My take on BU's long-term impact on the price of BTC

[nutildah]

Here's a different article I recently wrote about the whole triasco:

SegWit Adds to the BTC Civil War

Last week we talked a little bit about Bitcoin Unlimited and its attempt to secede from the bitcoin network by creating something akin to a hostile takeover of the bitcoin blockchain. Since bitcoin is decentralized and no central organization can truly control bitcoin (most major updates are made via consensus of Core developers), it’s not a hostile takeover in the classic, corporate sense, but it is a revolutionary effort that has split fans, users and experts alike right down the middle.

Recap of BU

Bitcoin Unlimited proposed to solve the problem of ever-slowing transaction times and increasing transaction fees by allowing for an increase in bitcoin block size. If miners could decide the size of the block they wanted to mine and add to the blockchain, they could theoretically collect more transaction fees while simultaneously helping transactions get pushed through more quickly. Critics are quick to point out that this would make the size of the blockchain even more unwieldy than its current size of about 120 GB. Having the bandwidth necessary to download and update an even larger blockchain would further remove the average person’s ability to operate a full bitcoin node and thus maintain a Core client-based wallet.

The Second Fork in the Road

So, what will bitcoin users be stuck with: high fees and sluggish transactions, or having to run and maintain a program that will likely be far larger than bitcoin’s already-110 GB blockchain? Enter Segregated Witness, or SegWit, a coding tweak first proposed by bitcoin developer Pieter Wuille in 2011. With a doctorate in computer science from the University of Leuven, Peter has been part of the bitcoin core development team for longer than most other developers, and his solution is currently being highly considered as a way to bridge the gap between bitcoin Core and Unlimited camps. (The “Core” camp preferring to leave the block size at 1 MB for the moment and the “Unlimited” camp preferring to dynamically increase block sizes.) The term “Segregated Witness” refers to the idea that it is possible to remove (or segregate) certain identification data from bitcoin transactions in order to make them smaller in size, which would allow for more transactions to be squeezed into a single 1 MB block. The bitcoin network could still function as normal if data related to signatures (“witness data”) was removed from bitcoin transactions. Transaction IDs, which are dauntingly long strings of characters, would be shortened, each transaction would therefore consist of less total data, and the need for bigger block sizes would be relieved.

Much like Bitcoin Unlimited, proponents of SegWit are attempting to implement their coding changes via a consensus-based soft fork, meaning nobody would have to upgrade their client to be SegWit compatible if they didn’t want to, and their bitcoins would still be safe and compatible with nodes running the SegWit implementation. In order for SegWit to be activated, 95% of miners must be using the SegWit version of the bitcoin client, which would signal the network to incorporate the change into the bitcoin protocol for good.

The Limitation of Bitcoin Unlimited

SegWit poses two problems for Bitcoin Unlimited supporters. First, it draws away potential miner support that BU needs to reach their own activation threshold. As this “third party candidate” enters the ring and gains increasing favorability, it is near certainly spelling the doom of BU’s activation hopes by splitting up the miners into a third camp. In this way, you can imagine SegWit to be the Ralph Nader, Ron Paul or even Bernie Sanders of bitcoin political camps. With over 30% of the miner vote now signaling support for SegWit, this week it passed Bitcoin Unlimited in terms of miner popularity for the first time, effectively removing BU as a serious contender in the race to be the savior of bitcoin. On top of that, SegWit has already been named as the culprit behind a crash of BU-running servers, most likely due to software incompatibility issues on the part of BU. Obviously, Roger Ver, early bitcoin adopter and lead investor behind the highly-publicized and contentious push for BU, can’t be having a good week. Of course, SegWit is not without its own detractors, though they may have come too little and too late to derail SegWit’s impact on BU’s chances of success.

