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Author Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.  (Read 2032123 times)
Zangelbert Bingledack
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July 09, 2015, 10:10:28 PM
Last edit: July 09, 2015, 10:33:41 PM by Zangelbert Bingledack
 #28541

Yes people will stop using Bitcoin b/c they have to pay $0.5 per transaction. They rather use bank and will pay $20.

Or use an altcoin that doesn't fetishize 1MB blocks and pay $0.01. Bitcoin can't afford to be ultra-conservative in the face of endless altcoin competition. It must take calculated risks or be overtaken.

 or ... there are SC

Yes, if they work (as an aside, why does Blockstream keep saying sidechains are not a scalability solution?).

I'd rather it be spinoffs, which are much simpler and less risky.
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July 09, 2015, 10:12:51 PM
 #28542

is possible LTC rise to 0.1 BTC?  Huh
I heard bitcoin getting stronger because there are two countries that go bankrupt  Shocked
cypherdoc (OP)
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July 09, 2015, 10:14:42 PM
 #28543

is possible LTC rise to 0.1 BTC?  Huh
I heard bitcoin getting stronger because there are two countries that go bankrupt  Shocked

if we weren't being crippled by iCEBlow and his Cripplecoiners, we'd have had the huge LTC rally here.
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July 09, 2015, 10:17:10 PM
 #28544

if i have to migrate to a new chain and lose money doing it, i'm done with  crypto.

If you see the event ahead of time (and act on it), you'd likely make an enormous amount of money rather than losing.
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July 09, 2015, 10:21:40 PM
 #28545

is possible LTC rise to 0.1 BTC?  Huh
I heard bitcoin getting stronger because there are two countries that go bankrupt  Shocked

if we weren't being crippled by iCEBlow and his Cripplecoiners, we'd have had the huge LTC rally here.

If XT weren't being buttressed by Frap.doc and his Buttcoiners, we'd have the huge NFLX rally here.


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cypherdoc (OP)
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July 09, 2015, 10:23:31 PM
 #28546

if i have to migrate to a new chain and lose money doing it, i'm done with  crypto.

If you see the event ahead of time (and act on it), you'd likely make an enormous amount of money rather than losing.

that's true.  but i converted from gold to Bitcoin precisely b/c i saw it as a SOV to replace gold that's had that role for thousands of years.  i'm not about to remain in a system that guarantees a rolling ponzi scheme every 5-6 yrs where i might get lucky the first migration but lose everything the second migration.  Bitcoiners should have the luxury of socking savings away in a cold wallet and forgetting about it maybe for the rest of their lives as they hand them down generation after generation.  b/c that is what it will take to really replace gold as digital gold.

we were told that the open source nature of the code would be able to adapt or mutate according to threats.  migration to another chain is the antithesis of that.
Zangelbert Bingledack
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July 09, 2015, 10:27:17 PM
 #28547

Yes people will stop using Bitcoin b/c they have to pay $0.5 per transaction. They rather use bank and will pay $20.

Or use an altcoin that doesn't fetishize 1MB blocks and pay $0.01. Bitcoin can't afford to be ultra-conservative in the face of endless altcoin competition. It must take calculated risks or be overtaken.

so important to demonstrate that it is indeed open source adaptable and resilient.  forks are not to be feared but to be encouraged in the proper situations.

I completely agree.

Branching into law, here's a quote from John Hasnas, the Hayekian legal professor (emphasis mine):

Quote
I have been arguing that the law is inherently indeterminate, and further, that this may not be such a bad thing. I realize, however, that you may still not be convinced. Even if you are now willing to admit that the law is somewhat indeterminate, you probably believe that I have vastly exaggerated the degree to which this is true. After all, it is obvious that the law cannot be radically indeterminate. If this were the case, the law would be completely unpredictable. Judges hearing similar cases would render wildly divergent decisions. There would be no stability or uniformity in the law. But, as imperfect as the current legal system may be, this is clearly not the case.

