Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[tvbcof]

latest poll results "should the blocksize be raised?".
http://www.poll-maker.com/results329839xee274Cb0-12#tab-2:

quite obvious

I would have voted with the minority, but I don't go off-site to use some data harvesting bullshit site just to vote in on a silly poll.  People who are not familiar with sample selection (and certain other network sciences) should be careful about interpretation of jokes like this.

My best guess is that by headcount, the split is about 1/4 on the hard fork.  That is much more promising than I'd expected given the makeup of the community.  25% by headcount is easily enough to keep a defensible system healthy.  By actual skin-in-the-game it would not surprise me in the least if a significant majority by HODL both favored the conservative approach and, more importantly, have the skills to protect their asses/assets.  Edit:...and probably exploit many of the other 75% if they so choose.

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[cypherdoc]

latest poll results "should the blocksize be raised?".
http://www.poll-maker.com/results329839xee274Cb0-12#tab-2:

quite obvious

Yes because almost everyone agrees it should be raised (Greg and Luke excepted, though they agree it should be raised eventually). The poll didn't ask about raising to 20MB.

how ridiculously obtuse can they both get?  they've also gone on record saying that they think the block size should be reduced.  and just recently.

[Adrian-x]

fiat 2.0, SDR's come on.

Hehe. Bitcoin is centralized, you are only obfuscating to yourself if you claim that it isn't.

The centralization was put in the wrong place in Bitcoin's design. You move it, then you can control it with decentralization.

do you care to explain how it's centralized again.

if the idea you have is correct then it needs to spread, it wont spread if it cant be understood.

can you ELI5.

[cypherdoc]

Ironically, if it CAN be done in 1 month, that speaks pretty negatively about decentralization -- in the same sense that all the different central banks don't make the system decentralized.  They are all marchin in step to the same drummer.

I don't see how that's the case. If it's a good idea, and everyone's doing it, then the trade-off becomes attractive for just about everyone, so it can happen pretty fast without any centralization. Marching in lockstep doesn't mean centralized (of course; that's the whole idea of Bitcoin in a way).

Isn't there some kind of alert key that goes to every full node? SPV nodes don't matter since they don't care about blocksize. If the problem is just alerting everyone that a fork is coming and they have to choose sides, then what is the worst that can happen? Can someone even operate a full node without seeing the alert?

easily. if you're just running the full node as a service, like most of us do, then there's never any reason to login.  the way i check it's up and running periodically is by going to https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ and checking the ip address to make sure there's a connection there.  thus, i would NOT get any alerts which, btw, i've only ever seen in the GUI and not in the command line which i use if and when i do happen to rarely go into the vps.

[Adrian-x]

latest poll results "should the blocksize be raised?".
http://www.poll-maker.com/results329839xee274Cb0-12#tab-2:

quite obvious

Yes because almost everyone agrees it should be raised (Greg and Luke excepted, though they agree it should be raised eventually). The poll didn't ask about raising to 20MB.

Gavin's proposal was just bad timing for them, they are not ready to deploy and would not have the opportunity to deploy should there be no demand, so they look for reasons to delay.

[cypherdoc]

latest poll results "should the blocksize be raised?".
http://www.poll-maker.com/results329839xee274Cb0-12#tab-2:

looks where all the voters come from.  does THIS look decentralized to you?:

And what's the point of voting on highly technical question? Democracy doesn't work with this stuff, because majority have holes in their brains and then they lean on opinions of others and marketing campaigns.

well that's the question, isn't it?  is it really simply a technical question?  on it's face it may seem to be but i learned a while ago that the computer scientists don't have a lock on how Bitcoin works.  which is why there was only one inventor, Satoshi, who made the breakthrough.  most CS geeks have been shown to be armchair analysts, esp ones like Peter Todd.  i am one too.  point being, it's not simply a technical matter.  there's economics, both macro and micro, going on and a huge chunk of game theory determining what actually motivates the players. 

for instance, i think if we expand the blocks, we'll get more tx's and users resulting in more full nodes as a result of more investment money coming into the system and more vested players trying to help as full nodes.  mining will go back to being more profitable and we'll have better security.  Metcalfe's Law should work off the userbase, not the full nodes.

assuming that the majority have holes in their heads is exactly how authoritarian states get going; when a few minority ppl in the system think they know better than everyone else and should be determining all the decision making.  gmax and luke are the epitome of that.  and no, Gavin is not doing the same thing b/c he is responding to what the community as a whole wants.

[cypherdoc]

latest poll results "should the blocksize be raised?".
http://www.poll-maker.com/results329839xee274Cb0-12#tab-2:

quite obvious

I would have voted with the minority, but I don't go off-site to use some data harvesting bullshit site just to vote in on a silly poll.  People who are not familiar with sample selection (and certain other network sciences) should be careful about interpretation of jokes like this.

