Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[TPTB_need_war]

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.

This is the only retort I've seen in support of pegged side chains. The pegged attribute means the BTC is actually reserved on the Bitcoin chain so that no matter what happens to the side chain, the value can always be recovered back to BTC.

You are not using scaling[1] as the basis of your desire for side chains. Rather you are using the insurance of value relative to BTC. The difference between a peg on the Bitcoin blockchain and a hedging instrument are the zero cost and reservation guarantee of the former.

But I don't see why we need Blockstream to do that. Afaics, any altcoin could offer the feature where its coin supply is the number of BTC on specified reserve on the Bitcoin blockchain (using the methods devised by Blockstream).

But there is no incentive for the altcoin developer because their work doesn't get valued nor monetarily remunerated in terms of coin appreciation. No ICO can be done, because the coins are still reserved on the Bitcoin blockchain.

A risk-free investment does not exist. You are asking to take away all ROI to enable a guarantee but with nothing in return offered to incentivize the market and development. You also remove your ability to profit on HODLing the altcoin. In short, you don't want to invest and you don't want to profit (in anything other than Bitcoin).


[1] Which I argue is not aided by and probably harmed by side chains, because the only way scaling (and thus network effects) are solved by side chains is an unlimited numbers of side chains, else the complexity class is the same as needing to solve how to scale Bitcoin's blockchain. But innumerable side chains kills interoperability and thus the scaling of network effects.

"Why go out for hamburger when one has steak at home?"

Because you might meet the waitress of your dreams. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. No investigation, no knowledge. Ignorance is bliss. Home eating, boring men don't often capture the (attention of the) Playboy bunny and don't stay abreast of current trends outside.

[1713582799]

1713582799

[1713582799]

1713582799

[1713582799]

1713582799

[TPTB_need_war]

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

Armstrong noted that throughout history, peripheral markets counterfeit the reserve currency's coins because these are the widest accepted.

I view Gresham's law as basically saying that the most widely recognized money drives the other money out-of-circulation. I think it applies regardless of legal tender laws as we see throughout history where for example Roman coins circulated even where they weren't required to by law.

Your argument should instead be that Bitcoin is the most widely recognized and accepted crypto money.

[TPTB_need_war]

Gold failed to bounce in June, thus it looks like we are headed down. BTC likely to follow down.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31318

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31344

Safe haven seeking capital is flowing into the short-end of the bond yield curve in Europe. All in preparation for the contagion Big Bang 2015.75, likely Greece.

[TPTB_need_war]

The Blockstream white paper mentions interoperability, but afaics gives no details other than to say the chains share the same BTC unit.

I assume this means each side chain's money supply will fluctuate according to spending from one chain to the other and presumably not passing back through the Bitcoin blockchain as I had assumed. I suppose this is viable and what remains of my criticism is there is no investment model possible for the side chains unless there is some fee service that can be sold. So I guess the devs of a side chain would need seek their ROI by charging transaction fees but ongoing payment is a form of centralization.

I guess one could view moving BTC from the Bitcoin blockchain to a side chain as an investment in an ecosystem driving the value of BTC higher. Appreciation of the particular side chain will not be possible to capture.

The investment model concerns I think strongly disfavor side chains for any ubiquitous features. Thus side chains don't appear to do anything for the scaling problem of Bitcoin.

Side chains would be useful for isolating blockchain scripting where user programmability is the priority and not investment ROI.

Also I think my interoperability concern remains valid in at least one way. For example Monero as a side chain would presumably have different anonymity properties when spending to another chain than spending within the Monero side chain. Thus the interoperability doesn't scale the same as a single chain with ubiquitous features.

I potentially like side chains as a way of achieving hard forks democratically, i.e. anyone can stay with the old chain or spend off to the new chain (and come back anytime), but this could encourage fragmentation which could retard value appreciation.

I just don't think side chains address scaling and Gregory should either justify how they do or accept that isn't the market he needs to defend with this block size debate.

Edit: there is one way side chains enable scaling. That is the side chain is a centralized ledger. So if the masses can be enticed to spend their BTC into the Coinbase+Paypal+Circle cartel side chain, then it can scale easily. And then the hashrate of the Bitcoin blockchain will wane and can be attacked by the cartel.

Yeah a cartel side chain is great sell out to TPTB. Go! Good job!

Blockstream is (unwittingly?) enabling an easy path for the cartel to fork Bitcoin.

