Odalv
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March 12, 2015, 11:52:37 PM |
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:-) please tell me, how many of 7,000,000,000 people can understand, verify and safe use bitcoins ?
It's less than the number of people currently using bitcoins. far less. ... molecular is an example :-) (legendary member that can be trapped in simple scam)
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smooth
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March 12, 2015, 11:59:45 PM |
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:-) please tell me, how many of 7,000,000,000 people can understand, verify and safe use bitcoins ?
It's less than the number of people currently using bitcoins. far less. ... molecular is an example :-) (legendary member that can be trapped in simple scam) I don't see any connection with one way pegs or spin offs at all except that Bitcoin badly needs improvement that could come from a viable and economically sensible upgrade path if legendary members fall for simple scams.
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tvbcof
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March 13, 2015, 12:07:16 AM |
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you guys cant seriously still be debating side chains? Mainly because people tend to make up completely bass-ackards stuff our of ignorance or malice. Ref: ~cbeast (now ~mortified) post above. Cypherdoc's 'hollowed out' Bitcoin is another example. WTF is that supposed to mean? Sidechains would 'hollow out' Bitcoin to a much lesser degree than the Wingklevoss dudes who sit on a pile of BTC and probably don't perform any transaction activity for weeks at a time. There is real concern that with a healthy sidechains ecosystem at scale even the 7 TPS which has gotten Bitcoin through 6 years and billions in marketcap might be strained just doing settlements, and a healthy transaction fee plus significant infrastructure support thanks to sidechains would be anticipated as extra niceties. Thirdly, I personally cannot get over the Pavlovian negative response that people have to the seemingly very simple concept that Sidechains are for a different purpose than Bitcoin and one normally would not have much at risk with a given one. Native Bitcoin continues to exist and is available for people with ultra-high security needs and are thus able to pay what the solution is worth (which is a lot!) Those who don't have such needs and don't support the solution from an infrastructure perspective are a drag on the system and are very very likely to sink it eventually and blow it for both themselves and everyone else.
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sig spam anywhere and self-moderated threads on the pol&soc board are for losers.
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Odalv
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March 13, 2015, 12:13:35 AM |
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:-) please tell me, how many of 7,000,000,000 people can understand, verify and safe use bitcoins ?
It's less than the number of people currently using bitcoins. far less. ... molecular is an example :-) (legendary member that can be trapped in simple scam) I don't see any connection with one way pegs or spin offs at all except that Bitcoin badly needs improvement that could come from a viable and economically sensible upgrade path if legendary members fall for simple scams. You are free to use as many "shit, spin-offs, alts, forks ... and digital" coins as you wish. Bitcoin is only one.
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kodtycoon
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March 13, 2015, 12:16:10 AM |
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you guys cant seriously still be debating side chains? Mainly because people tend to make up completely bass-ackards stuff our of ignorance or malice. Ref: ~cbeast (now ~mortified) post above. Cypherdoc's 'hollowed out' Bitcoin is another example. WTF is that supposed to mean? Sidechains would 'hollow out' Bitcoin to a much lesser degree than the Wingklevoss dudes who sit on a pile of BTC and probably don't perform any transaction activity for weeks at a time. There is real concern that with a healthy sidechains ecosystem at scale even the 7 TPS which has gotten Bitcoin through 6 years and billions in marketcap might be strained just doing settlements, and a healthy transaction fee plus significant infrastructure support thanks to sidechains would be anticipated as extra niceties. Thirdly, I personally cannot get over the Pavlovian negative response that people have to the seemingly very simple concept that Sidechains are for a different purpose than Bitcoin and one normally would not have much at risk with a given one. Native Bitcoin continues to exist and is available for people with ultra-high security needs and are thus able to pay what the solution is worth (which is a lot!) Those who don't have such needs and don't support the solution from an infrastructure perspective are a drag on the system and are very very likely to sink it eventually and blow it for both themselves and everyone else. iv barely read much about sidechains but that makes sense tbh.. but what i have noticed is the very same people who slag off alt coins as worthless app coins and say that the features of alt coins should built around coins(like copay, open bazaar etc) opposed to built into coins are the same people proposing to bolt app coins onto the side of bitcoin? all that tells me is they want the apps, just as long as they are on (or attached) to the bitcoin blockchain.. im not going to pretend to understand the technicalities or economics of side chains, but the mind set of the proponents of side chains is easy to understand.
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smooth
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March 13, 2015, 12:20:14 AM |
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:-) please tell me, how many of 7,000,000,000 people can understand, verify and safe use bitcoins ?
