Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[LiteCoinGuy]

pro   - scale and evolve.

[Kazimir]

Simple scaling it up to 20MB seems like a rigid and rather exteme rule.

Instead, I'm more into dynamic rules. Like "doubling the max block size every 50,000 blocks, starting at block #350,000".

Or better yet, the max size (in bytes) of block N should be:

• if N ≤ 350000 : 1048576
• if N > 350000 : 1048576 * 2^{(N-350000)/50000}

This way, the max block size smoothly grows exponentially over time

[Bitcoinexp]

Was gonna happen anyway...might as well get it done earlier before it causes problems.

[hdbuck]

I believe it is extremely important to maintain the fundamental properties that Satoshi laid out -- because the system he described is the system that all of us who own bitcoin bought in to.

exactly this..

so checking the poll, what happens if 1/3 dont comply with the fork? - either by choice, prudence (as in 'you go first i'll see how it unfolds') or ignorance

what happens if MP do release 10k 'home node boxes'? (i confess i'd surely want one, as an ex-home-miner forced out by loaded centralized businesses)

im personally not sure i want my investment to be fully 'diluted' in larger blocks since i'd like to be able to 'run bitcoin' by my own and as cheaply as possible.
thats why i bought in, to be autonomous and reduce my exposure to 'centralized crooks' (oxymoron).

so im probably going to be the 'prudent' type.

edit: maybe spread my investment 50/50 between the two blockchains, knowing that i could eventually upgrade, but never go back...

[Q7]

If it is for the betterment of the coin and preparing for future scenario, then I'm all for it. So when is that?

[bg002h]

This is rather a pointless discussion which was led more than once. Why would anyone fight this?
Saying that we still have 'some time' is not a strong argument here. Should we think about doing the fork once we hit the cap?

Believe me, once we hit it, using Bitcoin will be very painful.

I dont see the rush here tho, price is crashing, adoption is slowing, regulation is stamping..

How big will the blockchain become with 20mb blocks?

from the locked thread: 20MB * 6 (per hour) * 24 * 365 = 1051 GB per year

Uhh...no. Raising the limit doesn't force the blocks to be filled. It just gives miners the option to make bigger blocks should market conditions make it to their advantage to do so.

[jubalix]

could we not have block size increase by some function of storage cost v size going down. Thus bootstraping into a quasi moores law approach, which would mean we would hit say 20 MB or larger but with no increasing cost to the user base.

This would seem to please all parties and provide a road map of when fork would take place. Indeed this would be less like a fork, more like a feature of BTC much like the predetermined coin supply.

[R2D221]

could we not have block size increase by some function of storage cost v size going down. Thus bootstraping into a quasi moores law approach, which would mean we would hit say 20 MB or larger but with no increasing cost to the user base.

This would seem to please all parties and provide a road map of when fork would take place. Indeed this would be less like a fork, more like a feature of BTC much like the predetermined coin supply.

How would you input storage cost to a formula in a decentralized and trustless way?

[acoindr]

This is really simple to me.

If you ask all 'anti' fork folks if they hold Bitcoin with an expectation of eventually being part of a large global group of users they will probably say yes (they don't expect to only be able to transact with friends). This is what gives bitcoins value and expectation of higher future value. Therefore holding bitcoins == belief in global user base.

At the same time the anti group wants Bitcoin to remain decentralized. However, nobody has proposed making it centralized.

The anti group isn't arguing this. They are arguing for protection from Bitcoin becoming centralized. However, how to protect Bitcoin from becoming centralized was never spelled out as 'it must never transmit over 1MB blocks'.

It's true keeping 1MB blocks reduces risk of centralization, but so does 1KB blocks. Both of these limits are unworkable for supporting a global user base, but only the 1KB block is more obviously problematic at current usage.

The anti group seems to have a disconnect between present day usage and future usage.

