Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[justusranvier]

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.

Ordering is a subset of the problem of maintaining the supply of money. Allowing the same coins to be spent twice is one of the ways that the supply can be violated.

Distribution is not a primary purpose of mining. We know this because the distribution function is temporary yet mining will continue even when there are no new coins to distribute.

Linking initial coin distribution to mining was just the least-bad way to get the coins into circulation.

[1714000449]

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[cypherdoc]

this lady is highly unlikely to be making a mistake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ6WR2R1MnM&feature=youtu.be

[smooth]

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.

Ordering is a subset of the problem of maintaining the supply of money. Allowing the same coins to be spent twice is one of the ways that the supply can be violated.

Distribution is not a primary purpose of mining. We know this because the distribution function is temporary yet mining will continue even when there are no new coins to distribute.

Linking initial coin distribution to mining was just the least-bad way to get the coins into circulation.

The important point is that ordering is the only hard part. As you say, we've had digital signatures, and ordering is easy to do in a centralized system. Mining is needed to provide ordering in a decentralized system

As far as distribution being unimportant, we probably disagree a bit. I've never been sold on the idea of transaction fees properly incentivizing mining, so I don't really see the system as viable if distribution were to really end. Of course that won't actually happen in the current design for 100+ years so maybe it doesn't matter.

I also don't think think just a few words from satoshi in the white paper (or anything else he wrote) really suggest he did any careful analysis of how or if transaction fees as incentive would work. It seemed more like a kick the can approach, or an error.

[smooth]

<snip>

i smell Monero all over him.

Ok, as you mention it, and this is not meant as an attack on Monero, what I really don't understand is how a truly anonymous coin can survive, regardless of the tech, when the lead developers are public figures (eg Smooth, who was extremely helpful when I asked about the 21inc stuff) and they have a very public 'castle' as the home of one of their lead promoters (Risto).
How does that work if/when  the SHTF ??
Honestly, I have nothing against Monero, but I can't wrap my head around how something that TPTB will obviously fight against can flourish with these criteria. $5 wrench anyone ??

Please enlighten me. I say this in a truly non-confrontational manner - I am truly confused

I have to correct you for a bit here, Monero can be transparant on-demand. I also agree that a fully anonymous coin will probably get into some legal trouble.

But doesn't that optional anonymity property of Monero violate its fungibility argument? (smooth apologies if we'd already had this debate and I forgot)

TPTB will again use regulation and monopolization techniques to subsume Monero and force all users to turn off the anonymity else their coins don't transact.

You yourself have made the argument that it is vastly harder for authorities to impose draconian requirements directly on users.

If mining becomes centralized, however, then miners can indeed impose (or be compelled to impose) whatever requirements they want though, such as identifying yourself with secondary information, even if nothing within the primary protocol supports identification directly.

So yes, decentralized mining is a requirement for a coin that uses mining to have decentralized anything (including privacy).

I don't think fungibility is a problem, again as long as mining remains decentralized (and if it isn't then all bets are off) because the coins will get remixed into the fog within several hops, or sooner if people have a reason to mix aggressively.

[Adrian-x]

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.

Ordering is a subset of the problem of maintaining the supply of money. Allowing the same coins to be spent twice is one of the ways that the supply can be violated.

Distribution is not a primary purpose of mining. We know this because the distribution function is temporary yet mining will continue even when there are no new coins to distribute.

Linking initial coin distribution to mining was just the least-bad way to get the coins into circulation.

The important point is that ordering is the only hard part. As you say, we've had digital signatures, and ordering is easy to do in a centralized system. Mining is needed to provide ordering in a decentralized system

As far as distribution being unimportant, we probably disagree a bit. I've never been sold on the idea of transaction fees properly incentivizing mining, so I don't really see the system as viable if distribution were to really end. Of course that won't actually happen in the current design for 100+ years so maybe it doesn't matter.

I also don't think think a few words from satoshi in the white paper (nor anything else he wrote) really suggest he did any careful analysis of how or if transaction fees as incentive would work. It seemed more like a kick the can approach, or an error.

I think he considered it enough to know not to just make it a fixed 0.2% of transaction cost or something, just think if Bitcoin had to scale to be a global money ledger with a fixed 0.2% fee 0.2% of all GDP would be financial fee that would be a significant savings on the current financial system tax we pay to engage in commerce, you would also be able to predict that 0.2% of energy consumed global would secure the network. its not like that because its a free market equation and it may be more or less depending on circumstances.

I think it irons out quite nicely so long as the incentives are preserved many are threatened with the likes of SideChains.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

This begs the question.  It presupposes success.
When a fork occurs, you are on one side or the other at the time of the fork.

