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

[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.

[Elwar]

I can see the IMF's position on El Salvador and I agree that it is a higher risk for them.

When they announced that, I thought...why don't we just raise $1 billion among Bitcoin folk and loan El Salvador the money to put toward infrastructure to be paid back in the future.

But if Bitcoin is accepted nationwide and widely used...then...good luck getting any more tax dollars from anyone since they'll just be earning untraceable, anonymous currency. Their tax revenue is going to crash and they won't be able to pay anyone anything.

I do like the idea that they are accepting Bitcoin for residency. That could possibly become their main source of revenue and replace all taxation as people want to join their thriving economy.

Bitcoin ends governments and it makes sense that the IMF would not want to invest in a country that will have a much smaller government in the future.

[Richy_T]

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

I mean, sure it could. And you could also be putting a bigger engine in your car so you could go faster in reverse. Nothing is needed for smaller blocks other than fewer transactions. Certainly lowering the block size limit dynamically wouldn't seem to server a useful purpose.

But I wouldn't want to put words into your mouth (and apologies if I have). What do *you* see as the benefits of a dynamic block size limit?

[Richy_T]

I do like the idea that they are accepting Bitcoin for residency. That could possibly become their main source of revenue and replace all taxation as people want to join their thriving economy.

That could be interesting. If it became a regular thing, it might lead to ES cleaning up their act and becoming a lot more visitor friendly.

Probably watch for the US increasing the cost of renouncing citizenship again soon.

[Elwar]

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.

Anarcho communists want decentralisation but while anarcho capitalists throw in the idea that we'll all be cooperatively free market property protecting volunteers, they believe that everyone will be unselfish, freely trading, sharing society with no need for property...because everyone cooperates and stuff.

Both are flawed in their reliance upon people agreeing to the final terms of life with no rulers. But at least they are on the right path with the no rulers part.

If your societal system does not take into account that some people will want to do X while you think they should do Y, then your system does not work for everyone.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

Maybe keep Segwit, but increase the block by 1 mb, and make a fork of that. See how it catches on. But fork it from BTC, not from the other ones which are already forks from BTC and forks of forks. Just start fresh from 0.21.1 (current version as of this post) and fork from there. You can call it BRH or something Bitcoin Richy? I dunno. hehe.. Or do serious research about the name. BBB.. Bitcoin Big Block.

Might work?  Rome was not built in a day, and little by little peeps can port their lil selfies over to the better version of bitcoin.. I am not a fan of using bitcoin in the name.... but I suppose if such everything the same and  merely BIGGER blocks catches on and takes over, then probably it would be better to have bitcoin in the name at that point, perhaps?

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.

Well of course there are a lot of factors that any country has to consider regarding various regulatory posturing that they might take towards bitcoin, and surely there are a lot of smart people in China who had been studying bitcoin way longer than Michael Saylor and Nayib Bukele, but for some reason, some of these quicker study folks are coming to better conclusions regarding why bitcoin might happen to matter. 

Even though it seems that China officials may well be fighting this tide too much and stifling innovation and industry in their country, they are better in a position to know what they want to do and how to approach the matter, and not even saying that any of their seemingly strong stances in regards to trying to control bitcoin industries in their country is going to work out well for them.  Could be a pretty BIG ass waste of their resources and energies if they believe that they can create some coins or embrace some "crypto" - non-bitcoin projects that they believe are going to sufficiently compete with bitcoin or allow them to keep bitcoin "in check" in their borders.  I am sure that there are plenty of smart people in China advising more friendly bitcoin related strategies, so who knows, exactly, what is real and what is NOT real or if some place like China will be ready willing and able to reverse themselves if they figure out that they are going down the wrong path in relation to their current posturing towards bitcoin.  Maybe they will end up being the smartest guys in the room - instead of seeming to disincentivizing (and stifling) bitcoin developments within their borders?

[Elwar]

I'm checking out Sphynx.chat which @jack just tweeted about.

It appears to be a way to chat over LN. I know they were working on that technology but I did not realise that it was implemented.

Does anyone know much about the tech behind it? Is it truly all living on the LN or is it reliant upon the Sphynx server?

[modrobert]

I can see the IMF's position on El Salvador and I agree that it is a higher risk for them.

When they announced that, I thought...why don't we just raise $1 billion among Bitcoin folk and loan El Salvador the money to put toward infrastructure to be paid back in the future.

But if Bitcoin is accepted nationwide and widely used...then...good luck getting any more tax dollars from anyone since they'll just be earning untraceable, anonymous currency. Their tax revenue is going to crash and they won't be able to pay anyone anything.

I do like the idea that they are accepting Bitcoin for residency. That could possibly become their main source of revenue and replace all taxation as people want to join their thriving economy.

Bitcoin ends governments and it makes sense that the IMF would not want to invest in a country that will have a much smaller government in the future.

IMF (with CIA abusing USAID for the positive mainstream media propaganda) want to invest in a country where they can easily oppress the people through a corrupt government and charge interest long term (think weaponized loan shark on global scale), in other words, El Salvador will be better off without them in the future. Also, I don't understand why Bitcoin would prevent the government in El Salvador to tax their citizens? Tax them with BTC the same way they would using USD.