The observation that the legal system is highly stable is, of course, correct, but it is a mistake to believe that this is because the law is determinate. The stability of the law derives not from any feature of the law itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background among those empowered to make legal decisions. Consider who the judges are in this country. Typically, they are people from a solid middle- to upper-class background who performed well at an appropriately prestigious undergraduate institution; demonstrated the ability to engage in the type of analytical reasoning that is measured by the standardized Law School Admissions Test; passed through the crucible of law school, complete with its methodological and political indoctrination; and went on to high-profile careers as attorneys, probably with a prestigious Wall Street-style law firm. To have been appointed to the bench, it is virtually certain that they were both politically moderate and well-connected, and, until recently, white males of the correct ethnic and religious pedigree. It should be clear that, culturally speaking, such a group will tend to be quite homogeneous, sharing a great many moral, spiritual, and political beliefs and values. Given this, it can hardly be surprising that there will be a high degree of agreement among judges as to how cases ought to be decided. But this agreement is due to the common set of normative presuppositions the judges share, not some immanent, objective meaning that exists within the rules of law.

In fact, however, the law is not truly stable, since it is continually, if slowly, evolving in response to changing social mores and conditions. This evolution occurs because each new generation of judges brings with it its own set of "progressive" normative assumptions. As the older generation passes from the scene, these assumptions come to be shared by an ever-increasing percentage of the judiciary. Eventually, they become the consensus of opinion among judicial decisionmakers, and the law changes to reflect them. Thus, a generation of judges that regarded "separate but equal" as a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gave way to one which interpreted that clause as prohibiting virtually all governmental actions that classify individuals by race, which, in turn, gave way to one which interpreted the same language to permit "benign" racial classifications designed to advance the social status of minority groups. In this way, as the moral and political values conventionally accepted by society change over time, so too do those embedded in the law.

The law appears to be stable because of the slowness with which it evolves. But the slow pace of legal development is not due to any inherent characteristic of the law itself. Logically speaking, any conclusion, however radical, is derivable from the rules of law. It is simply that, even between generations, the range of ideological opinion represented on the bench is so narrow that anything more than incremental departures from conventional wisdom and morality will not be respected within the profession. Such decisions are virtually certain to be overturned on appeal, and thus, are rarely even rendered in the first instance.

Confirming evidence for this thesis can be found in our contemporary judicial history. Over the past quarter-century, the "diversity" movement has produced a bar, and concomitantly a bench, somewhat more open to people of different racial, sexual, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. To some extent, this movement has produced a judiciary that represents a broader range of ideological viewpoints than has been the case in the past. Over the same time period, we have seen an accelerated rate of legal change. Today, long-standing precedents are more freely overruled, novel theories of liability are more frequently accepted by the courts, and different courts hand down different, and seemingly irreconcilable, decisions more often. In addition, it is worth noting that recently, the chief complaint about the legal system seems to concern the degree to which it has become "politicized." This suggests that as the ideological solidarity of the judiciary breaks down, so too does the predictability of legal decisionmaking, and hence, the stability of the law. Regardless of this trend, I hope it is now apparent that to assume that the law is stable because it is determinate is to reverse cause and effect. Rather, it is because the law is basically stable that it appears to be determinate. It is not rule of law that gives us a stable legal system; it is the stability of the culturally shared values of the judiciary that gives rise to and supports the myth of the rule of law.

We could rewrite the bold text to make a fundamental point about Bitcoin forks and open source in general:

"The observation that Bitcoin is highly stable is, of course, correct, but it is a mistake to believe that this is because it is "governed by impartial math" or code. The stability of Bitcoin derives not from any feature of the code itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background and interests among its investors and other stakeholders."

The correct way to think about it is that Bitcoin is constantly forking, just usually to the same thing, because the stakeholders by default desire constancy. But by the same token, whenever Bitcoin needs to change to better serve what its investors/stakeholders deem to be its purpose, that continual forking - like someone just repeatedly pushing a button marked "STATUS QUO" - will shift easily to the necessary change. Of course this will essentially never involve changing the monetary parameters, because - again - that would be the "third rail" for investors and other stakeholders. They will ONLY support changes that add value.

It is not, like the code-focused devs imagine, a matter of stakeholders desiring that "the code" remain constant, but a matter of them desiring that "the code + the environment it interacts with = the resulting effective functionality of Bitcoin in the world" remain constant. If and when that environment changes, the code must also change: in this case, when there is greater adoption and higher technology available, especially with altcoins nipping at Bitcoin's heels, the code must change just to keep the final result (the effective functionality of Bitcoin in the world) constant.
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July 09, 2015, 10:27:32 PM
 #28548

The sub-coins (Litecoin, Peercoin, and Namecoin - the original three popular alts) were down from their average ratio to BTC and were due for an upward correction. As usual, the stress testing is just the trigger, just the domino that sets off the cascade of pent-up tension there. It would have happened sooner or later anyway.

