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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

467 points by amdixon 9y ago

taspeotis 9y ago
https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/commit/9ddfa8defe4cbf8e7159c828992e5077098a3cf2 https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/commit/9ddfa8... Alerts: BIP148/92: change title over objection Note: I object to this change, which I think makes the alert less clear, less forceful, and degrades alert usability.
Fej 9y ago
Do any significant number of people genuinely take Bitcoin to be the future of currency at this point?
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > Do any significant number of people genuinely take Bitcoin to be the future of currency at this point? No one is betting that the current version of Bitcoin is the future of currency. They are betting that the version of Bitcoin that exists in 20 or 30 years is the future of currency.
- blockmeamadeus 9y ago
  Why not? They are solving a problem that other cryptocurrencies have yet to face.
- sauronlord 9y ago
  Yep. You will be sorry within 20 years from now that you did not invest in the network this early on
- hudon 9y ago
  Many people simply believe there is a need for a digital censorship resistant currency like physical cash. I don't think it'll replace currencies, but I think it will serve a purpose as a means to transfer value when authorities don't want you to transfer value. Not saying if this is a good or bad thing, but it is a real value proposition.
  - RexetBlell 9y ago
    It's also useful if you want to buy something online and don't want it showing up on your Credit Card statement.
    - RandomKid 9y ago
      For this use-case there is a better solution - GNU Taler [1]. It doesn't invent its own coins but works with existing currencies. [1]: https://taler.net/en/ https://taler.net/en/
frenchie4111 9y ago
Can someone give me some context on what is causing this?
- blockmeamadeus 9y ago
  A change in the protocol that requires the majority of miners to accept the change. There is no central authority, so they can not simply say "protocol x will be in place from August 1st". As in any community, not everybody agreed on the best course of action, so the outcome is not certain.
- 6nf 9y ago
  It's called User Activated Soft Fork or UASF for short. It could end up being nothing but it's worth noting the date. There are currently two main ideas on how to scale Bitcoin. One camp is the called Bitcoin Unlimited and it's a proposal that allows the miners to adjust the block size as needed. The other idea is called Segregated Witness or Segwit. This is a change in the way bitcoin transactions are counted towards the 1MB per block limit. It will allow slightly more transactions per block but also adds functionality that could allow other types of transactions. Those will be useful in some situations, e.g. paying the same entitiy many times over the course of the relationship. Some people in the Segwit camp are tired of waiting so they are attempting to force the issue without the support of most miners. The date they picked is Aug 1. Since very few miners support this move, it's not likely to succeed in my opinion, but nobody knows for sure.
  - runeks 9y ago
    > Some people in the Segwit camp are tired of waiting so they are attempting to force the issue without the support of most miners. The date they picked is Aug 1. I don't understand why the bitcoin.org page sounds so alarmist. If the miners are not in on it why would some special Bitcoin blockchain (with alternative rules) matter, since miners could easily DoS this chain, if they wanted to, in case they don't support it? Anyone can create their own chain with non-agreed-upon-rules (e.g. testnet3 or regtest), but that's just not Bitcoin precisely because it's practically ignored by miners (like a UASF). Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF?
roadbeats 9y ago
What strategy is the best for small investors ? Moving the money into altcoins or just pulling completely back ? Should we expect a soar on altcoins (e.g litecoin, ripple, antshares a.k.a neo) ?
- mhluongo 9y ago
  The million dollar question. If you look back at what the Ethereum split did for the market, maybe it'll give you some ideas. Remember though- if you don't have any Bitcoin under your own control (non-custodial wallet) you might not be able to trade between chains if there's a split. There are only two exchanges with announced pairs AFAIK- BitFinex and ViaBTC both have futures contracts set up.
  - roadbeats 9y ago
    I actually moved to altcoins already but just curious if I should move out completely.
    - daxfohl 9y ago
      Don Stewart of Haskell fame and former head of computer-something at HSBC is a lot smarter than me. He seems not terribly impressed by the potential. I'm out (never got in), but do what you will. https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879782911607791616 https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879782911607791616 https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879804988708540416 https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879804988708540416 But, eh, if crypto ever completely replaces raw mineral as a trading mechanism, I guess there's still 200x potential there. https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-money-in-perspective https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-money-in-perspective
- Taek 9y ago
  Pretty easy. Pull all of your coins into a wallet you control (like bitcoin-core, running on your own computer), and then just ride through the storm. For some amount of time, there may be 2 or 3 versions of Bitcoin that are active, but if you use this strategy you'll own all of your coins on all the versions. So, as long as the combined value of every version is approximately around the value of the original version, you haven't lost any money. Then, wait for the dust to settle, sell the coins for the versions you don't like, buy coins for the versions you do like, and then resume using Bitcoin like you had originally. The altcoin market is pretty upside down right now, even more than Bitcoin is. It's probably less safe to move to an alt than it is to just ride through the bitcoin storm.
cgb223 9y ago
What is the disruption? Why is this happening?
- mhluongo 9y ago
  Some good answers in sibling comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758661
isubkhankulov 9y ago
this post feels like propoganda. prior bitcoin upgrades have gone much smoother and when they do go wrong the community banded together to spread the right information. albiet the userbase was likely a lot smaller back then.
- isubkhankulov 9y ago
  it could even be guerrilla marketing by trading exchanges...
  - mhluongo 9y ago
    Doubtful. Aside from bitcoin.org's history, if it were, you'd expect more exchanges announcing UASF / legacy / SegWit2x trading pairs.
    - isubkhankulov 9y ago
      hard to price unless a fork actually occurs. if a fork like ETH/ETC happens, exchanges do benefit.
      - mhluongo 9y ago
        True. Guess I'm surprised Kraken et al haven't already announced that they'll support all chains, though? I guess they're all quietly prepping in case more than one chain is viable.
        isubkhankulov 9y ago
        does kraken trade etc and eth?
        wusatiuk 9y ago
        Yes
- 9y ago
jpatokal 9y ago
Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). However, any changes require consensus from the miners who create Bitcoins and process transactions, and because it's not in their best incentive to do anything to reduce those transaction fees, no change has received majority consensus. In an attempt to break this deadlock, there is a "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal #148" (BIP148) that proposes a User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) taking effect on August 1, 2017. Basically, everybody who agrees to this proposal wants SegWit to happen and (here's the key part) commits to discarding all confirmations that do not flag support for SegWit from this date onward. If successful, this will fork Bitcoin, because whether a transaction succeeded or not is going to depend on which side of the network you believe. However, BIP148's odds of success look low, as many of the largest miners out there led by Bitmain have stated that they will trigger a User-Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) if needed to stop it. Specifically, if UASF appears successful, instead of complying with SegWit, they'll start mining BTC with large blocks instead: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14... Anyway, it all boils down to significant uncertainty, and unless you've got a dog in the race you'll probably want to refraining from making BTC transactions around the deadline or purchasing new BTC until the dust settles down. And an important disclaimer: this is an extremely contentious issue in the Bitcoin community and it's really difficult to find info that's not polarized one way or the other. Most notably, Reddit's /r/bitcoin is rabidly pro- BIP148 and /r/btc is equally rabidly against it. Here's one reasonably neutral primer: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide...
- mhluongo 9y ago
  You skipped the option that's closest to consensus! SegWit2x has industry support and has a short enough window to lock-in before the Aug 1st UASF EDIT: Quick reference https://medium.com/@wintercooled/the-road-to-segwit-activation-uasf-segwit2x-and-segwit-signalling-explained-2ff00488b7cb https://medium.com/@wintercooled/the-road-to-segwit-activati...
dmitriid 9y ago
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the most amazing stable scalable global tech of the future
Twisell 9y ago
