Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 334 posts

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

#71

Post by buttershakes »

statoshi wrote: post #48
buttershakes wrote: post #26

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.

This is false. Bitcoin is a consensus system, and the default client for better or for worse has a stickiness that doesn't exist in normal open source software because of this group consensus. So there is definitely a measure of control. Yes, it's not total or complete, but it is there.

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

#72

Post by ChrisClark »

jerguismi wrote: post #61
mhluongo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No major bitcoin company has stated that they will run segwit2x client. If you have conflicting information, please link announcement/blog post about that. As for the hashpower, it doesn't matter what clients miners run. You can't force the nodes to run specific client with hashpower.

I'm not picking a side, just delivering info:

You can see the signalling process here: https://coin.dance/blocks

90% are signalling the NYA intent to support Segwit2x. Since the software release 20% have signalled with segwit2x blocks.

You can see business support here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support#Businesses

I'm not sure if you consider Coinbase a major bitcoin company yourself, but I think they qualify.

If I was to make a prediction, everyone will be running segwit2x or another client faking segwit2x support, to get segwit passed by Aug 1st. Then once October comes along we'll have another fight over the actual blocksize hardfork.

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

#73

Post by buttershakes »

jerguismi wrote: post #61
mhluongo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No major bitcoin company has stated that they will run segwit2x client. If you have conflicting information, please link announcement/blog post about that. As for the hashpower, it doesn't matter what clients miners run. You can't force the nodes to run specific client with hashpower.

You basically can do exactly that. Unless the companies involved want to run on a minority chain with much less hash power, which means they are exposing themselves to a 51% attack as soon as their difficulty drops significantly behind the majority. Hash power is a very big stick.

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

#74

Post by luka-birsa »

cableshaft wrote: post #70
drukenemo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wondering if it's time to sell mine. Already sold like 70%...

Personally I wouldn't sell now, especially if you can wait it out a year or two. The dust will settle eventually, and it'll be on the rise again, most likely, higher than it got a couple of months ago. But I don't know what's going to happen anymore than anyone else claims to.

If you're convinced it's going to fall, then it's stupid to hold. You can sell and rebuy at lower price.

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

#75

Post by segmondy »

jerguismi wrote: post #64
statoshi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't control, but they have lots of power in the sense that 99% of people will just run the bitcoin core client without researching too much, what is in the code.

Not true, the miners are heavily vested and do their research. Speculators who just buy and sell go wherever the market is which is wherever the miners are.

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

#76

Post by kinghajj »

shp0ngle wrote: post #66

The basic question is how to scale; off-chain or on-chain. The rest is just theatrics and typical nerdy hyperbole. One side of the fight (Core / blockstream) wants to scale off-chain, pushing transactions to side-chains and/or lighting networks, and want to profit from off-chain solutions. The other side of the fight (segwit2x / miners) wants to scale on-chain, making the blocks bigger, and profit from block fees. Bo…

> Also cannot scale this way infinitely (you need to keep all the transactions on a disk forever).

The whitepaper itself mentions that the Merkle tree can be pruned so that doesn't need to be the case. Do you know why there hasn't been more effort towards implementing that yet?

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

#77

Post by stale2002 »

jerguismi wrote: post #61
mhluongo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No major bitcoin company has stated that they will run segwit2x client. If you have conflicting information, please link announcement/blog post about that. As for the hashpower, it doesn't matter what clients miners run. You can't force the nodes to run specific client with hashpower.

Wrong. Coinbase is on board.

They were an original signer of the new york agreement, which is how segwit2X was created.

If you want a link, just read the new york agreement announcement.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

jerguismi wrote: post #61
mhluongo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No major bitcoin company has stated that they will run segwit2x client. If you have conflicting information, please link announcement/blog post about that. As for the hashpower, it doesn't matter what clients miners run. You can't force the nodes to run specific client with hashpower.

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by DINKDINK »

buttershakes wrote: post #71
statoshi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is false. Bitcoin is a consensus system, and the default client for better or for worse has a stickiness that doesn't exist in normal open source software because of this group consensus. So there is definitely a measure of control. Yes, it's not total or complete, but it is there.

Bitcoin Core does not have control over the software users run on their machine. If you believe differently, you don't understand how Bitcoin works. You might be confusing network effect with control.

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

#80

Post by jerguismi »

jerguismi wrote: post #61
mhluongo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No major bitcoin company has stated that they will run segwit2x client. If you have conflicting information, please link announcement/blog post about that. As for the hashpower, it doesn't matter what clients miners run. You can't force the nodes to run specific client with hashpower.

All those claiming that coinbase is planning to run segwit2x, please link to a statement provided by a representative of that company. I think you are just talking bullshit.
Post reply on HN