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

[Torque]

so, here we are again, discussing block size while the next big bitcoin upgrade is just 140 signaling blocks away.

And once again, the vocal "we" that wants to endlessly debate that shit has ZERO, LESS THAN ZERO control over it...but with hubris thinks that they have some control.

And trying to convince other users that also have ZERO control is futile and a waste of time and effort.

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[Torque]

OT: This is the ultimate red pill, the ultimate "ah ha" moment.

And you can no longer vote against it. They will print and spend regardless of who is in office. Once you "get" this, you soon realize that there are only so many ways out of their system. Bitcoin is one of those ways.

"Big government only sees itself. It is the ultimate narcissist, everything else exists for its benefit.  

Think about this...with massive government, the people are the budget. We’re little hash marks on a piece of paper, little items in a multi-trillion dollar lobbyist giveaway, all devolving us into nothing more than a product to manage, a product to distribute, a product to tax, and a product to exploit for political and financial gain all along the way.

The size of government itself and its contempt for the people it’s supposed to represent has made it inevitable that they hardly see us as human beings at all. No doubt they see us as hamsters in the wheel, all to fund an ever-expanding bureaucracy.

In fact, the endless spending is a representation of the denigration of humanity at every level, and it all happens when the government becomes an insatiable monolith."

-Tammy Bruce

[Richy_T]

The guy seems clueless. If a 'price crash' is a reason to forbid it, you should forbid the financial markets 

But the government can always step in and bail out all those rich people who made stupid high-risk bets with poor peoples' money doncha know?

[Richy_T]

Does this include the big miners using their own hydropower installations? If so, seems like a stupid decision.

Definitely the kind of idiocy that can only come from a command-and-control economy.

[cygan]

oooh shiat, thats true


https://twitter.com/Bitcoin_ator/status/1403017092056616966

[philipma1957]

the builders thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5314398.0

these cheap nodes that mine at a small profit can be in 10 thousand homes.

building a super node with 32mb blocks would mean using 8tb ssds in arrays

you would need more than 300mb internet speed.

I loaded a node/wallet on a thread ripper about 18 months ago

used a threadripper 3970 with 128gb ram

used 200mb internet and a 2tb nvme m.2 ssd

took 2 hours to synch it.

the time was 2 hours due to a 100mb switch I downloaded at a constant 80-90mb. it was about 300gb

but if we had a 32mb block thread it would be 16x the size
take 32 hours to download
and use 4.8tb

if it were a 96mb block
it takes 96 hours to download

and use 13.4tb

so that would mean at least two 8tb ssds in an array to give 16tb
maybe the 2000 usd threadripper the 3970 is good enough
maybe the 128gb ram is enough.

but I would need to have built a 9 k rig to do a node.

i dont need my full node (which i use purely for validating my own transactions) to run on a rPi, but it at least needs to be able to run on a (probably beefy) commodity computer and be able to sync from scratch in a reasonable time. so i dont mind needing a 3-4k (or even 10k) computer to run a node purely for my own verification, but once you need business class internet and seriously potent server gear thats when i have issues. i will need to trust other nodes at that point. SPV clients have thier place but not as my main check for my transactions and balances. i suppose spinning up AWS type stuff for a personal verification node is a possibility but that seems drastic and likely expensive plus i like my gear in house.

blocks at its current size may have issues but they work for me at this point and thats good enough for now. high fees at the moment? pay up, wait, or go home: pretty simple. ill wait for the bulging brains types to figure the best way forward.

edit: slow and steady. this is Prod after all. i like my coin STABLE. let the alts blow up their blockchains. believe me its nice to have paper wallets from 2011 that are as safe and usable as the day i printed them. cant say that for a lot (likely most) shitcoins from back in the day, or even more recent ones.

If you want to be all btc.

Have a few hodl wallets.

paper ,trezor, core

and have liquid btc on an exchange.

Personally I have run nodes on really good pcs and on the new apollo with many inbetween.

