Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[tabnloz]

twobitidiot on the 21M cap: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fbfnj/digital_currency_groups_twobitidiot_calls_for/

username checks out

i dont like the idea as it breaks the social contract of bitcoin, but this discussion needs to be had as the economy and infrastructure grows, if only to do away with it once and for all. The stigma surrounding deflation is already hyped up by the Fed's actions, I hope bitcoin can do away with the bogeyman.

[iCEBREAKER]

frap.doc is desperate at this point 

Thank goodness for small miracles.

Can you imagine how insufferably smug Frap.doc would be at this point, were XT nodes dominating the network (rather than being a lulzy comedy sideshow footnote provided by Gavinsta dead-enders)?

Frap.doc is so 1337 - a true 1%'er, by income *and* by choice of Bitcoin node.

Szaboshi Backamoto, meditating in his Fortress of Solitude, is most assuredly vexed by the mighty 87 XT (out of 5954 total) nodes.   

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[brg444]

No one cares about an altcoin boasting 5x Bitcoin's capacity...because it's not Bitcoin. But if it boasts 100x Bitcoin's capacity, that's a game-changer. We have to at least get in the ballpark. Watching from the sidelines is not going to cut it, and I refuse to call that in any way conservative, patient, or careful.

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

To get in the ballpark where some people here would wanna go you'd need 100000X anyway.

I also happen to think it would be a mistake, from where you sit, to pretend that people involved are "watching from the sidelines".

This post was strangely out of character for you I should say. To read references to alt-coins competition from you was a surprise! It seems more than most here you have championed the importance of the economic majority and its interest in respecting the ledger. Well unless you refer to the "spin-offs" idea, it seems out of question for me that the ledger would ever move to another chain that is not secured by the longest proof-of-work.

[Cconvert2G36]

This post was strangely out of character for you I should say. To read references to alt-coins competition from you was a surprise! It seems more than most here you have championed the importance of the economic majority and its interest in respecting the ledger. Well unless you refer to the "spin-offs" idea, it seems out of question for me that the ledger would ever move to another chain that is not secured by the longest proof-of-work.

So some carefulness is not wasted.  We will succeed simply by not failing.  The seeds of success are sown into the fabric of the Bitcoin code and architecture.

No, there is competition from altcoins to consider. If we leave 99% of the market on the table because of ultraconservatism about blocksize, we let an altcoin have all that, and Bitcoin gets swept by the wayside. And guess which one ends up more decentralized.

The supposed conservatism or carefulness in keeping the 1MB cap (or growing it only slowly) is entirely illusory. The only position that can conceivably be called conservative is one where the blocksize cap is set as high as is likely to be feasible. The conservative option isn't "do nothing." The conservative option is to set the cap almost as high as we think any competitor will be able to feasibly do so. The network effect will take care of the slop factor, but not if that slop factor is a Texas mile because we didn't even bother aiming.

Patience...  Bitcoin is still in beta, its so young.  Lets give it the chance to grow up without breaking it along the way.

Over-patience is the same as breaking it. The result is the same because competition is ever-present. Network effect means small mistakes and sub-optimalities are forgiven, and often even substantial ones, but gigantic ones cannot be. An altcoin with orders of magnitude bigger block capabilities, able to scale on the fly because there is no limit, and experiencing no problems because the conjectured issues turned out to be frivolous...that's a tough cookie for the network effect to swallow.

No one cares about an altcoin boasting 5x Bitcoin's capacity...because it's not Bitcoin. But if it boasts 100x Bitcoin's capacity, that's a game-changer. We have to at least get in the ballpark. Watching from the sidelines is not going to cut it, and I refuse to call that in any way conservative, patient, or careful.

Seemed completely lucid and reasonable to me. Being lulled into complacency and justifying it with 1MB ubermensch dogma does not.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

No one cares about an altcoin boasting 5x Bitcoin's capacity...because it's not Bitcoin. But if it boasts 100x Bitcoin's capacity, that's a game-changer. We have to at least get in the ballpark. Watching from the sidelines is not going to cut it, and I refuse to call that in any way conservative, patient, or careful.

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

To get in the ballpark where some people here would wanna go you'd need 100000X anyway.

I also happen to think it would be a mistake, from where you sit, to pretend that people involved are "watching from the sidelines".

This post was strangely out of character for you I should say. To read references to alt-coins competition from you was a surprise! It seems more than most here you have championed the importance of the economic majority and its interest in respecting the ledger. Well unless you refer to the "spin-offs" idea, it seems out of question for me that the ledger would ever move to another chain that is not secured by the longest proof-of-work.

Spinoffs work as an altcoin defence provided we're talking about Bitcoin vs. altcoins in the context of the Bitcoin community. But as long as you have a gigantic mass market still largely unfamiliar with Bitcoin, an "altcoin" (not an altcoin from their perspective, which is the key point) can take over if it can pull off the miracle of dramatically outpacing Bitcoin's adoption rate.

