Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

That is because bitcoins are a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold. Unfortunately much like gold some characteristics limit its direct use as a mean of exchange. Gold's shortcoming is in its physicality, Bitcoin's own is the decentralization tradeoff.

I think Bitcoins are absolutely a unique collectible. I hate to "call up" authority but its own creator was well aware of that:

Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you’ve suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange. (I would definitely want some) Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it. - Satoshi Nakamoto

It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. -Satoshi Nakamoto

Aug. 27, 2010: Bitcoins have no dividend or potential future dividend, therefore not like a stock. (They’re) more like a collectible or commodity. - Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi quotes which are correct, but also relate to when BTC was the only cryptocurrency.
Today http://coinmarketcap.com has about 600 listed, including - if I choose one at random - Monero.

So, is a monero a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold? Yes or No!

YES!

Now are they as "rare" by my definition than Bitcoin? No. But by all account they have obtained a significant amount of "collectors" because of its own rather unique property, as smooth pointed out.

Hang on a sec whilst I just nip down and photocopy an thousand copies of the Mona lisa. This is money were talking about network effect and userbase are all that is important.

Bingo. 

esp since Bitcoin units are an abstract concept which can't be coddled, hugged, and fawned all over like gold.

this why a fixed supply of Bugati's or even cowry shells will never function as money in a real world.

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[Wexlike]

XT nodes are still rising ! It is not about that we, the XT nodes, want a XT fork. We use this node to show our vote for bigger blocks. Because that is the only way how you can vote in this ecosystem, through a majority of nodes (if you are not a (big) mining pool). At least that is my perspective.

[brg444]

That is because bitcoins are a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold. Unfortunately much like gold some characteristics limit its direct use as a mean of exchange. Gold's shortcoming is in its physicality, Bitcoin's own is the decentralization tradeoff.

I think Bitcoins are absolutely a unique collectible. I hate to "call up" authority but its own creator was well aware of that:

Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you’ve suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange. (I would definitely want some) Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it. - Satoshi Nakamoto

It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. -Satoshi Nakamoto

Aug. 27, 2010: Bitcoins have no dividend or potential future dividend, therefore not like a stock. (They’re) more like a collectible or commodity. - Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi quotes which are correct, but also relate to when BTC was the only cryptocurrency.
Today http://coinmarketcap.com has about 600 listed, including - if I choose one at random - Monero.

So, is a monero a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold? Yes or No!

YES!

Now are they as "rare" by my definition than Bitcoin? No. But by all account they have obtained a significant amount of "collectors" because of its own rather unique property, as smooth pointed out.

Hang on a sec whilst I just nip down and photocopy an thousand copies of the Mona lisa. This is money were talking about network effect and userbase are all that is important.

Hmm... I'm aware of that. Maybe you'd like to return to my original post to understand the point I was trying to make which is basically that as far as Bitcoin is concerned we are still very much in the "collector" stage where users, in majority, will use it to store wealth and not necessarily to trade for goods and services.

[brg444]

this why a fixed supply of Bugati's or even cowry shells will never function as money in a real world.

Not sure what you mean by that? Cowry shells were used as money in the real world.

[cypherdoc]

The reason is that I don't find your answers convincing, nor rigorously analyzed or presented, for the most part. That even applies to Peter R, in terms of many of his answers on this. His paper was good but it only addressed a small part of the larger set of questions.

then i'm sure you'll accept the fact that i find your fears even less rigorously presented.

at least when i throw up all those graphs from Tradeblock, Chain.io, statoshi.info, i analyze and attempt to explain what i see in the data.  and what i see during stress tests, is a network that is being artificially constrained in that there are no massive full node failures as a result of their unfortunate wasted needs to validate inflated mempools, i see no massive orphaning (that's b/c all pools are processing 1MB blocks together), i see no delays in the avg 10 min block processing, i see no problems in the storage capacities of any of my full nodes, and i hear no complaints from miners.

all i hear is complaints from users who get unconf stuck tx's and high fees and wonder what the hell is going on? sure, there's a small subset of us that know how to get thru but that is a small minority and totally ignores all those newbies who could be coming onboard to Bitcoin if not for the problems the congestion caused.  what a wasted opportunity we had a month ago during the Greek peak crisis.

and here's the thing.  i think all of us have access to the same data all the core devs have access to for the most part.  even the technical simulations they rarely do.  so really it boils down to interpretation of what we see going on and i see artificial constraint.

