Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading(trustnodes.com)
trustnodes.com
Bitcoin Cash Starts Trading
http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/07/22/bitcoin-cash-starts-trading-reaches-high-nearly-900
92 comments
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.
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.
> increasing blocksize 4x or even 8x will have negligible impact on the security or decentrality of Bitcoin.
Incorrect. It will make running a full node for almost all consumers in Australia impossible at any price.
> hopefully SegWit2X will be the sane compromise
Segwit is the compromise and we are finally going to get it. If you want to install the 2x hard-fork to china-coin, you are welcome to. Everyone else will just continue using bitcoin. Now with segwit.
Incorrect. It will make running a full node for almost all consumers in Australia impossible at any price.
> hopefully SegWit2X will be the sane compromise
Segwit is the compromise and we are finally going to get it. If you want to install the 2x hard-fork to china-coin, you are welcome to. Everyone else will just continue using bitcoin. Now with segwit.
You've made a lot of assertions like this but you aren't backing them up with any numbers.
8MB every 10 minutes is 13KB/s. Do Australians not look at youtube either, because when I was there well over a decade ago it worked pretty well. Even a full node syncing multiple people -while the blocks are full at 8MB- is no problem. Also there are many orders of magnitude left before running a full node exceeds the capacity of a $15/month VPS and many orders of magnitude before a person at home could no longer sync with a full node off a basic internet connection. That is also ignoring the fact that most people don't need or want to sync with the full chain, but to be clear, hundreds of millions can and would still be able to.
I see arguments like this from time to time, usually from the same small group of people, but there is nothing but crickets when I show them basic numbers and ask for how they came to this conclusion.
8MB every 10 minutes is 13KB/s. Do Australians not look at youtube either, because when I was there well over a decade ago it worked pretty well. Even a full node syncing multiple people -while the blocks are full at 8MB- is no problem. Also there are many orders of magnitude left before running a full node exceeds the capacity of a $15/month VPS and many orders of magnitude before a person at home could no longer sync with a full node off a basic internet connection. That is also ignoring the fact that most people don't need or want to sync with the full chain, but to be clear, hundreds of millions can and would still be able to.
I see arguments like this from time to time, usually from the same small group of people, but there is nothing but crickets when I show them basic numbers and ask for how they came to this conclusion.
Here's the source of the justification of my opinion :
https://iancoleman.github.io/blocksize/#_
Where's yours?
The issue is the upload bandwidth requirement, which demonstrates that your understanding of the constraint, with your comparison to YouTube, is completely incorrect. And centralizing of all of these nodes onto service provider infrastructure is the worst possible example of decentralization, which is what we're talking about in the first place.
What I've found in the past is the people who hold your views are only cursorily aware of the constraints of decentralization, and use unrelated justifications in order to hand wave away problems. Thankfully, the people who actually secure bitcoin, through their use of nodes, spend more time to understand how bitcoin works, and have repeatedly rejected 'solutions' that will reduce the security of the network.
But you can now prove me wrong! Instead of using bitcoin, use bitcoin cash. If what you say is true, it will be valued significantly higher than bitcoin. If it stops you trying to break bitcoin, even better.
https://iancoleman.github.io/blocksize/#_
Where's yours?
The issue is the upload bandwidth requirement, which demonstrates that your understanding of the constraint, with your comparison to YouTube, is completely incorrect. And centralizing of all of these nodes onto service provider infrastructure is the worst possible example of decentralization, which is what we're talking about in the first place.
What I've found in the past is the people who hold your views are only cursorily aware of the constraints of decentralization, and use unrelated justifications in order to hand wave away problems. Thankfully, the people who actually secure bitcoin, through their use of nodes, spend more time to understand how bitcoin works, and have repeatedly rejected 'solutions' that will reduce the security of the network.
But you can now prove me wrong! Instead of using bitcoin, use bitcoin cash. If what you say is true, it will be valued significantly higher than bitcoin. If it stops you trying to break bitcoin, even better.
> with your comparison to YouTube, is completely incorrect
Not for syncing. For running a full node, a VPS costing $12 - $15 USD per month has orders of magnitude more bandwidth. I already have you the math of full 8MB blocks, there is no way you can say that these aren't trivial bandwidth numbers.
> What I've found in the past is the people who hold your views are only cursorily aware of the constraints of decentralization, and use unrelated justifications in order to hand wave away problems.
That's big talk when:
1. You are talking about bandwidth and the numbers are simple to calculate and come out to trivial amounts.
2. Bitcoin is literally working right now with 0 hiccups except for full blocks and high fees. The people working on it right now didn't do that, they kicked out the people who did.
3. You say hand waving while not backing up a single thing you've said or confronting what I've said. 8MB block when 100% full takes 13KB/s to sync. Is that wrong? Twitch streams are 250KB/s. Most people don't even want to or need to sync.
> But you can now prove me wrong! Instead of using bitcoin, use bitcoin cash.
This is about how ridiculous the 1MB limitation is, you can try to divert from that, but lets see you confront it.
Not for syncing. For running a full node, a VPS costing $12 - $15 USD per month has orders of magnitude more bandwidth. I already have you the math of full 8MB blocks, there is no way you can say that these aren't trivial bandwidth numbers.
> What I've found in the past is the people who hold your views are only cursorily aware of the constraints of decentralization, and use unrelated justifications in order to hand wave away problems.
That's big talk when:
1. You are talking about bandwidth and the numbers are simple to calculate and come out to trivial amounts.
2. Bitcoin is literally working right now with 0 hiccups except for full blocks and high fees. The people working on it right now didn't do that, they kicked out the people who did.
3. You say hand waving while not backing up a single thing you've said or confronting what I've said. 8MB block when 100% full takes 13KB/s to sync. Is that wrong? Twitch streams are 250KB/s. Most people don't even want to or need to sync.
> But you can now prove me wrong! Instead of using bitcoin, use bitcoin cash.
This is about how ridiculous the 1MB limitation is, you can try to divert from that, but lets see you confront it.
> For running a full node, a VPS costing $12 - $15 USD
So your solution to centralization pressures is to use a centralized service for decentralization?
> You are talking about bandwidth and the numbers are simple to calculate and come out to trivial amounts.
I provided more evidence on the bandwidth requirements than your incomplete understanding of how bitcoin works multiplied by your flawed opinion.
> 2. Bitcoin is literally working right now with 0 hiccups except for full blocks and high fees.
No-one is forcing you to use it. There are a multitude of other options if you feel that bitcoin isn't meeting your use-case.
