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Question: Will you support Gavin's new block size limit hard fork of 8MB by January 1, 2016 then doubling every 2 years?
1.  yes
2.  no

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Author Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.  (Read 2032123 times)
tvbcof
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January 03, 2015, 05:49:20 PM
 #19441

...
about 90%+ of satoshi's code has been rewritten.  we ARE seeing steady improvements to the code like the recent 0.1 with 3h MC download times now.  that's an extraordinary improvement of about 10x.  i put up that link of that Seagate 8TB SSD the other day.  storage is outpacing MC growth and now costs $0.03/GB.  i'm actually quite satisfied with where we are even now.  with a few, or even one, tx hop one can have provable deniability for anonymity reasons if they want.  10 min block times isn't conceptually ideal but works perfectly well for me.  i'm not sure what all the complaining is about.

No you didn't.  Words (e.g., 'SSD') mean things.  We've been around and around on this storage thing over the years.  Everyone agrees that bulk storage is not and has never been an issue (until Gavin slips in his exponential growth scheme at least...).  Total blocksize is a useful tool to fool fools in trying to make a point.  Most people cannot conceptualize that just sitting on data is quite a different thing than actually accessing it so discussions here are aggravating, pointless, and futile.


who knows how much further MC achievements might have been accomplished if BS core devs were spending all that time working on Bitcoin Core that they undoubtedly have been dedicating to the spvp for the last year and a half.  forget that shit and get behind Gavin and increase blocksize.  now is the time to do this.

When one has worked on code and complex systems it becomes very apparent that the gains and optimizations one can achieve are highly exponential
in nature.  It is common to be able to obtain a 10x improvement with minimal effort at first.  Very quickly it becomes physically impossible to achieve even a 1x improvement.  This is what people are talking about when they mention 'low hanging fruit.'


fundamentally, i think allowing an offramp for BTC units over to insecure SC's is economically and technically flawed for all the Sound Money reasons i've already articulated.

Not to be offensive, but most of what you say about most things (economic, engineering, technology, investment, etc) is very primitive and often enough laughable incorrect.  Another short-hand term I've used in the recent past to describe this is 'ass-clown'.


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January 03, 2015, 06:25:03 PM
 #19442

who knows how much further MC achievements might have been accomplished if BS core devs were spending all that time working on Bitcoin Core that they undoubtedly have been dedicating to the spvp for the last year and a half.  forget that shit and get behind Gavin and increase blocksize.  now is the time to do this.
A hard fork to increase blocksize may be needed, but the proposed exponential blocksize growth is both unnecessary and harmful to propagation of the sufficient bitcoin nodes desired for resilience.   

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January 03, 2015, 06:32:32 PM
 #19443

...
about 90%+ of satoshi's code has been rewritten.  we ARE seeing steady improvements to the code like the recent 0.1 with 3h MC download times now.  that's an extraordinary improvement of about 10x.  i put up that link of that Seagate 8TB SSD the other day.  storage is outpacing MC growth and now costs $0.03/GB.  i'm actually quite satisfied with where we are even now.  with a few, or even one, tx hop one can have provable deniability for anonymity reasons if they want.  10 min block times isn't conceptually ideal but works perfectly well for me.  i'm not sure what all the complaining is about.

No you didn't.  Words (e.g., 'SSD') mean things.  We've been around and around on this storage thing over the years.  Everyone agrees that bulk storage is not and has never been an issue (until Gavin slips in his exponential growth scheme at least...).  Total blocksize is a useful tool to fool fools in trying to make a point.  Most people cannot conceptualize that just sitting on data is quite a different thing than actually accessing it so discussions here are aggravating, pointless, and futile.


who knows how much further MC achievements might have been accomplished if BS core devs were spending all that time working on Bitcoin Core that they undoubtedly have been dedicating to the spvp for the last year and a half.  forget that shit and get behind Gavin and increase blocksize.  now is the time to do this.

When one has worked on code and complex systems it becomes very apparent that the gains and optimizations one can achieve are highly exponential
in nature.  It is common to be able to obtain a 10x improvement with minimal effort at first.  Very quickly it becomes physically impossible to achieve even a 1x improvement.  This is what people are talking about when they mention 'low hanging fruit.'

this headers only first download capability just got implemented with the last update.  i thought you said we were already at the stodgy stage?
Quote

fundamentally, i think allowing an offramp for BTC units over to insecure SC's is economically and technically flawed for all the Sound Money reasons i've already articulated.