My best guess is that by headcount, the split is about 1/4 on the hard fork.  That is much more promising than I'd expected given the makeup of the community.  25% by headcount is easily enough to keep a defensible system healthy.  By actual skin-in-the-game it would not surprise me in the least if a significant majority by HODL both favored the conservative approach and, more importantly, have the skills to protect their asses/assets.  Edit:...and probably exploit many of the other 75% if they so choose.

i'm quite sure that gmax and his buddies came here to register their no votes.  i openly told him about it back when the ratio was 4:1 or 80%  for earlier on.  immediately, a bunch of no votes started getting registered bringing it down to just over 3:1 where it is now.

of course consensus would be best which is the same thing as saying 100% for or against but in some forks like this one that doesn't appear possible.  the "vote" at least gives everyone an idea where the majority of ppl stand on this in the community.  it's alot better than no information.  and we have 3 independent polls, including mine, all saying the same thing.

[smooth]

I don't agree with your apathy on whether cryptographers who invent anything that truly threatens TPTB will be made into examples.

Smooth I also don't think it is viable to murder dozens of open source programmers because it would be difficult to obscure on that scale and thus the hacker community would likely rise up and retaliate (and win!). But in terms of stopping an immediate threat or making an example out of a serious threat which can be done in an obfuscated manner so as to not wake up the entire community, I think it is a realistic consideration. Perhaps avoiding outcomes below is contingent on carefully accessing the situation the potential victim has placed himself into. For example, attack the Russian oligarchs and you will be overtly assassinated. Attack the CIA or NSA and they will weigh the cost of murdering versus the risk of waking up the sheeople.

Yeah its posible that one or two people could be taken out in a "suspicious" manner. So as I said earlier, open the project. Get others to participate (even if that includes giving up some measure of your anonymity to do it, and I think it does). Otherwise, as long as you remain critical to the effort, you are betting solely on your ability to actually remain anonymous for your safety. That is difficult and may even be impossible. It certainly didn't work out too well for Ross.

For all we know satoshi's identity is well known to the NSA, etc. (I consider that quite likely). Likewise the developers of cryptonote are probably identifiable by the NSA too. But what difference does either really make at this point? The code is out there. Interest has been established, so the projects will continue.

[cypherdoc]

i thought there was supposed to be a recovery going on?:

Australia, home to commodity mining:


BHP, world's biggest mine:


Exxon Mobil, world's biggest energy conglomerate:


Natgas, the supposed new energy source:

[smooth]

It's interesting how people talk about Monero as if we know for sure the privacy achievable in Monero is greater than the privacy achievable in Bitcoin.

Has anyone measured it?

Yes, Monero's privacy has been "measured" (if by "measured" you mean 'mathematically proven') and we thus do know for sure it's better than Bitcoin's.

https://downloads.getmonero.org/whitepaper_review.pdf

Some of the privacy of Monero would be achievable using Bitcoin, but only if everyone changed their operational security methods.
JustusRanvier uses stealth addresses, which privacy would be further improved if he only transacted with others who also do this.  Ring signatures can also theoretically be accomplished albeit with some difficulty by using a client that could support this sort of key signing exchanges.

The problem for privacy remains, however, that since these are not a fundamental part of the protocol and a default for each transaction.  There are limits to the amount of privacy that can be obtained in the face of correlation analysis by a well funded reveal-er of such secrets.

The only real argument I've seen for Monero is that privacy was make "at the protocol level".

In Monero's case though, "at the protocol level" simply means that everyone is forced to transact in a certain manner (a manner that mixes) on top of a bitcoin style address protocol.

However, this is not a real innovation. The exact same mixing procedures can be done on top of Bitcoin. No Bitcoin does not force this mixing, but any group of people, entities or wallets can agree to use the same mixing procedures as Monero or better ones as they are developed. This means Bitcoin in the end will have better mixing/privacy features than Monero, since Bitcoin is flexible and any mixing procedure can be run on top of it.

Which brings us back to the Monero innovation, Monero's "innovation" is simply the decision to force all transactions to use a single fixed mixing routine. That is not an innovation though, it is a decision. Any group of entities using Bitcoin can make the same decision.

"At the protocol level" simply means that all transactions are forced into a single static mixing routine. However with Bitcoin, although people are not forced into any mixing routine, they are free to agree to use any mixing routing that may be developed.

Rocks, they can't do that because any kind of "mixing routine" that would be adopted by wallets or users on top of Bitcoin would require interaction between them (some sort of coordination or key exchange type process). However, that isn't how Monero works and the relaxation of a simultaneity and coordination requirements is probably the most important part of the protocol.

If you want to comment intelligently on it you really need to understand how the protocol works, and not just understand it in vague terms of "people decided to use mixing." The type of "mixing" that occurs in Monero is not really the same type that Bitcoin mixing uses, even though the word is the same.

It really is different cryptography. You can't just have a group of Bitcoin users decide to use Zerocash, nor can you have group of Bitcoin users decide to do Cryptonote-style mixing either.

[Erdogan]

An observation about the blockchain, that I have not seen commented elsewhere.

The blockchain appears to be a ledger, which is a tool to record and thus document transactions. But that is not the purpose of the blockchain, neither do we need it for that. We need it only to ensure the integrity of the system, to avoid double spending and guard against coin fractions coming from nowhere.

