Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[da2ce7]

let's list a few of the tactics employed by the Blockstream devs:

1.  appeal to authority- "the entire dev/technical community is against this"-which they're not if you look outside core dev.
2.  scare tactics- "if Bitcoin forks, it will fail"
3.  character assassination- "Gavin hasn't coded for over a year", "we are shocked by his behavior", "he's out courting merchants, exchanges, & miners behind our backs".

i honestly ask you, which of the 3 tactics has Gavin employed on Reddit or here?  my answer is NONE.  and here we yet another example of #2 tonite by gmax:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3awomg/how_the_bitcoin_experiment_might_fail/

he's getting pounded too.  and these are the reasons Blockstream will lose in the end.  no one trusts them.

I've been closely following the debate, in-fact I even tried my hand at a proposal.

I'm a very cautious man by nature. I first want to comment how the core development team has so-far done an underrepresented engineering work in computer science in keeping the Bitcoin network running.  This achievement should not be under-stated.  They have really done an remarkable job.

Part of their success has been their extremely conservative nature. In the past, when changes have been rushed through, such as BIP 16 https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0016.mediawiki , without full consideration of the proposed alternatives (BIP 17) https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0017.mediawiki we have found serious issues with them in hindsight.

To quote:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/34mrtj/eli5_why_is_peter_todd_important_and_why_do_some/

[–]nullcGreg Maxwell - Bitcoin Expert 14 points 1 month ago*

To give an external perspective from Luke's on this;

I now agree that BIP17 was better; not just slightly better but very clearly better in important, meaningful ways.

At the time I preferred BIP16, in hindsight I made an error in reasoning-- part of this was that I incorrectly believed that the difference was smaller than it actually was: There were substantial differences in terms of limitations of P2SH that none of us (probably not even Luke) understood at the time. (I say not even Luke because Luke's primary argument was about the "aesthetics" of the implementation, which were not-- by themselves-- that persuasive to anyone.)

A lack of care in this deployment resulted in substantial non-trivial (3-5 blocks) network forks for a period of about two months. BIP16's irregularity resulted in alternative implementers being somewhat slower to implement and more error prone. Luke just gave a concrete example (the idiotic 520 byte limit; which I think we didn't even realize existed in BIP16 at the time, spec was updated later to mention it); another is that you can't combine multiple P2SH scripts, e.g. to get an OR where you can spend a coin with either a small script or a big one-- that one we knew existed but didn't give adequate thought to, it's turned out to be a rather annoying limitation.

At the time the fact that the BIP16 approach had more testing and work on it, especially after the embarrassing design reboot after OP_EVAL turned out to be vulnerability introducing, and Gavin's strong preference for it, combined with the assessment of "little difference" made me prefer BIP16; as anything else would have meant additional delays. In reality, it was basically years before there was widespread P2SH use, an additional delay would have been better. It's worth noting that the person (roconnor) who found the OP_EVAL flaw also preferred BIP17-- which was probably a sign we should have paid more attention to. It's not a big regret but I do consider it a lesson.

It didn't help that some people (mostly not Luke himself) tried to construct a public drama with non-technical community members over what was still just a kind of boring technical argument. Unfortunately; trying to make drama can have exactly the opposite effect of embedding people in their positions and making them immune to reason. It's almost universally a bad move if you care about achieving a high quality result. I keep trying to remind myself of the importance of deciding to be immune to political drama in order to avoid the failure modes it creates if you let it influence you.

You can see a chart of opinions at the time: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2SH_Votes BIP16 was a condorcet winner; but most people considered either approach acceptable.

Rushing important decisions is a fools game. A prudent person makes well informed and slow careful choices.


I would much prefer to suffer the discomfort of transaction fees being a few more cents, than to rush a hard fork and fuck up the community (the most valuable thing that Bitcoin has).

(From a Old Hat).

[1713557358]

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[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I'm less interested in rushing the hard fork than I was, now that it seems less likely that Bitcoin breaks due to full blocks.

