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Is Bitcoin breaking up?

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Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#51

Post by Locke1689 »

drcross wrote: post #18
increment_i wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt this is the case. Most bankers I know have regarded bitcoin with a keen curiosity rather than some kind of malignant threat.

In which case I proffer that they don't understand the implication of the cryptocurrency endgame.

It seems far more likely that you do not, actually. There are thousands of extremely intelligent people working in finance with a lot of domain knowledge -- in the case that something as widely publicized and easily studied as bitcoin is not being taken seriously in finance, it's far more likely that there are serious issues you don't understand.

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#52

Post by mrb »

"Mining already is so expensive that it takes company-sized investments to participate"

This is not true at all. I do not understand why journalists repeat this claim. It is like saying "investing in the stock market is so expensive that it takes company-sized investments to participate". It is not true. Whether you invest $1000 or $1 million your returns—as a percentage of your initial investment—will be the same regardless if this is the stock market or Bitcoin mining.

In fact I would say the opposite is true: small miners have a slightly better profitability than large-scale miners, because they are so small they do not even have to cover certain costs. A large-scale miner will have to pay for hosting or for building a data center but a small miner will host the hardware in his house at no extra cost. A large-scale miner will have to hire staff to maintain the miners but a small miner will maintain his machine himself.

Of course profitability depends a lot on electricity costs, but again you might be a small miner and live (for example) in Douglas County, Washington and pay a domestic electricity rate of 2.5 cents per kWh, and you will beat many large-scale miners who almost always pay more (see my previous comment on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10907584).

Large-scale miners may get a financial advantage by buying hardware in bulk, or manufacturing it themselves, but this is a cost saving of at most 20 or 30%, and this certainly does not make mining so expensive that small miners cannot participate.

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#53

Post by pbhjpbhj »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #23
wemysh wrote: post #21

The current situation reminds me a lot of the time when Firefox replaced Internet Explorer as the most popular browser. And of the time when Chrome replaced Firefox as the most popular browser. Currently there is only one Bitcoin implementation. And the developers a) refuse to implement what users want. And b) implement bloat that users dont't want. So Bitcoin will "break up" in a similar way the WWW "broke up" when…

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#54

Post by CyberDildonics »

roymurdock wrote: post #26
pash wrote: post #9

The 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…

So you believe that whoever was upset with the blocksize/management changes that would have been introduced in XT has been placated by this more inclusive effort? And that this actor will not attempt to sabotage the rollout of Classic as they did with XT?

They absolutely will. At this point though the first alternative implementations helped people calibrate to the dishonesty of the group of people who has worked so hard to censor and alienate everyone who might compromise the need for their company, blockstream.

Most people really gave them way too much credit and took them at their word, but it's been dug into the ground at this point that they are going to try to lie, censor, and outright sabotage any attempt to adapt bitcoin since they think creating problems gives them an opportunity to solve them.

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#55

Post by SCAQTony »

I think these are very exciting problems. The bigger the problem the more creative the solution.

It took us two thousand years or so to go from using the weight of a bale of barley to represent the value of silver, bronze, copper to eventually actual coinage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money

Maybe digital currency takes 15-years or so to work out the problems much like they did with barley to coins but it is definitely the future.

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#56

Post by EthanHeilman »

Lazare wrote: post #37
pash wrote: post #9

The 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 way XT seems to have failed yet Classic seems to be suceeding seems odd to me. Is all it took really just to have a developer fly out to China and talk to a hanful of people? Seems like there's a lot more politics going on behind the scenes. In any case, fixing the blocksize limit will be good, but I think the real value in Classic is breaking the perceived monopoly Core has and moving to a healthier political se…

>The way XT seems to have failed yet Classic seems to be suceeding seems odd to me.

XT was much more aggressive. Not only would it have initially increased the blocksize to 8MB, but then it fixed a schedule of doubling the blocksize every 2 years[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_XT#Determining_the_new...