> You say hand waving while not backing up a single thing you've said
I provided evidence that backed up my opinion. You should try it.
> This is about how ridiculous the 1MB limitation is, you can try to divert from that, but lets see you confront it.
Nah. You can use another service if you feel that the 10's of thousands of nodes somehow don't have a better understanding of the constraints of running a node than you. No-one is holding a gun to your head. Ever heard of Bitcoin Cash? Perhaps that might better suit your needs.
So your solution to centralization pressures is to use a centralized service for decentralization?
> You are talking about bandwidth and the numbers are simple to calculate and come out to trivial amounts.
I provided more evidence on the bandwidth requirements than your incomplete understanding of how bitcoin works multiplied by your flawed opinion.
> 2. Bitcoin is literally working right now with 0 hiccups except for full blocks and high fees.
No-one is forcing you to use it. There are a multitude of other options if you feel that bitcoin isn't meeting your use-case.
> You say hand waving while not backing up a single thing you've said
I provided evidence that backed up my opinion. You should try it.
> This is about how ridiculous the 1MB limitation is, you can try to divert from that, but lets see you confront it.
Nah. You can use another service if you feel that the 10's of thousands of nodes somehow don't have a better understanding of the constraints of running a node than you. No-one is holding a gun to your head. Ever heard of Bitcoin Cash? Perhaps that might better suit your needs.
> I provided more evidence on the bandwidth requirements than your incomplete understanding of how bitcoin works multiplied by your flawed opinion.
No, you didn't. You didn't confront my numbers for syncing, you for some reason think the option to pay for a cheap VPS to run a node is centralization. You also seem to that a single node is uploading to 8 people at all times, no more, no less not to mention that your assertion revolves around thinking that 48KB/s to run a full node is a lot when hundreds of millions of people can do that now with their home internet connections, not to mention buisnesses. Kids are running around streaming live video from their phones, how can you cling to such nonsense and why won't you confront it directly?
> No-one is forcing you to use it. There are a multitude of other options if you feel that bitcoin isn't meeting your use-case.
So instead of confronting these absurd statements, you say 'then don't use it'. This is about whether what you are saying makes sense and so far I haven't seen anything more than trying to avoid the simple numbers that make the answer obvious.
> I provided evidence that backed up my opinion. You should try it.
I'm not really sure what you want or how you can say that. I've broken down the numbers for you in terms of bandwidth, people that have access to that bandwidth, previously running systems, and widespread use cases of other technology that already uses more resources.
> Nah. You can use another service if you feel that the 10's of thousands of nodes somehow don't have a better understanding of the constraints of running a node than you. No-one is holding a gun to your head. Ever heard of Bitcoin Cash? Perhaps that might better suit your needs.
So anyone who can do simple math and questions bizarre statements should 'go somewhere else' ?
No, you didn't. You didn't confront my numbers for syncing, you for some reason think the option to pay for a cheap VPS to run a node is centralization. You also seem to that a single node is uploading to 8 people at all times, no more, no less not to mention that your assertion revolves around thinking that 48KB/s to run a full node is a lot when hundreds of millions of people can do that now with their home internet connections, not to mention buisnesses. Kids are running around streaming live video from their phones, how can you cling to such nonsense and why won't you confront it directly?
> No-one is forcing you to use it. There are a multitude of other options if you feel that bitcoin isn't meeting your use-case.
So instead of confronting these absurd statements, you say 'then don't use it'. This is about whether what you are saying makes sense and so far I haven't seen anything more than trying to avoid the simple numbers that make the answer obvious.
> I provided evidence that backed up my opinion. You should try it.
I'm not really sure what you want or how you can say that. I've broken down the numbers for you in terms of bandwidth, people that have access to that bandwidth, previously running systems, and widespread use cases of other technology that already uses more resources.
> Nah. You can use another service if you feel that the 10's of thousands of nodes somehow don't have a better understanding of the constraints of running a node than you. No-one is holding a gun to your head. Ever heard of Bitcoin Cash? Perhaps that might better suit your needs.
So anyone who can do simple math and questions bizarre statements should 'go somewhere else' ?
> No, you didn't.
Yeah. I did. It's still there. Perhaps you should take the time to figure out what it means.
> Kids are running around streaming live video from their phones, how can you cling to such nonsense and why won't you confront it directly?
Kids are uploading their videos to a centralized service where they are being downloaded from. But because you have no concept of what decentralization means, you have no ability to even integrate that information.
> So anyone who can do simple math and questions bizarre statements should 'go somewhere else' ?
People who don't have any concept of what decentralization means shouldn't make comment on the requirements of a service that requires decentralization. And if they can't figure out why they can't get what they 'want', yes, they should use another service that better meets their use-case. Paypal and venmo might better suit your needs?
It's not often you run into someone with a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of a subject, and still feels the need to comment, but here we are. The only thing that makes sense is that you're young. Like really young. There's a significant gap in your understanding of how a block-chain works, and for some reason you seem completely resistant to overcoming that hurdle. But you really should work on it.
Yeah. I did. It's still there. Perhaps you should take the time to figure out what it means.
> Kids are running around streaming live video from their phones, how can you cling to such nonsense and why won't you confront it directly?
Kids are uploading their videos to a centralized service where they are being downloaded from. But because you have no concept of what decentralization means, you have no ability to even integrate that information.
> So anyone who can do simple math and questions bizarre statements should 'go somewhere else' ?
People who don't have any concept of what decentralization means shouldn't make comment on the requirements of a service that requires decentralization. And if they can't figure out why they can't get what they 'want', yes, they should use another service that better meets their use-case. Paypal and venmo might better suit your needs?
It's not often you run into someone with a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of a subject, and still feels the need to comment, but here we are. The only thing that makes sense is that you're young. Like really young. There's a significant gap in your understanding of how a block-chain works, and for some reason you seem completely resistant to overcoming that hurdle. But you really should work on it.
The reason is not because of the vision. Also if anyone thinks about it as a replacement of paypal/visa, they know scaling via increased block size is not going to cut it. 7tx/s doen't do much good if scaled linearly.
It was a flaw in the Bitcoin specification that there was a conflict of interest between miners and users that when more blocks are filled, the more fee the miners get, thus miners have no incentive to make the blocks less congested.
Not sure how doubling the block size suddenly disallows users from validating the blocks, besides, as the entire data is already around 160GB or so, none of the mobile wallets contain the full data and are delegating much of the credibility of the chain to others' full nodes.
Bitcoin Cash is mostly built around the Chinese mining community who have been rejecting to activate segwit for a while since their asicboost that helps their mining speed by 20-30% was about to become unusable, though they claim it's not used.
