Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[rocks]

With fees, I see no problem with the market sorting it out. Except - when someone wants to minimize the fees of his own transactions, some transactions will suddenly take forever to confirm. So a possibility to raise the fee on a nonconfirmed transaction would be great. Has anyone suggested that, or is it unpossible technically?

Yes it is called replace by fee

I'm not sure. With replace by fee, you can change other things in the transactions (like outputs), no? This makes double-spending much easier. I'm not sure wether "increase fee" can even be done, since it also requires changes to the outputs (and maybe inputs).

I see replace-by-fee as a very bad idea currently.

First off, I think it's inevitable, as there is nothing that would make a miner want to not accept a higher fee.

That said, you can make a restricted version that doesn't allow reducing any outputs. You would have to add an additional input to pay the higher fee.

Anything that reduces any of the outputs of a transaction already broadcast through the network is by definition a double spend. This would essentially invalidate instant acknowledgement by the P2P network, and force everyone to wait for a block confirmation, crippling many services in the process.

To increase the fee, you have to either reduce an output or add an input. Reducing an output is not an option, so you'd have to add an input, which at that point is essentially a new transaction replacing the earlier. That is a big change from today's bitcoin IMHO.

[cypherdoc]

Gavin is spreading MIT/USG FUD.
why the hurry?
Especially when there is no consensus?

Bitcoin is certainly not going to dissapear anyway.. THAT is HIS FUD.

how about this?

pwuillie, gmax, luke, and corrallo are spreading Blockstream SC FUD.  what, they don't care if the protocol breaks at 1MB full blocks coming soon?  what a bunch of communists.

[cypherdoc]

interestingly, we're getting some whiffs of deflation in the futures markets tonite.  the invisible hand has about 6h to reverse this or there are going to be fireworks tomorrow.  get out the popcorn.

[smooth]

With fees, I see no problem with the market sorting it out. Except - when someone wants to minimize the fees of his own transactions, some transactions will suddenly take forever to confirm. So a possibility to raise the fee on a nonconfirmed transaction would be great. Has anyone suggested that, or is it unpossible technically?

Yes it is called replace by fee

I'm not sure. With replace by fee, you can change other things in the transactions (like outputs), no? This makes double-spending much easier. I'm not sure wether "increase fee" can even be done, since it also requires changes to the outputs (and maybe inputs).

I see replace-by-fee as a very bad idea currently.

First off, I think it's inevitable, as there is nothing that would make a miner want to not accept a higher fee.

That said, you can make a restricted version that doesn't allow reducing any outputs. You would have to add an additional input to pay the higher fee.

Anything that reduces any of the outputs of a transaction already broadcast through the network is by definition a double spend. This would essentially invalidate instant acknowledgement by the P2P network, and force everyone to wait for a block confirmation, crippling many services in the process.

To increase the fee, you have to either reduce an output or add an input. Reducing an output is not an option, so you'd have to add an input, which at that point is essentially a new transaction replacing the earlier. That is a big change from today's bitcoin IMHO.

The version that that only allows adding additional outputs (and therefore inputs) has already been discussed for years and maybe implemented. So it is certainly possible (the original question).

Another possible approach is child-pays-for-parent. In this case you respend your change with a higher fee. The fee credit counts toward the entire tx chain, causing the parent be mined faster.

As I said before though, I consider all of these inevitable as mining continues to become more competitive (especially after 1+ more block halving). If you are relying on zero confirm transactions, you better have a plan for what you're going to do when they break.

[Erdogan]

With fees, I see no problem with the market sorting it out. Except - when someone wants to minimize the fees of his own transactions, some transactions will suddenly take forever to confirm. So a possibility to raise the fee on a nonconfirmed transaction would be great. Has anyone suggested that, or is it unpossible technically?

Yes it is called replace by fee

A two year old discussion that went past me . So it is not obviously advantageous.

[Erdogan]

In todays reddit discussions, someone (Raystonn) promised to create a 20 MB "unfriendly" fork. Good idea I think, but, I might change it again and run an unlimited fork.

What would happen? If no increase is advised, it will  work as normal. If a larger block arrives, I would follow that, and if orphaned, I will revert. No hassle for me, I am not that dependent on being on the prime fork at any specific time. If a larger than 20 MB block arrives, I can handle that the same way.

If more people think like this, we could end up with unlimited size from gavins cutoff date.