The Resurgence of Litecoin

Last but not least regarding SegWit is the fact that the world’s second oldest cryptocurrency, Litecoin (LTC), is on the verge of signaling SegWit activation in their own network, spurring a boost in new mining software aimed to take advantage of the likely event of its activation. Litecoin has always been touted as the more environmentally-friendly version of bitcoin since not nearly as much computing power is necessary to keep its network running and blockchain secured. This has pushed the price of LTC to fresh highs on speculation that lower fees and faster transaction times provided by SegWit may give it an edge over bitcoin in terms of future user adoption. Still, if anything’s certain, it’s that the future of cryptocurrency is always uncertain. A mantra heeded to potential speculators hoping to capitalize one way or another on last week’s events could best be put in terms of an ancient axiom: “change is the only constant.”

[zimmah]

I invested in bitcoin to get away from centralized banks, not to be controlled by it.

I don't want AXACoin, I want bitcoin.

A decentralized, P2P currency.

Bitcoin Core will turn it into a centralized settlement layer with 3rd parties.

Nothing of that is bitcoin.

i see your point mate, and LN and other shit are not bitcoin to me too, blockstream also it's centralized crap, what iw ant is that everything is done with bitcoin alone, not any other party, in the bitcoin discussion, there are other proposal to the block solution, which don't go away from decentralization too much, it's called extension blocks

Extension block is an untested proposal, We have some tested proposal and why we need to go to the untested proposal? We are having SegWit become the successful proposal to be implemented on the bitcoin.

Can you tell the reason? We are not wanna waste our time just for an untested proposal.

Honestly, Extension blocks are supporting all of the features by SegWit and emergents consensus.

But there is a wrong thing, SegWit was offering the blocksize increase to 2MB.,

Core devs have done nothing but to waste time all the time.   

if they just took satoshis advice to write a blocksize increase in the code that activates at block X then none of this would be a problem.   

But no, they stall for time.   

Before blocks were full, they were holding conventions to make agreements behind closed doors, to waste even more time and centralize bitcoin even more.

[Wind_FURY]

The Resurgence of Litecoin

Last but not least regarding SegWit is the fact that the world’s second oldest cryptocurrency, Litecoin (LTC), is on the verge of signaling SegWit activation in their own network, spurring a boost in new mining software aimed to take advantage of the likely event of its activation. Litecoin has always been touted as the more environmentally-friendly version of bitcoin since not nearly as much computing power is necessary to keep its network running and blockchain secured. This has pushed the price of LTC to fresh highs on speculation that lower fees and faster transaction times provided by SegWit may give it an edge over bitcoin in terms of future user adoption. Still, if anything’s certain, it’s that the future of cryptocurrency is always uncertain. A mantra heeded to potential speculators hoping to capitalize one way or another on last week’s events could best be put in terms of an ancient axiom: “change is the only constant.”

The best case scenario for Litecoin is to become a testbed for Segwit. It still remains to be seen if it gains an "edge" on Bitcoin. Maybe if the dark markets started accepting Litecoin then we should have something to be worried about. But right now, as is, everything is still ok. Maybe LTC might gain some of the market that BTC has but it will not wholly dominate it.

[ImHash]

There is no take long or short whatsoever, end of story. market has spoken already that if BU forks no matter if they run the longest chain or whatever exchanges will not accept/ trade/ list it as BTC what else you need to see to know for sure that forking is not the answer, not just that but then comes the chain split ETH/ETC drama, double spending the 16.3M bitcoins potentially. do you really think people pay $1200 for 1 bitcoin while another one with the same signature can be spend as well and pay $1200 for that as well?
Any hard fork without 95% miners/ nodes consensus will result in a disaster/ rejected blocks/ orphan blocks and miners will receive hundreds of thousands dollars loss of funds.
But now they have decided that 75% hash power agreeing on something should be enough and the remaining 25% must follow the majority which is still acceptable but hard forking with +51% hash power and maintaining the longest chain doesn't make any economical sense as why would they do that while keeping one secure and strong chain would benefit them most?