And with 8MB for Bitcoin Cash it would make the chain data so large after several years, if block spaces get filled you will be able to barely host a node on a desktop with TBs of storage not to mention hosting on clouds would be pretty expensive leading to centralization.
It was a flaw in the Bitcoin specification that there was a conflict of interest between miners and users that when more blocks are filled, the more fee the miners get, thus miners have no incentive to make the blocks less congested.
Not sure how doubling the block size suddenly disallows users from validating the blocks, besides, as the entire data is already around 160GB or so, none of the mobile wallets contain the full data and are delegating much of the credibility of the chain to others' full nodes.
Bitcoin Cash is mostly built around the Chinese mining community who have been rejecting to activate segwit for a while since their asicboost that helps their mining speed by 20-30% was about to become unusable, though they claim it's not used.
And with 8MB for Bitcoin Cash it would make the chain data so large after several years, if block spaces get filled you will be able to barely host a node on a desktop with TBs of storage not to mention hosting on clouds would be pretty expensive leading to centralization.
"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
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.
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.
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.
> I think that its quite possible that we can see scaling of 1000x on the linear blockchain
In order for your fantasy to become a reality the tens of thousands of current users of the core ref nodes would have to uninstall their node clients and permanently remove their ability to ever validate their transactions on the blockchain. That is never going to happen.
In order for your fantasy to become a reality the tens of thousands of current users of the core ref nodes would have to uninstall their node clients and permanently remove their ability to ever validate their transactions on the blockchain. That is never going to happen.
8MB blocks means 13KB/s to sync with the chain -when blocks are full-. The numbers for this argument don't work out at all.
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 here. People (miners) are motivated by "A shared vision" or a dollar in the bank account? Look at it closer (quote from parent comment):
>
> "larger blocks means more resources required to transmit, validate and store blocks and if you cannot validate blocks, then you are trusting transaction validators (miners)"
>
Can you see the problem with the explanation now? Its written from the view of an end user (of bitcoin), not a miner. But its miners who vote on the fork, hence, the above quoted text is mostly irrelevant to understanding the "WHY" of the fork battle.
(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 here. People (miners) are motivated by "A shared vision" or a dollar in the bank account? Look at it closer (quote from parent comment):
>
> "larger blocks means more resources required to transmit, validate and store blocks and if you cannot validate blocks, then you are trusting transaction validators (miners)"
>
Can you see the problem with the explanation now? Its written from the view of an end user (of bitcoin), not a miner. But its miners who vote on the fork, hence, the above quoted text is mostly irrelevant to understanding the "WHY" of the fork battle.
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.
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.
None of the nodes users, which define and police consensus in bitcoin, is interested in reducing the security of the network to allow miners more control. This is the fourth failed coup attempt of the bitcoin network, and the only thing that it has demonstrated, is the resilience of the network against large corporate centralization attempts. Segwit might very well be the last architectural change of the protocol.
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.
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.
> (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.
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.
This is how priority transactions work.Increasing block size would allow more transactions per second. Less people would then pay for the premium of fast transactions as the normal transaction is fast enough
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...
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
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Once there are multiple viable forks of Bitcoin proper, the idea that bitcoins are rare assets worth investing in will collapse.
Aren't most alts a fork of a fork? How many of them have truly original codebases? (obviously operative word in your comment was "viable", but at a minimum, Litecoin is one viable fork)
Those aren't forks, they are new chains.
FYI, a network with 1000x more on-chain transactions, that everyone uses, is much more difficult to censor, than one that requires bank-like organisation with IOUs to the main chain.
Two problems with your argument:
1- You imply that only one camp wants to scale. Actually, both camps want to scale. The only difference is that the "big blocks" camp do not think a user's ability to validate the blockchain is worth keeping.
2- The size of the network is irrelevant to the government's ability to censor transactions. The only thing that stops them from having power over the network is decentralization. If you as a user have no say whatsoever in what goes into blocks, you are forfeiting your power and handing it over to the miners. Then, the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government. As a user, you will have no means to stop this because you can't even validate the chain they are producing (because it costs you too much to transmit, store and validate it in computing resources).
I'm not saying the argument for the "not-big-blocks" camp is to never increase the block size, but it is to try everything they can to keep the power in the user's hands while growing the network. The minute you give up on decentralization for the purpose of scale, Bitcoin loses its value proposition as it looks less like digital cash and more like paypal with central transaction validators and a central database.
1- You imply that only one camp wants to scale. Actually, both camps want to scale. The only difference is that the "big blocks" camp do not think a user's ability to validate the blockchain is worth keeping.
2- The size of the network is irrelevant to the government's ability to censor transactions. The only thing that stops them from having power over the network is decentralization. If you as a user have no say whatsoever in what goes into blocks, you are forfeiting your power and handing it over to the miners. Then, the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government. As a user, you will have no means to stop this because you can't even validate the chain they are producing (because it costs you too much to transmit, store and validate it in computing resources).
I'm not saying the argument for the "not-big-blocks" camp is to never increase the block size, but it is to try everything they can to keep the power in the user's hands while growing the network. The minute you give up on decentralization for the purpose of scale, Bitcoin loses its value proposition as it looks less like digital cash and more like paypal with central transaction validators and a central database.
You are either lying or misinformed. The "big block camp" absolutely does think a user's ability to validate the blockchain is worth keeping. This is why proposals that scale blocks according to Moore's law have been created. This is also why proposals exist which allow flexible block sizes based on need.
You are also ignoring the fact that for most of bitcoin's existence, block sizes were soft limited by miners as appropriate. With soft limited or flexible block sizes, just because big blocks are used sometimes when transaction volume is high does not mean that we will see gigabyte block sizes every 10 minutes for all of time.
The root of the debate is that small blockers have conveniently chosen to ignore the reality that markets and market participants can regulate themselves.
In the small blocker's mind, keeping the power in the user's hands means making bitcoin so expensive that the only people who can use it directly are banks and governments that offer sidechain connections to other networks. They blather on about decentralization while the reality is they are the ones creating centralization.
It is a questionably convenient choice for small blockers because it forces centralization to things that aren't actually bitcoin which is the most logical desire of governments or other bodies who wish to subvert bitcoin.
You are also ignoring the fact that for most of bitcoin's existence, block sizes were soft limited by miners as appropriate. With soft limited or flexible block sizes, just because big blocks are used sometimes when transaction volume is high does not mean that we will see gigabyte block sizes every 10 minutes for all of time.
