Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[justusranvier]

A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them"

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

I had not seen this comment until it was pointed out to me today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhy7kk?context=1

There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post.

[thezerg]

A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them"

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

I had not seen this comment until it was pointed out to me today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhy7kk?context=1

There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post.

Specifically for the risk of sidechains replacing the main chain: do you think that the bitcoin economy would move their coins to a chain controlled by a single company? They'd be idiots if they did.

But now we fear that the economy will be forced to because of a refusal to scale the main chain.  Given a choice between no business at all and a dangerous "idiots" move, companies will pick the "idiot" move and hope for the best.

And if there is a specific issue where you think I (or anyone else) is being partial because of a conflict of interest: please yell.

OK now we are yelling.  The Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to permanently remain at a max size of 1MB.  Tons of historical posts show this and show that Satoshi and others of that time were fully cognizant of the partial centralization that might ensue (e.g. full nodes are not practical at home and must move to the cloud).  I do not need to repeat these. 

So if you want a small-sized chain, why don't you create a sidechain with a low block limit?


Is there ANYONE out there who is:
1. not a miner
2. does not have mining investments
3. is not affiliated with Blockstrem
And
4. wants to keep the block size at 1MB?

[cypherdoc]

i'd like to revisit that thought experiment i introduced last week.

an anonymous person hard forks the current Bitcoin code with the only change being a lifting of the limit.  he provably destroys the commit key (a Bitcoin private key) over at github thru a op_return spend.  the result being a Bitcoin source code with no core devs and thus no ability to change it going forward.  would that be enough to carry Bitcoin forward for the next century?

if anything needed to be changed in an emergency going forward, anonymous person #2 could do the same thing.

would it work?  i suspect the answer is yes.

[brg444]

A bad thing is when people like cypherdoc derive from the conflict of interest malicious intents without proof other than "I don't trust them"

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

That choice of actions is what lead to ongoing concern about their motives, not the founding of Blockstream itself.

I had not seen this comment until it was pointed out to me today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhy7kk?context=1

There clearly were some accurate acknowledgements of potential conflicts of interests in that Reddit post.

Specifically for the risk of sidechains replacing the main chain: do you think that the bitcoin economy would move their coins to a chain controlled by a single company? They'd be idiots if they did.

But now we fear that the economy will be forced to because of a refusal to scale the main chain.  Given a choice between no business at all and a dangerous "idiots" move, companies will pick the "idiot" move and hope for the best.

And if there is a specific issue where you think I (or anyone else) is being partial because of a conflict of interest: please yell.

OK now we are yelling.  The Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to permanently remain at a max size of 1MB.  Tons of historical posts show this and show that Satoshi and others of that time were fully cognizant of the partial centralization that might ensue (e.g. full nodes are not practical at home and must move to the cloud).  I do not need to repeat these. 

So if you want a small-sized chain, why don't you create a sidechain with a low block limit?


Is there ANYONE out there who is:
1. not a miner
2. does not have mining investments
3. is not affiliated with Blockstrem
And
4. wants to keep the block size at 1MB?

Yet another argumentum ad populum. Reminder that this is not a vote and that we should avoid any form of "democratic" outcome.

Here is an excellent quote from a recent article explaining why your logic fails you:

OUR CURRENT ALTERNATIVES SUCK
I refer to our conversation / information alternatives: /r/bitcoin, mailing lists, and chatrooms. They don’t work and their problems will deepen as BTC becomes more popular and more valuable (threatening).

The Basics

Let’s breeze through the currently known problems with the alternatives, mainly r/bitcoin: that those who seek expertise can’t validate (or even identify) what they read, those with expertise report frustration at having their views de-emphasized or misrepresented, bias goes undetected (or over-detected), conversations are duplicated (or misplaced), falling signal-to-noise ratios invite a septic futility into each stultified conversation. Almost no one is polite, and, in fact, everyone generally behaves in a way that would drive off any Thinking Person (but if they weren’t so critical, things might even be worse).

The Do-er Alone Learneth

OK, let’s take it to the next level. After all, this is the governance of Bitcoin we’re talking about.

On the subreddit/mailing-list a few people write, and many people read.

Socrates
The (spoken) thoughts of Socrates on the written word are worth mentioning:

“For this invention [writing] … You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. … He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him-who-knows the matter about which they are written.” –(Socrates, Phaedrus 274c-275b, emphasis added)

Occasionally, reddit is used to enable a dialogue (the “AMA”). In such cases, everyone who asked a question would probably merit Socrates’ approval. On mailing lists, the Q&A are seemingly the only relevant sections of the entire discussion (other than to state mind-numbing tautologies like “we must be careful” or “Bitcoin won’t scale the way it is configured right now”).

