Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[HeliKopterBen]

The experiment will likely fail if it the network is NOT upgraded and the limit eventually removed.  The limit has already been reached anyway.

no. and no.

The first one is opinion.  The second one is fact.  I have seen plenty of blocks come through at 9xx kb, so yes the 1mb limit has been reached.

[HeliKopterBen]

The experiment will likely fail if it the network is NOT upgraded and the limit eventually removed. 

Nonsense.
Bitcoin does not "fail."  It gains strength when, and only when, faced with adversity.

I was being a bit facetious because of this nonsensical comment:

If a guy in Venezuala (or Florida) can't be his own private bank by running a full node over TOR on a slow 5mb DSL line, this experiment has failed.

[sickpig]

Another one from Gavin

http://gavinandresen.ninja/bigger-blocks-another-way

[cypherdoc]

The experiment will likely fail if it the network is NOT upgraded and the limit eventually removed. 

Nonsense.
Bitcoin does not "fail."  It gains strength when, and only when, faced with adversity.

I was being a bit facetious because of this nonsensical comment:

If a guy in Venezuala (or Florida) can't be his own private bank by running a full node over TOR on a slow 5mb DSL line, this experiment has failed.

it's reasonable to assume if we get 10x users, we'd get 10x #full nodes, and 10x the value.  we can't do that with a technical cap.

[iCEBREAKER]

yes, the avg Venezuelan doesn't care about running a full node.  he cares about reliable, cheap tx's.  sad thing is, if we stay at 1MB blocks, he might never know about Bitcoin.  and he certainly will never learn about the more complex concept of digital gold.

Bitcoin isn't going to fail because of full blocks.  I find your lack of faith disturbing.  As New Liberty said, "Sell your fear elsewhere."

It may experience temporary graceful degradation, but such adversity is required by antifragile systems in order to grow stronger.

Avg. Jose doesn't yet care about full nodes because he's never heard of Bitcoin, and Bitcoin hasn't yet closed the loop w/r/t fiat exclusion.

The infrastructure needed to onboard Avg. Jose, such as Lightning/Sidechains/linear UXTO scaling, is still in the vapor R&D stage.

Coddling BTC with lavish 20mb blocks, at the first hint of a possible sign of a whiff of tx fee pressure, decreases motivation to complete and implement that infrastructure and those optimizations.

BTC hype is largely driven by its price in fiat.  Price increases, not tps capacity, are what will sustain the next waves of publicity, awareness, and adoption.

What do you think the Great Schism and associated FUD are doing/will do to the price of BTC?

Will buyers think 'oh goody, BTC's stock is about to split into a parent corporation and a GavinCoin spin-off' or, 'holy shit, wtf do you mean I have to spend on both chains or abstain from transactions until the fork is resolved?"

it's reasonable to assume if we get 10x users, we'd get 10x #full nodes, and 10x the value.  we can't do that with a technical cap.

The soft 1mb cap is protecting us from the hard (but uncertain) UXTO cap.  It was put in place for another reason, but also happens to be a serendipitous magic number.

Until UXTO optimization/pruning can keep set growth (sub)linear, Bitcoin cannot replace Western Union, much less Visa.

To quote the great davout,

The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

[thezerg]

iCEBREAKER, your vision sucks. 

People can't directly submit txns because they are too expensive due to limited space.  So coin used for spending must be held by larger institutions who handle payments internally, and periodically make blockchain transfers among themselves.  These institutions will inevitably go fractional reserve even though they claim they won't.

Congratulations, you've reinvented the gold backed banking system of the 19th century!

[iCEBREAKER]

People can't directly submit txns because they are too expensive due to limited space.  So coin used for spending must be held by larger institutions who handle payments internally, and periodically make blockchain transfers among themselves.  These institutions will inevitably go fractional reserve even though they claim they won't.

Congratulations, you've reinvented the gold backed banking system of the 19th century!

Nonsense.

To quote the great davout,

The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

[cypherdoc]

People can't directly submit txns because they are too expensive due to limited space.  So coin used for spending must be held by larger institutions who handle payments internally, and periodically make blockchain transfers among themselves.  These institutions will inevitably go fractional reserve even though they claim they won't.

Congratulations, you've reinvented the gold backed banking system of the 19th century!

Nonsense.

To quote the great davout,

The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

doesn't compute.  if we're stuck at only 0.001% of the population even knowing about Bitcoin b/c of 1MB, that's not a definition of "everyone".

[tvbcof]

..
Will buyers think 'oh goody, BTC's stock is about to split into a parent corporation and a GavinCoin spin-off' or, 'holy shit, wtf do you mean I have to spend on both chains or abstain from transactions until the fork is resolved?"

One would only have to 'spend on both chains' if the recipient were demanding multi-chain legal outputs.  This would be an unlikely demand since only long term hodlers who controlled fossil UTXO's would be able to create them.  OTOH, such spends could very well command much higher valuations making Bitcoin Gavincoin as a currency highly non-fungible.