Not to be offensive, but most of what you say about most things (economic, engineering, technology, investment, etc) is very primitive and often enough laughable incorrect.  Another short-hand term I've used in the recent past to describe this is 'ass-clown'.



there's only one way for me to address these types of insults unfortunately but you force me to.  and i'm not bragging:

so how do you explain me being the first to publicly state that M-Pesa could be a great target case for Bitcoin, how do explain me posting to sell/short gold and silver at their peaks in May and August 2011 despite your objections and trolling which turned out to be wrong?  how do you explain me (& you) buying at $1.98?  how do you explain me stating that mining centralization will even out & not become a problem (we see striking evidence of this in the pool chart i always put up)?  how is it that i got into Bitcoin 2.5 yrs before Adam as close as i can pinpoint it?  is it all luck?  if so, i'll take it. no ones perfect, esp me over the last 6 mo of price drop, but at least i get more concepts right than wrong in this Bitcoin space and that has not been easy to do.  and the fact is, many ppl understand and agree precisely with the line of reasoning i've provided regarding this SC issue.  sure, we could be wrong, so i'm still listening.  but when i read about Adam ruminating (not recommending) changing the issuance curve or allowing gvts to construct a SC depending on his definition of what they're doing as not being evil, i get concerned.  as NewLiberty said a while back, why would you want a competing altcoin (Truthcoin) or a gvt coming in and setting up business next to your core engine business (on a SC which can siphon BTC from MC)?

no one remembers you for predicting anything except when i acknowledge you being with me @1.98.  most of what you say is just socialistic babble.
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January 03, 2015, 06:39:29 PM
 #19444

much of what drives Bitcoin is logic and the prediction of human behavior.

geeks don't have a monopoly on that.
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January 03, 2015, 06:58:07 PM
 #19445

i have a question for the computer scientists in the crowd. 

i've noticed some things about the WP's over the last coupla years, including Satoshi's, that i wasn't aware of. first, there doesn't seem to be any peer review.  not only that but what strikes me is that it seems that authors come up with a particular logic pattern that makes sense to them and then construct maths to support that logic.  i often don't even see large data sets, testing, or simulations performed.  that supposedly is a standard for proof of a theory.  is this correct?  this is not a criticism of the CS field but just an inquiry to help me understand your field.

in many fields, a hypothesis is asked, then an experiment with blinded investigators along with large #'s of subjects and controls is carried out over a statistically significant time period to rule out investigator bias (can never do that completely) and prove that the hypothesis is correct within a std dev often of p<0.05 or 5%.  i realize these are different methods in different fields so it's hard to determine which is more rigorous.
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January 03, 2015, 07:00:24 PM
 #19446

who knows how much further MC achievements might have been accomplished if BS core devs were spending all that time working on Bitcoin Core that they undoubtedly have been dedicating to the spvp for the last year and a half.  forget that shit and get behind Gavin and increase blocksize.  now is the time to do this.
A hard fork to increase blocksize may be needed, but the proposed exponential blocksize growth is both unnecessary and harmful to propagation of the sufficient bitcoin nodes desired for resilience.  

I'm curious to know what you (and others btw) make of Mircea Popescu and his crew's position that blocksize should not (arguably never) be increased

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010
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January 03, 2015, 07:20:29 PM
 #19447

much of what drives Bitcoin is logic and the prediction of human behavior.

geeks don't have a monopoly on that.
+1

In fact one's knowledge and understanding grows where one put there focus. Many have been enabled by Bitcoin's rapid price assent and have contemplated daily how this technology will propagate and succeed, this economic thought experiment has been undertaken by a fiew who spend there days assimilating the communities synaptic sparks.  Many developers spend more time developing than they spend conceiving the concepts they develop they don't have the luxury of spending 4 years in thought about how human behaviour will react to the logic before they start developing.

Some even get hung up on there lack of understanding and have sleepless nights and urgently set out to change things they feel they know well.