[cypherdoc]

In todays reddit discussions, someone (Raystonn) promised to create a 20 MB "unfriendly" fork. Good idea I think, but, I might change it again and run an unlimited fork.

What would happen? If no increase is advised, it will  work as normal. If a larger block arrives, I would follow that, and if orphaned, I will revert. No hassle for me, I am not that dependent on being on the prime fork at any specific time. If a larger than 20 MB block arrives, I can handle that the same way.

If more people think like this, we could end up with unlimited size from gavins cutoff date.

yeah, that is a revealing thread.  Raystonn is angry and i don't blame him.

the devs, all Blockstream except for Todd (who has for years been at odds with Gavin & just about every other core dev until now), are wanting to let the 1MB ceiling be hit to force up tx fees. as discussed here, i think that is a bad idea in that the Bitcoin user base is still tiny and immature.  this inconvenience and breakage of Bitcoin likely will cause even dedicated users, like Raystonn, to abandon Bitcoin for another altcoin as well as prevent any new users from adopting.  the key thing here is that none of the alternatives that they're suggesting are even close to primetime; SC's, Lightning, payment channels.  thus, they offer no immediately viable alternatives.

also, they're constructing a boogie man scenario whereby large miners might collude to fabricate spam-like "large" blocks that cause smaller miners to struggle processing it thus potentially driving them out of business.  i think that makes no sense at all.  in an open system such as we have, a miner doing this will be immediately detected.  if it's IP can be identified and the process itself causes any problem at all (debatable), that miner can be sealed off from the network if necessary.  but more fundamentally, i say they won't try that, at least on the consistently needed basis required to drive out competitors.  it's too risky and they stand to lose a ton of money trying this.  not only from detection but a game theoretic basis.  i foresee miners continuously doing a look back of maybe 1000 blocks or so measuring the avg size of blocks coming thru the network.  they will try to stick close to that size and continue to make them as small as possible so that when solved they can be propagated thru the network as fast as possible to capture the reward.  remember, the real prize right now is capturing those 25BTC so that is priority #1.  large blocks are the antithesis of this goal as their large block can be orphaned by latency not to mention dicking around with constructing such a large cumbersome block.  and even if they happen to get one largish block thru, they would have to be able to sustain such an attack for quite a long time to drive any competitors out of business.  an attacking large pool like this has no idea of the financial condition of any of their smaller competitors such as capitalization, access to ultra low electricity, business acumen of founders, and overall technical ability to counteract such a stupid attack.  a large pool miner will instead continue to take the honest route in constructing avg size blocks to go after the reward.  if they're 30% of the network, they know with certainty they will make 30% of the block rewards plus tx fees.  that is calculable and known and most importanty the safe thing to do.  attacking smaller miners, whom they know nothing about, is foolish and extraordinarily risky and most likely will fail and result in their own bankruptcy.

all the objections that i'm hearing from these guys are mostly political and economic, areas which i do not have confidence that they understand.  not to mention that almost all of them have an economic conflict of interest.

[justusranvier]

I'd like to know who is behind several of the sock puppet accounts on Reddit who are participating on the discussion.

Over the last year or so I've noticed some distinctive writing characteristics appear in threads about a few specific topics, and the distinctive characteristics are spread across multiple Reddit accounts.

Sometimes they accidentally give themselves away by using that distinctive style and then delete the post.

Fortunately I've taken to performing lots of screenshots so I catch most of them before they get deleted.

[cypherdoc]

the Blockstream devs seem to forget that pools consist of individual users who are willing to aggregate their hashing power together to the pool operator.  any operator who abuses that privilege will get shafted; just look at how ghash has been punished down to a mere 3% of the network despite what guys like gmax have been raving about for years.  attempting what i think is a stupid technical attack of bloated blocks makes no sense as it would be quite costly and risky.  no, gvts won't walk in the doors of several of these pool and force them to conduct this attack.  there already exists a legal basis for running mines which can be used by the operators to defend themselves from such blatant illegal collusion.  plus, most of the operators are dedicated Bitcoin believers who want to get their hands on as many BTC as fast as possible before the next 10x ramp just like their users.  they would more likely do a Ladar Levinson (Lavabit) that would embarrass any gvt as well as punish that same gvt thru legal action.  think back to the 0.8.1 fork where miners, lead by Eleuthria, did the ultimate to save the network.

[sickpig]

Gloves starting to come off already. Suppose it was inevitable.

Definitely: http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090292/

[cypherdoc]

I'd like to know who is behind several of the sock puppet accounts on Reddit who are participating on the discussion.

