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

[realr0ach]

Maybe I don't understand the lightning network well, but wouldn't the channels used by the exchanges be the major benefit?

This is all you need to know for why Lightning Network is a dud:

LN is an unworkable train wreck without putting all channel closings in the same common permissioned queue (meaning completely centralized).  The fact these systems are built around a finite block size means humans can easily attack that bottleneck by flooding it with channel closings.  Since it can be flooded, you're required to buffer them and either discard low payers or put them at the back of the line just like regular bitcoin mempool.

From that point, you either have to design as a hub and spoke model just like what Mike Hearn claimed, where the Lightning node is a bitcoin bank and everyone who uses it is their peon slaves to extract usury upon, or every lightning node broadcasts a shared queue with each other.  But due to the fact that people can try to flood the queue as mentioned earlier, each lightning node will have their own criteria for what is or isn't spam that they will broadcast to other nodes (meaningly INSANELY PERMISSIONED, cartel coordinated, and usury based).  The nodes might also be incentivized NOT to broadcast and force a hub and spoke model for their own gain.

If a Lightning node constantly broadcasts flood bullshit to everyone, they will likely be blacklisted by other Lightning nodes (lightning banks, whatever you want to call them), so the entire system is based around things like trusted and untrusted members, subjective anti-spam filters, etc.  In other words, for Lightning to work at all, it would probably be the most permissioned centralized piece of garbage ever to exist.  No real difference from having an account at Bank of America, and ironcially, the govt will likely legislate who is and isn't allowed to run these Lightning nodes, meaning Bank of America or Goldman Sachs will run them.

At least this is my understanding of the problems one has to overcome to create such system.  The fact bitcoin is not decentralized and it's impossible to create a decentralized digital currency in the first place, also means anyone claiming Lightning is going to be "decentralized" is a complete idiot when it's built on top of bitcoin.

[Gab0]

If the block limit of 1mb will inevitably be eliminated, why refuse an increase in the size of the blocks at critical times like the ones we have seen these days?

Among other reasons: because, as our good Mayor implies in his reply, a hardfork is required to increase the block size. A hardfork is not unplanned for, but when it happens it should include a bundle of fixes, not just a quick bandaid.
Besides, the bandaid can't really solve the problem, even momentarily: if the spammers are willing to spam no matter what, they can as easily fill double-sized blocks with 1-satoshi transactions.

You are right, and the most efficient, in an ideal scenario, would be to make a hardfork with a series of improvements in the network; but the current conditions (spam attacks, new users, price increases, media attention, fomo) are having critical consequences in the network. Not only users have been harmed, but the stability and continuity of companies that have built their business model around the bitcoin blockchain (and at the same time add value to the network). For that reason, I think it is far from being a "temporary" solution, or of less importance.

On the other hand, it would be much more expensive for the attacker to fill the blocks.
Filling the blocks with transactions of ~ $ 20 in fees should mean a large sum of money (regardless of whether they are miners or not). Obviously, this type of attack is being made to manipulate the price. If the cost of carrying out the attack exceeds the benefits that can be achieved by manipulating the market, the attacker loses the incentive to carry them out. Also, if 2mb or 4mb blocks are filled with 1sat / B transactions, no one would care, because the fees would still be low and the network would remain decentralized. Jbreher recently mentioned the tx capacity of an average computer. I quote:

The only serious investigation into the matter has proven that your average 'home' computer today can handle a simple block size increase that will net us about 100 tx/s. And with a fix to core's crappy multithreading design, can handle block size increase up to about 500 tx/s. And that is without looking for other sw architecture improvements.

I would like to be able to express my ideas more widely, but the language barrier does not allow me to do so.

[svdleer]

i'm watching the orderbook in GDAX a while now.