Ok just another proof that bitcoin can definitely not be compared to gold. Or maybe it could? "After the event you might end up with gold or lead it all depends if your banker believe in transmutation or not (and if transmutation is actually achievable which will be determined by the best alchemists of the kingdom that need to agree together). So all in all the guild of merchants recommend that you don't accept gold as a payement on the last day before new moon (and for a few day after that), because you wil not be able to tell if you are getting real gold or lead during that period. Well to be honest it won't technically be lead you would get but forked gold, a gold that could be gold but isn't until the alchemists say so. But you shall still be able to use it in a limited way with people who believe in the same alchemists dissidents. It's totally normal if it's sound complicated, it's magic after all!"
- stale2002 9y ago
  Lets say that you buy a bunch of gold and put it in a fortress. Nobody can steal your gold, but lets say the entire world gets together at once, and decides that gold is worthless and that they are moving over to lead as the new currency. But they are keeping the name "gold". Everyone now uses the name "gold" to refer to what was previously known as "lead". Your pile of "real gold" wasn't stolen, but it may as well have been, because now it is just a bunch of heavy, worthless, shiny, rocks. (yes, yes, there are industrial uses, but the price is way way higher than what industry justifies alone) And it really doesn't matter that you are strenuously arguing about how this "new gold" is actually lead, because nobody cares about your opinion. That is a similar enough analogy to how bitcoin forks work.
  - Crye 9y ago
    Except you get the same amount as leas as you have gold. In fact, now you have gold and lead. One will turn out to be a storage for value.
    - monort 9y ago
      I think there is a third scenario - both forks become worthless.
ented 9y ago
What is the max tx/s speed? Still no consensus???
- VMG 9y ago
  With segwit, you can use http://lightning.network http://lightning.network. Lightning network gives you essentially unlimited transaction speed.
  - spiralx 9y ago
    Which doesn't actually exist yet, and doesn't solve the problem even theoretically: https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800 https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-...
    - VMG 9y ago
      The blog author and you need to learn about lighting network and graph theory. Edit: responses to the specific "proof" you linked https://medium.com/@murchandamus/i-have-just-read-jonald-fyookballs-article-https-medium-com-jonaldfyookball-mathematical-fd112d13737a https://medium.com/@murchandamus/i-have-just-read-jonald-fyo... https://medium.com/@murchandamus/some-subsidiary-points-on-lightning-network-cc68bc81d6f1 https://medium.com/@murchandamus/some-subsidiary-points-on-l...
      - spiralx 9y ago
        That's just a lot of hand-waving, if the author is so confident about his rebuttal he should be able to provide a model for it. This person did at least attempt to simulate something along the lines of an ideal LN, which showed that micropayments do not do very well at all due to the combination of fees accrued at each hop: https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-network-with-10-million-users-9a8b5930fa7a https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-... This thread on the same story discusses other issues with LN proposals, one that stands out to me is how routing is going to work if all nodes are perfectly equal - routing on the internet relies on a hub model, seems likely that a decentralised routing protocol adds even more complexity and resource requirements. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14759965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14759965 The trouble of course is that LN is just a bunch of proposals right now, each promising to fix all of Bitcoin's issues without removing all of its unique features. When it actually exists then I'll revisit, but until then I'll treat it as another piece of vapourware.
unabridged 9y ago
This is late FUD, a last minute whine by the owners of "bitcoin.org" aka core. The discussion over scaling has been happening for many months and consensus has actually just been reached in the last couple weeks. 85% of the mining power is signalling for segwit2x, and if this continues it will lock in before Aug 1st completely avoiding the scary situation talked about in the post.
- wyager 9y ago
  Not sure why people are downvoting you, you are objectively correct. segwit2x is at over 85%. https://coin.dance/blocks https://coin.dance/blocks
  - Taek 9y ago
    I'm guessing the downvotes were a response to the tone of the post, not the actual content. Though, the content itself is incorrect as well. Consensus has been achieved by the miners and by a few major payment processors, but not by the userbase. Blockchains though are very resistant to moves by major players, and even the miners being at 85% are not enough to force fundamental changes like this into the network if the users do not actively want to participate in the changes. Note the wording there. The users have to opt-in to a change like this. It's opt-in, not opt-out. I'm very doubtful that software which is not even out in the wild yet is going to be able to get a majority of users to opt-in within a 3 week timeline. We will know soon enough for sure.
    - wyager 9y ago
      It's a bad idea to downvote one of the only correct posts in the entire thread (at that time) because of its tone. Bitcoin consensus is definitionally achieved by miner PoW. Yes, they are beholden to market pressure from users, but saying that concensus is "by the user base" is misleading. I'm using the terminology from the bitcoin white paper
    - azm1 9y ago
      What type of power has the user base on the blockchain?
wyager 9y ago
This looks like FUD. As I recall, the owners of Bitcoin.org are mad that their exact proposed scaling solution didn't go through. 85+% of miners are signaling support for segwit2x, so it's extremely unlikely that there will be any disruption. https://coin.dance/blocks https://coin.dance/blocks
1ba9115454 9y ago
If you hold Bitcoin then you need to think about getting hold of your private keys or using a non custodial wallet like https://strongcoin.com https://strongcoin.com If the network splits there will 1 or 2 new types of Bitcoin. If the exchanges decide to support the new types of Bitcoin you will be able to sell your holding on the new chains whilst still keeping coins on the main Bitcoin chain. But to do this you need to manage your own private keys.
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
> This means that any bitcoins you receive after that time may later disappear from your wallet or be a type of bitcoin that other people will not accept as payment. Can you imagine the uproar if Visa said the same thing? It would be totally unthinkable. Bitcoin can get away with this type of "disruption" because it's not really being used for anything other than a speculative vehicle.
- Taek 9y ago
  That's incorrect, Bitcoin is used in many places for critical applications, and I'm sure that those people are very frustrated by the situation. I know that I am. We are doing a hardware presale using Bitcoin, and we're going to have to stop accepting Bitcoin at that time (it's a cryptocurrency miner, 90% of our sales are in Bitcoin), and that's going to hurt us. This whole situation is frustrating.
- gcp 9y ago
  I dunno about you but debit and credit card terminal failures are rather typical around Black Friday like situations.
- ar0 9y ago
  Isn't "any [money] you receive [...] may later disappear" actually pretty common with credit card chargebacks?
  - GenericsMotors 9y ago
    Chargebacks usually have some form of review/dispute process as well. What's bit-coin's process for disputing the disappearance of my wallet's contents because of this fork?
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    This is such a silly argument. Chargebacks are for the protection of the consumer against a business. They're GREAT if you're a consumer. Why would it be in my benefit as a bitcoin user to have no recourse for fraudulent transactions?
- 9y ago
jageen 9y ago
It will surely affect on ransomware collectors.
- ktta 9y ago
  Maybe they'll also move to ETH. A great way to get a good % of the population away from BTC to ETH
  - jageen 9y ago
    It is good time for investors :). Or it is already passed, I did not see the rate of both but there might be major change.
modeless 9y ago
The problems described in this post are unlikely to happen. There is an attempt to split ("fork") the network scheduled for August 1. The people forking will force activation of a new feature, Segwit, while the non-forkers won't. However, the non-forkers are currently planning to activate Segwit as part of a compromise plan before the deadline. If this compromise happens as planned, there will be no need to force-activate Segwit with a fork, and so no fork will happen on August 1. Frankly, even if the compromise solution fails and the fork does happen on August 1, it will be a complete non-event. Bitcoin.org is biased as they are affiliated with people who support the August 1 fork, and so they're attempting to publicize it. However, the fork has practically zero support from Bitcoin miners or exchanges. On Aug 1 the vast majority of miners and exchanges will stay with the current network. Without significant miner support the forked network will run extremely slowly, and it will be vulnerable to several kinds of attacks. Without exchange support the forked network will not have economic value, and will quickly become irrelevant. Although August 1 will likely not be a problem either way, there is another date that will. Around the end of October, another proposal to fork the network is scheduled, and this one is supported by miners and exchanges. What will happen then is much more murky. It will become clearer as the date approaches.
- kilimchoi 9y ago
  If the community soft-forks as you say, then this will be disastrous since corporate miners will not be onboard and the forked chain will be vulnerable to attacks which could result in UASF chain's demise.
  - modeless 9y ago
