Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[brg444]

The nature of bitcoin is that if mining becomes too centralized and the miners decide on an unpopular fork, the users can just ignore them (well, we will need some miners, and in the worst case we might have to manually drop the difficulty to keep things running with less hashpower).

As long as the user base disagrees with the change, they don't have to follow along.  More users is more decentralized. The miners only have as much power as we grant them, and we can take it away if necessary.

The fact that you and a couple others try to smash this idea inside everyone's head does not make it more true. If you mean more nodes then granted but more users != more nodes.

When did miners decide on a fork anyway?

I don't see how your comments address any of mine and others' concerns. It seems you're basically saying "if Bitcoin becomes too centralized then we'll just switch to something else"... That's not a very productive argument...

[Jdj1727]

I think has BTC has greater return potential than gold. But, holding some physical gold/silver is always a good a idea.

[sgbett]

The nature of bitcoin is that if mining becomes too centralized and the miners decide on an unpopular fork, the users can just ignore them (well, we will need some miners, and in the worst case we might have to manually drop the difficulty to keep things running with less hashpower).

As long as the user base disagrees with the change, they don't have to follow along.  More users is more decentralized. The miners only have as much power as we grant them, and we can take it away if necessary.

...
When did miners decide on a fork anyway?
...

When the fork includes code that waits for a majority condition before triggering the production of blocks that the minority will reject as invalid.

Once the majority are running the new version and the condition is triggered then they will start mining those blocks, and the new blockchain becomes longer. Anyone that doesn't then get with the programme is effectively mining an alt coin.

Thats how miners decide. If they all stick with version N-1 blocks then version N blocks never happen.

[thezerg]

One great feature of bitcoin is that the payment network IS the settlement network.  To see this feature be deliberately broken is disheartening esp. Since the argument is so weak.  The author of that long post does not seem to understand this.

Centralization fears apply equally to LN. Worse, LN services are probably money transmitters from a legal perspective.

Nodes have no power.  We've already lost the centralization battle to the extent that mining pools are centralized. No govt is gping to pressure full nodes.  They will pressure miners.  So its ok to have full nodes in data centers.

[cypherdoc]

One great feature of bitcoin is that the payment network IS the settlement network.  To see this feature be deliberately broken is disheartening esp. Since the argument is so weak.  The author of that long post does not seem to understand this.

Centralization fears apply equally to LN. Worse, LN services are probably money transmitters from a legal perspective.

Nodes have no power.  We've already lost the centralization battle to the extent that mining pools are centralized. No govt is gping to pressure full nodes.  They will pressure miners.  So its ok to have full nodes in data centers.

precisely this.

[iCEBREAKER]

How does scaling bitcoin separate the store of value bitcoin holds from it's function as a payment network? The two are inseparable and go hand in hand.

How can bitcoin retain it's function as a base store of value when it loses its active userbase to other block chains?

Did you miss the part where the distinction between a credit-based payment network (Visa/Paypal) vs a value-based settlement layer (Bitcoin/gold) was explained?  Go back and read it again.  Keep doing that until you understand.

Of course marginal users will be gradually pushed off BTC's MotherChain as their tiny crapflood/gambling tx fees fail to remain competitive.  But you are acting as if there is some binary function whereby 100% of BTC users will instantly move to LTC or Monero.  That's called a false dilemma and it's a stupid way to think.  Plus it ignores the high probability small tx will find space on sidechains and/or LN.

Get a clue.  Your whining about how every tx in the universe absolutely must be on MainChain or else Bitcoin Will Die, Because Evil Altcoins, is ridiculous.

Here's what you need to know:

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-July/009728.html

On July 29, 2015 7:15:49 AM EDT, Mike Hearn via bitcoin-dev:
>Consider this:  the highest Bitcoin tx fees can possibly go is perhaps
>a
>little higher than what our competition charges. Too much higher than
>that,
>and people will just say, you know what .... I'll make a bank transfer.
>It's cheaper and not much slower, sometimes no slower at all.

I respectfully disagree with this analysis. The implication is that bitcoin is merely one of a number of payment technologies. It's much more than that. It's sound money, censorship resistance, personal control over money, programmable money, and more. Without these attributes it's merely a really inefficient way to do payments.

