Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Carlton Banks]

Until now whenever we’ve needed to transfer money we’ve had to rely on a third party, whether it be a bank, a clearing house or a payment network. Bitcoin offers, for the first time, a method for transferring value and making payments from anywhere to anywhere, in real-time, without any intermediary.

^ Bitcoin is powerful because it is borderless and permissionless.  

This is not true, and people keep repeating it at a concerning rate. The reality isn't quite so snappily summed up, but it's wildly different from this presentation, and that makes it very dangerous misinformation.

I agree but not in the senstionalist sense that you like to put it.

So, bitcoin is permissionless? I don't see how it's possible to sensationalise such a basic fact. Bitcoin holders can be prevented from spending their bitcoin by a majority of miners: that's just plain statement of facts.

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't. This is the exact issue I'm trying to draw attention to. It is a big assumption to make that the pressure for miners to conform to government edicts will not increase in step with bitcoin's influence on world finance. By the time that happens, and without an alteration in the barriers to entry for mining or the miners ability to control transactions, then mining centralisation will become even more entrenched.

How are you going to feel if a future mining majority decides that Austrianism is no longer fashionable any more, and Keynesianism is back? 500 BTC superwhales could end up with something closer to 500 dollars.

[1714929660]

1714929660

[HeliKopterBen]

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't. This is the exact issue I'm trying to draw attention to. It is a big assumption to make that the pressure for miners to conform to government edicts will not increase in step with bitcoin's influence on world finance. By the time that happens, and without an alteration in the barriers to entry for mining or the miners ability to control transactions, then mining centralisation will become even more entrenched.

How are you going to feel if a future mining majority decides that Austrianism is no longer fashionable any more, and Keynesianism is back? 500 BTC superwhales could end up with something closer to 500 dollars.

It is highly unlikely to happen as radically as you describe.  If this were to happen, then most likely we would end up with an Austrian fork and a Keynesian fork dueling it out, which I could see possibly happening.  Users would have to make a choice between one or the other, or a combination of the two.  This is the likely outcome in your scenario because bitcoin is global and can be forked easily.  The dollar or Euro cannot be forked with a new set of rules applied, so this scenario is impossible with legacy currencies.

[cypherdoc]

need some opinions on this, from Reddit:

"Second, if push comes to shove and we end up with a fork battle then whoever holds the most will have the most power in choosing which wins out anyway. They can simply sell on one fork and buy on the other to shift the relative values. Whichever fork ends up most valuable will attract the most miners. Stronger value and security will attract more users to that fork."

is this viable?  this could be interesting...

[Carlton Banks]

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't. This is the exact issue I'm trying to draw attention to. It is a big assumption to make that the pressure for miners to conform to government edicts will not increase in step with bitcoin's influence on world finance. By the time that happens, and without an alteration in the barriers to entry for mining or the miners ability to control transactions, then mining centralisation will become even more entrenched.

How are you going to feel if a future mining majority decides that Austrianism is no longer fashionable any more, and Keynesianism is back? 500 BTC superwhales could end up with something closer to 500 dollars.

It is highly unlikely to happen as radically as you describe.  If this were to happen, then most likely we would end up with an Austrian fork and a Keynesian fork dueling it out, which I could see possibly happening.  Users would have to make a choice between one or the other, or a combination of the two.  This is the likely outcome in your scenario because bitcoin is global and can be forked easily.  The dollar or Euro cannot be forked with a new set of rules applied, so this scenario is impossible with legacy currencies.

And given that most likely of outcomes in my apparently extreme scenario, bitcoin ceases to be. You state this in a way that implies an unavoidable consequence: that no-one would risk such an outcome, as the stakes are too high for something as trivial as having a "sound" (i.e. Keynesian) money system, right? I don't believe you're imagining this from the perspective of a) the tiny minority of influential figures in government and corporations, or b) the majority of people who are ignorant not just to cryptocurrency, but even their regular currency.

[Peter R]

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't [permissionless]…

I dunno; that doesn't seem like a useful way to look at it.  By similar logic, could one not state:

   Either Blockchain signatures are forgeable or unforgeable

and then, since there's a 1 in 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542975 odds of picking a private key that will allow you to forge a signature, conclude that:

    Blockchain signatures are forgeable  

It's technically true, but practically useless.  

Anyways, is this not just semantics? According to my definition, Bitcoin is permissionless.  If it ever becomes non-permissionless, then it would cease being Bitcoin.  Maybe that's a more useful way to look at it.  The question then becomes, will it ever stop being bitcoin?