    The UASF chain's demise would not be disastrous at all, it would simply be the status quo. Bitcoin would continue as normal.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  You're misunderstanding the issue. Core / Bitcoin.org don't have a problem with Segwit2X which is a UASF like Bip-148 which core supports. (It uses a different BIP and is slightly different but it's perfectly find with all of us.) The threat is that BitMain, the controller of a very large amount of hashing power, something like %70 is threatening a hard fork into their own, non-segwit chain: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...
Taek 9y ago
I wish there was a concise way to explain what is going on, but there really isn't. I'm going to do my best though. Bitcoin is a consensus system. This means that the goal is to have everyone believe the exact same thing at all times. Bitcoin achieves this by having everyone run identical software which is able to compile a list of transactions, and from there decide what money belongs to which person. As you can imagine, it's a problem if you have $10, and Alice believes she owns that $10, Bob believes he owns that same $10, and Charlie believes that the money was never sent to either of them. These three people can't interact with eachother, because they can't agree on who owns the money. Spending money has no meaning here. In Bitcoin, there are very precise rules that define how money is allowed to move around. These rules are identical on all machines, and because they are identical for everyone on the network, nobody is ever confused about whether or not they own money. Unfortunately, there are now 3 versions of the software floating around (well... there are more. But there are only 3 that seem to have any real traction right now, though even that is hard to be certain about). Currently, all versions of the software have the exact same set of rules, but on August 1st, one of those versions of the software will be running a different set of rules. So, depending, people may not be able to agree on the ownership of money. If you are running one version, and your friend is running another, your friend may receive that money, or they may not. This is of course a bad situation for both of you, and its even worse if you are working with automated systems, because an automated system likely has no idea that this is happening, and it may have no way to fix any costly mistakes. It gets worse. The version of the software that is splitting off actually has the power to destroy the other two versions of the software. I don't know how to put this in simple terms either. In Bitcoin, it is possible to have multiple simultaneous histories. As long as all of the histories are mathematically correct (that is, they follow all of the formal rules of Bitcoin), you know which history is the real history based on how much work is behind it. The history with the most work wins. If the history is illegal, you ignore it no matter how much work is behind it. So, this troublemaker version of the software (the UASF version) has a compatible set of rules with the other 2 versions. Basically, everything that it does, the other versions see as valid. So if its history is the longest, the other versions will treat that history as the one true history. The thing is, this troublemaker version of the software is stubborn, and so even if the histories of the other two versions have more work, it'll ignore them and focus only on its own version of history. So, the dramatic / problematic situation happens if the UASF software initially has less work in its history. What'll happen is a split, and two different versions of Bitcoin will exist at the exact same time. But then, if the UASF software ends up with more work after some period of time (days, weeks, etc.), the other versions of the software will prefer its version of history over their own. Basically, what happens there is that entire days, or weeks, etc. of history get completely obliterated. The UASF history becomes canonical, and the histories built by the other versions all get destroyed. Miners lose all of their money, people who accepted payments lose those payments, people who made payments get those payments back. Basically a lot of chaos where people end up losing probably millions and millions of dollars. ---- I hope that helps. This whole situation is screwed up, and really the best thing to do is to put your coins in a cold wallet (one that you control, not an exchange), and then just not send or receive any coins for a few weeks. Let the dust settle, and then resume using Bitcoin once its clear that the turmoil is over. ---- The most likely situation here is that nothing interesting happens at all. My personal opinion is that the vast majority of people who matter in Bitcoin aren't even paying attention to the drama, and something dramatic is really only possible if the majority of Bitcoin users opt-in to doing something. I don't think that's the case at all, which means essentially nothing interesting is going to happen. But, I could be wrong. There's a non-zero chance that something very unfortunate happens, and there's a pretty easy way to isolate yourself: don't send or receive any Bitcoins starting July 31st, and don't resume until it's clear that the storm has passed. It'll likely take less than a week to come to a well-defined conclusion.
ragelink 9y ago
anyone know why out of all timezones they pick Central america Time?
- nenreme 9y ago
  They didn't. You did.
- sebst 9y ago
  I guess, the times in the document are displayed according to the time zone of the browser rendering it.
jstanley 9y ago
I wrote this in case anyone wants more information: https://smsprivacy.org/bip148-uasf https://smsprivacy.org/bip148-uasf Should be a bit more informative than TFA.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  Naw, this isn't about Segwit2x, it's about the hard fork bitmain wants to do: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure the announcement on bitcoin.org is about the BIP148 UASF.
nemoniac 9y ago
What time zone is "GMT+0100 (IST)" supposed to be? India Standard Time is something like GMT+5.
- xxpor 9y ago
  Irish Summer Time I would guess.
- asclepi 9y ago
  That would be the time zone configured on your device. In this case, Irish Standard Time. Which, unlike the American nomenclature for time zones, is a Daylight Saving Time time zone (Ireland uses GMT outside of DST). Note that the page has "2017/08/01 00:00 UTC" in the source, but uses a "Localize dates" JavaScript function to change that to your configured time zone.
atemerev 9y ago
For me, the lightning network is the obviously right solution, bringing more decentralization and totally removing the need for global consensus. Why it is not that popular, I don't know.
- exit 9y ago
  > Why it is not that popular, I don't know. because using sha256 for proof of work was a mistake - it's too easily implemented in specialised hardware. now mining power is centralising and small groups can manipulate blockchain policies in their own interest. bitcoin should PoW-chain to a memory-hard hashing algorithm.
- lawn 9y ago
  Because LN has been vaporware since it's been announced, claiming to solve all the problems but have yet to done so. On chain scaling has also been shunned in favor of LN but it's still far from ready. You talk about decentralization but it's not shown, and may not even be possible, how the LN should work without relying on centralized hubs.
BenoitP 9y ago
To me, hashing power is not the process by which the outcome will be decided. IMHO, the percentage of technical signalling will not even matter that much. Two chains will get created quite quickly. And some BTC holders will try to take advantage of the situation. Since transactions can get replayed on the other chain (and copying them from one chain to the other brings a stability advantage) the technical way things are going to occur is double-spending to different adresses. ... Which means services supporting different chains will be pitted against each other. Users will empty out one wallet at the same time to one exchange on a chain they don't support, and to another address they control on the chain they support. In cashing out on the exchange, they will crash the market value of that chain. ... Which brings me to: exchanges should start signalling support and come to a consensus pretty quickly, in their own interest. They don't want to be the exchange everybody cashes out on. Questions abound: * Have they started signalling it? * What software are they running? * If you hold some BTCs: are you planning to double spend? * How are you going to proceed? * Which chain do you support, and how many BTC do you possess? TL;DR: There will be a run. Exchanges will determine the outcome.
- sktrdie 9y ago
  If I had an exchange I would be sure to check on all forks whether certain coins have been used before allowing processing. Since all forks are known, this is probably how they're going to avoid double-spending.
- jsn 9y ago
  Why do you think that being the exchange used for cashing out is a bad position to be for an exchange? My understanding is, exchanges earn money on commissions, so the more volume they get, the better, and cashing out sure is some volume. Those speculators who buy BTC on the wrong chain -- sure, they will take a hit on that. But the exchange itself will still get their commission just fine. Am I missing something here?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - 9y ago
nthcolumn 9y ago
I obviously don't understand this at all. I thought it was distributed and that that was the whole point.
- Doxin 9y ago
  It is distributed, and that is the whole point. The difficulty lies in being unable to force anyone to do anything, so any change to the protocol runs the risk of bitcoin splitting two incompatible halves. Changes like these have happened in the past without too much trouble, but these days there's more money and politics involved, so it's wait-and-see as to the outcome. Worst case bitcoin will permanently split into Bitcoin A and Bitcoin B. In practice I think it's fairly unlikely. Just suspend your trading near the date until this kerfuffle sorts itself out and you should be fine.
sktrdie 9y ago
