rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)

[ArticMine]

is there a significant consequence to 2x, 4x, 10x -ing the block size as a temp fix?

Increasing the hard-coded blocksize limit as a temporary fix is trivial from the software perspective, but it is a hard fork.  In pseudo code:

   if (blocknumber > 350,000) blocksize_limit = 4 MB

   else blocksize_limit = 1 MB

I expect that we will implement a temporary fix like this ^^ when we get closer to the limit.  There will also be a strong commitment at this point that the next change will implement a floating blocksize limit.  The algorithm used to calculate this limit must be chosen very carefully and shouldn't be rushed.    

This may well turn out to be the case, although I am not so sure that the next change, after a temporary fix, would implement a floating blocksize limit. This is because of human nature. We must also keep in mind that the 256K to 1 MB blocksize limit change in 2013 in the end became a hard fork, so in reality this coming change is the "next" change.

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[threecats]

So this could be the end of the bitcoin bubbles, possibly. Will a competitor come and dethrone bitcoin? Or, are we just entering a new and much smaller growth period?

This may depend on how the question of the 1 MB max blocksize limit is handled. One thing is certain without an increase in this limit, and a hark fork is necessary for this, Bitcoin will be dethroned by a competitor. Once the limit is reached transaction fees will skyrocket as an ever growing number of transactions compete for the 1 MB space every 10 min. Fortunately Gavin Andresen understands the need for this. So do other Bitcoin developers. The real question in my mind is will they muster the necessary community consensus to make this hard fork happen?

I don't think there's any plausible scenario in which the death of Bitcoin is somehow an opportunity for some altcoin to take its place.  The death of Bitcoin would be the death of cryptocurrency.

I don't agree. BTC is currently caught in the middle of two somewhat conflicting pulls: 1) a means of commerce and 2) and a deeper evolution of modern politics: that is, the changing balance of power between the individual and the state. At this point there are alts mpving full speed ahead in both these two directions, while btc seems paralyzed in the middle. In first direction, alts like Via are moving forward with sidechain possibilities and faster transactions. In the other direction, anons like Cloak and BTCD are moving rapidly towards privacy evolutions that BTC has now forsaken.

Evolution, sythesis, antithesis - this is the nature of life. BTC and crypto in general does not stand apart  from this flow.

If Bitcoin can be replaced by a competitor, then it will almost certainly have failed to act as a store of value.  At that point, why would anyone have confidence in the replacement coin not to be itself replaced in time.  If this scenario were to play out, I think it would damage confidence in cryptocurrencies for the foreseeable future.

I don't think it will be replaced.I thin it will remain as the mothership, if you will, which dovetails nicely with the store of value role.   As for confidence in replacements, apply that logic to any investment heavy technology:  if it were true, people would never build factories, large ships, etc.

[threecats]

So this could be the end of the bitcoin bubbles, possibly. Will a competitor come and dethrone bitcoin? Or, are we just entering a new and much smaller growth period?

This may depend on how the question of the 1 MB max blocksize limit is handled. One thing is certain without an increase in this limit, and a hark fork is necessary for this, Bitcoin will be dethroned by a competitor. Once the limit is reached transaction fees will skyrocket as an ever growing number of transactions compete for the 1 MB space every 10 min. Fortunately Gavin Andresen understands the need for this. So do other Bitcoin developers. The real question in my mind is will they muster the necessary community consensus to make this hard fork happen?

I don't think there's any plausible scenario in which the death of Bitcoin is somehow an opportunity for some altcoin to take its place.  The death of Bitcoin would be the death of cryptocurrency.

I don't agree. BTC is currently caught in the middle of two somewhat conflicting pulls: 1) a means of commerce and 2) and a deeper evolution of modern politics: that is, the changing balance of power between the individual and the state. At this point there are alts mpving full speed ahead in both these two directions, while btc seems paralyzed in the middle. In first direction, alts like Via are moving forward with sidechain possibilities and faster transactions. In the other direction, anons like Cloak and BTCD are moving rapidly towards privacy evolutions that BTC has now forsaken.