[smooth]

The reason is that I don't find your answers convincing, nor rigorously analyzed or presented, for the most part. That even applies to Peter R, in terms of many of his answers on this. His paper was good but it only addressed a small part of the larger set of questions.

then i'm sure you'll except the fact that i find your fears even less rigorously presented.

Sure. I haven't claimed otherwise, and I don't really think most of my posts on this should be convincing to anyone. They are generally conversational in tone and not trying to be authoritative. Although occasionally I do point out clear errors on specific points.

The thing is, I see this as a really hard problem to answer in a rigorous way. As I said, Peter R's paper was really good but only looked a small portion of the relevant concerns. I imagine it was also a fair amount of work. Now imagine five or so more papers like that looking at other aspects of the problem, and finally some additional papers looking at the entire thing at a system level. That's what is really needed. I don't think we are going to get that before this issue or the conflict over it becomes a serious problem one way or another.

We are trying to design an airplane upgrade while the plane is in the air, without any real knowledge of aerodynamics.

[brg444]

The reason is that I don't find your answers convincing, nor rigorously analyzed or presented, for the most part. That even applies to Peter R, in terms of many of his answers on this. His paper was good but it only addressed a small part of the larger set of questions.

what a wasted opportunity we had a month ago during the Greek peak crisis.

oh please...

[cypherdoc]

I must have missed this video excerpt where hearn says to "ignore the longest chain" and basically throw out consensus to fork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB9goUDBAR0

thoughts?

Cypher?

Ice?

Smooth?

Peter?

it seems the avg Bitcoiner can't bear to hear or even discuss "possible" messy scenarios as Mike is quite rightfully willing to do.  as he should and as all of should and DO.   Brian asked him to explain in detail what he meant so Mike simply explained a possible solution, checkpoints, that could be used if the Chinese hashing power didn't go along with 20MB blocks. 

first off, i don't think it gets that far.  when push comes to shove, everyone will converge to one network to preserve value.  second, since i don't agree with the concept of checkpoints, i would probably go with which chain ISN'T employing them.  anyways, these scenarios are all very theoretical and it doesn't hurt to discuss them as Mike did.  they aren't likely to occur.

[cypherdoc]

this one is a big loss for NY:

http://blog.sci.ph/?p=564

[cypherdoc]

Apple still not doing well:

[Peter R]

The reason is that I don't find your answers convincing, nor rigorously analyzed or presented, for the most part. That even applies to Peter R, in terms of many of his answers on this. His paper was good but it only addressed a small part of the larger set of questions.

then i'm sure you'll except the fact that i find your fears even less rigorously presented.

Sure. I haven't claimed otherwise, and I don't really think most of my posts on this should be convincing to anyone. They are generally conversational in tone and not trying to be authoritative. Although occasionally I do point out clear errors on specific points.

The thing is, I see this as a really hard problem to answer in a rigorous way. As I said, Peter R's paper was really good but only looked a small portion of the relevant concerns. I imagine it was also a fair amount of work. Now imagine five or so more papers like that looking at other aspects of the problem, and finally some additional papers looking at the entire thing at a system level. That's what is really needed. I don't think we are going to get that before this issue or the conflict over it becomes a serious problem one way or another.

We are trying to design an airplane upgrade while the plane is in the air, without any real knowledge of aerodynamics.

I agree with everything you said above, and I appreciate having people like you who understand how scientific progress is often made incrementally by analyzing a small part of a larger and more complex problem.

However, I'm not sure I agree with everything you might have implied (correct me if I'm wrong).  I agree we do not yet have sufficient knowledge to choose the best course of action regarding the block size limit, but that applies equally well--and perhaps more so--to keeping the limit constant at 1 MB.

I personally think we should increase the limit in some way while we continue to perform the research you suggested above.  This seems like the least bad way to move forward.  Do you disagree?

[smooth]

"frap.doc" smear.

As an observer I can tell you that I can't really tell the difference between this and your "ICEblow" stuff. I just see hate flying back and forth between you.

