Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[electerium]

Garzik starting to get it more and more:

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/624712746471329792

I keep asking, you think Nasdaq expects or wants to have to compete, do an RBF, or pay high fees in getting every stock trade marker into the MC? Nor will they ever accept a SC solution.

Why wouldnt they prefer to use a sidechain where they can control and better obfuscate transactions?

Even such, as long as it is built on top of bitcoin, does it really matter whether Nasdaq's intent is to rely on the main chain or not?


The advantage of bitcoin is that it has been around for 6 years and has proven itself to be extremely robust as a protocol that handles transactions. If Nasdaq wants to create it's own private altcoin, that would take years of planning with hundreds of businesses and entities to ensure that their altcoin would be able to serve everybody. I don't think anyone in the world even today, 6 years after the launch of bitcoin, could create such a business plan that can be executed in a meaningful time period (e.g. inside of 10 years) where this altcoin would be able to supercede bitcoin's capabilities.

They would rather buy their own miners, form a pool, and obfuscate their transactions on a sidechain than to wait 10 years on a piece of software or technology that bitcoin could render obsolete in months because of its open source nature.

[cypherdoc]

This sounds just grand:

http://www.coindesk.com/research-banks-unprepared-for-digital-disruption/?utm_content=bufferdac01&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[iCEBREAKER]

Garzik starting to get it more and more

Nope, Garzik is losing his grip and confusing BTC's economic figure with its development ground.

Tx fees have always been destined to wean the network off, and ultimately replace, block subsidies.  It's not a "new" policy.

Who appointed Garzik as Bitcoin's FOMC and granted him the power to regulate fee pressure?

Fee pressure is something to be celebrated as a milestone towards Bitcoin independence (and away from Ponzi territory), not feared and used to justify panic reactions just because fees rise from 1/8 to 1/4 of a pittance.

Garzik whines (and exaggerates) about slightly higher tx fees differing "radically" from "what users have experienced for the past ~6 years."

So what?  Users have also experienced sub-$10k BTC in the past.  If BTC rises to $10k, should we increase block emission to preserve UX?

The spectacle of a Bitcoin core dev wringing his hands over "disruption" and "new economic policy" is hard to endure.  As PWuille stated so powerfully and succinctly:

Bitcoin Core is not running the Bitcoin
economy, and its developers have no authority to set its rules. Change in
economics is always happening, and should be expected. Worse, intervening
in consensus changes would make the ecosystem more dependent on the group
taking that decision, not less.

So to point out what I consider obvious: if Bitcoin requires central
control over its rules by a group of developers, it is completely
uninteresting to me. Consensus changes should be done using consensus, and
the default in case of controversy is no change.

[cypherdoc]

bullish:

[cypherdoc]

Garzik starting to get it more and more

Nope, Garzik is losing his grip and confusing BTC's economic figure with its development ground.

Tx fees have always been destined to wean the network off, and ultimately replace, block subsidies.  It's not a "new" policy.

Who appointed Garzik as Bitcoin's FOMC and granted him the power to regulate fee pressure?

Fee pressure is something to be celebrated as a milestone towards Bitcoin independence (and away from Ponzi territory), not feared and used to justify panic reactions just because fees rise from 1/8 to 1/4 of a pittance.

Garzik whines (and exaggerates) about slightly higher tx fees differing "radically" from "what users have experienced for the past ~6 years."

So what?  Users have also experienced sub-$10k BTC in the past.  If BTC rises to $10k, should we increase block emission to preserve UX?

The spectacle of a Bitcoin core dev wringing his hands over "disruption" and "new economic policy" is hard to endure.  As PWuille stated so powerfully and succinctly:

Bitcoin Core is not running the Bitcoin
economy, and its developers have no authority to set its rules. Change in
economics is always happening, and should be expected. Worse, intervening
in consensus changes would make the ecosystem more dependent on the group
taking that decision, not less.

So to point out what I consider obvious: if Bitcoin requires central
control over its rules by a group of developers, it is completely
uninteresting to me. Consensus changes should be done using consensus, and
the default in case of controversy is no change.

devs should stick to what they know best; coding.  they are inexperienced and naive in areas such as fee markets or finance, much less game theory.  most of them have little experience in dealing with ppl much less starting a business.  ppl who understand these things and who have knowledge regarding the history of money and economics certainly can help prevent missteps along the way.

[iCEBREAKER]

devs should stick to what they know best; coding.  they are inexperienced and naive in areas such as fee markets or finance, much less game theory.  most of them have little experience in dealing with ppl much less starting a business.  ppl who understand these things and who have knowledge regarding the history of money and economics certainly can help prevent missteps along the way.

That's true for devs in general.  Security, crypto, and especially BTC devs by necessity and predilection have deep understandings of game theory.

But yes, they should stick to coding and not (attempt) central management of tx fee markets, regardless of pleas of 'Oh, won't someone think of the users!'