Evolution, sythesis, antithesis - this is the nature of life. BTC and crypto in general does not stand apart  from this flow.

Although I agree that alt-cryptocoins can be a place for innovation, Based on the market, your conclusion about the stagnant state of BTC seems incorrect.  BTC's share of the market cap continues to grow, while all of the others put together are NOT really taking any meaningful market share from BTC.  This may show more of the demise of LTC rather than the demise of BTC.  In conclusion, BTC seems to continue to hold its own, pretty well, and so far.

Market share will be a future result of current changes. And the departure of Peter Todd for Via signifies everything that is stagnent about BTC dev right now.  Sidechains & tree chains were a no brainer innovation for BTC to knock the stuffing out of the entire alt coin market. The opportunity has hung in the air for months. Nothing happened. And now the brains are leaving to go where the action & innovation can happen. This is a red flag for any entity - creativity and energy going elsewhere because the conditions for creative growth are not there.

[rpietila]

And it will keep going lower, since there are more bad news than there are good ones.

What planet are you living on?  The news for bitcoin has been overwhelmingly bullish essentially ever since Gox went titsup in the river.

Price is low because of dumping on exchanges, which are easy to manipulate because they are thinly traded, because everyone is holding tight.

Why dump?  Two reasons:  Cheap coins from industrial mining, and suppressing price marks for contracted OTC prices.  These two factors enable large actors to enter the market without adverse price movement.

This dam will break.  It will break suddenly, and it will break massively.  The wave will be a tremendous wall, and when it passes, all our houses will be washed up on higher shores, if we do not make a shipwreck of them in all the excitement.

Thank you. It is good to be reminded of these realities every once in a while

[statoshi]

The block size limit in the protocol will not become an issue until transaction fees become a more substantial portion of mining revenue. As it stands at the moment, there is a market-based soft block size limit that results due to the economic incentives that miners face due to block propagation races. Since transaction fees are eclipsed by the block reward, miners are incentivized to publish smaller blocks with fewer transactions.

[ArticMine]

The block size limit in the protocol will not become an issue until transaction fees become a more substantial portion of mining revenue. As it stands at the moment, there is a market-based soft block size limit that results due to the economic incentives that miners face due to block propagation races. Since transaction fees are eclipsed by the block reward, miners are incentivized to publish smaller blocks with fewer transactions.

Yes this is a problem, but it can be solved by the market by increasing fees to cover the propagation risk to the miners. Furthermore it also creates an incentive to run full nodes as users compete to get their transactions confirmed. This has the overall effect of reducing the latency of the network, thereby mitigating the propagation risk to the miners. In short there are built in economic incentives already to address this problem. The problem with the 1 MB limit is that it is arbitrary and not related the costs incurred by the miners or the rest of the network, so no amount of fee increases or reduction of risk by adding full nodes will address the fact that a certain number of transactions will not get any confirmations.

[Wary]

And it will keep going lower, since there are more bad news than there are good ones.

What planet are you living on?  The news for bitcoin has been overwhelmingly bullish essentially ever since Gox went titsup in the river.

Price is low because of dumping on exchanges, which are easy to manipulate because they are thinly traded, because everyone is holding tight.

Why dump?  Two reasons:  Cheap coins from industrial mining, and suppressing price marks for contracted OTC prices.  These two factors enable large actors to enter the market without adverse price movement.

This dam will break.  It will break suddenly, and it will break massively.  The wave will be a tremendous wall, and when it passes, all our houses will be washed up on higher shores, if we do not make a shipwreck of them in all the excitement.

Thank you. It is good to be reminded of these realities every once in a while

It's possible to test the "large actors buying OTC" theory. Have you or whales you know been recently contacted with a big OTC offer?

[giveBTCpls]

private property as we knowing must basically dissapear. Things will be lended. Say you need whatever device to do whatever task, like record a movie or whatever, you ask for any free cameras and you get one sent, when you are done you send it back and some other person uses it.

Who sends you the camera? Who stores it? Who fixes it when it's broken? If two people want it at the same time, who decides who gets it? What happens to the person who "borrows" it and never sends it back?

