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Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

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Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#71
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi was in favor of digitally signing Bitcoin transactions to provide non-repudiation as an underpinning of Bitcoin ownership. > it is more important what is in the message than who wrote it. That statement actually favors the signing of this textual message, since digital signatures provide integrity control in addition to non-repudiation of origin.

Satoshi could be a whole building of people, we don't know who he was, and so it's not even clear what "authentic" would mean in his case. Integrity of the message doesn't matter - if you see a message and it makes sense to you, then that is all that is necessary. You can agree or post a response to argue a point. If it's something stupid, what does it matter that it's signed? And if it is from "Satoshi Nakomoto", ho…

What you are saying is, reputations are irrelevant.

In this case you can get all sorts of sybil attacks to manipulate consensus by sheer numbers, including fake news and so forth.

Imagine HN without reputations or limits on spoof accounts.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#72
post #61

So... this should probably mean a deep dive for btc price then, right?

No, it resolves uncertainty and lets the community move forward in a unified way. It also shows Bitcoin's resilience in the face of committed minorities who would try to take over its governance. In short, Bitcoin survived a coup d'état, achieving total victory over a rebellious group of powerful actors (CEOs mainly).

> It also shows Bitcoin's resilience in the face of committed minorities who would try to take over its governance

could it not likewise be "it also shows Bitcoin is controlled by committed minorities which will not allow others to take over its governance" ?

From the outside, this seems the case.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#73
"6 people called off the fork. Think about that." [0]

A censorship resistant digital cash is being built, and it only took 6 small time CEOs to completely throw everyone off and almost derail the project. When someone like CME Group, who now has skin in the game, also starts pulling their weight, who knows if the bitcoin experiment will survive?

[0] https://twitter.com/arronschaar/status/928316853092433920

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#74
post #14

So bitcoin went up because they were going to fork, and now it's going up again because they will not? k Edit: Otoh, looks like it's seeing a bit of a drop now, but I doubt it will hit the pre-anticipation levels.

The only conclusion is bitcoin is not going up for any of these reasons.

I remember seeing a chart that correlated botcoins price with it's Google search volume.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#75
The idea of “consensus” in the bitcoin network is interesting to me. The code expresses “consensus” mathematically, and there exists a binary truth of whether a consensus has been “reached.” That’s simple and straightforward. It’s easy to reason about what happens once a consensus has been tautologically reached.

However, answering the question of “do we have a consensus yet?” is far less precise. Answering “what compromises can we make to achieve consensus,” even less so. All deliberation and conversation must happen offline, in “meatspace” amongst humans and operating outside mathematical principles. For example with the segwit2x fork, there was the New York Agreement, discussion all over the internet, etc. But does anyone have a precise number for the “theoretical consensus” or is all discussion based entirely on estimates?

I’ve always thought the “51% consensus” and the “hard fork” idea were hand-wavy solutions to a problem that can fundamentally only be solved by human cooperation. I also think Satoshi never expected this kind of discontent to be such a common occurrence.

Bitcoin should include a consensus building layer of code that acts as an arbiter for building consensus. It could execute polls, enforce rules of deliberation, etc. This is basically decentralized voting, which is generally seen as a distinct topic from bitcoin. But it seems bitcoin, one of the biggest decentralized networks, could benefit from a consensus building protocol.

The problem of decentralized governance is not going away. Solving it will be a massive technological step forward.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#76
post #70

A few altcoins immediately went +20% up - NEO, IOTA, Omnise, Lisk, Waves, Ark. But not the ones I expected - like Ethereum.

Doesn't Ethereum have its own problems right now?

Not ethereum, but one of the contracts written on top of it had a bug that some newbie triggered by mistake and locked something like $160M worth of moneys.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#77
post #51
post #14

So bitcoin went up because they were going to fork, and now it's going up again because they will not? k Edit: Otoh, looks like it's seeing a bit of a drop now, but I doubt it will hit the pre-anticipation levels.

Market fundamentals seem non existant here. At least a few years ago, when there were bad news the prices would reflect that. Now, it seems to go up anytime bitcoin is mentioned at all, regardless whether the market understands the implications or not.

Yep. In September Business Insider reported a 91% correlation between the price of Bitcoin and searches for Bitcoin on Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-goo...

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#78
post #56
post #14

So bitcoin went up because they were going to fork, and now it's going up again because they will not? k Edit: Otoh, looks like it's seeing a bit of a drop now, but I doubt it will hit the pre-anticipation levels.

I guess people say all kinds of things, but I don't recall anyone arguing that Bitcoin was going up because of the impending fork. It certainly wasn't the conventional wisdom.

There was a spate of articles calling Bitcoin forks "dividends" and other such nonsense which I'm sure a lot of people bought into.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#79

The idea of “consensus” in the bitcoin network is interesting to me. The code expresses “consensus” mathematically, and there exists a binary truth of whether a consensus has been “reached.” That’s simple and straightforward. It’s easy to reason about what happens once a consensus has been tautologically reached. However, answering the question of “do we have a consensus yet?” is far less precise. Answering “what com…

I think the most promising work here is around fork futures. Paul Sztorc (of Bitcoin Hivemind, the original decentralized prediction market, and Drivechains) has a lot to say about how with fork futures, we can let the market tell us how valuable proposals are [0].

We saw this in practice with the numerous S2X futures that were available. They were all predicting that S2X had about 13% chance of winning. This signal can then be used as substantial evidence in meatspace to retract or push forward a proposal.

[0] http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/fork-futures/

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#80

What a great way to manipulate the market.

I don't understand this desire to immediately assume bad faith in these situations. It's a complicated situation, involving a lot of actors. Yeah, probably some of them are acting in bad faith. But probably most of them are just trying to develop a functional cryptocurrency. This stuff is very hard, and having it all so decentralized only makes it harder. Personally I was hoping for the 2x fork to succeed, or, barrin…

> miracle switch over to Bitcoin Cash, which has the 8x capacity without the baggage of Segwit.

That fork (BCH) already happened. You were hoping that the vendors who stated "follow the chain w/greatest difficulty" would land on BCH? The merits just aren't there, and that's likely why miners aren't there either.

> But probably most of them are just trying to develop a functional cryptocurrency. This stuff is very hard

IMO people who haven't actually tried to do that actual development have no idea how hard it is and don't put sufficient weight on the concerns expressed by those who do. The segwit 2x proponents weren't developers.

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