All this "unconsensus" is weird to me given that PoW was created to fix just that. I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners. After all, anybody can be a miner. Anything other than that just doesn't make it decentralized anymore. If you trust the developers, exchanges or even users to make decisions, then why not just make a BitcoinSQL where the servers are controlled by these groups? Mining specifically allows for this not to happen. one-CPU-one-vote as per Satoshi's paper. No matter the rules of the protocol, the chain with most work is the one that most people agreed upon. This seems to me the only true democratic solution and I don't understand how anything else is possible. With regards to fees being to high and miners actually liking that, that's bullshit, because miners (which are also users!) care about the health of the entire system. If something like SegWit will bring many more users, that's a win for them. Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Miners aren't just these chinese groups of people. It's the only true democratic way of reaching consensus - anything else is really not a way to reach trustless consensus in my opinion.
- imaginenore 9y ago
  > I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners. How about Bitcoin owners instead? Your vote is proportional to how much you have.
- numbsafari 9y ago
  > one-CPU-one-vote "He who has the chips, makes the rules." The problem with your understanding is two-fold: first, "one CPU, one vote" sounds very egalitarian, but in practice it just means people buy vote share and therefore control. The second is the idea that democracy is a perfect consensus system. That's only true if nobody agrees to fork. No social contract is written in stone (despite millennia of efforts to do so).
- knocte 9y ago
  > anybody can be a miner That is false, nowadays. > Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) Bitcoin's mining algorithm is so simple that mining industry has specialized too much, and now the best technology for it is ASICs. You cannot mine (or rather, it's nowhere near profitable) if you don't have access to this kind of hardware. And of course, claiming that anybody can have access to this hardware is very very debatable. The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays (just look at the correlation between ASIC manufacturers and owners of mining pools).
jancsika 9y ago
I haven't kept up with Bitcoin tech for awhile. Hopefully the following questions are relevant here: 1. What percentage of Bitcoin's PoW belongs to Bitmain? 2. Are the drivers for Bitmain's hardware free-as-in-freedom? 3. Is mining hardware in the same class as Bitmain's manufactured anywhere in the world other than China? Edit: Bonus question: If all cutting edge hardware tends to be developed and manufactured in one particular spot in one particular nation state, and if Bitcoin mining efficiency now depends mainly upon the manufacture of newer, more powerful hardware, does that change any of the implicit assumptions made in the Bitcoin whitepaper? (Esp. considering that same nation state has put a hard speed limit on all data moving in/out its borders.)
gopz 9y ago
As someone with a basic Comp Sci understanding of crypto currencies could someone explain to me why there is a scalability problem? I thought one of the primary benefits of Bitcoin was that higher transaction fees will attract more miners and ergo the transactions can be processed at a higher rate. Why won't this problem be resolved naturally? Tinkering with the block size makes sense to me as a way to crank through more transactions per mined block, but again, why is it even a problem? The mining power is just not there?
- someguydave 9y ago
  There is plenty of mining power. The simple answer to your question is that everyone who wants to change bitcoin has a poltical agenda they are angling to satisfy.
- MildlySerious 9y ago
  The mining power doesn't matter in that case, as the network adjusts to whatever mining power is there. The limitation is in the protocol, or rather, its current implementation with the 1MB blocksize limit. It was originally implemented to make growth a little more predictable in the beginning, nothing else. Satoshi himself said that it's only to prevent spam, which was at a time before growth, when it wasn't obvious yet how well the self regulation with TX fees works. After Satoshi disappeared, other people took over the development, and disagreements over how to continue began. What was mostly a technical argument at one point, became a political argument after Blockstream formed, which had taken investments from banks and had most of the core developers under them. These then not only pushed for other means of scaling than just removing the blocksize cap, but also actively pushed against that, which split the community in half. Now we have people who (very simplified) just want the blocksize cap increased, and others who support the scaling methods of Blockstream, namely segwit and, down the road, lightning. This endless debate with both parts of the community calling the other's solution unsafe is what is currently crippling Bitcoins potential.
- rmah 9y ago
  The scale problem exists because of two things: 1) currently, only about 6 blocks can be verified by the network per hour. That is fixed, any faster and the difficulty rises. Any slower and the difficulty declines. With the current code in use, it will always be about 6 blocks per hour. 2) currently, blocks are limited to 1MB in size. This means that only a certain number of transactions can be processed per block (apx 1200 to 2500). Thus, only 24 * 6 * #txns_per_block => 170k to 350k transactions can be processed per day. It doesn't matter how many computers are verifying new blocks in the blockchain. This is an... issue. Note, a "transaction" is moving BTC from one wallet to another wallet.
davidbeep 9y ago
Terribly uninformative. I'm actually surprised the coin is trading as high as it is considering all the uncertainty. I expected a greater freak out from technologically inapt investors/speculators.
cableshaft 9y ago
> "Be wary of storing your bitcoins on an exchange or any service that doesn’t allow you to make a local backup copy of your private keys." I know a couple people who have some bitcoin on Coinbase and aren't too comfortable moving it to a local wallet (Coinbase is just easier for them, they don't have to worry about the security of their personal computer). Does Coinbase allow making a local backup of private keys? I'm thinking they might not, but maybe they do.
- pat2man 9y ago
  When ETH split Coinbase chose one fork and allowed you to transfer your other ETH out.
wittgenstein 9y ago
Does anyone know how Coinbase is going to handle this?
buttershakes 9y ago
This will go down as a massive failure in governance. The Bitcoin core guys have completely created this situation by taking a hard liner stance based on a non issue. Committing to a 2 megabyte hard fork 2+ years ago would have averted this situation and kept control within the core dev team. Now we see miners taking a stance because SegWit doesn't necessarily benefit them. Further payment channels and other off chain scaling haven't really been tested or materialized, and the SegWit code itself is a series of changes to the fundamentals of Bitcoin without requiring a hard fork. In other words it is overly engineered to avoid having to have real consensus. Further the almost rabid attacks against a 2mb increase are bordering on complete insanity. No serious software engineer would say that an additional 1 megabyte of traffic every 10 minutes is a problem in any way. Instead we are stuck with a proportional increase in bandwidth and processing to support segwit and a minor increase in block size, which is through some convoluted logic preventing centralization. This whole thing is a power grab, plain and simple. Now the alternative implementations are racing to complete something the miners will agree with, the sole purpose being to wrest control away from the "Bitcoin core" development group which has made some a complete mess of governance. Anyone who invested in Blockstream has to seriously be scratching their heads and wondering why they are killing the golden goose over some ideological bs instead of making what is really a trivial change. I think at this point they have screamed so loudly for so long that back tracking would reveal them to be hypocritical in the extreme. To couch this whole debate as a rallying cry against centralized interests instead of a corporate power grab is completely absurdist.
- zhoujianfu 9y ago
  Well put and 100% correct in my opinion. I feel like everybody's starving and there are hundreds of free hamburgers sitting right in front of them and core is blocking everybody from grabbing them while yelling "Don't eat those or you'll all die of heart attacks some day!!!"
- mmagin 9y ago
  As an outsider, I find it especially amusing that cryptocurrencies are supposed to make it so that users don't have to live with the politics surrounding traditional currency.
pyroinferno 9y ago
Good, good. Bitcoin will fall, and eth will become king.
kristianp 9y ago
Here's part of the warning message on bitcointalk [1]: 1. Ensure that you have no BTC deposited with a Bitcoin bank or other trusted third-party before Aug 1. If there's no technical way for you to export the private keys for your BTC, then that BTC is at risk. Some Bitcoin banks may assure you that they'll definitely keep your BTC safe, but I absolutely wouldn't trust them. 2. Do not send transactions or trust received transactions starting 12 hours before Aug 1 at midnight UTC, and continue this until you hear the "all clear" from several trustworthy sources. For example, I will post a forum news item if everything is OK, or if everything is not OK and action is required. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2017191.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2017191.0
kanzure 9y ago
follow-up thread was posted over here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14788663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14788663