For elaboration of this aspect of the argument, see:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423570#msg11423570
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423612#msg11423612
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423877#msg11423877
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423961#msg11423961 (best summary here)

That miracle becomes a lot easier if Bitcoin gets artificially hobbled way below its potential. Now the question of whether we could have 100MB blocks now without wrecking decentralization, and are leaving all that extra capacity on the table for "Supercoin" to come and grab, remains up in the air. Surely intelligent people can disagree on where exactly the real capacity limit lies, and probably by orders of magnitude at that, considering all the optimizations we have yet to think of and all the new brainpower that the next wave of exponential growth will bring in.

The correction I'd like to make is to the idea that we can afford to keep Bitcoin potentially one or more orders of magnitude below its capacity under the assumption that we have all the time in the world to succeed. If you believe we are definitely very near the real practical limit, then this argument wouldn't apply. But how many people in the smaller blocks camp are so sure of that? A lot of the Core devs seem to simply be concerned about what they would admit are theoretical issues, with the stance, "Why take unnecessary risks?" My point here is that some risk is necessary.

[cypherdoc]

No one cares about an altcoin boasting 5x Bitcoin's capacity...because it's not Bitcoin. But if it boasts 100x Bitcoin's capacity, that's a game-changer. We have to at least get in the ballpark. Watching from the sidelines is not going to cut it, and I refuse to call that in any way conservative, patient, or careful.

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

To get in the ballpark where some people here would wanna go you'd need 100000X anyway.

I also happen to think it would be a mistake, from where you sit, to pretend that people involved are "watching from the sidelines".

This post was strangely out of character for you I should say. To read references to alt-coins competition from you was a surprise! It seems more than most here you have championed the importance of the economic majority and its interest in respecting the ledger. Well unless you refer to the "spin-offs" idea, it seems out of question for me that the ledger would ever move to another chain that is not secured by the longest proof-of-work.

Spinoffs work as an altcoin defence provided we're talking about Bitcoin vs. altcoins in the context of the Bitcoin community. But as long as you have a gigantic mass market still largely unfamiliar with Bitcoin, an "altcoin" (not an altcoin from their perspective, which is the key point) can take over if it can pull off the miracle of dramatically outpacing Bitcoin's adoption rate.

For elaboration of this aspect of the argument, see:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423570#msg11423570
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423612#msg11423612
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423877#msg11423877
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg11423961#msg11423961 (best summary here)

That miracle becomes a lot easier if Bitcoin gets artificially hobbled way below its potential. Now the question of whether we could have 100MB blocks now without wrecking decentralization, and are leaving all that extra capacity on the table for "Supercoin" to come and grab, remains up in the air. Surely intelligent people can disagree on where exactly the real capacity limit lies, and probably by orders of magnitude at that, considering all the optimizations we have yet to think of and all the new brainpower that the next wave of exponential growth will bring in.

The correction I'd like to make is to the idea that we can afford to keep Bitcoin potentially one or more orders of magnitude below its capacity under the assumption that we have all the time in the world to succeed.

and as many have pointed out, esp awemany, we can always soft fork back down to the real limit if we overshoot.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

And I'm actually a fan of just getting good at hard forking, so that Bitcoin can be more exploratory with trying various things, always of course only those extremely careful changes that the market supports. But when you have that option, you can afford to merely raise the blocksize to 2MB, then 3MB, then 5MB, etc. in small increments and see if there is an issue, then fork back down if needed. That seems like the ultimate answer to these controversies.

[smooth]

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

I basically agree with this. The reason there is no consensus in the developer community is (probably) not that some of them are Compromised and secretly working for banks to undermine Bitcoin, it is that there are very real tradeoffs and the best answer is not at all obvious.

There is likewise no obvious answer to how make an altcoin that has 100x Bitcoin's capacity without compromising on something else important in the process. Maybe there is an answer but it isn't obvious and if an altcoin manages to do it, maybe that altcoin perfectly well deserves to win, because it will have accomplished something that is extremely difficulty and important, possibly as or more important than satoshi's original accomplishment, and it will have done it first.

I agree with ZB that getting good at hard forking would be valuable, but I see less chance of that realistically happening than waking up tomorrow to find out that the Bitcoin developers have announced an Ultimate Solution to the block size question. As hard as blocksize is, hard forking safely is harder.

[Erdogan]

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

I basically agree with this. The reason there is no consensus in the developer community is (probably) not that some of them are Compromised and secretly working for banks to undermine Bitcoin, it is that there are very real tradeoffs and the best answer is not at all obvious.

