Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[TPTB_need_war]

This thread is a perfect example of the power vacuum of politics.

If we had a decentralized system, this thread would not exist.

I am working on that.

[1714260476]

1714260476

[1714260476]

1714260476

[1714260476]

1714260476

[1714260476]

1714260476

[NewLiberty]

i said years ago that high tx costs, like we're starting to get now, will drive all these op_return companies away from Bitcoin.  and it will be the fault of guys like iCEBlow, tvbcof, & the BS core devs.  there will be repercussions:

What high TX costs?  Its up a little, but still less than everything comparable (if anything is).
Miner revenue is up lately.

Using only slightly higher than default fee, your TX gets processed without delay.

[Erdogan]

The sound money is the beginning and the end, the alfa and the omega.

We already have that with gold and silver, but bitcoin has overall better qualities. In times and places where gold has been sound money, it has always been modified with paper substitutes and finanzialization. This has been true the last 500 years. Gold is not sufficiently practical in the modern world. It is the reason why fiat keeps creeping in. With bitcoin, the actual money can be used directly, reducing the danger represented by paper substitutes.

With good quality sound money, people can save money, they are not pressed into risky investments when they don't want. The opportunity to save is the most profound change to the world that bitcoin promises.

[iCEBREAKER]

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

Yep. This is my take:

Bwah-ha-ha!  I thank you for that, because I know Frap.doc will be greatly annoyed by being put on the same page as the alt-coiners he hates with such sectarian passion.

The best part is, he did it to himself with his envious, intemperate "if we weren't being crippled by iCEBlow and his Cripplecoiners, we'd have had the huge LTC rally here" remark.   

Maybe it's a good idea to diversify investments in a new sector and keep a few carefully chosen hedges around, instead of getting married in a religious ceremony to one particular enterprise?

Nah, that would violate the principle known as Frappuccino_Doc's Razor:

"The single form of e-cash in which I am heavily invested is so totally legitimate it will replace gold, Visa, and car wash tokens; but everything else is a Ponzi Scheme."

It's just like when you are driving.  Everyone going slower than you is a granny creating a safety hazard; everyone going faster than you is a suicidal moran.  Enjoy your road rage, Frap.doc!   

[cypherdoc]

But your being politically correct and non confrontational by leaving out one major factor that is driving the debate under the hood. And that is Blockstream. They, like Bitcoin, are also about money. Except I'd argue, by crippling Bitcoin, they are about USD's.

The conflict of interest is a real concern, to be sure, but at this point I think it more likely that they are sincere. At least Greg, because he's always been a bit of a pessimist on Bitcoin scalability as a whole, being so code-focused, it really is quite consistent for him to side with Blockstream. Adam I suspect a bit more, since missing out on Bitcoin and all the financial gains despite having created part of it has to hurt, but I'm not at all willing to assume bad faith on his part either. At this point it's basically a social club for their point of view, and I do think the money influence will be corrupting as time wears on, but I'm skeptical that it's having a substantial effect yet. I

In any case, the main point is that it could be but we simply can't know. We can suspect, and it is probably good to needle them about it, but actually jumping to that conclusion as a decided fact doesn't seem helpful to me.

The conflict of interest is a simple matter of the facts.

Whether it is problematic to the point of whether any recusal is warranted is another matter entirely. 
Likely its sufficient to examine on an issue by issue basis.

Correct, but no one wants or should have  to do this on a case by case basis when it comes  down to what's supposed to be a public good, sound money, or digital gold.

[cypherdoc]

i said years ago that high tx costs, like we're starting to get now, will drive all these op_return companies away from Bitcoin.  and it will be the fault of guys like iCEBlow, tvbcof, & the BS core devs.  there will be repercussions:

What high TX costs?  Its up a little, but still less than everything comparable (if anything is).
Miner revenue is up lately.

Using only slightly higher than default fee, your TX gets processed without delay.

The spammer had gotten his feet up to. 0002 earlier but it may have gone back down to. 0001. Yes not much for you or me but maybe not so for 3rd world. Yes, it's mostly an unusability issue. But still, Nasdaq is not going to get aggressive until a solution to the spam occurs.

