Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#51

Post by vgb2k11 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

ithought wrote: post #46

vgb2k11 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But its still the wrong explanation. Think about it: (i) Miners, not average users, hold the voting power. (ii) When the 1 MB block-size is congested (like it is now), miners make significantly more money on transaction fee's. (iii) Increasing the block-size increases supply and reduces demand for priority processing in the block, hence, reduces transaction fee's. Which explanation truly matches your view of reality…

Can you elaborate further? When Mike Hearn quit bitcoin (Jan 2016), he wrote the Chinese miners were worried about bitcoin getting too popular because of their limited access to the Internet. And said they were actively trying to supress its popularity. But obviously that isn't true now? https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...

Check out replies by zkSNARK and stale2002 (just down-page at time of writing). Screen cap here for reference: http://imgur.com/a/xBJUW

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#52

Post by jgord » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 1:32 AM UTC

hudon wrote: post #20

A fork like Bitcoin Cash will be a boon for the blockchain community. There is a pretty big subset of the community that believe Bitcoin is a panacea that will replace currencies, payment networks and so on, regardless of how technically inferior the blockchain is to other more mature distributed databases and networks. They believe one day, the blockchain will be just as efficient or even more so. This subset is voc…

Its a commonly voiced, but false dichotomy - increasing blocksize 4x or even 8x will have negligible impact on the security or decentrality of Bitcoin.

It will just allow more transactions through, which will allow fees to fall to levels where normal people can use it for normal transactions.

The use of bitcoin as a currency is being throttled by the artificially small blocksize.

We can have more than 3 transactions per second, while still maintaining the fundamental properties that are Bitcoin.

Hopefully SegWit2X will be the sane compromise everyone hopes for - ie. that we see the bottleneck alleviated with segwit and 1MB blocksize contributing to a near 4x improvement in transaction throughput, and lower usage fees.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#53

Post by jgord » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 1:53 AM UTC

vgb2k11 wrote: post #44

DougN7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your explanation. This is the best description of WHY there is such a battle going on that lay people like me can grok :)

But its still the wrong explanation. Think about it: (i) Miners, not average users, hold the voting power. (ii) When the 1 MB block-size is congested (like it is now), miners make significantly more money on transaction fee's. (iii) Increasing the block-size increases supply and reduces demand for priority processing in the block, hence, reduces transaction fee's. Which explanation truly matches your view of reality…

Its a transient equilibrium during growth, not a zero-sum game. We could see lower fees and miners earning more :

Hypothetically, if blocksize went up tomorrow by 8x, then potentially fees might drop by 4x and volume of transactions go up by 8x .. then miners will be making 2x in fees per block, for maybe 2% extra cost.

That has other flow on effects - if fees are lower bitcoin can accommodate people using it as a day to day currency, then its utility and user base goes up, then the valuation in USD goes up, the value of the bitcoins miners earn/save goes up, etc.

I think there are miners who understand that there is a sweet spot of fees being low enough to facilitate higher daily usage and growth. Also, the majority of their current income is not in fees, but rather in 'coinbase', the reward for mining the block [ which is how new bitcoin money supply is injected into the system ]. They are highly vested in the valuation of USD/BTC, so they will do well if the user base of bitcoin grows.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#54

Post by jgord » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 2:05 AM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #48

taysic wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"7tx/s doen't do much good if scaled linearly" Why not? Bitcoin Cash may be more vocal in the Chinese miner community but there are plenty of Americans who believe in it too. The storage issue both chains will have to deal with if they are used in any big capacity

Because solutions that are practical for getting 2x or 10x the capacity aren't sufficient, since getting used in big capacity requires a vision that can give a thousandfold increase, and increasing the block size can't ever provide that in a practical manner. If you want to scale a huge cliff, going to fetch a 20 feet ladder will not help you.

I think that its quite possible that we can see scaling of 1000x on the linear blockchain, without fundamentally changing the economic/security properties.

Increasing blocksize is just the first thing to do of many engineering optimizations. If you want to climb Everest, you first need to reach base camp.