[ASHLIUSZ]

The Resurgence of Litecoin

Last but not least regarding SegWit is the fact that the world’s second oldest cryptocurrency, Litecoin (LTC), is on the verge of signaling SegWit activation in their own network, spurring a boost in new mining software aimed to take advantage of the likely event of its activation. Litecoin has always been touted as the more environmentally-friendly version of bitcoin since not nearly as much computing power is necessary to keep its network running and blockchain secured. This has pushed the price of LTC to fresh highs on speculation that lower fees and faster transaction times provided by SegWit may give it an edge over bitcoin in terms of future user adoption. Still, if anything’s certain, it’s that the future of cryptocurrency is always uncertain. A mantra heeded to potential speculators hoping to capitalize one way or another on last week’s events could best be put in terms of an ancient axiom: “change is the only constant.”

The best case scenario for Litecoin is to become a testbed for Segwit. It still remains to be seen if it gains an "edge" on Bitcoin. Maybe if the dark markets started accepting Litecoin then we should have something to be worried about. But right now, as is, everything is still ok. Maybe LTC might gain some of the market that BTC has but it will not wholly dominate it.

As stated litecoin will surely serve as an testbed to know better about the impact of segwit on activation. Litecoin cannot dominate bitcoin even if LTC gains some market of the bitcoin. BU has lost its potential to segwit and as Litecoin won't suddenly gain capital bitcoin won't be impacted much.

[nutildah]

IMHO, SegWit's won, not because it's been activated, but because its definitely stopped BU's momentum to a terminal degree.

Just goes to show that those who try to hijack bitcoin's good name will inevitably get burned.

I mean FFS Roger, come up with a more original name for your own damn coin.

[cellard]

IMHO, SegWit's won, not because it's been activated, but because its definitely stopped BU's momentum to a terminal degree.

Just goes to show that those who try to hijack bitcoin's good name will inevitably get burned.

I mean FFS Roger, come up with a more original name for your own damn coin.

It's a tie. Segwit has won on every department, but the hashrate is still blocked by a centralizing actor, which is ridiculous but that's how the system works.
UASF is an option, to attack this ridiculous centralization.

[gentlemand]

It's a tie. Segwit has won on every department, but the hashrate is still blocked by a centralizing actor, which is ridiculous but that's how the system works.
UASF is an option, to attack this ridiculous centralization.

It is slightly bonkers that a handful of people can do this. Look at what Litecoin's getting up to with the prospect of Segwit and they don't have the slightest scaling problem either.

It just goes to show how little vision the average miner who isn't enjoying asicboost has.

[cellard]

It's a tie. Segwit has won on every department, but the hashrate is still blocked by a centralizing actor, which is ridiculous but that's how the system works.
UASF is an option, to attack this ridiculous centralization.

It is slightly bonkers that a handful of people can do this. Look at what Litecoin's getting up to with the prospect of Segwit and they don't have the slightest scaling problem either.

It just goes to show how little vision the average miner who isn't enjoying asicboost has.

That's why BTC will get segwit with either hashrate or UASF because what the people want, we didn't sign up for Jihan Coin where a single person gets to block everything else. So signal what users want or get UASF.

[gentlemand]

They will keep on fighting and try to fork the network away from the Core developers because Bitcoin is about the one which has more hash power securing the blockchain.

If we had a blatant miner hijack then I for one would be long gone. It would basically be Chinese miners versus the rest of the world, as there really isn't very much going on China itself and never has been.

They could theoretically gather the grunt to steer Bitcoin in the direction they want. They'd be left selling them to the few hundred people left on Chinese exchanges as everyone else would be shopping elsewhere.

[Omega Weapon]

The Resurgence of Litecoin

Last but not least regarding SegWit is the fact that the world’s second oldest cryptocurrency, Litecoin (LTC), is on the verge of signaling SegWit activation in their own network, spurring a boost in new mining software aimed to take advantage of the likely event of its activation. Litecoin has always been touted as the more environmentally-friendly version of bitcoin since not nearly as much computing power is necessary to keep its network running and blockchain secured. This has pushed the price of LTC to fresh highs on speculation that lower fees and faster transaction times provided by SegWit may give it an edge over bitcoin in terms of future user adoption. Still, if anything’s certain, it’s that the future of cryptocurrency is always uncertain. A mantra heeded to potential speculators hoping to capitalize one way or another on last week’s events could best be put in terms of an ancient axiom: “change is the only constant.”

