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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#61

Post by Taek »

mhluongo wrote: post #24
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…

You skipped the option that's closest to consensus! SegWit2x has industry support and has a short enough window to lock-in before the Aug 1st UASF EDIT: Quick reference https://medium.com/@wintercooled/the-road-to-segwit-activati...

Though it has industry support, it does not have user support, because it does not have a working, tested implementation released. With less than 3 weeks until the fork triggers, I highly doubt they are going to get substantial user adoption by the time the fork triggers.

One of the most amazing properties of Bitcoin is that it's completely user driven. When it comes to the fundamental consensus rules, no amount of hashrate or corporate agreements can force a change onto the userbase. It's a system that intentionally resists central control. Any changes need to start with userbase support, and I'm just not seeing that with Segwit2x.

If I am wrong, I will find out soon enough.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#62

Post by samat »

a1371 wrote: post #45
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, ou…

A little remark - those central authorities have men with guns to enforce their authority (given that governments are backing centralized system as for now)

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#63

Post by Taek »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #58

> This means that any bitcoins you receive after that time may later disappear from your wallet or be a type of bitcoin that other people will not accept as payment. Can you imagine the uproar if Visa said the same thing? It would be totally unthinkable. Bitcoin can get away with this type of "disruption" because it's not really being used for anything other than a speculative vehicle.

That's incorrect, Bitcoin is used in many places for critical applications, and I'm sure that those people are very frustrated by the situation. I know that I am.

We are doing a hardware presale using Bitcoin, and we're going to have to stop accepting Bitcoin at that time (it's a cryptocurrency miner, 90% of our sales are in Bitcoin), and that's going to hurt us.

This whole situation is frustrating.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#64

Post by Taek »

wyager wrote: post #52
unabridged wrote: post #50

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.

Not sure why people are downvoting you, you are objectively correct. segwit2x is at over 85%. https://coin.dance/blocks

I'm guessing the downvotes were a response to the tone of the post, not the actual content.

Though, the content itself is incorrect as well. Consensus has been achieved by the miners and by a few major payment processors, but not by the userbase. Blockchains though are very resistant to moves by major players, and even the miners being at 85% are not enough to force fundamental changes like this into the network if the users do not actively want to participate in the changes.

Note the wording there. The users have to opt-in to a change like this. It's opt-in, not opt-out. I'm very doubtful that software which is not even out in the wild yet is going to be able to get a majority of users to opt-in within a 3 week timeline.

We will know soon enough for sure.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#65

Post by wyager »

Taek wrote: post #64
wyager wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why people are downvoting you, you are objectively correct. segwit2x is at over 85%. https://coin.dance/blocks

I'm guessing the downvotes were a response to the tone of the post, not the actual content. Though, the content itself is incorrect as well. Consensus has been achieved by the miners and by a few major payment processors, but not by the userbase. Blockchains though are very resistant to moves by major players, and even the miners being at 85% are not enough to force fundamental changes like this into the network if t…

It's a bad idea to downvote one of the only correct posts in the entire thread (at that time) because of its tone.

Bitcoin consensus is definitionally achieved by miner PoW. Yes, they are beholden to market pressure from users, but saying that concensus is "by the user base" is misleading. I'm using the terminology from the bitcoin white paper

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#66

Post by Taek »

stale2002 wrote: post #38
runeks wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get it. As long as a reasonable majority of hashing power stays on one chain, there shouldn't be any symptoms except increased confirmation times. The bitcoin.org page says: > Do not trust any payments you receive after Tue Aug 01 2017 02:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST) until the situation is resolved. No matter how many confirmations the new payment says it has, it can disappear from your wallet at any point up…

The doomsday scenario is that Bitcoin forks for a long period of time, but then one fork down the road, crashes in value to worthlessness. There is nothing that prevents 2 forks from existing for an indefinite amount of time, just look at ethereum and ethereum classic. The question of the year is whether one side will suddenly crash down to a price of 0.

No, that's not correct. In the case of the UASF, something very frightening is possible.

If the UASF has majority economic support (unlikely) and also the miners do not support it, initially the UASF side will be behind, and there will be multiple chains. There will be the UASF chain and the normal chain.

But since the UASF has more support, it'll have more block reward, and eventually it'll have more hashrate behind it. It'll eventually catch up to the other chain, pass the other chain, and then...

The other chain completely implodes, and stops existing. Yes, that's actually what happens, and why if you are a miner, you should be afraid of the UASF. You lose basically everything if the UASF ends up with more hashrate, and the UASF is eventually guaranteed to have more hashrate if it has a higher coin price.

----

Basically, your doomsday scenario dramatically understates the worst-case scenario.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#67

Post by olalonde »

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?

Those issues have been known for a while so it's no surprise they haven't affected the price in the last 24 hours. Explaining Bitcoin's price movements is a bit like astrology but this guy probably lifted some spirits today: https://media.giphy.com/media/8cTtn78RkOAk8/giphy.gif

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#68

Post by modeless »

The problems described in this post are unlikely to happen. There is an attempt to split ("fork") the network scheduled for August 1. The people forking will force activation of a new feature, Segwit, while the non-forkers won't. However, the non-forkers are currently planning to activate Segwit as part of a compromise plan before the deadline. If this compromise happens as planned, there will be no need to force-activate Segwit with a fork, and so no fork will happen on August 1.

Frankly, even if the compromise solution fails and the fork does happen on August 1, it will be a complete non-event. Bitcoin.org is biased as they are affiliated with people who support the August 1 fork, and so they're attempting to publicize it. However, the fork has practically zero support from Bitcoin miners or exchanges. On Aug 1 the vast majority of miners and exchanges will stay with the current network. Without significant miner support the forked network will run extremely slowly, and it will be vulnerable to several kinds of attacks. Without exchange support the forked network will not have economic value, and will quickly become irrelevant.

Although August 1 will likely not be a problem either way, there is another date that will. Around the end of October, another proposal to fork the network is scheduled, and this one is supported by miners and exchanges. What will happen then is much more murky. It will become clearer as the date approaches.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#69

Post by Taek »

roadbeats wrote: post #8

What strategy is the best for small investors ? Moving the money into altcoins or just pulling completely back ? Should we expect a soar on altcoins (e.g litecoin, ripple, antshares a.k.a neo) ?

Pretty easy. Pull all of your coins into a wallet you control (like bitcoin-core, running on your own computer), and then just ride through the storm. For some amount of time, there may be 2 or 3 versions of Bitcoin that are active, but if you use this strategy you'll own all of your coins on all the versions.

So, as long as the combined value of every version is approximately around the value of the original version, you haven't lost any money.

Then, wait for the dust to settle, sell the coins for the versions you don't like, buy coins for the versions you do like, and then resume using Bitcoin like you had originally.

The altcoin market is pretty upside down right now, even more than Bitcoin is. It's probably less safe to move to an alt than it is to just ride through the bitcoin storm.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#70

Post by jpatokal »

Taek wrote: post #59
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…

A neutral response would probably not use the phrasing 'muddle through' with regards to the solution endorsed by most of the technical experts in the Bitcoin space. ---- Right now there are 3 implementations of Bitcoin in the wild, and each of the 3 will react differently to different network events. The network is essentially splitting apart, with each fragment driven by a different faction. If you don't know what t…

My view is that SegWit is a bandaid, not a cure: while it would give Bitcoin some breathing room, it doesn't fix the underlying constraints and is not alone going to solve scaling, hence "muddle through".
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