This is what i noticed a few times :

2017-12-25 00:13:51.088915 BTC-USD bid: 0.001 @ 14109.00   ask: 33.362 @ 14200.67
2017-12-25 00:13:51.090565 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14109.00   ask: 33.362 @ 14200.67
2017-12-25 00:13:51.092307 BTC-USD bid: 2.590 @ 14106.40   ask: 33.362 @ 14200.67
2017-12-25 00:13:51.094036 BTC-USD bid: 2.358 @ 14106.40   ask: 33.362 @ 14200.67

Ask Wall is dropped, no filed orders @ 14200

2017-12-25 00:13:51.097444 BTC-USD bid: 2.358 @ 14106.40   ask: 0.038 @ 14175.00

Another example :

2017-12-25 00:32:44.920442 BTC-USD bid: 0.834 @ 14130.00   ask: 27.295 @ 14134.85
2017-12-25 00:32:44.921671 BTC-USD bid: 0.636 @ 14130.00   ask: 27.295 @ 14134.85
2017-12-25 00:32:44.924260 BTC-USD bid: 0.636 @ 14130.00   ask: 27.221 @ 14134.85
2017-12-25 00:32:44.925542 BTC-USD bid: 0.636 @ 14130.00   ask: 27.147 @ 14134.85

Dropped :

2017-12-25 00:32:44.928893 BTC-USD bid: 0.636 @ 14130.00   ask: 0.250 @ 14134.84

Again no orders filed.

2017-12-25 00:36:45.922197 BTC-USD bid: 0.001 @ 14055.18   ask: 20.720 @ 14055.19
2017-12-25 00:36:45.994320 BTC-USD bid: 0.001 @ 14055.18   ask: 25.720 @ 14055.19
2017-12-25 00:36:46.222450 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14055.18   ask: 25.720 @ 14055.19
2017-12-25 00:36:46.234737 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14055.17   ask: 25.720 @ 14055.19

Dropped :

2017-12-25 00:36:46.235970 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14055.17   ask: 0.217 @ 14055.18

And this goes on and on.

2017-12-25 00:39:26.456802 BTC-USD bid: 1.431 @ 14035.89   ask: 24.273 @ 14035.90
2017-12-25 00:39:26.492477 BTC-USD bid: 1.000 @ 14035.89   ask: 24.273 @ 14035.90
2017-12-25 00:39:26.504431 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14035.88   ask: 24.273 @ 14035.90
2017-12-25 00:39:26.526798 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14035.88   ask: 23.953 @ 14035.90
2017-12-25 00:39:26.551306 BTC-USD bid: 0.000 @ 14035.88   ask: 0.250 @ 14035.89

....

[FractalUniverse]

hmm looks like normal exchange bot to me

[d_eddie]

On the other hand, it would be much more expensive for the attacker to fill the blocks.

Double size, double number of transactions (on average), double cost.
IMO the issue is that if the ones who spam are miners who pocket most of the fees anyway, it's much too cheap to spam.

Filling the blocks with transactions of ~ $ 20 in fees should mean a large sum of money (regardless of whether they are miners or not).

If it's majority miners, it's not "regardless". They can rely on mining a large percentage of blocks, which in turn means a large percentage of the fees they paid get back to them.

Obviously, this type of attack is being made to manipulate the price. If the cost of carrying out the attack exceeds the benefits that can be achieved by manipulating the market, the attacker loses the incentive to carry them out.

Agreed. IMO the way to up the price of spamming is not having larger blocks, because a significant percent of those blocks get mined by the spammer anyway - be they large or small blocks. A better solution would be to have really widespread mining, so the attackers know that their chances of pocketing back their own spam fees are low.

Also, if 2mb or 4mb blocks are filled with 1sat / B transactions, no one would care, because the fees would still be low

My bad. I didn't write clearly (and I was not being accurate anyway).
I meant 1 satoshi as the transaction amount, not the fee. I know dust transactions are discarded anyway, but I meant "amount as low as can be". A bit of an exaggeration, admittedly.

