does mircea popescu really have the power to decide if a hardfork happens?

[mimblewimble]

i have been reading on this lately as some people claim that he and his group has enough bitcoins (up to billion+) to decide to outcome of any split, i assume the method would be to dump their coins on the market to crush the fork, kill the hashrate and thus resolve the conflict forcing miners to come back to legacy chain

i wrote a post here

since people have short attention spams and dont like to read, i'll keep this one shorter and hopefully someone checks out the other thread for more detailed explanation

i would like to know, if he and his group have enough power to influence bitcoin so much.  has he signed addresses that prove he is that wealthy?  how do we know for a fact?

devs seem to take the time to ask about their opinion so i assume they have tons, but i haven't seen any evidence.

a good read to put you in context:

http://thestringpuller.com/2016/06/bitcoin-wont-hardfork-any-time-soon/



did satoshi have in mind and predicted that this sort of whale groups acting as keepers or guardians of bitcoin would arise to make it immutable?

isn't it unavoidable that this concentration of power would have happened?  did he predict that this concentration of power would be in the hands of "bitcoin fundamentalists" that wouldn't allow any changes? or this just happened by chance?  could a group like this compromised of people with other agendas have arised? do they exist and we don't know?

is this good? bad?  a single point of failure? centralizing? what is this?  can they really stop hardforks and even dictate the conditions at will?

what does this mean for bitcoin in the big picture?

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[kenzo tamasaki]

Some guy here claims he makes tons of money with that MPEX website which I have no idea what it is and how much is moved there.

[jonald_fyookball]

 

omg man..too funny.

no.  its entirely up to the miners. 

[davis196]

"He and his group has enough bitcoins(up to billion+)".Are you kidding me?
Do you mean million,not billion?Nobody can have 1 billion btc 
Nobody could  have even 1 million.The largest btc holders have around 100000 btc.
I don` t care about his claims.Miners care only about their profits,they don`t care about btc price and what holders think about the hard fork.

[Qartada]

omg man..too funny.

no.  its entirely up to the miners. 

Miners will mine on the chain which is profitable.  If one of the two chains is barely worth anything, miners can only mine on their preferred one for so long.

If there actually are whales considering BIP 148, it would sure as hell influence miners for them to sell loads of coins on one chain.
The answer is that you actually wouldn't need such a huge amount of BTC to make one chain near worthless.  If they were listed on exchanges, all that whales would have to do is collaborate to sell >500,000 BTC or so and with giant sell walls I can't see the new (or old) chain actually recovering.

[alani123]

i have been reading on this lately as some people claim that he and his group has enough bitcoins (up to billion+) to decide to outcome of any split, i assume the method would be to dump their coins on the market to crush the fork, kill the hashrate and thus resolve the conflict forcing miners to come back to legacy chain

i wrote a post here

since people have short attention spams and dont like to read, i'll keep this one shorter and hopefully someone checks out the other thread for more detailed explanation

i would like to know, if he and his group have enough power to influence bitcoin so much.  has he signed addresses that prove he is that wealthy?  how do we know for a fact?

devs seem to take the time to ask about their opinion so i assume they have tons, but i haven't seen any evidence.

a good read to put you in context:

http://thestringpuller.com/2016/06/bitcoin-wont-hardfork-any-time-soon/



did satoshi have in mind and predicted that this sort of whale groups acting as keepers or guardians of bitcoin would arise to make it immutable?

isn't it unavoidable that this concentration of power would have happened?  did he predict that this concentration of power would be in the hands of "bitcoin fundamentalists" that wouldn't allow any changes? or this just happened by chance?  could a group like this compromised of people with other agendas have arised? do they exist and we don't know?

is this good? bad?  a single point of failure? centralizing? what is this?  can they really stop hardforks and even dictate the conditions at will?

what does this mean for bitcoin in the big picture?

Mircea has managed to troll the media a couple of times, perhaps he's trying to do the same now. People familiar with the bitocin space know that he's a manic person with a completely irrational way of through. He's alliterated his closes group of friends and even many of his supporters drove away form his ventures through time due to his behavior. Not to be taken seriously when making such claims. Afterall, he could easily prove such a thing but he's obviously lying.

[DooMAD]

The thing with using a significant proportion of your fortune to short the chain you disagree with is, if you get it wrong, you lose a significant proportion of your fortune.  You've either got to be pretty bold or pretty certain that you're right if you're going to try doing that.  It's potentially a big gamble.  Although, with regard to 148 specifically, it's perhaps not much of a risk at all while so few nodes and even fewer miners seem to care.

As for the group of individuals referred to in the OP, I hope that when the egomaniacal sociopathic zealots inevitably place their bets against the will of the wider userbase, they remember the aphorism "the bigger they are, the harder they fall".  A small number of whales having too much influence would mean that Bitcoin is an oligarchy and users won't stand for that kind of centralisation.

[European Central Bank]

no. he was someone in 2011/12. now most people don't know who he is, and none of the miners or major players give a shit even if they do know who he is. i've read he has something like 30,000 coins. so what?

[mimblewimble]

omg man..too funny.

no.  its entirely up to the miners.  

the miners can attempt to hardfork, but AFTER the split happens, these whales will recieve their billions worth of BTC on both chains

if we agree on the fundamental principle of "hashrate follows price", and whales coordinate a massive dump to crush whichever chain they don't like, then how is it up entirely up to the miners? ultimately it's the whales that are deciding what chain survives.

from MP's blog:

VII. The miners decide.


No, they do not. The miners make some minor decisions in Bitcoin, but major decisions such as block forks are not at their disposition alone, and this for excellent reasons you'll readily understand if you stop and think about it.

There are two specific methods to control miners on this matter, which will make the scamcoin Gavin is trying to replace everyone's Bitcoin with only replace some people's Bitcoin. The first and most obvious is that irrespective of what miners mine, each single full node will reject illegal blocks. This is a fact. If all the miners out there suddenly quit Bitcon and go mine Keiser's Aurora scamcoin instead, from the perspective of the Bitcoin network hash rate simply dropped and that's all. There's absolutely no difference between Keiser's scamcoin and Gavin's scam coin as far as the network is concerned : while one's a scammer that I humiliatingly defeated in the past whereas the other a scammer that I humiliatingly defeat in the future, this makes no difference for Bitcoin. As far as anyone will be able to perceive, miners simply left.

The second and perhaps not as obvious has nevertheless been discussed at length on multiple occasions on #bitcoin-assets. Consider this terse explanation from March. 2013.

mircea_popescu: whoever has enough money to matter is likely to pick one chain for whatever reason
mircea_popescu: since fork means btc can be spent independently on either chain
mircea_popescu: he will sell his btc on one and perhaps buy on the other.
mircea_popescu: as a result prices will rapidly diverge, panicking the mass of users, and the fork is economically resolved.

The situation here is aggravated by the fact that the fork proposed is not simply nondeterministic behaviourii, and so the holdings on the two chains aren't notionally equivalent. Instead, all the holdings on the Bitcoin chain are accepted as valid on both Bitcoin and Gavincoin, but holdings on Gavincoin are rejected by Bitcoin. Consequently, everyone involved with the fork is writing options to everyone in Bitcoin, free of charge. That they have no ready way to finance these should be obvious, and consequently the grim prospects of the Gavin side of the fork should be just as obvious. At least, to people who understand economy to any degree.




i. By which really what's usually contemplated is, "pool masters will hijack the miners pointing at their pools, because they really wish to end up like BTCGuild/ 50 BTC ; that <5% of an entity once around 48% is such a tempting market share."
ii. As Peter Todd aptly points out, the alleged hard fork in Bitcoin's past wasn't a hard fork, but simply nondeterministic behaviour, resulting in two chains which both and roughly to the same degree validated.

[jonald_fyookball]

omg man..too funny.

no.  its entirely up to the miners.  

the miners can attempt to hardfork, but AFTER the split happens, these whales will recieve their billions worth of BTC on both chains

if we agree on the fundamental principle of "hashrate follows price", and whales coordinate a massive dump to crush whichever chain they don't like, then how is it up entirely up to the miners? ultimately it's the whales that are deciding what chain survives.
 