The best case scenario for Litecoin is to become a testbed for Segwit. It still remains to be seen if it gains an "edge" on Bitcoin. Maybe if the dark markets started accepting Litecoin then we should have something to be worried about. But right now, as is, everything is still ok. Maybe LTC might gain some of the market that BTC has but it will not wholly dominate it.

It is obvious Litecoin is not going to surpass bitcoin, but without a doubt it is going to give a push to Litecoin and it is going to attract a lot of attention for some time, but at the same time this is nothing new for quite some time if you wanted a faster confirmation time then you needed to use Litecoin instead of bitcoin.

[Wind_FURY]

IMHO, SegWit's won, not because it's been activated, but because its definitely stopped BU's momentum to a terminal degree.

Just goes to show that those who try to hijack bitcoin's good name will inevitably get burned.

I mean FFS Roger, come up with a more original name for your own damn coin.

It can be also seen in reverse. The miners having their support behind Bitcoin Unlimited has neutralized the activation of Segwit and they also see this as a small victory for themselves. Segwit opens up the possibility of the LN which reduces their bonuses collected in fees. The status quo is ok with them because of the "fee market" structure. Maybe this is what the miners really want all along. Higher fees.

[nutildah]

IMHO, SegWit's won, not because it's been activated, but because its definitely stopped BU's momentum to a terminal degree.

Just goes to show that those who try to hijack bitcoin's good name will inevitably get burned.

I mean FFS Roger, come up with a more original name for your own damn coin.

It can be also seen in reverse. The miners having their support behind Bitcoin Unlimited has neutralized the activation of Segwit and they also see this as a small victory for themselves. Segwit opens up the possibility of the LN which reduces their bonuses collected in fees. The status quo is ok with them because of the "fee market" structure. Maybe this is what the miners really want all along. Higher fees.

Except for the fact that SegWit support has been going up while BU support is going down. So, it can't be seen in reverse. Besides, SegWit isn't trying to present themselves as a hostile takeover of the network.

I agree that the fee problem is a bitch. But here's the thing: if the miner isn't happy with the fees they are getting, they can quit and that will make room for other miners willing to settle for less. That's the beauty of the system.

[Hazir]

Except for the fact that SegWit support has been going up while BU support is going down. So, it can't be seen in reverse. Besides, SegWit isn't trying to present themselves as a hostile takeover of the network.

From the looks of it we can tell that both support for SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited decreased recently.
Week ago SegWit was backed by more that 30% of hash power, today it is 28.5%.
Same with BU, it was supported by 38%-39% miners at its peak, now it is 36.9%
Miners are waiting for some other solution and are tired of SegWit vs. Bu never ending debate?

https://coin.dance/blocks

[nutildah]

Except for the fact that SegWit support has been going up while BU support is going down. So, it can't be seen in reverse. Besides, SegWit isn't trying to present themselves as a hostile takeover of the network.

From the looks of it we can tell that both support for SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited decreased recently.
Week ago SegWit was backed by more that 30% of hash power, today it is 28.5%.
Same with BU, it was supported by 38%-39% miners at its peak, now it is 36.9%
Miners are waiting for some other solution and are tired of SegWit vs. Bu never ending debate?

https://coin.dance/blocks

What kind of a pattern do you think this chart looks like its about to follow to you?

https://coin.dance/nodes/unlimited

A chart that is shooting to the moon or a chart that has plateau'd after a tremendous pump and is about to fall on its knees.

We'll know for sure in about 2 weeks, if not less.

And for the record, I'm not pro-SegWit necessarily, I'm just anti-BU

[Wind_FURY]

IMHO, SegWit's won, not because it's been activated, but because its definitely stopped BU's momentum to a terminal degree.

Just goes to show that those who try to hijack bitcoin's good name will inevitably get burned.

I mean FFS Roger, come up with a more original name for your own damn coin.

