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

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[Fatman3001]

This is it.

That's disappointing. No boat for me then.

[AlexGR]

Suppose a bus company starts running a service in 2010. At first, you'd only see one or two people in the bus. As the bus service becomes more known, more people travel on the bus. Nowadays, busses are often completely occupied. It's common that people are left at the bus stops having to wait for the next one, esp. if they bought the cheapest tickets.

The difference between buses and blockchains is that buses can only take onboard real passengers, not ...fake ones.

Blockchains can be burdened with millions of transactions just because one guy, that didn't even want to make one legitimate transaction, wants to have fun.

I can imagine that a flood of tx without fee can be considered spam. But nowadays, only mining pools use zero fee tx to payout their miners. There are hardly any zero fee tx issued otherwise. (800 in the past 24 hours, source: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ ) But if a tx carries a fee, how to decide if it's spam or not? What is your definition of spam?

Someone "pays" for 1mb of spam with 1 satoshi per byte. Thus for occupying 1mb of space, he only needs 1 million satoshi = 0.01 btc = 4.2$.

He can actually occupy the entire's day blockspace of 144mb by "paying" 604.8$.

Even at 2mb, he can buy a block at 8$ and a day's worth of blocks at 1200$.

Does this mean that he is not a spammer because he "paid" a ridiculously low amount of money?

Fact: the number if tx per day is close to the limit of 250,000. We recently touched that twice. (sources: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=2year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= , http://www.coindesk.com/data/bitcoin-daily-transactions/ )

We crossed the 20,000 tx/day in June 2012
We crossed the 50,000 tx/day in August 2013
We crossed the 100,000 tx/day in March 2015
We crossed the 200,000 tx/day in January 2016

And the hard limit is a little over 250,000...

So, do you think 250,000 tx/day is sufficient for Bitcoin to be successful? Do you think 400,000 tx/day is sufficient by the end of this year, when SW is rolled out and most other software is updated to take advantage of it? Do you think 400,000 tx/day will be enough until LN comes into existence?

Compare these:

Number of transactions: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

vs

Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 10: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-10
Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 100: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-100
Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 1000: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-1000
Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 10,000: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-10000

(long chains = moving money to next address => to next address => to next address => to next address => ...)

[Fatman3001]

Russia is getting tougher on cryptos:
http://www.coindesk.com/report-russia-to-propose-7-year-prison-sentences-for-digital-currency-issuers/

I wonder how long it will take before the russians get their act together and boot out the siloviki. It's painful to watch when otherwise clever people support this kind of evil.

[gentlemand]

The Russian soul has been custom designed to suffer through the tolerance of totalitarian arseholes. It's a very special skill and I applaud them.

[spooderman]

Sell over $420, buy under $420

At least until any major developments occur.

and you know what to do when it's at 420

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[fravia]

Coin



Explanation

the price seems to be climbing at a very slow pace but its still better than nothing i guess, i hope it wont stop right now

im slowly but surely making profit out of that, it would be ideal if the price would go all the time till halving event as we would reach some high numbers

[molecular]

and maybe even if there are ways to show charts that separate spam and legit transactions 

I can imagine that a flood of tx without fee can be considered spam. But nowadays, only mining pools use zero fee tx to payout their miners. There are hardly any zero fee tx issued otherwise. (800 in the past 24 hours, source: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ ) But if a tx carries a fee, how to decide if it's spam or not?

What is your definition of spam?

Don't you get it? Anything > 1 MB is spam.

[Andre#]

Suppose a bus company starts running a service in 2010. At first, you'd only see one or two people in the bus. As the bus service becomes more known, more people travel on the bus. Nowadays, busses are often completely occupied. It's common that people are left at the bus stops having to wait for the next one, esp. if they bought the cheapest tickets.

The difference between buses and blockchains is that buses can only take onboard real passengers, not ...fake ones.