It's less than the number of people currently using bitcoins. far less. ... molecular is an example :-) (legendary member that can be trapped in simple scam) I don't see any connection with one way pegs or spin offs at all except that Bitcoin badly needs improvement that could come from a viable and economically sensible upgrade path if legendary members fall for simple scams. You are free to use as many "shit, spin-offs, alts, forks ... and digital" coins as you wish. Bitcoin is only one. Which Bitcoin
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rocks
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March 13, 2015, 02:00:12 AM |
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It isn't the 20MB block size that scares me, it is the automatic doubling every two years until we reach 20GB blocks. This scares the crap out of me because if a problem turns up we need a fork to pause the scaling. I'm starting to wonder if forks are really that big a deal. Imagine if all the exchanges were set up to handle economic arbitrage of two or more forks. Say you have 20 BTC on Bitstamp when a fork happens. Your account is automatically split into 20 BTC in BitcoinOld and 20BTC in BitcoinNew. If you don't know/care about the fork, you do nothing. If you think one of the two is obviously more viable and/or obviously more likely to get support, you immediately start selling BTC in one for BTC in the other. Since everyone is doing the same, I bet this all plays out in a matter of minutes because once the trend becomes clear it will snowball since no one wants to be on the losing fork. Luckily, again, you can sit out the arbitrage and leave your stash untouched whichever fork wins. It's just that you can earn yourself some extra coin if you guess the winning fork correctly. Now to guard against possible glitches in BitcoinNew, even if it wins in initial trading, BitcoinOld will probably still retain some value for a time - for instance 10% of its former value for a few days or weeks - as a representation of an estimated 10% probability of a glitch in BitcoinNew. After that it would likely fade into nothingness. All the while your bitcoins are safe no matter the outcome. Not only is this far faster than waiting for "consensus," it also ties more solidly into the basic economics of Bitcoin itself. As Daniel Krawisz has pointed out, where investors go, everyone else follows. Investors have the ultimate control, so the forking process should reflect this and exchanges should be setting their systems up for this. I agree. I would like this scenario a lot more if we replaced "exchanges set up to handle multiple forks" to "wallets/nodes set up to handle multiple forks". Maybe I should prepare for such scenario and have a node / wallet ready that does that. Anyone have a suggestion? I dont know. On one hand I agree that a fork to improve bitcoin or fix an issue isn't a big deal. But on the other hand the more easy and accustomed to forks bitcoin becomes, the easier it is for regulation to push a fork towards some type of FEDCoin. To me the default should be that forks are rare and only for exceptional reasons
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Zangelbert Bingledack
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March 13, 2015, 06:01:25 PM |
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But on the other hand the more easy and accustomed to forks bitcoin becomes, the easier it is for regulation to push a fork towards some type of FEDCoin. If they can fork Bitcoin to their liking while not destroying its major selling points, more power to them and I'll even invest in their fork, but I don't think that's possible. The changes the government would demand would make it orders of magnitude less valuable and most of the current economic majority would stay with Bitcoin Classic. They could grow FEDCoin larger than Bitcoin, more valuable, etc., but Bitcoin would still have its uses - precisely those uses that were neutered in FEDCoin. In summary, government-sponsored forks aren't a threat to Bitcoin. In fact they would probably just help, because they would get the general public familiar with the ins and outs of crypto, such as security. Then there's Bitcoin with its ex-hypothesi better features.
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rocks
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March 14, 2015, 05:42:13 AM |
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But on the other hand the more easy and accustomed to forks bitcoin becomes, the easier it is for regulation to push a fork towards some type of FEDCoin. If they can fork Bitcoin to their liking while not destroying its major selling points, more power to them and I'll even invest in their fork, but I don't think that's possible. The changes the government would demand would make it orders of magnitude less valuable and most of the current economic majority would stay with Bitcoin Classic. They could grow FEDCoin larger than Bitcoin, more valuable, etc., but Bitcoin would still have its uses - precisely those uses that were neutered in FEDCoin. In summary, government-sponsored forks aren't a threat to Bitcoin. In fact they would probably just help, because they would get the general public familiar with the ins and outs of crypto, such as security. Then there's Bitcoin with its ex-hypothesi better features. The problem with goverment forks is if they get 99% of the public to use the fork (which is likely), the original system becomes irrelevant even if a few diehards stick to it. Take gold and the FED's original gold backed dollar. The FED's original dollar was a government fork of gold as money. Gold coins offered many benefits from security, irreversible transactions, privacy, fixed stable value, etc. The gold backed dollar was a fork from mother nature in a sense, and they promoted a variety of benefits including easier transactions, etc. Even after the FED broke all promises and broke the dollar's ties to gold, there were so few people willing to still use gold as money in daily transactions that gold never regained its true value. A government fork of bitcoin would do the same thing to bitcoin as the paper gold dollar did to gold, make it irrelevant, not used and valueless. Sure there would be some holdouts who refuse to follow the fork, but they wouldn't be enough to maintain a functional market. Just as the gold bugs weren't enough to maintain gold's role as money or value in society. That's one of my fears for the project. The harder and less common we make forks to implement, then the harder this attack vector becomes.