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January 03, 2015, 07:28:53 PM
 #19448

i have a question for the computer scientists in the crowd. 

i've noticed some things about the WP's over the last coupla years, including Satoshi's, that i wasn't aware of. first, there doesn't seem to be any peer review.  not only that but what strikes me is that it seems that authors come up with a particular logic pattern that makes sense to them and then construct maths to support that logic.  i often don't even see large data sets, testing, or simulations performed.  that supposedly is a standard for proof of a theory.  is this correct?  this is not a criticism of the CS field but just an inquiry to help me understand your field.

in many fields, a hypothesis is asked, then an experiment with blinded investigators along with large #'s of subjects and controls is carried out over a statistically significant time period to rule out investigator bias (can never do that completely) and prove that the hypothesis is correct within a std dev often of p<0.05 or 5%.  i realize these are different methods in different fields so it's hard to determine which is more rigorous.

My opinion is that in terms of both science and engineering, the software industry is kind of a joke, but I've never had any involvement in the academic side of things.  That lack of rigor may explain why shit actually gets done...

In a practical sense, it's damn near impossible for something like these non-academic crypto whitepapers or ideas to obtain anything remotely resembling quality 'peer review'.  It's to much work for to little gain, and the signal to noise ratio in crypto-land (aka, 'spam') is a giant factor.  There are relatively few people who are even qualified to do the kinds of review necessary and they have more interesting things to do.  Poul-Henning Kamp's struggles to get someone to review his full disk encryption work is an interesting read which might help understand the problem(s).  I don't have a link handy.

Bitcoin seems to owe most of it's success to Hal taking a modest interest at the right time.  A splash of diesel at the right time can mean the difference between a fully engulfed fire pile or one with not a wisp of smoke a few hours later.  (I happen to have been working on some brush clearing over the last week and stop by to check my favorite thread when I need a break.)

The stuff from that Israeli dude (presented at the SJ 2013 con) which seems to be becoming the snark ideas is one exception to this lack of rigor (in my read of things.)  It's just so damn interesting and universally important that it can get the kind of attention needed.

My other current favorite thread here is the one about global warming.  I finally took the dive into researching that aspect of 'our common future' recently after blowing it off for years.  My respect for the process of academic and scientific rigor has been quashed as effectively as my aspirations for 'Socialism' as a result of this research.  Crypto-currency may be better off without 'peer review' in the end.


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January 03, 2015, 07:33:12 PM
 #19449

who knows how much further MC achievements might have been accomplished if BS core devs were spending all that time working on Bitcoin Core that they undoubtedly have been dedicating to the spvp for the last year and a half.  forget that shit and get behind Gavin and increase blocksize.  now is the time to do this.
A hard fork to increase blocksize may be needed, but the proposed exponential blocksize growth is both unnecessary and harmful to propagation of the sufficient bitcoin nodes desired for resilience.  

I'm curious to know what you (and others btw) make of Mircea Popescu and his crew's position that blocksize should not (arguably never) be increased

Early on I saw lots of opportunity for business services for expand transactions, many business ideas will be enhanced by a limited block size.

I think the idea enables an alternate outcome I now feel the primary experiment is unlimited block size and a secondary more radical experiment is limiting the number of transactions.

The reason being storing the blockchain is priced in to the incentive structure for those who have an invested interest in its integrity, it is a service the wealthy provide to the network for using the network.

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January 03, 2015, 07:35:43 PM
 #19450


I'm curious to know what you (and others btw) make of Mircea Popescu and his crew's position that blocksize should not (arguably never) be increased

Anyone who can manage to get kicked out of trolltalk is worth listening to in my book.  For instance, Atlas was the ass-clown's ass-clown but he actually produced some very insightful peals if one looked closely enough.  MP (of his sock-puppet pimpette thing or whatever it was) was wildly amusing to me in general, and often enough cast pearls.

And I am natively closer to that view of blocksize anyway of course.

edit - spellchecker: naively --> natively (is that a word?)  Ya, ya, Freudian slip.  yuck-yuck.

