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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

#301

Post by pmorici »

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…

I completely agree with everything you've said. The only thing I'll add is that Blockstream's CEO was replaced. It was originally Austin Hill and the current CEO Adam Back replaced him. Not an improvement, but it was a change.

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

#302

Post by princeb »

hudon wrote: post #199
jcranmer wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard financial example for blockchains is financial clearing, and the amount of money processed in these transactions is truly staggering. CHIPS alone processes $1,000,000 every minute .

Does CHIPS use a blockchain?

is this a rhetorical question meant to show that blockchain is not the appropriate tool for financial clearing?

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

#303

Post by pmorici »

sp821543 wrote: post #295
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…

On the other hand, Bitcoin ABC puts a 40 billion dollar network in the hands of one developer. Nevermind the other dozen or so who have context and expertise from maintaining the codebase for years.

The current Core developers drove the long time developers out with vitriol and petty personal attacks. All those long time developers are now working on the alternative implementations like Unlimited, Classic, ABC, and btc1.

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

#304

Post by hudon »

princeb wrote: post #302
hudon wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does CHIPS use a blockchain?

is this a rhetorical question meant to show that blockchain is not the appropriate tool for financial clearing?

Yep, and the history of R3 Corda is evidence of how "bitcoin as a clearing house between banks" is a pipe dream.

Bitcoin is almost 10 years old. We have enough data now to be able to build strong cases for what it's actually useful for. It is no longer sufficient to talk about what Bitcoin will do without talking about why it has not done so yet.

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

#305

Post by pmorici »

kanzure wrote: post #185
shp0ngle wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Core != Blockstream The overlap is very large. In the same way, segwit2x != Chinere miners, but come on, there is an clear overlap. > It's an effective blocksize increase to 2MB If all users start using segwit addresses and segwit transactions, and if all wallets software will know how to send and receive it. And that will mean users will need to send their money to their segwit-enabled addresses first, which might…

> In the same way, segwit2x != Chinere miners, but come on, there is an clear overlap there's more overlap with core developers and chaincode labs. > Lightning network might be a vaporware. Literally nobody is using it, since it does not exist. it does exist, https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd and http://lightning.community/release/software/lnd/lightning/20... and other implementations of lightning also exist.

Chaincode shares at least one affiliate with Blockstream.

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

#306

Post by pmorici »

Animats wrote: post #179

The scary thing is that the developers want to go from initial release of new code to wide deployment in a few days. This on something where any security flaw can be attacked anonymously and profitably. What could possibly go wrong?

99% of the code has been in testing for a long time. Also the guy leading Segwit2x, Jeff Garzik, is a pro with a ton of opensource experience. You probably run his code on your Linux box and don't even realize it. He wrote rngd for example.

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

#307

Post by int_19h »

colordrops wrote: post #271
placeybordeaux wrote: post #104

I just moved ~20% of my crypto holdings from BTC to LTC. The rest I'll likely keep close to 40% of my cryptoholdings in BTC, but move it onto my own wallet. If a fork actually happens, I'd prefer to be in control of the private keys. It's kind of odd that there is still so much FUD about segwit, as it has already activated on LTC. It hasn't appeared to open any security holes.

The arguments about Segwit are not about security holes. Segwit would enable off-chain transactions using systems that are patented and centralized, allowing others to control things on top of the bitcoin network. LTC isn't used for purchases, so Segwit hasn't had much of an effect there.

> Segwit would enable off-chain transactions using systems that are patented and centralized

Why is that a problem, so long as it is enabled, not mandated?

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

#308

Post by pmorici »

marme wrote: post #205
nfriedly wrote: post #189

What is Bitcoin and friends good for right now besides speculating with and trading for other currencies? A while back there was a BTC marketplace where among other things, I spent 1 BTC on a steam key for the game Portal (a poor trade in hindsight). But they shut down and the only other place that I can think of that accepts BTC is humblebundle.com - and presumably they convert it to USD right away. Actually: > Bitc…

it is great for money laundering which is why it is so popular in china. You can buy btc in cash no questions asked and it is untraceble and then sell it at a legit exchange in another country and claim it as legit income or just move it from country to country bypassing currency controls in places like china where no bank will allow you to send more than 50k USD per year out of the country

"it is great for money laundering"

People like to say this but it just isn't true. Nobody is laundering large amounts of money buy buying Bitcoin for cash and almost by definition you don't need to launder small amounts of money.

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

#309

Post by pmorici »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #104

I just moved ~20% of my crypto holdings from BTC to LTC. The rest I'll likely keep close to 40% of my cryptoholdings in BTC, but move it onto my own wallet. If a fork actually happens, I'd prefer to be in control of the private keys. It's kind of odd that there is still so much FUD about segwit, as it has already activated on LTC. It hasn't appeared to open any security holes.

Has there even been a single Segwit transaction on the LTC network? No problems have appeared because no one uses it. More generally very few people use LTC

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

#310

Post by pmorici »

sp821543 wrote: post #21
ihuman wrote: post #6

How is this different then what happened with Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin classic?

XT/Classic was a mere skirmish compared to this. On one side you have Chinese miners and one developer gunning for segwit2x because it gives them a significant advantage related to their hardware. On the other side you have the other dozen or so core developers who want a more conservative approach. As a side-effect this version levels the playing field for miners.

"it gives them a significant advantage related to their hardware"

What are you talking about? Pretty sure this is false. Please don't say ASICBoot.

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