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Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

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Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#301

Post by RustyRussell »

arcticbull wrote: post #253
repomies691 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare. I don't know much about LN and actually I'm quite sceptical about it. However I have tried it now couple of times with different wallets and it seems to work very fluently from user perspective. And saying this as a very old bitcoin user, so I'm used to sending bitcoin payments a lot, LN payme…

LN requires an on-chain transaction to open a channel and another to close a channel which means it'll take 70 years to open a channel for everyone on earth and then close it once, assuming the blockchain does nothing else. If an intermediate node loses power all your channel money is locked for over 48 hours. It's also not even Bitcoin and could work just as well with any other cryptocurrency or probably even dollar…

Your figures are about right, but 70 years is a long time to assume nothing else changes.

As to "it's not even bitcoin" you're flat wrong. Holding a valid Bitcoin transaction is definitely Bitcoin, and with Lightning you always do. This is why it can't be done without bitcoin.

And from a FOSS development perspective, bitcoin is the only project in the *cryptos" space I consider serious. I wouldn't base a project of mine on any of the other chains, and I think I've earned my graybeard enough in FOSS to make that judgement.

[Disclaimer, I work on Lightning standards and one implementation, since 2015]

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#302

Post by mamon »

xorcist wrote: post #296
arcticbull wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LN requires an on-chain transaction to open a channel and another to close a channel which means it'll take 70 years to open a channel for everyone on earth and then close it once, assuming the blockchain does nothing else. If an intermediate node loses power all your channel money is locked for over 48 hours. It's also not even Bitcoin and could work just as well with any other cryptocurrency or probably even dollar…

Is the argument here that Lightning, or Bitcoin, is useless because everyone on earth can not use it at the same time? Isn't that moving the goalposts, even a little? Even if only a couple of thousand people could use it, as long as it is useful to them it has a niche. It might not be enough to justify insane valuations, of course, but that's another discussion entirely.

Traditional banking serves pretty much everyone on earth, without running into performance issues, so if Bitcoin is going to replace those banks then yes, it must do the same. And it was Bitcoin fanboys who declared that Bitcoin is here to replace fiat money, so you set that goalpost yourself.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#303

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

panarky wrote: post #291
Animats wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether is starting to look like a Madoff-scale Ponzi scam. What maintains the $1 price of Tether is a continual net inflow of cash. Tether is known not to be backed with sufficient real assets.[1] If there's a period of net outflow from Tether, the whole house of cards comes crashing down. [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tether-reverses-claim-of-1...

The difference between Tether and Madoff is that people have been loudly yelling "scam", in public, for years about Tether. When Madoff collapsed, his investors were shocked. If Tether collapses, precisely zero people will be surprised. When it's common knowledge that it's a scam, is it still a scam?

Probably we can think of Tether as a type of lottery

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#304

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

root_axis wrote: post #134
jacquesm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used it seriously. Paying people in countries without a functional banking system is a real problem and bitcoin nicely helped with that. I also collected some donations for reocities.com which helped to keep it alive. I never bought any, just mined a bit and I never sold any either.

> Paying people in countries without a functional banking system is a real problem and bitcoin nicely helped with that Bitcoin isn't a solution to this problem because regions afflicted with non-functional banking systems have very little options for converting or spending bitcoin.

Not really. We had an extremely hard time trying to receive funds in Russia from an Indonesian customer, his native banks just flat out refused to do the transfer. Bitcoin solved the problem easily.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#305

Post by alwillis »

DagAgren wrote: post #99
StavrosK wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I try to add it to all my side-projects that accept payment. I looked at a few payment providers and settled on OpenNode, as they had the right mix of an easy API, quick support and good documentation, though I would like it if they supported more cryptocurrencies. If you want cryptocurrencies to succeed, you need to make them widespread as a form of payment. I already lament Steam and Stripe removing Bitc…

Unfortunately, Bitcoin as designed is technically incapable of being in widespread use for payment, due to a severe lack of network capacity, and a complete lack of interest in ever changing this. Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare.

Every LN app I’ve used—DropBit, Zap, Bottle Pay, BlueWallet—has totally nailed user experience.

LN will be the standard for micropayments in a year or two.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#306

Post by superkuh »

iagovar wrote: post #2

The more I know about cryptos, the more I remain skeptical. The only people I know that uses cryptos seriously are acquaintancies from latin america, and none of them for storing value, with the exception of Venezuelans. Not even argentinians, that just buy as many dollars they can. IMO this is a thread worth reading on this topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/dj2jro/the_large...