[sickpig]

It shouldn't need years of engineering studies to understand that there's no real technical discussion going on between the various sub-camps in the developer's camp.

So your take is that devs are going full "political" rather than technical? (serious question)

If yes, what's the way to unlock this impasse?

[awemany]

It shouldn't need years of engineering studies to understand that there's no real technical discussion going on between the various sub-camps in the developer's camp.

So your take is that devs are going full "political" rather than technical? (serious question)

If yes, what's the way to unlock this impasse?

Given the deadlock, I honestly start to think it might be good to do a 'divorce'. As in, we actually agree to disagree, and all see that there are fundamentally incompatible opinions with regards to the direction of Bitcoin. But we can keep it friendly.  This might be less damage/cost than having a hardfork battle solving it in January 2016.

That way we can avoid the fighting and truly let the market work out the rest. We divide up the common assets of the web sites, code repos etc. between Bitcoin/QT and Bitcoin/XT. Make it clear that Bitcoin is now two Bitcoins, and that the user has to decide.

QT and XT simply seem like two people who shouldn't be married. Better have a clean divorce than endless fighting.

Thoughts?

[sickpig]

It shouldn't need years of engineering studies to understand that there's no real technical discussion going on between the various sub-camps in the developer's camp.

So your take is that devs are going full "political" rather than technical? (serious question)

If yes, what's the way to unlock this impasse?

Given the deadlock, I honestly start to think it might be good to do a 'divorce'. As in, we actually agree to disagree, and all see that there are fundamentally incompatible opinions with regards to the direction of Bitcoin. But we can keep it friendly.  This might be less damage/cost than having a hardfork battle solving it in January 2016.

That way we can avoid the fighting and truly let the market work out the rest. We divide up the common assets of the web sites, code repos etc. between Bitcoin/QT and Bitcoin/XT. Make it clear that Bitcoin is now two Bitcoins, and that the user has to decide.

QT and XT simply seem like two people who shouldn't be married. Better have a clean divorce than endless fighting.

Thoughts?

If XT hadn't been a MIke Hearn's creature I would have said 100% yes.

My gut feeling and few facts that I gather along the way (mainly red-listing, but also having decreased dust fee request https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305), make me think that way.

But all in all yes, by definition to resolve a deadlock you need to change the policy that have regulated the process since.

I'm still hoping that the situation will be solved without the need of a "schism", though.

Mind you I think that more implementations of the bitcoin protocol (modulo the consensus rules that has to be enforced by
the same library for all the clients) is an healthy thing to have, but that's not the case unfortunately.

[awemany]

@ Solomon's Trial:

The fundamental problem with seeing it as a King Solomon's trial is that Bitcoin is not to be owned ever by either party. It is a false equivalence.

@sickpig:

Maybe a scheme could be worked out where XT and QT would each have their own set of core dev consensus, with only a partial overlap of core devs between the two?

[79b79aa8d5047da6d3XX]

It shouldn't need years of engineering studies to understand that there's no real technical discussion going on between the various sub-camps in the developer's camp.

So your take is that devs are going full "political" rather than technical? (serious question)

Matters quickly become political when the point of contention is money; as Satoshi and Szabo have starkly reminded us, there is no economics without ideology. Macroeconomists (and among them, fiscal and monetary policists) couch their positions in technical terms under a veil of objectivity and impartiality, but it is fairly simple to sort out their assumptions, biases and allegiances.

Fortunately, the main political implications of the bitcoin economy are set in stone (as they are for the fiat economy). The devs, like the macroeconomists, will fiddle around the edges, try-and-err, and roll with their punches.

[NewLiberty]

i said years ago that high tx costs, like we're starting to get now, will drive all these op_return companies away from Bitcoin.  and it will be the fault of guys like iCEBlow, tvbcof, & the BS core devs.  there will be repercussions:

What high TX costs?  Its up a little, but still less than everything comparable (if anything is).
Miner revenue is up lately.

Using only slightly higher than default fee, your TX gets processed without delay.