I thought Adrian-X made a great comment about this (riffing on the point ZB often makes, and related to the question Cypherdoc asks above):

Bitcoin does what the economic majority want, the only question in my mind is does the economic majority want to adopt the immutable rules of Bitcoin, or does the economic majority want to tweak the rules by manipulating politics.

Does the ecomonic majority want permissionless, borderless bitcoin or something else?

[Carlton Banks]

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't [permissionless]…

I dunno; that doesn't seem like a useful way to look at it.  By similar logic, could one not state:

   Either Blockchain signatures are forgeable or unforgeable

and then, since there's a 1 in 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542975 odds of picking a private key that will allow you to forge a signature, conclude that:

    Blockchain signatures are forgeable  

It's technically true, but practically useless.  

Anyways, is this not just semantics? According to my definition, Bitcoin is permissionless.  If it ever becomes non-permissionless, then it would cease being Bitcoin.  Maybe that's a more useful way to look at it.  The question then becomes, will it ever stop being bitcoin?

I thought Adrian-X made a great comment about this (riffing on the point ZB often makes, and the point Cypherdoc makes above):

Bitcoin does what the economic majority want, the only question in my mind is does the economic majority want to adopt the immutable rules of Bitcoin, or does the economic majority want to tweak the rules by manipulating politics.

Does the ecomonic majority want permissionless, borderless bitcoin or something else?

There is no "practical uselessness" to this property of the bitcoin system in anything like the way you present with your comparison; there is no similarity in the logic at all. One is a question of statistical probability of guessing a number from an impracticably sized domain. And the resolution depends only on the math. The other has nothing to do with any branch of mathematics at all, it's about decisions made by humans, dependent only on social or moral values. I do not take your comparison seriously, Peter.

And you're saying the same thing that anyone else seems to: that because miners do not and have not censored transactions, they never will. This is clearly not the case, and I would argue it's an unwise assumption.

[Peter R]

...
And you're saying the same thing that anyone else seems to: that because miners do not and have not censored transactions, they never will. This is clearly not the case, and I would argue it's an unwise assumption.

What do you say to the argument that, if the miners ever enforced rules that were unacceptable to the economic majority, that we'd push Adam Back's "big red button" by forking the protocol, rendering all their hardware useless?

[cypherdoc]

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't [permissionless]…

I dunno; that doesn't seem like a useful way to look at it.  By similar logic, could one not state:

   Either Blockchain signatures are forgeable or unforgeable

and then, since there's a 1 in 1461501637330902918203684832716283019655932542975 odds of picking a private key that will allow you to forge a signature, conclude that:

    Blockchain signatures are forgeable  

It's technically true, but practically useless.  

Anyways, is this not just semantics? According to my definition, Bitcoin is permissionless.  If it ever becomes non-permissionless, then it would cease being Bitcoin.  Maybe that's a more useful way to look at it.  The question then becomes, will it ever stop being bitcoin?

I thought Adrian-X made a great comment about this (riffing on the point ZB often makes, and the point Cypherdoc makes above):

Bitcoin does what the economic majority want, the only question in my mind is does the economic majority want to adopt the immutable rules of Bitcoin, or does the economic majority want to tweak the rules by manipulating politics.

Does the ecomonic majority want permissionless, borderless bitcoin or something else?

There is no "practical uselessness" to this property of the bitcoin system in anything like the way you present with your comparison; there is no similarity in the logic at all. One is a question of statistical probability of guessing a number from an impracticably sized domain. And the resolution depends only on the math. The other has nothing to do with any branch of mathematics at all, it's about decisions made by humans, dependent only on social or moral values. I do not take your comparison seriously, Peter.

And you're saying the same thing that anyone else seems to: that because miners do not and have not censored transactions, they never will. This is clearly not the case, and I would argue it's an unwise assumption.

in honor of John Nash:

https://twitter.com/cypherdoc2/status/602533856290349056

[Carlton Banks]

...
And you're saying the same thing that anyone else seems to: that because miners do not and have not censored transactions, they never will. This is clearly not the case, and I would argue it's an unwise assumption.

What do you say to the argument that, if the miners ever enforced rules that were unacceptable to the economic majority, that we'd push Adam Back's "big red button" by forking the protocol, rendering all their hardware useless?