As Gavin said raising the size in line with current capability and expectation that technology at least continues to follow Moore's Law and Nielsen's Law seems a reasonable compromise. What is there otherwise? Not much.

[hdbuck]

kind of a noobish question but why not sort of raise the number of blocks instead of increasing their size?

[R2D221]

kind of a noobish question but why not sort of raise the number of blocks instead of increasing their size?

Because of the 10 minute limit: blocks mut be generated approximately every 10 minutes. If you want more information, you need bigger blocks.

[hdbuck]

kind of a noobish question but why not sort of raise the number of blocks instead of increasing their size?

Because of the 10 minute limit: blocks mut be generated approximately every 10 minutes. If you want more information, you need bigger blocks.

ah sure, but doesnt 'more nodes and/or miners' also implies 'more information'?

[R2D221]

kind of a noobish question but why not sort of raise the number of blocks instead of increasing their size?

Because of the 10 minute limit: blocks mut be generated approximately every 10 minutes. If you want more information, you need bigger blocks.

ah sure, but doesnt 'more nodes and/or miners' also implies 'more information'?

Not quite. It is more infomation, but because of the 10 minute limit, it's information that will be sent slowly. Imagine watching an HD video streaming on a 56k connection.

[acoindr]

kind of a noobish question but why not sort of raise the number of blocks instead of increasing their size?

Raising the number of blocks alone doesn't solve the problem of global usage. Litecoin already has 4 times as many blocks on average over time as Bitcoin, meaning it can already support more users than Bitcoin with its copied 1MB limit. But it can't support global usage either without raising its block size, which could very well happen, regardless what the Bitcoin community does.

[bambou]

Quoting this from the "gold down bitcoin up" thread:

From the bitcoin dev mailing list quoting Wladimir van der Laan:

The block chain is a single channel broadcasted over the entire
world, and I don't believe it will ever be possible nor desirable to broadcast all the
world's transactions over one channel.

The everyone-validates-everything approach doesn't scale. It is however
useful to settle larger transactions in an irreversible, zero-trust way.
That's what makes the bitcoin system, as it is now, valuable.

But it is absurd for the whole world to have to validate every purchase of
a cup of coffee or a bus ticket by six billion others.

Naively scaling up the block size will get some leeway in the short term,
but I believe a future scalable payment system based on bitcoin will be
mostly based on off-blockchain transactions (in some form) or that there
will be a hierarchical or subdivided system (e.g. temporary or per-locale
sidechains).

Thanks for quoting that!  Wladimir's quietness in the public muck is as pronounced as his activity in the codebase.  I never knew where he stood on this stuff.  My natural guess would be that anyone who is bright enough to be such a prolific code contributor would immediately understand certain things like this, but...Gavin...

As someone who has worked on and designed data management systems, Wladimir's statement is so common sense to me that it shouldn't even need to be stated.  I am aghast that there is so much dispute about it.  A very strong hypothesis is that many people who have some technical skills are busying themselves with solutions which will be viable only by at least a scaling induced semi-failure of Bitcoin...and those who's technical and analytical skills are weak or non-existent are just expressing their inborn goober-ishness.

Sidechains not only soundly addresses the issue, but the two-way peg completely demolishes any economic concerns as well.

I agree, seems presumptuous if not reckless to take on the whole world only with bitcoin.

[acoindr]

I agree, seems presumptuous if not reckless to take on the whole world only with bitcoin.

I don't disagree with Wladimir. Anyone who has been on this forum long enough may know I was among the first to propose off-chain transactions as a critical part of scaling Bitcoin. My views there haven't changed. I still believe they will be key.

However, it's also worth noting purely off-chain solutions are likely to look more like present day centralized payment systems than decentralized P2P currency. I believe what we'll ultimately see is a combination of many technological options mobilized to keep Bitcoin working smoothly (Gavin also talks along these lines, see signature link).

I believe it's smartest, though, to build Bitcoin with the most utility possible, as a sort of if all else fails option.