You can deduce, with a level of confidence, who owns an output if you know something about the inputs, but that is all. The confidence level will always be less than one, unless you know with full confidence who owned each of the inputs and manage to compel the owner to tell you who he sent them to (if he knows). The same consideration if you know the owner of the output and want to deduce who owned the inputs.

I propose that most people will not tell, and therefore most outputs will have an unknown owner. The anonymity in the basic system is quite good, if not absolute. There is plausible deniability, unconfiscatibility, and the anonymity can be enhanced by simple means.

[tvbcof]

i'm quite sure that gmax and his buddies came here to register their no votes. ...

I'm quite sure that Maxwell is way to busy with real stuff to play your silly little games.

[cypherdoc]

i'm quite sure that gmax and his buddies came here to register their no votes. ...

I'm quite sure that Maxwell is way to busy with real stuff to play your silly little games.

don't be an idiot.  you remember when he and Adam were posting here a few months ago to play their silly games?

[justusranvier]

The blockchain appears to be a ledger, which is a tool to record and thus document transactions. But that is not the purpose of the blockchain, neither do we need it for that. We need it only to ensure the integrity of the system, to avoid double spending and guard against coin fractions coming from nowhere.

That's probably the most overlooked fact about Bitcoin.

Transactions using digital signatures are easy. We've had the technology since the 80s.

Bitcoin is special because it enforces a defined quantity of money without a trusted third party.

All the mining and the verification is done for the purpose of ensuring that that every balance being spent in a transaction legitimately existed prior to the transaction.

[justusranvier]

don't be an idiot.  you remember when he and Adam were posting here a few months ago to play their silly games?

How long do you really think it's been since either of them posted in this thread?

[cypherdoc]

don't be an idiot.  you remember when he and Adam were posting here a few months ago to play their silly games?

How long do you really think it's been since either of them posted in this thread?

ask the idiot.

[tvbcof]

i'm quite sure that gmax and his buddies came here to register their no votes. ...

I'm quite sure that Maxwell is way to busy with real stuff to play your silly little games.

don't be an idiot.  you remember when he and Adam were posting here a few months ago to play their silly games?

I remember Back's contributions on this thread well.  He was universally decent and thoughtful.  It was appreciated and it did a lot to help me develop some confidence in their efforts.

Speaking of, as an artifact of watching Maxwell's very good presentation which anonymint pointed out, noticed that Blockstream hired Stratman.  My recollection is that he was at least incompetent and possibly a scumbag in the Intersango thing.  That did NOT help build my confidence in them.  Lukedashjr has also done some highly questionable things over his stay in the ecosystem.  Blockstream seemed to have hired him on a contract basis to perform a task in which he had domain experience.  I can tolerate that better.  On balance the team is still amazing though.

[Adrian-x]

i'm quite sure that gmax and his buddies came here to register their no votes. ...

I'm quite sure that Maxwell is way to busy with real stuff to play your silly little games.

don't be an idiot.  you remember when he and Adam were posting here a few months ago to play their silly games?

I remember Back's contributions on this thread well.  He was universally decent and thoughtful.  It was appreciated and it did a lot to help me develop some confidence in their efforts.

Speaking of, as an artifact of watching Maxwell's very good presentation which anonyming pointed out, noticed that Blockstream hired Stratman.  My recollection is that he was at least incompetent and possibly a scumbag in the Intersango thing.  That did NOT help build my confidence in them.  Lukedashjr has also done some highly questionable things over his stay in the ecosystem.  Blockstream seemed to have hired him on a contract basis to perform a task in which he had domain experience.  I can tolerate that better.  On balance the team is still amazing though.

what type of domain experience?

my regular IP's where blocked from visiting blockstream.io but not new ones i had assess to, after complaining publicly, Adam had the firewall reset and I was able to use there site.

I'm glad it was resolved, intentional or not we'll never know.

[smooth]

The blockchain appears to be a ledger, which is a tool to record and thus document transactions. But that is not the purpose of the blockchain, neither do we need it for that. We need it only to ensure the integrity of the system, to avoid double spending and guard against coin fractions coming from nowhere.

That's probably the most overlooked fact about Bitcoin.

Transactions using digital signatures are easy. We've had the technology since the 80s.

Bitcoin is special because it enforces a defined quantity of money without a trusted third party.

All the mining and the verification is done for the purpose of ensuring that that every balance being spent in a transaction legitimately existed prior to the transaction.

That and ordering. The entire purpose of mining (other than distribution) is to establish ordering so that if coins are double spent the new location of those coins is not ambiguous.

[tvbcof]

...
Lukedashjr has also done some highly questionable things over his stay in the ecosystem.  Blockstream seemed to have hired him on a contract basis to perform a task in which he had domain experience.  I can tolerate that better.  On balance the team is still amazing though.

what type of domain experience?

Some mining code iirc.  I didn't pay a lot of attention to it but the contract as tangentially described, seemed to make sense.

I only really remember my basic take-away from thinking about who was involved in Blockstream.  I try to put at least a little bit of thought into this aspect of a business.  I did the same about Coinbase who I actually did use.  I concluded that they are not to my liking philosophically, but that they were unlikely to rip me off and I needed services in their segment.  So far this has been true.