Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cbeast]

Bitcoins killer app is SOV.

If we allow an offramp from MC to SC's, I think that goes away.

I think the whole SC thing is a red herring. If they can't do it without "social structures" then it's not Bitcoin. OTOH, the social structure crowd has plenty of space for developing mining pool "social structures" that incentives decentralization through Delegated 'insert-term-here' technology.

I think you mean Trojan Horse.

Someone is going to lose alot of money. In fact, most people investing in cryptocurrencies are going to lose money. That's how bull markets are.

i mean, we can't bring everyone with us.  it wouldn't be fair.

We'll see if/when SCs are no longer vaporware. Perhaps it will only be the VCs and IPO investors that lose money.

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[tvbcof]

Someone is going to lose alot of money. In fact, most people investing in cryptocurrencies are going to lose money. That's how bull markets are.

And how pump-n-dumps are.  Just sayin'

[sickpig]

Other things also snarks can do magical things (full node validation and low bandwidth), sharding like Rusty Russel is exploring with pettycoin (its not an alt, its an approach to sharding bitcoin).

Rusty Russell? The creator of iptables/netfilter?

Edit: a brief search confirmed we have another main linux kernel developer on board

Ayup the one and same.  He has a video up about pettycoin chain sharding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzst_gChOr8.

btw that is a kind of (non-pegged) sidechain and you hear him talking about a gateway or federated gateway.  That is like a federated peg.  (Yeah he knows its related, he's hanging out on #bitcoin-wizards and discussing pettycoin design with GMaxwell and others).

(Pettycoin is a micropayment network bitcoin auxiliary chain aiming at scaling to 100k tx/sec.)

Adam

Thanks for the info Adam, appreciated. I will have a look.

Somehow it seems that ex/still active kernel hackers are attracted to bitcoin world. Actually we have three of them involved (that I'm aware of): Garzik, Kolivas and now Russell. All of them did a lot of good stuff in the kernel sphere.

[xcapator]

When btc is as big as gold, it will itself become a benchmark. Hold gold for privacy, hold bitcoin for convenience, no need for fiat in this world. even apple pay is unnecessary.

[kodtycoon]

Bitcoins killer app is SOV.

If we allow an offramp from MC to SC's, I think that goes away.

I think the whole SC thing is a red herring. If they can't do it without "social structures" then it's not Bitcoin. OTOH, the social structure crowd has plenty of space for developing mining pool "social structures" that incentives decentralization through Delegated 'insert-term-here' technology.

I think you mean Trojan Horse.

Someone is going to lose alot of money. In fact, most people investing in cryptocurrencies are going to lose money. That's how bull markets are.

i mean, we can't bring everyone with us.  it wouldn't be fair.

We'll see if/when SCs are no longer vaporware. Perhaps it will only be the VCs and IPO investors that lose money.

you guys know that nxt has essentially beaten bitcoin to sidechains and not only that but its done it with out the need for side chains.. ie the side coins are secured by the nxt blockchain so theres no need for secondary chains its going live @ block 330000 i think. just thought id burst your sidechain bubbles

the currencies built on top can have their own fuctions, distribution rate/methods, need to lock nxt to use them etc etc.. they just dont need their own chain.

[stereotype]

you guys know that nxt has essentially beaten bitcoin to sidechains .......

Oh boy. This will be interesting.

Cue the @Garzik et al, derision!

[kodtycoon]

you guys know that nxt has essentially beaten bitcoin to sidechains .......

Oh boy. This will be interesting.

Cue the @Garzik et al, derision!

someone should tweet @Garzick and let him down easy.. might be easier on him if it comes from an empathetic bitcoiner than a smug nxter lol

[iCEBREAKER]

" secured by the nxt blockchain "

Secured by Proof of Stake?

Good luck with that.  You'll need it, esp given NXT's extremely top heavy distribution and previous problems:

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112278/breaking-bter-hacked-50m-nxt-stolen

My bet is on VIA's treechains, secured by Proof of Work in the form of merged scrypt mining.

[adam3us]

you guys know that nxt has essentially beaten bitcoin to sidechains .......

Oh boy. This will be interesting.

Cue the @Garzik et al, derision!

I dont want any death threats (you know Jeff Garzik tweeted about getting some after saying something derogatory about NXT and technobabble) but for a long while NXT was closed source, and since it became open, I never took the trouble to try to decipher whether what it claims to do is actually achieved in a decentralised way.  Actually beyond that I dont even know what it claims to do beyond "bitcoin 2.0" like bitshares, and the rest.

If someone works up the energy, be sure to explain what they're talking about to us.

Adam

[darkmind]

When btc is as big as gold, it will itself become a benchmark. Hold gold for privacy, hold bitcoin for convenience, no need for fiat in this world. even apple pay is unnecessary.

fiat ain't gonna disappear anytime soon and anyone who thinks it is, well in my opinion they're just fooling themselves

[adam3us]

" secured by the nxt blockchain "

Secured by Proof of Stake?