High fees eventually is burdensome, but that's a much less urgent problem because it takes real adoption to get fees high and it ramps gently. Hopefully fees will give us a nice smooth ramp up in pain so that the need to hard fork can come smoothly to a head, rather than suddenly, leaving the holdouts with no ground to stand on so that consensus is easier, without having the pain be so sudden and intense that it results in a PR fiasco.

Gavin's plan to schedule a hard fork for a future date is fine with me, though, since it can always be unscheduled if necessary. In the meantime we can expect everything to be tried and tested so that we'll know whether it's really necessary and how much opposition there really is.

A fork will be necessary eventually either way, and everyone acknowledges that. Since the question is only "when and by how much,"  the ramping fees creates a nice gentle mounting of pressure toward consensus on exactly how the "raise the cap" vs. "optimize other ways" contours play out.

[Bagatell]

[–]nullcGreg Maxwell - Bitcoin Expert 14 points 1 month ago*

It didn't help that some people (mostly not Luke himself) tried to construct a public drama with non-technical community members over what was still just a kind of boring technical argument. Unfortunately; trying to make drama can have exactly the opposite effect of embedding people in their positions and making them immune to reason. It's almost universally a bad move if you care about achieving a high quality result. I keep trying to remind myself of the importance of deciding to be immune to political drama in order to avoid the failure modes it creates if you let it influence you.

And here we are again.

[TPTB_need_war]

I'm less interested in rushing the hard fork than I was, now that it seems less likely that Bitcoin breaks due to full blocks.

I believe the rush was fabricated to draw Blockstream into a political cat fight which of course Gavinmike could win because the majority are easily hoodwinked by "this is for the masses" and Blockstream "is against progress" and are "elitists". I think they wanted to prevent side chains some how if they could gain control over the fork, such as blacklisting all BTC that went off chain.

That is why I urged Adam to cool it in public (no direct communication, just my posts and one unacknowledged private message).

Appears Gavinmike may be losing now as awareness is rising.

[sickpig]

As far as I remember the debate about the max block size cap started a "long" time ago,
an it risked to stall indefinitely.

In my opinion Gavin's conduct has objectively an accelerating effect on the decision
process. I dare to say that such "extreme" attitude had stimulated a lot devs
in focusing to find a solution and to come to a compromise.

I'm not saying that his proposal is perfect or better than any others on the table, just
stating that his strategy have moved the situation toward a new equilibrium by a long shot.

I agree. Gavin's threat of a unilateral hardfork did successfully concentrate minds on coming up with solutions to the problem. How do you know that his intention was not to stage a dev-team coup? He behaved exactly as if he really intended to, nothing suggested otherwise (although I don't claim to be aware of every bit of public commentary Gavin has made, as previously mentioned, I am not a twitter user  )

I don't know as any other person who based his opinion on fact. I can for sure observe public community  reactions to Gavin's behaviour, though.

Well, the facts are that Gavin literally did just that; an alternative, hardforked client with a 20 MB block limit, and anyone from the core deve team that didn't like that could watch while he lobbies miners, services and merchants to accept the new client. That was what he said, he has not retracted it, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him. Those are the facts, are they not?

Sure facts are facts, while speculation is another thing entirely.

Gaving did something and community at large react to his stimulation.

And I prise community reactions, in particular core devs reaction.  

From what I can see we're moving forward in the process of finding
a way to make bitcoin scale.

Just to make an example in the beginning of the debate a lot of devs
(core or not) did not acknowledge that a block size increase was needed
Now almost everybody, modulo mircea popescu and mpex group, agree
about some sort of increase.

This is a result of Gavin action, and I say a positive one.

Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).

Mind you I never said that Gavin's proposal are the best available technical
wise, I don't have enough knowledge, skills and time to make a proper judgement.

[rocks]

But polls show that Gavin has a clear majority... its just certain core devs who object and not on technical grounds.  And most of them are working for a single organization.  How is that "hectoring a community"?

It isn't. Who said that?

