6 ms·

So this is #3 of the Satoshi Roundtable notes and opinions that have made it to HN, as far as I can tell (I was initially confused and thought this was a re-sub

So this is #3 of the Satoshi Roundtable notes and opinions that have made it to HN, as far as I can tell (I was initially confused and thought this was a re-submission of Brian Armstrong's notes https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-roundtable-6c11a10d8cdf https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-...). As someone who has dabbled into the bitcoin and block chain area but never seriously, all of these reports and the constant reporting of the serious issues facing bitcoin with little to no consensus about what's going to be done to scale it just scares me away from touching it. Maybe I'm just not understanding the issue in its entirety but many of the opinions just keep talking about how uncooperative everyone is, how wrong or right one group is versus another and no solutions are really being worked on that expect to be accepted. Blockchain is cool tech but bitcoin itself seems like a horribly immature place to ever put real money into.

w1ntermute 11y ago
It seems very likely that building anything on top of Bitcoin will be seen in retrospect as a mistake, because the platform is controlled by a group of unpredictable individuals. You can't even predict the most likely outcome and plan accordingly.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Bitcoin does seem to lack effective leadership. This dates back to Satoshi leaving: he handed over the reins to people who didn't want them.
bhaak 11y ago
Your impression is spot on. Nevertheless there are still lots of people who have lots of money in it and that's part of the problem why there is so much controversy and why some people don't want to move away from their position. If you are interested in blockchain technology you don't have to go to bitcoin. There are lots of other cryptocurrencies where you could learn about it. Ethereum is currently the new kid on the block. Ethereum is often described as "Bitcoin 2.0". Better technology, better leadership, no toxic community, IMHO it looks like how bitcoin should look like (at least for now, who knows what it will be like in a year). Because of that lots of money has been going to Ethereum altely, even long time hodlers of bitcoin have sold bitcoin to get some ether.
- vertex-four 11y ago
  Ethereum has the same potential scaling issues as Bitcoin and has not yet defined a plan for scaling infinitely, aside from pushing for the development of technologies which move some forms of communication off the blockchain entirely. At the point where Ethereum gets to where Bitcoin is now, it's entirely possible its community could have exactly the same issue.
  - bhaak 11y ago
    "Scaling infinitely" is a pretty steep requirement. I wouldn't go there yet, either implementation of the blockchain technology is useful long before the insane transactions per seconds which VISA is handling. But yes, Ethereum has similar constraints as Bitcoin. Vitalik did some scalability blog posts on https://blog.ethereum.org/ https://blog.ethereum.org/ but it's entirely possible that any blockchain technology just won't scale as we would like it to (that is, as good as a centralized approach). OTOH, if there is a good technological solution, currently I have much more confidence that it gets implemented in Ethereum than in Bitcoin. The current infighting, bickering and actual threats and actions (e.g. DDOS at dissenting miners) is slowly but steadily destroying the Bitcoin community.
rsi_oww 11y ago
There is near complete consensus, see: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-consensus-266d475a61ff https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con... Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this. The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus". It's simply not true. They want to take over the bitcoin network with a fork, which will follow different rules, called "Bitcoin Classic". This is their second attempt at a takeover, the last was the failed "Bitcoin XT" fork. There is no sane reason to fork the network short of trying to take control of the protocol. Here is the roadmap that the main Bitcoin ("core") team has put together and is working on: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq...
- jhildings 11y ago
  But still, the thing is that regardless of who is right there is a bias in the most comments, including yours. This is the conflict that is bad it itself
- Vespasian 11y ago
  Your reply is demonstrating the parents issues with the discussion perfectly. Anyone not closely following the situtation(such as myself) just sees a enormously heated up discussion (I was reminded of [1]). Every party involved is accusing the others of spreading lies,misrepresenting the situation and trying to take control over the blockchain/bitcoin/protocol. Based on that, I have difficulties understanding and evaluating the potential technical and political challenges. Bitcoin (and similar crypto currencies) seem to be a huge risk at the moment: Everything might collapse tomorrow (or not). The market could be split into incompatible segments(or not). One entity could become strong enough to take control of the network and enact unfavourable policies(or not). Right now,I do not see why somenone would decide to start investing (time and money) into bitcoin while there are generally accepted, scaled up and working solutions for the underlying problem of getting money from A to B (Banks Credit cards, etc). These work fine for most people/companies and their cost and risks can be estimated fairly well in advance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

