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Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

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Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#231

Post by hudon »

buttershakes wrote: post #216
hudon wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a lot. Again, please show me an example application of the blockchain that comes close to that number but that does not need censorship resistance. The estimate of daily volume provided by blockchain.info obscures our discussion, especially if you consider that the daily volume for BTC/USD pair is around $1B. There could be $1B-worth of outputs in a day all dedicated to providing liquidity to exchanges, but ent…

Well i consider trading a very valid use case, as well as simple peer to peer payment for all goods and services. How much transactional volume is Bitpay doing? 800,0000 isn't a big number, and certainly it will only represent a small portion of the payment volume if Bitcoin went anywhere near main stream. It's also pretty evident that Bitcoin may be censorship resistant but it isn't anonymous or fully fungible, make…

If you can show me that bitpay processes around the same amount as dark markets, I will re-assess my position...

As for anonymity and fungibility: I believe tumbling services are good enough today, which is why buying on a dark market works. However, it is not perfect and this is why projects like Monero, ZCash, MimbleWimble, TumbleBit and Xim are important.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#232

Post by ErikBjare »

jerguismi wrote: post #166
buttershakes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The taking a little while to adapt is because their is less hash power, which means it takes longer to find blocks which means the remaining hash power will have less blocks for many many weeks. This means their expected return is lower, not higher, they aren't getting a larger percentage of found blocks, and those blocks occur farther apart. Then when the difficulty has fallen enough to make mining profitable and ha…

"This means their expected return is lower, not higher, they aren't getting a larger percentage of found blocks, and those blocks occur farther apart." The blocks would happen farther apart, but it would also mean that the remaining miners would have much higher change of actually finding a block, since there would be less competition. Also as there would be the same amount of transactions and less blocks, the blocks…

> The blocks would happen farther apart, but it would also mean that the remaining miners would have much higher change of actually finding a block, since there would be less competition.

That's not true. The chance of finding a block is the same for every hash given a certain difficulty, regardless of competition. So a miner with a certain amount of hashing power will always have the same chance of finding a block until the difficulty changes.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#233

Post by wolco »

buttershakes wrote: post #151
knocte wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if I don't like the consensus driven code of Bitcoin my only choice is to sell Wrong. What's the choice you have when you disagree with what the maintainers of an opensource project do? You can fork. You're welcome to fork at any time. And in fact this is what we're seeing these days: an attempt of a fork. I believe that, as with the majority of the forks in the opensource world, the fork will not succeed, beca…

You seem to be missing my point. I can fork Linux right now, make some random changes and I have a fully functioning equivalent system with those minor changes. I can fork Bitcoin right now, make some random changes to the consensus code, and I have a useless token that has absolutely no value. These two things, are not the same. How can you possibly refute that?

Because you can take those minor changes deploy to a smaller group where a decentralized exchange is required. For example an ad buying network. Or you can make your own coin and market it.

It's the same as forking facebook's website code if they allowed that. You have a product you can use but without the scale of people and data it would give you a similiar level of value.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#234

Post by hudon »

gcb0 wrote: post #230
hudon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team I disagree. SegWit2x is a misguided attempt to make Bitcoin "more efficient" without realizing that it puts at risk the core value proposition of Bitcoin: censorship resistance. At the root of this debate is a disagreement about what the blockchain is for. On one side, you have all the developers working on the Core project and activists like Amir Taak…

how can't you validate a block if that is trivial, even with the changes? honest question. does the proposal screw things up that much that you need to do a trillion hashes to validate instead of one?

A bigger block requires at least as many resources as a smaller one to receive, validate and store the data.

I am not saying we should never increase the block size, but I am saying we should try all alternatives that make the network more efficient (more tx throughput for same total resource cost) without making it harder for users to validate the blockchain.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#235

Post by buttershakes »

hudon wrote: post #231
buttershakes wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well i consider trading a very valid use case, as well as simple peer to peer payment for all goods and services. How much transactional volume is Bitpay doing? 800,0000 isn't a big number, and certainly it will only represent a small portion of the payment volume if Bitcoin went anywhere near main stream. It's also pretty evident that Bitcoin may be censorship resistant but it isn't anonymous or fully fungible, make…

If you can show me that bitpay processes around the same amount as dark markets, I will re-assess my position... As for anonymity and fungibility: I believe tumbling services are good enough today, which is why buying on a dark market works. However, it is not perfect and this is why projects like Monero, ZCash, MimbleWimble, TumbleBit and Xim are important.

https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-b...