Note the orange line, showing Litecoin price in term of BTC. It's merely returning to its usual ratio. It will likely overshoot a bit out of exuberance, then settle back down.



It looks a bit worse if you use log scale.  In fact, btc has fallen 80% when priced in ltc in the past 2 months, but it is still only a 50% retracement from the all time high.  Hopefully it is just a natural bounceback, but it is a bit stronger than I would have expected, and it goes against Cypherdoc's thesis that there will only be one dominant POW money.  Its definitely due for a pullback.


Counterfeit:  made in imitation of something else with intent to deceive:  merriam-webster
Zangelbert Bingledack
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July 09, 2015, 10:38:18 PM
 #28549

if i have to migrate to a new chain and lose money doing it, i'm done with  crypto.

If you see the event ahead of time (and act on it), you'd likely make an enormous amount of money rather than losing.

No, because the principle would be dead. You'd forever have to be an investor, hopping from coin to coin. No reliability as a store of value. That's why it won't happen. Altcoins (meaning alt-ledgers, not alt-protocols) are a fundamentally self-defeating idea, except in catastrophic backup scenarios and as testnets. The window to market an altcoin to a new audience unfamiliar with Bitcoin - so that it wouldn't be an altcoin from those new people's perspective - has mostly closed, making it truly self-defeating as a long-term investment proposition.

Now alt-protocols are different, as they can be pasted on to Bitcoin's ledger via the spinoff method; maintaining Bitcoin's ledger just like a sidechain would try to. If Litecoin, for example, turns out to be better and there's somehow no way to incorporate its better ideas into the Bitcoin protocol, LTC will not be what rises; instead a spinoff of Litecoin will administer Bitcoin's ledger and BTC will rise because it has successfully improved itself!
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July 09, 2015, 10:44:12 PM
 #28550

If there is only 1 copy of blockchain then I expect it is located in 1 datacenter. (node)
I agree that if the least secure and reliable way, out of all the other possible ways, of storing the blockchain was chosen, it probably wouldn't work very well.

Did you have anything else to add to the discussion?
Zangelbert Bingledack
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July 09, 2015, 10:46:31 PM
 #28551

is possible LTC rise to 0.1 BTC?  Huh
I heard bitcoin getting stronger because there are two countries that go bankrupt  Shocked

In terms of market cap, it has been typical for Litecoin to be around 10% of Bitcoin. (But since there are nearly 4x as many LTC as BTC, the price should be closer to 1 LTC = 0.025 BTC, which is almost exactly where we are now.) Nothing strange going on.
Zangelbert Bingledack
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July 09, 2015, 10:48:10 PM
 #28552

is possible LTC rise to 0.1 BTC?  Huh
I heard bitcoin getting stronger because there are two countries that go bankrupt  Shocked

if we weren't being crippled by iCEBlow and his Cripplecoiners, we'd have had the huge LTC rally here.

Well maybe 10% of it, since it's a 10x small market. But as I said, the stress test is only the narrative. The ratio is merely reverting to the norm.
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July 09, 2015, 10:49:51 PM
 #28553

Yes people will stop using Bitcoin b/c they have to pay $0.5 per transaction. They rather use bank and will pay $20.

Or use an altcoin that doesn't fetishize 1MB blocks and pay $0.01. Bitcoin can't afford to be ultra-conservative in the face of endless altcoin competition. It must take calculated risks or be overtaken.

so important to demonstrate that it is indeed open source adaptable and resilient.  forks are not to be feared but to be encouraged in the proper situations.

I completely agree.

Branching into law, here's a quote from John Hasnas, the Hayekian legal professor (emphasis mine):

Quote
I have been arguing that the law is inherently indeterminate, and further, that this may not be such a bad thing. I realize, however, that you may still not be convinced. Even if you are now willing to admit that the law is somewhat indeterminate, you probably believe that I have vastly exaggerated the degree to which this is true. After all, it is obvious that the law cannot be radically indeterminate. If this were the case, the law would be completely unpredictable. Judges hearing similar cases would render wildly divergent decisions. There would be no stability or uniformity in the law. But, as imperfect as the current legal system may be, this is clearly not the case.