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January 03, 2015, 08:09:23 PM
 #19451

i have a question for the computer scientists in the crowd. 

i've noticed some things about the WP's over the last coupla years, including Satoshi's, that i wasn't aware of. first, there doesn't seem to be any peer review.  not only that but what strikes me is that it seems that authors come up with a particular logic pattern that makes sense to them and then construct maths to support that logic.  i often don't even see large data sets, testing, or simulations performed.  that supposedly is a standard for proof of a theory.  is this correct?  this is not a criticism of the CS field but just an inquiry to help me understand your field.

in many fields, a hypothesis is asked, then an experiment with blinded investigators along with large #'s of subjects and controls is carried out over a statistically significant time period to rule out investigator bias (can never do that completely) and prove that the hypothesis is correct within a std dev often of p<0.05 or 5%.  i realize these are different methods in different fields so it's hard to determine which is more rigorous.

Satoshi's whitpaper is not a "scientific" paper but a good "technology advance" paper.  It specifies a concrete real-world problem (build an e-cash system that does not depend on trusted 3rd parties) and an open sub-problem of that (how to motivate the volunteers to maintain and secure the ledger).  It then describes a proposed solution for that sub-problem, with enough detail that any competent programmer could implement it.  The paper concludes with some logical arguments and computations showing that the proposed solution does not have some flaws that one may think of.  Then Satoshi built an implementation that would be sufficient to prove the soundness of the solution.  He set that implementation running, and recruited enough interested people to make the test meaningful.

The Sidechains whitepaper is nothing like that.  It does not define concrete real-world problem(s) to be solved, and then develop suitable solution(s) for it/them.  Instead, the "problem" that it sets to solve is how to save bitcoin from being superseded by centralized payment systems and other altcoins.  The "solution" they propose is basically to rebrand the best  altcoins plus some unspecified array of other network services as "sidechains of bitcoin",  in exchange for some unspecified advantages involving merged mining and the prestige of bitcoin.  However, there are no details in the paper to even tell what applications could be "sidechains", how the integration would work, what concrete benefits they would derive from that, why other projects could not obtain the same benefits without being "sidechains of bitcoin" -- and why would bitcoin be saved as a result.  Needless to say, there is also no analysis of possible failure modes.

Just as bitcoin reminds me of the Wright Brothers' Flyer One, the sidechains proposal reminds me of their unsuccessful efforts to commercialize their invention.  (AFAIK, the first commercially successful series-produced airplane, still only a toy for aeronautics nerds, was this one.)

"Dear investors, you are all aware of the hard times that Ford Motor Co. has been going through, because of competition from manufacturers of cars that are cheaper, faster, more beautiful, or more reliable than ours.  You know that, while we could incorporate their advantages in our Model T, modifying our assembly lines is very expensive and would take too long.  But we have come up with an idea that will surely save us.  We will allow the other manufacturers to rebrand themselves: "Ford Jeep" instead of "Jeep", "Ford Jaguar" instead of "Jaguar", "Ford Mercedes" instead of "Mercedes", etc..  We will allow them to use our great assembly lines, as long as they don't require any special change or interfere with our production.  We will also build a yard where our customers will be able to safely trade their Model Ts for cars of our competitors, at values established by the latter.  Thus we expect to turn our most formidable competitors into our allies, and, with their help, retain our dominant share of the billion-dollar revenue to be made in the car market."

Academic interest in bitcoin only. Not owner, not trader, very skeptical of its longterm success.
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January 03, 2015, 08:14:49 PM
 #19452

However, there are no details in the paper to even tell what applications could be "sidechains", how the integration would work, what concrete benefits they would derive from that, why other projects could not obtain the same benefits without being "sidechains of bitcoin" -- and why would bitcoin be saved as a result.  Needless to say, there is also no analysis of possible failure modes.

So I take it you didn't read the paper  Undecided

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010
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January 03, 2015, 08:50:28 PM
 #19453

However, there are no details in the paper to even tell what applications could be "sidechains", how the integration would work, what concrete benefits they would derive from that, why other projects could not obtain the same benefits without being "sidechains of bitcoin" -- and why would bitcoin be saved as a result.  Needless to say, there is also no analysis of possible failure modes.
So I take it you didn't read the paper  Undecided
I did read it, and also the "sidechains for dummies" blogpost that people recommended, and some more posts.

So what you are saying is that I did not understand it at all.  Perhaps.  But then I ask, for example, why Bitstamp is not already a "sidechain".  OK, it is not decentralized nor merge-mined, but does the whitepaper say that a sidechain must be those things?