467 points by amdixon 9y ago

https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/commit/9ddfa8defe4cbf8e7159c828992e5077098a3cf2 https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/commit/9ddfa8... Alerts: BIP148/92: change title over objection Note: I object to this change, which I think makes the alert less clear, less forceful, and degrades alert usability.

Fej 9y ago

Do any significant number of people genuinely take Bitcoin to be the future of currency at this point?

Alex3917 9y ago
> Do any significant number of people genuinely take Bitcoin to be the future of currency at this point? No one is betting that the current version of Bitcoin is the future of currency. They are betting that the version of Bitcoin that exists in 20 or 30 years is the future of currency.
blockmeamadeus 9y ago
Why not? They are solving a problem that other cryptocurrencies have yet to face.
sauronlord 9y ago
Yep. You will be sorry within 20 years from now that you did not invest in the network this early on
hudon 9y ago
Many people simply believe there is a need for a digital censorship resistant currency like physical cash. I don't think it'll replace currencies, but I think it will serve a purpose as a means to transfer value when authorities don't want you to transfer value. Not saying if this is a good or bad thing, but it is a real value proposition.
- RexetBlell 9y ago
  It's also useful if you want to buy something online and don't want it showing up on your Credit Card statement.
  - RandomKid 9y ago
    For this use-case there is a better solution - GNU Taler [1]. It doesn't invent its own coins but works with existing currencies. [1]: https://taler.net/en/ https://taler.net/en/

frenchie4111 9y ago

Can someone give me some context on what is causing this?

blockmeamadeus 9y ago
A change in the protocol that requires the majority of miners to accept the change. There is no central authority, so they can not simply say "protocol x will be in place from August 1st". As in any community, not everybody agreed on the best course of action, so the outcome is not certain.
6nf 9y ago
It's called User Activated Soft Fork or UASF for short. It could end up being nothing but it's worth noting the date. There are currently two main ideas on how to scale Bitcoin. One camp is the called Bitcoin Unlimited and it's a proposal that allows the miners to adjust the block size as needed. The other idea is called Segregated Witness or Segwit. This is a change in the way bitcoin transactions are counted towards the 1MB per block limit. It will allow slightly more transactions per block but also adds functionality that could allow other types of transactions. Those will be useful in some situations, e.g. paying the same entitiy many times over the course of the relationship. Some people in the Segwit camp are tired of waiting so they are attempting to force the issue without the support of most miners. The date they picked is Aug 1. Since very few miners support this move, it's not likely to succeed in my opinion, but nobody knows for sure.
- runeks 9y ago
  > Some people in the Segwit camp are tired of waiting so they are attempting to force the issue without the support of most miners. The date they picked is Aug 1. I don't understand why the bitcoin.org page sounds so alarmist. If the miners are not in on it why would some special Bitcoin blockchain (with alternative rules) matter, since miners could easily DoS this chain, if they wanted to, in case they don't support it? Anyone can create their own chain with non-agreed-upon-rules (e.g. testnet3 or regtest), but that's just not Bitcoin precisely because it's practically ignored by miners (like a UASF). Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF?

roadbeats 9y ago

What strategy is the best for small investors ? Moving the money into altcoins or just pulling completely back ? Should we expect a soar on altcoins (e.g litecoin, ripple, antshares a.k.a neo) ?

mhluongo 9y ago
The million dollar question. If you look back at what the Ethereum split did for the market, maybe it'll give you some ideas. Remember though- if you don't have any Bitcoin under your own control (non-custodial wallet) you might not be able to trade between chains if there's a split. There are only two exchanges with announced pairs AFAIK- BitFinex and ViaBTC both have futures contracts set up.
- roadbeats 9y ago
  I actually moved to altcoins already but just curious if I should move out completely.
  - daxfohl 9y ago
    Don Stewart of Haskell fame and former head of computer-something at HSBC is a lot smarter than me. He seems not terribly impressed by the potential. I'm out (never got in), but do what you will. https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879782911607791616 https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879782911607791616 https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879804988708540416 https://twitter.com/donsbot/status/879804988708540416 But, eh, if crypto ever completely replaces raw mineral as a trading mechanism, I guess there's still 200x potential there. https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-money-in-perspective https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-money-in-perspective
Taek 9y ago
Pretty easy. Pull all of your coins into a wallet you control (like bitcoin-core, running on your own computer), and then just ride through the storm. For some amount of time, there may be 2 or 3 versions of Bitcoin that are active, but if you use this strategy you'll own all of your coins on all the versions. So, as long as the combined value of every version is approximately around the value of the original version, you haven't lost any money. Then, wait for the dust to settle, sell the coins for the versions you don't like, buy coins for the versions you do like, and then resume using Bitcoin like you had originally. The altcoin market is pretty upside down right now, even more than Bitcoin is. It's probably less safe to move to an alt than it is to just ride through the bitcoin storm.

cgb223 9y ago

What is the disruption? Why is this happening?

mhluongo 9y ago
Some good answers in sibling comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14758661

isubkhankulov 9y ago

this post feels like propoganda. prior bitcoin upgrades have gone much smoother and when they do go wrong the community banded together to spread the right information. albiet the userbase was likely a lot smaller back then.