Statistics could get extracted in terms of "how many cameras are used and for how much time are they used, and how many of them get broken" and then manufacture under these %'s. These cameras are built by automated robots, which manufacture given the data input that I mentioned earlier. The wasted stuff aka unrepairable will be decomposed and the prime materials used again. In 1000 years the human imput to keep this cycle going will be peanuts.

Who extracts these statistics? Who decides how much in terms of resources gets spent on digital cameras, smartphone cameras, video cameras, other types of cameras, and / or R&D on new types of cameras?

Of course some sort of centralized (as in central or "Main", not closed source) computer having realtime date of worldwide resources. I don't see any other solution. The core of what dictates if something can be manufactured or not is judging by the dictatorship that is nature (nature is only true dictatorship, we must align to it, to whatever resources are available) and also to the well being of everyone. If what you are requesting, whatever that is, compromises the basic needs of a person a continent away, then you deal with it and not get said thing until this equilibrum of resources and global well being + your specific not basic need demand not compromising any of the former is meet.

[aminorex]

It's possible to test the "large actors buying OTC" theory. Have you or whales you know been recently contacted with a big OTC offer?

I have met buyers (2 hedge funds) who contract with industrial-scale miners for virgin blocks (and one of them also does altcoins).  I was not privy to contractual details.  I acted as an SME and quantitative analyst consulting for the funds.  I suspect one of the funds is sourcing a substantial quantity.  The fund that also does alts was probably not sourcing very much btc (and even less alts), in comparison.  This isn't enough data to form any strong conclusion, but it is leading.  I find it hard to imagine that my experiences were unique.  I can't identify them in any way without violating contracts.  They were not names familiar from crypto news (of which five spring to mind).

The number of desks doing btc is proliferating like commodity futures in the 80s, but very much on the down-low.  I can't imagine they can be accumulating much yet, or the dam would already have broken.

[bucktotal]

is there a significant consequence to 2x, 4x, 10x -ing the block size as a temp fix?

Increasing the hard-coded blocksize limit as a temporary fix is trivial from the software perspective, but it is a hard fork.  In pseudo code:

   if (blocknumber > 350,000) blocksize_limit = 4 MB

   else blocksize_limit = 1 MB

I expect that we will implement a temporary fix like this ^^ when we get closer to the limit.  There will also be a strong commitment at this point that the next change will implement a floating blocksize limit.  The algorithm used to calculate this limit must be chosen very carefully and shouldn't be rushed.    

my question was more, is there a "sig consequence" to bigger blocks, not is it difficult to implement. i assume it's a trivial change. but is there a real impact to the blockchain (bloat etc...) or economy to have 10x size blocks? and how long would that solve the problem for etc...?

[BTCtrader71]

private property as we knowing must basically dissapear. Things will be lended. Say you need whatever device to do whatever task, like record a movie or whatever, you ask for any free cameras and you get one sent, when you are done you send it back and some other person uses it.

Who sends you the camera? Who stores it? Who fixes it when it's broken? If two people want it at the same time, who decides who gets it? What happens to the person who "borrows" it and never sends it back?

Statistics could get extracted in terms of "how many cameras are used and for how much time are they used, and how many of them get broken" and then manufacture under these %'s. These cameras are built by automated robots, which manufacture given the data input that I mentioned earlier. The wasted stuff aka unrepairable will be decomposed and the prime materials used again. In 1000 years the human imput to keep this cycle going will be peanuts.

Who extracts these statistics? Who decides how much in terms of resources gets spent on digital cameras, smartphone cameras, video cameras, other types of cameras, and / or R&D on new types of cameras?

Of course some sort of centralized (as in central or "Main", not closed source) computer having realtime date of worldwide resources. I don't see any other solution. The core of what dictates if something can be manufactured or not is judging by the dictatorship that is nature (nature is only true dictatorship, we must align to it, to whatever resources are available) and also to the well being of everyone. If what you are requesting, whatever that is, compromises the basic needs of a person a continent away, then you deal with it and not get said thing until this equilibrum of resources and global well being + your specific not basic need demand not compromising any of the former is meet.