People don't build cars with only one seat and tanks which hold just 2 gallons because people mostly make short trips to grocery stores and often travel alone. Buses and airplanes exist complementing cars, transporting large numbers of people, including cross country. However, the full utility of a car means if no other option exists a standard car can still get that job done. That's how I view Bitcoin. Nobody knows exactly how the future will look, but it won't be black versus white. If more alternatives ease the transaction load on Bitcoin then everybody still wins.

Gavin's latest size limiting plan doesn't alone account for handling all of the world's transactions; not by quite a long shot.

[acoindr]

I don't really keep up with development too well, are things like additional message and protocol fields being discussed, whatever kind of things that would make it easier to use Bitcoin's security in parallel systems and possibly need a hard fork? Just thinking something that important should cover anything we can see possible potential in from here.

Yes, see Factom for example, no hard fork needed.

[danielpbarron]

I. "I agree a big discussion is necessary before changes are made, but we shouldn't act like a hard fork is somehow inherently an issue."

Part and parcel of the present dispute is to clearly make the point that Gavin Andresen does not have the authority to enact or create a hardfork of the Bitcoin network, nor any sort of significant clout, cachet, power to influence the matter etc.

This will be useful for the Bitcoin network first and foremost, because Gavin is, by and large, a mentally retarded doofus displaying a shocking amount of Dunning-Kruger syndrome in his assorted dabblings in economics and other hard fields.

This will secondarily but perhaps still notably be useful for Gavin himself. Finally liberated from all that influence he is incorrectly perceived to carry he will be free to live the rest of his life in the relative peace his brain was constructed to handle. To understand his situation, imagine a mentally retarded child living happily in the sands of New Mexico. A rich old man dies in New York, and on the strength of original research, it is considered that the mentally retarded child is the sole inheritor. News makes its way to the happy desert residence that same evening, by telegraph, but the poor monkey knows nothing of it outside of dim rumors. He is not collected enough to understand what "inheritance" rightly means or anything. He does have some sort of an idea as to "being rich" = "lots of icecream", but that's as far as it goes. All sorts of people, much better placed to understand what it all means, all try their hand at, you know, "being friendly". And "neighbourly". And only meaning the best and having the kid's interest at heart. His life, as you might well imagine, turns into the sort of nightmare only homo homini lupus can bring on its brother, and the child lives hell (parce-que l'enfer, c'est l'autres). Once the news makes it through that really, it was all a mistake, no such inheritance exists (as in fact it does not), the simpleton is free to return to his simple prior life, and be happy again.

Help Gavin be a happy idiot, stop trying to make him fulfill shoes too large for his little peabrain.

II. "If the community can't hardfork today we could stop using bitcoin now and look for the better suited alt coin. If bitcoin can't fork-update it has no value."

Obviously Bitcoin "has no value" to you. That is probably because you were expecting to defraud the faith others put in Bitcoin by inflating it. While it's true that welfare states finance themselves that way currently, and in the process create the unwelcome and unwarranted impression in the heads of the nobodies in the street that their voice matters to any degree or is important in any manner, Bitcoin does not work that way. Bitcoin does not work that way intentionally, specifically and by design. So... yeah, pack it and get lost.

"The community" of people that need things can not fork Bitcoin to provide for their needs at the expense of the actual community of people that create things and own things. Related to this, let us reiterate those ancient points about Bitcoin :

TALKING ABOUT BITCOIN, EVEN IF IN A GROUP, DOES NOT MAKE YOU PART OF BITCOIN.

III. I don't understand why anybody would be against a larger block.

The popular name to this is "arguing to ignorance". You might also not understand why anyone would propose you wash, stop collecting broken car engines on plastic foil in front of your dilapidated motorhome or fucking your cousins. What you understand or don't understand is not a proper subject of discussion, and you aren't welcome to try and foist it on intelligent people who aren't your parents.