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lunarboy
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March 14, 2015, 06:40:57 AM |
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The problem with government forks is if they get 99% of the public to use the fork (which is likely),
This is a misunderstanding. Bitcoin is a global system. There is absolutely no way all of the worlds governments can or would come together to get 99% or their respective public's to use a new digital system, without highlighting the discussion on the use (pros and cons) of using bitcoin at the same time. the worlds governments are just too competitive and adversarial for this to happen. Free speech, even if hindered is still winning the battle on the internet.
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smooth
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March 14, 2015, 06:42:07 AM |
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The problem with government forks is if they get 99% of the public to use the fork (which is likely),
This is a misunderstanding. Bitcoin is a global system. There is absolutely no way all of the worlds governments can or would come together to get 99% or their respective public's to use a new digital system, without highlighting the discussion on the use (pros and cons) of using bitcoin at the same time. the worlds governments are just too competitive and adversarial for this to happen. Free speech, even if hindered is still winning the battle on the internet. Besides they already have 99% of the public using their fork. Network effect and liquidity will not make Bitcoin win, it will make it lose. To have a chance Bitcoin needs to push hard on being profoundly and undeniably superior.
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Zangelbert Bingledack
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March 14, 2015, 07:38:06 AM Last edit: March 14, 2015, 10:38:46 AM by Zangelbert Bingledack |
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A government fork of bitcoin would do the same thing to bitcoin as the paper gold dollar did to gold, make it irrelevant, not used and valueless. I get the analogy to gold vs. gold-backed dollars, but in Bitcoin's case I can't think of any specific changes the Feds could make to a fork that would allow it to both (a) obviate almost everyone's need for Bitcoin and (b) be enough different from Bitcoin for the government to be satisfied with it (and hardcore bitcoiners to be dissatisfied with it). For example, if the money supply remains un-changeable, this is awesome as the Federal Reserve has effectively been neutralized. If they make a fork that can be inflated, Bitcoin Classic retains its store-of-value properties and will be highly sought after. If they do something in between, we get a little of both. If they remove all anonymity possibilities in their fork, Bitcoin thrives in the black market; if they don't, awesome. If in between, a little of both. At one end of the spectrum they take just a few of Bitcoin's properties to build a system that is better than current fiat, which would be moderately liberty-promoting, while still leaving Bitcoin's differentiated value proposition very firmly intact. At the other end of the spectrum they adopt almost all of Bitcoin's properties, which would be extremely liberty-promoting, but leaving Bitcoin with little differentiated advantage. Either result is overall very good liberty-wise (though the result where they mimic Bitcoin quite closely may not be very good for Bitcoin investors - but that result is also highly unlikely), and I see no point in between those extremes that would be any worse. So I conclude there is nothing to worry about.
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cbeast
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Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
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March 14, 2015, 09:06:14 AM |
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The notion of the FEDcoin is beyond ludicrous, it's gone plaid.
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Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.
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rpietila
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March 14, 2015, 10:10:32 AM |
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Even after the FED broke all promises and broke the dollar's ties to gold, there were so few people willing to still use gold as money in daily transactions that gold never regained its true value.
The edict backed by the world's superior machinery for causing harm did a long way as well: "10 years of prison & 10k USD in fines to anyone who dares even possess gold."
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HIM TVA Dragon, AOK-GM, Emperor of the Earth, Creator of the World, King of Crypto Kingdom, Lord of Malla, AOD-GEN, SA-GEN5, Ministry of Plenty (Join NOW!), Professor of Economics and Theology, Ph.D, AM, Chairman, Treasurer, Founder, CEO, 3*MG-2, 82*OHK, NKP, WTF, FFF, etc(x3)
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rocks
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March 15, 2015, 06:05:15 AM |
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A government fork of bitcoin would do the same thing to bitcoin as the paper gold dollar did to gold, make it irrelevant, not used and valueless. I get the analogy to gold vs. gold-backed dollars, but in Bitcoin's case I can't think of any specific changes the Feds could make to a fork that would allow it to both (a) obviate almost everyone's need for Bitcoin and (b) be enough different from Bitcoin for the government to be satisfied with it (and hardcore bitcoiners to be dissatisfied with it). Well one change they could make is to declare the fork is legal, while the original is illegal with significant +10 years jail time for using it. This is not far-fetched, there is a clear historical precedent/blue print for them to follow. Gold had thousands of years of history as money and most of the public in 1913 only considered to gold to be money, yet by 1933 they were able to ban even simple possession. The force of government combined with the apathy of the people is the biggest threat there is. For example, if the money supply remains un-changeable, this is awesome as the Federal Reserve has effectively been neutralized. If they make a fork that can be inflated, Bitcoin Classic retains its store-of-value properties and will be highly sought after. If they do something in between, we get a little of both. If they remove all anonymity possibilities in their fork, Bitcoin thrives in the black market; if they don't, awesome. If in between, a little of both.