The root of the debate is that small blockers have conveniently chosen to ignore the reality that markets and market participants can regulate themselves.
In the small blocker's mind, keeping the power in the user's hands means making bitcoin so expensive that the only people who can use it directly are banks and governments that offer sidechain connections to other networks. They blather on about decentralization while the reality is they are the ones creating centralization.
It is a questionably convenient choice for small blockers because it forces centralization to things that aren't actually bitcoin which is the most logical desire of governments or other bodies who wish to subvert bitcoin.
"You imply that only one camp wants to scale."
No. Go read what official Core developers like Luke-jr and Blue Hair Matt are saying.
They think that the blocksize might ALREADY be too large, and actually want to DECREASE the blocksize.
They also explicitly do not want to scale, because that would mean that transaction prices go down. They literally want block fees to be high so as to create a "fee market".
No. Go read what official Core developers like Luke-jr and Blue Hair Matt are saying.
They think that the blocksize might ALREADY be too large, and actually want to DECREASE the blocksize.
They also explicitly do not want to scale, because that would mean that transaction prices go down. They literally want block fees to be high so as to create a "fee market".
> They think that the blocksize might ALREADY be too large
That's because the block-size is only a small part of scaling.
That's because the block-size is only a small part of scaling.
> the miners become transaction validators that can be compelled to censor certain kinds of transactions by their government
That's only true if
1) >50% of the miners are in said county (currently China)
2) >50% of the miners agree to this censorship
3) They actually know the meaning of transactions in order to filter them. Most transactions are anonymous, even the big ones. We know identities of a tiny percentage of the addresses, and most of them are not hiding. For instance, we can't figure out where Mt Gox money went - I've seen some attempts of tracing them, but it went nowhere.
That's only true if
1) >50% of the miners are in said county (currently China)
2) >50% of the miners agree to this censorship
3) They actually know the meaning of transactions in order to filter them. Most transactions are anonymous, even the big ones. We know identities of a tiny percentage of the addresses, and most of them are not hiding. For instance, we can't figure out where Mt Gox money went - I've seen some attempts of tracing them, but it went nowhere.
I am unaware of any current proposal which requires putting in place a bank-like organisation. If you're talking about Lightning Network: routing things across a network without requiring a central controller is a very well-studied field.
Lightning's network topology is still up in the air. Saying "routing is well studied" is well and good, but from what I've read doing it with payment channels without devolving to hub and spoke isn't trivial.
I would argue that that is mostly because cryptocurrency developers are mostly incapable of reading CS papers, but that's neither here nor there.
I'm sure your input would be welcome :)
There have been a couple posts recently debating different network configurations [0]. It seems like the difference between Lightning's routing and other networks is that channels need re-balancing, but I don't know the literature well enough to know if there's an existing, well-studied analog.
[0] https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-...
There have been a couple posts recently debating different network configurations [0]. It seems like the difference between Lightning's routing and other networks is that channels need re-balancing, but I don't know the literature well enough to know if there's an existing, well-studied analog.
[0] https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-...
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.
Kind of.
You are correct that segwit2X is a hard fork, and therefore the other side could potentially stop it from happening.
But the thing is that it is already established that it is possible to do a blocksize increase via a soft fork. Segwit itself is literally a blocksize soft fork.
So if the hard fork fails, the big blockers could instead just blocksize soft fork instead of hard fork.
The war won't be over if segwit2X fails. That is the beginning, not the end, of the real Bitcoin civil war that will happen.
You are correct that segwit2X is a hard fork, and therefore the other side could potentially stop it from happening.
But the thing is that it is already established that it is possible to do a blocksize increase via a soft fork. Segwit itself is literally a blocksize soft fork.
So if the hard fork fails, the big blockers could instead just blocksize soft fork instead of hard fork.
The war won't be over if segwit2X fails. That is the beginning, not the end, of the real Bitcoin civil war that will happen.
> therefore the other side could potentially stop it from happening
No one can stop you from forking bitcoin. It's open source. Anyone can do it. What you can't do is force all of the existing users to stop using bitcoin, and instead use your china-coin fork.
I wish you woukd fork. But you won't. Because as soon as you do, you'll find that none of the existing users of bitcoin will follow your fork. So a week or so later, you'll blame core.
No one can stop you from forking bitcoin. It's open source. Anyone can do it. What you can't do is force all of the existing users to stop using bitcoin, and instead use your china-coin fork.
I wish you woukd fork. But you won't. Because as soon as you do, you'll find that none of the existing users of bitcoin will follow your fork. So a week or so later, you'll blame core.
>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
But they don't believe it's technically inferior to more mature distributed databases and networks..
You're transposing your own opinion onto theirs.
But they don't believe it's technically inferior to more mature distributed databases and networks..
You're transposing your own opinion onto theirs.
It's not opinion, it's fact. VISA can easily process over 40,000 TPS today. A single MySQL instance can process 10,000 TPS with very little electricity consumption compared to the Bitcoin or Ethereum networks, which currently use a ridiculous amount of electricity to process somewhere between 2 TPS to 20 TPS.
None of these numbers are hard to find and they are widely accepted as fact, not opinion.
> They believe one day, the blockchain will be just as efficient or even more so
^This is indeed their opinion and not a fact. Do you disagree?
None of these numbers are hard to find and they are widely accepted as fact, not opinion.
> They believe one day, the blockchain will be just as efficient or even more so
^This is indeed their opinion and not a fact. Do you disagree?
This is a fundamental misunderstanding that assumes a linear relationship between transaction capacity and electricity usage even though they are completely decoupled.
Here is a comment I made earlier addressing the comparison to Visa with actual resources it takes:
-They don't require everyone to hold the whole blockchain, you can have a thin wallet where the blockchain is held elsewhere.
-An ecosystem of multiple different currencies does create sharding.
-Merkle trees are a hierarchy of hashes so that someone can hold only the parts of the chain they want to look at and know that they are on the right chain by syncing large parts of it with their hash as a whole.
-At Visa level transaction rates of 300 Million transactions per day and the minimum size of about 4 transactions per KB in bitcoin, that means that at current 8TB hard drive prices it costs about $900 USD per year to store all the transactions. This would also require a steady connection of at least 870 KB/s to sync with the chain.
In short, there are plenty of solutions with even the extreme examples of involvement being very obtainable by the average person in a developed country.
Here is a comment I made earlier addressing the comparison to Visa with actual resources it takes:
-They don't require everyone to hold the whole blockchain, you can have a thin wallet where the blockchain is held elsewhere.