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#57

Post by woah »

cornholio wrote: post #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…

The fact that every transaction ever is saved for ever harms microtransactions. Luckily nobody actually uses Bitcoin, especially not for microtransactions. The network can't handle more than 3 transactions a second, and luckily it doesn't have that volume. Lightning is the only thing that can actually make Bitcoin more performant than a small VPS with postgres, if it is something that people want.

Also, "Lightning-like" channels aren't unique to Bitcoin- they can be implemented on Turing-complete currencies, and even on bank servers[1]

1. http://altheamesh.com/blog/universal-payment-channels/

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#58

Post by CyberDildonics »

Animats wrote: post #32

The 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…

Those are two very separate things solved in different ways. Chinese exchanges and transactions per second are very orthogonal.

> Bitcoin as a retail currency doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

I buy things online with btc much more than a credit card, so I beg to differ

> Robocoin, the Bitcoin ATM company, just went bust.

They made huge and expensive ATMs that aren't necessary for what most people try to do right now, which is buy bitcoins. You can literally buy parts and make your own ATM.

> Lots of companies nominally accept Bitcoin, but that's just a shopping cart program talking to Coinbase or Bitpay for immediate conversion.

As opposed to credit card transactions? Don't blur the issue of accepting payment and a business keeping and therefore investing in bitcoins.

> the conversion costs Less than credit card fees. 1% as opposed to 3% off your revenue stream matters quite a bit, not to mention no charge backs.

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#59

Post by kanzure »

pash wrote: post #9

The 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…

> rapidly coalescing around an effort to increase the maximum allowed blocksize to 2MB as soon as possible

I have a small nitpick to offer. Any hard-forking change is one for a new network and a new chain, by the very definition of hard-fork. The original Bitcoin blockchain and network will still exist, no matter how many times some of its users employ a hard-fork. A hard-fork cannot "turn off" Bitcoin for everyone else. This is no different than the way that an altcoin, like Litecoin, cannot "turn off" Bitcoin merely by the deployment and launch of Litecoin.

Since their proposal is a backwards-incompatible change (hard-fork), it should be obvious that it does not increase the capacity of the current system, but rather a new system. I find myself wondering how anyone can think it is increasing the capacity of the previous network, given the definition of an (intentional!) hard-fork?

Maybe if we all just wish hard enough, IPv4 will spontaneously transform into IPv6..... Bitcoin will continue to function even in the presence of yet-another hard-fork.

Anyone is welcome to do as they please, including whatever hard-forks they might want to participate in, just as anyone is welcome to use Bitcoin or how they are welcome to abandon Bitcoin if they find that they don't like its offering. However, anyone who wants to participate in a hard-fork should do so in a safe and responsible way, such as by using a new name for the new system, using a new address identifier to avoid cross-chain contamination accidents, etc.

What is Bitcoin Core's role in all of this? https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/2016-01-07-statement

Soft-forks and hard-forks? https://petertodd.org/2016/soft-forks-are-safer-than-hard-fo...

bip99 has some more details: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0099.mediawi...

Bitcoin Core published a capacity increases roadmap: http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-...

... and a FAQ about their capacity increases roadmap: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq...

> and [theymos] has strongly censored and perverted all discussion of changes

That's not really true, just search "site:reddit.com/r/bitcoin" for XT or classic or whatever. His lynch mob is waving the banner of censorship but meanwhile actual content shows up on the subreddit. Theymos even acknowledges this, but for some reason refuses to use moderation to eliminate the false allegations of censorship in his subreddit.

Re: Is Bitcoin breaking up?

#60

Post by pmorici »

zekevermillion wrote: post #42
pash wrote: post #9

The 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: http://thebitcoin.foundation/

The original Bitcoin didn't include any block limit and Bitcoin's inventor wasn't worried about block size being too large[0]. The current 1MB limit was itself a hard fork of the original as a temporary spam protection measure while the network was in it's infancy. So the name really isn't misleading. A lot of people are ignorant of the history of the block size limit though.

[0] http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg099...

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