My personal opinion is that, from the entire blocksize “discussion” thus far, I have (reliably) learned almost nothing. If anything, I have only learned about who, individually, I dislike (which does not really help with the underlying blocksize question). The state of the debate seems to reflect no technical info whatsoever, instead merely the ratio of BigBlock-Users (users who pay transaction fees, but do not run nodes) to SmallBlock-Users (those who run full nodes, but do not pay transaction fees), and who was friends with who before the conversation started.

The Internet is Not Representative

Haven’t you noticed a big difference between arguments experienced in real life, and arguments experienced on the internet? While the real-life arguments ultimately produce the phenomenon of “agreement”, netizens seem more contentious.

InternetWrong

I think that this is because of “free exit”: those who learn the answer leave the conversation (and do so without altering the conversation’s state: no having to admit that they were wrong, no feeling obligated to go back and convince others, etc). Say a website has 10,000,000 viewers, of which 5,000 agree with a given statement, and 5 disagree. What will the public see in the comments section? 1 principal dissenter arguing with 1 principal endorser (9,999,998 free-exits)…until? If one arguer drops out, another is likely to take his place. Observers will have no easy way to tell when (if) the debate has concluded, or what the conclusion was. On the internet, no one can tell how many people agree with something.

....

For example, almost every technical person has given up on Proof of Stake, to the point where it is openly laughed at and ridiculed at conferences. But you wouldn’t know it from The Internet, where it seems like “pro-PoS” and “anti-PoS” are each one of two equally-endorsed points of view. The technical elite are simply tired of repeating themselves.

Yet the voice of The Market speaks tirelessly. The PoS holdouts struggle to obtain 1/250th of Bitcoin’s marketcap, and –even more telling for an upstart– command almost none of the space’s VC funding / capital investment. They consistently lose to completely-valueless Copycoins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.

[brg444]

And the hits keep coming for the dangerous experiment of maintaining artificially constrained blocks. From 2009-14 Bitcoin functioned with no effective block size limit and mining decentralization post-ASIC was improving. Now, in 2015, that this latent piece of software is allowed to take effect the unintended consequences rear up:
(my bold emphasis below)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1125214.20

And here is why you shouldn't jump to conclusions so hastily

[cypherdoc]

all the mining centralization FUD is still BS:

[cypherdoc]

good news from Europe:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3dijsh/positive_rulingadvice_from_eu_no_vat_on_bitcoin/

[iCEBREAKER]

I suspect we agree that should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern (EG, if we see actual congestion resulting in appropriate fees no longer prioritizing their tx) the controversy will rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus.

no, the eye doctor says you're a blind fool.

Why do you say that?

Do you believe the controversy will *not* rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus, should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern?

you and the other Cripplecoiner's are blind fools to what is happening right now as a result of the 1MB choke you are inflicting on Bitcoin.  you don't have the vision to determine when there is urgency.

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

I like that one because it is objective.

What is your definition?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are defining actual congestion as "zero/low fee tx not being sufficiently subsidized by block size."

Please correct my blindness, good doctor.

[cypherdoc]

I suspect we agree that should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern (EG, if we see actual congestion resulting in appropriate fees no longer prioritizing their tx) the controversy will rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus.

no, the eye doctor says you're a blind fool.

Why do you say that?

Do you believe the controversy will *not* rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus, should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern?

you and the other Cripplecoiner's are blind fools to what is happening right now as a result of the 1MB choke you are inflicting on Bitcoin.  you don't have the vision to determine when there is urgency.

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

I like that one because it is objective.

What is your definition?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you are defining actual congestion as "zero/low fee tx not being sufficiently subsidized by block size."

Please correct my blindness, good doctor.

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

[iCEBREAKER]

So this boils down to you trusting MIT more than Silicon Valley.

If only Aaron Swartz was here to answer this one.

that's the stupidest characterization of what i said.  you clearly don't get it.

That is an excellent distillation of LeBron's position, with some nice #REKT added for color to really drive brg's point home.

LeBron is adorable when he casts aspersions on Blockstream while simultaneously painting MIT as an innocent charity.

MIT is a $10 billion multinational corporation with deep, old connections to the military-industrial complex, not your do-gooding local animal shelter.

If LeBron insists on regular public colonoscopies for Blockstream, it's only fair gavin@tla.mit.gov and hearn@sigint.google.mil be treated to the same procedure.

[iCEBREAKER]

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

What is your definition?

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

That's an ad hoc (IE non-generalizable) mish-mash of random observations, not an objective definition.

"Complaints on Reddit"

Oh dear sweet Jahbulon, please have mercy on those you have cursed with intelligence...  

[cypherdoc]

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

What is your definition?

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

That's an ad hoc (IE non-generalizable) mish-mash of random observations, not an objective definition.

"Complaints on Reddit?"

Oh dear sweet Jahbulon, please have mercy on those you have cursed with intelligence...  

a single self applied metric for a simpleton's mind.  is you.

yes, i'm using a overall survey of the marketplace to make my determination that we indeed have congestion.  you can't do so otherwise.