Given these advantages, there is no reason to believe the marginal cost of a transaction can't far surpass that of a PayPal or bank transfer. I personally would pay several multiples of the competitors' fees to continue using bitcoin.

Sure, some marginal use cases will drop off with greater fees, but that's normal and expected. These will be use cases where the user doesn't care about bitcoin's advantages. We must be willing to let these use cases go anyway, because we unfortunately don't have room on chain for everything anyone might want to do.

Therefore, bitcoin tx fees can go much higher than the competition.

Remember how Satoshi referenced the banking crisis in his early work? The 2008 banking crisis was about a lot of things, but high credit card and paypal fees wasnt one of them. There's more going on here than just payments. Any speculative economic analysis would do better to include this fact.

[notme]

The nature of bitcoin is that if mining becomes too centralized and the miners decide on an unpopular fork, the users can just ignore them (well, we will need some miners, and in the worst case we might have to manually drop the difficulty to keep things running with less hashpower).

As long as the user base disagrees with the change, they don't have to follow along.  More users is more decentralized. The miners only have as much power as we grant them, and we can take it away if necessary.

The fact that you and a couple others try to smash this idea inside everyone's head does not make it more true. If you mean more nodes then granted but more users != more nodes.

This is the first time I've said it... how is that "smashing this idea inside everyone's head"?

When did miners decide on a fork anyway?

The fear of centralization is that miners will decide on a fork that goes against the principles of bitcoin.  Isn't that what your afraid of?

I don't see how your comments address any of mine and others' concerns. It seems you're basically saying "if Bitcoin becomes too centralized then we'll just switch to something else"... That's not a very productive argument...

A plurarlity of miners can decide on a fork, but if the users (individual and business) don't agree with the change, they can continue with the old rules.  This leaves the miners on an unused fork and they will quickly figure out that they are the ones who have switched to something else.

I'm saying "if bitcoin becomes too centralized when it comes to mining, the miners still have to answer to the user base."  Getting every bitcoin accepting business (or at the very least the exchanges and the payment processors) to accept your fork is a prerequisite of a successful fork.  These entities add to the decentralization of consensus.  Excluding them is illogical.

[cypherdoc]

interesting tactics employed by /u/mmeijeri et al in this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fhik9/mike_hearn_outlines_the_most_compelling_arguments/

initially, all his comments got downvoted (seen down lower the thread) as the pro increase concensus set in.  then, he takes the tactic of sub-commenting (spamming) the top comment to push all his downvoted comments downwards so as to discourage casual readers from making it all the way down to the bottom where the real content is.  couple that with some support that came in with upvoting him and he suddenly looks like he's carrying the day in terms of sentiment.

Desperate to keep up the appearance of this being a balanced debate, when in fact the opposite is true.

I'm sorry but you "community" retards and your hubris are really a sight to behold.

Of course Reddit is not home to a balanced debate, it is filled to the brim with ignorant partisanism, fear mongering and general disingenuous pitchfork branding.

If you are looking for "balanced debate" look no further than the next message on the mailing list linked in OP.

People willing to have reasonable discussions have long realized that reddit is just another shill populist playground. Stop confusing this echo chamber with anything resembling "consensus".

Its actually kinda fun watching you get pounded with down votes over there. Keep up the good work. Kid.

[iCEBREAKER]

Its actually kinda fun watching you get pounded with down votes over there. Keep up the good work. Kid.

Enjoy your fallacious appeals to popularity all you like.

No amount of "Likes" will reverse the simple truth:

"you can build a visa on top of sound money, you can't build sound money on top of visa"

LOL rekt

[cypherdoc]

Its actually kinda fun watching you get pounded with down votes over there. Keep up the good work. Kid.

Enjoy your fallacious appeals to popularity all you like.

No amount of "Likes" will reverse the simple truth:

"you can build a visa on top of sound money, you can't build sound money on top of visa"

LOL rekt

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 


davout-bc -6 points 9 hours ago

Why do you want to increase at all?

And for your convenience, here is the previous argument in its quantitative version: "it's easy to build (1..N) good payment networks network on top of (1) good settlements network, the opposite isn't true".

In other words: "you can build a visa on top of sound money, you can't build sound money on top of visa"

[brg444]

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 

The only thing "lame as hell" is lending any credibility to reddit.

At this point I can only imagine you are trolling.

