The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#81

Post by Flowdalic » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 8:37 AM UTC

zby wrote: post #79

toomim wrote: post #75

This author confuses a hard fork for a github fork : > The bitcoin chain has been hard-forked at least five times, [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks Ouch! Those aren't hard forks— they are forks of the github repo! In reality Bitcoin has only been hard-forked twice. Once, to fix the bug as described in BIP 50, and once for Bitcoin Cash. Here's a better resource: http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk…

My mistake - I would delete this comment - but now I cannot. Your source is also not quite on the spot - it is about hard forks - but there were also soft forks.

BCC was a hard fork

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#82

Post by Kelab » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 9:54 AM UTC

Bitcoin doesn't have a real world use case, the fees is too high and it's too slow 10 mins

I just went to steemit blog network, now my grandma can use a blockchain

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#83

Post by Xophmeister » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:05 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #65

chrisco255 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would suffer a temporary drop then inevitably climb back up again. Bitcoin is global at this point. No one jurisdiction is going to shut it down.

Here’s a thought experiment. Yes Bitcoin is global but like all other distributed systems, the CAP theorem applies. When there is a network partition, you can only choose between consistency and availability. Now what if tomorrow the Chinese government decided to totally block Bitcoin traffic, just like they block Facebook, Twitter, NYT, Tor and VPNs? Losing either consistency or availability would be a heavy blow. I…

I think it would be pretty difficult to block a P2P network at that layer of the stack to effectively partition the network. The list of peers is dynamic, so it would always be one step ahead of The Great Firewall.

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#84

Post by dmitriid » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:11 AM UTC

Folks, I give you the disruptive infinitely scalable technology the likes of which the world has never seen. It will bring down the entrenched losers like Visa and cash-based economy.

Just hold on tight, let's see if it can survive protocol upgrades and get more than 4 transactions a second.

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#85

Post by Kelab » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:26 AM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #66

Personally I’m of the opinion that Bitcoin is already “too big to fail”: there are so many interested parties and stakeholders who want it to succeed that it will be kept alive through sheer will, despite internal politics.

So you think Chinese government cant afford to corner the mining hashes?

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#86

Post by Kelab » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:28 AM UTC

iopuy wrote: post #20

gruez wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be fair, part of the reason why there's so much drama with bitcoin is because it's biggest by market cap. when there's more at stake, people show their true intentions.

Very true, people often point out that Litecoin will suffer the same growing pains as Bitcoin as volume increases, and there is definitely an element of true to this. I trusted Gavin to help guide Bitcoin and since his departure I have not felt reassured of anyones true intentions in the Bitcoin community. With Litecoin, Charlie wanted it to be as fair as possible from the beginning. He refused to pre-mine the coin a…

Kill Charlie kill litecoin

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#87

Post by Kelab » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:30 AM UTC

s17n wrote: post #26

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of hero worship in general. Why does any of that matter for a commodity?

Ultimately a cryptocurrency needs a functional governance model to survive - it has to be possible to update the code, and so people have to decide somehow on which version is valid, and this creates the opportunity for a power structure to exist, and where there is such an opportunity, someone will fill it. Having a "hero" in charge is not the best way but Bitcoin is a fucking mess right now.

Heard of delegated proof of stake? The inventor moves on and the project is still alive and thriving

No hero needed just honest nodes

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#88

Post by makomk » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:37 AM UTC

AgentME wrote: post #25

As a Bitcoin fan (and someone who owns a little), I think it's a pretty good article. Some more tidbits of information from my perspective: >The anti-2Xers argue that the NYA should not be binding because it was negotiated behind closed doors, and that a change of this magnitude needs to be more carefully considered before it is adopted. No active developers were part of the NYA. Some in the NYA have said that they a…

Also, one of the problems with the NYA is that the creation of Bitcoin Cash - which is essentially a hardfork of Bitcoin that increases the block size and removes Segwit - left questions over whether some of the pro-hardfork side of the agreement actually intended to uphold it. In particular, it lead to speculation that they might just use the inevitable disruption to Bitcoin to encourage the adoption of the Bitcoin Cash fork, which they had backed and which was closer to what they wanted.

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#89

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:50 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #67

justboxing wrote: post #3

> I am fully cognizant of the perils of making bearish predictions about new technology. > But, to quote another well-worn and wholly unreliable aphorism, this time it's different. It really is. and >... because the only other alternative is chaos, and probably the end of the whole Bitcoin experiment. I'm very much a Bitcoin skeptic, but, I'm not sure this time is different, or that Bitcoin will die. For the last 8 y…

In one sense, it's already dead. In theory, Bitcoin is supposed to be a payment system, digital cash. But that seems to be pretty much dead. Consider the opinion of Fred Wilson, a big Bitcoin booster, who has stopped using it for payments: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/ Merchant acceptance is actually in retreat: http://www.businessinsider.com/merchants-arent-accepting-bit... It is still bei…

[deleted]

Re: The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November

#90

Post by colejohnson66 » Sat, Oct 07, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

Xophmeister wrote: post #83

kccqzy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a thought experiment. Yes Bitcoin is global but like all other distributed systems, the CAP theorem applies. When there is a network partition, you can only choose between consistency and availability. Now what if tomorrow the Chinese government decided to totally block Bitcoin traffic, just like they block Facebook, Twitter, NYT, Tor and VPNs? Losing either consistency or availability would be a heavy blow. I…

I think it would be pretty difficult to block a P2P network at that layer of the stack to effectively partition the network. The list of peers is dynamic, so it would always be one step ahead of The Great Firewall.

Packet Inspection?