I like running on the rasp/arm apollo it uses 10 watts and does the job. Plus it mines. It is due to become an ln node. It is possible that 10,000 of these could be in the world in a year or so.

We would not be able to have 10000 small form pc nodes like a dell with an i7 a 2tb ssd  and 32 gb ram with 100 mbs internet.

basically it is less affordable.

question how many nodes do we have and where to find a node number chart.

do we have :

1,000
5,000
10,000
25,000
50,000
100,000

the higher number would be an argument favoring the low block size we currently have.

it would be a nice point to assist the block size discussion.

[Richy_T]

What I mean are Bitcoin mining facilities with their own hydropower (water power) installations using small river as energy source as part of the land they own or lease, like this one:
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2018/1/17/inside-the-world-of-chinese-bitcoin-mining

No one is stealing energy when they generate their own power (or build mining facility close to existing hydropower plant with contract to mine energy overproduction), and shutting down just means the river continues to flow through the plant without turbine, no environmental gain.

It was my understanding that these hydro-power installations were mostly built in anticipation of needed demand (or arguably misallocated resources - see the ghost cities) and were just being used where they would otherwise be idle rather than built specifically by miners. I could see some idiot bureaucrat making a boneheaded decision in that case.

[cAPSLOCK]

Jack Dorsey has hinted that Twitter will integrate the Lightning Network. 

https://www.coindesk.com/dorsey-suggests-twitter-lightning-network-integration

He is such an interesting "hero" in the BTC space.  He is seemingly anti a lot of the right-libertarian/anarchist vibe so strong in the Bitcoin world.  He seems a bonafide techno-leftist, and yet he has very FIRMLY fallen in with the maxi sort of position.

[Richy_T]

It would have been interesting to see if they took BTC as is and only added bigger blocks, but that's not what they did, so here we are and the market has spoken.

Meh, segwit really isn't that interesting. While it's not disastrous, It adds technical debt because it does things in a kludgy way and the things it does bring to the table can be (and have been) implemented in better ways. Now, that typically means hard forks so could they have been implemented on Bitcoin? We'll never know.

It's definitely clear that forks that don't carry the BTC symbol or have the blessing of Core start a long way behind and hash is always going to be hugely important. It's clear to me that, as AlcoHoDL suggests, increasing the block size limit is inevitable at some point so I think it's far from a dead issue. Bitcoin is still permissionless and to act like all those who believe some kind of change is the block size limit is a good idea got exiled to BCH island is asinine.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[philipma1957]

37k and hodling

not bad.

[cAPSLOCK]

Jack Dorsey has hinted that Twitter will integrate the Lightning Network. 

https://www.coindesk.com/dorsey-suggests-twitter-lightning-network-integration

He is such an interesting "hero" in the BTC space.  He is seemingly anti a lot of the right-libertarian/anarchist vibe so strong in the Bitcoin world.  He seems a bonafide techno-leftist, and yet he has very FIRMLY fallen in with the maxi sort of position.

Piffy paf wing wang...

[proudhon]

37k and hodling

not bad.

$37k won't hold and we all know it.

[bitebits]

https://twitter.com/MarcusSpallek/status/1402717041694494722

[Richy_T]

It will not be very many years before tech gets to where we can move the blocksize up.

So I think it is still worth talking about.

-Currently I am mining on a 32thread 16 core CPU I bought for $700.  In a number of years 16 core cellphone processors will be a thing. (Not for mining for the most part, but for all the hashing done to validate things quicly enough)
-$400 will get you a 16T hard drive today.
-5G has Terabyte speeds at low latency WITHOUT WIRES.

For reference, the RPi 4 is based on the ARM-Cortex A72 which is from 2014. The Raspberry Pi computers are not designed to be bleeding edge and they are (I believe) run with a small technical team which means it takes time for them to get to market. Also, I'm not sure how much it's changed but I seem to recall they had trouble getting certain technical specs from the manufacturers.

