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BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#181

Post by joeblau »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #71
joeblau wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at BBN Technologies in the early 2000's. I was always amazed at how a company that essentially co-founded the internet and had the second domain name ever registered[1] could basically go out of business. You just made me think that Bitcoin could definitely be the ARPANET of blockchains and Core devs could be BBN. Don't get me wrong, I worked with some extremely smart people, but in the end, Raytheon bought…

The difference of course, is that bitcoin isn't a company. And the arpanet turned into the internet. But companies come and go. By your analogy, raytheon owns the internet.

You're right, Bitcoin is not a company, it's a technology. This is the analogy I'd make.

Then (Internet) / Now (Cryptocurrencies)

  NCP[1] == Blockchain based decentralized consensus
  ARPANET == Bitcoin
  BBN Technologies == Blockstream
  TCP/IP == We are figuring this out right now
  Internet == We are figuring this out right now
The ARPANET turned into the Internet in the fact that parts of it were used to build TCP/IP and the modern Internet. Just like concepts from Bitcoin will eventually be used to build whatever decentralized byzantine fault tolerant mechanism we end up with in ten years. I don't think Bitcoin is the Internet, Bitcoin is the ARPANET. Also, I wouldn't say Raytheon owns the Internet. Today the Internet is owned and controlled by many different parties all built on the TCP/IP stack. Countries like China own their own internet.

In my mind, all of this work to find different decentralized consensus algorithms is work to build transport layer (OSI Model[2]). Bitcoin is an early application, but thousands of applications are now popping up, competing, and building healthier communities.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Control_Program

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#182

Post by sireat »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #162
michaelmrose wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please explicate the means by which the chinese government could effectively trap your cash in your wallet. Couldn't you give money to any number of intermediaries?

It can be trivially done by the existing miners not committing transactions to the blockchain that they control. Because a single company, bitmain, controls more than 50% of the hashing power of bcash, they would only build on blocks that don't contain transactions from their blacklist. That is what bcash is right now. A captured blockchain. You transact on it at the sufferance of the chinese government. If you think…

How does bitmain control over 50% of Bitcoin cash?

https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/today

Doesn't look like any pool is dominating unless Bitmain controls many smaller pools.

However, I'd argue that any domination is a side effect of Bitmain being the 1000pound gorilla in BTC to start with. THeir BTC pool is at 20%. (there are a LOT of people unhappy with Bitmain's business practices).

I mean there is no cost effective hash/kw alternative to Bitmain S9s.

The scary thing is that my friends and colleagues are buying S9s because no real alternative exists if you want to mine BTC(and I suppose Bitcoin Cash too)

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#183

Post by Nursie »

topmonk wrote: post #177
abrkn wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like people used to write "Micro$oft" back in the day, the phrase "Bcash" used to imply it's no longer "Bitcoin"

> the phrase "Bcash" used to imply it's no longer "Bitcoin" Which is true, so what's the problem?

It's a fork with shared history. Both forks have moved on from early versions. I'd say it's open to interpretation what is the 'real' bitcoin.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#184

Post by Nursie »

topmonk wrote: post #176
pmorici wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was a campaign propagated by a self titled group of Crypto Currency trolls called "The Dragon's Den" They coordinate propaganda campaigns and cyber attacks on crypto currencies they don't like. There is a lot of overlap between the Dragon's Den and Bitcoin Core as well as Litecoin and they hold moderation positions in /r/bitcoin. The idea is that by calling Bitcoin Cash "bcash" they take the word "Bitcoin" ou…

The name "Bitcoin Cash" is confusing, and the authors meant it that way, so they can piggyback on the branding. There is no reason that the name of an unauthorized fork of a cryptocurrency should use the name of the original within it.

Unauthorized?

In a decentralised system based wholly around cypherpunk distrust of central authorisation, you call something unauthorised?

I'm not sure if that's hilarious or just sad.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#185

Post by jre »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #138
ericb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the work was undertaken in China, can you flesh out how the fact that nodes verify consensus resolves the China-coin problem? A 51% attack dictated by the chinese government would verify just fine.

You fundamentally do not understand how bitcoin works. So let's talk about nodes and consensus as defined in the whitepaper and implemented in nodes. Let's start with the bitcoin white paper ( https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf ) : > Satoshi from the Bitcoin white-paper chapter 12 'Conclusion' : The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. _Nodes_ work all at once with little coordination. They do not need to b…

You forgot to mention that nodes always consider the longest block chain to be the consensus. A 51% (majority) attack is when one miner is able to produce more blocks than the rest of the network, therefore controlling consensus.

Such a miner could do a double-spend transaction by first spending on the short chain and then reverting his transaction on the longest chain. See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#186

Post by makomk »

dannyw wrote: post #90
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only accept solutions that don't affect decentralization.

2 MB blocks (Bitcoin Classic) don't affect decentralization, if you support SegWit. SegWit blocks can be 4 MB, and that is 4 MB of data that has to be transmitted over the wire and stored unless you weaken your security model. In fact, SegWit negatively affects decentralization because it is much harder to build and maintain your wallet because of all of the complexity of SegWit, pushing people to crowd around existi…

The worst-case performance of validating a block full of SegWit transactions, which is the only way you'll hit 4MB with SegWit, is actually a lot better than the worst-case performance when validating a block full of non-SegWit transactions. The original design of Bitcoin had an unfortunate flaw where the cost of transaction validation could increase quadratically with transaction size. SigWit fixes this to be linear. (As it happens, Bitcoin Cash copied this fix, which makes it just as incompatible with existing wallets as SegWit transactions; arguably more so in fact, since by the time that deployed a lot of wallet software had implementations already.)

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#187

Post by topmonk »

Nursie wrote: post #184
topmonk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name "Bitcoin Cash" is confusing, and the authors meant it that way, so they can piggyback on the branding. There is no reason that the name of an unauthorized fork of a cryptocurrency should use the name of the original within it.

Unauthorized? In a decentralised system based wholly around cypherpunk distrust of central authorisation, you call something unauthorised? I'm not sure if that's hilarious or just sad.

Oh, it's "just sad", for sure...

There has to be some acknowledgement that if you take someone else's work and modify it, you shouldn't then be allowed to claim you are them.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#188

Post by topmonk »

Nursie wrote: post #183
topmonk wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the phrase "Bcash" used to imply it's no longer "Bitcoin" Which is true, so what's the problem?

It's a fork with shared history. Both forks have moved on from early versions. I'd say it's open to interpretation what is the 'real' bitcoin.

If you take someone else's work, modify it, and then claim you are them, that's not "open to interpretation". It's just wrong.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#189

Post by Nursie »

topmonk wrote: post #187
Nursie wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unauthorized? In a decentralised system based wholly around cypherpunk distrust of central authorisation, you call something unauthorised? I'm not sure if that's hilarious or just sad.

Oh, it's "just sad", for sure... There has to be some acknowledgement that if you take someone else's work and modify it, you shouldn't then be allowed to claim you are them.

Do you not see the irony in what you're saying here?

It is by definition a decentralised, anarchic system. The idea of authorisation or ownership of the one true core is hilarious.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#190

Post by Nursie »

topmonk wrote: post #188
Nursie wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fork with shared history. Both forks have moved on from early versions. I'd say it's open to interpretation what is the 'real' bitcoin.

If you take someone else's work, modify it, and then claim you are them, that's not "open to interpretation". It's just wrong.

So Bitcoin/Bitcoin Core/whatever need to stop claiming to be Bitcoin too?
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