[TPTB_need_war]

Gold failed to bounce in June, thus it looks like we are headed down. BTC likely to follow down.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31318

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31344

Safe haven seeking capital is flowing into the short-end of the bond yield curve in Europe. All in preparation for the contagion Big Bang 2015.75, likely Greece.

This is the most fascinating post I've perhaps ever seen from Armstrong. Amazing that his Trading Array model has INDEPENDENTLY picked up on the ECM 2015.75 Big Bang:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/31361

Looks like the timing for the capitulation low in private assets (gold, bitcoin, and now the USA stock market too) will be in October.

Again I reiterate my 80% expectation for < $1050 and < $150 for the final bottom (price independent of timing). I assign 50% odds of a bottom < $850 and <$100. Ideally would be a bottom in the mid-$600s and < $50, as that would clear out all the dumb money.

As in 2008, the private assets will rally hard after the initial margin call selling has caused them to crater. Remember when safe haven panic contagion strikes, people are forced to sell their most liquid assets. I was buying 1000oz silver bars at $9/tr.oz.

[TPTB_need_war]

Seems Etlase2 incorporated my 2013 "Topic: "Spiraling Transaction Fees Destruction" of bitcoin  (Read 6785 times)" into his white paper.

http://www.decrits.net/decrits-consensus.pdf

November 4, 2014

In the future when Bitcoin mining is no longer as heavily subsidized as it
is today, the problem is compounded by the fact that the network’s security is
relative to the amount of transaction fees assessed. If transaction fees are low,
the comparative network security must be low. If transaction fees are high,
it is likely that fewer transactions will be performed on-chain14 which would
also contribute to lower network security and an easier opportunity to attack.
It may very well be the case that older, less efficient pieces of silicon known as
ASICs that can only perform Bitcoin POW may find new life and profitability
in attacking the Bitcoin network.

I finally had a spare moment to contemplate the variables.

A key factor is the block size. If the block size is unlimited (and bandwidth is an insignificant cost), then unless miners have a monopoly they will accept transactions with fees as low as don't constitute a DoS attack, in order to maximize revenue.

In other words, they would have no pricing power at all (a Tragedy of the Commons) and the system would devolve into a partial-monopoly in order to gain pricing power.

A partial-monopoly in this case is enough % of the network hashrate to delay transactions (by that % of blocks) which do not include a sufficient fee.

If we limit block size, then the system doesn't scale.

If we let the Bitcoin foundation decide when to increase block size, then they control the economic market function, i.e. we've centralized Bitcoin.

Let us assume unlimited block size and partial-monopolies. Thus the transaction fee can always be forced higher in order to generate more revenue for the miners. Thus Bitcoin devolves (as coin rewards diminish) to a system that presents spenders with a choice between include a very high transaction fee or accept an ever increasing delay for confirmation. This will exacerbate as coin rewards diminish and volume of transactions increase.

If we instead assume limited block size, then the Bitcoin foundation will set the transaction fees, not the market.

Bitcoin is a broken design.

And from my account on Bitcoin StackExchange wherein they banned me for several months in 2013...

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/876/how-much-will-transaction-fees-eventually-be/8749#8749

In any P2P currency, there are only 3 choices, or combination of them.

You fund miners from savers.
You fund miners from spenders.
You let the government provide the mining. A public need so the economy doesn't stop.
1 is not available to Bitcoin long-term, because debasement is halving every four years.

2 penalizes economic activity, which is more important than burying money, ahem saving. Also it doesn't scale, unless it is uniform in the protocol. Gavin wrote making it uniform won't work in the market.

3 is thus the outcome for Bitcoin. (as designed by Satoshi)

[TPTB_need_war]

My prediction in 2013 for something like 21 Inc to arrive by 2016:

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3111/will-bitcoin-suffer-from-a-mining-tragedy-of-the-commons-when-mining-fees-drop-t/8686#8686

I now see a much more urgent and catastrophic threat vector potentially circa 2016.

Difficulty will tend to rise and fall such that the system-wide cost of mining is nearly the value of the coins mined (not perfectly but on a smoothed basis roughly true).

Thus the lowest-cost marginal miners will earn the highest profits and rates-of-return. Thus, as Satoshi Nakamoto anticipated, mining will become centralized among those with more capital who can buy the highest performance hardware.

This is more accentuated by the designed volatility in the price of Bitcoins, because a) marginal cost producers can go through periods of negative profits or no production, and b) more capital means more inertial reserve, economy-of-scale access to capital funding markets, and access to debt to delay insolvency so as to smooth volatility in market conditions.