w1ntermute 11y ago

It seems very likely that building anything on top of Bitcoin will be seen in retrospect as a mistake, because the platform is controlled by a group of unpredictable individuals. You can't even predict the most likely outcome and plan accordingly.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Bitcoin does seem to lack effective leadership. This dates back to Satoshi leaving: he handed over the reins to people who didn't want them.

bhaak 11y ago

Your impression is spot on. Nevertheless there are still lots of people who have lots of money in it and that's part of the problem why there is so much controversy and why some people don't want to move away from their position. If you are interested in blockchain technology you don't have to go to bitcoin. There are lots of other cryptocurrencies where you could learn about it. Ethereum is currently the new kid on the block. Ethereum is often described as "Bitcoin 2.0". Better technology, better leadership, no toxic community, IMHO it looks like how bitcoin should look like (at least for now, who knows what it will be like in a year). Because of that lots of money has been going to Ethereum altely, even long time hodlers of bitcoin have sold bitcoin to get some ether.

vertex-four 11y ago
Ethereum has the same potential scaling issues as Bitcoin and has not yet defined a plan for scaling infinitely, aside from pushing for the development of technologies which move some forms of communication off the blockchain entirely. At the point where Ethereum gets to where Bitcoin is now, it's entirely possible its community could have exactly the same issue.
- bhaak 11y ago
  "Scaling infinitely" is a pretty steep requirement. I wouldn't go there yet, either implementation of the blockchain technology is useful long before the insane transactions per seconds which VISA is handling. But yes, Ethereum has similar constraints as Bitcoin. Vitalik did some scalability blog posts on https://blog.ethereum.org/ https://blog.ethereum.org/ but it's entirely possible that any blockchain technology just won't scale as we would like it to (that is, as good as a centralized approach). OTOH, if there is a good technological solution, currently I have much more confidence that it gets implemented in Ethereum than in Bitcoin. The current infighting, bickering and actual threats and actions (e.g. DDOS at dissenting miners) is slowly but steadily destroying the Bitcoin community.

rsi_oww 11y ago

There is near complete consensus, see: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-consensus-266d475a61ff https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con... Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this. The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus". It's simply not true. They want to take over the bitcoin network with a fork, which will follow different rules, called "Bitcoin Classic". This is their second attempt at a takeover, the last was the failed "Bitcoin XT" fork. There is no sane reason to fork the network short of trying to take control of the protocol. Here is the roadmap that the main Bitcoin ("core") team has put together and is working on: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq...

jhildings 11y ago
But still, the thing is that regardless of who is right there is a bias in the most comments, including yours. This is the conflict that is bad it itself
Vespasian 11y ago
Your reply is demonstrating the parents issues with the discussion perfectly. Anyone not closely following the situtation(such as myself) just sees a enormously heated up discussion (I was reminded of [1]). Every party involved is accusing the others of spreading lies,misrepresenting the situation and trying to take control over the blockchain/bitcoin/protocol. Based on that, I have difficulties understanding and evaluating the potential technical and political challenges. Bitcoin (and similar crypto currencies) seem to be a huge risk at the moment: Everything might collapse tomorrow (or not). The market could be split into incompatible segments(or not). One entity could become strong enough to take control of the network and enact unfavourable policies(or not). Right now,I do not see why somenone would decide to start investing (time and money) into bitcoin while there are generally accepted, scaled up and working solutions for the underlying problem of getting money from A to B (Banks Credit cards, etc). These work fine for most people/companies and their cost and risks can be estimated fairly well in advance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc