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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#171

Post by RandVal30142 »

rothbardrand wrote: post #107
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…

I think you missed the key issue. Mining is largely centralized under the control of Bitmain, both via pools and indirectly via miners they have sold (which in the past have had backdoors). They profit from using an exploit called ASICBOOST. Segwit will disable ASICBOOST as a side effect of improving the protocol. Therefore, BitMain has been launching FUD campaigns and numerous attempts to propose alternative softwar…

>Segwit will disable ASICBOOST

Incorrect. It would make 'stealth' ASICBoost mining improbable but still possible overall.

> Therefore, BitMain has been launching FUD campaigns.

Substantiate your claim.

> proven to be due to spam

Show it. Just show it already. Its a transparent blockchain but no one can show this spam, identify how it is malicious, show where it is coming from.

Show the spam already. Like ASICBoost its an invisible horror used to terrorize people into supporting your narrative. This is not very nice.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#172

Post by joosters »

Taek wrote: post #61
mhluongo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

User support means nothing. Users have to either accept the way that the system works, persuade the miners to change their ways, or switch to another coin whose systems they prefer.

Certainly, the last of those options seems to be popular recently.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#173

Post by knocte »

zero_iq wrote: post #165
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…

I am rather stunned that the entire global bitcoin network, with its colossal combined computing power, and staggering electricity consumption, is only capable of sustaining 7 tps. The level of inefficiency here is mind-boggling. Surely this must be one of the least efficient, least environmentally-friendly computing ventures ever?

This is only layer1 (like IP in the networking world). Wait until layer2 comes (Lightning Network, TumbleBit), then we will reach the scalability levels we need for the entire planet to use the same blockchain.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#174

Post by joosters »

grwgreg wrote: post #72
mhluongo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support None of the core developers support segwit2x.

A big part of Bitcoin's entertaining in-fighting is due to the 'core' developers having a mindset that conflicts with many other people. Some speculate that this is because a large number of devs are paid by Blockstream, who have financial incentives to keep bitcoin congested so that their paid-for products (like their lightning implementations) have more value.

I have no bitcoins, so I have no real preference in what happens. But watching politics destroy a 'decentralised' currency is good entertainment :)

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#175

Post by joeblau »

sktrdie wrote: post #158

All this "unconsensus" is weird to me given that PoW was created to fix just that. I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners. After all, anybody can be a miner. Anything other than that just doesn't make it decentralized anymore. If you trust the developers, exchanges or even users to make decisions, then why not just make a BitcoinSQL where the servers are c…

One of the things that was confusing to me is the U in UASF. It's not a user actived soft fork, its certain miners vs other miners.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#176

Post by [deleted] »

jsn wrote: post #168
BenoitP wrote: post #144

To me, hashing power is not the process by which the outcome will be decided. IMHO, the percentage of technical signalling will not even matter that much. Two chains will get created quite quickly. And some BTC holders will try to take advantage of the situation. Since transactions can get replayed on the other chain (and copying them from one chain to the other brings a stability advantage) the technical way things…

Why do you think that being the exchange used for cashing out is a bad position to be for an exchange? My understanding is, exchanges earn money on commissions, so the more volume they get, the better, and cashing out sure is some volume. Those speculators who buy BTC on the wrong chain -- sure, they will take a hit on that. But the exchange itself will still get their commission just fine. Am I missing something her…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#177

Post by joosters »

brownbat wrote: post #108
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…

As a BTC amateur, trying to approach it from an ordinary user's perspective, all I know is I used to be able to set whatever fee I wanted and wait a few hours and things would get through, and now I have to play some sort of game of chicken with the network, guessing whether my transaction will ever be processed unless I pay as large a fee as possible. I've used the fee prediction engines to try to avoid low fees and…

Fee estimation is an impossible task. There's never any guaranteed fee that will get your transaction accepted.

Imagine there's 11 people waiting at a bus stop, and the next bus that arrives has 10 spare seats. There's no pricing model that will allow all 11 people on to that bus, regardless of how much the people want to pay, or even how you rate the users. So it goes with bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#178

Post by iopq »

RandomKid wrote: post #95
runeks wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> you can never protect its (gold's) value, since this will be diluted if someone else brings a lot of gold to market... Bitcoin prevents this by automatically adjusting difficulty. It doesn't prevent it. If everyone decides to sell BTC now (including the big whales owning the major portion), it's price in USD will fall, too. How is this different?

If everyone decides to sell now the price will tank. But then people will decide that Bitcoin is now "cheap" and the price will increase.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#179

Post by ktta »

patrickk wrote: post #146
ktta wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The other chain completely implodes, and stops existing. Are you sure? If I'm not wrong, this isn't that much different from Ethereum/Ethereum Classic situation. Ethereum Classic's price is no where near Ethereum's but it is still maintaining a good position - 5th by Market Cap and 3rd by 24hr volume. You are saying the ALL of the mining power will eventually move over, but what if it doesn't the miners (85% of whom…

> Ethereum Classic's price is no where near Ethereum's but it is still maintaining a good position - 5th by Market Cap and 3rd by 24hr volume. ETC's price is being pumped up (some more context can be found on /r/ethereum), in some cases by taking advantage of newcomers looking to get into the ETH craze, helped by the fact that the Ethereum Foundation doesn't seem interested in maintaining ownership how the word "Ethe…

I didn't really find any proper reason as to how it is being pumped. Just about ETC misleading people into buying it. Any links?

>There's no real technological innovation or developer interest in ETC.

I mean, ETC guys can just push all of the new developments in ETH to their code. The codebase is the same. There probably won't be any original developments in ETC, but they don't really need much to stay on par with ETH.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#180

Post by imaginenore »

sktrdie wrote: post #158

All this "unconsensus" is weird to me given that PoW was created to fix just that. I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners. After all, anybody can be a miner. Anything other than that just doesn't make it decentralized anymore. If you trust the developers, exchanges or even users to make decisions, then why not just make a BitcoinSQL where the servers are c…

> I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners.

How about Bitcoin owners instead? Your vote is proportional to how much you have.

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