How do you plan to convince the world population to subjugate themselves to your centralized computer?

[BTCtrader71]

So this could be the end of the bitcoin bubbles, possibly. Will a competitor come and dethrone bitcoin? Or, are we just entering a new and much smaller growth period?

This may depend on how the question of the 1 MB max blocksize limit is handled. One thing is certain without an increase in this limit, and a hark fork is necessary for this, Bitcoin will be dethroned by a competitor. Once the limit is reached transaction fees will skyrocket as an ever growing number of transactions compete for the 1 MB space every 10 min. Fortunately Gavin Andresen understands the need for this. So do other Bitcoin developers. The real question in my mind is will they muster the necessary community consensus to make this hard fork happen?

I don't think there's any plausible scenario in which the death of Bitcoin is somehow an opportunity for some altcoin to take its place.  The death of Bitcoin would be the death of cryptocurrency.

I don't agree. BTC is currently caught in the middle of two somewhat conflicting pulls: 1) a means of commerce and 2) and a deeper evolution of modern politics: that is, the changing balance of power between the individual and the state. At this point there are alts mpving full speed ahead in both these two directions, while btc seems paralyzed in the middle. In first direction, alts like Via are moving forward with sidechain possibilities and faster transactions. In the other direction, anons like Cloak and BTCD are moving rapidly towards privacy evolutions that BTC has now forsaken.

Evolution, sythesis, antithesis - this is the nature of life. BTC and crypto in general does not stand apart  from this flow.

If Bitcoin can be replaced by a competitor, then it will almost certainly have failed to act as a store of value.  At that point, why would anyone have confidence in the replacement coin not to be itself replaced in time.  If this scenario were to play out, I think it would damage confidence in cryptocurrencies for the foreseeable future.

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?
 

[ArticMine]

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?
 

The chances of such a merger are zero. From a technical perspective the coins are very different, and the economic interests strongly align against this. More importantly such a merger would violate the most basic economic fundamentals of both coins. This means that such a merger would break all trust in the coins and yes could make them both worthless. Both communities would reject such a merger and for very good reasons.

What is more likely to happen here is that Bitcoin would have to fork to deal with the 1 MB Limit. Both coins would live side by side, compete and hopefully learn from each other. First mover is not everything. A very good example is the credit card industry. The first movers were Diner's Club and then American Express. Then came the later entrants including Visa and MasterCard. The first movers are still around but with vastly reduced market share.

The challenge for the Bitcoin is to deal with the 1 MB blocksize limit before the above happens and not become the American Express or even Diner's Club of crypto-currency.

Edit: Bitcoin might even fork in the middle of a boom, like it did the last time. After all it is way easier to get consensus when everyone is getting wealthier.

[Wary]

It's possible to test the "large actors buying OTC" theory. Have you or whales you know been recently contacted with a big OTC offer?

I have met buyers (2 hedge funds) who contract with industrial-scale miners for virgin blocks (and one of them also does altcoins).  I was not privy to contractual details.  I acted as an SME and quantitative analyst consulting for the funds.  I suspect one of the funds is sourcing a substantial quantity.  The fund that also does alts was probably not sourcing very much btc (and even less alts), in comparison.  This isn't enough data to form any strong conclusion, but it is leading.  I find it hard to imagine that my experiences were unique.  I can't identify them in any way without violating contracts.  They were not names familiar from crypto news (of which five spring to mind).

The number of desks doing btc is proliferating like commodity futures in the 80s, but very much on the down-low.  I can't imagine they can be accumulating much yet, or the dam would already have broken.

Thanks! That's more that could be expected, since such deals are very discrete, I imagine. As for "unique experience", it depends on how many of good QAs with substantial bitcoin knowledge are around. I suspect, not a lot.  

[Peter R]

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?

It is possible to clone any alt-coin and bootstrap it with a snapshot of the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain using the spin-off method.  Using this technique, "Bitcoin the Ledger" could be preserved while "Bitcoin the Payment Network" could be replaced with new technology.  