"If everyone's doing it" means that they have already done it, so there is no longer anything to be attractive to them.  It is an event, not a migration.  Unless you are imagining many many failed forks until one finally succeeds, which would be exceedingly chaotic.

A hard fork shouldn't normally happen unless we have near-consensus enough for that effect to play. I thought the issue that there will be those last few percent who don't monitor the news, don't see the alert warning somehow (the big red button Gavin has doesn't at least interrupt the software forcing the user to pay attention before doing anything else?), and yet for some reason are needing to monitor a transaction involving themselves and somehow try to refer to their node software and not see anything amiss.

Those few people would be inconvenienced in a pretty big way because they wouldn't be able to validate payment on their own node without updating, but in practice at this time how big a deal is it really to trust another service, or the consensus of several? If we're talking about a merchant who hasn't who hasn't accepted a transaction for a month, is it likely to be for a huge amount? I don't really think merchant adoption has advanced very far yet, and most use Bitpay/Coinbase anyway. It's liable to create some problems and is hardly ideal, but as far as emergency fork it seems not undoable.

If someone could paint a picture of the potential issue they see that would help.

[STT]

this lady is highly unlikely to be making a mistake:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ6WR2R1MnM&feature=youtu.be

Will be amazing if she is right, maybe she just hopes she is as it definitely makes a good speech.  To say with that certainty that blockchain transactions will be part of all public financing and as ground breaking as the internet is quite a statement if we consider just how much trade is done by the markets every day.
  Thats a heck of alot of business to be completely changed into something new, I kinda believe her conclusion or at least that she believes it.   Did people or business ignore the internet early nineties ?  I worked for an ISP in 97 and I think it was fairly old in public concept by then but I guess many company websites were slow to establish

[hendra147]

sell your BTC and buy GOLD 

[iCEBREAKER]

What really surprises me, is the anger and spite coming from the Gavin supporters. The vitriol and vehemence with which they attack anyone who has concerns about 20 MB blocks is unsettling.

With the known exception of Frap.doc, I think most of the lumpenredditards screaming for 20MB blocks are holding bags of very expensive BTC from the run up to $1200.

The mob's patience having been exhausted over the last year+, it's predictable they will start loudly demanding Something Be Done Now.

They are thus easily converted to the Gavinista cause, as they would rather destroy Bitcoin Classic in a risky attempt to "scale" horizontally than continue enduring stagnant prices while the technology for genuine orthogonal scaling is developed.

[iCEBREAKER]

You missed the point. Monero's "innovation" was the decision to add a single mixing routing "at the protocol level" which is only one method to create agreement between entities on how to mix coins. Bitcoin users can make the exact same decisions among themselves, mixing does not have to be specified at the protocol level.

The value add here is weak, it will not be enough to make the global bitcoin ecosystem of users switch.

XMR uses well-known, mathematically proven ring signatures and stealth addresses in an extremely clever scheme which provides emergent new functionality, much like Satoshi's ingenious arrangement of PoW, HashCash, etc.

Did you miss crypto gurus like gmaxwell and theymos stating it provides genuine innovation (no scare quotes needed)?

Did you miss the fact Monero's Cryptonote protocol is unique in providing near-ZKP levels of unlinkability and untracability?  Try reading the whitepaper (it's not very long): https://www.cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdf

If you mix off-chain, you are merely obfuscating and therefore Doing It Wrong.

XMR isn't here to "make the global bitcoin ecosystem of users switch."

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.   

[Dotto]

The imposible monero>btc seems more plausible as time goes on

[cypherdoc]

The imposible monero>btc seems more plausible as time goes on

nope.  with Monero wallowing at near all-time lows relative to BTC and way down at #13 in the cryptocurrency mkts, it's no wonder iCELatte and his buddies have decided to come into this thread and try to take advantage of the 20MB controversy.  it's a shameless move yet quite expected from these altscam guys.  too bad it's not going to work:

[cypherdoc]

sell your BTC and buy GOLD 

how does this look to you? 

Gold!  show us the way, baby!:

[majamalu]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

[iCEBREAKER]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

Where is the evidence for these naked assertions?  (Visible) market volume vs emission indicates most XMR miners are accumulating.

Why would the mutually-reinforcing perfect complement to BTC be "doomed?"  Let's wait until sidechains exist before drawing conclusions.

Another part of XMR's attraction is its property of being a hedge against BTC implemented with a completely different dev team, codebase, and PoW.

