Not sure due to the paywall.
Google News link which bypasses paywall: https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=ne...
Is Bitcoin breaking up?
41–50 of 100 posts
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#42The Bitcoin community is rapidly coalescing around an effort to increase the maximum allowed blocksize to 2MB as soon as possible. This increase is being implemented in a new client, Bitcoin Classic [0], which is a fork of Bitcoin Core that changes only the single line of code that sets the blocksize limit. Bitcoin Classic was created by Jonathan Toomim, an American miner and developer who went to China to talk direc…
It seems misleading to call something "bitcoin classic" that would implement a hard fork.
The bitcoin implementation by the "real" bitcoin foundation (ie, asciilifeform's group) at least can claim that it is an implementation of the actual bitcoin protocol:
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#43"Bitcoin is breaking up" = Buy like a madman. The blocksize cuts down on the transaction spam making transactions non-free, maybe a few cents each. This is not optimal and certainly needs to fix in the next few years, because it harms microtransactions.
But "breaking up" ? That's just sensationalist bullshit. That's like saying Netflix is on the edge of bankruptcy because it's raging success has temporarily killed HD streaming in Australia & Antarctica. As a community building exercise, this debacle is great for Bitcoin, it really shows no one is in control and consensus to change the rules of the game is very hard to reach.
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#44The Bitcoin community is rapidly coalescing around an effort to increase the maximum allowed blocksize to 2MB as soon as possible. This increase is being implemented in a new client, Bitcoin Classic [0], which is a fork of Bitcoin Core that changes only the single line of code that sets the blocksize limit. Bitcoin Classic was created by Jonathan Toomim, an American miner and developer who went to China to talk direc…
The different versions of Bitcoin programs, I am confused, will it be possible to send Bitcoins to each address using the different programs or will each program have different Bitcoin addresses and blockchains so they are incompatible?
If I had Electum which uses the Bitcoin Core could I send Bitcoin to someone using Bitcoin Classic or Bitcoin XT?
If not then this causes a lot of problems and confusion.
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#45The block size issue is missing the point. The use case that matters for Bitcoin right now is converting yuan to Bitcoins, then Bitcoins to dollars. That's one way people in China get around China's exchange controls. (Note that mining in China also is used to move yuan to dollars.) Those are big transactions. They'll get through regardless of the block size. Bitcoin as a retail currency doesn't seem to be going anyw…
> They'll get through regardless of the block size. They'll get through until China bans it. China has a classic trilemma : let the currency depreciate, give up on monetary stimulus, or institute capital controls. Pick any 2 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity To date, they've shown pretty good success in controlling the Internet and Bitcoin is no different. I don't think Bitcoin advocates have necessa…
"They'll get through until China bans it."
China's leaky exchange controls are a strange subject. So much is leaking that investors in China are buying large amounts of property in London, New York, and Miami, but not occupying it, as a way to stash cash. However, the outflows aren't big enough to affect the value of the yuan.
The People's Bank of China (comparable to the Treasury Department plus the Fed) hasn't cracked down as much as they could. There seems to be an internal policy disagreement within China's government over whether the yuan should be an international currency. To be used internationally means allowing convertibility and giving up some control, and facing the possibility that China's domestic economy can be yanked around by world events. But convertibility increases China's external economic power. Back in 2013, there were announcements of convertibility within the next year. In November 2015, the target date was 2020.[1] China's stock market crashed last week, which may prompt tightening up on capital outflows again.
Much of what happens with Bitcoin is driven by these far larger issues.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/china-deve...
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser among users worldwide. Chrome is the most popular browser among certain techies. Chrome is also popular among users tricked into installing it via forced bundleware with Java updates, free antivirus engine updates, and (ironically) Flash plugin downloads for Firefox.
Just like IE is popular among users tricked into installing it via forced bundleware with Windows?
Microsoft was forced to include the browser choice thing for a few years in Europe.
I wish someone would take a closer look at how Google push Chrome as well.
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#47What is the downside to moving from 1MB to 2MB blocksizes, instead of moving up to 8MB or 20MB? If the reasonable maximum number of trades per minutes is 3 at the moment, does a doubling of the blocksize merely double the allowable number of trades per minute, or is it somehow a logarithmic change?
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#48Bitcoin is already specified. I doubt that nodes, miners, and the bitcoin richlist will converge around any alternative spec (whether XT or Litecoin) and decide to call it "bitcoin". However, the ecology of decentralized digital assets inspired by the nakamoto consensus has already fragmented and will continue to do so at an exponential rate. As a rough estimate let's say there are already 1000 bitcoin clones that have more than a handful of nodes and miners. I would not be surprised to see that number increase to 10,000 within 2016. That some of the individuals associated with Bitcoin Core are moving onto other projects is not going to mean very much one way or another for the original bitcoin spec, though we may see the Core project change. There are other alternatives for those who want to run an implementation of the original bitcoin spec. (http://thebitcoin.foundation/) And there are an exponentially growing number of alternative networks for those who do not.
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#49What is the downside to moving from 1MB to 2MB blocksizes, instead of moving up to 8MB or 20MB? If the reasonable maximum number of trades per minutes is 3 at the moment, does a doubling of the blocksize merely double the allowable number of trades per minute, or is it somehow a logarithmic change?
It does just double it. The problem with increasing it more is propagation speeds around the planet (this needs to be as fast as possible or another miner may get the block reward), especially if the miner is sitting in china.
Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?
#50What is the downside to moving from 1MB to 2MB blocksizes, instead of moving up to 8MB or 20MB? If the reasonable maximum number of trades per minutes is 3 at the moment, does a doubling of the blocksize merely double the allowable number of trades per minute, or is it somehow a logarithmic change?
That was my first thought. Why go through all this hassle to just put off the problem until the traffic merely doubles? This seems like when you see something silly in code like:
// const MAX_SIZE = 1;
// make it bigger to fix crash
const MAX_SIZE = 2;