There is a difference between "we need a hard fork to increase the block size" and "Gavin's plan is the way to do it, (which ever plan he settles upon)"

Most all the devs want a hard fork to increase block size.  Very few are on board with Gavin's plan.
Anyhow, it looks like the Bitcoin Core hard fork will be more likely to progress from gmaxwell's BIP, and the XT fork from Gavins perhaps.
They may remain compatible until there is a block that one would process and the other wouldn't.

You can include me in that contingent: we do need a hard fork to increase the block size (and only for what that will achieve, buying time). Very few people are debating that now, and I myself have been aware of the scalability issue for almost as long as I've been interested in bitcoin.

Re: which designs will be implemented on which fork; I thought Gavin had decided against the hostile fork?

the use of the term hostile is propaganda.

its not hostile, it's only hostile if you are feeling threatened like maybe the majority of Core developer working on another another hard fork and want to leverage block size increase with your proposed improvements.

Telling the entire core dev team, the commercial bitcoin players and the bitcoin user community that if they didn't like it, they were powerless to stop him? This is friendly gesture in your eyes?

I'm not even being rhetorical using the word "hostile", Gavin and Mike's attitude was exactly that: hostile.

That is completely not the situation at all.

Gavin was clear that the intent was to let the bitcoin community decide, by enabling the community to have options they themselves could pick from (bitcoind, bitcoin XT). The reality of the current situation is the core devs have probably put in less than 1% of the coding infrastructure work to get the bitcoin ecosystem to where it is today, but simultaneously get to dictate almost all the terms. That makes no sense for an open platform.

Telling the entire core dev team, the commercial bitcoin players and the bitcoin user community that if they didn't like it, they were powerless to stop him? This is friendly gesture in your eyes?

Gavin simply enables choice, he has no power to force anything with that move. In fact the default no action is for people to stay with the blockstream team. People have to make a concious choice to switch to XT, while the "no vote" segment essentially votes no. The path Gavin offered with XT was in fact probably the hardest to make work simply because of that fact.

I've come to see a single core as being the single greatest threat to Bitcoin out of all of this. A better situation to me would be a bitcoin P2P network with several separately developed cores that adhere to a common set of rules. The upgrade path is then always put to a vote. Any one core could then propose a change simply by implementing it (with a rule that after x% of blocks back the change it becomes active).

Then if people like the change, more will move to that core. This in turn would cause the other core to adopt the change or lose their users, and that is how consensus is achieved. If a majority did not like the change, they would not move to that core, and the change would never be accepted.

At no point in this do any set of gatekeepers get to dictate terms. Since no core has a majority of users captured, change would always have to come through user acceptance and adoption, and developers would simply be proposers of options.

[Carlton Banks]

I'm less interested in rushing the hard fork than I was, now that it seems less likely that Bitcoin breaks due to full blocks.

I sent transactions Monday during the test, I just picked some older outputs from the bottom of the wallet, and they confirmed after 1 block.

[Carlton Banks]

Well, the facts are that Gavin literally did just that; an alternative, hardforked client with a 20 MB block limit, and anyone from the core deve team that didn't like that could watch while he lobbies miners, services and merchants to accept the new client. That was what he said, he has not retracted it, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him. Those are the facts, are they not?

Sure facts are facts, while speculation is another thing entirely.

Gaving did something and community at large react to his stimulation.

And I prise community reactions, in particular core devs reaction.  

From what I can see we're moving forward in the process of finding
a way to make bitcoin scale.

Just to make an example in the beginning of the debate a lot of devs
(core or not) did not acknowledge that a block size increase was needed
Now almost everybody, modulo mircea popescu and mpex group, agree
about some sort of increase.

This is a result of Gavin action, and I say a positive one.

Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).

Speculating about what? I am sorry, but the only speculative statement in the above posts between you and I is the part where you assume Gavin was just acting, just doing this for the effect it would have. Again, that's not what he said, he has not retracted what he did say to confess his secret altruistic plan to get everyone talking, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him.

