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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

bitcoin.org

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#41

Post by Crye »

stale2002 wrote: post #39
Twisell wrote: post #37

Ok just another proof that bitcoin can definitely not be compared to gold. Or maybe it could? "After the event you might end up with gold or lead it all depends if your banker believe in transmutation or not (and if transmutation is actually achievable which will be determined by the best alchemists of the kingdom that need to agree together). So all in all the guild of merchants recommend that you don't accept gold…

Lets say that you buy a bunch of gold and put it in a fortress. Nobody can steal your gold, but lets say the entire world gets together at once, and decides that gold is worthless and that they are moving over to lead as the new currency. But they are keeping the name "gold". Everyone now uses the name "gold" to refer to what was previously known as "lead". Your pile of "real gold" wasn't stolen, but it may as well h…

Except you get the same amount as leas as you have gold. In fact, now you have gold and lead. One will turn out to be a storage for value.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#42

Post by runeks »

Twisell wrote: post #37

Ok just another proof that bitcoin can definitely not be compared to gold. Or maybe it could? "After the event you might end up with gold or lead it all depends if your banker believe in transmutation or not (and if transmutation is actually achievable which will be determined by the best alchemists of the kingdom that need to agree together). So all in all the guild of merchants recommend that you don't accept gold…

It doesn't matter how well you protect your gold, you can never protect its value, since this will be diluted if someone else brings a lot of gold to market. That's what happened during the ~1700s: lots of gold was brought to market because of world travel and disrupted local economies. Bitcoin prevents this by automatically adjusting difficulty. Asteroid mining can make gold useless, while Bitcoin would continue to function unless SHA256 is broken. I'm not saying Bitcoin is better or worse than gold, just that they both have advantages and disadvantages when compared.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#43

Post by kalleboo »

isubkhankulov wrote: post #12

this post feels like propoganda. prior bitcoin upgrades have gone much smoother and when they do go wrong the community banded together to spread the right information. albiet the userbase was likely a lot smaller back then.

The community is deeply divided on this issue though. Earlier network problems were non-contentious.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#45

Post by a1371 »

Twisell wrote: post #37

Ok just another proof that bitcoin can definitely not be compared to gold. Or maybe it could? "After the event you might end up with gold or lead it all depends if your banker believe in transmutation or not (and if transmutation is actually achievable which will be determined by the best alchemists of the kingdom that need to agree together). So all in all the guild of merchants recommend that you don't accept gold…

If you are comparing cryptocurrency exchanges with the real world transactions, stuff like this could have happened quite often in the old times. There is the story of the man working cast away for years with little connection with the rest of the world. After he comes back to a town he finds out that the king has changed, so all the notes and coins he has accepted as salary over the years are useless.

In reality, our banking system is much more chaotic than what the end-user sees it because central authorities are keeping the whole system together. and their authority is just what all of us believe in. Now, some people, for better or worse, started believing in something new.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#46

Post by beaner »

jpatokal wrote: post #20

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). Ho…

> any changes require consensus from the miners who create Bitcoins and process transactions, and because it's not in their best incentive to do anything to reduce those transaction fees

Can you explain how this jives with miners supporting Segwit2X, which brings both segwit and bigger blocks?

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#47

Post by fuwafuwa »

nodesocket wrote: post #34
jpatokal wrote: post #20

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). Ho…

So this all sounds pretty scary and gloomy, so why is BTC/USD trading up $86.00 in the last 24 hours? Shouldn't it be getting hammered? Is this a buying opportunity then?

The 24 hour upswing may be another bull trap masking the bearish trend that has taken hold for the last month, which has hit the entire crypto market and sent some market caps down over 50%. The BTC scaling crisis has been a known factor for even longer than that and may have precipitated a runup in other coins that directly preceded this downtrend.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#48

Post by erikpukinskis »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #26
jpatokal wrote: post #20

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). Ho…

That's a much more informative post than the link, and yet, I still don't really understand all the jargon. But it also reinforces for me just how not ready for primetime BTC is, and it makes me think the appreciation over the past year is truly insane.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be prime time at all. Almost no banking services, outside of checking accounts and index funds, are "ready for prime time" and yet banking services is a huge market.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#49

Post by jpatokal »

beaner wrote: post #46
jpatokal wrote: post #20

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). Ho…

> any changes require consensus from the miners who create Bitcoins and process transactions, and because it's not in their best incentive to do anything to reduce those transaction fees Can you explain how this jives with miners supporting Segwit2X, which brings both segwit and bigger blocks?

The opposing and (IMHO) ultimately greater pressure is that it's also in miners' best interest to keep Bitcoin alive and successful. It took a long time to hammer out SegWit2x and it's still not certain that it's going to work.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#50

Post by unabridged »

This is late FUD, a last minute whine by the owners of "bitcoin.org" aka core. The discussion over scaling has been happening for many months and consensus has actually just been reached in the last couple weeks. 85% of the mining power is signalling for segwit2x, and if this continues it will lock in before Aug 1st completely avoiding the scary situation talked about in the post.
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