uncletammy

> Have you ever read the white paper that outlines what bitcoin aims to be?

... or even the title

From what I understand, that's 50,000 pre-generated transactions pumped directly to the mining node. Not 50,000 transactions spread across hundreds of non-mining nodes and relayed to the mining node. There's a huge difference. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

Either way, bitcoin the protocol can handle waaaaaay more transactions than the BTC devs have constrained it to.

In order to get money on and off lightning network, you still need to make on-chain BTC transactions. Meanwhile, the BTC devs have intentionally changed the network so that it's expensive to make on-chain transactions. From this you can probably figure out why lightning network failed.

Enlightening commentary. Thanks for sharing it.

As if "bitcoin investors" actually make transactions! If they did, it would matter that the network isn't functional

It seems like it would useful to have some kind of probationary approval for situations like this. If the data isn't convincing and the only alternative patients have is death, approve the drug under the condition that the manufacturer must greatly subsidize the cost until they have data that is convicing or the manufacturer loses confidence and withdraws from the market.

This might be a terrible idea given how complex and delicate the incentive structures are in healthcare.

Speaking of Microsoft and encryption, here's a fun little clip from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

> According to The Guardian, NSA had access to chats and emails on Hotmail.com and Skype because Microsoft had "developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the interception of chats, and "for Prism collection against Microsoft email services will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."

Fool me once, shame on me...

> This is what caused me to let me eBay seller account die - they demanded Social Security Number (SSN) to continue selling.

Was this before or after they had to force-reset everyone's account password because their user data was compromised?

> Well none of this has any effect on the bitcoin network now does it?

After having been stripped of most of the functionality that gave BTC it's original value proposition, you might be surprised at the degree to which it really does need ads like this to attract fresh investors.

BTC killed it's most powerful tool for cementing it's position as the leading cryptocurrency, it's network effect.

They killed it by merging "full replace by fee", making it trivial to cheat bitcoin-accepting merchants during times of higher network congestion. This made it even super risky for merchants and many opted out. They even had a much safer alternative (FSS-RBF) ready to merge.

* https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6352

* https://blog.plan99.net/replace-by-fee-43edd9a1dd6d

They killed it by using the size of OP_RETURN to gaslight Counterparty, a company that was trying to build a rich smart contract ecosystem (yeah like Ethereum has now) on top of bitcoin. This was the second time the core devs' hatred of smart contracts killed new use cases for the coin. The first time led Vitalik to create Ethereum.

*https://old.reddit.com/r/decred/comments/6wxueo/your_best_pi...

They killed it by blanket censoring on all the big bitcoin related communication channels all discussion about increasing the blocksize and/or building/supporting alternative BTC full nodes. This censorship completely fractured the community and directly led to the network fork called Bitcoin Cash. As a result of this fork, many of the oldest supporters and infrastructure devs left BTC forever.

* https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-histor...

I expect you're uninformed but I don't know enough to prove it. Either way, I'm annoyed that you've been downvoted without a single reply. I'd like to know if/why you're actually wrong.

> I found google doesn't lead me to wikipedia as often anymore.

Ive also noticed this. Wikipedia used to always be in the first few results for any Google search I made. It was amazing becauase it was frequently the exact thing I was trying to find.

Now I have to add 'wiki' to the search terms or it wont even show up in the first page.

> Ah yes, the day a few softcore porn peddlers decided to create the greatest repository of knowledge in all of human history.

TIL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis

Although I lived through these events, I was far too busy optimizing my MySpace profile to notice.

They are fairly easy to pick out simply based on the way money flows in and out of the addresses. Also, they become known over time as customers share them then they are eventually labeled by companies (exchanges included) performing blockchain analytics. Many of the public blockchain explorers show labels for popular addresses. I've seen labels on big exchanges, Satoshi's coins, seized silk road coins, coins from hacks, etc.

Which to me sounds like a better argument to NOT make it illegal. From the perspective of government that is.

> It looks like they got the info from the Texas exchange.

I don't think the TX in that article means an exchange based in Texas. I think TX is abbreviating the word "transaction". Every instance of TX is followed directly by a bitcoin transaction id.

> The trust problem is trivial to work around with a script to slice the loot into small lots

Yeah but the BTC fee problem isn't trivial. When each "small lot" costs $20 to transfer, your Lambo very quickly turns into a Hyundai

> I find it interesting that these are missing in the Nakamoto Institute's quotes on scaling.

Here's a source directly from Mike Hearn

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149668.msg1596879#ms...