-An ecosystem of multiple different currencies does create sharding.
-Merkle trees are a hierarchy of hashes so that someone can hold only the parts of the chain they want to look at and know that they are on the right chain by syncing large parts of it with their hash as a whole.
-At Visa level transaction rates of 300 Million transactions per day and the minimum size of about 4 transactions per KB in bitcoin, that means that at current 8TB hard drive prices it costs about $900 USD per year to store all the transactions. This would also require a steady connection of at least 870 KB/s to sync with the chain.
In short, there are plenty of solutions with even the extreme examples of involvement being very obtainable by the average person in a developed country.
>which currently use a ridiculous amount of electricity to process somewhere between 2 TPS to 20 TPS.
The electricity consumption is a result of the mining subsidy, and artificially high fees from block space constraints, not fundamental costs for transaction processing.
If you break down the necessary costs (storage, bandwidth, CPU cycles for verification), it's actually very low, at about $0.001 (a tenth of a cent) a transaction:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3332.0
The mining subsidy is a fixed cost that will decrease in relation to the total number of transactions as transaction volumes increase.
The electricity consumption is a result of the mining subsidy, and artificially high fees from block space constraints, not fundamental costs for transaction processing.
If you break down the necessary costs (storage, bandwidth, CPU cycles for verification), it's actually very low, at about $0.001 (a tenth of a cent) a transaction:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3332.0
The mining subsidy is a fixed cost that will decrease in relation to the total number of transactions as transaction volumes increase.
The dangers of tx replay mean that HF's like this can never be safe.
Beware those that would tell you that these forks are safe, they are not.
This is another scam from those that would try to usurp the blockchain.
You will be able to replay original bitcoin and abc tx's on each chain, unless you opt-in to some funny new untesed hash. This will hugely disrupt the minority chain ABC, as the mempools on cash chain fill with other valid tx's from main chain. Its going to be a bloodbath. Steer very clear!
From: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56867/bitcoin-ca...
Bitcoin Cash (aka Bitcoin ABC aka UAHF) provides two methods of replay protection, both of which are opt in. If you do not create transactions which use these features, then your transactions are vulnerable to replay.
The first method is a redefined sighashing algorithm which is basically the same as the one specified by BIP 143. This sighash algorithm is only used when the sighash flag has bit 6 set. These transactions would be invalid on the non-UAHF chain as the different sighashing algorithm will result in invalid transactions. This means that in order to use this, you will need to transact on the UAHF chain first and then on the non-UAHF chain second.
The second method uses an OP_RETURN output which has the exact string:
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System as the data of the OP_RETURN. Any transaction which contains this string will be considered invalid by UAHF nodes until block 530,000. This means that prior to block 530,000, you can split your coins by transacting on the non-UAHF chain first with the OP_RETURN output, and then transacting on the UAHF chain second.
You will be able to replay original bitcoin and abc tx's on each chain, unless you opt-in to some funny new untesed hash. This will hugely disrupt the minority chain ABC, as the mempools on cash chain fill with other valid tx's from main chain. Its going to be a bloodbath. Steer very clear!
From: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56867/bitcoin-ca...
Bitcoin Cash (aka Bitcoin ABC aka UAHF) provides two methods of replay protection, both of which are opt in. If you do not create transactions which use these features, then your transactions are vulnerable to replay.
The first method is a redefined sighashing algorithm which is basically the same as the one specified by BIP 143. This sighash algorithm is only used when the sighash flag has bit 6 set. These transactions would be invalid on the non-UAHF chain as the different sighashing algorithm will result in invalid transactions. This means that in order to use this, you will need to transact on the UAHF chain first and then on the non-UAHF chain second.
The second method uses an OP_RETURN output which has the exact string:
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System as the data of the OP_RETURN. Any transaction which contains this string will be considered invalid by UAHF nodes until block 530,000. This means that prior to block 530,000, you can split your coins by transacting on the non-UAHF chain first with the OP_RETURN output, and then transacting on the UAHF chain second.
Uhh, protecting your transactions against replay attacks in Hard Fork scenarios like this is a solved problem.
There are a multitude of ways to split your coins, so that they are separate, and you don't risk selling the other chain when you don't mean to.
There are a multitude of ways to split your coins, so that they are separate, and you don't risk selling the other chain when you don't mean to.
Solved, maybe, but apparently not in this case as the replay mitigation's are opt-in.
What would stop someone replaying a regular tx from core chain if this network accepts either replay protected or not tx's?
What would stop someone replaying a regular tx from core chain if this network accepts either replay protected or not tx's?
Apparently it is 1 way protection.
So the answer is that if you spend a transaction on Core, yes, it can be stolen on the BCC chain.
Your core chain coins aren't stolen, though.
But it is safe on the BCC chain. The only people who get screwed are the main chain people, and NOT the BCC chain supporters/users.
So it is actually the opposite of what the original comment was claiming. It is MORE safe to be on the BCC chain, and LESS safe on the main chain, because the protection is 1 way.
Also, apparent segwit is not going to be activated on it, so that means that main chain segwit transactions can be stolen.
This is actually really clever, and is borderline adversarial development.
What this means is that miners on the BCC chain will be able to steal coins from segwit transactions on the main chain, and thus this would strongly incentivize BCC mining, while screwing over segwit supporters.
The people who it is "unsafe" for is Core and Segwit supporters, lol!
So the answer is that if you spend a transaction on Core, yes, it can be stolen on the BCC chain.
Your core chain coins aren't stolen, though.
But it is safe on the BCC chain. The only people who get screwed are the main chain people, and NOT the BCC chain supporters/users.
So it is actually the opposite of what the original comment was claiming. It is MORE safe to be on the BCC chain, and LESS safe on the main chain, because the protection is 1 way.
Also, apparent segwit is not going to be activated on it, so that means that main chain segwit transactions can be stolen.
This is actually really clever, and is borderline adversarial development.
What this means is that miners on the BCC chain will be able to steal coins from segwit transactions on the main chain, and thus this would strongly incentivize BCC mining, while screwing over segwit supporters.
The people who it is "unsafe" for is Core and Segwit supporters, lol!
> The only people who get screwed are the main chain people, and NOT the BCC chain supporters/users.
Sounds like definitely adversarial behavior to me, not "borderline". They have the opportunity to write secure opt-out (on-by-default) replay protection-- like by choosing a new address prefix (etc)--, and they choose not to.
Your "steal segwit coins" scenario wont work when the transaction tree is tainted by post-fork coinbase outputs.