[cAPSLOCK]

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.

As I have said the whole "must be runable on a Pi" ethos is misguided IMHO.

But there needs to be SOME minimum hardware requirement target, and though I think the Pi is too low, I would rather have too low than too high.  At least it's the Pi4.  

[cAPSLOCK]

I'm checking out Sphynx.chat which @jack just tweeted about.

It appears to be a way to chat over LN. I know they were working on that technology but I did not realise that it was implemented.

Does anyone know much about the tech behind it? Is it truly all living on the LN or is it reliant upon the Sphynx server?

It is truly LN native.  But there are "custodial" plans that the Sphinx folks sell.  You can run your own server.  Most of the Lightning node in a box distros offer it.

I am doing HUGE transaction volume based on this tech through my node since i have set my fees to zero when going to the podcastindex node (Adam Curry).

Breez has also implemented some crossover stuff... not the chatting, but the podcast/streaming stuff.

[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...

Just reeling a little as i realize what a huge pivotal moment this is.

We sit in here and yammer on and on about the price... and various other things...

But THIS development along side the ES thing is going to be a make or break moment for Bitcoin and the scaling path we have chosen.  Twitter implimenting the lightning network is actually a bigger test than the El Salvador thing.  Or equal.

It will obviously light up the BANKS!!! BANKS!!! people because twitter will obviously be running a giant node and all on Twitter traffic will be most likely off chain entirely.  But they obviously seem to be intending to send and receive OFF of the platform otherwise why even go to the trouble.

Jack Mallers is going to be one rich dude in the end.

Go Gen Z!

(By the way it sort of delights me that this is a Gen X/ Gen Z joint.. let the Boomer/Millennial people hate on each other all day and the quiet ones will get some shit done... lol)

[cAPSLOCK]

37k and hodling

not bad.

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

I think you are even more correct than usual about this!

[Hueristic]

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

But I wouldn't want to put words into your mouth (and apologies if I have). What do *you* see as the benefits of a dynamic block size limit?

It simply self manages itself will not have to be addressed again. The market sets the size, as long as you can create parameters that restrict the size from changing from attacks then this shouldn't be an issue as you can economically restrict expansion with a EXPONENTIAL fee schedule.

[Elwar]

I'm checking out Sphynx.chat which @jack just tweeted about.

It appears to be a way to chat over LN. I know they were working on that technology but I did not realise that it was implemented.

Does anyone know much about the tech behind it? Is it truly all living on the LN or is it reliant upon the Sphynx server?

It is truly LN native.  But there are "custodial" plans that the Sphinx folks sell.  You can run your own server.  Most of the Lightning node in a box distros offer it.

I am doing HUGE transaction volume based on this tech through my node since i have set my fees to zero when going to the podcastindex node (Adam Curry).

Breez has also implemented some crossover stuff... not the chatting, but the podcast/streaming stuff.

Very cool. Which would mean it's an uncensorable chat system...

I think it's time I set up a Lightning Node. I've just been using custodial stuff but the time has come.

My former maid just asked my wife about Bitcoin since she's from El Salvador. I need to figure out the best way for her to get paid over the LN and send it to her family without being too complicated. Strike is not available here in Panama yet.

[JayJuanGee]

I can see the IMF's position on El Salvador and I agree that it is a higher risk for them.

When they announced that, I thought...why don't we just raise $1 billion among Bitcoin folk and loan El Salvador the money to put toward infrastructure to be paid back in the future.

But if Bitcoin is accepted nationwide and widely used...then...good luck getting any more tax dollars from anyone since they'll just be earning untraceable, anonymous currency. Their tax revenue is going to crash and they won't be able to pay anyone anything.

I do like the idea that they are accepting Bitcoin for residency. That could possibly become their main source of revenue and replace all taxation as people want to join their thriving economy.

Bitcoin ends governments and it makes sense that the IMF would not want to invest in a country that will have a much smaller government in the future.

I like your idea about a potentiality that El Salvador could get its loan from another source (besides the IMF), and for example the bitcoin community.  Surely I believe that it would be important that if such loan were provided by the bitcoin community rather than the IMF, then there would be some kind of loan management service in place in order to assure that the lender(s) get paid back.

However, you are also asserting that you believe that El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin is going to just put it out of business and therefore, it would not be a good loan risk whether we are talking about the IMF loaning the money to them or the bitcoin community.

You could be correct regarding some aspects of Government being less relevant, but you seem to be presuming a whole hell of a lot to suggest that in the short term El Salvador is going to transition into a society that is unable to collect taxes because of the individualizing power of bitcoin.

So, let's assume that IMF has assumed that El Salvador is not a good risk in terms of paying back any loan (for example $1 billion).  I still personally believe that they would be sufficiently good for it, and if such money were to be loaned through some kind of arrangement of the bitcoin community, terms could be reached to give assurances that El Salvador would be good for the loan.. .. surely a bit speculative on my behalf too, but I do believe that you, Elwar, are presuming quite a bit, too.