Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[rocks]

Yes, and what I'm saying is there is no cartel. A cartel implies there is some barrier to entry (for example by limited capacity of equipment). There is none here; everyone can mine, and in a protocol that hasn't reached the stage of specialized hardware, the startup costs are low and entry is very rapid. A huge amount of mining would come online within a day or two, and remember your proposal is for all this to be announced a month ahead, so plenty of time to get ready.

You are making a valiant effort smooth, but it is not one you are going to win with this one. He make the same argument with me, in that a mining cartel could "block" all transactions they want. He refused to acknowledge that a non-conforming cartel would simply be removed from the pool, and the network would continue with the remain honest miners. He refuses to understand that the network will continue as long as there are some remaining honest miners to generate blocks.

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

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[JorgeStolfi]

Exceptional societies were the few that rejected this and relied on self reliance and responsibility of the individual. I've read about them, but have never seen one in my lifetime.

Could you name them please? I am not aware of any minimally developed society that would not have some sort of government backed by some sort of police.

I have seen people cite ancient Ireland (which seems to be false, false, the tribes had chiefs and there was even a "High King" at some point) and Iceland (where the population was all isolated farmers and the first village formed in the 18th century).  Do you mean some other?

[JorgeStolfi]

a non-conforming cartel would simply be removed from the pool

Please go back and read the plan I outlined.  The one with chains (1), (2), (3). Then please show me how the non-conformant cartel would be "removed from the pool" (?).

[smooth]

There is no cartel on the Red Button hard forked protocol. Anyone has equal access to the ability to mine. The fact that someone was a cartel previously does not grant any vested status in the future. Deepbit, for example, has no greater ability to show up today and be a mining cartel than you or I do.

Come on, you know that "the cartel" there means "the cartel of old-chain miners who want to force a change in the block schedule".  It is not "a cartel of rebel-chain miners". 

Yes, and what I'm saying is there is no cartel. A cartel implies there is some barrier to entry (for example by limited capacity of equipment). There is none here; everyone can mine.

And, again, I never said that they would be a cartel of rebel-chain miners.  They would still be a cartel of miners of the old chain and the cartel chain.  In fact they would have 100% of the active ASIC miners on their side, because the old chain miners would have no other viable option except join them.

There would be no point. Focus on users, not miners, for a monent. The have a choice:

Option 1. Hard forked chain that that pays more to miners

Option 2. Hard forked chain that does not pay more to miners

Users would choose #2. Miners would choose #1

Miners are by definition sellers of bitcoin, users are both buyers and sellers. Chain two would have both sellers and buyers. Chain 1 would have sellers but no buyers, and would therefore have no value. ASIC miners would face the choice to waste electricity mining a worthless coin or shut down.

[marcus_of_augustus]

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

yes Chief FUD Tester ... if he can get some FUD to fly here he runs with it and disseminates it to the other FUDsters. It is immaterial if that FUD has valid basis in logic or has technical merit or not because the aim is to generate as much FUD as possible to discredit, not to actually critique cryptocurrencies or bitcoin technology.

the current FUD is mining "cartels" FUDing ... ummm where are they exactly and what have they ever done in 6 years (when the stakes and therefore the protections were much lower)??

wanted for evidence: 1 proven malicious mining cartel

[smoothie]

oil?  who the hell needs oil, let alone natgas?:

lol yeah it seems US Dollars or other fiat is the most important thing for people to have...not commodities or tangible assets. 

[smoothie]

oil?  who the hell needs oil, let alone natgas?:

does this mean oil has failed?

i take it as the powers that be want people out of commodities and into fiat. Once they setup their plan....scrap the paper and take all the assets. 

[smoothie]

does this mean oil has failed?

The difference is that you need oil and probably 9/10 families have at least 1 thing that runs on oil (or gas made from it), be it a car, a motorcycle, a pump, lawn mower or a generator.
Is there anything physical that would cease to work if bitcoin disappeared? The only thing I can think of is mining hardware.

Yes. People's ability to transact fast and cheap over long distances.

That is huge ^

[bitcon]

oil was a pyramid scheme. only those early to the party made money by dumping on us latecomers! 

[marcus_of_augustus]

oil was a pyramid scheme. only those early to the party made money by dumping on us latecomers bagholders! 

social security is the biggest pyramid scheme in history, it's just that it is a cleverly disguised long con, designed to appeal humanities weakest emotional reactions, fear, pity, altruism

[rocks]

oil was a pyramid scheme. only those early to the party made money by dumping on us latecomers bagholders!  

social security is the biggest pyramid scheme in history, it's just that it is a cleverly disguised long con, designed to appeal humanities weakest emotional reactions, fear, pity, altruism

This. I've come across several analyses over the years the compare the amount paid into the system to the amount taken out of the system by various generations (in real terms). The silent generation received something like 400% more economic value than they paid in, of course it's a great system! The boomers are getting more than their fair share.