This isn't the most accurate thing, but looks to me like several millions USD worth of volume just in Bitpay. That doesn't account for all of the other payment processors, or the peer to peer payments, or the exchange trading, etc. I'm not saying dark markets aren't an early driver of Bitcoin, but it's not where the majority of the action is now at all.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#236

Post by sethrin »

wolco wrote: post #233
buttershakes wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be missing my point. I can fork Linux right now, make some random changes and I have a fully functioning equivalent system with those minor changes. I can fork Bitcoin right now, make some random changes to the consensus code, and I have a useless token that has absolutely no value. These two things, are not the same. How can you possibly refute that?

Because you can take those minor changes deploy to a smaller group where a decentralized exchange is required. For example an ad buying network. Or you can make your own coin and market it. It's the same as forking facebook's website code if they allowed that. You have a product you can use but without the scale of people and data it would give you a similiar level of value.

People have been downvoting you because you're wrong, but someone should say why: the difference between your two examples is that a social network has some sort of value with a limited network, but a currency only has value where it is accepted.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#237

Post by j_bond »

rothbardrand wrote: post #156
buttershakes wrote: post #26

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

You're right that this is a fight for control over bitcoin, but you're wrong on who the players are. There's the corporate faction: BitMain plus Bloq and the ones who want to embed KYC and AML into the bitcoin protocol. Their heavy hitter is Jihan Wu who controls %70 of the hash power, via his mining chips and his pools, and his customers being amenable to his wishes (because they want to remain customers). No visibl…

Serious question, why doesn't core switch hashing algorithms at the fork to something ASIC-resistant like Dagger-Hashimoto PoW. Seems like a win-win for them since they don't have to worry about the competitive faction causing havoc on their chain, the miners are more distributed, and there is an army of GPU hashing power that is looking for a place to direct their mining power towards with the Ethereum move to PoS on the horizon.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#238

Post by hudon »

buttershakes wrote: post #235
hudon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can show me that bitpay processes around the same amount as dark markets, I will re-assess my position... As for anonymity and fungibility: I believe tumbling services are good enough today, which is why buying on a dark market works. However, it is not perfect and this is why projects like Monero, ZCash, MimbleWimble, TumbleBit and Xim are important.

https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-b... This isn't the most accurate thing, but looks to me like several millions USD worth of volume just in Bitpay. That doesn't account for all of the other payment processors, or the peer to peer payments, or the exchange trading, etc. I'm not saying dark markets aren't an early driver of Bitcoin, but it's not where the majority of the action is now at all.

"peer to peer" payments don't require a blockchain: see Venmo, Square Cash, Facebook Messenger, PayPal, TransferWise, Uber (paying the driver), etc.

Exchange trading is not really using bitcoin, it is buying/selling bitcoin. This is like saying buying a car is an application of cars...

Having said that, Bitpay is processing more than I thought. The data in that article would mean it's about $5M per day... I'd love to see a breakdown of this to figure out why people are spending bitcoin for everyday things if it'd be better for them to just use a credit card (to get rewards, to not have to hold a volatile currency, for consumer protection, for faster payments, etc.)

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#239

Post by sethrin »

rothbardrand wrote: post #156
buttershakes wrote: post #26

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

You're right that this is a fight for control over bitcoin, but you're wrong on who the players are. There's the corporate faction: BitMain plus Bloq and the ones who want to embed KYC and AML into the bitcoin protocol. Their heavy hitter is Jihan Wu who controls %70 of the hash power, via his mining chips and his pools, and his customers being amenable to his wishes (because they want to remain customers). No visibl…

I think that arguing in that manner with that username will be a very effective strategy, but not for your side.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#240

Post by hellbanner »

buttershakes wrote: post #160
hudon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team I disagree. SegWit2x is a misguided attempt to make Bitcoin "more efficient" without realizing that it puts at risk the core value proposition of Bitcoin: censorship resistance. At the root of this debate is a disagreement about what the blockchain is for. On one side, you have all the developers working on the Core project and activists like Amir Taak…

Why do you say it's an attempt to make Bitcoin more efficient? It's essentially exactly the code base of Bitcoin core with some very minor changes including a block size commitment in the future. Seems pretty clear that it is about control of that code base, and not really the technical underpinnings which are almost identical. I think the issue is that people have a vision of what Bitcoin is, that doesn't align with…

Making sure I'm following your last sentence -- "centralizing force" because of the power miner teams wield over the blockchain? (Electricity power = control of network)
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