Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

gavinandresen.ninja

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 116 posts

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#61

Post by SolaceQuantum »

Lazare wrote: post #45
rsi_oww wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. This is not just alternative software, it is software that follows DIFFERENT rules from the main bitcoin software and would follow a different ledger history i…

> > The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. > This is simply not true. So anyone trying to discuss alternative software won't have their posts deleted? > The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. In other words, heavy handed censorship. Thanks for clarifying.

Because the people promoting alternative forks were using scripts and bots to censor the original bitcoin developers, criticism on the forks, and other discussion not promotion...

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#62

Post by bhaak »

vertex-four wrote: post #52
bhaak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your impression is spot on. Nevertheless there are still lots of people who have lots of money in it and that's part of the problem why there is so much controversy and why some people don't want to move away from their position. If you are interested in blockchain technology you don't have to go to bitcoin. There are lots of other cryptocurrencies where you could learn about it. Ethereum is currently the new kid on…

Ethereum has the same potential scaling issues as Bitcoin and has not yet defined a plan for scaling infinitely, aside from pushing for the development of technologies which move some forms of communication off the blockchain entirely. At the point where Ethereum gets to where Bitcoin is now, it's entirely possible its community could have exactly the same issue.

"Scaling infinitely" is a pretty steep requirement. I wouldn't go there yet, either implementation of the blockchain technology is useful long before the insane transactions per seconds which VISA is handling.

But yes, Ethereum has similar constraints as Bitcoin. Vitalik did some scalability blog posts on https://blog.ethereum.org/ but it's entirely possible that any blockchain technology just won't scale as we would like it to (that is, as good as a centralized approach).

OTOH, if there is a good technological solution, currently I have much more confidence that it gets implemented in Ethereum than in Bitcoin. The current infighting, bickering and actual threats and actions (e.g. DDOS at dissenting miners) is slowly but steadily destroying the Bitcoin community.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#64

Post by wslh »

rsi_oww wrote: post #18
Vozze wrote: post #9

There is a revolution going on in Bitcoin land. Very similar to how dictatorship gets overthrown in the real world. In the real world, dictators fight with censorship and violent force. In Bitcoin land these are social media censorship and DDoS attacks. The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. People who run alt…

> The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. This is not just alternative software, it is software that follows DIFFERENT rules from the main bitcoin software and would follow a different ledger history i…

If Satoshi Nakamoto him/herself appears and he/she promotes increasing the block size, would you change your position?

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#65

Post by jbmorgado »

rsi_oww wrote: post #18
Vozze wrote: post #9

There is a revolution going on in Bitcoin land. Very similar to how dictatorship gets overthrown in the real world. In the real world, dictators fight with censorship and violent force. In Bitcoin land these are social media censorship and DDoS attacks. The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. People who run alt…

> The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. This is not just alternative software, it is software that follows DIFFERENT rules from the main bitcoin software and would follow a different ledger history i…

> The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts.

Not really. Any criticism of bitcoin or even worst, any bad news, about bitcoin are censored in /r/bitcoin

For instance, when back in 2014 MtGox failed, some days before a user from /r/bitcoin posted a lengthly article that discussed the MtGox resolution citing the problems MtGox was facing, that they had lost a big part of their bitcoins and that they were going to close doors. This came directly from an internal document and he was actually showing it.

That post was of course censored in some minutes and only the people from other forums saw it before the MtGox demise.

Like this case, there are many others. /r/bitcoin is indeed heavily censored and there is this almost cult like mind hive thinking inside it that makes it impossible to get any idea about bitcoin reality from it.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#66

Post by jbmorgado »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #61
Lazare wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. > This is simply not true. So anyone trying to discuss alternative software won't have their posts deleted? > The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. In other words, heavy handed censorship. Thanks for clarifying.

Because the people promoting alternative forks were using scripts and bots to censor the original bitcoin developers, criticism on the forks, and other discussion not promotion...

There is a long, long tradition, going back as far as the end of 2013 of censorship of any criticism or even any bad news about bitcoin in /r/bitcoin

Funny thing though is that /r/buttcoin that was made as a criticism of bitcoin in general is actually much more open and censor free than /r/bitcoin to the point that you can actually read some technical pro bitcoin articles there without any censoring or even down voting.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#67

Post by riprowan »

rsi_oww wrote: post #13
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

So this is #3 of the Satoshi Roundtable notes and opinions that have made it to HN, as far as I can tell (I was initially confused and thought this was a re-submission of Brian Armstrong's notes https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-... ). As someone who has dabbled into the bitcoin and block chain area but never seriously, all of these reports and the constant reporting of the serious issues fa…

There is near complete consensus, see: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con... Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this. The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus".…

> They want to take over the bitcoin network with a fork, which will follow different rules

A simple and clear understanding of which group is trying to distort Bitcoin from its mission can be had by simply reading this informative white paper:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I would encourage everyone following this discussion to start by reading the foundation document, and then comparing the design and goals of the system envisioned by its creators and adopted by early-adopters, with the vision being propounded here.

I would furthermore ask everyone who has read the paper, to decide for themselves what it means for Bitcoin that "consensus" can be "reached" by putting all the key players in one room and signing a document.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#68

Post by riprowan »

A simple and clear understanding of which group is trying to distort Bitcoin from its mission can be had by simply reading this informative white paper:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I would encourage everyone following this discussion to start by reading the foundation document, and then comparing the design and goals of the system envisioned by its creators and adopted by early-adopters, with the vision being propounded by "Bitcoin Core" versus its opposition teams.

I would furthermore ask everyone who has read the paper, to decide for themselves what it means for Bitcoin that "consensus" can be "reached" by putting all the key players in one room and signing a document.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#69

Post by BinaryResult »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #8
LAMike wrote: post #2

The lack of product managers and an abundance of engineers is both the weakness/strength of the protocol. They have maybe 12 months of runway before everyone loses faith and sells, and by everyone, I mean me.

> They have maybe 12 months of runway before everyone loses faith and sells, and by everyone, I mean me. They're taking so long to even decide on a solution that I'm not convinced it's going to happen without fracturing. In fact, because of how this known problem has been creeping up with piss poor direction with solving the problem, I do not believe bitcoin is mature enough to put any serious money in it. Gamble, pl…

One reason may be that the rate of issuance of new coins is going to be cut in half in 4 months.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#70

Post by riprowan »

rsi_oww wrote: post #18
Vozze wrote: post #9

There is a revolution going on in Bitcoin land. Very similar to how dictatorship gets overthrown in the real world. In the real world, dictators fight with censorship and violent force. In Bitcoin land these are social media censorship and DDoS attacks. The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. People who run alt…

> The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. This is not just alternative software, it is software that follows DIFFERENT rules from the main bitcoin software and would follow a different ledger history i…

> The people pushing the need to fork would bombard the Reddit forum for many months, very likely with sockpuppets.

Or, maybe, a lot of people read the white paper, and took significant issue with command-and-control style Bitcoin development.

Everything needed to understand the roots of the debate can be found here: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

> The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it.

Post reply on HN