My impression is that the paper did not want to rule out anything, for fear that it might prevent co-opting a possible "bitcoin killer".

Academic interest in bitcoin only. Not owner, not trader, very skeptical of its longterm success.
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January 03, 2015, 08:55:31 PM
 #19454

i have a question for the computer scientists in the crowd. 

i've noticed some things about the WP's over the last coupla years, including Satoshi's, that i wasn't aware of. first, there doesn't seem to be any peer review.  not only that but what strikes me is that it seems that authors come up with a particular logic pattern that makes sense to them and then construct maths to support that logic.  i often don't even see large data sets, testing, or simulations performed.  that supposedly is a standard for proof of a theory.  is this correct?  this is not a criticism of the CS field but just an inquiry to help me understand your field.

in many fields, a hypothesis is asked, then an experiment with blinded investigators along with large #'s of subjects and controls is carried out over a statistically significant time period to rule out investigator bias (can never do that completely) and prove that the hypothesis is correct within a std dev often of p<0.05 or 5%.  i realize these are different methods in different fields so it's hard to determine which is more rigorous.

Satoshi's whitpaper is not a "scientific" paper but a good "technology advance" paper.  It specifies a concrete real-world problem (build an e-cash system that does not depend on trusted 3rd parties) and an open sub-problem of that (how to motivate the volunteers to maintain and secure the ledger).  It then describes a proposed solution for that sub-problem, with enough detail that any competent programmer could implement it.  The paper concludes with some logical arguments and computations showing that the proposed solution does not have some flaws that one may think of.  Then Satoshi built an implementation that would be sufficient to prove the soundness of the solution.  He set that implementation running, and recruited enough interested people to make the test meaningful.

The Sidechains whitepaper is nothing like that.  It does not define concrete real-world problem(s) to be solved, and then develop suitable solution(s) for it/them.  Instead, the "problem" that it sets to solve is how to save bitcoin from being superseded by centralized payment systems and other altcoins.  The "solution" they propose is basically to rebrand the best  altcoins plus some unspecified array of other network services as "sidechains of bitcoin",  in exchange for some unspecified advantages involving merged mining and the prestige of bitcoin.  However, there are no details in the paper to even tell what applications could be "sidechains", how the integration would work, what concrete benefits they would derive from that, why other projects could not obtain the same benefits without being "sidechains of bitcoin" -- and why would bitcoin be saved as a result.  Needless to say, there is also no analysis of possible failure modes.

Just as bitcoin reminds me of the Wright Brothers' Flyer One, the sidechains proposal reminds me of their unsuccessful efforts to commercialize their invention.  (AFAIK, the first commercially successful series-produced airplane, still only a toy for aeronautics nerds, was this one.)


I get it. Early adopters call you a troll because you are right. This is a problem

Forgive my petulance and oft-times, I fear, ill-founded criticisms, and forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes and head ache with my long letter. But I cannot forgo hastily the pleasure and pride of thus conversing with you.
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January 03, 2015, 09:01:11 PM
 #19455

However, there are no details in the paper to even tell what applications could be "sidechains", how the integration would work, what concrete benefits they would derive from that, why other projects could not obtain the same benefits without being "sidechains of bitcoin" -- and why would bitcoin be saved as a result.  Needless to say, there is also no analysis of possible failure modes.
So I take it you didn't read the paper  Undecided
I did read it, and also the "sidechains for dummies" blogpost that people recommended, and some more posts.

So what you are saying is that I did not understand it at all.  Perhaps.  But then I ask, for example, why Bitstamp is not already a "sidechain".  OK, it is not decentralized nor merge-mined, but does the whitepaper say that a sidechain must be those things?

My impression is that the paper did not want to rule out anything, for fear that it might prevent co-opting a possible "bitcoin killer".

For a thing to be a sidechain I guess it would need to first be a chain. Can you point me to Bitstamp's blockchain?