[cypherdoc]

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 

The only thing "lame as hell" is lending any credibility to reddit.

At this point I can only imagine you are trolling.

how do you measure consensus?

[brg444]

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 

The only thing "lame as hell" is lending any credibility to reddit.

At this point I can only imagine you are trolling.

how do you measure consensus?

here  :

[cypherdoc]

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 

The only thing "lame as hell" is lending any credibility to reddit.

At this point I can only imagine you are trolling.

how do you measure consensus?

here  :

XT with bigger blocks isn't ready yet.

[iCEBREAKER]

Its actually kinda fun watching you get pounded with down votes over there. Keep up the good work. Kid.

Enjoy your fallacious appeals to popularity all you like.

No amount of "Likes" will reverse the simple truth:

"you can build a visa on top of sound money, you can't build sound money on top of visa"

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 


davout-bc -6 points 9 hours ago

Why do you want to increase at all?

And for your convenience, here is the previous argument in its quantitative version: "it's easy to build (1..N) good payment networks network on top of (1) good settlements network, the opposite isn't true".

In other words: "you can build a visa on top of sound money, you can't build sound money on top of visa"

Downvotes (nor upvotes) affect the truth value of a statement.  Neither does labeling the speaker a "troll" (because Davout is a model of logical consistency).

I am proud to stand up for the truth, regardless of whatever passing narrative is preferred by the Frappuccino swilling mob.

You know what really is "lame as hell?"  Argumentum ad populum.   

It's a good thing the legal system does not decide cases by popular sentiment, or else you'd be out ~3000 LeBronCoins.   

[tvbcof]

don't you find yourself lame as hell quoting someone who's also getting pounded with downvotes?  and of all ppl, Troll davout-bc himself?   you're hurting your own case 

The only thing "lame as hell" is lending any credibility to reddit.

At this point I can only imagine you are trolling.

how do you measure consensus?

here  :

XT with bigger blocks isn't ready yet.

It's a relatively simple change.  The kind of analysis and testing that would be prudent has occurred.  All you have to do is release it and many many people will certainly jump on-board.  Just look at the sentiment here on trolltalk and on reddit.  And, of course, legacy Bitcoin with the temporary quick fix 1MB setting is pushing into the dangerous red zone that that Peter R dude has defined so it's ready to fail at any moment.

There may be a temporary need to kludge around a deficiency in hashing power as Hearn spoke of, but he's got that figured out via client updates and it would not last very long because most miners seem to be able to see the light.  With XT up and running there will be an escape port for the enlightened participants so it should rapidly take over.  XT is ready and it is time.  Go! Go! Go!

[Cconvert2G36]

2MB iCE and tvbcof?

We can build a bridge from the middle of the river?

[tvbcof]

2MB iCE and tvbcof?

We can build a bridge from the middle of the river?

What's the point?  If you want a universal crypto-currency which everyone uses for everything, do the calcs and do it.  If not, define where you want to draw the line (at what threshold do you kick people out and where do you kick them out to) and do that.  For some reason nobody wants to put any real numbers on any of that stuff.  Funny eh?

[Cconvert2G36]

2MB iCE and tvbcof?

We can build a bridge from the middle of the river?

What's the point?  If you want a universal crypto-currency which everyone uses for everything, do the calcs and do it.  If not, define where you want to draw the line (at what threshold do you kick people out and where do you kick them out to) and do that.  For some reason nobody wants to put any real numbers on any of that stuff.  Funny eh?

Being everything for everyone is silly, I agree. But 2MB (max not avg) seems manageable for a vast majority current nodes. Seems satoshi's vision was scaling up where technologically feasible and reasonable, while maintaining sufficient decentralization.

[brg444]

2MB iCE and tvbcof?

We can build a bridge from the middle of the river?

What's the point?  If you want a universal crypto-currency which everyone uses for everything, do the calcs and do it.  If not, define where you want to draw the line (at what threshold do you kick people out and where do you kick them out to) and do that.  For some reason nobody wants to put any real numbers on any of that stuff.  Funny eh?

Being everything for everyone is silly, I agree. But 2MB (max not avg) seems manageable for a vast majority current nodes. Seems satoshi's vision was scaling up where technologically feasible and reasonable, while maintaining sufficient decentralization.

What happens when we hit the 2MB limit?