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

[becoin]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

[billyjoeallen]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

[tommorisonwebdesign]

To topic, there is always fluctuation with the price of Bitcoin. What usually happen is the price will go up, people sell their Bitcoin, the price goes down temporarily, then it goes back up to at least the same price. Looking long term, Bitcoin is going to make us all rich

[ahpku]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

No worries. Core and Classic will work things out in the best Libertarian way possible

[AlexGR]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

In bitcoin, there are as many roads, as are people willing to pay different fees. This makes the system impossible to disrupt, unlike a single-road system.

1st road is for those paying 0 satoshi per byte
2nd road is for those paying 1 satoshi per byte
...
31st road is for those paying 50 satoshi per byte
...
51st road is for those paying 50 satoshi per byte
...
101th road is for those paying 100 satoshi per byte


Some roads (like 1st, second etc) can be congested because, well... free-riders

If you are in a hurry though, you are not forced to use any of the free-rider congested roads. You just use the 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th road, and go to your destination much faster.

So... where do you want to go, and how fast do you want to go there?

Tolls are practically zero to near-zero cost anyway, even for the higher count roads like the 40th or 50th (~0.04 - 0.05$).

[explorer]

I haven't made a bitcoin transaction in a while.  Just did one, expecting delays, with all the hype going on.  7 confirmations in 28 minutes.  Surprised? Ah, yep.

[JayJuanGee]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

Yeah..... the problem is really overstated and exaggerated... because currently, there is no real problem... you can zoom in and out, and see a few peaks in recent weeks..

These are the 180 day zooms.



Median confirmation time:    - largely between 6 minutes and 13 minutes with a mode that is around 8.5 minutes

https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-time?timespan=180days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=




Fullness of blocks:   - largely between 40% and 90% with a mode that is around 70%

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=180days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

[ahpku]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

In bitcoin, there are as many roads, as are people willing to pay different fees. This makes the system impossible to disrupt, unlike a single-road system.
...

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.

Alex, please understand that rational people, given a choice between money that costs money to use & money that doesn't, will chose the latter.
So no more new users; all the crazies are *already* bitcoining their way to vast riches.

[JayJuanGee]

I haven't made a bitcoin transaction in a while.  Just did one, expecting delays, with all the hype going on.  7 confirmations in 28 minutes.  Surprised? Ah, yep.

Yep... there is a lot of unsubstantiated talk going on regarding clogged blocks.  In the past couple of months, I have made more than 30 transactions, and most were completely confirmed (useable with at least 3 confirmations) in less than an hour... I tried a few transactions with low to no fees (near freebies), just to see for myself, and those freebies took longer but were all confirmed and useable in less than 10 hours.

[aztecminer]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

i'm not the one hiding the block capacity .. if every time u about to post u see chartbuddy at 100% full blocks might be confusing for some people... and.. i might not be convinced it is all adoption.

[billyjoeallen]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

In bitcoin, there are as many roads, as are people willing to pay different fees. This makes the system impossible to disrupt, unlike a single-road system.

1st road is for those paying 0 satoshi per byte
2nd road is for those paying 1 satoshi per byte
...
31st road is for those paying 50 satoshi per byte
...
51st road is for those paying 50 satoshi per byte
...
101th road is for those paying 100 satoshi per byte


Some roads (like 1st, second etc) can be congested because, well... free-riders

If you are in a hurry though, you are not forced to use any of the free-rider congested roads. You just use the 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th road, and go to your destination much faster.

So... where do you want to go, and how fast do you want to go there?

Tolls are practically zero to near-zero cost anyway, even for the higher count roads like the 40th or 50th (~0.04 - 0.05$).

We have a capacity of around half a million transactions per day no matter how high the fees get.  We are closer to that limit than we were before blocks filled up.  Fees do not add capacity and only mitigate the problem without solving it.  With less room to grow, we will grow less. How is that even controversial?


If bitcoin is less useful for marginal use cases, it is less valuable, and it is reasonable to see that reflected in the price. This seems so obvious to me, I don't understand why I even have to say it.

[aztecminer]

I haven't made a bitcoin transaction in a while.  Just did one, expecting delays, with all the hype going on.  7 confirmations in 28 minutes.  Surprised? Ah, yep.

Yep... there is a lot of unsubstantiated talk going on regarding clogged blocks.  In the past couple of months, I have made more than 30 transactions, and most were completely confirmed (useable with at least 3 confirmations) in less than an hour... I tried a few transactions with low to no fees (near freebies), just to see for myself, and those freebies took longer but were all confirmed and useable in less than 10 hours.

10 hours later he finally gets his happy meal .

[Sitarow]

I haven't made a bitcoin transaction in a while.  Just did one, expecting delays, with all the hype going on.  7 confirmations in 28 minutes.  Surprised? Ah, yep.

Yep... there is a lot of unsubstantiated talk going on regarding clogged blocks.  In the past couple of months, I have made more than 30 transactions, and most were completely confirmed (useable with at least 3 confirmations) in less than an hour... I tried a few transactions with low to no fees (near freebies), just to see for myself, and those freebies took longer but were all confirmed and useable in less than 10 hours.

10 hours later he finally gets his happy meal .