There is likewise no obvious answer to how make an altcoin that has 100x Bitcoin's capacity without compromising on something else important in the process. Maybe there is an answer but it isn't obvious and if an altcoin manages to do it, maybe that altcoin perfectly well deserves to win, because it will have accomplished something that is extremely difficulty and important, possibly as or more important than satoshi's original accomplishment, and it will have done it first.

I agree with ZB that getting good at hard forking would be valuable, but I see less chance of that realistically happening than waking up tomorrow to find out that the Bitcoin developers have announced an Ultimate Solution to the block size question. As hard as blocksize is, hard forking safely is harder.

So you want an altcoin, running basically the same technology as bitcoin, to try to make a 1MB+ block first, and if it works, you want that altcoin to succeed and not bitcoin? Wow, that was some real safety first thinking.

[smooth]

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

I basically agree with this. The reason there is no consensus in the developer community is (probably) not that some of them are Compromised and secretly working for banks to undermine Bitcoin, it is that there are very real tradeoffs and the best answer is not at all obvious.

There is likewise no obvious answer to how make an altcoin that has 100x Bitcoin's capacity without compromising on something else important in the process. Maybe there is an answer but it isn't obvious and if an altcoin manages to do it, maybe that altcoin perfectly well deserves to win, because it will have accomplished something that is extremely difficulty and important, possibly as or more important than satoshi's original accomplishment, and it will have done it first.

I agree with ZB that getting good at hard forking would be valuable, but I see less chance of that realistically happening than waking up tomorrow to find out that the Bitcoin developers have announced an Ultimate Solution to the block size question. As hard as blocksize is, hard forking safely is harder.

So you want an altcoin, running basically the same technology as bitcoin, to try to make a 1MB+ block first, and if it works, you want that altcoin to succeed and not bitcoin? Wow, that was some real safety first thinking.

No, you missed the point entirely. I don't think an altcoin running the same technology as Bitcoin, can deliver 100x the capacity.

To do that would require something different and we don't even know what it is.

As far as modest increases, in line with hardware (mostly bandwidth since that seems to be the slowest-progressing at the moment, but I'm not sure that is stable), I think Bitcoin should do that, so there is no room for an altcoin there.

[Erdogan]

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

I basically agree with this. The reason there is no consensus in the developer community is (probably) not that some of them are Compromised and secretly working for banks to undermine Bitcoin, it is that there are very real tradeoffs and the best answer is not at all obvious.

There is likewise no obvious answer to how make an altcoin that has 100x Bitcoin's capacity without compromising on something else important in the process. Maybe there is an answer but it isn't obvious and if an altcoin manages to do it, maybe that altcoin perfectly well deserves to win, because it will have accomplished something that is extremely difficulty and important, possibly as or more important than satoshi's original accomplishment, and it will have done it first.

I agree with ZB that getting good at hard forking would be valuable, but I see less chance of that realistically happening than waking up tomorrow to find out that the Bitcoin developers have announced an Ultimate Solution to the block size question. As hard as blocksize is, hard forking safely is harder.

So you want an altcoin, running basically the same technology as bitcoin, to try to make a 1MB+ block first, and if it works, you want that altcoin to succeed and not bitcoin? Wow, that was some real safety first thinking.

No, you missed the point entirely. I don't think an altcoin running the same technology as Bitcoin, can deliver 100x the capacity.

To do that would require something different and we don't even know what it is.

As far as modest increases, in line with hardware (mostly bandwidth since that seems to be the slowest-progressing at the moment, but I'm not sure that is stable), I think Bitcoin should do that, so there is no room for an altcoin there.

So you are in the largeblock (1MB+) camp. Did I understand you correctly? If so, I think you should go for 1MB+ blocks, not 1MB blocks.

[Erdogan]

I just want bigger blocks. Hard fork, hard fork to infinity with soft limit back to 2 MB, round keg into a square hole, rewrite the system in fortran, ip over avian carriers. Implement the evil bit. Whatever it takes.

If people mostly can agree on hard max blocksize of 1100000 bytes, I applaud that too. It should be quite safe.

[smooth]

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

I basically agree with this. The reason there is no consensus in the developer community is (probably) not that some of them are Compromised and secretly working for banks to undermine Bitcoin, it is that there are very real tradeoffs and the best answer is not at all obvious.

There is likewise no obvious answer to how make an altcoin that has 100x Bitcoin's capacity without compromising on something else important in the process. Maybe there is an answer but it isn't obvious and if an altcoin manages to do it, maybe that altcoin perfectly well deserves to win, because it will have accomplished something that is extremely difficulty and important, possibly as or more important than satoshi's original accomplishment, and it will have done it first.

I agree with ZB that getting good at hard forking would be valuable, but I see less chance of that realistically happening than waking up tomorrow to find out that the Bitcoin developers have announced an Ultimate Solution to the block size question. As hard as blocksize is, hard forking safely is harder.