The observation that the legal system is highly stable is, of course, correct, but it is a mistake to believe that this is because the law is determinate. The stability of the law derives not from any feature of the law itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background among those empowered to make legal decisions. Consider who the judges are in this country. Typically, they are people from a solid middle- to upper-class background who performed well at an appropriately prestigious undergraduate institution; demonstrated the ability to engage in the type of analytical reasoning that is measured by the standardized Law School Admissions Test; passed through the crucible of law school, complete with its methodological and political indoctrination; and went on to high-profile careers as attorneys, probably with a prestigious Wall Street-style law firm. To have been appointed to the bench, it is virtually certain that they were both politically moderate and well-connected, and, until recently, white males of the correct ethnic and religious pedigree. It should be clear that, culturally speaking, such a group will tend to be quite homogeneous, sharing a great many moral, spiritual, and political beliefs and values. Given this, it can hardly be surprising that there will be a high degree of agreement among judges as to how cases ought to be decided. But this agreement is due to the common set of normative presuppositions the judges share, not some immanent, objective meaning that exists within the rules of law.

In fact, however, the law is not truly stable, since it is continually, if slowly, evolving in response to changing social mores and conditions. This evolution occurs because each new generation of judges brings with it its own set of "progressive" normative assumptions. As the older generation passes from the scene, these assumptions come to be shared by an ever-increasing percentage of the judiciary. Eventually, they become the consensus of opinion among judicial decisionmakers, and the law changes to reflect them. Thus, a generation of judges that regarded "separate but equal" as a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gave way to one which interpreted that clause as prohibiting virtually all governmental actions that classify individuals by race, which, in turn, gave way to one which interpreted the same language to permit "benign" racial classifications designed to advance the social status of minority groups. In this way, as the moral and political values conventionally accepted by society change over time, so too do those embedded in the law.

The law appears to be stable because of the slowness with which it evolves. But the slow pace of legal development is not due to any inherent characteristic of the law itself. Logically speaking, any conclusion, however radical, is derivable from the rules of law. It is simply that, even between generations, the range of ideological opinion represented on the bench is so narrow that anything more than incremental departures from conventional wisdom and morality will not be respected within the profession. Such decisions are virtually certain to be overturned on appeal, and thus, are rarely even rendered in the first instance.

Confirming evidence for this thesis can be found in our contemporary judicial history. Over the past quarter-century, the "diversity" movement has produced a bar, and concomitantly a bench, somewhat more open to people of different racial, sexual, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. To some extent, this movement has produced a judiciary that represents a broader range of ideological viewpoints than has been the case in the past. Over the same time period, we have seen an accelerated rate of legal change. Today, long-standing precedents are more freely overruled, novel theories of liability are more frequently accepted by the courts, and different courts hand down different, and seemingly irreconcilable, decisions more often. In addition, it is worth noting that recently, the chief complaint about the legal system seems to concern the degree to which it has become "politicized." This suggests that as the ideological solidarity of the judiciary breaks down, so too does the predictability of legal decisionmaking, and hence, the stability of the law. Regardless of this trend, I hope it is now apparent that to assume that the law is stable because it is determinate is to reverse cause and effect. Rather, it is because the law is basically stable that it appears to be determinate. It is not rule of law that gives us a stable legal system; it is the stability of the culturally shared values of the judiciary that gives rise to and supports the myth of the rule of law.

We could rewrite the bold text to make a fundamental point about Bitcoin forks and open source in general:

"The observation that Bitcoin is highly stable is, of course, correct, but it is a mistake to believe that this is because it is "governed by impartial math" or code. The stability of Bitcoin derives not from any feature of the code itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background and interests among its investors and other stakeholders."

The correct way to think about it is that Bitcoin is constantly forking, just usually to the same thing, because the stakeholders by default desire constancy. But by the same token, whenever Bitcoin needs to change to better serve what its investors/stakeholders deem to be its purpose, that continual forking - like someone just repeatedly pushing a button marked "STATUS QUO" - will shift easily to the necessary change. Of course this will essentially never involve changing the monetary parameters, because - again - that would be the "third rail" for investors and other stakeholders. They will ONLY support changes that add value.