Jbreher recently mentioned the tx capacity of an average computer. I quote:

The only serious investigation into the matter has proven that your average 'home' computer today can handle a simple block size increase that will net us about 100 tx/s. And with a fix to core's crappy multithreading design, can handle block size increase up to about 500 tx/s. And that is without looking for other sw architecture improvements.

Jbreher is usually accurate in his factual statements, and his math is usually flawless. However, he does have his bigblocker agenda in his mind when he posts. He failed to mention bandwidth and latency, which are the real bottlenecks - more so than storage or computing power.

I would like to be able to express my ideas more widely, but the language barrier does not allow me to do so.

I don't know what else you wanted to express, but you made yourself quite clear on these points. Don't think about the barrier - just say what you mean in the best way you manage. I think communication is just fine.

Merry Xmas everybody!

[Arriemoller]

Yeah, every trade is a taxable event to US persons. Whether that is buying coffee or litecoin. It is property according to the IRS.

Even if you thought you could get away with the like kind exchange rule, you still have to report every trade individually on the exemption form.

If it were classified as a stock, you could just report net gains and losses but not so with property.

They have made compliance nearly impossible so unless someone passes a law to exempt transactions prior to a certain date, a lot of people are going to owe back taxes and penalties if not jail time.

Simple solution: Become an expat.

Not so easy or simple, unfortunately. Have you heard of the Exit Tax? Capital gains are realized for high net worth individuals upon renouncing.

You still owe cap gains if you don't renounce and just expat. Unless you plan on just hiding and never setting foot in US again nor using any international banks cooperating with FinCen rules.

Puerto Rico offers tax free cap gains for residents, but you still owe on any gains realized up to the date you become a resident.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2017/02/27/renounce-u-s-heres-how-irs-computes-exit-tax/#45c8627287d4

No, I actually haven't heard of the exit tax. It does make sense to some degree, or at least it would if taxes were legitimate in the first place. But regardless of whether or not you'd choose to pay what you "owe" before renouncing, it still doesn't sound like anyone who expects any significant profits should be staying in the US any longer than absolutely necessary for whatever individual circumstances.

Agreed. However, I'm suspecting you're not married or have many close family relations in the US? The moment I brought up renouncing to my wife, and that she would need to apply for visas to visit family, friends, etc., well... you can imagine the response. Although she's warming up to it proportionally to crypto value.

Which begs the question, how much is US citizenship worth? A US passport gets you in a lot of places without visas or trouble. Attaining citizenship in another country takes time and often a good deal of (traceable, taxable) fiat. Although being stateless is an option, it's not recommended for long. You have no rights, anywhere.

I think you can buy New Zealand citizenship and that will get you anywhere US citizenship will.  You can go buy mountain in Queenstown with all the hedge fund billionaires.

New Zealand is a very nice place to live. Come on down.
https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/investing-in-nz/visas/investor-visa

What's the weather like in NZ?

Depends on where you  live. Wellington is windy and gets a lot of rain, although the city is beautiful. I spent many years working in Wellington and I prefer it over Auckland. Auckland is nice but it has gotten expensive and crowded. Wine country of Hawkes Bay is fantastic.( Napier and Hastings) Great weather, many wineries, great food, fantastic bike riding.

The south island is extremely beautiful. I will be spending some more time there next year. So many great places. I want to go to Lake Tekapo. It is one of our dark sky reserves for seeing the night sky.


 

Thanks, I might go for a visit at least, but a little worried about seismic activity.

[nikauforest]

Yeah, every trade is a taxable event to US persons. Whether that is buying coffee or litecoin. It is property according to the IRS.

Even if you thought you could get away with the like kind exchange rule, you still have to report every trade individually on the exemption form.

If it were classified as a stock, you could just report net gains and losses but not so with property.

They have made compliance nearly impossible so unless someone passes a law to exempt transactions prior to a certain date, a lot of people are going to owe back taxes and penalties if not jail time.