Sounds like definitely adversarial behavior to me, not "borderline". They have the opportunity to write secure opt-out (on-by-default) replay protection-- like by choosing a new address prefix (etc)--, and they choose not to.
Your "steal segwit coins" scenario wont work when the transaction tree is tainted by post-fork coinbase outputs.
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 thefts aren't blocked, and any-can-spend really DOES mean anyone-can-spend instead of meaning segwit.
Or am I misinterpreting how it works?
I thought that segwit uses the anyone-can-spend output in order to be backwards compatible. That means that legacy nodes, or unupgraded nodes that don't have segwit, are perfectly fine will "theft" transactions.
A legacy fork, that does not have segwit activated, would thus be able to replay segwit transactions, but instead of being segwit transactions they would just be normal, anyone can spend transactions that can be stolen.
Anyways, yeah it is adversarial development.
But the other side was planning on doing the same kind of stuff, with User Activated Soft Fork, and POW changes. User activated soft fork threatens the other side with theft by doing a Wipeout of the other chain.
This stuff could have been solved much earlier if Core just compromised and merged the 4MB blocksize increase.
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 thefts aren't blocked, and any-can-spend really DOES mean anyone-can-spend instead of meaning segwit.
Or am I misinterpreting how it works?
I thought that segwit uses the anyone-can-spend output in order to be backwards compatible. That means that legacy nodes, or unupgraded nodes that don't have segwit, are perfectly fine will "theft" transactions.
A legacy fork, that does not have segwit activated, would thus be able to replay segwit transactions, but instead of being segwit transactions they would just be normal, anyone can spend transactions that can be stolen.
Anyways, yeah it is adversarial development.
But the other side was planning on doing the same kind of stuff, with User Activated Soft Fork, and POW changes. User activated soft fork threatens the other side with theft by doing a Wipeout of the other chain.
This stuff could have been solved much earlier if Core just compromised and merged the 4MB blocksize increase.
> 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).
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.
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.
> Sounds like definitely adversarial behavior to me, not "borderline". They have the opportunity to write secure opt-out (on-by-default) replay protection-- like by choosing a new address prefix (etc)--, and they choose not to.
looks like a change got merged, https://github.com/Bitcoin-UAHF/spec/pull/17#issuecomment-31...
looks like a change got merged, https://github.com/Bitcoin-UAHF/spec/pull/17#issuecomment-31...
That sounds like a massive scam, in it's pumping stage.
If you're going to fork bitcoin it should be to change the algorithm so 5 chip companies don't control the entire mining process.
As a bitcoin newbie, I'm even more confused now as before and I don't know if I should start with bitcoin at all..
Just make sure to read /r/btc and either ignore /r/bitcoin or know that both /r/bitcoin and bitcoin talk are heavily censored and manipulated. Hacker News has some of the same absurdities that pop up, but it isn't as bad. The big question is, do you think 13KB/s AT MOST is too much for your internet connection and computer to handle? Right now it is 1/8th of that, and the /r/bitcoin and 'small blocker' narrative is that anything more is a disaster. Simple math and even slight experience with bitcoin shows that it is exceptionally more likely that this is to create a problem that the company, blockstream, that pays all the gate keepers to the 'core' implementation, can then solve.
> do you think 13KB/s AT MOST is too much for your internet connection
You've quoted this number many times now, and it is completely incorrect. The upload bandwidth required for a full node with eight peers is an absolute minimum of 0.39mbps/mb of block size.
The things you're saying are the kind of things that people who really don't have any clue of the resources required by a node would say. In fact, it's pretty clear you don't run a node, have never run a node, and will never run a node. So your opinion as to the security requirements of bitcoin should be viewed in that context.
You've quoted this number many times now, and it is completely incorrect. The upload bandwidth required for a full node with eight peers is an absolute minimum of 0.39mbps/mb of block size.
The things you're saying are the kind of things that people who really don't have any clue of the resources required by a node would say. In fact, it's pretty clear you don't run a node, have never run a node, and will never run a node. So your opinion as to the security requirements of bitcoin should be viewed in that context.
That is what it would take to sync with the chain.
> The upload bandwidth required for a full node with eight peers is an absolute minimum of 0.39mbps/mb of block size.
That doesn't make any sense, it depends on how many people are downloading from you. By the way, you do realize that millions of people upload and download far more than this from torrents right? How can you even say these things with a straight face, they make no sense.
> The things you're saying are the kind of things that people who really don't have any clue of the resources required by a node would say.
You keep saying I don't know what I'm talking about, but I run half a dozen unlimited and classic nodes, they cost next to nothing. I run one off my phone with a 256GB micro sd card.
Do you really think you can't pay $15 USD per month and run even a single full node? A node doesn't even come REMOTELY close to taking up the resources of the cheapest VPS out there. How can anyone take you seriously when you say things like this?
> The upload bandwidth required for a full node with eight peers is an absolute minimum of 0.39mbps/mb of block size.
That doesn't make any sense, it depends on how many people are downloading from you. By the way, you do realize that millions of people upload and download far more than this from torrents right? How can you even say these things with a straight face, they make no sense.
> The things you're saying are the kind of things that people who really don't have any clue of the resources required by a node would say.
You keep saying I don't know what I'm talking about, but I run half a dozen unlimited and classic nodes, they cost next to nothing. I run one off my phone with a 256GB micro sd card.
Do you really think you can't pay $15 USD per month and run even a single full node? A node doesn't even come REMOTELY close to taking up the resources of the cheapest VPS out there. How can anyone take you seriously when you say things like this?
> > The upload bandwidth required for a full node with eight peers is an absolute minimum of 0.39mbps/mb of block size.
> That doesn't make any sense
To you, I'm sure that's the case. Good thing the people who actually maintain the network through the validation of full nodes have a better understanding than you.
> the cheapest VPS out there.
So your solution to pressures of centralization is to use a centralized service for decentralization?
> That doesn't make any sense
To you, I'm sure that's the case. Good thing the people who actually maintain the network through the validation of full nodes have a better understanding than you.
> the cheapest VPS out there.
So your solution to pressures of centralization is to use a centralized service for decentralization?
> To you, I'm sure that's the case. Good thing the people who actually maintain the network through the validation of full nodes have a better understanding than you.
I said it depends on how many people are connected and that it is such a trivial amount that it barely matters. Do you want to confront that?
> So your solution to pressures of centralization is to use a centralized service for decentralization?
How is -one option- to running a full node by paying for a cheap VPS centralization in any respect?