When the spin-off is launched, bitcoin users will have coins in both systems.  The two coins will trade against each other on the open market.  If the community thinks the new technology is not worth the switch, they will sell these "free" spin-off coins, thereby killing the spin-off.  If the community feels the technology is a "must have," they will sell bitcoins in favour of the spin-off, thereby transfer the bulk of the wealth to the new network.

[solex]

What is more likely to happen here is that Bitcoin would have to fork to deal with the 1 MB Limit. Both coins would live side by side, compete and hopefully learn from each other. First mover is not everything. A very good example is the credit card industry. The first movers were Diner's Club and then American Express. Then came the later entrants including Visa and MasterCard. The first movers are still around but with vastly reduced market share.

The challenge for the Bitcoin is to deal with the 1 MB blocksize limit before the above happens and not become the American Express or even Diner's Club of crypto-currency.

Edit: Bitcoin might even fork in the middle of a boom, like it did the last time. After all it is way easier to get consensus when everyone is getting wealthier.

Looking back at the March 2013 temporary fork event, a long time afterwards, it occurred to me that it may have been a major driver in the $266 spike (the Cyprus situation being irrelevant). The reason is that for many non-technical people the fork "proved" that Bitcoin was truly a breakthrough in software - not a clever scam. The fact that it could have a technical glitch and people from all over the ecosystem rushed to fix it, publicly on IRC, also proved that it is an honest enterprise.

However, this is a one-off proof of legitimacy. Similar events will be very damaging. There are hundreds of alt-coins of many types waiting for Bitcoin to shoot itself in the foot. Bitcoin's value is reasonably steady now and very much buoyed from its first-mover status - and its technical stability when viewed by the public. This is not something which should be thrown away because of analysis paralysis over the 1MB.

[phatsphere]

... there is a market-based soft block size limit that results due to the economic incentives that miners face due to block propagation races.

Yes this is a problem, but it can be solved by the market by increasing fees to cover the propagation risk to the miners.

I don't think so.

There are ways to speed up the block propagation by only sending out hashes for differences in the tree and so on -- and not the full block. This is something that needs to be designed well, implemented perfectly and accepted by the miners. This takes time. If the Bitcoin-devs solve this, they have once again a first mover advantage over all the other copy-coins.

I'm also firmly against increasing the block size just because it can be done. Let's wait and see for a few month how the tx-fees and acknowledgement times will develop once the floating fee algorithm is in effect.  Bitcoin as a store of value is currently it's main use case (in my eyes) and a takeoff for micro transactions would kill it. I really don't know why there are so many who were thinking that bitcoin has a future for micro-txs although there is a fixed blockchain. (If at all, transaction replacements are the future in that regard)

[rpietila]

Why is the floating transaction fee not implemented already?

(iow: why centralization?)

[huobi_network]

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?

It is possible to clone any alt-coin and bootstrap it with a snapshot of the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain using the spin-off method.  Using this technique, "Bitcoin the Ledger" could be preserved while "Bitcoin the Payment Network" could be replaced with new technology.  

When the spin-off is launched, bitcoin users will have coins in both systems.  The two coins will trade against each other on the open market.  If the community thinks the new technology is not worth the switch, they will sell these "free" spin-off coins, thereby killing the spin-off.  If the community feels the technology is a "must have," they will sell bitcoins in favour of the spin-off, thereby transfer the bulk of the wealth to the new network.

This is a beautiful idea. If it is technologically feasible, and I am sure it is, I see no way how an altcoin technologically superior to bitcoin would be able to hold its ground against an identical spin-off which includes the bitcoin ledger. Are there any convincing arguments against?

[danielW]

Why is the floating transaction fee not implemented already?

(iow: why centralization?)

Somebody has to do it.  

Not that many people truly understand the actual code. It takes a lot of time to understand it during which you dont get paid.

Once you do understand it there is a high demand for bitcoin developers from private ventures, not that many people can afford to work for free on bitcoin protocol and client.

(Thats being general, specifically I think floating prices should be implemented soon).