I have no idea who started it or what.

[Erdogan]

I must have missed this video excerpt where hearn says to "ignore the longest chain" and basically throw out consensus to fork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB9goUDBAR0

thoughts?

Cypher?

Ice?

Smooth?

Peter?

For someone to ignore the longest chain, there must be a reason for it in the parameters of the longest chain (else he just forgoes the chain with the best liquidity). It can certainly happen, but only if the majority does something stupid like changing the number of coins. If so, two chains is the best result.

[smooth]

The reason is that I don't find your answers convincing, nor rigorously analyzed or presented, for the most part. That even applies to Peter R, in terms of many of his answers on this. His paper was good but it only addressed a small part of the larger set of questions.

then i'm sure you'll except the fact that i find your fears even less rigorously presented.

Sure. I haven't claimed otherwise, and I don't really think most of my posts on this should be convincing to anyone. They are generally conversational in tone and not trying to be authoritative. Although occasionally I do point out clear errors on specific points.

The thing is, I see this as a really hard problem to answer in a rigorous way. As I said, Peter R's paper was really good but only looked a small portion of the relevant concerns. I imagine it was also a fair amount of work. Now imagine five or so more papers like that looking at other aspects of the problem, and finally some additional papers looking at the entire thing at a system level. That's what is really needed. I don't think we are going to get that before this issue or the conflict over it becomes a serious problem one way or another.

We are trying to design an airplane upgrade while the plane is in the air, without any real knowledge of aerodynamics.

I agree with everything you said above, and I appreciate having people like you who understand how scientific progress is made incrementally by analyzing a small part of a larger and more complex problem.

However, I'm not sure I agree with everything you might have implied (correct me if I'm wrong).  I agree we do not yet have sufficient knowledge to choose the best course of action regarding the block size limit, but that applies equally well--and perhaps more so--to keeping the limit constant at 1 MB.

I personally think we should increase the limit in some way while we continue to perform the research you suggested above.  This seems like the least bad way to move forward.  Do you disagree?

Yes I do. I've said a number of times I do support a 2-3 MB bump. I'm a bit perplexed by (what I perceive to be) the opposition to BIP102. I understand there were some technical issues with it, but fixing that should be straightforward. There seems to be more behind the hostility to it. That was when I first started to believe (somewhat) the conspiracy-ish theories about the motives of the small block side of the debate.

[cypherdoc]

"frap.doc" smear.

As an observer I can tell you that I can't really tell the difference between this and your ICEblow stuff. I just see hate flying back and forth between you.

I have no idea who started it or what.

don't get me wrong.  i don't hate iCE at all.  i think i actually like him.  he's an intelligent fellow; i just hate his tactics and over the top bombastic bile and vomit.  i think there is an agenda there but i can't be sure what it is.

[Peter R]

I'm actually quite excited about this idea.  It has a sort of inevitable feel to it.

Yes. Since anyone can run any software they want to interact with the Bitcoin network, this idea does seem like a logical development.

It also seems like one of those counter-intuitive anti-fragility things, where the seeming chaos and instability at a micro level will actually lead to a more predictable and stable behaviour at the macro level.

If it became more common for individual nodes to be able to tweak consensus parameters, then I think that would actually lead to more predictable and stable consensus behaviour in the long run. The worst thing that can happen to a node operator is to fall out of consensus with the rest of the network, so individual node operators would be strongly incentivised to develop methods to ensure they can track the status of the network, and deal with any potential consensus forks.

As it stands now, consensus behaviour is based on the specific implementation details of Bitcoin Core. The software is not designed with the assumption that hard consensus forks are a likely event, and when they do happen nodes are not designed to handle it gracefully. The accidental hard form of March 2013 happened because of an obscure implementation detail in the Core software, and was only possible because the software monoculture created a "single point of failure". A more diverse implementation of consensus rules might result in more frequent consensus divergences and orphaned blocks, but each one would be non-catastrophic, and would lead toward a more stable and resilient network in the long run.

Great insight!

You bring up an interesting point: rather than viewing forks as something that must be avoided, let's view them as something inevitable and necessary for the evolution of Bitcoin, and then work to find ways to make convergence of consensus in the presence of forks as robust as possible. 