I agree with that assessment, except for the "rendering all their hardware useless" part. I've expressed the same point a different way already. The miners that won't take an ethical stand would continue to mine the bitcoin network, and the economic majority might find their minds will change when they are similarly pressurised.

in honor of John Nash:

https://twitter.com/cypherdoc2/status/602533856290349056

I'm not sure whether you're defining the boundaries of this particular game too leniently. You're approaching this from the perspective of the miners self-interest in respect of each other, but they're not the only actors playing, and monetary systems are not the only game dynamic. What stops government saying "never mind your sound money game, allow me to introduce you to the game we're actually playing..."

[shmadz]

need some opinions on this, from Reddit:

"Second, if push comes to shove and we end up with a fork battle then whoever holds the most will have the most power in choosing which wins out anyway. They can simply sell on one fork and buy on the other to shift the relative values. Whichever fork ends up most valuable will attract the most miners. Stronger value and security will attract more users to that fork."

is this viable?  this could be interesting...

Mircea proposes something similar as an attack or defense against Gavincoin.

http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/
http://trilema.com/2015/if-you-go-on-a-bitcoin-fork-irrespective-which-scammer-proposes-it-you-will-lose-your-bitcoins/

You can love him or hate him but he does have a certain amount of both funding and following...

Gotta love bitcoin drama, lol

[majamalu]

 What stops government saying "never mind your sound money game, allow me to introduce you to the game we're actually playing..."

In Bitcoin you "vote" for what will happen to your own money, not other people's money. This is the big difference, and the reason why the state can not co-opt it.

[thezerg]

need some opinions on this, from Reddit:

"Second, if push comes to shove and we end up with a fork battle then whoever holds the most will have the most power in choosing which wins out anyway. They can simply sell on one fork and buy on the other to shift the relative values. Whichever fork ends up most valuable will attract the most miners. Stronger value and security will attract more users to that fork."

is this viable?  this could be interesting...

Mircea proposes something similar as an attack or defense against Gavincoin.

http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/
http://trilema.com/2015/if-you-go-on-a-bitcoin-fork-irrespective-which-scammer-proposes-it-you-will-lose-your-bitcoins/

You can love him or hate him but he does have a certain amount of both funding and following...

Gotta love bitcoin drama, lol

His post is mostly FUD because he is pushing an Anti-Gavin agenda and myopically assumes himself to be on the winning side rather than looking at the system as a whole.

If the world was beautiful and clean a fork would instantly separate the networks, so if you had N coins on Bitcoin, you'd now have N on BitcoinA and N on BitcoinB.  Someone would then quickly put up an exchange site that let you trade BitcoinA for BitcoinB, so you could sell the side you think will lose and buy the other, or choose nothing, in which case you'd end up unaffected (that is, still with N coins) once one fork dwindled to nothing.

But the reality is more complicated and you'd need careful code analysis and probably simulation to figure it out.  Yes you have N coins on both forks but the problem is that when you issue a transaction, it will be picked up by BOTH forks.  You can't spend on just one fork!  Your txn is valid on both, and even if you figure out how to "trigger" it on just one fork, the receiver could reissue it on the other thereby "stealing" your coins on the other fork.

But in theory the receiver would not have to; pending transactions won't be purged, so BitcoinA and BitcoinB would process the same transactions on different blockchains forever, keeping the forks in sync.  In practice, the smaller blockchain would probably drop some pending transactions eventually, resulting in a slow divergence.  Could you force this divergence?  It would take careful code analysis to figure out a way, but it would certainly be messy and probability based.  But eventually when transactions increase to consistently exceed the capacity of blocks in the smaller chain it would chew up all RAM and crash the code today (as per Mike Hearn's analysis).  But if patches were added clean that up, then finally you'd be able to pretty reliably target a transaction to a particular fork (by giving a txn fee too low for the fork with smaller blocks, for example).  Once you get the first single-fork transaction, you can now spend those coins independently because they are on different addresses on different forks.

At that point, both forks would see and attempt to apply each other's transactions, so you end up with lots of spends from "invalid" addresses "spamming" the network.  This would be a huge mess for statistics, visibility and analysis sites like blockchain.info.

Rather then risk the mess above, it would probably be better to add a "version" field to the transactions (and every other protocol message), change this version field EVEN if that protocol message didn't actually change, and have clients ignore messages of the wrong version.  Write your new clients to rev the version field once a particular block # is mined.  This would get you a clean separation.

[TPTB_need_war]

INVALID BBCODE: close of unopened tag in table (1)

[Adrian-x]

Still I don't get it, why bitcoin is risky put with all movements and effort that are put into ?

if it wasn't it would be worth a lot more,

I'm long on Bitcoin, but there is a lot going on and lots of politics. in practice what I'm seeing is political pressure is rivaling the mechanics that makes up the protocol.
This is a huge risk to the future of Bitcoin imo many don't see it as they are practical motivated and circumvent social engineering and political situations. If you can tweak the mechanics of the protocol by leveraging political pressure then Bitcoin will be leveraged by political pressure. Bitcoin does what the economic majority want, the only question in my mind is does the economic majority want to adopt the immutable rules of Bitcoin, or does the economic majority want to tweak the rules by manipulating politics.

This is a good point really, this question raised a flay in my mind, what option would you go with ?

Me, myself, will go with the adaption of the bitcoin rules.

me too, but the Venture capital coming in at the moment seems to be hedging the other way, Blockstream being an extreme example. 

[TPTB_need_war]

more and more defectors:

https://blog.xapo.com/announcing-xapos-advisory-board/

Do we have a list of all the current big name defectors?

feel free, to add to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16eHxzLoJk5GnkqNBCrVfBRbXm82-QJRqMq1BStVKDOw/edit?pli=1#gid=0

Assume some or all of the individuals in this list are saboteurs instead of defectors.

What types of attacks can they carry out?

What countermeasures are available to defend against those attacks?

They are not defecting. They are saboteurs (or allies depending on your goals) subsuming Bitcoin into the mainstream financial system and the plan for the NWO.

Very simple. They have monopolized the mining (ASICs concentrated into farms, 21 Inc, pools hidden behind Sybil attack) and the userbase (Coinbase, Paypal, Circle, Bitpay, etc). Checkmate.

Do you eat delusion for breakfast every morning?

P.S. Bitcoin will succeed in being widely adoped, because the elite want it to succeed. But they will be in control of Bitcoin. The decentralized, permission-less quality of Bitcoin will be a propaganda lie only, not reality.

[TPTB_need_war]

 What stops government saying "never mind your sound money game, allow me to introduce you to the game we're actually playing..."

In Bitcoin you "vote" for what will happen to your own money, not the money of others. This is the big difference, and the reason why the state can not co-opt it.

Did they not teach you in Political Economics 101 that democracy and voting is power vacuum, thus a winner-take-all paradigm?

Will you continue to eat the democracy lie for breakfast that the intellectuals have been feeding you ever since you stopped accepting a mirror in exchange for your ancestral land?

Bitcoin does what the economic majority want, the only question in my mind is does the economic majority want to adopt the immutable rules of Bitcoin, or does the economic majority want to tweak the rules by manipulating politics.

Does the ecomonic majority want permissionless, borderless bitcoin or something else?

Does a cow not want to eat grass? Does a human not want to urinate and shit?

Some things are immutable because otherwise they can't exist without. The elite exist because they enslave those of you who wish to be enslaved because you eat delusion every day. Without that paradigm, they can not exist.

Larry Summers and the financial elite can't give up their power and join a power-sharing arrangement in a decentralized Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a power vacuum that is winner-take-all by whoever will monopolize the mining and users.

Until we make crypto-currency technically impossible to monopolize, then we've given them no choice but to do what they do best.

Bitcoin's design can't resist monopolization. Impossible. Do I need to repeat all the detailed reasons again?



That power elite conspire to capture power vacuums is fact, not theory. Conspiracy theory is a term used by people who wish to live in a fantasy nirvana of democracy, voting, equality, human rights, etc. (it doesn't exist, the world is run by a Club and you ain't in it). All lies pitched to you by those whose role is to capture the power vacuum you've collectively laid out for them.

[TPTB_need_war]

Hope the light bulb goes on:

http://thedailycoin.org/?p=30597

Soros funded the Ferguson protests.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/george-soros-funds-ferguson-protests-hopes-to-spur/?page=all

Kochs and the Rockefellers (fossil fuel and bankster oligarchs, pitched by intellectuals as "good plutocrats" were instrumental in the creation of the UN) BOTH have foundations that are the major sponsors of the Colorado Climate Project with it's Agenda 21 directives.
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/12/01/the-agenda-21-enslavement-of-colorado/
Kochs are the antithesis to the Rockefeller thesis on many issues, ultimately both have the same agenda. This is the Hegelian dialectic (i.e. the good car salesman and bad car salesman ploy[1]) paradigm employed by the elite. The Kochs are known globalists going back to their father funding and organizing the development of what eventually became the controlled opposition John Birch Society.

Bitcoin is another such "controlled opposition" thesis and antithesis paradigm.

[1]

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-avoid-21-car-dealer-scams-tricks-2013-9?op=1 Good Guy, Bad Guy The Scam: Similar to the classic good cop, bad cop routine, one salesmen is "honest" and can be trusted, but his sales manager is hard to deal with. This strategy is meant to [get you to trust the "good" guy (who really has same agenda as the bad guy)], forcing you to agree to a bad deal.

If you geeks are still so damn gullible as to fall for the Good Guy, Bad Guy scam, then it is hopeless.

P.S. I assume many readers here are aware that Google, Facebook, etc were funded and created by the CIA under their data mining initiatives. We are battling a DEEP STATE with a massive $3 trillion budget.

...

TPTB

I caught the following re Larry Summers just now:

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/visas-hock-citibanks-reed-former-treasury-secretary-summers-join-xapos-advisory-board/

Three suspicious types joining Xapo's Board...

(Message)

http://willembuiter.com/ELB.pdf

Citi research on eliminating currency and the benefits to banksters and big gov.

[TPTB_need_war]

I used the term 'permission-minimized.'  How many times has someone been prevented from spending their coins?  None that I am aware of.  It's just another theoretical attack that doesn't work in practice.

Either it is or it isn't. This is the exact issue I'm trying to draw attention to. It is a big assumption to make that the pressure for miners to conform to government edicts will not increase in step with bitcoin's influence on world finance. By the time that happens, and without an alteration in the barriers to entry for mining or the miners ability to control transactions, then mining centralisation will become even more entrenched.

How are you going to feel if a future mining majority decides that Austrianism is no longer fashionable any more, and Keynesianism is back? 500 BTC superwhales could end up with something closer to 500 dollars.

It is highly unlikely to happen as radically as you describe.  If this were to happen, then most likely we would end up with an Austrian fork and a Keynesian fork dueling it out, which I could see possibly happening.  Users would have to make a choice between one or the other, or a combination of the two.  This is the likely outcome in your scenario because bitcoin is global and can be forked easily.  The dollar or Euro cannot be forked with a new set of rules applied, so this scenario is impossible with legacy currencies.

You can't fork away from the masses whom are owned by these mainstream elite who are now taking over Bitcoin. No one will follow you. Money requires some critical mass.

If you are going to fork, you must do it now and build some critical mass (even if smaller than Bitcoin's mass).

Which is precisely what I am intending to do very soon, i.e. fork those of us who are aware into a design that technically can resist all forms of attack on the decentralization and permission-less attributes.

Until you have that, you are just blowing hot air here.

[iCEBREAKER]

we would end up with an Austrian fork and a Keynesian fork dueling it out

Aptly put.

Perhaps the (roughly) two camps could agree to a 'velvet divorce' enforced with some social agreement and crypto-magic.

Gavin's Keynesian fork, with its inflated transaction supply, can continue its futile quest to mimic Visa, Mastercard, dollar bills, and pennies until the UXTO buffer pukes blood.

Satoshi's Austrian fork can continue to represent a new store of value and settlement system, guaranteeing for the first time in history every human the opportunity to be their own bank.

If the civil war goes hot and messy, chances are we will all lose unless the BloatCoin drama is ultimately in the service of antifragility.

[TPTB_need_war]

we would end up with an Austrian fork and a Keynesian fork dueling it out

Aptly put.

Perhaps the (roughly) two camps could agree to a 'velvet divorce' enforced with some social agreement and crypto-magic.

Gavin's Keynesian fork, with its inflated transaction supply, can continue its futile quest to mimic Visa, Mastercard, dollar bills, and pennies until the UXTO buffer pukes blood.

Satoshi's Austrian fork can continue to represent a new store of value and settlement system, guaranteeing for the first time in history every human the opportunity to be their own bank.

My stance is that a store-of-value that can't offer anything for the micropayments of the fledgling Knowledge Age, is going no where in terms of network effects.

Bitcoin is going to monopolize network effects in the NWO paradigm that most of the masses will fall into. If you are going to create an alternative, then you must identify the unique network effects of the alternative market.