So to capture a majority or maybe even most of the mining, an entity probably merely needs to subsidize on a large-scale.

The government or powerful elite has the funds to do this, either in public view using taxes (or deposit insurance on P2P currencies) or in documented black budgets.

Is there a scenario where the public would clamor for the government to fix a problem by doing this?

Imagine the public became heavily invested in wild "dot.com 2.0" run of Bitcoin price appreciation to say $1000, $10000, or $100000 (as some people expect). All bubbles eventually crash. Tangentially, the creator of Bitcoin would probably be a $billionaire.

So with an exponential crash in price, there could be a drastic reduction in miners, joined with a public wanting to blame something or someone. The government could probably find massive support for deposit insurance.

Thus I conclude that the computational Proof-of-Work design of Bitcoin is a serious threat to anyone who views Bitcoin as being independent of the control of the government. Noting that correlation isn't proof yet via Occam's Razor it is ostensibly designed for this outcome and thus to fall into the lap of the government.

And we are not talking about 2040. The pricing froth is building now so this could happen soon. And we also have another halving of the debasement payout rate in late 2016.

Which Btw, is when the repeating-throughout-all-recorded-history Economic Confidence Model expects this current bounce of capital flows into the USA dollar economy to turn hard down again a la 2008— exactly when we will need a P2P currency to help us avoid chaos of capital controls and liquidity collapse. Bitcoin could fail at precisely the time when we will need it most. That is what concerns me so much.

I would very, very much appreciate if any downvoters sign with a comment, in case this answer becomes prophetic we will be able to know how prescient you were.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=158111.msg1684553#msg1684553

Satoshi said mining would become centralized:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

Here he said there would probably always be nodes willing to process for free after debasement ends. He did not elaborate on why:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html

Another reason to centralize mining is the communication overhead, which I implied in my prior post where I said Satoshi was discussing the 100GB bandwidth.

[TPTB_need_war]

Basis for my comments about Gregory Maxwell also derives from this interaction (wherein surprisingly I made the same judgement that I stated in this thread about his personality) and also the interaction the On the Longest Chain Rule and CoinJoin threads.

[cypherdoc]

plenty of bad news for non-Bitcoiners this morning:



i've been warning you.  Gold collapsing, Bitcoin soon UP:



breaking to new lows.  leading:



and if you don't believe a small miner, here's a large gold miner about to hit new lows:

[ssmc2]

Ripple ftw! Hahaaaaa  

http://www.afr.com/brand/chanticleer/cbas-crypto-currency-move-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-20150602-ghee7i

edit:

Wright says the issue with Ripple is that it is a traditional trust model.

"If they are all working well, you can trust them. The problem is that no system is as secure as Ripple would like to have us believe.

"Ripple is in effect an IOU, the trouble is that this IOU can be misused. You can send things you cannot possibly have. For instance, it is possible to send a ripple IOU for 100 million Bitcoin. The problem is that there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoin."

"So, Ripple is using a lack of awareness of what they really are to fool others into the belief that they are a distributed network and Blockchain-based system."

[phoenix1]

Lol! I almost poked you an hour ago to ask why we had not had our market report after the NFP moves!
Bonds taking a real pounding too ...

[cypherdoc]

The Jaws of Death are closing on gold and the Dow (large red arrow).  Bitcoin will benefit:

[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:

-

I have been reading this thread since early 2013, it is one of the little gems this forum has left. I respect your thoughts and what you have contributed. Until now I have refrained from commenting on/about anything monero in the little posts i make here, since there's an altsection for that.

But what you're doing now is playing the exact same card that all the bitcoin sceptics are pulling to illegitimatize btc, which imo is a weak one. Bitcoin provided a mental exercise when it appeared on the scene. You've been able to make it to the other side and are one of the most forward thinking guys ion this subject(esp if compared to the rest of the world). There are a lot of viable arguments against alts or monero but the stance you've been taking is of the same sturdiness of the bitcoin-'haters' and have resulted in fallacies based on price.

Maybe that is because of the monero-proponents here who sort of force you into this position. But don't become like the btc-haters who arn't willing to at least try out other perspectives on the matter. You resorted into the same kind of tactics as the old status quo you once battled.