When sidechains or some like solution is well developed they can choose any backing store they like.  As long as Bitcoin is still idling along in the background, and especially if a highly distributed collection of full nodes exist to support it, many sidechains will probably choose Bitcoin as their backing store rather than Gavincoin.  I'll be taking a bet on this eventuality (and earning some spending money) by relinquishing control of a portion of my Gavincoin while maintaining control of it's Bitcoin counterpart.  At least if I can obtain a decent price for my Gavincoin-only spends.

As for 'abstaining from transactions', I've had no trouble doing so for the nearly two-year price slump and am not approaching the end of my patience.  Gavincoin will provoke a battle royal which could take many years to complete and may spawn and ecosystem of perpetual combat.  One way or another, the saying "If you cannot stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen" applies.  Those who are not technically and intellectually agile would be well advised to stick with Wells Fargo and Paypal.

edit: strike

[iCEBREAKER]

To quote the great davout,

The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

doesn't compute.  if we're stuck at only 0.001% of the population even knowing about Bitcoin b/c of 1MB, that's not a definition of "everyone".

You are confusing equality of opportunity (which is precluded by 20mb nodes' large care & feeding reqs) with equality of outcome (which is in no meaningful way encouraged by a mere 19mb increase). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome#Comparing_equalities_outcome_vs_opportunity

More than 1% of the world has already heard of Bitcoin, although only 0.001% of them >0 fucks about whether blocks are capped at 1mb or 20mb.

Until UXTO growth is contained within sustainable parameters, it is hopeless to expect anything resembling mass direct use to be driven by mere transactions per second.

People care about the price, not throughput.

The Great Schism threatens the price, which in turn retards hype/awareness/adoption/growth.

If the civil war goes hot and dueling forks ensue, there's no telling what kind of damage and FUD will be released in the wake of double-spent GavinCoins.

Mircea and his #BTC-assets brigade has already declared 20mb blocks to be an attack on Bitcoin, so some degree of fireworks/popcorn/tears/LULZ/drama are guaranteed.

"Bitcoin?  Didn't that implode in some obscure and incomprehensible sort of self-imposed extremely technical and nerdy e-peen measuring contest?"  -  Avg. Jose, July 2016

[jmw74]

People can't directly submit txns because they are too expensive due to limited space.  So coin used for spending must be held by larger institutions who handle payments internally, and periodically make blockchain transfers among themselves.  These institutions will inevitably go fractional reserve even though they claim they won't.

Congratulations, you've reinvented the gold backed banking system of the 19th century!

Nonsense.

Care to elaborate on that? Those who cannot afford to transact on the blockchain, what will they use instead?

[justusranvier]

The "great schism" is going to be underwhelming.

MP's popularity among certain subpopulations is a function of the prelevance of daddy issues in the Bitcoin community. He and the members of his cult of personality are stuck in a mutually-destructive relationship that precludes their capabilities from living up to the hype.

[iCEBREAKER]

People can't directly submit txns because they are too expensive due to limited space.  So coin used for spending must be held by larger institutions who handle payments internally, and periodically make blockchain transfers among themselves.  These institutions will inevitably go fractional reserve even though they claim they won't.

Nonsense.

Care to elaborate on that? Those who cannot afford to transact on the [BITCOIN] blockchain, what will they use instead?

They may use

-fiat

-"sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain"

-altcoins' blockchains

[hdbuck]

The "great schism" is going to be underwhelming.

MP's popularity among certain subpopulations is a function of the prelevance of daddy issues in the Bitcoin community. He and the members of his cult of personality are stuck in a mutually-destructive relationship that precludes their capabilities from living up to the hype.

Talking about personality cultists, doesn't these daddy issues also apply to the mass-minions that gets all wet about some "big names" of wall street, globally centralized businesses, and more generally of USG-approved scumbags joining Bitcoin? Shouldnt they be considered first and foremost the real destructive threat here?

Imho, MP is a joker. And a smart one to the least. He hasnt hurt anyone (except for sum ladyboys maybe), enslaved anyone, sold you like all the huge internet corporations CEOs has done... And now we are supposed to clap them busting into what was meant to bypass them?

With all respect, I think I have made my choice here. Now who's your daddy? ^^

[iCEBREAKER]

The "great schism" is going to be underwhelming.

MP's popularity among certain subpopulations is a function of the prelevance of daddy issues in the Bitcoin community. He and the members of his cult of personality are stuck in a mutually-destructive relationship that precludes their capabilities from living up to the hype.

I hope you are right.  OTOH, perhaps the 'Full Block Crisis' will be underwhelming as market mechanisms efficiently allocate the scare resource of block space.

As for MP, I'm not sure why you seek to insult us with armchair Freud psychoanalysis bullshit.

If you really want to go there, I'd speculate that perhaps you are projecting onto MP issues and insecurities of your own.   

His "cult of personality" is entirely aware of how their purposefully over-the-top shenanigans irritate easily offended dweebs such as yourself.

When you get all huffy and nasty towards MP & Co, it is a tremendous source of LULZ for them and 3rd party observers like myself.