After you explain that, why don't you explain how there is so much torrent traffic zipping around the internet if this is such a big problem. Before streaming video and netflix, torrents were a major part of the internet's bandwidth. Completely decentralized and on a completely different scale of bandwidth, even over a decade ago. Are you going to explain why that was possible and this is impossible?
I said it depends on how many people are connected and that it is such a trivial amount that it barely matters. Do you want to confront that?
> So your solution to pressures of centralization is to use a centralized service for decentralization?
How is -one option- to running a full node by paying for a cheap VPS centralization in any respect?
After you explain that, why don't you explain how there is so much torrent traffic zipping around the internet if this is such a big problem. Before streaming video and netflix, torrents were a major part of the internet's bandwidth. Completely decentralized and on a completely different scale of bandwidth, even over a decade ago. Are you going to explain why that was possible and this is impossible?
> I said it depends on how many people are connected and that it is such a trivial amount that it barely matters.
And I provided evidence that contradicts that unfounded belief.
> How is -one option- to running a full node by paying for a cheap VPS centralization in any respect?
If you have to explain that, you don't even have a concept of what decentralization means.
> why don't you explain how there is so much torrent traffic zipping
Because people don't care if their torrent takes a few hours to download, where in a multi-agent system with rigorous consensus rules, it's important that nodes are aligned as quickly as possible, because bitcoin block-propagation is an adversarial system that leads to orphaning, and potential loss of funds, when nodes aren't aligned. Yet again, to have to explain this O.o
You really don't understand this bitcoin thing at all. Like at all.
And I provided evidence that contradicts that unfounded belief.
> How is -one option- to running a full node by paying for a cheap VPS centralization in any respect?
If you have to explain that, you don't even have a concept of what decentralization means.
> why don't you explain how there is so much torrent traffic zipping
Because people don't care if their torrent takes a few hours to download, where in a multi-agent system with rigorous consensus rules, it's important that nodes are aligned as quickly as possible, because bitcoin block-propagation is an adversarial system that leads to orphaning, and potential loss of funds, when nodes aren't aligned. Yet again, to have to explain this O.o
You really don't understand this bitcoin thing at all. Like at all.
This all boils down to you trying hard not to say anything so you don't have to confront the hard numbers I gave you. You keep saying 'you don't understand' but that rings pretty hollow when you can't give any evidence that anything I've said is wrong.
This is a no go im impressed by the upvotes i think HN community is not well informed on the subject
I don't think this is a joke, but it should be. Forking a chain will never result in value-added.
Ethereum forked and both have gone up since. I can't say it will always result in a value-add, but certainly never is incorrect.
Litecoin is the oldest fork of Bitcoin, and arguably it adds value (with shorter confirmation times)
fork in codebase, not fork in chain. mutually exclusive genesis blocks and different proof of work algorithms. Its like its little silver brother!
fuel for the ETH/ETC fire =P
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6hko7c/viabtc_will...
^ Here is some information (mostly in the form of a fragment of a video, but also to a much much lesser extent some comments) on what seems to be earlier versions of this plan, which I found useful for context (though I haven't spent the time to work this all out in my head yet...).
^ Here is some information (mostly in the form of a fragment of a video, but also to a much much lesser extent some comments) on what seems to be earlier versions of this plan, which I found useful for context (though I haven't spent the time to work this all out in my head yet...).
For those unaware, "Bitcoin Cash" is a proposed future fork of Bitcoin. The primary miner supporting it also runs an exchange, so what they are effectively trading is "future promised coins" once they start actually mining the fork.
Because so few of % of the total coins are tradeable, I think this results in a similarly volatile "market cap" as many ICOs.
Because so few of % of the total coins are tradeable, I think this results in a similarly volatile "market cap" as many ICOs.
Thank you. I was about to ask for a clarification on the below statement from the article, but that now makes sense.
"At that point, anyone who currently has bitcoin gains the same amount of BCC, while retaining their BTC."
"At that point, anyone who currently has bitcoin gains the same amount of BCC, while retaining their BTC."
> "At that point, anyone who currently has bitcoin gains the same amount of BCC, while retaining their BTC."
This is quite important, because it means that all Bitcoin holders effectively are given BCC for free, which they can sell on an exchange. Thus, the BCC market risks an immense flood of BCC sellers who very suddenly earned a tidy profit out of nowhere, which could crash the BCC price completely, because the market is so shallow, relative to the BTC markets.
In fact, I think this is quite likely to end up being the death of BCC: a constant sell-pressure from BTC-cum-BCC holders, who just want to cash out in dollars. This can end up forcing market makers out of the BCCUSD market, because they can't risk holding too much BCC with a constant sell-pressure like that.
The BTCUSD market has grown from a small stream to a small river and, when the BCCUSD market opens in earnest, this small BTCUSD river will be connected to the tiny stream that is the freshly born BCCUSD market.
This is quite important, because it means that all Bitcoin holders effectively are given BCC for free, which they can sell on an exchange. Thus, the BCC market risks an immense flood of BCC sellers who very suddenly earned a tidy profit out of nowhere, which could crash the BCC price completely, because the market is so shallow, relative to the BTC markets.
In fact, I think this is quite likely to end up being the death of BCC: a constant sell-pressure from BTC-cum-BCC holders, who just want to cash out in dollars. This can end up forcing market makers out of the BCCUSD market, because they can't risk holding too much BCC with a constant sell-pressure like that.
The BTCUSD market has grown from a small stream to a small river and, when the BCCUSD market opens in earnest, this small BTCUSD river will be connected to the tiny stream that is the freshly born BCCUSD market.
Is there a crypto voting ring? I understand why most crypto articles reach the top 10 posts but this one has nothing going for it.
* Niche website linked / breaking the news
* Non-mainstream crypto-fork
* No novel interest / features
There's nothing to suggest why this would be upvoted, even among this crypto-friendly crowd.
* Niche website linked / breaking the news
* Non-mainstream crypto-fork
* No novel interest / features
There's nothing to suggest why this would be upvoted, even among this crypto-friendly crowd.
It's novel. Bitcoin hasn't had a persistent fork before. Exchanges are trading assets that represent coin futures. That's very new.
Look at all the other stuff on the front page of HN right now:
* Dell made a new monitor. Yay. * An article about salaries in Norway * Emacs compared to alternatives * A map of Ulysses’ journey * People in the UK must register their drones now.
Everyone has different interests but something new is happening with a large, expensive, distributed piece of software that allows anyone to hack on. That's HN's raison d'être.
Look at all the other stuff on the front page of HN right now:
* Dell made a new monitor. Yay. * An article about salaries in Norway * Emacs compared to alternatives * A map of Ulysses’ journey * People in the UK must register their drones now.
