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Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

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Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#51

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why not both? It doesn't appear that the two strategies are mutually exclusive. Is it just that SegWitX2 is considered too rushed? Is it just that miners have a vested interest in maintaining influence? Personally it seems like smart contracts and other similar services beget an ecosystem that could swell the market cap by a significant amount, I assume miners would have a long…

Sounds like you already know. The Core devs say that SegWit2x is too rushed (and I tend to agree), but it's also putting forward a new client that could become the default over Core (btc1), and a potential refresh of the dev team.

This is less about the tech and more about the politics, at this point.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#52
post #4
post #2

TL;DR: Bitcoin is popping, and Ethereum is going to be the new bubble.

Ethereum already went bubble and popped. Maybe it'll go again though. I personally got out @2600 and am probably done with cryptos for a while. Was a good 3 year hold and appreciate though.

Ethereum is up 17x in 4 months. So uh... popped aint the right word

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#53
post #16

The days are counting down to the "Segwit2X" rollout, the idea supported in the "New York Agreement" (NYA)[0]. There is a contingency plan in place should the Core-supported User Activated Soft Fork become activated.[1] Segwit2X has working code, has been tested in beta, and is now in RC.[2] Without commenting on the merits of the different approaches, the current situation is thrilling to watch as a spectator. To ca…

> Without commenting on the merits of the different approaches, the current situation is thrilling to watch as a spectator. To call it a "Civil War" is not an exaggeration.

I totally disagree. The whole discussion is totally overblown when you consider what is actually happening. I would bet 99% of services accepting bitcoin are running core, and the rest 1% maybe with minor patches which doesn't affect consensus code. That is very unlikely to change.

Miners can run whatever they want and probably already are running custom code. However for the rest of the network matters if they mine core compatible blocks or not. Some miners can choose to mine 2MB blocks or whatever, but the rest of the network will ignore those, since they are not compatible with core.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#54

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why not both? It doesn't appear that the two strategies are mutually exclusive. Is it just that SegWitX2 is considered too rushed? Is it just that miners have a vested interest in maintaining influence? Personally it seems like smart contracts and other similar services beget an ecosystem that could swell the market cap by a significant amount, I assume miners would have a long…

There are many reasons, but one is that few people in the technical community support a somewhat rushed hard fork that does nothing but increase the block size a bit. There are plenty of other things that would be great to clean up if a hard fork is to be deployed. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#55
post #25

With this much uncertainty, paying ~$2000 for 1 bitcoin seems insane to me. But that's why I don't invest in cryptocurrencies; too much volatility for my taste.

You can't invest in a Cryptocurrency. It's called gambling. edit: autocorrect.

All investments are speculative in nature. Some are just riskier than others.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#56
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XT/Classic was a mere skirmish compared to this. On one side you have Chinese miners and one developer gunning for segwit2x because it gives them a significant advantage related to their hardware. On the other side you have the other dozen or so core developers who want a more conservative approach. As a side-effect this version levels the playing field for miners.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Because what I see from my point of view is a dozen of Blockstream employees pushing for segwit, with barely no support from the community nor the miners. And on the other side I see a growing majority of miners, a growing majority of the community asking for a simple block size increase, wich is a matter of 10 lines modified, compared to 5 000 lines and a great bunch of compl…

I find it sad (but not at all surprising) that this is the state of the Bitcoin community. The level of discourse for what is supposed to be a technology that is billed as "liberating money from the whims of governments" has neatly conformed to exactly that of the current state of political discourse. Everyone who disagrees with you is a shill/troll or an idiot. Adding math and "decentralization" doesn't magically prevent humans from being humans.

I'm sure given just enough time the "community" will structure itself into a perfect replica of a modern bureaucracy.

edit: I'm not just extrapolating from this one post a gander over at /r/btc or /r/bitcoin shows the same lovely trend

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#57
post #49

This is why I'm bullish on Litecoin. Already has segregated witness, lightning network, low transaction fees, and a low drama community.

pretty sure LTC doesnt have lighting sidechain

@roasbeef posted about ltcd running on Litecoin with SegWit in May [0].

[0] - http://lightning.community/release/software/lnd/lightning/20...

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#58

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

Core developers never had control in the first place. No one has control; it's weird to see so many people applying authoritarian concepts to an anti-authoritarian system.

Yeah I don't think the core developers have ever claimed to have control. Isn't this one of the main reasons why they have refused to implement auto-upgrade in Bitcoin Core?

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#59

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

"I suspect that SegWit2x will end up taking over the network" What? They had first release like yesterday, the project has released one tarball, no packaging, no very good marketing etc. The biggest marketers seem to be the tinfoil hat opponents who fear the fork so much that they speak about it everywhere. I don't think it is at all likely that segwit2x client will gain support. Or if it will gain support, it will t…

They have a huge amount of committed hashpower and the support of most major Bitcoin companies.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#60
post #16

The days are counting down to the "Segwit2X" rollout, the idea supported in the "New York Agreement" (NYA)[0]. There is a contingency plan in place should the Core-supported User Activated Soft Fork become activated.[1] Segwit2X has working code, has been tested in beta, and is now in RC.[2] Without commenting on the merits of the different approaches, the current situation is thrilling to watch as a spectator. To ca…

> the current situation is thrilling to watch as a spectator

Is there a good "live-thread" where I can follow the events?

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