It is not, like the code-focused devs imagine, a matter of stakeholders desiring that "the code" remain constant, but a matter of them desiring that "the code + the environment it interacts with = the resulting effective functionality of Bitcoin in the world" remain constant. If and when that environment changes, the code must also change: in this case, when there is greater adoption and higher technology available, especially with altcoins nipping at Bitcoin's heels, the code must change just to keep the final result (the effective functionality of Bitcoin in the world) constant.

this brings up a good point that i've been meaning to talk about.  hopefully i have enough time to express it properly.

what comes first?  the code or the economic theory?  to me, it seems all the code monkeys trying to enforce Cripplecoin are just another play on the blockchain comes first theory where the coin is irrelevant.  this is also demonstrated by their incessant focus on decentralization of full nodes while ignoring users.  also demonstrated by their stubbornness in their position in spite of 75% support to inc block size over a number of polls.

they're wrong of course.  for those of us who've been around for a long time and have witnessed the evolution of the altcoin and Bitcoin 2.0 spaces, it should be obvious what comes first.  and that is, a bunch of geeks sit around a table and talk about what types of economic features should go into a coin to draw in as many investors and speculators as possible.  this happens FIRST.   then they go out and code it.  this comes SECOND.  this is what happened with Bitcoin as is clear in Satoshi's writings, the book of which i've read and studied for over 4.5 yrs now.  the code is merely used to enforce the economic precepts.

i see non tech ppl around here and on Reddit get intimidated by devs into thinking they don't know what they're talking about when they voice economic concerns about how core dev is being handled.  they are criticized and dismissed as if this is all about the tech.  i say BULLSHIT.  it's about a very important economic concept that's been around for thousands of years and that is SOUND MONEY.  it's bigger than all of us put together.  it's the human races first chance to have the most efficient form of sound money ever conceived of and created.  if we don't get this one right it could be another hundred years before we get another chance.  all the dev sounding bullshit we get from tvbcof, iCEBlow, gmax, kazukiPimp, MOA and TPTB is just about dev's gotta dev.  so don't let them intimidate you, non techies!

that's the truth of the matter.
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July 09, 2015, 10:53:02 PM
 #28554

if i have to migrate to a new chain and lose money doing it, i'm done with  crypto.

If you see the event ahead of time (and act on it), you'd likely make an enormous amount of money rather than losing.

that's true.  but i converted from gold to Bitcoin precisely b/c i saw it as a SOV to replace gold that's had that role for thousands of years.  i'm not about to remain in a system that guarantees a rolling ponzi scheme every 5-6 yrs where i might get lucky the first migration but lose everything the second migration.  Bitcoiners should have the luxury of socking savings away in a cold wallet and forgetting about it maybe for the rest of their lives as they hand them down generation after generation.  b/c that is what it will take to really replace gold as digital gold.

we were told that the open source nature of the code would be able to adapt or mutate according to threats.  migration to another chain is the antithesis of that.

Yah, I know how it feels to be a "you'll pry DOS from my cold dead hands" "Windows-is-Literally-Satan" guy.   Cheesy

But it is possible BTC is the DOS (or GM-NAA I/O) of e-cash.  Or, more hopefully, the UNIX.

UNIX is still around, but not in anything like the original version.  And Linux (the Litecoin of Unix) is the most popular descendant.

Bitcoin is just software, not an ubiquitous-yet-rare immutable element.   I'm sure you'll spout some smug cliche about first mover advantages or network effects.

Doesn't matter; software changes rapidly and you shouldn't get married to any one implementation (or stock in a promising new sector).


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Monero
"The difference between bad and well-developed digital cash will determine
whether we have a dictatorship or a real democracy." 
David Chaum 1996
"Fungibility provides privacy as a side effect."  Adam Back 2014
Buy and sell XMR near you
P2P Exchange Network
Buy XMR with fiat
Is Dash a scam?
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July 09, 2015, 10:56:51 PM
 #28555

if i have to migrate to a new chain and lose money doing it, i'm done with  crypto.