Good luck with that.  You'll need it, esp given NXT's extremely top heavy distribution and previous problems:

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112278/breaking-bter-hacked-50m-nxt-stolen

My bet is on VIA's treechains, secured by Proof of Work in the form of merged scrypt mining.

You know Peter Todd self-admits freely that he hasnt figured out if tree chains work at incentive level yet, its the kernel of an idea that may or may not work - not an implementable spec.  Its based on full node only model, somewhat like the respendable version of my commited tx idea https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=206303.15.  So tree-chains wont have the same scaling properties if they do work, but its an interesting line of exploration.   I'm interested to see if he can make it work, or to add ideas if I can.  I didnt see anything further yet beyond the common inputs (from a 4hr late night IRC chat between Peter & myself) that went into both respendable committed tx and tree-chains.  And as far as that goes committed-tx dont quite work either due to an issue Peter Todd describes as the proof-of-publication issue.

Adam

[iCEBREAKER]

You know Peter Todd self-admits freely that he hasnt figured out if tree chains work at incentive level yet, its the kernel of an idea that may or may not work - not an implementable spec.

Yes, TCs are in the early research stage.  But even if that idea isn't viable (pun intended), I'd still rather use sidechains secured by POW than POS - especially NXT's particular version.

Thanks for making me elaborate!

[thezerg]

... we can let those guys insert an op_code ...

Do you know how many op_codes bitcoin already supports and what they do ?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

nope.  i'm just going along with BS's new way of presenting this argument.  if we shouldn't prevent the spvp op_code, why should we prevent op_codes submitted by OT or any other alt or Bitcoin 2.0?

Just like with bitcoin we should evaluate these new opcodes on their technical merit not on who submitted them.

[adam3us]

Just like with bitcoin we should evaluate these new opcodes on their technical merit not on who submitted them.

Hey Zerg - no fair - too much signal density (signal/byte!) 

This is bitcointalk - where's the trolling, name-calling, ad-hominem or claim of bad faith bias?

cypherdoc - can you do us a favour and redress the karmic balance before the signal gets too high in here?  Gotta rev up the flame war, it was fun!

Adam

[JorgeStolfi]

Well the term sidechain is sort of fuzzy pre-existing term that means something like a related chain that watches or interacts with a parent or sibling chain.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my stupid questions.  If I can abuse once more of your patience, please consider this scenario:

  Someone, not connected to Blockstream or any other bitcoin entity, creates a new altcoin GreatNewCoin (GNC).

  GNC is basically a clone of bitcoin, with SHA PoW, block rewards etc.

  GNC has a few advantages over BTC, say 10x faster block rate; but is also endorsed by Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, and the Dalai Lama.

  GNC can be merge-mined with BTC, and occasionally inserts hashes into the BTC blockchain to make itself "secured by the bitcoin blockchain". Still, GNC is not explicitly supported by the bitcoin protocol, and there is no expliciit "transfer" of BTC to it.

  Most bitcoin miners will merge-mine GNC too, since they may win the 50 GNC block reward as well as the 25 BTC reward, without extra work.  Thus GNC, from the start, has the same network hashpower as BTC.

  Various people set up exchanges between BTC, GNC, and national currencies.  People also trade GNC over-the-counter, person-to-person, etc.   BitPay adds GNC as a payment option for all their affiliated merchants.  These ventures do have no explicit support in the GNC (or BTC) protocol and network.

  GNC price rises from 0.10$ to 1$.  Some smart BTC holders sell their BTC for dollars or GNC.  Some dumb GNC holders sell their GNC for dollars of BTC.  The price of GNC keeps rising, while that of BTC starts to drop.

  One Monday at 06:30 am, the market suddenly gets the idea that GNC is going to supersede BTC.  BTC holders rush to sell BTC and buy GNC.  In a few hours, the price of GNC rallies to 1000$, while that of BTC crashes to near zero.

  At 11:30 am, the Winkles wake up to discover that their 200'000 BTC are now worth 2 kopeks and a Somalian shilling.

  Since the BTC rewards and fees are now worthless, most miners stop mining BTC and keep mining GNC only.  Only a few persist, for sentimental reasons. The BTC block rate drops to near zero for months, until the difficulty gets readjusted.

  Then someone, not connected to Blockstream, GNC, or any other bitcoin entity, creates a new altcoin SuperShibaCoin (SSC)....

Summary: doesn't merged mining provide a path for an altcoin to steal bitcoin's network power and market cap, with little investment,  even without any change to the BTC protocol and without any special mechanism to "transfer" BTC to it?

Could some sidechains innovation provide suitable incentives to miners that would prevent this risk?

[stereotype]

....- especially NXT's particular version.