Hi. You can get to know me. I'm an american and I regularly use bitcoin to pay for services, pay for physical products, and donate to causes over the internet. I've been involved in bitcoin since 2010 or so. I did not get rich but I still see the obvious utility of having a means to transfer value without trust or centralized control.

This was especially true after the US state dept. started using the big credit card corps as a means to impose their will politically.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#307

Post by 1996 »

wruza wrote: post #207

For tech’s sake in this cryptoeconomy PhD thread, working with Bitfinex API was a pleasure. A simple websocket protocol with concise deterministic event packets and clear documentation. The only limitation is $1k barrier even for testing purposes, but no big deal. These guys know their ropes. Opposed to say Bitmex, which rolled out a braintrashing overengineered differential update protocol, so hard to scratch that w…

You may be interested in an existing commercial offer of non native bitmex api, with guaranteed latency and a few other bells n whistles.

Want to know more?

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#308

Post by alwillis »

arcticbull wrote: post #253
repomies691 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare. I don't know much about LN and actually I'm quite sceptical about it. However I have tried it now couple of times with different wallets and it seems to work very fluently from user perspective. And saying this as a very old bitcoin user, so I'm used to sending bitcoin payments a lot, LN payme…

LN requires an on-chain transaction to open a channel and another to close a channel which means it'll take 70 years to open a channel for everyone on earth and then close it once, assuming the blockchain does nothing else. If an intermediate node loses power all your channel money is locked for over 48 hours. It's also not even Bitcoin and could work just as well with any other cryptocurrency or probably even dollar…

There's a lot of FUD here.

It's kind of a straw man to talk about opening LN channels for 7.5 billion people, as if that's something to be concerned about today. Not every man, woman and child has a cell phone or computer right now, so that's not really a concern in 2019.

Dispute resolution is built into the protocol: it's a two-way channel; both parties have to agree that the transaction in question took place and either party can close the channel if they wish.

And because LN is under heavy development, there are all kinds of new features being developed, like watchtowers that can monitor the channel on your behalf, etc.

You don't need chargeback if you can claim your money and close the channel if thing you want to happen isn't happening, right?

Yes, other cryptocurrencies (such as Ethereum) can create LN as a layer-2 feature.

No, you can't do this with dollars; since there's no cryptocurrency representation of USD with the required blockchain and scripting/smart contracts language required for LN—at least not yet.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#309

Post by Sargos »

throwawayhhakdl wrote: post #5
vbezhenar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With current Bitcoin volatility it's crazy to store money with it. I really love tech which allows me to remember passphrase and having all money locked inside my brain, so I would certainly use it if it weren't so volatile.

I always get downvoted for asking this but... doesn’t that seem like a really bad idea that makes you far far more vulnerable to physical crime? If a guy mugs you at an atm, the bank is going to flag something as suspicious. If a guy mugs you for your private key, you have no recourse for all of your holdings- and the getaway is a lot easier. Physical crypto crime feels like it would be very prevalent if it became “m…

By the time crypto goes mainstream people will be using smart contract wallets like Argent and Gnosis Safe that implement things like social key recovery, daily transfer limits, and other common sense measures.

Re: Lone Bitcoin Whale Likely Fueled 2017 Price Surge, Study Says

#310

Post by neffy »

eccodown wrote: post #203
this_user wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "store of value" proposition of Bitcoin is that it can't be printed by a central bank, so you can be sure that your holdings relative to the size of the money supply cannot be diluted. Except that's not true. The block reward consists of newly created coins of which there are 1800 per day. Currently, that is a 3.7% annual inflation rate in supply, which is far more than the 2% target most central banks from dev…

The supply is currently being bootstrapped, the rate of new creation is falling as the supply get closer to the maximum. Some months from now new coins from block rewards should halve (3.7% inflation dropping to 1.85%), and the process repeats as maximum supply is reached in the distant future, at which point the mining reward would primarily be the transaction fees.

This is I think the point OP is making. Up to this point in time, there has been a steady, and somewhat exponential increase in the supply of Bitcoin. As you say, that is about to start tapering off.

At which point, the behaviour of the entire system can be expected to radically change.

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