IV. Satoshi himself envisioned much larger blocks.

The discussion of what "Satoshi himself" did or didn't do, meant or didn't mean, so on and so forth is about as interesting and discussing the Mormon "bible".

This is called "arguing to authority", and it tries to give pecuniary value to that only truly worthless article of all times and places : the esteem of the mob. This may work well in electing United States presidents, ensuring that "while the voting public knows best what it wants, it deserves to get it long and hard". Bitcoin specifically and deliberately does not work in this way.

Bitcoin is not a reflection of your hopes and aspirations, but a check on them. Bitcoin isn't here to make it easier for you to do what you want to do ; Bitcoin is here to make it trivial for others to prevent you from doing what you want to do every time that's stupid. The sooner you comprehend this fundamental difference between Bitcoin and "technology" especially in the "revolutionary & innovative" subsense of that nonsense, the better, for you.

V. The fork is needed because otherwise some people won't be able to use Bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn't for everybody. Creating something useful that everyone can use is an exercise in trying to create something that's useful but worthless. Such a thing may exist, in the sense perpetuum mobile may exist. As far as the science of physics goes, they do not.

Should blocks ever become full, older coinbases will be prioritized over newer coinbases, and larger mining fees and transactions prioritized over smaller mining fees and smaller transactions. This means that someone who wishes to pay for very little with Bitcoin will be forced to use something else, so to speak is forced to "give his seat" to someone richer. This is exactly the point and the intent of Bitcoin : to force the poor to yield to the rich, unversally, as a matter of course.

You may not like this, but that is entirely an emotional problem of yours, which you're welcome to resolve any way you can : stop being poor, take a lot of pills, whatever. You may try to solve it by attempting to make it impossible for the rich to construct tools that they will then use to force you to yield to them, but this will necessarily not work : being rich means by definition they have more resources than you, and whatever you devise they can make a counter.

If you are more practically inclined, and having understood, accepted and come to terms with your fundamental human inferiority as it flows from your poverty, some solutions to your predicament of "I wish to buy myself a basket" have already been discussed :

For the reasons noted and for many other reasons I am pretty much satisfied that Bitcoin is not nor will it ever be a direct means of payment for retail anything. You may end up paying for a month's worth of coffee vouchers at your favourite coffee shop via Bitcoin (so shop scrip built on top of Bitcoin), you may end up settling your accounts monthly at the restaurant in Bitcoin (so store credit built on top of Bitcoin), you will probably cash into whatever local currency from Bitcoin (be it Unified Standard Dubaloos or Universally Simplified Dosidoes or whatever else) but all that is entirely different a story.

Run along now, back to playing in the mud with the other naked kids in your village. Bitcoin's just not for your kind.

VI. This is a clerical issue, because block propagation and other considerations incentivize miners to keep blocks small anyway. The 1MB is just a hard limit getting in the way of things, the marketplace of miners should be allowed to fix block size as it seems appropriate.

While this argument has been disingenuously brought by Gavin himself, the fact is that the proposed inverted bloom filters upgrade would allow all blocks to propagate in constant time, regardless of their size. Just the sort of deceitful poison flowing out of USG through its few remaining (but apparently well entrenched) Bitcoin moles.

VII. The minersⁱ decide.

No, they do not. The miners make some minor decisions in Bitcoin, but major decisions such as block forks are not at their disposition alone, and this for excellent reasons you'll readily understand if you stop and think about it.

There are two specific methods to control miners on this matter, which will make the scamcoin Gavin is trying to replace everyone's Bitcoin with only replace some people's Bitcoin. The first and most obvious is that irrespective of what miners mine, each single full node will reject illegal blocks. This is a fact. If all the miners out there suddenly quit Bitcon and go mine Keiser's Aurora scamcoin instead, from the perspective of the Bitcoin network hash rate simply dropped and that's all. There's absolutely no difference between Keiser's scamcoin and Gavin's scam coin as far as the network is concerned : while one's a scammer that I humiliatingly defeated in the past whereas the other a scammer that I humiliatingly defeat in the future, this makes no difference for Bitcoin. As far as anyone will be able to perceive, miners simply left.