Any fork could start out as an un-changeable supply. The FED's dollar was originally convertible to gold and thus had a fixed supply. Then during the next crisis they can default and fork again to increase the supply through default "for the common good". Again there is historical precedent for this. It took only 20 years for the FED to break a thousand years of gold history, how long would it take for bitcoin? At one end of the spectrum they take just a few of Bitcoin's properties to build a system that is better than current fiat, which would be moderately liberty-promoting, while still leaving Bitcoin's differentiated value proposition very firmly intact. At the other end of the spectrum they adopt almost all of Bitcoin's properties, which would be extremely liberty-promoting, but leaving Bitcoin with little differentiated advantage. Either result is overall very good liberty-wise (though the result where they mimic Bitcoin quite closely may not be very good for Bitcoin investors - but that result is also highly unlikely), and I see no point in between those extremes that would be any worse. So I conclude there is nothing to worry about.
Any fork could start out benign at first, but turn downright 1984 Orwellian over time. The FED dollar was benign at first, it was considered the same as gold, and look where we are today. I'm a believer in the bitcoin project and think it has a decent change of success. But it is not black or white where either bitcoin is guaranteed to fail or guaranteed to succeed, it is somewhere in between (gray). All I am saying is making forks easy and common makes bitcoin's chance of success slightly grayer. We can argue about whether it makes is very slightly more gray or significantly more gray, but to me that doesn't matter, why make it grayer at all, no matter how much?
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rocks
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March 15, 2015, 06:14:46 AM |
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Even after the FED broke all promises and broke the dollar's ties to gold, there were so few people willing to still use gold as money in daily transactions that gold never regained its true value.
The edict backed by the world's superior machinery for causing harm did a long way as well: "10 years of prison & 10k USD in fines to anyone who dares even possess gold." This is largely why I think so many in government and banking do not see bitcoin as a real threat to the system. The mind set there is they have a multitude of methods to dictate and control money as they see fit. It's why bitcoin as a real threat is considered to be a joke in many of those circles. And although I disagree with them (it's why I am here), the threats are real and I personally think bitcoin should constantly be thinking about how to strengthen itself against them. Take chainanalysis's likely recent Sybil attack. This is a small startup, there can and will be bigger attempts and may things in the future. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=978088.msg10756505#msg10756505
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Zarathustra
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March 15, 2015, 09:45:05 AM |
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Bagatell
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March 15, 2015, 10:00:44 AM |
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"This will be the BITCOIN without the BITCOIN." Am I the only one that doesn't think so?
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ssmc2
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March 15, 2015, 01:00:23 PM |
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"This will be the BITCOIN without the BITCOIN." Am I the only one that doesn't think so? Nope
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Zangelbert Bingledack
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March 15, 2015, 04:37:53 PM |
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I get the analogy to gold vs. gold-backed dollars, but in Bitcoin's case I can't think of any specific changes the Feds could make to a fork that would allow it to both (a) obviate almost everyone's need for Bitcoin and (b) be enough different from Bitcoin for the government to be satisfied with it (and hardcore bitcoiners to be dissatisfied with it).
Well one change they could make is to declare the fork is legal, while the original is illegal with significant +10 years jail time for using it. It's not that different from simply declaring Bitcoin illegal. In either case the incentive to use Bitcoin is affected similarly, to the extent that FEDCoin lacks Bitcoin's key features. (And again, to the extent that it doesn't lack Bitcoin's features, it's wonderful - just not for Bitcoin investors - but also highly unlikely to happen.) More than that, banning Bitcoin and using a FEDCoin lacking many of Bitcoin's key features just hamstrings the US in the economic race. It's a giveaway to other countries. Any fork could start out as an un-changeable supply. The FED's dollar was originally convertible to gold and thus had a fixed supply. Then during the next crisis they can default and fork again to increase the supply through default "for the common good". This is a dream scenario for Bitcoin: they've familiarized the general public with some or most of the benefits of Bitcoin, now they are corrupting their own fork, driving people to use Bitcoin (or, if the original FEDCoin is sufficiently Bitcoin-like to keep people away from Bitcoin, then people will just keep using the more Bitcoin-like fork; if they also ban the original FEDCoin fork, then we're back to the "Bitcoin ban" scenario mentioned above). So I can't see any move toward FEDCoin not helping Bitcoin, or at least advancing the cause of cryptoledgers.
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