Even if LN works great and scales beautifully, we will still need that 100x increase in the blockchain that it settles on. LN itself will create transaction demand - people aren't paying $2.50 in fees now to buy a $3 coffee with bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#55

Post by stale2002 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

kanzure wrote: post #49

stale2002 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm? The steal segwit coins senario would work as follows: 1. Person A does a segwit transaction and sends coins to the anyone-can-spend output on the main chain. These coins aren't really "anyone can spend" because segwit stops invalid transactions. 2. The transaction gets replayed on the BCC chain. Segwit transactions work by sending via the anyone can spend output, but since segwit is not activated on BCC, the the…

> Or am I misinterpreting how it works? I had mentioned specifically post-fork coinbase output taint; if it's tainted, there's no way to replay, that's in fact one of the proposed replay protection mechanisms (unfortunately it's of the "opt-in" variety).

Ahh, yeah, of course. If you taint it. But if you don't taint and don't opt in, then it can be stolen.

So yes, if you are on the Core chain, you can protect against replay, but only if you opt in. If you don't opt in, then they can be stolen on the other chain.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#56

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 2:48 AM UTC

vgb2k11 wrote: post #44

DougN7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your explanation. This is the best description of WHY there is such a battle going on that lay people like me can grok :)

But its still the wrong explanation. Think about it: (i) Miners, not average users, hold the voting power. (ii) When the 1 MB block-size is congested (like it is now), miners make significantly more money on transaction fee's. (iii) Increasing the block-size increases supply and reduces demand for priority processing in the block, hence, reduces transaction fee's. Which explanation truly matches your view of reality…

But miners aren't stupid, and they know that if they are perceived as being a huge bottleneck and impediment to the growth and viability of Bitcoin, everyone else will just follow a different chain.

Currencies only have value if people are willing to trade you actual goods/services for it, and if the larger community decides the value lies with another fork, miners will lose all their power.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#57

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 2:48 AM UTC

vgb2k11 wrote: post #44

DougN7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your explanation. This is the best description of WHY there is such a battle going on that lay people like me can grok :)

But its still the wrong explanation. Think about it: (i) Miners, not average users, hold the voting power. (ii) When the 1 MB block-size is congested (like it is now), miners make significantly more money on transaction fee's. (iii) Increasing the block-size increases supply and reduces demand for priority processing in the block, hence, reduces transaction fee's. Which explanation truly matches your view of reality…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#58

Post by kalleboo » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 4:07 AM UTC

vgb2k11 wrote: post #44

DougN7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your explanation. This is the best description of WHY there is such a battle going on that lay people like me can grok :)

But its still the wrong explanation. Think about it: (i) Miners, not average users, hold the voting power. (ii) When the 1 MB block-size is congested (like it is now), miners make significantly more money on transaction fee's. (iii) Increasing the block-size increases supply and reduces demand for priority processing in the block, hence, reduces transaction fee's. Which explanation truly matches your view of reality…

> (ii) When the 1 MB block-size is congested (like it is now), miners make significantly more money on transaction fee's.

One thing I've not understood is, if the miners want more money from fees, why don't they just say "we're not accepting into blocks any transactions with fees lower than X"?

If just one large miner with 10% of the hashrate does this, that instantly puts any transaction with a lower fee than that at a 10% chance of being delayed, and if the fee is still reasonable people will pay it just in case.

And it's not like there's a market of miners. A user can't refuse to deal with a miner or choose who gets to confirm their transaction.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#59

Post by Artlav » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 4:23 AM UTC

h1d wrote: post #36

Artlav wrote: post #19

That sounds like a massive scam, in it's pumping stage.

Find who's behind and you will know it's not a scam. Not that I support such a large block though.

Yes, the same guys who were behind "Bitcoin XT", "Bitcoin Classic", "Bitcoin Unlimited" and other similar scams. Can't see why this one should be any different.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading

#60

Post by Frogolocalypse » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 4:34 AM UTC

hudon wrote: post #20

A fork like Bitcoin Cash will be a boon for the blockchain community. There is a pretty big subset of the community that believe Bitcoin is a panacea that will replace currencies, payment networks and so on, regardless of how technically inferior the blockchain is to other more mature distributed databases and networks. They believe one day, the blockchain will be just as efficient or even more so. This subset is voc…

If it leads to a small group of people choosing an alt based upon the bitcoin protocol such that they stop trying to kill decentralization in bitcoin, good luck to them.