If you see the event ahead of time (and act on it), you'd likely make an enormous amount of money rather than losing.

that's true.  but i converted from gold to Bitcoin precisely b/c i saw it as a SOV to replace gold that's had that role for thousands of years.  i'm not about to remain in a system that guarantees a rolling ponzi scheme every 5-6 yrs where i might get lucky the first migration but lose everything the second migration.  Bitcoiners should have the luxury of socking savings away in a cold wallet and forgetting about it maybe for the rest of their lives as they hand them down generation after generation.  b/c that is what it will take to really replace gold as digital gold.

we were told that the open source nature of the code would be able to adapt or mutate according to threats.  migration to another chain is the antithesis of that.

Yah, I know how it feels to be a "you'll pry DOS from my cold dead hands" "Windows-is-Literally-Satan" guy.   Cheesy

But it is possible BTC is the DOS (or GM-NAA I/O) of e-cash.  Or, more hopefully, the UNIX.

UNIX is still around, but not in anything like the original version.  And Linux (the Litecoin of Unix) is the most popular descendant.

Bitcoin is just software, not an ubiquitous-yet-rare immutable element.   I'm sure you'll spout some smug cliche about first mover advantages or network effects.

Doesn't matter; software changes rapidly and you shouldn't get married to any one implementation (or stock in a promising new sector).

says blows the iCEBlow Monero Pimp.
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July 09, 2015, 11:04:12 PM
 #28556

if i have to migrate to a new chain and lose money doing it, i'm done with  crypto.

If you see the event ahead of time (and act on it), you'd likely make an enormous amount of money rather than losing.

No, because the principle would be dead. You'd forever have to be an investor, hopping from coin to coin. No reliability as a store of value. That's why it won't happen. Altcoins (meaning alt-ledgers, not alt-protocols) are a fundamentally self-defeating idea, except in catastrophic backup scenarios and as testnets. The window to market an altcoin to a new audience unfamiliar with Bitcoin - so that it wouldn't be an altcoin from those new people's perspective - has mostly closed, making it truly self-defeating as a long-term investment proposition.

Now alt-protocols are different, as they can be pasted on to Bitcoin's ledger via the spinoff method; maintaining Bitcoin's ledger just like a sidechain would try to. If Litecoin, for example, turns out to be better and there's somehow no way to incorporate its better ideas into the Bitcoin protocol, LTC will not be what rises; instead a spinoff of Litecoin will administer Bitcoin's ledger and BTC will rise because it has successfully improved itself!

Eh, I basically agree with you that no other coin really stands a chance of "taking on" or replacing BTC, but my post was based only on the implied possibility in cypherdoc's post that it could happen.

On the flipside, I don't really buy into the One True LedgerTM thesis, so it doesn't ring true to me that "the principle would be dead" if another coin somehow managed to become the leader. I DO, however, assign an extremely low probability of that happening.

BTC has not yet been anything close to a reliable store of value.
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July 09, 2015, 11:05:06 PM
 #28557

what comes first?  the code or the economic theory?  to me, it seems all the code monkeys trying to enforce Cripplecoin are just another play on the blockchain comes first theory where the coin is irrelevant.  this is also demonstrated by their incessant focus on decentralization of full nodes while ignoring users.  also demonstrated by their stubbornness in their position in spite of 75% support to inc block size over a number of polls.

they're wrong of course.  for those of us who've been around for a long time and have witnessed the evolution of the altcoin and Bitcoin 2.0 spaces, it should be obvious what comes first.  and that is, a bunch of geeks sit around a table and talk about what types of economic features should go into a coin to draw in as many investors and speculators as possible.  this happens FIRST.   then they go out and code it.  this comes SECOND.  this is what happened with Bitcoin as is clear in Satoshi's writings, the book of which i've read and studied for over 4.5 yrs now.  the code is merely used to enforce the economic precepts.

i see non tech ppl around here and on Reddit get intimidated by devs into thinking they don't know what they're talking about when they voice economic concerns about how core dev is being handled.  they are criticized and dismissed as if this is all about the tech.  i say BULLSHIT.  it's about a very important economic concept that's been around for thousands of years and that is SOUND MONEY.  it's bigger than all of us put together.  it's the human races first chance to have the most efficient form of sound money ever conceived of and created.  if we don't get this one right it could be another hundred years before we get another chance.  all the dev sounding bullshit we get from tvbcof, iCEBlow, gmax, kazukiPimp, MOA and TPTB is just about dev's gotta dev.  so don't let them intimidate you, non techies!