Simple solution: Become an expat.

Not so easy or simple, unfortunately. Have you heard of the Exit Tax? Capital gains are realized for high net worth individuals upon renouncing.

You still owe cap gains if you don't renounce and just expat. Unless you plan on just hiding and never setting foot in US again nor using any international banks cooperating with FinCen rules.

Puerto Rico offers tax free cap gains for residents, but you still owe on any gains realized up to the date you become a resident.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2017/02/27/renounce-u-s-heres-how-irs-computes-exit-tax/#45c8627287d4

No, I actually haven't heard of the exit tax. It does make sense to some degree, or at least it would if taxes were legitimate in the first place. But regardless of whether or not you'd choose to pay what you "owe" before renouncing, it still doesn't sound like anyone who expects any significant profits should be staying in the US any longer than absolutely necessary for whatever individual circumstances.

Agreed. However, I'm suspecting you're not married or have many close family relations in the US? The moment I brought up renouncing to my wife, and that she would need to apply for visas to visit family, friends, etc., well... you can imagine the response. Although she's warming up to it proportionally to crypto value.

Which begs the question, how much is US citizenship worth? A US passport gets you in a lot of places without visas or trouble. Attaining citizenship in another country takes time and often a good deal of (traceable, taxable) fiat. Although being stateless is an option, it's not recommended for long. You have no rights, anywhere.

I think you can buy New Zealand citizenship and that will get you anywhere US citizenship will.  You can go buy mountain in Queenstown with all the hedge fund billionaires.

New Zealand is a very nice place to live. Come on down.
https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/investing-in-nz/visas/investor-visa

What's the weather like in NZ?

Depends on where you  live. Wellington is windy and gets a lot of rain, although the city is beautiful. I spent many years working in Wellington and I prefer it over Auckland. Auckland is nice but it has gotten expensive and crowded. Wine country of Hawkes Bay is fantastic.( Napier and Hastings) Great weather, many wineries, great food, fantastic bike riding.

The south island is extremely beautiful. I will be spending some more time there next year. So many great places. I want to go to Lake Tekapo. It is one of our dark sky reserves for seeing the night sky.


 

Thanks, I might go for a visit at least, but a little worried about seismic activity.

Well, we definitely have seismic activity here. Earthquakes and volcanoes.....

[RewFrew]

Bitcoin Segwit2x hard fork Scheduled for December ‎‎28 2017 after calling off a month ago.

Source: http://b2x-segwit.io

[jojo69]

I think we have some resistance up around 14400...I for one would be happy to see us break it

[smartcomet]

BTC closed the week at 14158 (Bitstamp)
good consolidation.

[Wilhelm]

I think we have some resistance up around 14400...I for one would be happy to see us break it

Triangle formation. Hopefully we will break out but you are right, there is a barrier between 14200 and 14800.

For now we will ping pong between 12800 and 14200. Tomorrow we will arrive at the breakout point at approx 13600 and see what happens

[Peter R]

That’s right.

Just introduce 10GB blocks and call it a night. Problem solved.

Let's just hope people who can actually run a node don't get the bright idea to charge subscription fees to let your SPV wallet connect to them.

This is inevitable.  It cost time and money to run a node which serves headers and Merke-branch proofs to SPV clients.  Eventually, businesses will charge for this service, perhaps using payment channels.  I'd suspect the cost would be well under $1 per month, as it would be a high-competition / low-margin type business.

An income stream for non-mining nodes would be a positive development, as it means we're not relying on altruism.  Do you disagree?

[strawbs]

Merry Christmas to all the hodlers out there.  We once said our time will come, well this year it did. Some of you are dicks, some of you are awesome - you know who you are.  Have a great time out there y'all.

[bones261]

That’s right.

Just introduce 10GB blocks and call it a night. Problem solved.

Let's just hope people who can actually run a node don't get the bright idea to charge subscription fees to let your SPV wallet connect to them.

