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Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

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Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#151

I still don't really understand why people were so against a block size increase. I get that there are centralisation risks if the block size increases too much, but it doesn't really seem as though increasing to 2mb really make such a big difference? Am I missing something?

SegWit was a soft-fork block size increase with other scaling improvements. I'm strongly against having any hard fork in Bitcoin. The last Ethereum hard fork (when half of the devs wanted to cancel it because of the bug that was found) showed how dangerous it is. At this point Bitcoin is worth so much, that it's better to not touch it at all without a formal proof that the network is not harmed at all. The biggest di…

What are the technical reasons that mean bitcoin has such a long time between blocks? Other large chains (Ethereum, Litecoin) have significantly lower confirmation times.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#152
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I got out of bitcoin trading. It used to correlate to the general attitude about it. Now the coins and miners are so centralized the real driving force of bitcoins price is the thousand wallets holding 95% of all BTC. Its like trying to predict market movements for a stock where 95% of the shares in a company are owned by one person. It isn't up to anyone else but that person where the price trends, becau…

Reposting this as pertinent: In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and many addresses have been used only once or a few times. (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from…

For context, those numbers came from 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1

I can't find any more recent study specific to the Gini coefficient, however these[1] charts show an improvement over this snapshot[2] from May 2015.

[1]: https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.... [2]: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/1-bitcoin-community-controls...

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#153
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll copy a response I left below: The value of full nodes is widely understood by bitcoin contributors [0][1][2]. Increasing the block size directly increases the amount of resources required to run a full node. Increased bandwidth requirements is especially a problem. It is up to the candidate (s2x), not the incumbent (core) to show that no, it won't be harder to run full nodes, or to show that you can have just as…

Why would a full node be more secure than an SPV node? I had understood that SPV nodes store only the merkle root of all the transactions in each block, so as I understand it should be able to verify whether a given transaction is valid or not?

Peter Wuille provides one answer to this in the first link I shared:

> SPV nodes (such as some mobile clients, and Multibit) place a blind trust in the majority of miners, without checking validity of the blockchain they produce. It still requires a majority of miners to mislead an SPV node, but they can make it believe anything (including "You received 10000000 BTC!"). The reason why this does not happen is because full nodes would not accept such blocks, and assuming a large portion of the ecosystem does rely on full nodes, miners who do this would not see their blocks accepted by the larger economy, resulting in them wasting money.

Further, on this page, you can read about security considerations between light clients and full nodes: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security

Basically, a network comprised of only SPV nodes and miners places the SPV nodes at the mercy of the miners. Because of how centralized and state-controlled mining is (see Russia and China), this would be a very easy way for states to attack bitcoin.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#154
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a full node be more secure than an SPV node? I had understood that SPV nodes store only the merkle root of all the transactions in each block, so as I understand it should be able to verify whether a given transaction is valid or not?

Peter Wuille provides one answer to this in the first link I shared: > SPV nodes (such as some mobile clients, and Multibit) place a blind trust in the majority of miners, without checking validity of the blockchain they produce. It still requires a majority of miners to mislead an SPV node, but they can make it believe anything (including "You received 10000000 BTC!"). The reason why this does not happen is because…

OK clear now. Thin clients can only verify that a given transaction exists on the chain, but are not able to verify the contents of the transaction itself.

Thanks for the links :)

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#155
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That doesn't matter, because people can independently look at the design of the crypto. Your point about authentic in this context is meaningless. > 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. That…

> You don't sign to check stupidity

Right, you use your brain to check for stupidity, and once that check is complete, identity, authenticity and consistency of the message does not matter.

Bitcoin is a trust-less protocol, you cannot and should not trust any node, miner, developer, any online or offline post. Trust is not a thing in the Bitcoin world, and the tradition of not signing communications is generally rooted in this concept.

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#156
post #97
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why I got out of bitcoin trading. It used to correlate to the general attitude about it. Now the coins and miners are so centralized the real driving force of bitcoins price is the thousand wallets holding 95% of all BTC. Its like trying to predict market movements for a stock where 95% of the shares in a company are owned by one person. It isn't up to anyone else but that person where the price trends, becau…

where are you getting those false numbers from, this is the distribution

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....

Trading on attitude is not the best trading analysis strategy, I'm glad you sold before losing more money

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#157
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I got out of bitcoin trading. It used to correlate to the general attitude about it. Now the coins and miners are so centralized the real driving force of bitcoins price is the thousand wallets holding 95% of all BTC. Its like trying to predict market movements for a stock where 95% of the shares in a company are owned by one person. It isn't up to anyone else but that person where the price trends, becau…

Reposting this as pertinent: In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and many addresses have been used only once or a few times. (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from…

How can they possibly identify 47 individuals and what does that even mean in bitcoin context? Would an exchange fund holding millions of people’s coins be considered a single individual?

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#158
post #135

I still don't really understand why people were so against a block size increase. I get that there are centralisation risks if the block size increases too much, but it doesn't really seem as though increasing to 2mb really make such a big difference? Am I missing something?

Segwit activation in August was a blocksize increase, and a much more elegant solution than just doubling the blocks. An agreement was made by a few corporate entities to allow for segwit after a long standoff. They also decided on doubling the blocksize later in the year to appease the miners. Miners reneged on the agreement when Bitcoin Cash or BCH was forked when a small minority thought a better solution was to a…

Segwit is a horrible blocksize increase strategy, the mempool is filled with unconfirmed transactions that 1mb believers call spam

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#159
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended

#160
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.

You must be new to this. Literally any change shows that bitcoin will win.

Something bad for bitcoin? And it still can't stop it! Look at how resilient it is!

Something good for bitcoin? TOLD YOU SO to the moon!

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