[JayJuanGee]

Oh, and BTW, there are at least two Big Block^TM live "versions" of Bitcoin: BCH (a.k.a. Bcash LOL) and BSV (CSW's creation).

There is at least one other thing different about those big block coins vs Bitcoin, they intentionally took out SegWit when they forked.

It would have been interesting to see if they took BTC as is and only added bigger blocks, but that's not what they did, so here we are and the market has spoken.

Oh?  So now the bigblocker tards want segwit?  Maybe they want taproot, too, no?

Anyhow, they could forkening bitcoin now with segwit and increase the blocksize, no?  or they could get a taproot version, right? and then forkening bitcoin with segwit, taproot and any other bug fixes that had been made along the way.. and then just add their dumbass bigger blocks to that, right?

To me, it just seems better to stick with actual bitcoin, and then if there were to be some kind of concern that something might be broken, to make a proposal for some reasonable and prudent changes.  Sure, some BIG blocker know-it-alls might imagine that their concerns are NOT being taken seriously, so they may need to work on both their presentation skills and make sure that they have both facts and logic to support what they are proposing and get some others (besides just their lil selfies) to consider supporting such proposals. 

I doubt that anyone, including yours truly, would be against BIG blocks (or BIGGER blocks for more onchain BIGGEDness) if there were to be some kind of perception that they were actually fixing something that needs to be fixed in bitcoin, and at the same time they would not be breaking more than they would supposedly be fixing.  I doubt that I am personally technical enough to understand with any kind of exactness, so I admit that I do have to rely on some kinds of assessments of a variety of folks.. but I can read English too if there were some reasonable proposal being made in regards to both describing problems that were purportedly being addressed, and surely there are smart folks out there who are able to give more technical assessments to potential BIG blocker proposals..  I doubt it is just a technical question.. but instead as I mentioned some needs to present facts and logic and perhaps some of these currently seeming dumbass proposals could end up gaining some traction to convince technical and non-technical folks that there is some kind of problem in bitcoin that could be fixed by some kind of reasonable BIG blocker proposal.. perhaps? perhaps?

I am not moving the goalposts.  Segwit passed and became a part of bitcoin in August 2017.  You are the one who seems to be suggesting that something might need to be done about that or that you are complaining about something that the blocks are not big enough that relate to issues from 2017.. .. so my who fucking cares should suggest to you that you have some kind of burden to show facts and logic for it to be relevant.  

Remember in late 2015, Peter wuille came up with a compromise (which was segwit), and for about 6 months (while segwit was coded and tested), there was a lot of consensus that it was great, but then with the passage of time, the disingenuine BIG blocker fucktwats just started to make up other shit about various disagreements they had with it.. .

You are the one who brought up segwit, Hueristic was asking about raising the block size limit, Marcus cast aspersions in big block advocates as a group. I replied to each of these, I did not bring them up. Until you can keep more than one thing in your li'l head at a time, there's no point continuing.

Yes, nothing can be done about Segwit. That was one of the complaints against it at the time.

Makes hardly any sense to talk about blocksize limitation increases in a vacuum, so I have no clue if I brought up segwit first or if you were talking about various ways that big blocker concerns were purportedly NOT being taken seriously, so whether I presented context first or you presented context first, it seems that if we are talking about these various ideas about historical proposals that had been made in regard to blocksize limit increases, segwit is surely a part of that discussion and a considered partial solution that ended up coming onto the scene (like I said) in late 2015 - seemingly in connection with some BIG blocker then concerns, and it ended up getting included into bitcoin, which likely satisfied quite a few folks in connection to some of the BIG blocker concerns that you had raised.. sure, it likely did not satisfy everyone, including ur lil selfie, but it could be possible that it took some of the wind out of the sail of some folks who might have otherwise wanted to ally with you, if you had actually made a BIP and tried to get support, so your base may have ended up shrinking down from 10 whiners to ONLY one whiner (ur lil selfie), or maybe we can give you some benefit of the doubt in terms of your whining about BIG blocks base.  Maybe you had 1,000 whiners in the BIG blocker camp, and then after segwit, you only could get 20 whiners thereafter?  Of course, I am pulling these numbers out of my ass to some degree just to make the point that segwit might have reduced the number of BIGblocker whiners.  Perhaps?