I think you're right that this "seeming chaos and instability at a micro level will actually lead to a more predictable and stable behaviour at the macro level."

[Holliday]

it seems the avg Bitcoiner can't bear to hear or even discuss "possible" messy scenarios as Mike is quite rightfully willing to do.

It's pretty clear that Mike doesn't understand what an economic majority means. If you have the economic majority, you don't need to enforce a "technical mess" to fix anything.

I still don't understand how anyone interested in Bitcoin can support anything associated with Hearn after hearing anything the guy has to say, unless they actually want to turn Bitcoin into something completely unrecognizable.

I'm not completely opposed to bigger blocks, but I am completely opposed to BitcoinXT and anything Hearn.

[Peter R]

…
At this point I'd say just find a way to put the forks on the market and let's arbitrage it out. I will submit if a fork cannot gain the market cap advantage, and I suspect the small-blockers will likewise if Core loses it. Money talks.

I had a strange idea recently: what if we don't even bother with BIP100, BIP101, etc., or trying to come to "consensus" in some formal way.  What if, instead, we just make it very easy for node operators to adjust their block size limit.  Imagine a drop down menu where you can select "1 MB, 2 MB, 4 MB, 8 MB, … ."  What would happen?  

Personally, I'd just select some big block size limit, like 32 MB.  This way, I'd be guaranteed to follow the longest proof of work chain, regardless of what the effective block size limit becomes.  I'd expect many people to do the same thing.  Eventually, it becomes obvious that the economic majority is supporting a larger limit, and a brave miner publishes a block that is 1.1 MB is size.  We all witness that indeed that block got included into the longest proof of work chain, and then suddenly all miners are confident producing 1.1 MB blocks.  Thus, the effective block size limit slowly creeps upwards, as this process is repeated over and over as demand for block space grows.

TL/DR: maybe we don't need a strict definition for the max block size limit.

You know that you can do this now, right?  And always could.

The code is open source, you can (of course) just change it and compile.

We were discussing writing a BIP for the idea where the block size limit is removed from the consensus layer, and each client manually selects the max block size that they are willing to accept.  If this idea truly makes sense and can gain some mindshare, then perhaps to go along with a BIP, we could fork Bitcoin Core to create a "reference implementation" for the new idea?  Like Awemany said, it wouldn't require much coding.

I'd probably run it too, because by setting my personal block size limit high, I would always get dragged along with the longest proof-of-work chain.  Who knows, it could actually catch on more widely too…

We'd also need a name for this implementation.

[blobafett2]

^ I apologize for the presence of the stalker who follows me around and spams his "warning" wherever I post, no matter how off topic he might be. He's upset because I regularly call out his favorite heavily-isntamined shitcoin (Dash, formerly Darkcoin) and is conducting this campaign as retaliation. It's sad to see him bring that there.

I trust people's intelligence enough to be able to do their own research Smooth.  You are a prolific troll in the BCT alt section with 1000s of posts attacking your competitors, for example:

Example Day of forum attacks by Smooth (today, 12th Aug 2015)

Attacking his competitors:

Dash thread: 28 posts (competing with the anon feature)
Vanilla threads: 20 posts (competing for Poloniex volume)
Bytecoin thread: 4 posts (competing "Anon coin")

Posting on his own threads:

AEON: 3 posts
Monero: 0 posts

Smooth's competitors attacking his coins on any threads:

Dash devs: 0 posts
Vanilla devs: 0 posts
Bytecoin devs: 0 posts

Whilst at the same time pretending to be a Monero core-dev, when the only development you did in one year for Monero is 30 lines of code which is mostly adding comments, inseting and removing preprocessor directives,and 2 IF statements:

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/commits?author=iamsmooth

Nov 9, 2014 Change 6 lines of codes, temporary bug fix
Nov 11, 2014 Commented out 2 lines of code
March 5, 2015 4 lines to change a variable and add IF statement
March 5, 2015 Added 4 lines of code, in the form of a comment
March 6, 2015 Added one line of code (a checkpoint)
March 10, 2015 Changing a default value and an IF statement, 6 lines of code
Apr 5, 2015 4 lines of code and a comment
Apr 5, 2015 2 lines of code to handle a rounding
Apr 14, 2015 Remove a define, 1 line changed



