That was quite a stair step up around 8pm PDT. Anyone know what happened? http://imgur.com/a/W6m6n
Also Segregated Witness will lock in on Aug. 8 with a very high probability, and activate at the end of August.
Really? How do you quantify this? Most people who are pro big blocks felt it went well (r/btc) and it'll take a while to make it profitable for miners to mine it. Many people who are against big blocks thought it'd immediately dive to $1, which is 1/200 of where it is currently at. It also seems like many pro-Blockstream people would dump Bitcoin Cash regardless, just because they don't believe in the rationale for it (r/bitcoin threads about how to sell Bitcoin Cash w/o analysis).
You could argue about market liquidity etc, but 4B market cap is hardly a failure. This doesn't mean it is a success. It is more accurate to call it undecided for the time being. To call it a failure is definitely premature and uncharitable, though.
Please don't play up this narrative unnecessarily. It's an easy narrative, but it's also wrong and misses important things about governance and identity. It makes it sound like the Segregated Witness proposal, which won supermajority support on the development list, does not increase block size (which it does, just in a backwards compatible way).
It has been known for quite some time that apart from a bug in the software, that could destroy value in an instant, the biggest challenge will be managing an open source project in the face of competing interests. It's the first time the IETF governance model meets fintech, and if Bitcoin continues to grow it will make the patent drama round rtcweb look like child's play.
> pro-Blockstream people
This is also simplifying beyond what's reasonable. Bitcoin is an open source project. There is a mailing list. You can join it.
It's not always roses and civilized technical discussion, but every argument can be heard out and there are enough people lurking the sidelines to act as a guard against abuses of power.
The Blockstream narrative plays down the contributions of Lau, Lopp, Lombrozo and dozens of others which do a lot of the development and release management of the software.
Also, as you point out big block isn't really the defining characteristic of the Bitcoin Cash fork since in principle Bitcoin is having a block size increase in the near future too. The bigger difference is ripping out the SegWit fix for transaction malleability, with the stated intention of making Lightning Network off-chain payments which require malleability to be fixed not work. In an interesting attack of irony, the ViaBTC exchange (one of its main proponents) just has to stop withdrawals because transaction malleability was breaking them: https://twitter.com/ViaBTC/status/893744282087047168
Sure, and as ironic as it may be that BCH deposits was malleability attacked earlier today, I still don't think it is a good idea to focus on the technical features of these forks. Who is behind the fork is more interesting than what is in the fork.
This is not a conflict among developers, with a few notable exceptions. This is a governance conflict. That is why the conflict is not very visible in the developer community, but rather outside in social media.
The open source project is a multi stakeholder model which can be very foreign to people who consider themselves influential. In many ways it looks more like academia than a corporation. Everyone would like the developers on their payroll, but no one wants to pay for it. Pretty much like academia, I suppose.
One source: this interview with a dev of the main Bitcoin Cash client: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/future-bitcoin-cash-int...
This quite real and significant divergence of worldviews is one of the biggest challenges that civilization faces, and, I believe, is also the primary thing holding back wider deployment of innovative technologies, rather than technical or financial limitations.
This is not to say that people shouldn't have different views. But identities are tied up together with communities and the general belief system that goes with them. It's just human nature and no technology is immune to it.
The daily volume tells you that Bitcoin Cash is traded (or maybe dumped?) quite a bit. It's volume is about that of LTC currently which really is not too shaby.
Don't forget that Bitcoin Cash was an as friendly fork as possible. I don't think anybody realistically expected that it would overtake Bitcoin right away. I'm not even sure if the initiators expect it to overtake Bitcoin at all. In a slightly conspiracy theoristic view, it might just have been a rehearsal for if the 2X part of Segwit2X doesn't happen and a hostile takeover might be tried.
Cryptocurrencies don't easily die and so far, Bitcoin Cash is doing okay. Calling it a failure at this point is premature.
Anyway, there was a difficulty adjustment in the last hours, so things should improve.
This is a good heuristic in general. Everyone has an agenda and it is very hard to find an unbiased source of anything, especially for contemporary news. It is often better to find sources where the bias is clear, as opposed to hidden. Then find the strongest contradictory argument and compare the two.
UPDATE: Parent asked for a summary, not a technical deep dive. Here it is from "/r/btc" (pro fork) POV: https://i.imgur.com/uJ9XE06.png and from "/r/bitcoin" (against fork) POV: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6r05nm/megathread_... Follow the mentioned links if you are interested to get into more details.
the price to dollar is mostly controlled by the exchanges supply and demand, which are mostly opaque.
if I were to bet: price collusion to dump it before every miner jumps into the new chain exclusively.
you might be right on the reason. only the exchange knows. the trick is that the dollar to btc is a known value for them only.
Why does this matter? If you're concerned about double spend, just wait for more confirmations and treat it as a slower to resolve chain. In any case, double spend problems could only happen if miners _did_ switch, so then you wouldn't need to be worried about miners not switching.