You've been getting a lot of shit here lately in all the debates. And although you are used to getting shit about these topics it almost seems that lately you're losing it a little. Call me a troll/newb/insignifact whatever. The paragraph i started with was genuine.

i appreciate the feedback.  i've already taken these types of thoughts into consideration.

thezerg once accused me of being a dinorsaur with regards to innovation in Bitcoin, which you kinda are above.  i don't think that's true.  this whole debate is consistent with my long held belief that all innovation should occur on the mainchain.  if Bitcoin fails to do that as an open source project similar to linux, which was supposedly the great promise it made imo, then the whole concept of cryptocurrencies has failed and we'll just go back to fiat for the next hundred years.  this whole movement of Gavin to go to XT, if necessary, is innovation on the mainchain as i see it.  he's simply going to upgrade the software to accept bigger blocks.  and that's a good thing.  if anything, the dinosaurs and fear mongerers are the one's wanting to keep Bitcoin artificially restrained.  enough about that.

as far as Monero is concerned, it is a completely new altcoin with a different signature scheme.  to be honest, it is so far off my radar and so insignificant of an alt that i hadn't paid much attention to it.  i still don't really care to understand how it works b/c i don't think it will go anywhere.  could be wrong.  i've always said i'd welcome more privacy in Bitcoin and it's possible Monero does that.  i know there was a big technical issue months back but can't remember what it was.  maybe someone could clarify.  but that's beside the point.  it is NOT innovating on top of Bitcoin which i quite frankly see as a problem for it.  it is not leveraging upon the huge network effect already achieved by Bitcoin.  does that necessarily mean it will fail?  no.  but i think we get one chance with this b/c the implications are so huge.  if Bitcoin fails, they all fail.  if it's not improved upon or upgraded, it will fail.  if we all don't stick together as a group, it will fail.  if that means the economic majority has to fork off and shed the likes of the Blockstream cabal, we have a chance.  the more i think about it, the better i like the idea of getting rid of gmax and luke.  i think they're toxic.  yeah, gmax is a brilliant cryptographer but he can't be trusted with the keys or to run a company.  he's a KNOWN Bitcoin bear and posts an XMR donation address.  that's his prerogative but i think a core dev should be all out pushing and working on Bitcoin like Gavin does to advance the project forward.  shedding those guys would be a good thing.

everything i say is said in the context of the broader markets.  we're probably heading into the next recession and in that environment i believer altcoins will be slaughtered.  if Bitcoin can hang on, or even thrive, as a safe haven alternative, a major shift in finance may be upon us.  Bitcoin has already survived an unbelievable 6 yrs and next yr we will halve.  the way all the charts have lined up, it's just a matter of time before we start the next advance to end Bitcoin's longest Bear.  this hasn't even been the greatest Bear, imo, which was from 32 to 1.98 in 2011.  that is a great sign.  i've always said that the majority of ppl investing in cryptocurrencies will lose money.  this is definitely playing out and includes Bitcoiners who bought high.  it also includes full node operators and miners, btw, and accounts for the decrease in their numbers too.  but that will easily reverse with new adoption and the next price rise.

Bitcoin is like threading a needle; it needs to stay private enough to prevent all out war with TPTB.  so far so good.  is Monero in that category?  i doubt it but i'm not saying it won't possibly find a niche with the iCELatte's of the world.  oh, btw, it took me a while to figure out what his agenda was with him coming in here and pretending to be all concerned about Bitcoin when his real agenda was to diss it and pump Monero.  even smooth, who offers up decent stuff, was confusing me a while back before i found out he was a Monero core dev.  i couldn't figure out why when i got skeptical about altcoins he'd always quickly negate anything i had to say on that.  also when we got to talking about the 49%-51% attacks against Bitcoin he was posting highly frequently against Bitcoin.  that's ok, he's smart and is entitled to his opinion.  but it was never clear until someone mentioned his Monero connection what was happening.  i like to focus on what ppl's motivations are, that should be clear.  i won't let that cloud my judgment however.  i really think Bitcoin is on the right path, even if it has to fork to XT.  to me, that would just mean a much easier path forward with a new group of devs.  then the market can be free of financial conflicts of interest from the likes of Blockstream.  i've heard enough complaints about how big players like Nasdaq won't entrust large amounts of money to a monetary system controlled by an unknown, anarchistic leaning group of new leaders.  i wouldn't either if i didn't fully understand the system.  that's why i would be willing to migrate to XT if need be.  how would it be for Gavin to initiate growth to 20x at least for Bitcoin?  not bad at all i'd say.  we will overcome the technical constraints, if there really are some.  the financial incentives to find a solution will be so great at that point that full node growth is bound to happen, bandwidth providers will be happy to accept more traffic and will be financially incentivized to find solutions, and Wall St will then jump in with both feet.  and if we need to, we'll just pair the block size back temporarily until a real solution is found.  Monero can't even be a part of all that b/c the big players won't be allowed to play.

we will thread the needle b/c we can guide it to be so.

