]

FACT blocksize will increase
FACT core plans to do it
FACT the network could benefit from this increase today
FACT we are waiting a full year before we do it, because we have some unproven code that could MAY increase "effective blocksize" by 1.75x if Core can figure out why it's forking the crap out of the testnet.

FACT run to eth for short trem profits 

[BitUsher]

your overstating the effect of a "bandaid solution" of raising the block limit sooner rather then later.


or do you blieve 1MB FOREVER =  longterm health??

No, I want much larger blocks as I have stated multiple times.

The first idea is to make Bitcoin more scalable first by optimizing it because even at 1MB we are seeing problems.
The second idea is to get LN and payment channels in the wild to insure we don't continue to keep delaying these because we have enough capacity.

The fear from raising the blocksize as a temporary bandaid is that it will work and get people comfortable with HF's that simply bumps up the blocksize without developing payment channels. This isn't speculation ... look at Classics Road map -

https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/documentation/blob/master/roadmap/roadmap2016.md

There is absolutely no mention of payment channels but they suggest adopting dynamic blocksizes in 3rd Q this year which do not address any centralization concerns. Gavin has gone on record suggesting that no limits would be just fine for bitcoin and many classic supporters want everything on the chain. Kicking the can could lead us down the path where we don't treat bitcoin like a settlement layer... This would be disastrous!

If you don't think so do the math on 128MB blocks + thin/weak blocks vs 8MB blocks + LN + thin/weak blocks.

fine then,

 the endless debate with 0 progress for years is hurting bitcoin image

better?

I don't agree with this. With the difficulty in a political coup making changes to bitcoin it shows investors and outsiders how resilient bitcoin is from an attack and how raising the 21million limit will be next to impossible if going from 1-2 Mb limit on something far less controversial than changing the inflation rate would be.\

[Adrian-x]

O.k... take for example, when a few months ago, he said that Coinbase was going to support Classic XT etc...

FTFU - Coinbase said they were going to test XT...

Ok. thanks.. I was kind of shooting off the cuff.. by memory... but what you say sounds exactly correct... and much more accurate than what I said.. but my point, in part, was that Armstrong has been increasing and increasing and increasing his involvement in the debate, rather than merely making statements regarding what his company was going to do.. he is currently seeming to be involved in an ongoing battle of persuasion to convince a lot others what they should do, too... which for me is beginning to come off as a bit much and causing me desires to remove some of my dinero from their system.

Armstrong's is working in the best interests of his investors. His investors are invested in a decentralized control of Bitcoin where they can leverage there competitive advantage.

A lot of people are ignoring the centralized authoritative control over the direction bitcoin development is taking, but the fact remains as much as I dislike Coinbase there company's success is built on the success of the same Bitcoin I'm invested in.

Blockstream are working to change bitcoin in a way that will undermine Coinbase, it will undermine the Bitcoin I'm invested in. Should Bitcoin be optimized today as a settlement network their company vision and business model is dead in the water.  That in its self is not a reason to not optimist bitcoin to be a settlement network. I have a preference to see bitcoin evolve organically, I think its premature to limit the block size as a stimulus to catalyse bitcoin as a settlement network. I want to decentralize financial control and totally disrupt incumbent financial players.

I want as many people as is technically feasible to settle directly with each other on the blockchain, that doesn't mean I don't want to see LN, or off chane networks, it just means I want LN or Coinbase to succeed or fail on there own merits I don't want to see anyone controlling the development direction in bitcoin to favor one or the other business models. 

   

[ZyclonRacerX]

...I don't agree on your timeline......

Here are a few reasons why you should:

> I can walk up to kiosk and wave my credit card or bank card and pay for anything under $30 in less than 3 seconds.

> I've got several credit cards and I haven't paid a penny for them or to use them for years.  But I still get all sorts of payment protection insurance and free replacement cards whenever I want.

> My cards are linked to my bank account. As long as I get paid, I don't have to do any extra work to use my cards that give me quick and easy access to as many cups of coffee as my brain can handle before getting completely wired.

If I use Bitcoin to pay for $3 of coffee and cake, first I need to do some extra work; then I incur exchange fees; and then I have to pre-pay for the LN; before I get charged a fee for a transaction I can get for free, with less cost and for less effort.

That. Also boldface bit that LN fans don't mention for some reason..

[JayJuanGee]

FACT blocksize will increase
FACT core plans to do it
FACT the network could benefit from this increase today
FACT we are waiting a full year before we do it, because we have some unproven code that could MAY increase "effective blocksize" by 1.75x if Core can figure out why it's forking the crap out of the testnet.

FACT run to eth for short trem profits 

I think that I understand that you are engaging in a bit of hyperbole, here, yet?   I really wonder about ETH versus BTC today? 

I own zero ETH, and I own quite a bit of BTC..... but for some reason, I feel very close to zero inclination to convert even .0001BTC to ETH... Maybe it is just me?  Good luck everyone, but I feel pretty good in my BTC at the moment especially compared with the current status of ETH.  On the other hand, if I owned a little bit of ETH, I probably would be inclined to convert it to BTC, but that inclination is probably merely a bit of a personal bias that I am experiencing at the moment.   

[Adrian-x]

It can be made a reality pretty easily if we co-locate the miners and nodes into a single data center - or a few data centers well interconnected with big fat lines, in a way that even 1gb blocks at 3000tx/sec would not be an issue. But then you don't really have a peer to peer bitcoin. You have a (centralized) client/server one with plenty of attack vectors, including physical raids.

No I don't see it, were do you get customers to make this vision a reality, if you think it's pretty easily JUST DO IT?

[BitUsher]

I think that I understand that you are engaging in a bit of hyperbole, here, yet?   I really wonder about ETH versus BTC today?  

I own zero ETH, and I own quite a bit of BTC..... but for some reason, I feel very close to zero inclination to convert even .0001BTC to ETH... Maybe it is just me?  Good luck everyone, but I feel pretty good in my BTC at the moment especially compared with the current status of ETH.  On the other hand, if I owned a little bit of ETH, I probably would be inclined to convert it to BTC, but that inclination is probably merely a bit of a personal bias that I am experiencing at the moment.  

If they are serious about buying Eth as a potential fear their values aren't aligned with bitcoin and they really cannot see how technically Eth is ridiculous. Once Eth switches to PoS there will be a strong incentive to fork Ethereum as a sidechain on bitcoin where all bitcoin holders are rewarded free æthereum to run their DAPPs. Of course there is still the problem of finding a DAPP that makes business sense but at least geeks will have their toys and be able to make atomic transfers between BTC and  æthereum and never need to buy any fuel whatsoever .

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563925.0

There already exist multiple ethereum forks with much cheaper "fuel" that can run the exact same DAPPs... but at least ethereum has slightly better PoW security than the alternative forks... Vitalik is doing away with that advantage soon so get ready for free fuel to all bitcoin users!