Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

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  

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?

They have a ledger but it isn't a block chain.

so why does the WP, Odalv, and Adam refer to these federated server models as an implementation of SC's?  which by my definition means involving a blockchain?

[1714079944]

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[1714079944]

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[marcus_of_augustus]

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion

all these power plants operate on the physics of nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion plants are non-existent.

[tvbcof]

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion

all these power plants operate on the physics of nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion plants are non-existent.

Correct.  The interesting thing is that all of the problems were all 'fixed' in the same way though.  Namely by papering them over and hoping that they can be ignored completely.  Worked like a champ in Fukushima since by that time a robust system of mass ignorance was well developed.

This is sorta like Justusranvier does with the 'econ 101' class observation that the reward to the sha256 miners will always approach zero...or more likely, overshoot it by a mile...

[Odalv]

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  

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?

They have a ledger but it isn't a block chain.

so why does the WP, Odalv, and Adam refer to these federated server models as an implementation of SC's?  which by my definition means involving a blockchain?

I'm trying to explain you that computers can "do it". And if federated servers can "do it" then bitcoin-network can "do it" too.

[User705]

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

If the COIN ETF is approved, perhaps it will open a large market of private investors in the US (savings and retirement accounts, etc.) 

Latin America could be such a market, but there does not seem to be a population of commodities speculators like the Chinese one.  Africa has the same problem, and is much poorer than China.  India seems to be wary of bitcoin (perhaps by memories of Mavrodi's scams).

But if they buy the COIN ETF it in now way effects Bitcoin price or ecosystem.

[cypherdoc]

this can't be good.  there's a higher purpose:

[sgbett]

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

If the COIN ETF is approved, perhaps it will open a large market of private investors in the US (savings and retirement accounts, etc.) 

Latin America could be such a market, but there does not seem to be a population of commodities speculators like the Chinese one.  Africa has the same problem, and is much poorer than China.  India seems to be wary of bitcoin (perhaps by memories of Mavrodi's scams).

But if they buy the COIN ETF it in now way effects Bitcoin price or ecosystem.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+will+buying+coin+etf+affect+bitcoin+price

[cypherdoc]

weekly all time LTC/USD chart.  really does not look good:

[marcus_of_augustus]

cypherdoc: it seems you are against side-chains on an economic principle rather than a specific technical implementation

Does this principle then extend to all other provably-backed (cryptographically-linked) bitcoin substitute tokens? And would you like to specify/define exactly what that principle is so that future technical improvements can be evaluated equally?

There are many new innovations to come that will achieve the same or similar results in principle to the side-chain conversion SPV 2wp, using multi-sig and time-locks, ZKP, etc ... are you going to be opposed to all these innovations also? (Hint: they will allow fast, off-chain, private settlement, or ttx bundling, with near zero-trust, i.e. blockchain level security and low costs).

I think that the economic principle of operation you seem to be vehemently opposed to is inevitable in some form or another. There will be token money substitutes that really will be cryptographically "as good as bitcoin", in a way that paper money substitutes were never "as good as gold".

[tabnloz]

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion

all these power plants operate on the physics of nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion plants are non-existent.

Fukishima suffered such catastrophic damage because it was not built to withstand a sizeable force like a tsunami.. The company that built the plant, I believe, was the same one from TM island where there engineering was also shoddy. iirc, the fukishima companys mistake was not to build the sea wall high enough or strong enough or something like that. They were aware of the potential for this oversight to be dangerous but did nothing to fix it, because money. see gregpalast.com or his book 'Vultures' for evidence/further clarification. very damning read.

[User705]

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

If the COIN ETF is approved, perhaps it will open a large market of private investors in the US (savings and retirement accounts, etc.) 

Latin America could be such a market, but there does not seem to be a population of commodities speculators like the Chinese one.  Africa has the same problem, and is much poorer than China.  India seems to be wary of bitcoin (perhaps by memories of Mavrodi's scams).

But if they buy the COIN ETF it in now way effects Bitcoin price or ecosystem.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+will+buying+coin+etf+affect+bitcoin+price

They already own the bitcoins they want to unload and collect a management fee to "securely" hold them.  Buyers of that ETF are not Bitcoin buyers or people interested in Bitcoin ecosystem.  They are traders of IOUs.

[cypherdoc]

cypherdoc: it seems you are against side-chains on an economic principle rather than a specific technical implementation

multiple reasons:  economic (risks sound money function by encouraging speculative asset trading on SC's inside the Bitcoin system), technical (depends on a miner gratuity of 100% MM to be as safe as Bitcoin), fairness aka conflict of interest (5 devs in same for profit can "block" altcoin op_codes and even improvements to Bitcoin Core if a threat to SC business)

Does this principle then extend to all other provably-backed (cryptographically-linked) bitcoin substitute tokens? And would you like to specify/define exactly what that principle is so that future technical improvements can be evaluated equally?

i'd like to see any improvements to Bitcoin be done on MC with testing on federated servers or on Testnet

There are many new innovations to come that will achieve the same or similar results in principle to the side-chain conversion SPV 2wp, using multi-sig and time-locks, ZKP, etc ... are you going to be opposed to all these innovations also? (Hint: they will allow fast, off-chain, private settlement, or ttx bundling, with near zero-trust, i.e. blockchain level security and low costs).