...And that's an issue because you are using your cache as a Monero 'core team' dev to build up a new competitor to Monero (AEON) with the same features and only 2% of the market cap:

The funny thing is, Smooth the Monero core-dev has now personally taken over Aeon development, a tiny-marketcap competitor to Monero with the same the Bytecoin features / codebase, and has acquired at least 2.5% of the supply, has done 2 releases in the last month, is working on a GUI, his OP is advertising AEON as "the next generation of anonymous cryptocurrency" with no mention of his Monero involvement, and AEON market cap is gaining fast with 4x the volume of Monero on Bittrex[/url] - while Monero hasn't released anything for 9 months.  Oh, and he spends the other half of his day providing unbiased "investment advice" to sell Dash and buy Monero (and now AEON )

From an ethical perspective, here is a dev of one coin, taking over a smaller competitor and using his position from Monero to pump the price of AEON which he owns a huge stake in (as well as try to crash the threads of his larger competitors to disrupt their functioning and slander them for being scams).  

So what happens as AEON market cap grows closer to Moneros, and investors realize the Monero dev is doing more work on AEON than Monero, and they have the same features or AEON starts to get ahead?  And nothing is being mentioned on the Monero thread or the AEON OP, and the Monero community seems happy with this!!!  

I am just posting this here for visibility Smooth.

You go around offering 'free investment advice' to the communities of all your competitors, in the form of sell them and buy Monero - with Dash, you are now even posting a 'warning' message each day and holding the community to ransom until the 'media' comply with your demands (lol), so if you are offering investment advice here I think this is relevant, and I think users here are smart enough to read between the lines and do their own research, because if you are here, there is no doubt some scheme going on to direct $ back to yourself and your projects like Monero / AEON and everything you say has that as it's main motive.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151565

Thanks

i read your link and the thing that jumped out at me was the link you drew btwn iCEBLOW and Smooth.  do you think that iCEBLOW and Smooth tend to work together and if so, why?

Mainly because they are the most prolific tag-team troll-duo in the Alt section of BCT... most of their day is spent attacking Monero competitors main thread's with the same scam accusation repeated dozens of times regardless of any response or critical debate anyone provides to them.  The common factor is if there is a coin that has more value than Monero and is anything to do with 'anon', or is a contender for the top-volume slots on Poloniex, you will find Icebreaker and Smooth there trolling which ramps up the morethose coins prices or volume is rising.

Just a few examples I pulled out where they are trolling in tandem...(these are attack-Dash threads as that is their largest target and also how I 'bumped' into them as a Dash supporter)

Re: Why the darkcoin/dash instamine matters
DASH (aka DARKCOIN) vicitim resources
Spamming the CoinMarketCap.com thread to get Dash listed as a premine
Darkcoin aka DASH - The biggest ongoing SCAM in crypto
Re: Dash's Instamined/Partly Premined Beginnings

BTW, I was the user BlockaFett that helped expose the Mintpal scam and return some of the user's coins, including all of the XMR that was stolen by Alex Green aka Ryan Kennedy:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=824211.0

More info on Smooth's activity here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151565.0

Or scroll back through his post history and notice how which competitors this 'core dev' for Monero and now AEON is attacking:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=13813;sa=showPosts

Apologies to this thread for any disruption, Smooth is the biggest ALT-troll right now whilst at the same time trying to get investors into 2 competing alt-coin schemes he is running, I have just posted this because I think he needs a little light shone under his rock, and I doubt any of his BCT activities are for the reasons he gives so there is probably some reason he is here too...

[brg444]

it seems the avg Bitcoiner can't bear to hear or even discuss "possible" messy scenarios as Mike is quite rightfully willing to do.

It's pretty clear that Mike doesn't understand what an economic majority means. If you have the economic majority, you don't need to enforce a "technical mess" to fix anything.

I still don't understand how anyone interested in Bitcoin can support anything associated with Hearn after hearing anything the guy has to say, unless they actually want to turn Bitcoin into something completely unrecognizable.

I'm not completely opposed to bigger blocks, but I am completely opposed to BitcoinXT and anything Hearn.

+1