Or 10 hours later he transferred the equivalent wealth of a small nation with little to no fee's

[billyjoeallen]

We are down more than 8% in the last three months, even though we're 3 months closer to the halving. We are down 64% from the All Time High 28 months later, even though we are 28 months closer to the halving.


The halving is known. It's priced in.  It's the only reason we aren't trading in the $200s right now.

[AlexGR]

We have a capacity of around half a million transactions per day no matter how high the fees get.  We are closer to that limit than we were before blocks filled up.  Fees do not add capacity and only mitigate the problem without solving it.  With less room to grow, we will grow less. How is that even controversial?

Your underlying assumption is that spam=legit tx volume=growth.

I do not assume the same thing:

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-10
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-100

This is the number of txs when you exclude coins that have been sequentially sent over and over again for >10 or >100 times.

This is like saying, I gave you 5$ in paypal, you instantly gave it to someone else, and he instantly gave it to someone else, and this happened over 100 times in a single day (with the same money). Sounds legit

Well, if you have people that do chains of >10, >100, >1000, by sending coins between their addresses or something, they are occupying the space of >100 or >1000 ordinary txs by doing so. This is only made possible by the extremely low fee structure. If fee competition is introduced in a meaningful way, for one such chain that is eliminated, you get +1000tx capacity for normal uses.

Legacy systems won't really allow that kind of abuse. By the time you've done that a few times with a bank wire or visa or paypal, the 5$ will be gone in fees.

The halving is known. It's priced in.  It's the only reason we aren't trading in the $200s right now.

That's speculation-wise.

The daily effect of having just the half BTCs for dumping is something that will be of benefit only post-halving.

[billyjoeallen]

We have a capacity of around half a million transactions per day no matter how high the fees get.  We are closer to that limit than we were before blocks filled up.  Fees do not add capacity and only mitigate the problem without solving it.  With less room to grow, we will grow less. How is that even controversial?

Your underlying assumption is that spam=legit tx volume=growth.

I do not assume the same thing:

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-10
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-chains-longer-than-100

This is the number of txs when you exclude coins that have been sequentially sent over and over again for >10 or >100 times.

This is like saying, I gave you 5$ in paypal, you instantly gave it to someone else, and he instantly gave it to someone else, and this happened over 100 times in a single day (with the same money). Sounds legit

Well, if you have people that do chains of >10, >100, >1000, by sending coins between their addresses or something, they are occupying the space of >100 or >1000 ordinary txs by doing so. This is only made possible by the extremely low fee structure. If fee competition is introduced in a meaningful way, for one such chain that is eliminated, you get +1000tx capacity for normal uses.

Legacy systems won't really allow that kind of abuse. By the time you've done that a few times with a bank wire or visa or paypal, the 5$ will be gone in fees.

There is no way to prevent that type of abuse without also preventing legitimate marginal use cases. It's an open protocol. A transaction limit is a ham-fisted, draconian anti-spam measure that costs more than it benefits.  You either need to accept that spam is a cost of doing business, or you need to find a better anti-spam tool.

It's only a matter of time before the next spam attack, and that will doubtless trigger another sell-off. If I was an amoral opportunist, I'd do it myself and make a pile of money. Regardless, it's likely somebody will do it and smallblockers are giving that spammer the tool to use.

[hdbuck]

I haven't made a bitcoin transaction in a while.  Just did one, expecting delays, with all the hype going on.  7 confirmations in 28 minutes.  Surprised? Ah, yep.

28min?!! i hope they kept your coffee hot while waiting for the payment to confirm!

[billyjoeallen]

A spam attack could cost ~$5,000 and impose $3-4,000 in additional harddrive space and bandwidth costs PER GB to the nodes. It's a stupid attack UNLESS you can drive the price down $20 or more by causing a service disruption and then the attack can more than pay for itself.

That has already been done. I don't know if the spammer traded the sell-off he caused or not, but now he knows he can and so does everybody else.  I know of no way of preventing this except increasing transaction capacity. 

We are sitting ducks.

[becoin]

yeah the blocks being full was starting to become obvious and a problem.. they are full 24/7 now .

Obviously adoption is accelerating. How can this be a problem?

Is it easier to disrupt the road system at 3 a.m. or during rush hour? When we are running so close to capacity, we become more vulnerable to intentional and unintentional service disruptions.

Sure, you can say that these are not attacks and we should allow everyone to use Bitcoin as they see fit, but let's try a simpler example. If someone loots all the toilet paper from the public toilet, is that a bad thing? Is the solution to double the amount of toilet paper stocked each day?

[JayJuanGee]

I haven't made a bitcoin transaction in a while.  Just did one, expecting delays, with all the hype going on.  7 confirmations in 28 minutes.  Surprised? Ah, yep.

Yep... there is a lot of unsubstantiated talk going on regarding clogged blocks.  In the past couple of months, I have made more than 30 transactions, and most were completely confirmed (useable with at least 3 confirmations) in less than an hour... I tried a few transactions with low to no fees (near freebies), just to see for myself, and those freebies took longer but were all confirmed and useable in less than 10 hours.

10 hours later he finally gets his happy meal .

Yes, with a happy ending, too.