Blockchains can be burdened with millions of transactions just because one guy, that didn't even want to make one legitimate transactions, wants to have fun.

I can imagine that a flood of tx without fee can be considered spam. But nowadays, only mining pools use zero fee tx to payout their miners. There are hardly any zero fee tx issued otherwise. (800 in the past 24 hours, source: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ ) But if a tx carries a fee, how to decide if it's spam or not? What is your definition of spam?

Someone "pays" for 1mb of spam with 1 satoshi per byte. Thus for occupying 1mb of space, he only needs 1 million satoshi = 0.01 btc = 4.2$.

He can actually occupy the entire's day blockspace of 144mb by "paying" 604.8$.

Even at 2mb, he can buy a block at 8$ and a day's worth of blocks at 1200$.

Does this mean that he is not a spammer because he "paid" a ridiculously low amount of money?

So the definition of spam is something that is bought cheap? The water coming out of my tap is cheap, so if I use that water I'm spamming the water supply?

Currently, 1 MB blocks can be bought for about 0.5 BTC, or $200.  If tx are too cheap, the price should be raised to the point it becomes economical. Instead of putting a limit on supply.

Fact: the number if tx per day is close to the limit of 250,000. We recently touched that twice. (sources: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=2year&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= , http://www.coindesk.com/data/bitcoin-daily-transactions/ )

We crossed the 20,000 tx/day in June 2012
We crossed the 50,000 tx/day in August 2013
We crossed the 100,000 tx/day in March 2015
We crossed the 200,000 tx/day in January 2016

And the hard limit is a little over 250,000...

So, do you think 250,000 tx/day is sufficient for Bitcoin to be successful? Do you think 400,000 tx/day is sufficient by the end of this year, when SW is rolled out and most other software is updated to take advantage of it? Do you think 400,000 tx/day will be enough until LN comes into existence?

Compare these:

Number of transactions: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

vs

Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 10: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-10
Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 100: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-100
Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 1000: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-1000
Number of Transactions Excluding Chains Longer Than 10,000: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-10000

(long chains = moving money to next address => to next address => to next address => to next address => ...)

From these graphs I conclude that about 2/3rd of all tx are part of chains longer than 10. So what? I suspect those who do these tx have a reason for it, and are willing to pay for it.

The fundamental problem seems to be that the true cost of a tx is not covered by the fee. That's why people who do long chain transactions are not discouraged by the costs of doing so. If this is a threat to Bitcoin, the price of tx should be raised (a minimum fee that truly covers the tx cost), or the efficiency should be increased (bigger blocks, LN).

Question is, what should the minimum fee be at a given block size limit to have enough headroom for a consistent user experience? Recycling an arbitrary limit as a capacity quota is not a good answer.

[watashi-kokoto]

The actual problem is that there are people out there who think they know better what the cap is supposed to be than Satoshi's 1MB.

Another advantage of the 1MB cap is that once these idiots realize they can't really change it, they will fork off from Bitcoin to their favourite shitcoin, taking their shitty poet shills and useless economic activity with them.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

My scaling solution is to encourage people to use altcoins.

Durr?

[ChartBuddy]

Coin



Explanation

[LMGTFY]

The actual problem is that there are people out there who think they know better what the cap is supposed to be than Satoshi's 1MB.

Another advantage of the 1MB cap is that once these idiots realize they can't really change it, they will fork off from Bitcoin to their favourite shitcoin, taking their shitty poet shills and useless economic activity with them.

Check out this guy, who actually had the arrogance to propose how to remove Satoshi's cap.

[Fatman3001]

The actual problem is that there are people out there who think they know better what the cap is supposed to be than Satoshi's 1MB.

stupid

Another advantage of the 1MB cap is that once these idiots realize they can't really change it,

stupid

they will fork off from Bitcoin to their favourite shitcoin,

stupid

taking their shitty poet shills and useless economic activity with them.

stupid


But thanks anyway.