However over the long run, economic value in can only equal economic value out. The silent generation and boomers are getting more than their fair share by creating debt to be paid by the next generations. This is not bond style debt, but debt in the form of unfunded liabilities. However now that the worker to taker ratio is around 2:1 this debt expansion will stall, generation X is guaranteed to receive less than it's fair share.

And the millennials? Those who overwhelmingly support the EU socialist model? They are in effect debt slaves and don't even realize it since it's not debt that shows up in their household balance sheet.

[79b79aa8d5047da6d3XX]

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

yes Chief FUD Tester ... if he can get some FUD to fly here he runs with it and disseminates it to the other FUDsters. It is immaterial if that FUD has valid basis in logic or has technical merit or not because the aim is to generate as much FUD as possible to discredit, not to actually critique cryptocurrencies or bitcoin technology.

it's been obvious for months on end that no matter how thoroughly one of his arguments gets answered, he will attempt to refine it or come up with a different one to the same effect (that bitcoin will fail). this conclusion has been decided in advance and is immune to change. thus he is not engaging in rational debate.

which is also the reason why he is not going to take up that bet.

on the other hand, the fact that after the massive effort --whether individual or collective-- none of the arguments to the pre-established conclusion are convincing, is highly illustrative. so thanks for that.

[JorgeStolfi]

There would be no point. Focus on users, not miners, for a monent. The have a choice:

Option 1. Hard forked chain that that pays more to miners

Option 2. Hard forked chain that does not pay more to miners

Users would choose #2. Miners would choose #1

Miners are by definition sellers of bitcoin, users are both buyers and sellers. Chain two would have both sellers and buyers. Chain 1 would have sellers but no buyers, and would therefore have no value. ASIC miners would face the choice to waste electricity mining a worthless coin or shut down.

Options 1 and 2 are different coins, that will have different market prices and different expectations of survival.  Each old bitcoin user starts out with the same number of coins in both chains.  There is no option for him to take: if he does not spend or sell the coins in one chain, they will simply sit there, as if he had decided to hoard them.  He could burn them, but that would mean throwing some value away -- and would make the price of that coin to rise.

So the question is not "which coin would the users choose", but "what will happen to the market price of each coin".

Coin 1 is just the same old bitcoin, with the same network and protocol, minus a reward halving that was scheduled to occur and will be postponed.  It will keep working smoothly through the transiiton. Its price may fall considerably, but it is unlikely to become insignificant.

Coin 2 is a brand new coin that happens to start with the same coin assignments, but has yet to build its network.  There is a bunch of rich guys out there -- the old bitcoin miners and their investors -- who have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake invested in coin 1, and therefore are quite interested in having the price of coin 2 crash so that it will not steal market value from coin 1.

So, except for the ideologues, if someone wanted to invest some money in "bitcoin" after the change, which of the two bitcoins would he choose?

Except for the ideologues, once the cartel has announced his plans, how many bitcoiners would still wish for the Red Button to be pressed?  If the button is pressed, how many will do whatever they could to kill coin 2?

Perhaps, as you say, there will be smart guys who will wait for the cartel to stop jamming coin 2 and then will start mining it, or buy tons of it as penny stock, counting on its recovery.  But, if that strategy turns out to be profitable, what would stop other people from forking other Red-Button-style clones of bitcoin?  

Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

It seems that you believe that the Red-Button coin 2 will prevail (or at least survive) for a similar reason, namely it would give to ordinary PC owners the opportunity to become early miners of "bitcoin" again, and amass a hoard of "bitcoin" with little cost. That cloned "bitcoin" would have a low price perhaps, but all users of the old bitcoin would automatically be its users too, and (by your belief) it would have a nonzero chance of conquering the bitcoin market.  

But, if so, what will stop people from creating more such clones, independently of any 51% threat?

These possibilities with two or more clones of bitcoin are already too confusing for me to reason about them.  After all, I am already unable to see why bitcoin would survive in the long term, even with no clones and no 51% shenaniigans.   Lucky for you that your beliefs a priori exclude the possibility of protocol changes, 51% attacks, hard clones, and anything that might be a problem for bitcoin.  

[JorgeStolfi]

PS. I find this discussion bizarre, because until a month ago bitcoiners claimed that altcoins would die because they did not have the huge mining network that bitcoin has.  Now it is the number of users that matters?  Then Auroracoin must have been a success -- didn't they "airdrop" some AUR to every person in Iceland? 

[msin]

Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

BCnext launched Nxt for exactly 21 BTC, it was by design as the number 21 was symbolic to him, once he hit that mark he closed investment and launched.  BTC was valued at about the same amount as now when he closed funding.  So your point is not true.  Not everyone is purely money motivated.  The people that called his distribution a scam were day traders who were angry they didn't participate during the two months the IPO was open.  Of course, Nxt isn't really an alt coin in the true sense of the form, because it's not a clone of anything.