[TPTB_need_war]

I've come to see a single core as being the single greatest threat to Bitcoin out of all of this. A better situation to me would be a bitcoin P2P network with several separately developed cores that adhere to a common set of rules. The upgrade path is then always put to a vote. Any one core could then propose a change simply by implementing it (with a rule that after x% of blocks back the change it becomes active).

Then if people like the change, more will move to that core. This in turn would cause the other core to adopt the change or lose their users, and that is how consensus is achieved. If a majority did not like the change, they would not move to that core, and the change would never be accepted.

At no point in this do any set of gatekeepers get to dictate terms. Since no core has a majority of users captured, change would always have to come through user acceptance and adoption, and developers would simply be proposers of options.

You just reinvented pegged side chains.

[sickpig]

Well, the facts are that Gavin literally did just that; an alternative, hardforked client with a 20 MB block limit, and anyone from the core deve team that didn't like that could watch while he lobbies miners, services and merchants to accept the new client. That was what he said, he has not retracted it, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him. Those are the facts, are they not?

Sure facts are facts, while speculation is another thing entirely.

Gaving did something and community at large react to his stimulation.

And I prise community reactions, in particular core devs reaction.  

From what I can see we're moving forward in the process of finding
a way to make bitcoin scale.

Just to make an example in the beginning of the debate a lot of devs
(core or not) did not acknowledge that a block size increase was needed
Now almost everybody, modulo mircea popescu and mpex group, agree
about some sort of increase.

This is a result of Gavin action, and I say a positive one.

Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).

Speculating about what? I am sorry, but the only speculative statement in the above posts between you and I is the part where you assume Gavin was just acting, just doing this for the effect it would have. Again, that's not what he said, he has not retracted what he did say to confess his secret altruistic plan to get everyone talking, nor confessed the ulterior motive you are affording him.

I'm not saying you're speculating and neither do I.

In fact I'm not assuming anything, not even that Gavin is just acting.

I'm just describing the facts as I see them, just to make clear that even if I want to,
and I don't, I can't determine real Gavin's intentions.

So the answer to your question
 

How do you know that his intention was not to stage a dev-team coup?

is still: I don't know, because it is impossible to determine his real intention.

[Carlton Banks]

So the answer to your question:
 

How do you know that his intention was not to stage a dev-team coup?

is still: I don't know, because it is impossible to determine his real intention.

Agreed. It's a fundamental truism, applies pretty much universally. You cannot therefore say that Gavin's conduct was a good idea, only the outcome (which was in stark opposition to his conduct) was laudable.

[NewLiberty]

Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).

An accelerated delivery is not always a good thing for development quality.

I'm more of the opinion that Bitcoin will succeed, provided that it does not fail, and that a misstep can easily be worse than doing nothing.
Intelligent people may disagree with this.

[sickpig]

Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).

An accelerated delivery is not always a good thing for development quality.

I'm more of the opinion that Bitcoin will succeed, provided that it does not fail, and that a misstep can easily be worse than doing nothing.
Intelligent people may disagree with this.

I agree.

Going too fast is never a wise thing to do, especially when you're dealing
with ~3.5bn system that could potentially bring a huge change in our society.

I don't know if doing nothing is the right thing to do, though.

I suppose that all depends on the definition of "success".

[hdbuck]

Other less measurable, but nonetheless actual result, is the increasing pace
at which "layer 2" solutions are developed (Lightning Network, Sidechain, Payment
channels implementations etc etc).

An accelerated delivery is not always a good thing for development quality.

I'm more of the opinion that Bitcoin will succeed, provided that it does not fail, and that a misstep can easily be worse than doing nothing.
Intelligent people may disagree with this.

I'd say it depends what you mean by "succeed".

Do you mean price-wise, as in making you rich, or changing the face of the world and finance?
It appeared to me lately that whilst both outcomes should be complementary, it probably wont be when considering the details of the path we are now on.

Explaining myself:

Bitcoin, as a disruptive technology, is meant to disrupt, hence, tearing the ambiant status quo in its field - ie. finance.

