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

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311–320 of 334 posts

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

#312

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've said it before but anyone who put money into Blockstream has to seriously be wondering what the hell they are doing

Thank you! As someone who has put money into Blockstream, I can assure you I'm following the situation very close.

Blockstream has few developers contributing to Core and associating with it is a very partial and poor view.

It is not a conventional company and the actual CEO (recently nominated) has the ability to keep such a group of talented minds together.

I humbly consider Blockstream the best investment I have done in my life under many aspects but the main one is the quality of the people working in it.

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

#313

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…

Thank you!

As someone who has put money into Blockstream I must say:

1. I follow the situation very close

2. The CEO was nominated not long ago

3. He has got the ability to keep such a group of talented minds together

4. Blockstream is not a conventional company

5. Core is an independent group of talented developers and FEW of Blockstream founders are part of it

6. I humbly admit that Blockstream is the best investments of my life under many aspects the main of which being the quality of the people working in it.

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

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of the hashing power has signaled their intention to adopt segwit2x as of late June. I assume it will become the dominant chain once it locks in right before August 1st.

That's misunderstanding even the basic issue here. Segwit signaling needs to begin August 1st, it won't lock in for about 2 weeks and that has nothing to do with the 2x part which won't even happen until November.

Incorrect. NYA begins locking in Segwit as early as July 21st. The point is to get Segwit locked in before August 1st so the UASF has no chance of creating a second chain that has any chance at life. You are correct that the 2x portion will require a hardfork that will presumably come down the road.

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of the hashing power has signaled their intention to adopt segwit2x as of late June. I assume it will become the dominant chain once it locks in right before August 1st.

That's assuming hashing power will determine the outcome. In the exchanges runs will take place. The actual economic users will vote this issue out. In the end spreadsheets will be updated, and miners won't want to spend their electricity on a chain that went unprofitable. Miners may have the software coming from segwit2x, and be the ones who actually provide the technical consensus. But the economic consensus will t…

Hashing power is what mines the blocks. There will be no "voting the issue out" if the dominant chain is using Segwit. Just because you buy a few BTC on GDAX or something doesn't somehow give you more say than the miners over what software gets run on their own machines. Vast amounts of hashing power is concentrated in the mining pools that are signaling support for this and 99% of the people speculating on these currencies don't care about the underlying protocol, they just want to make money.

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

#316
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'm disappointed that you concluded a valid argument with an ad-hominem attack. It's not helpful.

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

#317
Can someone please ELI5 why ASICBOOST would be considered an exploit?

Especially considering Satoshi clearly got caught off guard by the quick rise in GPU mining-- which led to the bootstrapping mechanism putting Bitcoin in fewer hands than it otherwise would have. But I never saw Satoshi call GPU mining an exploit.

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

#318
post #186
post #101

If Bitcoin splits, what do you predict would be the effect on holders of bitcoins? - They have twice as much money (yay!) - They have twice as much money but the value is split, so it's worth approximately the same. - One of the branches wins or mostly wins. - The split does so much damage that some (all?) value of coins is lost.

You can look at ETH vs ETH classic to see the effect. Initial huge drop while things get reorganized, then after a long time, with the legacy chain worth 10% of the main chain, with unknown extra value lost due to the split. This assumes enough hashpower where people can still transact on the legacy chain, and with some sort of replay protection to where exchanges can safely actually convert the funds to have two sep…

I really have not being paying much attention to crypto (apart from seeing the odd thing on reddit and here).

I hold some BTC and ETH, is it a case that what I have is no longer holding the value I believed it has?

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

#319
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.

Its starting to rise again now, I really would not be surprised if it peaks $500 over the next two weeks.

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

#320
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By design, miners control Bitcoin. Before Ethereum, miners were fine with Bitcoin core because they were still making tons of profits, and blocks weren't full. They were almost all following core and that's why core has a lot of power. Now that Bitcoin hit a scaling ceiling and a competitor who can scale way beyond Bitcoin is rapidely taking the lead, they finally realize why Core/Blockstream strategy is bad for them…

Miners provide security for the system, but they do so at the behest of the users. If they don't enforce the rules that the users desire, the users will reject their blocks and the miners won't get paid.

Miners provide security and thus value to the system, if the users don't follow them, their coins lose security and thus value. The chain with the most hashpower has the value and the users have no choice but to go with it or they risk their coins losing value. The users are not in control.
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