[Hueristic]

...
Hueristic was asking about raising the block size limit, ...

Actually I wanted to discuss why dynamic blocksize  was never getting discussed as I thought it was safe to have an adult conversation on the subject but I was apparently wrong.

I never said a damn thing about specifically raising it, it should be acedemic to create an algo that will work with market forces for it to manage itself.

Dynamic size can also result in smaller blocksize and I'm not sure all those people yelling big blocker are grasping that.

But I'm done trying to work out the pros and cons as its apparent the childish flaming is still just under the surface.

[Richy_T]

By the way, I will acknowledge that China appears to be ramping up their level of severity in the actual "China bans bitcoin" (for reals this time) arena.  Yet, it does not hurt to reiterate how it seems that their "china bans bitcoin" in late 2016 really fucked over quite a few of their peeps because as a result of the "china bans bitcoin" that time, they likely had quite a few regular folks (rather than the elites) who had quite a few of their funds (anything then on China exchanges) frozen up for something like a year - and seems like it was more than a year.. and guess what happened in 2017 during that time that some china regular peeps had their funds locked up on exchanges?  sure some of them were able to still make sure that they had bitcoin exposure by going through local bitcoins and perhaps some other means, but it did seem that their late 2016  "china bans bitcoin" was problematic and impactful.. but not really problematic and impactful on bitcoin overall, but instead problematic and impactful on certain parts of their citizens.

I guess one factor is that in the past, mining was bringing in a whole lot of $$$US. If China has intentions of ditching the petrodollar, they might be a lot less interested in having USD come into the country. I don't think this is likely any more real than it has been in the past but with USD inflation going the way it is, it seems like the odds may have shifted.

[modrobert]

What I mean are Bitcoin mining facilities with their own hydropower (water power) installations using small river as energy source as part of the land they own or lease, like this one:
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2018/1/17/inside-the-world-of-chinese-bitcoin-mining

No one is stealing energy when they generate their own power (or build mining facility close to existing hydropower plant with contract to mine energy overproduction), and shutting down just means the river continues to flow through the plant without turbine, no environmental gain.

It was my understanding that these hydro-power installations were mostly built in anticipation of needed demand (or arguably misallocated resources - see the ghost cities) and were just being used where they would otherwise be idle rather than built specifically by miners. I could see some idiot bureaucrat making a boneheaded decision in that case.

Yes, I was trying to find an old article about a Bitcoin mining facility with its own hydropower installation I read about previously, but when searching now this one came up which is built close to existing hydro power plant using overproduction electricity.

Basically how this works is based on energy distribution on the grid, simplified, any electricity produced which is not consumed on the grid can't be stored, it's just wasted. This means a hydropower power plant (or any type of power plant for that matter) will always overproduce a lot as it is tuned to handle the peaks of power usage, and during night time it's even more energy wasted. The idea here is that Bitcoin miners in close proximity to the plant buy the overproduction much cheaper than normal grid fee, during peak hours they either shut down or just pay the normal fee like any other consumer on the electric grid.

I watched several videos explaining this on the practical engineering channel:
Electrical Grid
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTZM4MrZKfW-ftqKGSbO-DwDiOGqNmq53

[Richy_T]

He is such an interesting "hero" in the BTC space.  He is seemingly anti a lot of the right-libertarian/anarchist vibe so strong in the Bitcoin world.  He seems a bonafide techno-leftist, and yet he has very FIRMLY fallen in with the maxi sort of position.

He is apparently an anarcho-communist and has a tattoo which seems to confirm it.

He's not a friend of freedom.