This is inevitable.  It cost time and money to run a node which serves headers and Merke-branch proofs to SPV clients.  Eventually, businesses will charge for this service, perhaps using payment channels.  I'd suspect the cost would be well under $1 per month, as it would be a high-competition / low-margin type business.

An income stream for non-mining nodes would be a positive development, as it means we're not relying on altruism.  Do you disagree?

I thought this was supposed to be P2P trustless electronic cash. Not connect to some hub and pay additional fees. However, Mr Wright seems to think that if I run a node, and not mining, that I'm just a fat wallet wasting network resources. Such plebs as us should just connect via SPV and pay fees. Wow, Mr Wright, that's really going to help the unbanked of Africa.  

[realr0ach]

That’s right.

Just introduce 10GB blocks and call it a night. Problem solved.

Let's just hope people who can actually run a node don't get the bright idea to charge subscription fees to let your SPV wallet connect to them.

This is inevitable.  It cost time and money to run a node which serves headers and Merke-branch proofs to SPV clients.  Eventually, businesses will charge for this service, perhaps using payment channels.  I'd suspect the cost would be well under $1 per month, as it would be a high-competition / low-margin type business.

An income stream for non-mining nodes would be a positive development, as it means we're not relying on altruism.  Do you disagree?

You're kinda admitting bitcoin is a system built on multiple levels of usury when that's *SUPPOSEDLY* something it defeats.  If I "own" a bitcoin, I don't really own it, I'm required to pay a ransom/usury fee to a miner if I want to do anything with it (unlike physical silver or gold).  Now you're talking about adding even MORE additional usury levels on top of that.  Why would anyone use some *permissioned*, multiple levels of usury system like this when they can use a usury-free, permissionless system like physical silver and gold?

[Enjel]

PM shilling

Do you really believe the price of bitcoin hit $20k while the "evil bankers" are against it?  It would have been made illegal WAAAAY before that happened if they were actually trying to stop it.  We all know the only thing that keeps bitcoin afloat is it's ability to be converted to fiat.  Cut off the fiat conversion and this shit instantly implodes.  So why has it not happened?  Why?  They want you to buy this centralized govt tracking system instead of metals.

Many big bankers are against Bitcoin. Stiglitz wants it to be illegal.

However, they have an opportunity to manipulate the price for profit, and the IRS (in the USA of course) has an opportunity to extract capital gains taxes from people.

They have plenty of incentive to allow Bitcoin and others to continue. But the fact is, bankers in general do NOT want Bitcoin to succeed in the long run, because it would destabilize the current system.

In addition, unless you are an illegal immigrant, the government already knows pretty much everything about you. They are already tracking and surveilling you in many ways.

[gentlemand]

Interesting wee thread about that Dragon miner thing unveiled with some fanfare a while back - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2443327.0

It's still looking distinctly vapoury at present.

[Fakhoury]

Just came to say Hi and to share something euphoric about the future

What the hell happened to you, since about May-ish?

I have read many speculations about you no longer being with us?

Another extreme dear brother showing up, my dear JJG.

Have been drowning into the crypto twitter ocean and IRL issues.

But finally back and gave our bullish thread a push 

I've missed you all brother, hopefully I won't fade away again 

EXACTAMENTE!!!

Even though each of us have our differing styles, your style has been missed - yet it seems a bit extreme, too, of you, to post 2-10 bullish media articles per day for several months (and spoil many of us), and then completely disaparecer for 6 months -ish.

In any event, I am glad to see you back, and I look forward to posts and your perspective.

O..k..  One other point that I would like to make is that I had frequently asserted that you were much more bullish than me regarding short term BTC price performance - especially if we look back to our interactive posts in the late 2015 time frame and even the ones in the mid-to-late 2016 time frame.  So, it seems that you were much closer in your assessment than me, because current BTC prices are running about 3x to 4x higher than my most likely bullish assessments of those times.