Multiple chains can survive regardless of dumping.

Whales can dump at any price, they can even sell them for a penny.... and someone will be buying.  The cheaper they sell, the more coins interested whales on the other side will accumulate.  It will be chaos for a short time and then the market will continue finding value.

[mr.robot8]

i hope nobody have the power to decide a hard fork alone,maybe minners after a votation...

[mimblewimble]

omg man..too funny.

no.  its entirely up to the miners.  

the miners can attempt to hardfork, but AFTER the split happens, these whales will recieve their billions worth of BTC on both chains

if we agree on the fundamental principle of "hashrate follows price", and whales coordinate a massive dump to crush whichever chain they don't like, then how is it up entirely up to the miners? ultimately it's the whales that are deciding what chain survives.
 

Multiple chains can survive regardless of dumping.

Whales can dump at any price, they can even sell them for a penny.... and someone will be buying.  The cheaper they sell, the more coins interested whales on the other side will accumulate.  It will be chaos for a short time and then the market will continue finding value.

it would survive as an alt at best, with marginal hashrate.

[franky1]

price crashing via dumping is temporary drama.. it will just be known as mega discount day..

think of it this way.. go back a couple years
do you think satoshi dumping his stash will suddenly revive the chain pre v0.8 that was compatible with satoshi's 0.1-0.3 implementations.. answer no.

its more complex then that, its about realising the symbiotic relationships between pools and nodes.. and then realising the many mechanisms and scenario's that can play out within the real understanding of the consensus network

such as if pools went in direction X but the nodes rejected blocks.. pools cant move their funds because none of the nodes recognise the block rewards because they are not held in the chain which the nodes have

also you have to interplay what node versions the gateway infrastructure is using. which means the ways in-out of bitcoin.

for instance the BScartel has puppet strings conncting to bitpay, bitpesa, coinbase, kraken, purse, shapeshift xapo amungst others.
so that too can decide which lasts longer..

and ofcourse there is the technical side. of which chain has most nodes and biggest chainwork/height with the LEAST headaches of orphans occuring that can sway people to trust one side or another..

the 'price' drama stuff is just temporary compared to consensus and security of the network

[mining1]

BU has the hashrate, core has the economic power, or atleast, more than BU. If core side dumps bitcoin BU, they will still have to convince BU miners to mine on their chain, because let's face it, 3-5 chinese guys control most of the hashrate. And BU obviously want BU side to succeed, which means, core will lose even with the most economic power because they won't have enough mining power.

[franky1]

BU has the hashrate, core has the economic power, or atleast, more than BU. If core side dumps bitcoin BU, they will still have to convince BU miners to mine on their chain, because let's face it, 3-5 chinese guys control most of the hashrate. And BU obviously want BU side to succeed, which means, core will lose even with the most economic power because they won't have enough mining power.

core has economic power?

last thing i read is that the exchanges would accept and trade both coins of any split that may occur.. so the 'economic' power is equal.

as i said in last post its more complex.
for instance if the BScartel only allowed their portfolio of exchanges to only allow deposits and withdrawals of segwit(AKA BScoin) .. THEN core would have economic power. but by exchanges allowing all forks to be traded. the ecomonic power is equalised

as for core having node power.. as of today cores nodes are empty flagging segwit without even having a node ready to make a segwit tx on the main net. (that will come as a later release after activation) so technically core has zero node power in true support of segwit. its just meaningless hand waving right now with promises of a proper version release after activation.

if you think that segwit tx's are going to occur overnight after activation. think again. even litecoin hasnt bothered to even get the segwit supporting pools to use segwit tx's. let alone the wider community..

all in all.. nothing is set in stone.. whether its
november-soft-segwit
august-hard-segwit
segwit-and-2mb-lagacy
1mb-legacy
dynamic-legacy

its still all up in the air, and going to be a clusterf**k of orphans for everyone.