[_mr_e]

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:

-

I have been reading this thread since early 2013, it is one of the little gems this forum has left. I respect your thoughts and what you have contributed. Until now I have refrained from commenting on/about anything monero in the little posts i make here, since there's an altsection for that.

But what you're doing now is playing the exact same card that all the bitcoin sceptics are pulling to illegitimatize btc, which imo is a weak one. Bitcoin provided a mental exercise when it appeared on the scene. You've been able to make it to the other side and are one of the most forward thinking guys ion this subject(esp if compared to the rest of the world). There are a lot of viable arguments against alts or monero but the stance you've been taking is of the same sturdiness of the bitcoin-'haters' and have resulted in fallacies based on price.

Maybe that is because of the monero-proponents here who sort of force you into this position. But don't become like the btc-haters who arn't willing to at least try out other perspectives on the matter. You resorted into the same kind of tactics as the old status quo you once battled.

You've been getting a lot of shit here lately in all the debates. And although you are used to getting shit about these topics it almost seems that lately you're losing it a little. Call me a troll/newb/insignifact whatever. The paragraph i started with was genuine.

i appreciate the feedback.  i've already taken these types of thoughts into consideration.

thezerg once accused me of being a dinorsaur with regards to innovation in Bitcoin, which you kinda are above.  i don't think that's true.  this whole debate is consistent with my long held belief that all innovation should occur on the mainchain.  if Bitcoin fails to do that as an open source project similar to linux, which was supposedly the great promise it made imo, then the whole concept of cryptocurrencies has failed and we'll just go back to fiat for the next hundred years.  this whole movement of Gavin to go to XT, if necessary, is innovation on the mainchain as i see it.  he's simply going to upgrade the software to accept bigger blocks.  and that's a good thing.  if anything, the dinosaurs and fear mongerers are the one's wanting to keep Bitcoin artificially restrained.  enough about that.

as far as Monero is concerned, it is a completely new altcoin with a different signature scheme.  to be honest, it is so far off my radar and so insignificant of an alt that i hadn't paid much attention to it.  i still don't really care to understand how it works b/c i don't think it will go anywhere.  could be wrong.  i've always said i'd welcome more privacy in Bitcoin and it's possible Monero does that.  i know there was a big technical issue months back but can't remember what it was.  maybe someone could clarify.  but that's beside the point.  it is NOT innovating on top of Bitcoin which i quite frankly see as a problem for it.  it is not leveraging upon the huge network effect already achieved by Bitcoin.  does that necessarily mean it will fail?  no.  but i think we get one chance with this b/c the implications are so huge.  if Bitcoin fails, they all fail.  if it's not improved upon or upgraded, it will fail.  if we all don't stick together as a group, it will fail.  if that means the economic majority has to fork off and shed the likes of the Blockstream cabal, we have a chance.  the more i think about it, the better i like the idea of getting rid of gmax and luke.  i think they're toxic.  yeah, gmax is a brilliant cryptographer but he can't be trusted with the keys or to run a company.  he's a KNOWN Bitcoin bear and posts an XMR donation address.  that's his prerogative but i think a core dev should be all out pushing and working on Bitcoin like Gavin does to advance the project forward.  shedding those guys would be a good thing.

everything i say is said in the context of the broader markets.  we're probably heading into the next recession and in that environment i believer altcoins will be slaughtered.  if Bitcoin can hang on, or even thrive, as a safe haven alternative, a major shift in finance may be upon us.  Bitcoin has already survived an unbelievable 6 yrs and next yr we will halve.  the way all the charts have lined up, it's just a matter of time before we start the next advance to end Bitcoin's longest Bear.  this hasn't even been the greatest Bear, imo, which was from 32 to 1.98 in 2011.  that is a great sign.  i've always said that the majority of ppl investing in cryptocurrencies will lose money.  this is definitely playing out and includes Bitcoiners who bought high.  it also includes full node operators and miners, btw, and accounts for the decrease in their numbers too.  but that will easily reverse with new adoption and the next price rise.