isubkhankulov 9y ago
it could even be guerrilla marketing by trading exchanges...
- mhluongo 9y ago
  Doubtful. Aside from bitcoin.org's history, if it were, you'd expect more exchanges announcing UASF / legacy / SegWit2x trading pairs.
  - isubkhankulov 9y ago
    hard to price unless a fork actually occurs. if a fork like ETH/ETC happens, exchanges do benefit.
    - mhluongo 9y ago
      True. Guess I'm surprised Kraken et al haven't already announced that they'll support all chains, though? I guess they're all quietly prepping in case more than one chain is viable.
      - isubkhankulov 9y ago
        does kraken trade etc and eth?
        wusatiuk 9y ago
        Yes
9y ago

jpatokal 9y ago

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). However, any changes require consensus from the miners who create Bitcoins and process transactions, and because it's not in their best incentive to do anything to reduce those transaction fees, no change has received majority consensus. In an attempt to break this deadlock, there is a "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal #148" (BIP148) that proposes a User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) taking effect on August 1, 2017. Basically, everybody who agrees to this proposal wants SegWit to happen and (here's the key part) commits to discarding all confirmations that do not flag support for SegWit from this date onward. If successful, this will fork Bitcoin, because whether a transaction succeeded or not is going to depend on which side of the network you believe. However, BIP148's odds of success look low, as many of the largest miners out there led by Bitmain have stated that they will trigger a User-Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) if needed to stop it. Specifically, if UASF appears successful, instead of complying with SegWit, they'll start mining BTC with large blocks instead: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14... Anyway, it all boils down to significant uncertainty, and unless you've got a dog in the race you'll probably want to refraining from making BTC transactions around the deadline or purchasing new BTC until the dust settles down. And an important disclaimer: this is an extremely contentious issue in the Bitcoin community and it's really difficult to find info that's not polarized one way or the other. Most notably, Reddit's /r/bitcoin is rabidly pro- BIP148 and /r/btc is equally rabidly against it. Here's one reasonably neutral primer: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide...

mhluongo 9y ago
You skipped the option that's closest to consensus! SegWit2x has industry support and has a short enough window to lock-in before the Aug 1st UASF EDIT: Quick reference https://medium.com/@wintercooled/the-road-to-segwit-activation-uasf-segwit2x-and-segwit-signalling-explained-2ff00488b7cb https://medium.com/@wintercooled/the-road-to-segwit-activati...

dmitriid 9y ago

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the most amazing stable scalable global tech of the future

Twisell 9y ago

Ok just another proof that bitcoin can definitely not be compared to gold. Or maybe it could? "After the event you might end up with gold or lead it all depends if your banker believe in transmutation or not (and if transmutation is actually achievable which will be determined by the best alchemists of the kingdom that need to agree together). So all in all the guild of merchants recommend that you don't accept gold as a payement on the last day before new moon (and for a few day after that), because you wil not be able to tell if you are getting real gold or lead during that period. Well to be honest it won't technically be lead you would get but forked gold, a gold that could be gold but isn't until the alchemists say so. But you shall still be able to use it in a limited way with people who believe in the same alchemists dissidents. It's totally normal if it's sound complicated, it's magic after all!"

stale2002 9y ago
Lets say that you buy a bunch of gold and put it in a fortress. Nobody can steal your gold, but lets say the entire world gets together at once, and decides that gold is worthless and that they are moving over to lead as the new currency. But they are keeping the name "gold". Everyone now uses the name "gold" to refer to what was previously known as "lead". Your pile of "real gold" wasn't stolen, but it may as well have been, because now it is just a bunch of heavy, worthless, shiny, rocks. (yes, yes, there are industrial uses, but the price is way way higher than what industry justifies alone) And it really doesn't matter that you are strenuously arguing about how this "new gold" is actually lead, because nobody cares about your opinion. That is a similar enough analogy to how bitcoin forks work.
- Crye 9y ago
  Except you get the same amount as leas as you have gold. In fact, now you have gold and lead. One will turn out to be a storage for value.
  - monort 9y ago
    I think there is a third scenario - both forks become worthless.

ented 9y ago

What is the max tx/s speed? Still no consensus???

VMG 9y ago
With segwit, you can use http://lightning.network http://lightning.network. Lightning network gives you essentially unlimited transaction speed.
- spiralx 9y ago
  Which doesn't actually exist yet, and doesn't solve the problem even theoretically: https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800 https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-...
  - VMG 9y ago
    The blog author and you need to learn about lighting network and graph theory. Edit: responses to the specific "proof" you linked https://medium.com/@murchandamus/i-have-just-read-jonald-fyookballs-article-https-medium-com-jonaldfyookball-mathematical-fd112d13737a https://medium.com/@murchandamus/i-have-just-read-jonald-fyo... https://medium.com/@murchandamus/some-subsidiary-points-on-lightning-network-cc68bc81d6f1 https://medium.com/@murchandamus/some-subsidiary-points-on-l...
    - spiralx 9y ago
      That's just a lot of hand-waving, if the author is so confident about his rebuttal he should be able to provide a model for it. This person did at least attempt to simulate something along the lines of an ideal LN, which showed that micropayments do not do very well at all due to the combination of fees accrued at each hop: https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-network-with-10-million-users-9a8b5930fa7a https://hackernoon.com/simulating-a-decentralized-lightning-... This thread on the same story discusses other issues with LN proposals, one that stands out to me is how routing is going to work if all nodes are perfectly equal - routing on the internet relies on a hub model, seems likely that a decentralised routing protocol adds even more complexity and resource requirements. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14759965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14759965 The trouble of course is that LN is just a bunch of proposals right now, each promising to fix all of Bitcoin's issues without removing all of its unique features. When it actually exists then I'll revisit, but until then I'll treat it as another piece of vapourware.

unabridged 9y ago

This is late FUD, a last minute whine by the owners of "bitcoin.org" aka core. The discussion over scaling has been happening for many months and consensus has actually just been reached in the last couple weeks. 85% of the mining power is signalling for segwit2x, and if this continues it will lock in before Aug 1st completely avoiding the scary situation talked about in the post.

wyager 9y ago
Not sure why people are downvoting you, you are objectively correct. segwit2x is at over 85%. https://coin.dance/blocks https://coin.dance/blocks
- Taek 9y ago
  I'm guessing the downvotes were a response to the tone of the post, not the actual content. Though, the content itself is incorrect as well. Consensus has been achieved by the miners and by a few major payment processors, but not by the userbase. Blockchains though are very resistant to moves by major players, and even the miners being at 85% are not enough to force fundamental changes like this into the network if the users do not actively want to participate in the changes. Note the wording there. The users have to opt-in to a change like this. It's opt-in, not opt-out. I'm very doubtful that software which is not even out in the wild yet is going to be able to get a majority of users to opt-in within a 3 week timeline. We will know soon enough for sure.
  - wyager 9y ago
    It's a bad idea to downvote one of the only correct posts in the entire thread (at that time) because of its tone. Bitcoin consensus is definitionally achieved by miner PoW. Yes, they are beholden to market pressure from users, but saying that concensus is "by the user base" is misleading. I'm using the terminology from the bitcoin white paper
  - azm1 9y ago
    What type of power has the user base on the blockchain?

wyager 9y ago

This looks like FUD. As I recall, the owners of Bitcoin.org are mad that their exact proposed scaling solution didn't go through. 85+% of miners are signaling support for segwit2x, so it's extremely unlikely that there will be any disruption. https://coin.dance/blocks https://coin.dance/blocks

1ba9115454 9y ago

If you hold Bitcoin then you need to think about getting hold of your private keys or using a non custodial wallet like https://strongcoin.com https://strongcoin.com If the network splits there will 1 or 2 new types of Bitcoin. If the exchanges decide to support the new types of Bitcoin you will be able to sell your holding on the new chains whilst still keeping coins on the main Bitcoin chain. But to do this you need to manage your own private keys.

