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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

#201

Post by joseluis »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #95
takeda wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin Cash is closer to original Bitcoin than Bitcoin Core. What makes one more worthy of the name than the other? Both are forks.

You can still run a 0.8 node on the bitcoin network if you are so inclined, because changes have been implemented via soft-forks. Bcash is a hard-fork of bitcoin. It is not bitcoin, or you would be able to use your existing wallets with it.

Soft doesn't mean it's still Bitcoin. This word doesn't grasp the true difference between these fork kinds. What is it? Softfok is a coercive change. You can't oppose it unless you make some counter-hardfork (this is what happened in Bitcoin Cash). Softfork is a sneaky change that non upgraded nodes don't notice. Meanwhile, hardfork (especially with replay protection) leaves everyone the freedom of accepting it or not and make it obvious to nodes that it happened.

These are technical terms that were fine when used technically by technical people who understand them. But they are kind of loaded what can be used to trick nontechnical people into believing that 'hard' means 'big' and 'soft' means 'small'. And 'big' means 'abandonment of true bitcoin' while 'soft' means 'still following the true bitcoin'.

Easy thought experiments can prove these is not the case. Let's think of some possible changes that can be made as softforks and are clearly a violation of the original idea:

- a requirement that every transaction has an additional output for tax collection

- a requirement that every transaction contains KYC/AML tag. - addresses blacklist

- decreasing the max block size to 10 kB

- lowering the block reward to 0 from tomorrow, miners get only tx fees (it is possible because the protocol defined the max block reward rather than exact block reward)

- adding a second PoW algo (it can be put in coinbase)

- a requirement for coinbase to contain a specific Quran verse

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7jehc2/we_should_aband...

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

#202

Post by ericb »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #142
ericb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your purpose was to explain how this solves a 51% attack from China, you have not yet succeeded.

? Sure i did. > Nodes even define the PoW algorithm that miners have to employ. Nodes change PoW algorithm and the old miners have expensive loud space heaters. They know this, which is why they didn't follow through on 2x. They knew that threatening that attack leads to one outcome : ruin. It's a complex subject, sure. But I can't force you to understand how bitcoin works dude.

In spite of your condescension, I don't think you understand what a 51% attack is. You are confusing agreement on hard-forks with POW consensus in your defense of why Bitcoin is not vulnerable to a state mandated 51% attack from China.

Satoshi's brilliant solution to the Byzantine generals problem of consensus is proof of work, not "nodes decide what code to run" precisely because nodes are vulnerable to sybil attacks.

-How would these nodes know that the 51% attack history is bad?

-A proof of work change is a hard fork, and these take months to deploy properly according to core.

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

#203

Post by Nursie »

topmonk wrote: post #191
Nursie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The idea of authorisation or ownership of the one true core is hilarious. That's great, but it's not what I wrote. What "one true core"? Taking someone's software, modifying it, and touting your change as the next version of their software is wrong. Regardless if the code is meant for a block chain, or anything else.

But that's exactly what's happened with Bitcoin, as collaborative work.

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

#204

Post by ericb »

makomk wrote: post #195
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He 'caved in' because bitpay was bought by bitmain, the largest centralized chinese miner.

This does seem like a more plausible explanation. Bitcoin Cash is worse for their application than Litecoin in pretty much every way: it has slower blocks so there's more chance of the price shifting before the transaction confirms, it has less exchange support, they had to create their own address format for it that existing Bitcoin Cash wallets don't even support sending to in order to ensure people didn't accident…

> Bitcoin Cash is worse for their application than Litecoin in pretty much every way

Litecoin will have the same scalability problems as bitcoin core, and it hasn't attracted a cutting edge-team that will be likely to try a different approach to improve the situation. Litecoin is a clone using recycled code and ideas from bitcoin. Clones with stale ideas don't generally eclipse their originators.

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

#205

Post by ericb »

SnowProblem wrote: post #81
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest actually learning how it works before commenting on it. Lightning allows users to take a single bitcoin transaction, and use it over a finite space of time, in order to shift bitcoin back and forth, with no or vanishingly small transaction fees, as iou's between what are called 'lightning channels'. The actual transaction size will be the same as a normal transaction, with a flag that says it can only…

This is too complicated. I would gladly pay small txn fees to avoid having to manage payment channels.

The surface area of lightning scares me. Don't get me wrong, I hope it works, but it just sounds really unlikely to.

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

#206

Post by ericb »

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…

More than 50% of the hashpower for bitcoin core is in China, so it is just as vulnerable!

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

#207

Post by jncraton »

lawn wrote: post #29
jncraton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is the long term store of value for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. The small transaction issue may be overcome by something like the Lightning Network, but in the short term, you can just use other cryptocurrencies with lower fees or other features…

> It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. This is only true as long as Bitcoin is worth more. But with it becoming more unusable, while other coins are growing in popularity, this will change and Bitcoin won't have any use case left. > The small transaction issue may be overcome by something li…

I agree with most of what you said, but I would add that part of the value of Bitcoin vs other cryptocurrencies comes from its incredibly high PoW difficulty. The Bitcoin network currently completes 14 quintillion sha256 hashes every second. A similar amount of computing power would need to be controlled by a successful attacker.

I understand that miners can choose to leave Bitcoin, and this is largely dependent on price, but historically, Bitcoin provides the most security, so it is the safest crypto for storing a large amount of value.

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

#208

Post by Bombthecat »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #97
hrrsn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the major (technical - plenty of political issues) problem I have with Bcash. It’s cheap and fast because transaction volumes, and price, are 10% of BTC, yet blocks are 1.5x the size (roughly, looking at a block explorer). As soon as they fill up, they’ll have the exact same problems down the line. Increasing the block size doesn’t scale long term and is a bandaid solution at best. BTC was fast and cheap when…

Everything is relative. The significant part is that increasing the block size steadily can scale to huge transaction volumes. Visa level transaction levels of around 2,000 TPS can be achieved with block size increases and higher end computer hardware. If we are talking visa level transaction volumes then the user base has to be at least 500 million users. If the userbase is that large then think of how many people w…

How big does a block needs to be to allow around 4k transactions?

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

#209

Post by Bombthecat »

topmonk wrote: post #192
Nursie wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, because those same developers worked on the earlier versions as well. They didn't just come in, take someone else's code, change it, and say, "Look guys, here is the next version of their software! Enjoy ;)"

They came after Satoshi still.

God knows what Satoshi thinks about all the stuff going on around bitcoin...

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

#210

Post by lawn »

jncraton wrote: post #207
lawn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. This is only true as long as Bitcoin is worth more. But with it becoming more unusable, while other coins are growing in popularity, this will change and Bitcoin won't have any use case left. > The small transaction issue may be overcome by something li…

I agree with most of what you said, but I would add that part of the value of Bitcoin vs other cryptocurrencies comes from its incredibly high PoW difficulty. The Bitcoin network currently completes 14 quintillion sha256 hashes every second. A similar amount of computing power would need to be controlled by a successful attacker. I understand that miners can choose to leave Bitcoin, and this is largely dependent on p…

Yes, that's exactly what I mean with it depends on the price. Historically most miners switched to Bitcoin Cash whenever it was more profitable to mine. With the new EDA the miner ratio is expected to follow the price ratio. So if Bitcoin Cash ever were to have a higher price than Bitcoin they would get the most miners. In the long run this would make Bitcoin Cash the chain with the most security.
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