Bitcoin is like threading a needle; it needs to stay private enough to prevent all out war with TPTB.  so far so good.  is Monero in that category?  i doubt it but i'm not saying it won't possibly find a niche with the iCELatte's of the world.  oh, btw, it took me a while to figure out what his agenda was with him coming in here and pretending to be all concerned about Bitcoin when his real agenda was to diss it and pump Monero.  even smooth, who offers up decent stuff, was confusing me a while back before i found out he was a Monero core dev.  i couldn't figure out why when i got skeptical about altcoins he'd always quickly negate anything i had to say on that.  also when we got to talking about the 49%-51% attacks against Bitcoin he was posting highly frequently against Bitcoin.  that's ok, he's smart and is entitled to his opinion.  but it was never clear until someone mentioned his Monero connection what was happening.  i like to focus on what ppl's motivations are, that should be clear.  i won't let that cloud my judgment however.  i really think Bitcoin is on the right path, even if it has to fork to XT.  to me, that would just mean a much easier path forward with a new group of devs.  then the market can be free of financial conflicts of interest from the likes of Blockstream.  i've heard enough complaints about how big players like Nasdaq won't entrust large amounts of money to a monetary system controlled by an unknown, anarchistic leaning group of new leaders.  i wouldn't either if i didn't fully understand the system.  that's why i would be willing to migrate to XT if need be.  how would it be for Gavin to initiate growth to 20x at least for Bitcoin?  not bad at all i'd say.  we will overcome the technical constraints, if there really are some.  the financial incentives to find a solution will be so great at that point that full node growth is bound to happen, bandwidth providers will be happy to accept more traffic and will be financially incentivized to find solutions, and Wall St will then jump in with both feet.  and if we need to, we'll just pair the block size back temporarily until a real solution is found.  Monero can't even be a part of all that b/c the big players won't be allowed to play.

we will thread the needle b/c we can guide it to be so.

Just to note, my connection with pumping Nxt/Supernet is because I truly believe it will grow to be a platform that will enhance and compliment Bitcoin, never would I want it to replace it. I do not believe Nxt is set up to function as a global currency and store of value due to the way it's designed. I do however believe it's feature set, which soon Bitcoin will be able to use without even holding any Nxt, will only serve to enable new Bitcoin functionality - which is still #1 in my books. It doesn't have to happen on the main chain to be useful, a couple differant chains will be very healthy "competition" spuring new innovations. Crypto is still very small and there is plenty of room for experimentation and growth. I agree that you need to remain a little more open and don't just shut things down without actually digging in to them, since that is the attitude all bitcoin/crypto haters hold to their detriment.

[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:

-

I have been reading this thread since early 2013, it is one of the little gems this forum has left. I respect your thoughts and what you have contributed. Until now I have refrained from commenting on/about anything monero in the little posts i make here, since there's an altsection for that.

But what you're doing now is playing the exact same card that all the bitcoin sceptics are pulling to illegitimatize btc, which imo is a weak one. Bitcoin provided a mental exercise when it appeared on the scene. You've been able to make it to the other side and are one of the most forward thinking guys ion this subject(esp if compared to the rest of the world). There are a lot of viable arguments against alts or monero but the stance you've been taking is of the same sturdiness of the bitcoin-'haters' and have resulted in fallacies based on price.

Maybe that is because of the monero-proponents here who sort of force you into this position. But don't become like the btc-haters who arn't willing to at least try out other perspectives on the matter. You resorted into the same kind of tactics as the old status quo you once battled.

You've been getting a lot of shit here lately in all the debates. And although you are used to getting shit about these topics it almost seems that lately you're losing it a little. Call me a troll/newb/insignifact whatever. The paragraph i started with was genuine.

i appreciate the feedback.  i've already taken these types of thoughts into consideration.

thezerg once accused me of being a dinorsaur with regards to innovation in Bitcoin, which you kinda are above.  i don't think that's true.  this whole debate is consistent with my long held belief that all innovation should occur on the mainchain.  if Bitcoin fails to do that as an open source project similar to linux, which was supposedly the great promise it made imo, then the whole concept of cryptocurrencies has failed and we'll just go back to fiat for the next hundred years.  this whole movement of Gavin to go to XT, if necessary, is innovation on the mainchain as i see it.  he's simply going to upgrade the software to accept bigger blocks.  and that's a good thing.  if anything, the dinosaurs and fear mongerers are the one's wanting to keep Bitcoin artificially restrained.  enough about that.

