CSW's "hash wars" impact on BTC price?

[cellard]

When will you understand that even if Core was on board with whatever proposal to increase the blocksize (let's say, the 2x segwit thing back then) it would still have created a division in the community, thus 2 different competing altcoins, and as a result an overall loss of the network effect and thefore value of Bitcoin? (see, Bitcoin Cash ABC vs Bitcoin SV nonsense).

Nonsense. Core drove division by their refusal to scale on chain, and by pushing their (maybe it will pay off some day in the future) segwit nonsense instead. In contrast to the abolition of the 250K soft cap and the 500K soft cap before then, which were both non-events.

Back in 2011, 'everybody knew' that we would just bump up the block size before blocks became persistently full. But no. Veer left -> ludicrous tx fees -> loss of dominance.

Actual nonsense. "Core" is not some guy that can decide, it's a bunch of people. And once again, the outcome would have been a clusterfuck of competing coins, which would have lead to loss of dominance as well, but said loss of dominance was unavoidable anyway because of the altcoin speculative bubble. Everyone wanted to get in on "Bitcoin 2.0" and get that x1000 on their initial investment, which is the only reason shitcoins go up.

By the time the next huge bubble happens capacity will not be a problem and trying to spam the network by the usual suspects will put even more losses on them.

But nonetheless the #1 reason of why bitcoin is valuable is the fact that it is immutable or in any case extremely difficult to change. If this wasn't the case then anyone with some brain cells would have dumped already and bought gold. Luckily as we can see by your frustration and everyone else's frustration on why "Bitcoin doesn't do what I want it to do so Bitcoin is dead" it isn't the case.

[figmentofmyass]

By the time the next huge bubble happens capacity will not be a problem and trying to spam the network by the usual suspects will put even more losses on them.

even with LN or sidechains, funding and settlement = on-chain transactions. we'll eventually run into the same congestion and high fees with or without a concerted effort to spam the network. 

are you opposed to any future block size increase? i've got mixed feelings myself knowing how difficult it might be politically. i'm curious how others see the issue---assuming the technological (network latency/bandwidth) bottlenecks are overcome.

[Wind_FURY]

When will you understand that even if Core was on board with whatever proposal to increase the blocksize (let's say, the 2x segwit thing back then) it would still have created a division in the community, thus 2 different competing altcoins, and as a result an overall loss of the network effect and thefore value of Bitcoin? (see, Bitcoin Cash ABC vs Bitcoin SV nonsense).

Nonsense. Core drove division by their refusal to scale on chain, and by pushing their (maybe it will pay off some day in the future) segwit nonsense instead. In contrast to the abolition of the 250K soft cap and the 500K soft cap before then, which were both non-events.

Back in 2011, 'everybody knew' that we would just bump up the block size before blocks became persistently full. But no. Veer left -> ludicrous tx fees -> loss of dominance.

Actual nonsense. "Core" is not some guy that can decide, it's a bunch of people. And once again, the outcome would have been a clusterfuck of competing coins, which would have lead to loss of dominance as well, but said loss of dominance was unavoidable anyway because of the altcoin speculative bubble. Everyone wanted to get in on "Bitcoin 2.0" and get that x1000 on their initial investment, which is the only reason shitcoins go up.

By the time the next huge bubble happens capacity will not be a problem and trying to spam the network by the usual suspects will put even more losses on them.

But nonetheless the #1 reason of why bitcoin is valuable is the fact that it is immutable or in any case extremely difficult to change. If this wasn't the case then anyone with some brain cells would have dumped already and bought gold. Luckily as we can see by your frustration and everyone else's frustration on why "Bitcoin doesn't do what I want it to do so Bitcoin is dead" it isn't the case.

Big blockers also fail to explain why everyone has not started using the "Bitcoin with big blocks" after their chain-split. If "everyone knew back in 2011 that an increase in block size" was all that had to be done, then where is "everyone" now?

[exstasie]

He's pointing to the fact that Bitcoin had dominance in the 80-95% range for years until it cratered ~ March 2017 and never really recovered. I think the drop can be generally attributed to the altcoin bubble and the launch of an unprecedented number of altcoins and ICO tokens. It's a stretch to blame it all on rising Bitcoin transaction fees, although I'm sure it played some role. Many altcoins were marketed as low-fee alternatives to BTC during the bubble.

Right, if you look at the chart I linked, the only category of coin gaining in the past 2 years is "Other," which signifies almost the entirety of the altcoin market (sans ETH, BCH and the handful of individualized others). There's been new coins coming on to the market ever since I've been here, but the fact is, BTC has remained far and away #1 the whole time. It's only gained worldwide popularity since then. Just because it equates for less of the total market cap space doesn't mean its utility has been diminished.

I'm not arguing anything like that. I think dominance is a silly metric for reasons already mentioned above. That's why there's no point saying, "It rose in market cap dominance from 38% to 51% over the last year." That's no more important than dominance falling because a thousand ICO tokens were launched. It's a totally distorted metric. It can move for reasons that are unrelated to actual demand or utility.

[cellard]

By the time the next huge bubble happens capacity will not be a problem and trying to spam the network by the usual suspects will put even more losses on them.

even with LN or sidechains, funding and settlement = on-chain transactions. we'll eventually run into the same congestion and high fees with or without a concerted effort to spam the network. 

are you opposed to any future block size increase? i've got mixed feelings myself knowing how difficult it might be politically. i'm curious how others see the issue---assuming the technological (network latency/bandwidth) bottlenecks are overcome.

It's not that im opposed or not, is that I really doubt it can be done, at least done smoothly... every hardfork is going to be a bit of a clusterfuck situation unless it's an undeniable necessity. Some may argue that it's never really needed because as long as there's people willing to pay to transact, then things go on as usual. Others may argue this damages some of the economical incentives but im not so sure about that.

In any case, in order to fill the current block space worth of LN transactions, the usage of LN would be massive.

I think blocksize will eventually be raised, however it will probably happen when the situation requires a hardfork for other things as well... we'll see.