I think that the economic principle of operation you seem to be vehemently opposed to is inevitable in some form or another. There will be token money substitutes that really will be cryptographically "as good as bitcoin", in a way that paper money substitutes were never "as good as gold".

hard to evaluate what ifs.  i'm not opposed to innovation, just do it on MC.  
one thing these guys haven't explained is how does one evaluate success of a SC innovation when the conditions can never be exactly those that exist on MC?  price?  lack of attacks?  #users?  market cap?

[JorgeStolfi]

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion

all these power plants operate on the physics of nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion plants are non-existent.

Thanks, that is one more good reason to believe that those accidents were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion.  

[tvbcof]

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion

all these power plants operate on the physics of nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion plants are non-existent.

Fukishima suffered such catastrophic damage because it was not built to withstand a sizeable force like a tsunami..

Wrong-ish.  The backup power generators were flooded and the fuel tanks for them washed away because nobody thought a tsunami of this magnitude was worth considering.  Not long before the event some archaeologists found evidence of periodic tsunamis of this magnitude and scheduled a meeting.  Tokyo Electric was invited but didn't bother to attend.

I, as something of a supporter of nuclear power at the time believed they hype that an accident of this type was not possible and that loss of electrical power would result in a safe shutdown.  Turns out that these old GE reactors (of which we have plenty here in the U.S.) are actually guaranteed to suffer core meltdown if electrical power is not available.

One thing I already knew is that nuclear plants are far more devastating that nuclear bombs.  This because a bomb (or warhead or whatever) must be transportable and is thus relatively small.  A nuclear power plant has many times more material available to contaminate things.  In brilliant designs like the old GE plants store several loads of spent rods on the roof of the building for convenience for the multiple years it takes the spent rods to cool down.  If they are not constantly underwater (in pools in the upper parts of the building) they will catch fire and the multitude of reaction isotopes will be vaporized do drift wherever the wind happens to be going.

Anyone worried about 'terrorism' should be plenty concerned about our nuclear facilities.  Fortunately the 'terrorist threat' is an almost completely invented by our government to terrorize us sheep so there probably isn't all that much to worry about except for natural disasters and incompetence.

The company that built the plant, I believe, was the same one from TM island where there engineering was also shoddy.

Nope.  TMI was a Babbcock & Wilcox pressurized water design.  An amazing series of bad luck led to it's partial melt-down, but the POV valve one of the biggies and was known defective.  As usual, it was not known to the right sets of people.

iirc, the fukishima companys mistake was not to build the sea wall high enough or strong enough or something like that. They were aware of the potential for this oversight to be dangerous but did nothing to fix it, because money. see gregpalast.com or his book 'Vultures' for evidence/further clarification. very damning read.

One interesting thing about TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima is that the operators could stare right at giant problems and simply not believe their eyes.  Some combination of high levels of indoctrination about the impossibility of a disaster, and the subconscious recognition of what a disaster a disaster actually is and consequent unwillingness to accept reality.

I wonder if the same thing could happen in crypto-currency-land...

[Adrian-x]

Adam the reason Bitcoin is considered successful thus far is real people have invested in giving it value, running SVP proof on the Bitcoin blockchain just put it all at risk.

Its not clear why you think adding an spv-multisig is worse than multisig or IOUs with offchain holdings (as most exchanges are doing).  That seems reversed to me.  What does it put at risk?

Adam

Bitcoin is successful precisely because of the arrangement of the incentives that make it a practical Store of Value.

What is at risk is the value secured by the existing incentive structure.

Your paper illustrated a mechanism to secure one's private key and the Bitcoin that are controlled by those keys, while allowing the value stored and secured by the Bitcoin incentive scheme to move onto a SideChain that has a new incentive structure, say one more favorable to the present economic elite.

Spv-multisig is undesirable as there is no central authority. When If a spv-multisig or decentralized proof exists in the Bitcoin protocol, it will changes the existing Bitcoin incentive scheme.

Some obvious SC's that could emerge are a PoS Bitcoin, with a fixed convention 2wp or a MM blockchain optimized to handle many magnitudes more transactions. In both theses examples there will be new revenue opportunities to validate transactions.

The miners or stake holders will have a new incentive to process transactions off the Bitcoin blockchain, this change in incentives will allow for new economic manipulation, and because Bitcoin is designed to disenfranchis (disempower) miners with diminishing returns, the resulting competition and market driven transaction costs will not materialize in the Bitcoin system but be subverted by a viable SideChain, (I believe it is possible to even engine this outcome)

The lickly outcome will not be a Bitcoin innovation but a alternate set of economic incentives and a more secure and predictable income for miners or stake holders, the net result is lickly to leave the incentive structure in Bitcoin improperly secured, and Bitcoin to lose its Master Chain status.