as far as Monero is concerned, it is a completely new altcoin with a different signature scheme.  to be honest, it is so far off my radar and so insignificant of an alt that i hadn't paid much attention to it.  i still don't really care to understand how it works b/c i don't think it will go anywhere.  could be wrong.  i've always said i'd welcome more privacy in Bitcoin and it's possible Monero does that.  i know there was a big technical issue months back but can't remember what it was.  maybe someone could clarify.  but that's beside the point.  it is NOT innovating on top of Bitcoin which i quite frankly see as a problem for it.  it is not leveraging upon the huge network effect already achieved by Bitcoin.  does that necessarily mean it will fail?  no.  but i think we get one chance with this b/c the implications are so huge.  if Bitcoin fails, they all fail.  if it's not improved upon or upgraded, it will fail.  if we all don't stick together as a group, it will fail.  if that means the economic majority has to fork off and shed the likes of the Blockstream cabal, we have a chance.  the more i think about it, the better i like the idea of getting rid of gmax and luke.  i think they're toxic.  yeah, gmax is a brilliant cryptographer but he can't be trusted with the keys or to run a company.  he's a KNOWN Bitcoin bear and posts an XMR donation address.  that's his prerogative but i think a core dev should be all out pushing and working on Bitcoin like Gavin does to advance the project forward.  shedding those guys would be a good thing.

everything i say is said in the context of the broader markets.  we're probably heading into the next recession and in that environment i believer altcoins will be slaughtered.  if Bitcoin can hang on, or even thrive, as a safe haven alternative, a major shift in finance may be upon us.  Bitcoin has already survived an unbelievable 6 yrs and next yr we will halve.  the way all the charts have lined up, it's just a matter of time before we start the next advance to end Bitcoin's longest Bear.  this hasn't even been the greatest Bear, imo, which was from 32 to 1.98 in 2011.  that is a great sign.  i've always said that the majority of ppl investing in cryptocurrencies will lose money.  this is definitely playing out and includes Bitcoiners who bought high.  it also includes full node operators and miners, btw, and accounts for the decrease in their numbers too.  but that will easily reverse with new adoption and the next price rise.

Bitcoin is like threading a needle; it needs to stay private enough to prevent all out war with TPTB.  so far so good.  is Monero in that category?  i doubt it but i'm not saying it won't possibly find a niche with the iCELatte's of the world.  oh, btw, it took me a while to figure out what his agenda was with him coming in here and pretending to be all concerned about Bitcoin when his real agenda was to diss it and pump Monero.  even smooth, who offers up decent stuff, was confusing me a while back before i found out he was a Monero core dev.  i couldn't figure out why when i got skeptical about altcoins he'd always quickly negate anything i had to say on that.  also when we got to talking about the 49%-51% attacks against Bitcoin he was posting highly frequently against Bitcoin.  that's ok, he's smart and is entitled to his opinion.  but it was never clear until someone mentioned his Monero connection what was happening.  i like to focus on what ppl's motivations are, that should be clear.  i won't let that cloud my judgment however.  i really think Bitcoin is on the right path, even if it has to fork to XT.  to me, that would just mean a much easier path forward with a new group of devs.  then the market can be free of financial conflicts of interest from the likes of Blockstream.  i've heard enough complaints about how big players like Nasdaq won't entrust large amounts of money to a monetary system controlled by an unknown, anarchistic leaning group of new leaders.  i wouldn't either if i didn't fully understand the system.  that's why i would be willing to migrate to XT if need be.  how would it be for Gavin to initiate growth to 20x at least for Bitcoin?  not bad at all i'd say.  we will overcome the technical constraints, if there really are some.  the financial incentives to find a solution will be so great at that point that full node growth is bound to happen, bandwidth providers will be happy to accept more traffic and will be financially incentivized to find solutions, and Wall St will then jump in with both feet.  and if we need to, we'll just pair the block size back temporarily until a real solution is found.  Monero can't even be a part of all that b/c the big players won't be allowed to play.

we will thread the needle b/c we can guide it to be so.