[cypherdoc]

hey iCE,

since you seem to have a distaste for little African boys, i'd assume you dislike little Afghan girls just as much, eh?

http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/07/16/bitcoin-is-a-beacon-of-hope-for-afghan-girls/

[brg444]

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

What is your definition?

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

That's an ad hoc (IE non-generalizable) mish-mash of random observations, not an objective definition.

"Complaints on Reddit?"

Oh dear sweet Jahbulon, please have mercy on those you have cursed with intelligence...  

a single self applied metric for a simpleton's mind.  is you.

yes, i'm using a overall survey of the marketplace to make my determination that we indeed have congestion.  you can't do so otherwise.

If only that survey was objective and not full of misconstruction and sometimes outright false statements.

1. Mempool appears perfectly fine as we speak
3. Seems you still don't understand the problem with Mycelium
4. Source?
5. Tradeblock shows the avg blocks are hardly full
7. Wtf does this have to do with network congestion?
8. Source?

[tvbcof]

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

Each of these is neutral reality to deal with, or great things that we should be thankful for.  Mostly the latter.  I'll defer on enumerating a reason for each at the moment.

What I will say is that when a toilet is getting clogged one can usually tell that something is up before the problem finally comes to a head and water threatens to overflow with turds and toilet paper and the like floating inches away from the rim.  At that point one breaks out the plunger and gives the the thing a few good plunges.  The obstruction cleared, the water, shit, soggy shit-stained toilet paper, vanishes never to be seen again.

This happy solution works when the pipes are in good shape but the system was simply not designed for certain kinds of abuse.  A more significant (but still solvable) problem exists when there are infrastructure failures.  Happily Bitcoin has very clear pipes (complements of the simplicity and 1MB setting) and simply needs a quick fix to a problem brought about by kids playing around and not using the system appropriately.  The solution is to give the kids a slap on the ass, a talking to, and something else to play with.  The distributed crypto-currency ecosystem has evolved to where both of these remedial activities are easily accomplished.

[iCEBREAKER]

My definition of actual congestion is "appropriately competitive fees no longer prioritizing their tx."

What is your definition?

1.  mempool:  57000 0conf-Statoshi,  11000 Tradeblock
2.  avg wait time for 0confs=45-60 min Chain.so
3.  Mycelium no longer able to prioritize fees
4.  continued complaints on Reddit of stuck tx's even with higher fees.
5.  continuous stream of full blocks and functioning full nodes indicative that the capacity for bigger blocks exists today.
6.  TPS able to spike to >100 when needed indicative of greater bandwidth than initially thought.
7.  continued lack of wallet development for fee feedback.
8.  full blocks creating new deviant behavior.

That's an ad hoc (IE non-generalizable) mish-mash of random observations, not an objective definition.

a single self applied metric for a simpleton's mind.  is you.

yes, i'm using a overall survey of the marketplace to make my determination that we indeed have congestion.  you can't do so otherwise.

Brevity is the soul of wit; thus my definition is concise, objective, and not "self-applied" (whatever that means).

I asked for your (preferably objective) definition of BTC network congestion, not a garbled survey of ephemeral trivia.

When you look in a dictionary, you see objective, generalizable definitions, not subjective ad hoc surveys of transitory variables.

My distaste for your Free Shit Army draft and fetishization of African boys, as possessing magical powers to imbue Bitcoin with their own special kind of value, has nothing to do with my independent desire to see them (and Afghan girls, etc.) benefit from Bitcoin's ascendancy.

[tvbcof]

i'll be offline for the next 3d camping.  have fun with your new Master "iCEBlow"  et al!

2d without your FUD and bitcoin is at $318.

BOO!!!

The guy comes back and we drop down into the $270's.  Go figure.

[cypherdoc]

so it appears that the Cripplecoiners do in fact want to see centralization of tx fee determination by core dev:


    18:47:13 gavinandresen: Pierre_Rochard: So, lets say we do see fees rise. How far do we let them rise? Who decides?

    18:48:37 Pierre_Rochard: gavinandresen: at some point they stop rising because they’re too high for the marginal transactor

    18:49:03 Pierre_Rochard: gavinandresen: in theory the miners would decide, in practice the core devs

http://bitstein.org/blog/pierre-rochard-and-gavin-andresen-discuss-the-block-size-limit/

[cypherdoc]

i'll be offline for the next 3d camping.  have fun with your new Master "iCEBlow"  et al!

2d without your FUD and bitcoin is at $318.

BOO!!!

The guy comes back and we drop down into the $270's.  Go figure.

yeah, and you're full of shit.  when i got back it was already down to $292 and dropping.  do you enjoy being such an idiot?

[tvbcof]

i'll be offline for the next 3d camping.  have fun with your new Master "iCEBlow"  et al!

2d without your FUD and bitcoin is at $318.
...

The guy comes back and we drop down into the $270's.  Go figure.

yeah, and you're full of shit.  when i got back it was already down to $292 and dropping.  do you enjoy being such an idiot?

Sometimes.