"I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash." Hal Finney, Dec. 2010
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January 03, 2015, 09:02:08 PM
 #19456

i have a question for the computer scientists in the crowd.  

i've noticed some things about the WP's over the last coupla years, including Satoshi's, that i wasn't aware of. first, there doesn't seem to be any peer review.  not only that but what strikes me is that it seems that authors come up with a particular logic pattern that makes sense to them and then construct maths to support that logic.  i often don't even see large data sets, testing, or simulations performed.  that supposedly is a standard for proof of a theory.  is this correct?  this is not a criticism of the CS field but just an inquiry to help me understand your field.

in many fields, a hypothesis is asked, then an experiment with blinded investigators along with large #'s of subjects and controls is carried out over a statistically significant time period to rule out investigator bias (can never do that completely) and prove that the hypothesis is correct within a std dev often of p<0.05 or 5%.  i realize these are different methods in different fields so it's hard to determine which is more rigorous.

Satoshi's whitpaper is not a "scientific" paper but a good "technology advance" paper.  It specifies a concrete real-world problem (build an e-cash system that does not depend on trusted 3rd parties) and an open sub-problem of that (how to motivate the volunteers to maintain and secure the ledger).  It then describes a proposed solution for that sub-problem, with enough detail that any competent programmer could implement it.  The paper concludes with some logical arguments and computations showing that the proposed solution does not have some flaws that one may think of.  Then Satoshi built an implementation that would be sufficient to prove the soundness of the solution.  He set that implementation running, and recruited enough interested people to make the test meaningful.

The Sidechains whitepaper is nothing like that.  It does not define concrete real-world problem(s) to be solved, and then develop suitable solution(s) for it/them.  Instead, the "problem" that it sets to solve is how to save bitcoin from being superseded by centralized payment systems and other altcoins.  The "solution" they propose is basically to rebrand the best  altcoins plus some unspecified array of other network services as "sidechains of bitcoin",  in exchange for some unspecified advantages involving merged mining and the prestige of bitcoin.  However, there are no details in the paper to even tell what applications could be "sidechains", how the integration would work, what concrete benefits they would derive from that, why other projects could not obtain the same benefits without being "sidechains of bitcoin" -- and why would bitcoin be saved as a result.  Needless to say, there is also no analysis of possible failure modes.

Just as bitcoin reminds me of the Wright Brothers' Flyer One, the sidechains proposal reminds me of their unsuccessful efforts to commercialize their invention.  (AFAIK, the first commercially successful series-produced airplane, still only a toy for aeronautics nerds, was this one.)

"Dear investors, you are all aware of the hard times that Ford Motor Co. has been going through, because of competition from manufacturers of cars that are cheaper, faster, more beautiful, or more reliable than ours.  You know that, while we could incorporate their advantages in our Model T, modifying our assembly lines is very expensive and would take too long.  But we have come up with an idea that will surely save us.  We will allow the other manufacturers to rebrand themselves: "Ford Jeep" instead of "Jeep", "Ford Jaguar" instead of "Jaguar", "Ford Mercedes" instead of "Mercedes", etc..  We will allow them to use our great assembly lines, as long as they don't require any special change or interfere with our production.  We will also build a yard where our customers will be able to safely trade their Model Ts for cars of our competitors, at values established by the latter.  Thus we expect to turn our most formidable competitors into our allies, and, with their help, retain our dominant share of the billion-dollar revenue to be made in the car market."

I'm going to stop calling you a troll despite our differences about Bitcoin. I can respect that .

The 2 papers that come to mind are Sirer's Selfish Mining paper and the Red Balloon paper from Microsoft. I've listened to Sirer talk before which is even more puzzling that he can be so pedantic about it. For Christ's sake, if you're going to stake your academic reputation on such a  theory, at least attack the network to prove it or release the code to meet everyone inspect it for flaws in reasoning or assumptions. He won't do either which should show you what the quality of his thesis is.

My problem with BS is that i think they represent the "entrepreneurs"  in Daniel's article. Those who are either underwater on their bitcoin holdings or are late to the game and feel they need to change Bitcoin in some fundamental way that will lower their risk all the while screaming everything wrong about the current system. The difficulty is in determining whether they're right, of course, as the price drop always makes everyone question their original thesis. ButiI have seen this before several time. 

To me though, as through the 5 other bubbles we've had, is the protocol still hasn't been hacked, tx's are going up, time has advanced (6yrs), dev is getting done, user adoption is growing worldwide, VC's investment continues to accelerate, and huge companies like Microsoft are coming on board.