However, it seems lately that the big names in its ecosystem are more concerned about their personal gain and position than working for the greater good: enter Wall Street, banks, ETFs, lobbyists, regulations, intelligencia, politics, etc...

Well imho that is a very risky move.. sustaining the old ways and powers in place is denaturing bitcoin's subversive part.

I like to refer to myself as a bitcoiner, plain and simple, waging between personal gain and paranoia.

The key aspect for bitcoin to success for me is its capacity of giving back a little power to the people, avoiding Big Bro in a lesser extent and its corrupted-to-the-bone establishment.

I understand financial freedom has a cost, but it seems we are just turning in circles here: the head of the spear being mortified by power, money, and secrecy.

So imho, Bitcoin will probably leave us with a bitter tasting, once they will be done with it.

But being a bitcoiner also imply being a little crazy and having a little faith

[Zarathustra]

Nope, it is confirmed there is no global elite.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33771

Whether the society and its elite is national or international or both is irrelevant. Relevant is: Do you promote the society (collectivism/paternalism) or the community (anarchy, self-sufficiency).

I promote the local and global community with my cryptocoin (and other technology) work and my concept of the coming Knowledge Age. But for you this must be absolute and preclude knowledge sharing in a "global community of exchange / sharing". The latter part is where we differ and you are all tied up into your Mathusianism which clouds your vision.

My vision is not clouded.

http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-we-re-on-the-brink-of-earth-s-sixth-mass-extinction

[Zarathustra]

Fun watching u two dance.. Get a room already! :p

Me and cypherdoc:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qoys8eUn9k

And I only wanted to box  

Here's what inevitably happens to poor cypherdoc when he bothers me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnSpeGlc9ic

It's been going on for years but the guy never seems to learn.

no one cares for your socialist, elitist view around here except for maybe TPTB and a few others.  but go ahead, dream on.

This is true.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I'm more of the opinion that Bitcoin will succeed, provided that it does not fail, and that a misstep can easily be worse than doing nothing.
Intelligent people may disagree with this.

The question is, what more qualifies as "doing nothing":

• Letting Bitcoin operate with constantly full blocks, which has never been done before, or
• Continuing to let Bitcoin operate with non-full blocks, effectively uncapped,* as it always has

   ?


*Of course a large part of the debate is over whether the current hard cap is actually doing anything. So the appeal to conservatism implied by "doing nothing" just pushes the question back.

[NewLiberty]

I suppose that all depends on the definition of "success".

My definition of success is perhaps modest to some, but it is still far away:

Bitcoin being the protocol and the coin of the internet realm.

If it achieves this, it could well become much more, but this is the success for which it is designed.

[macsga]

I suppose that all depends on the definition of "success".

My definition of success is perhaps modest to some, but it is still far away:

Bitcoin being the protocol and the coin of the internet realm.

If it achieves this, it could well become much more, but this is the success for which it is designed.

Knowing your way of thinking, yes; it is a modest target for something that incorporates so many different things in just one package. Maybe the "beginning of success" would've been more appropriate.

[thezerg]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-is-most-exposed-to-a-greek-default-2015-06-23

“The private sector “has almost no direct exposure to Greece anymore,” wrote strategists at J.P. Morgan Cazenove, in a Monday note urging clients to get back into German stocks.


So the whole 2011-2012 Greek loan restructuring was basically a strategy to move the bagholders from rich powerful bankers and investors into the hands of the general population (as taxed by their governments), wasn't it?

EDIT: the entire system is broken.  Let private lenders lend to eurozone countries at essentially no risk (that's moral hazard of bailouts).  Then bail out the country and the private lenders using public money because of political/social concepts like one unified europe. 

How about letting governments default on loans WITHOUT kicking them out of the eurozone.  How about a government bankruptcy -> elect a new govt, fire the top 10 central bankers and any other bankers the other central banks deem responsible and have a 5-10 year probationary period where their local central bank cannot give euro-creating loans.