[cypherdoc]

devs should stick to what they know best; coding.  they are inexperienced and naive in areas such as fee markets or finance, much less game theory.  most of them have little experience in dealing with ppl much less starting a business.  ppl who understand these things and who have knowledge regarding the history of money and economics certainly can help prevent missteps along the way.

That's true for devs in general.  Security, crypto, and especially BTC devs by necessity and predilection have deep understandings of game theory.

But yes, they should stick to coding and not (attempt) central management of tx fee markets, regardless of pleas of 'Oh, won't someone think of the users!'

then why do we hear nothing but cries of "centralization" from gmax et al despite this?

[iCEBREAKER]

devs should stick to what they know best; coding.  they are inexperienced and naive in areas such as fee markets or finance, much less game theory.  most of them have little experience in dealing with ppl much less starting a business.  ppl who understand these things and who have knowledge regarding the history of money and economics certainly can help prevent missteps along the way.

That's true for devs in general.  Security, crypto, and especially BTC devs by necessity and predilection have deep understandings of game theory.

But yes, they should stick to coding and not (attempt) central management of tx fee markets, regardless of pleas of 'Oh, won't someone think of the users!'

then why do we hear nothing but cries of "centralization" from gmax et al despite this?

Because having ~5 entities, with no way to verify their independence, controlling over 50% of the hashrate is not ideal for decentralization.

I'm certain gmax has already explained that to you, but too lazy to find the cite ATM.   

[Cconvert2G36]

I'm sure mining node operators with the ability to handle 2MB blocks will displace those that can only "handle" 1MB.

Tempest in a teapot. BIP 102 wouldn't change the landscape at all. But snarking redditards is so much fun...

[solex]

I cannot wait until we fork this problem away.

Yep.

interesting reddit post that sums up the fork in the road debate nicely. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ef6h1/bitcoin_ideology_do_you_vote_for_a_or_b/

Multiple Choice Question:
Do you see bitcoin in the future as:
A) a scaling peer to peer network with ultra cheap transactions, for anyone globally to use, with bitcoin functioning as internet cash, avoiding financial intermediaries or banks.
B) a settlement layer for banks, fin tech companies and early adopters, with a low volume expensive to transact upon blockchain

The root of the issue is that option "B" Bitcoin as a high-fee high-value settlement layer, without "A" scaling and widespread growing ecosystem usage happening first, is economic illiteracy of the first order. "B" by itself is simply a wet-dream of Blockchain Economics central planner fanbois.
If the 1MB is allowed to crowd out regular user tx, not just spam, then fees will plateau and inexorably decline amid an ongoing PR disaster.

Fortunately rescue from the 1MB4EVR idiocy seems likely.
Gavin is fixing the cpu-intensive bloat-tx attack threat, and then it looks like the change to an 8MB block limit will be offered to the community. I hope that Gavin and Jeff team up for this. When I first learned about Bitcoin it was Satoshi, Gavin, Jeff and Sipa who were commit access Core Dev (though Satoshi was already the Silent One). If it takes just two of them to get Bitcoin back on the track to success - then all power to them!

[cypherdoc]

I cannot wait until we fork this problem away.

Yep.

interesting reddit post that sums up the fork in the road debate nicely. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ef6h1/bitcoin_ideology_do_you_vote_for_a_or_b/

Multiple Choice Question:
Do you see bitcoin in the future as:
A) a scaling peer to peer network with ultra cheap transactions, for anyone globally to use, with bitcoin functioning as internet cash, avoiding financial intermediaries or banks.
B) a settlement layer for banks, fin tech companies and early adopters, with a low volume expensive to transact upon blockchain

The root of the issue is that option "B" Bitcoin as a high-fee high-value settlement layer, without "A" scaling and widespread growing ecosystem usage happening first, is economic illiteracy of the first order. "B" by itself is simply a wet-dream of Blockchain Economics central planner fanbois.
If the 1MB is allowed to crowd out regular user tx, not just spam, then fees will plateau and inexorably decline amid an ongoing PR disaster.

Fortunately rescue from the 1MB4EVR idiocy seems likely.
Gavin is fixing the cpu-intensive bloat-tx attack threat, and then it looks like the change to an 8MB block limit will be offered to the community. I hope that Gavin and Jeff team up for this. When I first learned about Bitcoin it was Satoshi, Gavin, Jeff and Sipa who were commit access Core Dev (though Satoshi was already the Silent One). If it takes just two of them to get Bitcoin back on the track to success - then all power to them!

Hey hey, as early adopter, I resemble that!

[sickpig]

the thing that I can't grok at all about arguments contrary to max blk size increase is the "fee-pressure" one.

isn't the fixed and over time decreasing tokens emission already supposed to take care of it?

why do we need to anticipate the time when miners should sustain theirs activity through fees?

[solex]

the thing that I can't grok at all about arguments contrary to max blk size increase is the "fee-pressure" one.

isn't the fixed and over time decreasing tokens emission already supposed to take care of it?

why do we need to anticipate the time when miners should sustain theirs activity through fees?