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

> This means that any bitcoins you receive after that time may later disappear from your wallet or be a type of bitcoin that other people will not accept as payment. Can you imagine the uproar if Visa said the same thing? It would be totally unthinkable. Bitcoin can get away with this type of "disruption" because it's not really being used for anything other than a speculative vehicle.

Taek 9y ago
That's incorrect, Bitcoin is used in many places for critical applications, and I'm sure that those people are very frustrated by the situation. I know that I am. We are doing a hardware presale using Bitcoin, and we're going to have to stop accepting Bitcoin at that time (it's a cryptocurrency miner, 90% of our sales are in Bitcoin), and that's going to hurt us. This whole situation is frustrating.
gcp 9y ago
I dunno about you but debit and credit card terminal failures are rather typical around Black Friday like situations.
ar0 9y ago
Isn't "any [money] you receive [...] may later disappear" actually pretty common with credit card chargebacks?
- GenericsMotors 9y ago
  Chargebacks usually have some form of review/dispute process as well. What's bit-coin's process for disputing the disappearance of my wallet's contents because of this fork?
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  This is such a silly argument. Chargebacks are for the protection of the consumer against a business. They're GREAT if you're a consumer. Why would it be in my benefit as a bitcoin user to have no recourse for fraudulent transactions?
9y ago

jageen 9y ago

It will surely affect on ransomware collectors.

ktta 9y ago
Maybe they'll also move to ETH. A great way to get a good % of the population away from BTC to ETH
- jageen 9y ago
  It is good time for investors :). Or it is already passed, I did not see the rate of both but there might be major change.

modeless 9y ago

The problems described in this post are unlikely to happen. There is an attempt to split ("fork") the network scheduled for August 1. The people forking will force activation of a new feature, Segwit, while the non-forkers won't. However, the non-forkers are currently planning to activate Segwit as part of a compromise plan before the deadline. If this compromise happens as planned, there will be no need to force-activate Segwit with a fork, and so no fork will happen on August 1. Frankly, even if the compromise solution fails and the fork does happen on August 1, it will be a complete non-event. Bitcoin.org is biased as they are affiliated with people who support the August 1 fork, and so they're attempting to publicize it. However, the fork has practically zero support from Bitcoin miners or exchanges. On Aug 1 the vast majority of miners and exchanges will stay with the current network. Without significant miner support the forked network will run extremely slowly, and it will be vulnerable to several kinds of attacks. Without exchange support the forked network will not have economic value, and will quickly become irrelevant. Although August 1 will likely not be a problem either way, there is another date that will. Around the end of October, another proposal to fork the network is scheduled, and this one is supported by miners and exchanges. What will happen then is much more murky. It will become clearer as the date approaches.

kilimchoi 9y ago
If the community soft-forks as you say, then this will be disastrous since corporate miners will not be onboard and the forked chain will be vulnerable to attacks which could result in UASF chain's demise.
- modeless 9y ago
  The UASF chain's demise would not be disastrous at all, it would simply be the status quo. Bitcoin would continue as normal.
rothbardrand 9y ago
You're misunderstanding the issue. Core / Bitcoin.org don't have a problem with Segwit2X which is a UASF like Bip-148 which core supports. (It uses a different BIP and is slightly different but it's perfectly find with all of us.) The threat is that BitMain, the controller of a very large amount of hashing power, something like %70 is threatening a hard fork into their own, non-segwit chain: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...

Taek 9y ago

I wish there was a concise way to explain what is going on, but there really isn't. I'm going to do my best though. Bitcoin is a consensus system. This means that the goal is to have everyone believe the exact same thing at all times. Bitcoin achieves this by having everyone run identical software which is able to compile a list of transactions, and from there decide what money belongs to which person. As you can imagine, it's a problem if you have $10, and Alice believes she owns that $10, Bob believes he owns that same $10, and Charlie believes that the money was never sent to either of them. These three people can't interact with eachother, because they can't agree on who owns the money. Spending money has no meaning here. In Bitcoin, there are very precise rules that define how money is allowed to move around. These rules are identical on all machines, and because they are identical for everyone on the network, nobody is ever confused about whether or not they own money. Unfortunately, there are now 3 versions of the software floating around (well... there are more. But there are only 3 that seem to have any real traction right now, though even that is hard to be certain about). Currently, all versions of the software have the exact same set of rules, but on August 1st, one of those versions of the software will be running a different set of rules. So, depending, people may not be able to agree on the ownership of money. If you are running one version, and your friend is running another, your friend may receive that money, or they may not. This is of course a bad situation for both of you, and its even worse if you are working with automated systems, because an automated system likely has no idea that this is happening, and it may have no way to fix any costly mistakes. It gets worse. The version of the software that is splitting off actually has the power to destroy the other two versions of the software. I don't know how to put this in simple terms either. In Bitcoin, it is possible to have multiple simultaneous histories. As long as all of the histories are mathematically correct (that is, they follow all of the formal rules of Bitcoin), you know which history is the real history based on how much work is behind it. The history with the most work wins. If the history is illegal, you ignore it no matter how much work is behind it. So, this troublemaker version of the software (the UASF version) has a compatible set of rules with the other 2 versions. Basically, everything that it does, the other versions see as valid. So if its history is the longest, the other versions will treat that history as the one true history. The thing is, this troublemaker version of the software is stubborn, and so even if the histories of the other two versions have more work, it'll ignore them and focus only on its own version of history. So, the dramatic / problematic situation happens if the UASF software initially has less work in its history. What'll happen is a split, and two different versions of Bitcoin will exist at the exact same time. But then, if the UASF software ends up with more work after some period of time (days, weeks, etc.), the other versions of the software will prefer its version of history over their own. Basically, what happens there is that entire days, or weeks, etc. of history get completely obliterated. The UASF history becomes canonical, and the histories built by the other versions all get destroyed. Miners lose all of their money, people who accepted payments lose those payments, people who made payments get those payments back. Basically a lot of chaos where people end up losing probably millions and millions of dollars. ---- I hope that helps. This whole situation is screwed up, and really the best thing to do is to put your coins in a cold wallet (one that you control, not an exchange), and then just not send or receive any coins for a few weeks. Let the dust settle, and then resume using Bitcoin once its clear that the turmoil is over. ---- The most likely situation here is that nothing interesting happens at all. My personal opinion is that the vast majority of people who matter in Bitcoin aren't even paying attention to the drama, and something dramatic is really only possible if the majority of Bitcoin users opt-in to doing something. I don't think that's the case at all, which means essentially nothing interesting is going to happen. But, I could be wrong. There's a non-zero chance that something very unfortunate happens, and there's a pretty easy way to isolate yourself: don't send or receive any Bitcoins starting July 31st, and don't resume until it's clear that the storm has passed. It'll likely take less than a week to come to a well-defined conclusion.

ragelink 9y ago

anyone know why out of all timezones they pick Central america Time?

nenreme 9y ago
They didn't. You did.
sebst 9y ago
I guess, the times in the document are displayed according to the time zone of the browser rendering it.

jstanley 9y ago

I wrote this in case anyone wants more information: https://smsprivacy.org/bip148-uasf https://smsprivacy.org/bip148-uasf Should be a bit more informative than TFA.