I don't closely monitor the #bitcoin-assets crowd, but do know they have great senses of humor (unlike you dour finger-wagging types).

Besides the humor/trolling and white-knighting for SatoshiCoin, I also appreciate what MP did for OpenBSD.  Does that make me a cult member?       

[tvbcof]

...
MP's popularity among certain subpopulations is a function of the prelevance of daddy issues in the Bitcoin community. He and the members of his cult of personality are stuck in a mutually-destructive relationship that precludes their capabilities from living up to the hype.

I'd not argue against most of that, but one can meet success by being, through shit-house luck, on the right side of a fence.

Back around the turn of the year I read MP's stuff some.  He's definitely a weird motherfucker, but definitely also very bright with a good grasp on many aspects of philosophical and engineering thought.  If I had to guess I'd say that whatever success he has realized (and I suspect it is significantly puffed up) was not in the accident of fate category as much as it was a result of good analysis and execution.  I'm as happy that he's on my side of the fence as I am that Gavin-the-clod is not.  If the MP contingent is self-destructive it's just one more ball to keep an eye on as the ecosystem experiences a stress pulse.

[hdbuck]

lol 3 MP defenders posts in a row here. its happening!

edit: and i have to say i really appreciate tvbcof and icebreaker insights too. so thank you guise.

[HeliKopterBen]

I believe the block size limit issue is getting critical.  You guys should check out Reggie Middleton's Veritaseum.  Quoting:

Veritaseum uses only bitcoin, and subsists completely on the bitcoin blockchain. It is the only bitcoin wallet system that can trade simple and complex value structures without using non-bitcoin tokens, alt coins, sidechains or alternative blockchains. It can trade the value of over 45,000 tickers in all asset classes, from major exchanges from all around the world. At it’s essence, Veritaseum is a hyper-intelligent Bitcoin wallet “system” that is able to create and interpret smart contracts through the blockchain. It coordinates with an Oracle to gain access to conventional, physical and legacy financial data and information and uses it to price, value, trade and settle OTC, P2P financial instruments - all in BTC.

The Veritaseum platform, using nothing but pure bitcoin with no tokens or alternative internal currencies, moves the value of all that he mentioned plus much more (over 45k tickers), with absolutely no counterparty risk on a fully autonomous basis using smart contracts based solely on bitcoin script

A member of our board of advisors, which we are just putting together, is the ex-chief investment office of one of the largest funds in the world — a few hundred billion dollars. He was a maverick in his space, is excited about the opportunity to literally shake up the world of finance, and is tasked with basically getting institutions to do trades. So, for every ten billion dollar institution that [trades on our platform], that’s the equivalent of an entire Bitfinex in one month’s worth of trades. That’s how we’re going to start, and then we have different verticals — we have that vertical, we have retail, and we have other, specialized verticals.”

Pretty bold claims from Middleton, but I have tried it and it works, at least in a beta phase, not vapor phase or proof of concept phase, but beta phase.  You can trade all tickers that Cypherdoc mentions on here. 

The potential for a massive influx of usage is there, but 7 tps won't cut it.  We have already hit that limit with people just experimenting.  Frankly, I don't think 20mb will cut it either, but its a step in the right direction.  I am for a dynamic limit based on something like one standard deviation above a 30 day moving average of blocksize, or something similar, but I am with Gavin in that it has become mission-critical.

[justusranvier]

...
MP's popularity among certain subpopulations is a function of the prelevance of daddy issues in the Bitcoin community. He and the members of his cult of personality are stuck in a mutually-destructive relationship that precludes their capabilities from living up to the hype.

I'd not argue against most of that, but one can meet success by being, through shit-house luck, on the right side of a fence.

Back around the turn of the year I read MP's stuff some.  He's definitely a weird motherfucker, but definitely also very bright with a good grasp on many aspects of philosophical and engineering thought.  If I had to guess I'd say that whatever success he has realized (and I suspect it is significantly puffed up) was not in the accident of fate category as much as it was a result of good analysis and execution.  I'm as happy that he's on my side of the fence as I am that Gavin-the-clod is not.  If the MP contingent is self-destructive it's just one more ball to keep an eye on as the ecosystem experiences a stress pulse.

I've barely interacted with MP, but I have had the opportunity to observe signifigant changes in behaviour among some people who have spent a lot of time doing so.

There are people who respond to his shtick for reasons independent of the quality of his analysis and display all the signs of co-dependence. It doesn't bode well for the future achievements of anyone involved.

[iCEBREAKER]

I believe the block size limit issue is getting critical.  You guys should check out Reggie Middleton's Veritaseum.

I believe antifragile systems require adversity in order to innovate, adjust, and thrive.

I believe the source of Bitcoin's antifragility is its diverse, diffuse, defensible, and resilient network.

I believe a functioning (IE non- or less-subsidized) market for Bitcoin transactions will ensure miners continue to secure the network even as block rewards dwindle.

I believe you should sell your fear somewhere else.