The spammer had gotten his feet up to. 0002 earlier but it may have gone back down to. 0001. Yes not much for you or me but maybe not so for 3rd world. Yes, it's mostly an unusability issue. But still, Nasdaq is not going to get aggressive until a solution to the spam occurs.

Sure, in Venezuela where a month's labor at minimum wage under 33% monthly inflation is less than US$20 at black market exchange rates, such a fee becomes almost meaningful...

The largest bank note in Venezuela is worth about 16 cents currently.


But even (maybe especially) there the fee is affordable if you want to do a sure transaction with new coins.

[iCEBREAKER]

the congestion really has only just begun.  if it persists, yes, ppl will start to stop using Bitcoin.  the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging.  the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through.  they won't be as patient as some of us here.

Hi doc.  I can't help but notice with each passing day you sound more like a Buttcoiner.

Specifically, Jorge Stolfi - the Buttcoiner's big fat smart-bug:

The "new devs" are impatient for the network to saturate so that the "fee market" will arise, and they have invented several spiffy gadgets to handle it that they are dying to use.  No matter how people explain, they don't want to understand that

* even 80% of saturation would render the use of bitcoin a nightmare, driving users away from bitcoin and stopping its growth well before full saturation.

* when the traffic will stop growing, say at ~80% of capacity in daily average, the "traffic jams" will arise erratically at peak hours and at random variations  of demand and supply;

* the queue lengths will vary pretty fast during a jam,  and will be emptied in a few hours;

* the fees will be useless outside of the jams;

* the right fees will be impossible to predict during a jam, because each jam will be different, the queue status will vary too fast;

* the right fee that you should use to be among the first 2500 entries of the queue that will get into the next block depends on the 3000 transactions that will be issued in the next 10 minutes, by 3000 clients who are trying to choose a fee that will put their transactions ahead of yours;

* twidding the fees will not reduce the average delay by one second, only make everybody spend more money and make the individual delays more unpredictable;

* many clients will end up paying much more than the standard fee, only to wait more than if the transactions were processed first-come, first served;

* most clients -- espcially those who issue important transactions -- have better things to do with their time than sit two hours watching the queues and playing the silly "fee hopscotch" game.

It is useless to point out to them that no business in the world, from lemonade stands to airline manufacturers, uses (or could use) anything remotely like this bizarre pricing mechanism.  It is useless to explain to them that the "fee market" will not be a "fRee market", because they have this silly libertarian definition of "free market" as "a market without government regulations".

Unfortunately, they are so detached from the real world, so fired up with the "fee market" fantasy, and so anxious to see their toys at work -- that they cannot even understand how that "fee market" will transform the act of paying something with bitcoin from a mildly complicated routine into an absolutely stupid, lengthy, incomprehensible and frustrating game.

They are like kids who set fire to the house because they want to play firemen and put the filre out with their water guns.

Bitcoin has been dead for more than a year, and was very sick before that.  What is still twitching there is a bizarre and terribly expensive payment system that resembles bitcoin, and works like it for some puroses; but with a crucial difference -- it depends on 5 people not having bad ideas.

Besides the trivial 'Buttcoin' vs 'Cripplecoin' choice of vocabulary and your lacking their keen sense of puckish humor, you seem to agree with most/all of their Standard Litany of Reasons Why Butt/Cripple-coin Has Failed, Is Failing, and Will Fail.

Any thoughts on this?  Perhaps you should take your ball, go home, and become the LeBron of Buttcoin!   

[sickpig]

@sickpig:

Maybe a scheme could be worked out where XT and QT would each have their own set of core dev consensus, with only a partial overlap of core devs between the two?

It could be a solution If all the parties involved are able to get a "consensus" around this plan. No pun intended.

I'm not good at making estimates but I'd not giving an high success probability to this solution. I could be wrong, though. 

[TPTB_need_war]

An amazing wall of political morass verbiabage.

[uvwvj]

Sure, in Venezuela where a month's labor at minimum wage under 33% monthly inflation is less than US$20 at black market exchange rates, such a fee becomes almost meaningful...

The largest bank note in Venezuela is worth about 16 cents currently.