Draft press release of NXT SC version ..... https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/launching-1-4/msg145133/#msg145133

[LOBSTER]

Well the term sidechain is sort of fuzzy pre-existing term that means something like a related chain that watches or interacts with a parent or sibling chain.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my stupid questions.  If I can abuse once more of your patience, please consider this scenario:

  Someone, not connected to Blockstream or any other bitcoin entity, creates a new altcoin GreatNewCoin (GNC).

  GNC is basically a clone of bitcoin, with SHA PoW, block rewards etc.

  GNC has a few advantages over BTC, say 10x faster block rate; but is also endorsed by Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, and the Dalai Lama.

  GNC can be merge-mined with BTC, and occasionally inserts hashes into the BTC blockchain to make itself "secured by the bitcoin blockchain". Still, GNC is not explicitly supported by the bitcoin protocol, and there is no expliciit "transfer" of BTC to it.

  Most bitcoin miners will merge-mine GNC too, since they may win the 50 GNC block reward as well as the 25 BTC reward, without extra work.  Thus GNC, from the start, has the same network hashpower as BTC.

  Various people set up exchanges between BTC, GNC, and national currencies.  People also trade GNC over-the-counter, person-to-person, etc.   BitPay adds GNC as a payment option for all their affiliated merchants.  These ventures do have no explicit support in the GNC (or BTC) protocol and network.

  GNC price rises from 0.10$ to 1$.  Some smart BTC holders sell their BTC for dollars or GNC.  Some dumb GNC holders sell their GNC for dollars of BTC.  The price of GNC keeps rising, while that of BTC starts to drop.

  One Monday at 06:30 am, the market suddenly gets the idea that GNC is going to supersede BTC.  BTC holders rush to sell BTC and buy GNC.  In a few hours, the price of GNC rallies to 1000$, while that of BTC crashes to near zero.

  At 11:30 am, the Winkles wake up to discover that their 200'000 BTC are now worth 2 kopeks and a Somalian shilling.

  Since the BTC rewards and fees are now worthless, most miners stop mining BTC and keep mining GNC only.  Only a few persist, for sentimental reasons. The BTC block rate drops to near zero for months, until the difficulty gets readjusted.

  Then someone, not connected to Blockstream, GNC, or any other bitcoin entity, creates a new altcoin SuperShibaCoin (SSC)....

Summary: doesn't merged mining provide a path for an altcoin to steal bitcoin's network power and market cap, with little investment,  even without any change to the BTC protocol and without any special mechanism to "transfer" BTC to it?

Could some sidechains innovation provide suitable incentives to miners that would prevent this risk?

That'd be a great invention.

I mean your scenario is a little bit unrealistic but I think it would be secure.

[JorgeStolfi]

Summary: doesn't merged mining provide a path for an altcoin to steal bitcoin's network power and market cap, with little investment,  even without any change to the BTC protocol and without any special mechanism to "transfer" BTC to it?
Could some sidechains innovation provide suitable incentives to miners that would prevent this risk?

That'd be a great invention.

By "that" you mean the GNC coin, or a way to protect BTC from having its network stolen via merged mining?

As fas as I can see, such a "bitcoin killer" coin would not need to invent anything, correct?

[cbeast]

....- especially NXT's particular version.

Draft press release of NXT SC version ..... https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/launching-1-4/msg145133/#msg145133

The idea is similar to the sidechains development taking place in Bitcoin – with the difference that the additional functionality is all contained within the NXT platform, without the need for an external two-way peg.

Emphasis mine.
It doesn't offer a two-way peg, so what does the SC stand for?

[_mr_e]

you guys know that nxt has essentially beaten bitcoin to sidechains .......

Oh boy. This will be interesting.

Cue the @Garzik et al, derision!

I dont want any death threats (you know Jeff Garzik tweeted about getting some after saying something derogatory about NXT and technobabble) but for a long while NXT was closed source, and since it became open, I never took the trouble to try to decipher whether what it claims to do is actually achieved in a decentralised way.  Actually beyond that I dont even know what it claims to do beyond "bitcoin 2.0" like bitshares, and the rest.

If someone works up the energy, be sure to explain what they're talking about to us.

Adam

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113223/the-nxt-client-just-gave-me-a-braingasm

More importantly... Nxt is a platform, not an altcoin. A massive amount of innovative projects are being built on top, SuperNet being the biggest one that you should not be ignoring: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113229/supernet-super-competition-for-fiat

There's also FreeMarket, Lyth, InstantDex, TradeBots, financial privacy and anon tech that destroys coinjoin/mix, FinHive's blockchain AI tech(http://finhive.com/roadmap.html), distributed plugin system(verifiable untamporable web app plugins stored on the blockchain), distributed anon websites and comm(may offer safer access then Tor itself), encrypted messaging without needing an ip address, decentralized file storage via integration with storj, the multigateway, decentralized poker, p2p sprtsbetting/dice/casino, etc... I could go on and on.

Oh and many of these things will also be usable with Bitcoin!