Everyone has different interests but something new is happening with a large, expensive, distributed piece of software that allows anyone to hack on. That's HN's raison d'être.
I think that crypto news are still underrepresented on HN. The recent crypto topics (such as ICOs, Solidity, Tezos, EOS, ETH's Parity which is btw written in Rust) surge in word-wide traffic outperforming last year trends (AI, bots, VR) by far.
I hunt for respective news on other sites because HN just provides the most important crypto news. There's a lot more out there, it's new and complex. It's good to read stuff multiple times from different sources to get familiar with this new world order.
I hunt for respective news on other sites because HN just provides the most important crypto news. There's a lot more out there, it's new and complex. It's good to read stuff multiple times from different sources to get familiar with this new world order.
....Just to double-check, you're serious right?
Yes, I am. There's also a lot of scam out there, almost every ICO feels like scam, but still. The more serious stuff catches such a huge attention, just the ecosystem around ETH got so big and mature (despite some recent exploits) that it's hard to ignore this space.
Just compare: not just few projects raised funds within days a startup would take months. If this is the future? IDK. But I know it's 10x better than how fundraising was before. And this is just one part of the crypto space.
Just compare: not just few projects raised funds within days a startup would take months. If this is the future? IDK. But I know it's 10x better than how fundraising was before. And this is just one part of the crypto space.
> feel like scam
More like people flock onto immature projects with large sum of money hoping for a quick 5x making the projects look far larger than they should be and when they fail to deliver, depression is as large as their investment leading to feel they got scammed.
More like people flock onto immature projects with large sum of money hoping for a quick 5x making the projects look far larger than they should be and when they fail to deliver, depression is as large as their investment leading to feel they got scammed.
I'm not saying cryptocurrencies aren't interesting, I'm just saying you're overstating their case relative to other technologies and the novelty (eg, that it even is novel, as opposed to normal engineering on top of ideas that have been around decades) in saying that it's underrepresented.
(Also, AI and bots are the same topic, but that's a tangent.)
I would argue we should hear about them less than automated truck driving specifically, based on potential economic impact and current spending levels.
(Which, actually, seems to be about the trend -- we see small bursts of a few stories a day when a major event happens, but otherwise, it's mostly just a low murmur among other things.)
(Also, AI and bots are the same topic, but that's a tangent.)
I would argue we should hear about them less than automated truck driving specifically, based on potential economic impact and current spending levels.
(Which, actually, seems to be about the trend -- we see small bursts of a few stories a day when a major event happens, but otherwise, it's mostly just a low murmur among other things.)
Have there been any recent developments with automated truck driving? Has anything actually happened? We all agree that automated transportation will have an Enormous effect on society. It's been talked about a lot before. But stuff is actually happening today in Bitcoinland.
Currently the #8 position on the HN front page is an article about Dell releasing a new monitor.
Currently the #8 position on the HN front page is an article about Dell releasing a new monitor.
I can't speak for this website in particular but I wouldn't call "Bitcoin Cash" not mainstream. It is a direct answer of the large portion of Bitcoin users and miners who have been clamoring for larger blocks. Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin ABC, and UAHF, all the same thing, have been discussed for the past several weeks in cryto forums.
There's a huge marketing push at the moment for this fork as well on one of the Bitcoin subreddits. I suspect it's being pushed by ViaBTC, which just launched "futures trading" for it (as well as probably being the only miner), and has a lot of $ to gain by people trading on their service.
EDIT: yeah, totally organic growth I'm sure https://screenshots.firefox.com/1Jd3clym3pT37nAH/www.reddit....
EDIT: yeah, totally organic growth I'm sure https://screenshots.firefox.com/1Jd3clym3pT37nAH/www.reddit....
I think it's because many people here have money in cryptocurrencies...
The group associated with Bitcoin Cash is well known to participate in the manipulation of social media and news aggregates, including vote manipulation and sockpuppet comments.
Are they? I ask, because they aren't the ones that are HEAVILY censoring /r/bitcoin
On /r/bitcoin there are shadow bans, outright bans, story deletion, selective enforcement of their cherry picked rules, different default comment reorganization when the conversation doesn't go the way they like and of course closed moderation logs.
/r/btc has none of this. So who is really doing the manipulation? Many of the posters who are lock step with the narratives /r/bitcoin pushes have post histories that are ONLY in /r/btc and /r/bitcoin and end up with -100 karma. Most the accounts that pop up like this are also only a few months old.
So who exactly is engaging in those practices? Because when real people meet up, or when votes are taken with signed bitcoin keys, or any sort of real verification is done there ends up being silence of the narratives /r/bitcoin pushes.
On /r/bitcoin there are shadow bans, outright bans, story deletion, selective enforcement of their cherry picked rules, different default comment reorganization when the conversation doesn't go the way they like and of course closed moderation logs.
/r/btc has none of this. So who is really doing the manipulation? Many of the posters who are lock step with the narratives /r/bitcoin pushes have post histories that are ONLY in /r/btc and /r/bitcoin and end up with -100 karma. Most the accounts that pop up like this are also only a few months old.
So who exactly is engaging in those practices? Because when real people meet up, or when votes are taken with signed bitcoin keys, or any sort of real verification is done there ends up being silence of the narratives /r/bitcoin pushes.
The comments on the articles are also generally very optimistic and uncritical of the marketplace. Lots of jargon usage without any significant substance.
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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 vocal about the urgency of increasing Bitcoin's block size limit so that we can increase transaction throughput as much as possible and as soon as possible.
On the other hand, most developers who have worked on Bitcoin proper (either protocol development or Core node development) believe that Bitcoin is more about financial sovereignty and censorship resistance, not as an in-place replacement of PayPal or VISA. This group wants to find as many ways to scale the blockchain without increasing the block size limit because increasing the size of blocks puts at risk users' ability to validate the chain. This is because larger blocks means more resources required to transmit, validate and store blocks and if you cannot validate blocks, then you are trusting transaction validators (miners) just like you trust PayPal. Risking the ability to validate the chain is risking the financial sovereignty or censorship resistance they value so much.
Regardless of how well some claim SegWit2x is doing, truth is once SegWit is activated, we still have to face the 2x hard fork which many people in the second camp will simply refuse to support.
Having said all this, Bitcoin Cash represents an earnest understanding that there are two camps in Bitcoin and because of the differing economic visions, they will have different technical visions, so why not have two chains and evolve them independently? Rather than playing tug-of-war and both parties being dissatisfied?