I agree that the code is secondary to the desired functionality; I actually think most of the people you mentioned would agree on that, especially if pressed (meaning this is somewhat a problem of mental compartmentalization). There are arguments from the small-blockers that are purely about what would allow Bitcoin to succeed as sound money, and those are fine in this respect, but some of them also slip into this pitfall you are talking about of seeing the code as primary (Mircea Popescu being the extreme example) rather than as a means to an end.

With that in mind, I think it's important to call out whenever this fallacy is invoked. Often it is not explicitly stated, so it should be drawn out into the open to be swept away. Insofar as the debate revolves solely around what will allow Bitcoin to scale without making it more vulnerable, that is fine. We both happen to think that keeping blocks small is not going to be the best way to achieve the resilience Bitcoin needs, but as Greg might say, "smart people can disagree on this." What is inexcusable is mistaking the code for a sacred cow, and that does extend a bit into the notion that "the devs know best." They're experts at optimizing the existing code, not at sculpting robust economic incentive structures (except Satoshi, of course).
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July 09, 2015, 11:11:38 PM
 #28558

Doesn't matter; software changes rapidly and you shouldn't get married to any one implementation (or stock in a promising new sector).

By all means, upgrade the protocol, even to the Litecoin or Monero protocol or whatever. But to change ledgers every time you need to upgrade the protocol doesn't make sense at all. People don't want to have to play stock trader with their bank account.

Fortunately, because of spinoffs (and maybe sidechains), the Bitcoin ledger is a safe place to store value even if the Bitcoin protocol gets superseded.
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July 09, 2015, 11:38:07 PM
 #28559

China threatening short sellers.  Shades of US back in 2008.  the volatility back then makes Bitcoin look like cake:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-09/china-soars-most-2009-after-government-threatens-sellers-arrest-global-stocks-surge

Speaking of volatility:




(From the very good Pantera Report)

I don't really see the recent relative price stability to be a lasting trend quite yet.

Supply/demand just seems relatively balanced right now despite all the chaos (blocksize debates, Greece, etc.)  I expect resolution of some of these big questions will increase volatility again soon and BTC price will move again in one direction or the other.

On the other hand I expect that volatility in LTC, PPC, NMC and other coins will decrease from current levels.
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July 09, 2015, 11:42:24 PM
 #28560

Branching into law, here's a quote from John Hasnas, the Hayekian legal professor (emphasis mine):
How profoundly naïve and myopic point of view! How exceptionally Anglocentric to the point of parochialism! What a beautiful example of "Here be dragons" from somebody who is considered "learned" amongst the Anglophiles.

Here are my standard two links I send to the lawyers who attempt to do common law reasoning to the rest of the world and the rest of the history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisitorial_system

I'm going to preserve the whole quote for my future reference. This type of reasoning typically comes from various "diploma mill (or step above)" graduates and political apparatchiks, but this one is actually very well written.
Branching into law, here's a quote from John Hasnas, the Hayekian legal professor (emphasis mine):


Quote
I have been arguing that the law is inherently indeterminate, and further, that this may not be such a bad thing. I realize, however, that you may still not be convinced. Even if you are now willing to admit that the law is somewhat indeterminate, you probably believe that I have vastly exaggerated the degree to which this is true. After all, it is obvious that the law cannot be radically indeterminate. If this were the case, the law would be completely unpredictable. Judges hearing similar cases would render wildly divergent decisions. There would be no stability or uniformity in the law. But, as imperfect as the current legal system may be, this is clearly not the case.

