BitcoinUnlimited can end costing more than Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin core will end costing 1/10 of BU price and will be renamed to Bitcoin classic just like Ethereum-
The "Bitcoin Classic" brand was already taken. It was the 2nd of 3 (so far) attempts to hard fork Bitcoin to a larger blocksize limit. XT, then Classic, and now Unlimited.
For BTU to exist, it needs to have more proof-of-work than BTC (as if BTC's work exceeds it, it will be considered valid and the BTU will reorg away).
I expect BU would add a checkpoint on the first >1MB block to prevent the BU chain every reorging back to the Bitcoin chain.
Loaded's term:
I'll add the contingency that the deal is null and void if there are major changes to either.
needs clarification. "Major changes" is too vague I think. BU adding a checkpoint to prevent reorgs back to the pre-fork chain could be called a major change, for example.
Alright: how about a small side bet for us little fish? I bet you 1 BTC that--should the most-work blockchain include a single block larger than 1 MB--that no minority chain will make it beyond 2100 blocks (~2 weeks and the length of a difficulty adjustment) without either a difficulty reset or a change in the proof-of-work algorithm. If I win, the 2 BTCs in escrow will be sent to me. If you win, the 2 BTCs on both chains will be sent to you. If nothing happens by December 31, 2017, we both get our 1 BTC back.
This could use a lot of clarification. The designation of "the most-work blockchain" is possibly going to refer to different chains at different times. It would be clearer to talk about chains by whether they contain at least one >1MB block or not. Also, it seems odd to specify the "~2 weeks" clause when any minority chain is almost guaranteed to take over 4 weeks to mine 2100 blocks.
[Edit: also I have seen posts from BU supporters saying that they will attempt to kill the Bitcoin blockchain in the event of a hard fork by deliberately orphaning any blocks on it, replacing them with empty blocks. If such a 51% attack happens it seems likely some kind of countermeasure would need to be taken, possibly a change of the work algorithm. Your bet then reads like "in the event of a hostile hard fork the original chain will die unless it takes steps to protect itself from attack" which is maybe self evident.]
While this is pretty amazing and popcorn worthy for the community, and you are uniquely positioned to make such a bet... Wouldn't it be more prudent to invest some of those risked coins to improve the bitcoin ecosystem? 40k coins buys a lot of developer time! It's enough to start and fund several bitcoin startups.
I guess from Loaded's point of view he isn't risking anything of value. He's only risking some valueless altcoin that has no chance of success. Once he wins the bet he will have doubled his Bitcoin count while simultaneously having reduced Roger's ability to further damage Bitcoin.
Anyway, I'm happy with 1 BTC and will go as high as 100 BTC. May I suggest Dooglus as an escrow, but I'll take anyone of the standard escrows here.
I would be happy to act as escrow, but I would need the rules to be a lot clearer than I have seen so far.
Regarding your term that if a fork happens, but BU reorgs so that the most-work chain no longer contains a block > 1 MB, I might be OK with that, but it's a bit unfair to me because what if we just get a random 1.1 MB block like we saw with bitcoin.com? I could see that happening again, and I don't think that should count as a fork. How about we define a "fork attempt" as occurring once the large block chain has at least 72 blocks built on top of it?
It seems possible to me that there could be a deliberate fork attempt but that it loses support quickly enough that it never reaches 72 blocks long from the forking block. For example, perhaps a significant percentage of the hashrate currently signalling BU support is trolling you, and won't ever actually mine BU blocks but just wants you to try forking. How happens in that case?
Let me think about whether I'd like to bet more that 1 BTC and I'll get back to you.
Do you have any problem with me posting the terms of our bet on Reddit (once dooglus has accepted and we've made sure that the terms are unambiguous), in order to generate some publicity?
I have no problem with using Reddit, or a separate BitcoinTalk thread. We should probably move off of this thread though and leave this one for the Loaded/Roger bet.
Edit:
Step 3: When the tx in step 2 is sufficiently confirmed (number of blocks to be determined), Loaded will send 60000 BTU tokens to the following P2SH address:
I think the idea is that they would want to lock the coins in place before any fork happens. Your plan seems like it requires the fork to have already happened.