It can be also seen in reverse. The miners having their support behind Bitcoin Unlimited has neutralized the activation of Segwit and they also see this as a small victory for themselves. Segwit opens up the possibility of the LN which reduces their bonuses collected in fees. The status quo is ok with them because of the "fee market" structure. Maybe this is what the miners really want all along. Higher fees.

Except for the fact that SegWit support has been going up while BU support is going down. So, it can't be seen in reverse. Besides, SegWit isn't trying to present themselves as a hostile takeover of the network.

Not really. Segwit support is slightly going up, yes but it is not something to celebrate over. We should give it more time.

Bitcoin Unlimited support go down but it has been ganing its losses lately. You can check the graphs of both.

https://blockchain.info/charts/bip-9-segwit

https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-unlimited-share

I agree that the fee problem is a bitch. But here's the thing: if the miner isn't happy with the fees they are getting, they can quit and that will make room for other miners willing to settle for less. That's the beauty of the system.

Do you really think that will happen after their investment in ASIC and very large mining farms? They will impose their will on the network and use dirty tactics to get what they want.

[nutildah]

Not really. Segwit support is slightly going up, yes but it is not something to celebrate over. We should give it more time.

Like I said, I'm not a SegWit supporter per se, I'm just glad that miners are using it as an excuse to fight BU.

Do you really think that will happen after their investment in ASIC and very large mining farms? They will impose their will on the network and use dirty tactics to get what they want.

Well, so far you've been wrong. Let's hope this continues to be the case. BU will hardfork before it gets activated, that's a near guarantee by this point.

[Wind_FURY]

Not really. Segwit support is slightly going up, yes but it is not something to celebrate over. We should give it more time.

Like I said, I'm not a SegWit supporter per se, I'm just glad that miners are using it as an excuse to fight BU.

What? You confuse me. Is it not the other way around? The miners support BU and are using that to oppose Segwit and Core.

Do you really think that will happen after their investment in ASIC and very large mining farms? They will impose their will on the network and use dirty tactics to get what they want.

Well, so far you've been wrong. Let's hope this continues to be the case. BU will hardfork before it gets activated, that's a near guarantee by this point.

I thought you said support for Segwit is going up and the support for Bitcoin Unlimited is going down? Now I am really confused by you. 

[darkangel11]

Not really. Segwit support is slightly going up, yes but it is not something to celebrate over. We should give it more time.

Like I said, I'm not a SegWit supporter per se, I'm just glad that miners are using it as an excuse to fight BU.

Do you really think that will happen after their investment in ASIC and very large mining farms? They will impose their will on the network and use dirty tactics to get what they want.

Well, so far you've been wrong. Let's hope this continues to be the case. BU will hardfork before it gets activated, that's a near guarantee by this point.

I doubt BU will have enough support to cause a fork. It's as strong as Ver's money, meaning that as long as he's making it a personal hobby and uses money to promote it it's getting somewhere, but it's a lost cause. People just don't like the idea, period. No amount of promotion or attempts to make fun of Bitcoin's current state via btc.com will make it happen.

[Wind_FURY]

Not really. Segwit support is slightly going up, yes but it is not something to celebrate over. We should give it more time.

Like I said, I'm not a SegWit supporter per se, I'm just glad that miners are using it as an excuse to fight BU.

Do you really think that will happen after their investment in ASIC and very large mining farms? They will impose their will on the network and use dirty tactics to get what they want.

Well, so far you've been wrong. Let's hope this continues to be the case. BU will hardfork before it gets activated, that's a near guarantee by this point.

I doubt BU will have enough support to cause a fork. It's as strong as Ver's money, meaning that as long as he's making it a personal hobby and uses money to promote it it's getting somewhere, but it's a lost cause. People just don't like the idea, period. No amount of promotion or attempts to make fun of Bitcoin's current state via btc.com will make it happen.

I am almost in the same opinion as you but I believe if Bitcoin Unlimited support reaches 50% and stays there, the hard fork will be inevitable. Everyone should start preparing for replay attack protection.