The observation that the legal system is highly stable is, of course, correct, but it is a mistake to believe that this is because the law is determinate. The stability of the law derives not from any feature of the law itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background among those empowered to make legal decisions. Consider who the judges are in this country. Typically, they are people from a solid middle- to upper-class background who performed well at an appropriately prestigious undergraduate institution; demonstrated the ability to engage in the type of analytical reasoning that is measured by the standardized Law School Admissions Test; passed through the crucible of law school, complete with its methodological and political indoctrination; and went on to high-profile careers as attorneys, probably with a prestigious Wall Street-style law firm. To have been appointed to the bench, it is virtually certain that they were both politically moderate and well-connected, and, until recently, white males of the correct ethnic and religious pedigree. It should be clear that, culturally speaking, such a group will tend to be quite homogeneous, sharing a great many moral, spiritual, and political beliefs and values. Given this, it can hardly be surprising that there will be a high degree of agreement among judges as to how cases ought to be decided. But this agreement is due to the common set of normative presuppositions the judges share, not some immanent, objective meaning that exists within the rules of law.

In fact, however, the law is not truly stable, since it is continually, if slowly, evolving in response to changing social mores and conditions. This evolution occurs because each new generation of judges brings with it its own set of "progressive" normative assumptions. As the older generation passes from the scene, these assumptions come to be shared by an ever-increasing percentage of the judiciary. Eventually, they become the consensus of opinion among judicial decisionmakers, and the law changes to reflect them. Thus, a generation of judges that regarded "separate but equal" as a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gave way to one which interpreted that clause as prohibiting virtually all governmental actions that classify individuals by race, which, in turn, gave way to one which interpreted the same language to permit "benign" racial classifications designed to advance the social status of minority groups. In this way, as the moral and political values conventionally accepted by society change over time, so too do those embedded in the law.

The law appears to be stable because of the slowness with which it evolves. But the slow pace of legal development is not due to any inherent characteristic of the law itself. Logically speaking, any conclusion, however radical, is derivable from the rules of law. It is simply that, even between generations, the range of ideological opinion represented on the bench is so narrow that anything more than incremental departures from conventional wisdom and morality will not be respected within the profession. Such decisions are virtually certain to be overturned on appeal, and thus, are rarely even rendered in the first instance.

Confirming evidence for this thesis can be found in our contemporary judicial history. Over the past quarter-century, the "diversity" movement has produced a bar, and concomitantly a bench, somewhat more open to people of different racial, sexual, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. To some extent, this movement has produced a judiciary that represents a broader range of ideological viewpoints than has been the case in the past. Over the same time period, we have seen an accelerated rate of legal change. Today, long-standing precedents are more freely overruled, novel theories of liability are more frequently accepted by the courts, and different courts hand down different, and seemingly irreconcilable, decisions more often. In addition, it is worth noting that recently, the chief complaint about the legal system seems to concern the degree to which it has become "politicized." This suggests that as the ideological solidarity of the judiciary breaks down, so too does the predictability of legal decisionmaking, and hence, the stability of the law. Regardless of this trend, I hope it is now apparent that to assume that the law is stable because it is determinate is to reverse cause and effect. Rather, it is because the law is basically stable that it appears to be determinate. It is not rule of law that gives us a stable legal system; it is the stability of the culturally shared values of the judiciary that gives rise to and supports the myth of the rule of law.

We could rewrite the bold text to make a fundamental point about Bitcoin forks and open source in general:

"The observation that Bitcoin is highly stable is, of course, correct, but it is a mistake to believe that this is because it is "governed by impartial math" or code. The stability of Bitcoin derives not from any feature of the code itself, but from the overwhelming uniformity of ideological background and interests among its investors and other stakeholders."

The correct way to think about it is that Bitcoin is constantly forking, just usually to the same thing, because the stakeholders by default desire constancy. But by the same token, whenever Bitcoin needs to change to better serve what its investors/stakeholders deem to be its purpose, that continual forking - like someone just repeatedly pushing a button marked "STATUS QUO" - will shift easily to the necessary change. Of course this will essentially never involve changing the monetary parameters, because - again - that would be the "third rail" for investors and other stakeholders. They will ONLY support changes that add value.

It is not, like the code-focused devs imagine, a matter of stakeholders desiring that "the code" remain constant, but a matter of them desiring that "the code + the environment it interacts with = the resulting effective functionality of Bitcoin in the world" remain constant. If and when that environment changes, the code must also change: in this case, when there is greater adoption and higher technology available, especially with altcoins nipping at Bitcoin's heels, the code must change just to keep the final result (the effective functionality of Bitcoin in the world) constant.

Please comment, critique, criticize or ridicule BIP 2112: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54382.0
Long-term mining prognosis: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91101.0
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