Roger Ver had nothing to do with the BCH fork. In fact, he was many months late in showing any public support for it. He was dead silent until it started to look like the core devs were going to reneg on their agreement to support 2mb blocks in exchange for passing Segwit. And as expected, they did reneg on that, immediately after they got what they wanted.

BCH is not Roger Ver. BCH is all of the old school Bitcoiners who still believe Bitcoin can scale like Satoshi intended. And they're a hell of a lot less toxic to interact with.

I support any and every coin that aims to build Satoshi's version of peer-to-peer electronic cash. Right now, the coins that come closest are Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash. Sadly all three have had to make some big concessions that make them look less like the original version.

I also find the split interesting. I'm most interested in how effectively public perception was manipulated with regards to the split and the reasons for it.

Bitcoin Cash exists solely because of the censorship on r/bitcoin and the bitcointalk forums. When supporters of a high throughput network were silenced, the exodus started. That exodus turned into the fork. You can read more about that here ( https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-histor... ) and here ( https://medium.com/@johnblocke/r-bitcoin-censorship-revisite... )

With regards to lightning network, it was pulled into the debate as a deflection from the real issue which was that a few high ranking core devs (after forming Blockstream, a company aiming to make money off of BTC's "scaling problems" ) reneged on their agreement to bump the blocksize to 2mb with the passing of segwit. Those devs realized they could hide behind lightning network and make it's supporters think big blockers were attacking them.

The truth is, very few people in the big block camps are against lightning network. I know many BCH devs that would welcome and even contribute to a lightning implementation on BCH, which for the record would work substantially better because on-chain fees wouldn't make it cost prohibitive to open/close channels or provide liquidity. The only beef with Lightning that big blockers really have is that they don't see it as an alternative to on-chain scaling. This whole BCH vs Lightning war is just a false flag.

Also, while we're all watching the Coinbase IPO with great interest, here's a gem from the golden boy himself that is very much relevant to this discussion: https://blog.coinbase.com/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-round...

> Ethereum is not Bitcoin because Ethereum doesn't want to be Bitcoin, otherwise Ethereum wouldn't have existed in the first place

This isn't exactly true. Vitalik only created Ethereum because the new core devs ( Blockstream ) were actively limiting what types of things could be done with Bitcoin. They were moving away from programmable money in favor of "digital gold".

Source: https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/929805462052229120...

Here's a more detailed telling of the events by one of the Decred developers: https://old.reddit.com/r/decred/comments/6wxueo/your_best_pi...

TLDR: Ethereum actually does want to be Bitcoin but that's only because Bitcoin doesn't really want to be Bitcoin anymore. They've dumbed down their protocol. They've dumbed down their infrastructure. Hell, they've even managed to dumb down their users. Ethereum will make a fine Bitcoin.

In BTC, the wise guidance of Satoshi is also regularly ignored.

Here are a few examples

Satoshi's Guidance: Bitcoin should function as cash

Source: https://bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf ( See the title )

Satoshi's Guidance: We shouldn't be limiting transaction capacity to accommodate low performance client hardware

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

Satoshi's Guidance: The blocksize limit should be removed to maximize network capacity. The limit was only meant to be temporary.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg153...

EDIT: formatting

> ... Linking data between services augments the dangers and the consequences are not obvious to the end user.

Or the end user's friends and family who's privacy was also affected by being in the user's contact list.

Not without trusting a third party that they're not going run off with your money. Also, coinjoins on BTC are craxy expensive because transaction fees are crazy high.

Luckily BCH has near-perfect coinjoin privacy with CashFusion. It is capable of running > 20 person coinjoin rounds with no change outputs and no trusted third party. And the transactions always cost a fraction of a penny cause BCH has reasonable sized blocks.

I'm not sure what you mean by "B development"

> My biggest concern is a fixed-supply currency gives no government the ability to provide stimulus if necessary.

That's a feature. Not a bug.

> Bitcoin doesn't need merchant protection, because transactions are irreversible.

They first have to get confirmed and that can take a long time on BTC. Replace By Fee offers another attack vector on transaction finality.

Other than those two very important points, I completely agree with you.

Obvious troll is obvious

Middle millennial here. I've pretty much given up home for my generation getting the opportunity to experience this effect. The problem seems to be a combination of boomers having been too greedy and millennial expecting opportunities to "trickle down" if they play within the system they were taught to.

Newer generations lucked out because they learned early that boomers will only help themselves and the only chance they have for social mobility is to gamble their way into wealth. Lucky for them, they'll get to live out their life being served coffee by some of the smartest, most well educated baristas the world has ever seen.