Over the last year or so I've noticed some distinctive writing characteristics appear in threads about a few specific topics, and the distinctive characteristics are spread across multiple Reddit accounts.

Sometimes they accidentally give themselves away by using that distinctive style and then delete the post.

Fortunately I've taken to performing lots of screenshots so I catch most of them before they get deleted.

i'd like to know who is behind the "Bitcoin Expert" handle flair that you brought to my attention last night.  it's been brought out specifically for that one thread.  since theymos is apparently against the block size increase and runs /rBitcoin, it probably is him:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/354qbm/bitcoin_devs_do_not_have_consensus_on_blocksize/

[Bagatell]

i'd like to know who is behind the "Bitcoin Expert" handle flair that you brought to my attention last night.  it's been brought out specifically for that one thread. 

First time I've seen it.

[cypherdoc]

i'd like to know who is behind the "Bitcoin Expert" handle flair that you brought to my attention last night.  it's been brought out specifically for that one thread. 

First time I've seen it.

it's a shameful tactic.  right up theymo's alley.

[_mr_e]

I love how they bombard me with propaganda:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/354qbm/bitcoin_devs_do_not_have_consensus_on_blocksize/cr122wx

[cypherdoc]

I love how they bombard me with propaganda:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/354qbm/bitcoin_devs_do_not_have_consensus_on_blocksize/cr122wx

everyone who disagrees within that thread gets bombarded.  that thread is a coordinated planned event.

[cypherdoc]

regulators gonna regulate.  any company with a CEO or known founders could be a target and that includes companies like Blockstream and to be fair 21.  this is why i say that if you're gonna invest in Bitcoin, buy the currency unit.  it's the safest place to be with the highest likelihood of an extraordinary return:

http://www.coindesk.com/fincen-director-examiniation-digital-currency/

[Adrian-x]

Gavin is spreading MIT/USG FUD.
why the hurry?
Especially when there is no consensus?

Bitcoin is certainly not going to dissapear anyway.. THAT is HIS FUD.

how about this?

pwuillie, gmax, luke, and corrallo are spreading Blockstream SC FUD.  what, they don't care if the protocol breaks at 1MB full blocks coming soon?  what a bunch of communists.

The risk of the 20MB block irreparably damaging Bitcoin is smaller than the risk of damaging Bitcoin as we approaching the 1MB block.

The FUD is spread by the majority of Bitcoin developers arguing for a delay so they can push through a quick fix (one that's been in development for some time - aka SC) in the event there is a problem.

They are behaving more like gorilla operatives.

[cypherdoc]

this is a big deal.

Benjamin M. Lawsky, Superintendent of Financial Services, today announced that the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) granted a charter under the New York Banking Law to itBit Trust Company, LLC – a commercial Bitcoin exchange. ItBit, which is based in New York City, is the first virtual currency company to receive a charter from NYDFS.

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press2015/pr1505071.htm

accts also have $250K FDIC insurance.

[cypherdoc]

this is a big deal.

Benjamin M. Lawsky, Superintendent of Financial Services, today announced that the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) granted a charter under the New York Banking Law to itBit Trust Company, LLC – a commercial Bitcoin exchange. ItBit, which is based in New York City, is the first virtual currency company to receive a charter from NYDFS.

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press2015/pr1505071.htm

accts also have $250K FDIC insurance.

this is interesting:

ItBit avoided the need for a BitLicense by instead applying for a trust company charter, which appears to come with even stricter regulations. It is the first trust company to be created in New York since the financial crisis.

Many Bitcoin companies have been held back by the difficulty of opening accounts with banks, which have been hesitant to deal with the risks of virtual currencies. As a trust company, itBit will be able to be the custodian of customer funds by itself.

The focus at itBit will be on allowing customers to buy, sell and hold the digital tokens as an asset, like a sort of digital gold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/business/dealbook/bitcoin-exchange-receives-first-license-in-new-york-state.html?_r=1

[HeliKopterBen]

Block size could reach the 1mb limit at any time with a massive influx of users and the chart for average block size looks like it could possibly have a sharp exponential rise hitting the limit within a short period of time, well before March 2016.

IMO, even Gavin may be to late.  Most likely, if this increase in adoption happens, transactions will be pushed off-chain to Coinbase and other services until the limit can be increased.  Anybody opposed to the block size increase doesn't even have a working solution for scale, so I don't see how their arguments can even fly.