I think the entrepreneurs need patience and need to buy in to the MC.
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January 03, 2015, 09:19:44 PM
 #19457

The SC's WP was disjointed to me. On the one hand, parts of it complain about alcoins, but them turns right around and gives a whole section to Freicoin, of all things. Talk about a screwed up economic policy. Adam even mentioned it again just the other day.  This tells me they are not on board with Bitcoins sound or hard money principles. Probably different guys on their team contributed different sections or thi  was a bone thrown to one of them. I seem to recall that Poelstra might be the one into demurrage. 
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January 03, 2015, 10:21:58 PM
Last edit: January 03, 2015, 11:33:29 PM by solex
 #19458

who knows how much further MC achievements might have been accomplished if BS core devs were spending all that time working on Bitcoin Core that they undoubtedly have been dedicating to the spvp for the last year and a half.  forget that shit and get behind Gavin and increase blocksize.  now is the time to do this.
A hard fork to increase blocksize may be needed, but the proposed exponential blocksize growth is both unnecessary and harmful to propagation of the sufficient bitcoin nodes desired for resilience.  

I'm curious to know what you (and others btw) make of Mircea Popescu and his crew's position that blocksize should not (arguably never) be increased

People who argue that the block size limit should never be increased are arguing from a position of ideology, not practicality. They want as many nodes as possible, helped by low volume overhead, thinking that limiting transaction throughput can maintain Bitcoin as a guerrilla enterprise outside mainstream finance. They want it to be the financial system for the "Unsystem".

Anyone who has read my posts for the last 2 years will know that I rail against the global corruption of central banks, their fiat FRB system, inflation targeting, interest rate manipulation, crony capitalism, asset bubbles, and stealth wealth transfers from the majority to the 0.1%. I see Bitcoin is a reset button for this 100-year mess, a river to flush out the Augean Stables of central banking. However, that river can never be diverted when it is a trickle, dammed upstream.

Answer the question "Is blockchain PoW (or its variants, perhaps even PoS) a better basis for a monetary system than the existing debt-money of CB fiat?"
If "yes", then the inexorable nature of science and technology will ensure that blockchain money prevails in the long run, 10, 20, 30 years from now. So the second question is "Will the future globally successful blockchain money be Bitcoin or some other alt coin?"

The answer to the second question is "Bitcoin, unless its first mover advantage is thrown away by an unresolved fundamental failing." Failure to scale is a fundamental failing which can consign Bitcoin forever to the margins of world finance. But, why would a marginalized Bitcoin be used even by its unsystem adherents when Darkcoin or Monero offer better anonymity?

Constraining the block size, therefore transaction volumes, ignores several important aspects of the situation:

1. The quality of nodes is much better than 5 years ago. There might have been 20,000 PCs and notebooks as nodes in 2010, cpu mining and supporting the network, but was that network better than the 6500 (known) nodes of today? Many of which are owned by companies now earning a living in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Corporate nodes are much more tolerant of volumes than hobbyist nodes.

2. Bandwidth is improving in many countries at up to 40% per year, so volume increases should be acceptable up to that level, or until another constraint is seen such as cpu signature verification. Limiting it at a 2010 baseline means it is being unnecessarily constrained as computing technology is still improving.

3. Block compression techniques exist to reduce propagation overhead. IBLT was only described in 2011, a year after Satoshi put the 1MB limit in place.

4. If Bitcoin fails to scale then I-Can-Scale-Coin will incorporate the necessary changes and the ecosystem will move across to that alt instead. Sidechains do not help with scaling because SC volume still needs to be handled somewhere.

5. Despite the long bearmarket of 2014, and price down at $290 right now, a large percentage of the price assumes that Bitcoin has future scalability. That it can grow to handle a reasonable percentage of world commerce. Its SoV is predicated upon being able to scale.

Accepting the block size limit as it stands is to do the central banks a massive favor by crippling this new emerging monetary system, giving them more years to screw up the world economy, before a new alt coin can eventually prevail.

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January 03, 2015, 10:30:55 PM
 #19459

The 2 papers that come to mind are Sirer's Selfish Mining paper and the Red Balloon paper from Microsoft. I've listened to Sirer talk before which is even more puzzling that he can be so pedantic about it. For Christ's sake, if you're going to stake your academic reputation on such a  theory, at least attack the network to prove it or release the code to meet everyone inspect it for flaws in reasoning or assumptions. He won't do either which should show you what the quality of his thesis is.