[JorgeStolfi]

Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

BCnext launched Nxt for exactly 21 BTC, it was by design as the number 21 was symbolic to him, once he hit that mark he closed investment and launched.  BTC was valued at about the same amount as now when he closed funding.  So your point is not true.  Not everyone is purely money motivated.  The people that called his distribution a scam were day traders who were angry they didn't participate during the two months the IPO was open.  Of course, Nxt isn't really an alt coin in the true sense of the form, because it's not a clone of anything.

I accept that there may be exceptions.  I believe my analysis above applies to most of what people call "pump-and-dump" or "junk" cryptocoins.  (I called them "altcoins" out of laziness, it is easier to type.)

[msin]

Note that altcoins are created not because they can be better than bitcoin (which in some cases may be true), but because their creators think: "Why should I buy an existing coin, and see its early adopters become filthy rich at my expense, when I can create my own altcoin, and become filthy rich at other people's expense?"

BCnext launched Nxt for exactly 21 BTC, it was by design as the number 21 was symbolic to him, once he hit that mark he closed investment and launched.  BTC was valued at about the same amount as now when he closed funding.  So your point is not true.  Not everyone is purely money motivated.  The people that called his distribution a scam were day traders who were angry they didn't participate during the two months the IPO was open.  Of course, Nxt isn't really an alt coin in the true sense of the form, because it's not a clone of anything.

I accept that there may be exceptions.  I believe my analysis above applies to most of what people call "pump-and-dump" or "junk" cryptocoins.  (I called them "altcoins" out of laziness, it is easier to type.)

Most people here think that anything other than BTC is a pump and dump junk coin.

[smooth]

There would be no point. Focus on users, not miners, for a monent. The have a choice:

Option 1. Hard forked chain that that pays more to miners

Option 2. Hard forked chain that does not pay more to miners

Users would choose #2. Miners would choose #1

Miners are by definition sellers of bitcoin, users are both buyers and sellers. Chain two would have both sellers and buyers. Chain 1 would have sellers but no buyers, and would therefore have no value. ASIC miners would face the choice to waste electricity mining a worthless coin or shut down.

Options 1 and 2 are different coins, that will have different market prices and different expectations of survival.

Already explained that users and only users can give market value. Miners can only hold or sell, but they have no reason to buy. If you don't attract (non-mining) users, you're dead.

Coin 1 is just the same old bitcoin

It's not. It changed. With a bit of forward looking, one can easily see that it would be changed again.

After all, repeat your plan, exactly as you have stated it:

If miners can fork the protocol to double their rewards once, why can't they do it again? If they can, users will recognize that, and avoid such a coin like the plague, as it is sure to be diluted to nothing.

Your plan, by its own mechanism with no assumptions about alternative mining, fails, because it only succeeds if you stop the game after one iteration, yet the game itself contains no mechanism to prevent such repetition. QED

[smooth]

PS. I find this discussion bizarre, because until a month ago bitcoiners claimed that altcoins would die because they did not have the huge mining network that bitcoin has.  Now it is the number of users that matters?  Then Auroracoin must have been a success -- didn't they "airdrop" some AUR to every person in Iceland? 

Cool, let's add some more fallacies to your atrociously constructed arguments.

1. All bitcoiners didn't/don't claim that.

2. Even if they did, it wouldn't make it so.

3. Aurora is a coin. Aurora failed. Bitcoin (whether modified not) is a coin, therefore bitcoin will fail. Nice.

Mining can not and does not give a coin value. Mining chases value. If mining gave value then perhaps the value of LTC would have gone up when it switched to "more secure" ASIC mining. In fact its value has gone (almost) to zero.

Mining does one and only one thing, which is limit and disincentivize ballot stuffing by forcing real resources to be used to vote. Any reasonable sort of mining will suffice and it is the value of a coin that determines the amount of mining, not vice versa.

[NewLiberty]

Yes, and what I'm saying is there is no cartel. A cartel implies there is some barrier to entry (for example by limited capacity of equipment). There is none here; everyone can mine, and in a protocol that hasn't reached the stage of specialized hardware, the startup costs are low and entry is very rapid. A huge amount of mining would come online within a day or two, and remember your proposal is for all this to be announced a month ahead, so plenty of time to get ready.

You are making a valiant effort smooth, but it is not one you are going to win with this one. He make the same argument with me, in that a mining cartel could "block" all transactions they want. He refused to acknowledge that a non-conforming cartel would simply be removed from the pool, and the network would continue with the remain honest miners. He refuses to understand that the network will continue as long as there are some remaining honest miners to generate blocks.

I refuse to believe that he can not understand this, and instead believe he is simply trying out and testing new FUD against bitcoin here. Some FUD is easily refuted, other FUD requires more discussion and understanding. He has already said that he is working with his government on educating the public on the scam that is bitcoin.

I also get the impression that we are writing a paper for him, that discredits his imagined dystopia.

Sure it could happen, it would just take a massive preponderance of stupidity and/or lack of self interest, or coercion.
If it did happen, I would suspect the coercion first.  Most miners of any significance have plenty of self interest and very little stupidity.