I confess my brother, I'm an extremist.

I'm not a moderate person and an insane risk taker, so let it be whatever it meant to be.

I did you miss you a lot my dear brother and missed our talks a lot and here they are back again

My new targets are as follows, and you are free to call me an insane/crazy person, I know I'm mentally mad :

2018 will end at $100,000
2020 will end at $1,000,000

We are just warming up and we ain't seen anything yet, wait to witness 2018, it's will be a mind-blowing year.

I am going to call you insane/crazy, perhaps with a couple of conditions.  First condition:  What you are saying does not seem to be out of the range of contemplation - however, each of those numbers under those time lines seem like  long shots - however, if the first one is met, then the second one would become more probable.  Second condition:  I hope that you are careful in terms of your own investment - because without revealing details, it seems to me that you should have a lot of value right now, whether you hold that value in crypto or fiat or alts or some combination, so in that regard, I hope that you are hedging what I perceive to be (and you seem to admit) your extreme thoughts.  hahahaha.. you and MacAfee...   I just realized ---- John, is that you?   

Well, what I've figured from living on this planet for 27 years that all of my life is based on "bets" and not a normal bets, it's a "take-all-lose-all" bets as I've a major issue in my personality called "Perfection!!!!"

Regarding cryptocurriences, I guess I've said it before, I'm "all-in".

So let it be what is was destinated to be, I'm here for the long haul and for the perfect me.

Actually I din't see those number long shots.

These year we did nearly a 20x, it we make another 20x, we will end 2018 at $400,000, so can't end at $100,000 ?

2018 will the start of the real fireworks.

[JayJuanGee]

Just found a stack of paper wallets from 2015. I was giving away 0.05 Bitcoi in each and these were the leftovers. It’s a nice find I didn’t know I had it....

Yep.   All of a sudden scrap amounts become real money.

It is kind of bullshit, though, regarding how some of these people treat their gifts, and I have a few war stories regarding that too.

My friend recently contacted me, and told me that he was looking for his son's $40 bitcoin transaction that I had sent for a graduation gift.

Mind you I sent $40 to the son and $10 to the dad, in order that they could, perhaps, learn together about bitcoin.  The price was around $380 at the time... So, a couple of times a year, I would remind him about bitcoin and ask him if he had retrieved the bitcoin... did it through Circle....  He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, he still has access to the e-mail account, and just a few weeks ago when he contacted me, he asked me if I could recover the coins because he said that he did not have access to the e-mail accounts.  The son's value was something like $1,740 and the dads value was something like $440.  Crazy.  I think that they lost everything, unless they can regain access to their earlier e-mails, perhaps there is a way... I think that it was a private domain e-mail that their family administrator allowed the domain to expire.

 

hahahahahahaha...

I like that one.

[Peter R]

That’s right.

Just introduce 10GB blocks and call it a night. Problem solved.

Let's just hope people who can actually run a node don't get the bright idea to charge subscription fees to let your SPV wallet connect to them.

This is inevitable.  It cost time and money to run a node which serves headers and Merke-branch proofs to SPV clients.  Eventually, businesses will charge for this service, perhaps using payment channels.  I'd suspect the cost would be well under $1 per month, as it would be a high-competition / low-margin type business.

An income stream for non-mining nodes would be a positive development, as it means we're not relying on altruism.  Do you disagree?

I thought this was supposed to be P2P trustless electronic cash. Not connect to some hub and pay additional fees. However, Mr Wright seems to think that if I run a node, and not mining, that I'm just a fat wallet wasting network resources. Such plebs as us should just connect via SPV and pay fees. Wow, Mr Wright, that's really going to help the unbanked of Africa.  

I'd expect there will always be some form or "free service" available (both for Merkle-branch proofs and for transaction confirmations).  But I suspect timely-confirmations will cost around a penny and that timely SPV proofs will cost several-orders of magnitudes less.