But even (maybe especially) there the fee is affordable if you want to do a sure transaction with new coins.

This is why I worry about the current Bitcoin bullshit with transactions, I can afford paying $0.25 to send money around the globe.  Someone who is in Venezuela cant.  I dont know if the answer if raising the block limit, using sidechains for regionally curriences backed by bitcoin or what

But to the Dev Masters - quit your fucking bitching - come to an answer and fix the fucking problem at halving and be done with it.

[iCEBREAKER]

Given the deadlock, I honestly start to think it might be good to do a 'divorce'. As in, we actually agree to disagree, and all see that there are fundamentally incompatible opinions with regards to the direction of Bitcoin. But we can keep it friendly.  This might be less damage/cost than having a hardfork battle solving it in January 2016.

That way we can avoid the fighting and truly let the market work out the rest. We divide up the common assets of the web sites, code repos etc. between Bitcoin/QT and Bitcoin/XT. Make it clear that Bitcoin is now two Bitcoins, and that the user has to decide.

QT and XT simply seem like two people who shouldn't be married. Better have a clean divorce than endless fighting.

Thoughts?

Clean divorce?  Yah right, as if!   

The Gavinistas are trying to take sole custody of the core dev's child.  The one they raised from a baby and devoted thousands of hours to nurturing.

There are already false allegations of abuse flying around.  It's been getting uglier and messier for months now, with no resolution in sight.

All of this, just so Hearn can make Bitcoin pull his XT wagon instead of launching it as a proper, independent altcoin.

This is worse than the time the DASH dev rode Darkcoin's coattails to launch his crappy new coin.

[Erdogan]

i said years ago that high tx costs, like we're starting to get now, will drive all these op_return companies away from Bitcoin.  and it will be the fault of guys like iCEBlow, tvbcof, & the BS core devs.  there will be repercussions:

What high TX costs?  Its up a little, but still less than everything comparable (if anything is).
Miner revenue is up lately.

Using only slightly higher than default fee, your TX gets processed without delay.

The spammer had gotten his feet up to. 0002 earlier but it may have gone back down to. 0001. Yes not much for you or me but maybe not so for 3rd world. Yes, it's mostly an unusability issue. But still, Nasdaq is not going to get aggressive until a solution to the spam occurs.

How do you know it is spam? It could be someone making small denomination bitcoin paper wallet rectangles for circulation in the philippines...

[iCEBREAKER]

I worry about the current Bitcoin bullshit with transactions, I can afford paying $0.25 to send money around the globe.  Someone who is in Venezuela cant.  I dont know if the answer if raising the block limit, using sidechains for regionally curriences backed by bitcoin or what

But to the Dev Masters - quit your fucking bitching - come to an answer and fix the fucking problem at halving and be done with it.

There is no "fucking problem."  There is only the endless whining of economically illiterate people like you.

For those of us who can't afford $0.25 BTC fees, there's Litcoin, Peercoin, Nubits (pegged to the dollar, neat!), Monero, etc.



Quit your fucking bitching.  We're tired of it.  It will never change Bitcoin, because You. Have. No. Power. Here.

[Erdogan]

It shouldn't need years of engineering studies to understand that there's no real technical discussion going on between the various sub-camps in the developer's camp.

So your take is that devs are going full "political" rather than technical? (serious question)

If yes, what's the way to unlock this impasse?

Given the deadlock, I honestly start to think it might be good to do a 'divorce'. As in, we actually agree to disagree, and all see that there are fundamentally incompatible opinions with regards to the direction of Bitcoin. But we can keep it friendly.  This might be less damage/cost than having a hardfork battle solving it in January 2016.

That way we can avoid the fighting and truly let the market work out the rest. We divide up the common assets of the web sites, code repos etc. between Bitcoin/QT and Bitcoin/XT. Make it clear that Bitcoin is now two Bitcoins, and that the user has to decide.

QT and XT simply seem like two people who shouldn't be married. Better have a clean divorce than endless fighting.

Thoughts?

No, divorce the source, make them compatible on all things except max blocksize, and let us see who dares make the first 1.1 MB block.