Just to note, my connection with pumping Nxt/Supernet is because I truly believe it will grow to be a platform that will enhance and compliment Bitcoin, never would I want it to replace it. I do not believe Nxt is set up to function as a global currency and store of value due to the way it's designed. I do however believe it's feature set, which soon Bitcoin will be able to use without even holding any Nxt, will only serve to enable new Bitcoin functionality - which is still #1 in my books. It doesn't have to happen on the main chain to be useful, a couple differant chains will be very healthy "competition" spuring new innovations. Crypto is still very small and there is plenty of room for experimentation and growth. I agree that you need to remain a little more open and don't just shut things down without actually digging in to them, since that is the attitude all bitcoin/crypto haters hold to their detriment.

while i agree with the "digging in" part, i've taken a somewhat opposite approach.  and that is to dig into Bitcoin so deep that you understand it so well that any competing altcoin would really have to stand out to attract my attention and time to dig into it.  granted my "understanding" fits neatly into my mental framework of how i look at the world so that is where disagreement btwn individuals will occur.  i think of myself being so right so far so i'm going to stick with it until something jumps out at me.  and it hasn't been Monero.

[cypherdoc]

there's a fundamental disconnect with developing new altcoins that Bitcoiners should be able to migrate to or exchange for.  it's called instability or even inflation.

this ties in with Bitcoin's promise of being open source and being programmable money.  if Monero or any other coin is proven to be successful to the point of forcing all Bitcoiner's to switch, then i think crypto money as a concept fails.  why?  it's b/c that process causes so many ppl to lose money in aggregate from the migration process.  this is why i don't like SC's b/c it can force the same thing if a SC becomes dominant.  ppl can't afford that and it destroys stability and thus confidence.  it would appear as if crypto were a ponzi scheme, luring in ppl to one scam, only to take their money and create another.

Bitcoin has given a promise and it needs to deliver on that.  that is what i will support.  innovation and growth to all corners of the Earth for maximum decentralization.

[_mr_e]

there's a fundamental disconnect with developing new altcoins that Bitcoiners should be able to migrate to or exchange for.  it's called instability or even inflation.

this ties in with Bitcoin's promise of being open source and being programmable money.  if Monero or any other coin is proven to be successful to the point of forcing all Bitcoiner's to switch, then i think crypto money as a concept fails.  why?  it's b/c that process causes so many ppl to lose money in aggregate from the migration process.  this is why i don't like SC's b/c it can force the same thing if a SC becomes dominant.  ppl can't afford that and it destroys stability and thus confidence.  it would appear as if crypto were a ponzi scheme, luring in ppl to one scam, only to take their money and create another.

Bitcoin has given a promise and it needs to deliver on that.  that is what i will support.  innovation and growth to all corners of the Earth for maximum decentralization.

Well good thing you won't need to worry about that because the supernetwork adds better-then-monero anonymity directly to the bitcoin chain itself!

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

How do you create a network topology that is decentralized at any scale?

With a design that enables the ends of the network to be autonomous (e.g. the internet), i.e. the End-to-End principle. Ideally the power (autonomy) of the ends over the center (or the group) should get stronger the more it is Sybil attacked (i.e. the attack doesn't exist).

Abstractly not erroneously redefining decentralization to be centralization-by-free-will-but-no-other-choice (aka "one for all, and all for one" collectivism) as Bitcoin did:

Marching in lockstep doesn't mean centralized (of course; that's the whole idea of Bitcoin in a way).

So no universal agreement on the state of the ledger? There must be some way of settling up over time. But I guess you just mean the protocol doesn't have to be shared, in some sense. This may be outside my technical knowledge. Not being a coder at all, I admit I haven't thought a great deal about how Bitcoin runs under the hood until recently. Your hints are getting somewhat tantalizing, but without seeing the whole thing we of course can't know if there's some obvious error if you're recreating Hashcash or Ripple/Stellar (can you? if it's that important you may as well open it to peer review; with a lot of it precoded you could still easily be first out of the gate).

[cypherdoc]

sometimes, you just have to focus on the obvious:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246607

[rocks]

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.   

I read the whitepaper before. I never said it was not a clever scheme, it is.

What I said is it is possible to layer similar schemes on top of Bitcoin. For an example just look at the reusable payment codes justusranvier posted here a bit ago. That alone gets you a long way towards the anonymity of Monero, and more and more methods will continue to be developed on top of Bitcoin over time, achieving whatever level of anonymity desired.

So again, the differentiating factor for Monero is simply the decision to implement a single scheme at the protocol level, but there is no requirement to implement a scheme in that manner, there are other options to achieve the same thing in Bitcoin. No those options are not fully developed nor widespread today, but they will be.

In fact, implementing a single fixed scheme may turn out to be limiting over time