[tabnloz]

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima were not caused by flaws in the physics of nuclear fusion

all these power plants operate on the physics of nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion plants are non-existent.

Fukishima suffered such catastrophic damage because it was not built to withstand a sizeable force like a tsunami..

Wrong-ish.  The backup power generators were flooded and the fuel tanks for them washed away because nobody thought a tsunami of this magnitude was worth considering.  Not long before the event some archaeologists found evidence of periodic tsunamis of this magnitude and scheduled a meeting.  Tokyo Electric was invited but didn't bother to attend.

I, as something of a supporter of nuclear power at the time believed they hype that an accident of this type was not possible and that loss of electrical power would result in a safe shutdown.  Turns out that these old GE reactors (of which we have plenty here in the U.S.) are actually guaranteed to suffer core meltdown if electrical power is not available.

One thing I already knew is that nuclear plants are far more devastating that nuclear bombs.  This because a bomb (or warhead or whatever) must be transportable and is thus relatively small.  A nuclear power plant has many times more material available to contaminate things.  In brilliant designs like the old GE plants store several loads of spent rods on the roof of the building for convenience for the multiple years it takes the spent rods to cool down.  If they are not constantly underwater (in pools in the upper parts of the building) they will catch fire and the multitude of reaction isotopes will be vaporized do drift wherever the wind happens to be going.

Anyone worried about 'terrorism' should be plenty concerned about our nuclear facilities.  Fortunately the 'terrorist threat' is an almost completely invented by our government to terrorize us sheep so there probably isn't all that much to worry about except for natural disasters and incompetence.

The company that built the plant, I believe, was the same one from TM island where there engineering was also shoddy.

Nope.  TMI was a Babbcock & Wilcox pressurized water design.  An amazing series of bad luck led to it's partial melt-down, but the POV valve one of the biggies and was known defective.  As usual, it was not known to the right sets of people.

iirc, the fukishima companys mistake was not to build the sea wall high enough or strong enough or something like that. They were aware of the potential for this oversight to be dangerous but did nothing to fix it, because money. see gregpalast.com or his book 'Vultures' for evidence/further clarification. very damning read.

One interesting thing about TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima is that the operators could stare right at giant problems and simply not believe their eyes.  Some combination of high levels of indoctrination about the impossibility of a disaster, and the subconscious recognition of what a disaster a disaster actually is and consequent unwillingness to accept reality.

I wonder if the same thing could happen in crypto-currency-land...

Fukushima was designed, built and contracted to be rebuilt by Shaw Construction, an iteration of Stone & Webster.

The Seismic Qualification tests at Fukushima were also fudged.

My recollection was that the strength of the earthquake at Fukushima wasn't anywhere near the 9.0 reported at the epicenter, but I could be way misguided saying that.

http://www.gregpalast.com/fukushima-they-knew/


But there's no doubt that the inability to recognise possible disaster is in crypto land )

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

weekly all time LTC/USD chart.  really does not look good:

It looks like I'm seeing BTC/USD in the future

[JorgeStolfi]

weekly all time LTC/USD chart.  really does not look good:

It looks like I'm seeing BTC/USD in the future

The funny thing is that the BTC/USD curve does look like that, except for two extra "mini-bubbles" added to it (the one starting ~2014-05-20, and another one starting ~2014-11-04. 

May be a sign that these two mini-bubbles were generated outside China, perhaps?  LTC seems to be largely a Chinese thing.

[justusranvier]

I think that the economic principle of operation you seem to be vehemently opposed to is inevitable in some form or another. There will be token money substitutes that really will be cryptographically "as good as bitcoin", in a way that paper money substitutes were never "as good as gold".

Money substitutes will be created. They will not be as good as Bitcoin, unless they are a new currency we should switch to instead of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin development can continue in a way that makes money substitutes less necessary and attractive (improved scalability to enable higher transaction rates, more economically robust P2P network model), or Bitcoin could intentionally cede the field to the money substitutes in the mistaken belief that it's possible for Bitcoin survive that way.

[thezerg]

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.

These sorts of crypto "white papers" are not really academic papers at all. They are marketing for a piece of software (perhaps still under development). They vary in presentation from somewhat academic to not academic at all, but at their core they are entirely different in goals and methodology as you explain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper#In_business-to-business_.28B2B.29_marketing

Yes every white paper I've read in this space is garbage with the exception of Satoshi and the SC one (but note I havent analyzed SC paper fully yet).  However Cypherdoc to answer your question directly, CS is not an experimental science so you would not see the kind of study you propose.  In fact that is an indicator of poor thought.  You should be looking for an algorithmic proof similar to a mathematical proof.