[BillyBobZorton]

BU has the hashrate, core has the economic power, or atleast, more than BU. If core side dumps bitcoin BU, they will still have to convince BU miners to mine on their chain, because let's face it, 3-5 chinese guys control most of the hashrate. And BU obviously want BU side to succeed, which means, core will lose even with the most economic power because they won't have enough mining power.

core has economic power?

last thing i read is that the exchanges would accept and trade both coins of any split that may occur.. so the 'economic' power is equal.

as i said in last post its more complex.
for instance if the BScartel only allowed their portfolio of exchanges to only allow deposits and withdrawals of segwit(AKA BScoin) .. THEN core would have economic power. but by exchanges allowing all forks to be traded. the ecomonic power is equalised

as for core having node power.. as of today cores nodes are empty flagging segwit without even having a node ready to make a segwit tx on the main net. (that will come as a later release after activation) so technically core has zero node power in true support of segwit. its just meaningless hand waving right now with promises of a proper version release after activation.

if you think that segwit tx's are going to occur overnight after activation. think again. even litecoin hasnt bothered to even get the segwit supporting pools to use segwit tx's. let alone the wider community..

all in all.. nothing is set in stone.. whether its
november-soft-segwit
august-hard-segwit
segwit-and-2mb-lagacy
1mb-legacy
dynamic-legacy

its still all up in the air, and going to be a clusterf**k of orphans for everyone.

Buggy Unlimited is already:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-unlimited/

It's literally out of the picture. The miners just mine it to not resolve the situation and keep stacking up big fees.

If someone is stupid enough to hardfork, they will lose money if they sell their coins for BarryCoin, BuggyCoin, or WhateverthefuckCoin.

[franky1]

Buggy Unlimited is already:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-unlimited/

It's literally out of the picture. The miners just mine it to not resolve the situation and keep stacking up big fees.

If someone is stupid enough to hardfork, they will lose money if they sell their coins for BarryCoin, BuggyCoin, or WhateverthefuckCoin.

fool
1. bu is not activated nor will ever activate unless there is consensus.. there is no BU coin..
2. if there is a proper consensus fork. then the majority survives..(because consensus wins).. so the minority will lose their value for holding onto their minority.
3. your not realising the barrycoin is the same BScoin as blockstreams segwitcoin... barry and blockstream are together.. its all bait and switch divide and conquer techniques just to try getting segwit activated sooner rather than later by pretending its 'options/free choice' when really its just a new bridge that leads to the same highway

[BillyBobZorton]

Buggy Unlimited is already:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-unlimited/

It's literally out of the picture. The miners just mine it to not resolve the situation and keep stacking up big fees.

If someone is stupid enough to hardfork, they will lose money if they sell their coins for BarryCoin, BuggyCoin, or WhateverthefuckCoin.

fool
1. bu is not activated nor will ever activate unless there is consensus.. there is no BU coin..
2. if there is a proper consensus fork. then the majority survives..(because consensus wins).. so the minority will lose their value for holding onto their minority.
3. your not realising the barrycoin is the same BScoin as blockstreams segwitcoin... barry and blockstream are together.. its all bait and switch divide and conquer techniques just to try getting segwit activated sooner rather than later by pretending its 'options/free choice' when really its just a new bridge that leads to the same highway

Those BU futures are just an advance of what would happen to BU coin if Roger and Jihad are dumb enough to go through with it.

If there is no consensus for segwit then so be it. ANYTHING is better than 2 coins. I hope that whatever OP is talking about is true and whales are able to stop any hardforks. Paying big fees is better than having 2 bitcoins. All I ever wanted with bitcoin was a long term store of value anyway. If I wanted to transact fast and cheap you can always use litecoin or whatever.

If bitcoin hardforks it's pretty much game over for any hopes of a cryptographic store of value.

[virtualdn]

Never heard of this guy. Or I've heard once a few weeks ago, but I'm sure Satoshi is more popular and owns more coins for sure.

[franky1]

....

cant have store of value if you take away the real value part.. which is utility...
seems all you care about a greed of price

so from now on how about instead of talking about store of value, you use the term "greed of price" atleast then you are truly talking about what you desire.