So you want an altcoin, running basically the same technology as bitcoin, to try to make a 1MB+ block first, and if it works, you want that altcoin to succeed and not bitcoin? Wow, that was some real safety first thinking.

No, you missed the point entirely. I don't think an altcoin running the same technology as Bitcoin, can deliver 100x the capacity.

To do that would require something different and we don't even know what it is.

As far as modest increases, in line with hardware (mostly bandwidth since that seems to be the slowest-progressing at the moment, but I'm not sure that is stable), I think Bitcoin should do that, so there is no room for an altcoin there.

So you are in the largeblock (1MB+) camp. Did I understand you correctly? If so, I think you should go for 1MB+ blocks, not 1MB blocks.

I support modest increases in line with hardware improvements (until and unless software/protocol improvements are made to allow even larger blocks to be supported safely). That's probably something like 2-3 MB at this point. I don't support automatic increases to the moon or removing the limit or anything radical like that.

[sidhujag]

There is no such things like Bitcoin with 100x capacity. The security trade-off is disproportionate with the incremental amount of txs you can process.

I basically agree with this. The reason there is no consensus in the developer community is (probably) not that some of them are Compromised and secretly working for banks to undermine Bitcoin, it is that there are very real tradeoffs and the best answer is not at all obvious.

There is likewise no obvious answer to how make an altcoin that has 100x Bitcoin's capacity without compromising on something else important in the process. Maybe there is an answer but it isn't obvious and if an altcoin manages to do it, maybe that altcoin perfectly well deserves to win, because it will have accomplished something that is extremely difficulty and important, possibly as or more important than satoshi's original accomplishment, and it will have done it first.

I agree with ZB that getting good at hard forking would be valuable, but I see less chance of that realistically happening than waking up tomorrow to find out that the Bitcoin developers have announced an Ultimate Solution to the block size question. As hard as blocksize is, hard forking safely is harder.

So you want an altcoin, running basically the same technology as bitcoin, to try to make a 1MB+ block first, and if it works, you want that altcoin to succeed and not bitcoin? Wow, that was some real safety first thinking.

No, you missed the point entirely. I don't think an altcoin running the same technology as Bitcoin, can deliver 100x the capacity.

To do that would require something different and we don't even know what it is.

As far as modest increases, in line with hardware (mostly bandwidth since that seems to be the slowest-progressing at the moment, but I'm not sure that is stable), I think Bitcoin should do that, so there is no room for an altcoin there.

So you are in the largeblock (1MB+) camp. Did I understand you correctly? If so, I think you should go for 1MB+ blocks, not 1MB blocks.

I support modest increases in line with hardware improvements (until and unless software/protocol improvements are made to allow even larger blocks to be supported safely). That's probably something like 2-3 MB at this point. I don't support automatic increases to the moon or removing the limit or anything radical like that.

Once u start u can't stop

[Erdogan]

Support from an unexpected camp:

Within our mandate, the bitcoin community is ready to do whatever it takes to expand the bitcoin blocksize. Even if we have to implement the evil bit. Believe me, it will be enough.

Mario Draghi

[sickpig]

Support from an unexpected camp:

Within our mandate, the bitcoin community is ready to do whatever it takes to expand the bitcoin blocksize. Even if we have to implement the evil bit. Believe me, it will be enough.

Mario Draghi

sarcasm?

[Erdogan]

Support from an unexpected camp:

Within our mandate, the bitcoin community is ready to do whatever it takes to expand the bitcoin blocksize. Even if we have to implement the evil bit. Believe me, it will be enough.

Mario Draghi

sarcasm?

Yes.

[brg444]

I support modest increases in line with hardware improvements (until and unless software/protocol improvements are made to allow even larger blocks to be supported safely). That's probably something like 2-3 MB at this point. I don't support automatic increases to the moon or removing the limit or anything radical like that.

For the record this is mostly my POV as well.

[cypherdoc]

I support modest increases in line with hardware improvements (until and unless software/protocol improvements are made to allow even larger blocks to be supported safely). That's probably something like 2-3 MB at this point. I don't support automatic increases to the moon or removing the limit or anything radical like that.

For the record this is mostly my POV as well.

Then  shut the hell up with your MP pronouncements and references to crap articles like yesterday's.

[brg444]

I support modest increases in line with hardware improvements (until and unless software/protocol improvements are made to allow even larger blocks to be supported safely). That's probably something like 2-3 MB at this point. I don't support automatic increases to the moon or removing the limit or anything radical like that.

For the record this is mostly my POV as well.

Then  shut the hell up with your MP pronouncements and references to crap articles like yesterday's.

 

You woke up in a bad mood today? Your maid refused to make you breakfast? 1% life must be stressful heh 

I certainly won't "shut the hell up" when retards like you are championing lifting the block size limit entirely as some sort of rational opinion.