The second and perhaps not as obvious has nevertheless been discussed at length on multiple occasions on #bitcoin-assets. Consider this terse explanation from March. 2013.

mircea_popescu: whoever has enough money to matter is likely to pick one chain for whatever reason
mircea_popescu: since fork means btc can be spent independently on either chain
mircea_popescu: he will sell his btc on one and perhaps buy on the other.
mircea_popescu: as a result prices will rapidly diverge, panicking the mass of users, and the fork is economically resolved.

The situation here is aggravated by the fact that the fork proposed is not simply nondeterministic behaviourⁱⁱ, and so the holdings on the two chains aren't notionally equivalent. Instead, all the holdings on the Bitcoin chain are accepted as valid on both Bitcoin and Gavincoin, but holdings on Gavincoin are rejected by Bitcoin. Consequently, everyone involved with the fork is writing options to everyone in Bitcoin, free of charge. That they have no ready way to finance these should be obvious, and consequently the grim prospects of the Gavin side of the fork should be just as obvious. At least, to people who understand economy to any degree.


i. By which really what's usually contemplated is, "pool masters will hijack the miners pointing at their pools, because they really wish to end up like BTCGuild/ 50 BTC ; that <5% of an entity once around 48% is such a tempting market share."
ii. As Peter Todd aptly points out, the alleged hard fork in Bitcoin's past wasn't a hard fork, but simply nondeterministic behaviour, resulting in two chains which both and roughly to the same degree validated.

VIII. "By the time the hard fork rolls around, all miners (and wallets, and other bitcoin software) will have dormant code ready to switch over and start mining the new fork."

Not so. The various gunk added to Bitcoin (past 0.6 or so) is currently only supported by the scam foundation Vessenes created back when nobody was looking, and everyone's been abandoning ever sinceⁱ.

The actual Bitcoin Foundation is not supporting any of that.

Consider the rate at which the scam foundation has been propping up scams, and the rate at which they blow up. Where is BFL ? Where is MtGox ? Where's all them fearless captn's of industry of yore ?ⁱⁱ Perhaps much more importantly : who has been popping them ? Think long and hard about that before you jump to conclusions about "everyone" and "nobody" and so on. A year ago you thought "everybody" would be impressed by imaginary "brick and mortar stores". I wasn't. That aspect of you is now in jail on unrelated charges. Bear this in mind.ⁱⁱⁱ

The odds of the Vessenes scam foundation surviving until the end of the year are intricately linked to BitPay, their only remaining supporter with actual money^iv, remaining solvent. Which, in spite of "brick and mortar store"-isms and other avatars of the Redditarded discussion, does not really look all that likely. In any case it won't be around for the years being here contemplated, which explains why Gavin's in such a rush, and why all this has to be done "right now".

Why would you help a bunch of scammers ruin Bitcoin on their way out ? And why'd you imagine that if you do you'll be left hodling anything but dust ?

IX. "Hard fork block size politics: do we want decentralized digital gold, or just another Visa? We want both. And there's no reason we can't have both."

Actually, there's a damned good reason "we" can't have both : one of them is nonsense. To grok this, tell me, whom do you know in Mali ?

No, not Bali, that island where preppy sluts go for spring break. Mali, the funny-shaped, landlocked West African nation.

Nobody ? Never even heard of anyone from there, never ate in a Mali restaurant, never bought a Mali anything over the mail, as far as you're concerned Mali could just as well not exist at all ? Well, bless you, the sentiment's exactly mutual! As far as they're concerned, the entire population of Mali couldn't give less of a fuck, and you might as well not exist.