[ahpku]

The actual problem is that there are people out there who think they know better what the cap is supposed to be than Satoshi's 1MB.

Such as Satoshi himself, for instance.

It [higher cap] can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

But I'll keep spouting gibberish, no matter how often my betters kindly correct me.

That's what makes you you

[European Central Bank]

Check out this guy, who actually had the arrogance to propose how to remove Satoshi's cap.

That makes for kinda sad reading considering where we're at now.

And this guy nailed it a mere five and a half goddamn years ago. Maybe that should've been Satoshi's parting gift. I may not know anything about this stuff but I could've predicted that.

Only recently I learned about this block size limit.

I understand not putting any limit might allow flooding. On the other hand, the smaller your block, the faster it will propagate to network (I suppose.. or is there "I've got a block!" sort of message sent before the entire content of the block?), so miners do have an interest on not producing large blocks.

I'm very uncomfortable with this block size limit rule. This is a "protocol-rule" (not a "client-rule"), what makes it almost impossible to change once you have enough different softwares running the protocol. Take SMTP as an example... it's unchangeable.

I think we should schedule a large increase in the block size limit right now while the protocol rules are easier to change. Maybe even schedule an infinite series of increases, as we can't really predict how many transactions there will be 50 years from now.

[AlexGR]

So the definition of spam is something that is bought cheap?

The point is that it doesn't matter if it's free or paid, if what you pay is near-zero cost. It definitely cannot be a factor of ruling out spam if the fees are too cheap and aren't an adequate deterrent.

And even "adequate deterrent" is wrong, as a term, because a script kiddie might not afford a good spam attack but a deep-pocketed adversary may not be deterred by the costs, because by attacking in this fashion he is getting side-benefits by harming BTC.

From these graphs I conclude that about 2/3rd of all tx are part of chains longer than 10. So what?

When you receive a payment, do you often send your coins to another address, to another address, to another address, to another address, in a chain of hundreds or thousands? Are we serious?

Do you want people to just sit and pretend that all this is somehow "natural growth" and that there is a "problem" when the majority of txs are junk - done by god knows who - and we should give him/them the tools to continue doing that at ever lower prices, and with more space to spam?

If you have an attack vector, or a weakness, do you amplify it?

Is this rational behavior?

But anyway, this issue is ..."solved" because either classic or core, 1mb is dead and we go to 1.7 to 2.

Question is, what should the minimum fee be at a given block size limit to have enough headroom for a consistent user experience? Recycling an arbitrary limit as a capacity quota is not a good answer.

Things like that aren't simple. Someone could counter-argue that the central planning of fees isn't much different than central banking policies.

[ahpku]

So the definition of spam is something that is bought cheap?

The point is that it doesn't matter if it's free or paid, if what you pay is near-zero cost. It definitely cannot be a factor of ruling out spam if the fees are too cheap and aren't an adequate deterrent.

And even "adequate deterrent" is wrong, as a term, because a script kiddie might not afford a good spam attack but a deep-pocketed adversary may not be deterred by the costs, because by attacking in this fashion he is getting side-benefits by harming BTC.

Spam is the work of Communists, deep-pocketed Fifth Columnists, Obama, and Saurian saboteurs. It can not be stopped, mainly due to the fact that it can't be defined.
Abandon all hope

[julian071]

Pft deterring fees will occur automatically as the block reward disappears. At a price of 500$/BTC it would work out like this:

1 block (25 bitcoins) created every 10 minutes -> for each minute, 2.5 bitcoins are created X $500/bitcoin = $1250/minute.
So every minute $1250 in fees needs to come from transactions (instead of the block rewards today)
Using 10 transactions/sec as maximum speed (with current block size), 600 transactions each minute.
$1250/600 transactions = $2,08 per transaction.

Even higher BTC price -> even higher fees.

Edit: and if you use 5 tx/s instead of the theoretical 10 tx/s the amount doubles.