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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#281

Post by shardo »

GenericsMotors wrote: post #272
nenreme wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine the uproar if Visa said the same thing? It would be totally unthinkable. No, that's exactly what Visa says, they call it chargeback. That's why it is hard to buy bitcoins with bank cards.

Yes, and you can dispute it, by contacting your them/your bank. Who do I call if bitscoins just evaporate from my wallet thanks to this fork?

If a government outlaws a currency and you sold your house for that currency, who could you possibly call?

Bitcoins transacted before July 31 WILL stay in your wallet. They are not going to evaporate any time soon.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#282

Post by Retric »

lawn wrote: post #194
knocte wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the centralization? If there was no centralization, people would still be profitable doing solo mining. Most of the pools these days are pools because they own huge mining datacenters already (not because they have a lot of miner-users).

That's not how we should see decentralization, "lacking a central point of control" is a better definition. What you're arguing for is the mining to be distributed. https://medium.com/@johnblocke/decentralization-fetishism-is...

Effectively 4 people, when they agree, completely control bitcoin. That's more centralized than the US dollar.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#283

Post by duckingtest »

whiskers08xmt wrote: post #215
runeks wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitfury recently released an analysis, that predicts that 95% of current miners, would find mining to be unprofitable at blocksize of 8MB. I don't understand this. Due to what would 95% of current miners find mining unprofitable at 8MB blocks?

8mb blocks would mean that the bitcoin blockchain, would grow by 35 gigabyte a month. Compare this to the total blockchain size of about 120gb right now. This increases the cost of mining, by requiring miners to keep up on harddisk space. This cost can be amortized, as you can scale your processing independently of your harddisk space, making it even more profitable to mine for big investors, than smaller fish.

There's an old idea that solves the storage issue completely - utxo commitments.

Literally the only real throughput limit is end user's download bandwidth, which means 500MB blocks or so for 10Mbps download. Spv clients are fine for those unfortunate to have monthly limits.

>making it even more profitable to mine for big investors, than smaller fish.

Both storage and bandwidth are utterly insignificant cost items in a mining operation.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#284

Post by GenericsMotors »

kakarot wrote: post #279
GenericsMotors wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and you can dispute it, by contacting your them/your bank. Who do I call if bitscoins just evaporate from my wallet thanks to this fork?

Decentralized currency comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. The tech is still in its infancy. Take it or leave it.

Then seems to me it's on its deathbed, not in its infancy. A handful of Chinese mining pools will decide which fork retains any value...so much for decentralization.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#285

Post by GenericsMotors »

shardo wrote: post #281
GenericsMotors wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and you can dispute it, by contacting your them/your bank. Who do I call if bitscoins just evaporate from my wallet thanks to this fork?

If a government outlaws a currency and you sold your house for that currency, who could you possibly call? Bitcoins transacted before July 31 WILL stay in your wallet. They are not going to evaporate any time soon.

And this is not was I was replying to. Gp was comparing this to a chargeback.

But now that you bring up governance, bitcoin is essentially being steered by a handful of mining pools, not by loosely knit community of private individuals :)

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#286

Post by pat2man »

cableshaft wrote: post #263

> "Be wary of storing your bitcoins on an exchange or any service that doesn’t allow you to make a local backup copy of your private keys." I know a couple people who have some bitcoin on Coinbase and aren't too comfortable moving it to a local wallet (Coinbase is just easier for them, they don't have to worry about the security of their personal computer). Does Coinbase allow making a local backup of private keys? I…

When ETH split Coinbase chose one fork and allowed you to transfer your other ETH out.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#287

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#288

Post by matt_wulfeck »

ar0 wrote: post #93
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.

Isn't "any [money] you receive [...] may later disappear" actually pretty common with credit card chargebacks?

This is such a silly argument. Chargebacks are for the protection of the consumer against a business. They're GREAT if you're a consumer. Why would it be in my benefit as a bitcoin user to have no recourse for fraudulent transactions?

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#289

Post by GenericsMotors »

moduspol wrote: post #280
GenericsMotors wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you absolutely can have its value disappear from you. This is not a fair representation of what the article says. It doesn't only say that coins you've received may lose value, it says that there's no guarantee the network will recognize the contents of your wallet in the future. A more accurate analogy would be me handing you a crisp $100 bill which you place in your wallet, and tomorrow when you go to retrieve it…

I think you're misunderstanding the situation the article is describing then. In that unlikely but possible scenario: Your wallet would have received coins on Chain A, but the majority of the network now favors Chain B and as a result is ignoring Chain A. You still have the private key to coins and can spend them on Chain A. It's just problematic because they're on a chain fewer people value. Fewer, but not zero. The…

Worthless as they may be, they are already collectors items. Who's going to care about a failed chain's unspent coins in 50 years time?

Also, you can use ZWD notes as kindling. :)

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