Yet your proposal here is that we take everything of everyone : each pair of underwear, each box of notebooks left over from highschool, each car and set of car keys, each coffee mug, each old printer cartridge, each and every single item of everyone, worldwide, and dump them all into a huge warehouse in San Francisco. And then, you say, you'll give everyone receipts to keep track of their stuff. Obviously the receipts will be rather lengthy and complicated an affair, but all the inconvenience, confusion and sheer effort is worth it, you say. Because why ? "Because there's no reason we can't have both". Orly.

I get it, you're a centralist at heart, you want this globalisation thing where everyone's stuff is locked up in Fort Knox so the misfortunate indigents of Mali get to curse the day your pasty ass showed up forcing "democracy" on them. I don't particularly like this outlook, but who am I to tell you how to live your life.

Nevertheless, there's a damned good reason why you can't have both at my expense. You can't ask demand me and my friends and my business partners run complicated, expensive and ultimately pointless computer systems that are required to distinguish our transactions from Mali bound transactions, avoid double spends and all of that simply because you want the world to be a centrally-planned, single-core thing because you're too intellectually lazy and too mentally simple to accomodate the actual variety of the world in your barren skull. I get it, it'd be much simpler for you to think of "everything in Bitcoin".

This simplicity for you has actual costs in the world. If large classes of transactions among which there is no possible cross-ambiguity remain limited to their own context, there's less hassle for everyone involved. Imagine the common occurence of someone sitting in your seat on the airplane. Fortunately, the tickets carry a seat number, which can be compared, and there you go. Imagine instead the Gavinairport where Gavintickets require everyone in the whole airport get out of their planes, single file to the tickets checking office, and have their tickets checked. Every single time someone sits in someone else's seat. And what'd the TSA say to this ? I can almost see them, "there's no reason we can't have it". Of course there isn't, if nobody gives a shit about people or their legitimate interests.

There's no benefit to making everything wait on everything else if large swaths can be readily isolated that'd absolutely never meet. If my blockchain doesn't have to wait for Mali blocks to propagate, and if it doesn't have to to check against Mali doublespends of transactions nobody in Mali could ever be conceivably involved in under any circumstances, then my blockchain is easier to run, to maintain, to debug and so it can provide for the citizens of Mali exactly the only thing they actually want me to provide : a backup value.

They don't perceivably want nor do they conceivably need main chain transactions for every single quarter of cent / West African CFA franc transaction they undertake. What they clearly need and possibly even want is the ability to turn a pile of however many of these they've saved into a few Satoshi. So they can save that, so they can buy Trilema credits, so they can do the few and precious things where they actually interact with the world at large. There's absolutely no need to make every single move they take dependent on the actions of far removed parties that couldn't care less about their interests, needs or proclivities.

Yeah, yeah, you're thinking "but Bitcoin is decentralized". Sure, it's a decentralized implementation. But it is an implementation of a centralized concept. Bitcoin is universal money, and that's quite by definition central. Even if implemented in a decentralized manner, as all usable money always has to be implemented, it nevertheless is a centralized thing, by the very nature of what money has to be in order to be money. Now why marry to this an obligation that's burdensome on everyone and not really useful to anyone ?


i. Considering Murck left as well, it's not at all clear who's even left whatsoever.
ii. Not to put too fine a point on it :

TomServo: Pretty minor gripe but, "under a regulation that requires he prove his intent to depart the U.S." - how does one prove that? "No - see, my calendar says I have a dentist appt back home in 2 weeks so I'll definitely be gone."
mircea_popescu: TomServo really, he's being about as dumb as nefario. That's always been there, for foreigners, which people who renounce a citizenship become. It is customarily shown by a) substantial assets and b) family ties. The uncomfortable reality that he has neither is obviously something he's not willing to confront, and so it has to be about how bad teh us customs & immigration is. Now, it's all fine and dandy to all agree on how teh us is the empire of evil. However, the notion that they'd err on the side of not letting anyone in is plain ridoinculous.