When Satoshi designed Bitcoin he expected most users of it to be able to mine using their own full nodes, receiving block rewards, for a lot longer than actually happened, ASIC farms and mining pools hijacked the reward emission to a certain extent. So people who run full nodes are often not mining and not compensated for handling ever larger blocks. So the idea of higher and higher fees is to force tx volumes lower than what the market and ecosystem would like, purely in the theory that it helps the non-mining nodes with less overhead.

The real solution to this is a combination of several things: node services payment channels (like JR has written about), blockchain pruning, Lightning Network type off-chain services, and IBLT which reduces the block propagation bandwidth requirements.

If all these changes were happening then there would be no pressure to try forcing a (misguided) centrally planned fees-market.

[Natalia_AnatolioPAMM]

This sounds just grand:

http://www.coindesk.com/research-banks-unprepared-for-digital-disruption/?utm_content=bufferdac01&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

even more than that! it can change it all. thanks for sharing

[Melbustus]

I cannot wait until we fork this problem away.

Yep.

interesting reddit post that sums up the fork in the road debate nicely. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ef6h1/bitcoin_ideology_do_you_vote_for_a_or_b/

Multiple Choice Question:
Do you see bitcoin in the future as:
A) a scaling peer to peer network with ultra cheap transactions, for anyone globally to use, with bitcoin functioning as internet cash, avoiding financial intermediaries or banks.
B) a settlement layer for banks, fin tech companies and early adopters, with a low volume expensive to transact upon blockchain

The root of the issue is that option "B" Bitcoin as a high-fee high-value settlement layer, without "A" scaling and widespread growing ecosystem usage happening first, is economic illiteracy of the first order.

Yes, well said, thank you.

The 1MB crowd constantly talks about how a fee market is necessary for bitcoin. Yes, of course, ultimately there must be a robust fee market. But there won't be one unless Bitcoin both continues to grow and continues to hold the vast majority of crypto-economic value. If we deliberately tell demand to go somewhere else at this stage, it will (and it won't necessarily be a btc-sidechain).

Many of us in this thread, who've been supporting the ecosystem for years, worked through the longrun adoption/mining/security/fee-market dynamic years ago. Fees remain low for many years while mining is subsidized by inflation. The combination of cheap/fast/global transactions is a big contributor (but not the only one, of course) to demand for bitcoin transactions. 3, 4, or 5 havings down the road, enough of this transaction demand probably exists that fees can still be low, and yet add up to about the same or more than the block reward. At this point, the fee market starts to really develop, and miners get selective, publish their fee preferences, vertically integrate services and compete all based on fees. Bitcoin matures and strengthens, all while remaining low-fee *and* high security; this is a very achievable years-from-now equilibrium.

With consistent demand, high security, a mature fee market, and known-well-in-advance dynamics, more and more people who operate the plumbing of the world's traditional financial system feel comfortable moving volume to Bitcoin. This is how a global settlement layer develops.

Intentionally stifling demand years before this happens is a terrible idea.

[jt byte]

I honestly have no idea what China is doing with gold sales or purchases. It's not something I'm particularly concerned about.

[sickpig]

the thing that I can't grok at all about arguments contrary to max blk size increase is the "fee-pressure" one.

isn't the fixed and over time decreasing tokens emission already supposed to take care of it?

why do we need to anticipate the time when miners should sustain theirs activity through fees?

When Satoshi designed Bitcoin he expected most users of it to be able to mine using their own full nodes, receiving block rewards, for a lot longer than actually happened, ASIC farms and mining pools hijacked the reward emission to a certain extent. So people who run full nodes are often not mining and not compensated for handling ever larger blocks. So the idea of higher and higher fees is to force tx volumes lower than what the market and ecosystem would like, purely in the theory that it helps the non-mining nodes with less overhead.

The real solution to this is a combination of several things: node services payment channels (like JR has written about), blockchain pruning, Lightning Network type off-chain services, and IBLT which reduces the block propagation bandwidth requirements.

If all these changes were happening then there would be no pressure to try forcing a (misguided) centrally planned fees-market.

So they are trying to solve the ever increasing burden of running a full node for a non miner indirectly, through the mean of a side effect of an anti-DoS mechanism.

Am I right?

if I'm correct, It seems to me a rather convoluted way of thinking, why not just say that instead of use the fee pressure rethoric?

why not embrace JR's free market idea for full node services?

[prodigy8]

I think the gold value will never collapsing, there are many ups and downs of every coin but gold is old

[cypherdoc]

I think the gold value will never collapsing, there are many ups and downs of every coin but gold is old

Yep, you hit it on the head. It's old and soon to be replaced by the new. I think we're going to see gold  parity once again, at the minimum.

[bracek]

what happens after gold price hits 700 or whatever ?
logic says it goes up from the low bound,
but how much, for how long (in case of continuing drop) ?

I can't "justify" it's continuation towards zero.
Won't there be another grand run up over the next 15 years or so ?
is it really "over" because of digital era ?