Well, Ph. D. theses are often like that. Cheesy  Speaking as an advisor, after I have stolen five of the best years of someone's life, it would be a crime to send him/her away with empty hands.

Seriously, I did not quite understand how Sirer's Selfish Mining attack works either, but I did not spend much time trying to.
Anyway, even if it works, it does not seem to be fatal, but only make life less fair for miners.  Or is it claimed to be worse than that?

I haven't seen the other paper you mention.

Quote
To me though, as through the 5 other bubbles we've had, is the protocol still hasn't been hacked, tx's are going up, time has advanced (6yrs), dev is getting done, user adoption is growing worldwide, VC's investment continues to accelerate, and huge companies like Microsoft are coming on board.

Well, I am not so optimistic about those things:

* By my understanding of the past bubbles, a new large bubble would require a new large market, comparable to that of the Chinese speculators who adopted Bitcoin in Nov/2013.

* The cryptographic security of the basic protocol, properly implemented, is assured as long as the basic tools are.  However, people can easily make mistakes when using or even implementing it.  See the recent BCI fiasco, for example.  Claiming that those problems are not bugs "in the protocol" is a weak argument; for prospective users, what matters is the system's security, not the security of the central part.  It is not reassuring to know that Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion, but to errors in its use.

* The blockchain traffic has been falling recently: tx/day down 18% last week, BTC/day down 44% last month, USD/day down 55%.

* VC investment is almost all in ventures that will make money no matter what happens to the price.  Most merchants who "accept bitcoin", including the large ones, do not want to touch it, they want dollars.  When asked about its future plans for bitcoin, Microsoft dodged the question.  The few minimally reliable data on bitcoin usage for e-payment through BitPay show stagnation in BTC amount over 2014, drop in USD amount.

Academic interest in bitcoin only. Not owner, not trader, very skeptical of its longterm success.
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January 03, 2015, 10:41:59 PM
 #19460

The 2 papers that come to mind are Sirer's Selfish Mining paper and the Red Balloon paper from Microsoft. I've listened to Sirer talk before which is even more puzzling that he can be so pedantic about it. For Christ's sake, if you're going to stake your academic reputation on such a  theory, at least attack the network to prove it or release the code to meet everyone inspect it for flaws in reasoning or assumptions. He won't do either which should show you what the quality of his thesis is.

Well, Ph. D. theses are often like that. Cheesy  Speaking as an advisor, after I have stolen five of the best years of someone's life, it would be a crime to send him/her away with empty hands.

Seriously, I did not quite understand how Sirer's Selfish Mining attack works either, but I did not spend much time trying to.
Anyway, even if it works, it does not seem to be fatal, but only make life less fair for miners.  Or is it claimed to be worse than that?

I haven't seen the other paper you mention.

Quote
To me though, as through the 5 other bubbles we've had, is the protocol still hasn't been hacked, tx's are going up, time has advanced (6yrs), dev is getting done, user adoption is growing worldwide, VC's investment continues to accelerate, and huge companies like Microsoft are coming on board.

Well, I am not so optimistic about those things:

* By my understanding of the past bubbles, a new large bubble would require a new large market, comparable to that of the Chinese speculators who adopted Bitcoin in Nov/2013.

* The cryptographic security of the basic protocol, properly implemented, is assured as long as the basic tools are.  However, people can easily make mistakes when using or even implementing it.  See the recent BCI fiasco, for example.  Claiming that those problems are not bugs "in the protocol" is a weak argument; for prospective users, what matters is the system's security, not the security of the central part.  It is not reassuring to know that Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion, but to errors in its use.

* The blockchain traffic has been falling recently: tx/day down 18% last week, BTC/day down 44% last month, USD/day down 55%.

* VC investment is almost all in ventures that will make money no matter what happens to the price.  Most merchants who "accept bitcoin", including the large ones, do not want to touch it, they want dollars.  When asked about its future plans for bitcoin, Microsoft dodged the question.  The few minimally reliable data on bitcoin usage for e-payment through BitPay show stagnation in BTC amount over 2014, drop in USD amount.

hmm, I wonder if there are any of those left *scratches head* Wink

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution" - Satoshi Nakamoto
*my posts are not investment advice*
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