So Roger Ver is now a bum. Who could have foreseen!

iii. No, I'm not kidding. All these schmucks can go to jail on pretty much anyone's say-so. There's a good reason serious business isn't generally built on the backs of ex-cons, out on parole. Guess what the reason may be ? Could it have anything to do with them being unreliable ? Whether they wish to be or not ?
iv. Yes, this is important. Bitcoin is about money. Not about "ideas", not about "community", not about your delusions of grandeur, importance, influence and so on. Bitcoin.Is.About.Money.

X. A Princeton graduate who resides in Amherst, Massachusetts and has lived his entire life firmly attached to the govenrment tit is going to "save Africa" from imaginary problems it doesn't actually have by inflating the Bitcoin blockchain to the point nobody but his USG owners can maintain a full record. This is good for Bitcoin.

You are an idiot. Go the fuck away.

XI. Raising the limit doesn't force the blocks to be filled. It just gives miners the option to make bigger blocks should market conditions make it to their advantage to do so.

This is not how economics work. Quoting Buffettⁱ :

The domestic textile industry operates in a commodity business, competing in a world market in which substantial excess capacity exists. Much of the trouble we experienced was attributable, both directly and indirectly, to competition from foreign countries whose workers are paid a small fraction of the U.S. minimum wage. But that in no way means that our labor force deserves any blame for our closing. In fact, in comparison with employees of American industry generally, our workers were poorly paid, as has been the case throughout the textile business. In contract negotiations, union leaders and members were sensitive to our disadvantageous cost position and did not push for unrealistic wage increases or unproductive work practices. To the contrary, they tried just as hard as we did to keep us competitive. Even during our liquidation period they performed superbly. (Ironically, we would have been better off financially if our union had behaved unreasonably some years ago; we then would have recognized the impossible future that we faced, promptly closed down, and avoided significant future losses.)

Over the years, we had the option of making large capital expenditures in the textile operation that would have allowed us to somewhat reduce variable costs. Each proposal to do so looked like an immediate winner. Measured by standard return-on-investment tests, in fact, these proposals usually promised greater economic benefits than would have resulted from comparable expenditures in our highly-profitable candy and newspaper businesses.

But the promised benefits from these textile investments were illusory. Many of our competitors, both domestic and foreign, were stepping up to the same kind of expenditures and, once enough companies did so, their reduced costs became the baseline for reduced prices industrywide. Viewed individually, each company's capital investment decision appeared cost-effective and rational; viewed collectively, the decisions neutralized each other and were irrational, just as happens when each person watching a parade decides he can see a little better if he stands on tiptoes.

After each round of investment, all the players had more money in the game and returns remained anemic. Thus, we faced a miserable choice: huge capital investment would have helped to keep our textile business alive, but would have left us with terrible returns on ever-growing amounts of capital. After the investment, moreover, the foreign competition would still have retained a major, continuing advantage in labor costs. A refusal to invest, however, would make us increasingly non-competitive, even measured against domestic textile manufacturers. I always thought myself in the position described by Woody Allen in one of his movies: "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

For an understanding of how the to-invest-or-not-to-invest dilemma plays out in a commodity business, it is instructive to look at Burlington Industries, by far the largest U.S. textile company both 21 years ago and now. In 1964 Burlington had sales of $1.2 billion against our $50 million. It had strengths in both distribution and production that we could never hope to match and also, of course, had an earnings record far superior to ours. Its stock sold at 60 at the end of 1964; ours was 13.

Burlington made a decision to stick to the textile business, and in 1985 had sales of about $2.8 billion. During the 1964-85 period, the company made capital expenditures of about $3 billion, far more than any other U.S. textile company and more than $200-per-share on that $60 stock. A very large part of the expenditures, I am sure, was devoted to cost improvement and expansion. Given Burlington's basic commitment to stay in textiles, I would also surmise that the company's capital decisions were quite rational.