If forced to choose between them, I'd rather hold perfectly fungible XMR than possibly tainted, potentially white/black/red/grey-listed BTC.

[cypherdoc]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

Where is the evidence for these naked assertions?  (InVisible) market volume vs emission indicates most XMR miners are accumulating.

Why would the mutually-reinforcing perfect complement to BTC be "doomed?"  Let's wait until sidechains exist before drawing conclusions.

Another part of XMR's attraction is its property of being a hedge against BTC implemented with a completely different dev team, codebase, and PoW.

If forced to choose between them, I'd rather hold perfectly fungible XMR than possibly tainted, potentially white/black/red/grey-listed BTC.

ftfy 

[tvbcof]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

I don't have any Monero and don't know jack shit about it.  Or any alt.  It's one of those "Why go out for hamburger when one has steak at home?" type of deals to me.

Now, if Monero or pretty much any total shitcoin was a sidechain and I could have the proper level of confidence that I could, autonomously, shift my holdings back to BTC, I'd be all over it.  If XMR is as great for privacy as iCEBREAKER claims (again and again and again), fantastic!  I'd happily use it whenever I have that need.

In some back-of-my-mind sort of way I sense that somehow privacy and use as a reserve currency are not very compatible.  I cannot put my finger on it and have not spent the time to think up a theory, but it's just a sense.  Perhaps it is a sense that without understanding with some precision the backing store, the system built on top of it is suspect.  Anyway, I personally don't sweat the rather severe privacy deficiencies Bitcoin has in my particular use-case.

[majamalu]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

Where is the evidence for these naked assertions?

When money is forced to compete, Thiers' law takes effect.

"in the absence of effective legal tender laws, Gresham's Law works in reverse. If given the choice of what money to accept, people will transact with money they believe to be of highest long-term value. However, if not given the choice, and required to accept all money, good and bad, they will tend to keep the money of greater perceived value in their possession, and pass on the bad money to someone else. In short, in the absence of legal tender laws, the seller will not accept anything but money of certain value (good money), while the existence of legal tender laws will cause the buyer to offer only money with the lowest commodity value (bad money) as the creditor must accept such money at face value."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law#Reverse_of_Gresham.27s_Law_.28Thiers.27_Law.29

[iCEBREAKER]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

Where is the evidence for these naked assertions?  (InVisible) market volume vs emission indicates most XMR miners are accumulating.

Why would the mutually-reinforcing perfect complement to BTC be "doomed?"  Let's wait until sidechains exist before drawing conclusions.

Another part of XMR's attraction is its property of being a hedge against BTC implemented with a completely different dev team, codebase, and PoW.

If forced to choose between them, I'd rather hold perfectly fungible XMR than possibly tainted, potentially white/black/red/grey-listed BTC.

ftfy 

Oh, silly old Frap.doc!   

You fixed it until it broke, just like 20MB blocks would have done to BTC if Evil Blockstream Conspirator Peter Todd hadn't checked Gavin's shitmath and noticed the correct most optimistic answer was actually 8MB.

We of course don't know about "invisible" (IE off-market and/or non-public) XMR volume, but what we do see is dumping insufficient to erode the price, indicating miners are either accumulating or selling new coins somewhere besides Polo.

[cypherdoc]

XMR is a complement, not competition, for BTC.  One provides transparency, the other opacity.  Salt & Pepper.  

If it is competition at least there's a remote chance for xmr, otherwise it is doomed -- people that need it will not hold the units; they will make use and those units will be exchanged for btc units ASAP in the other end.

It might survive as a sidechain though.

Where is the evidence for these naked assertions?  (InVisible) market volume vs emission indicates most XMR miners are accumulating.

Why would the mutually-reinforcing perfect complement to BTC be "doomed?"  Let's wait until sidechains exist before drawing conclusions.

Another part of XMR's attraction is its property of being a hedge against BTC implemented with a completely different dev team, codebase, and PoW.

If forced to choose between them, I'd rather hold perfectly fungible XMR than possibly tainted, potentially white/black/red/grey-listed BTC.

ftfy 

Oh, silly old Frap.doc!   

You fixed it until it broke, just like 20MB blocks would have done to BTC if Evil Blockstream Conspirator Peter Todd hadn't checked Gavin's shitmath and noticed the correct most optimistic answer was actually 8MB.

We of course don't know about "invisible" (IE off-market and/or non-public) XMR volume, but what we do see is dumping insufficient to erode the price, indicating miners are either accumulating or selling new coins somewhere besides Polo.

that's a stunning 21BTC daily 24 h volume you got there iCELatte!  i shit that amt every mornin'!