Nevertheless, Burlington has lost sales volume in real dollars and has far lower returns on sales and equity now than 20 years ago. Split 2-for-1 in 1965, the stock now sells at 34-on an adjusted basis, just a little over its $60 price in 1964. Meanwhile, the CPI has more than tripled. Therefore, each share commands about one-third the purchasing power it did at the end of 1964. Regular dividends have been paid but they, too, have shrunk significantly in purchasing power.

This devastating outcome for the shareholders indicates what can happen when much brain power and energy are applied to a faulty premise. The situation is suggestive of Samuel Johnson's horse: "A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician." Likewise, a textile company that allocates capital brilliantly within its industry is a remarkable textile company, but not a remarkable business.

My conclusion from my own experiences and from much observation of other businesses is that a good managerial record (measured by economic returns) is far more a function of what business boat you get into than it is of how effectively you row (though intelligence and effort help considerably, of course, in any business, good or bad). Some years ago I wrote: "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." Nothing has since changed my point of view on that matter. Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

So, no : infinite blocks to not give "the miners" any sort of option, because "the miners" as a collective noun do not exist. There exist individual miners exclusively, and the incentives of individuals are, should the Gavin scam actually be implemented, firmly oriented towards destroying the commons that is Bitcoin.

There's no way out of this problem, and simple ignorance of economy or game theory is not a solution.

XII. The current 1Mb limit is arbitrary. We want to change it. Please ignore the fact that the discussion is about whether to change or not to change, and please ignore that the onus is on whoever proposes change to justify it. Instead, buy into our pretense that the discussion is about "which arbitrary value". Because we're idiots, and so should be you!

Go away.

XIII. Bitcoin has worked fine so far, and is sending the world's elite running for cover - from political to financial to media elites. Clearly this means more of the same won't work in the future, and it must be changed to more closely conform to what these elites like to see, which only coincidentally happens to strictly resemble each and every other previous challenge to their authority, which only coincidentally hapepend to all failed. Because we're idiots, and so should be you! For equality.

Go away.

XIV. We all agree.

Good for you, too bad you're irrelevant. Bitcoin is about money and about power, not about opinion and social media. You can agree until you are blue in the face, that's not what makes a difference. Your public humiliation on this score - in case your shepherd be dumb enough to actually take the field and be humiliatedⁱⁱ - should be instructive for you.

Take notice on the why and the how you don't matter, understand why "MP doesn't cater to my idiocy which makes me want to support anything else" doesn't actually do anything, break through the shell of your own idiocy and start actually developing as a human being already. Going by your infantile behaviour this is clearly the first time you had the chance, but going by the messy state of the world around you it might actually be your last, too. Try and make the best of the very little you have at your disposal.

That'd be it. This third installment actually covers the entirety of the "arguments" brought by the idiots (and assorted incentivised shills / "political activists") pushing this particular attack on Bitcoin. Ridiculous how little they have, considering how much they cost their government, their parents and the Earth generally. But such is life.


i. Really, you should do a lot more reading of MPOE-PR - she is pretty much the only avenue for a tardstalk user to actually relate to Bitcoin. Everyone else there is just hallucinating nonsense.
ii. Seems improbable, if nothing else on the strength of the recent very embarassed Fed release - apparently once MP destroyed their shill in Bitcoin they're not even willing to name Bitcoin at all anymore, it has to be "Digital Value Transfer Vehicles" now. Nothing quite like wounded narcissism in bureaucrats, eh ?

[fat buddah]

Now i see. Gavin announced chaos and drama to the press because he himself intends to create it. He gets a 30% veto and still wants to proceed. It's gonna rip. I just switched to Litecoin.

Someone even seems to buy up the old BitcoinScrypt for some reason. My gut feeling says: there is some reorganisation in crypto space coming. R.I.P. Bitcoin.
Hardfork against 30% 'no' is not going to end well.

[bambou]