rothbardrand 9y ago
Naw, this isn't about Segwit2x, it's about the hard fork bitmain wants to do: https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148/ https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...
- jstanley 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure the announcement on bitcoin.org is about the BIP148 UASF.

nemoniac 9y ago

What time zone is "GMT+0100 (IST)" supposed to be? India Standard Time is something like GMT+5.

xxpor 9y ago
Irish Summer Time I would guess.
asclepi 9y ago
That would be the time zone configured on your device. In this case, Irish Standard Time. Which, unlike the American nomenclature for time zones, is a Daylight Saving Time time zone (Ireland uses GMT outside of DST). Note that the page has "2017/08/01 00:00 UTC" in the source, but uses a "Localize dates" JavaScript function to change that to your configured time zone.

atemerev 9y ago

For me, the lightning network is the obviously right solution, bringing more decentralization and totally removing the need for global consensus. Why it is not that popular, I don't know.

exit 9y ago
> Why it is not that popular, I don't know. because using sha256 for proof of work was a mistake - it's too easily implemented in specialised hardware. now mining power is centralising and small groups can manipulate blockchain policies in their own interest. bitcoin should PoW-chain to a memory-hard hashing algorithm.
lawn 9y ago
Because LN has been vaporware since it's been announced, claiming to solve all the problems but have yet to done so. On chain scaling has also been shunned in favor of LN but it's still far from ready. You talk about decentralization but it's not shown, and may not even be possible, how the LN should work without relying on centralized hubs.

BenoitP 9y ago

To me, hashing power is not the process by which the outcome will be decided. IMHO, the percentage of technical signalling will not even matter that much. Two chains will get created quite quickly. And some BTC holders will try to take advantage of the situation. Since transactions can get replayed on the other chain (and copying them from one chain to the other brings a stability advantage) the technical way things are going to occur is double-spending to different adresses. ... Which means services supporting different chains will be pitted against each other. Users will empty out one wallet at the same time to one exchange on a chain they don't support, and to another address they control on the chain they support. In cashing out on the exchange, they will crash the market value of that chain. ... Which brings me to: exchanges should start signalling support and come to a consensus pretty quickly, in their own interest. They don't want to be the exchange everybody cashes out on. Questions abound: * Have they started signalling it? * What software are they running? * If you hold some BTCs: are you planning to double spend? * How are you going to proceed? * Which chain do you support, and how many BTC do you possess? TL;DR: There will be a run. Exchanges will determine the outcome.

sktrdie 9y ago
If I had an exchange I would be sure to check on all forks whether certain coins have been used before allowing processing. Since all forks are known, this is probably how they're going to avoid double-spending.
jsn 9y ago
Why do you think that being the exchange used for cashing out is a bad position to be for an exchange? My understanding is, exchanges earn money on commissions, so the more volume they get, the better, and cashing out sure is some volume. Those speculators who buy BTC on the wrong chain -- sure, they will take a hit on that. But the exchange itself will still get their commission just fine. Am I missing something here?
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nthcolumn 9y ago

I obviously don't understand this at all. I thought it was distributed and that that was the whole point.

Doxin 9y ago
It is distributed, and that is the whole point. The difficulty lies in being unable to force anyone to do anything, so any change to the protocol runs the risk of bitcoin splitting two incompatible halves. Changes like these have happened in the past without too much trouble, but these days there's more money and politics involved, so it's wait-and-see as to the outcome. Worst case bitcoin will permanently split into Bitcoin A and Bitcoin B. In practice I think it's fairly unlikely. Just suspend your trading near the date until this kerfuffle sorts itself out and you should be fine.

sktrdie 9y ago

All this "unconsensus" is weird to me given that PoW was created to fix just that. I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners. After all, anybody can be a miner. Anything other than that just doesn't make it decentralized anymore. If you trust the developers, exchanges or even users to make decisions, then why not just make a BitcoinSQL where the servers are controlled by these groups? Mining specifically allows for this not to happen. one-CPU-one-vote as per Satoshi's paper. No matter the rules of the protocol, the chain with most work is the one that most people agreed upon. This seems to me the only true democratic solution and I don't understand how anything else is possible. With regards to fees being to high and miners actually liking that, that's bullshit, because miners (which are also users!) care about the health of the entire system. If something like SegWit will bring many more users, that's a win for them. Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Miners aren't just these chinese groups of people. It's the only true democratic way of reaching consensus - anything else is really not a way to reach trustless consensus in my opinion.

imaginenore 9y ago
> I don't understand how can any other group of people decide what should happen other than the miners. How about Bitcoin owners instead? Your vote is proportional to how much you have.
numbsafari 9y ago
> one-CPU-one-vote "He who has the chips, makes the rules." The problem with your understanding is two-fold: first, "one CPU, one vote" sounds very egalitarian, but in practice it just means people buy vote share and therefore control. The second is the idea that democracy is a perfect consensus system. That's only true if nobody agrees to fork. No social contract is written in stone (despite millennia of efforts to do so).
knocte 9y ago
> anybody can be a miner That is false, nowadays. > Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) Bitcoin's mining algorithm is so simple that mining industry has specialized too much, and now the best technology for it is ASICs. You cannot mine (or rather, it's nowhere near profitable) if you don't have access to this kind of hardware. And of course, claiming that anybody can have access to this hardware is very very debatable. The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays (just look at the correlation between ASIC manufacturers and owners of mining pools).

jancsika 9y ago

I haven't kept up with Bitcoin tech for awhile. Hopefully the following questions are relevant here: 1. What percentage of Bitcoin's PoW belongs to Bitmain? 2. Are the drivers for Bitmain's hardware free-as-in-freedom? 3. Is mining hardware in the same class as Bitmain's manufactured anywhere in the world other than China? Edit: Bonus question: If all cutting edge hardware tends to be developed and manufactured in one particular spot in one particular nation state, and if Bitcoin mining efficiency now depends mainly upon the manufacture of newer, more powerful hardware, does that change any of the implicit assumptions made in the Bitcoin whitepaper? (Esp. considering that same nation state has put a hard speed limit on all data moving in/out its borders.)

gopz 9y ago

As someone with a basic Comp Sci understanding of crypto currencies could someone explain to me why there is a scalability problem? I thought one of the primary benefits of Bitcoin was that higher transaction fees will attract more miners and ergo the transactions can be processed at a higher rate. Why won't this problem be resolved naturally? Tinkering with the block size makes sense to me as a way to crank through more transactions per mined block, but again, why is it even a problem? The mining power is just not there?

someguydave 9y ago
There is plenty of mining power. The simple answer to your question is that everyone who wants to change bitcoin has a poltical agenda they are angling to satisfy.
MildlySerious 9y ago
The mining power doesn't matter in that case, as the network adjusts to whatever mining power is there. The limitation is in the protocol, or rather, its current implementation with the 1MB blocksize limit. It was originally implemented to make growth a little more predictable in the beginning, nothing else. Satoshi himself said that it's only to prevent spam, which was at a time before growth, when it wasn't obvious yet how well the self regulation with TX fees works. After Satoshi disappeared, other people took over the development, and disagreements over how to continue began. What was mostly a technical argument at one point, became a political argument after Blockstream formed, which had taken investments from banks and had most of the core developers under them. These then not only pushed for other means of scaling than just removing the blocksize cap, but also actively pushed against that, which split the community in half. Now we have people who (very simplified) just want the blocksize cap increased, and others who support the scaling methods of Blockstream, namely segwit and, down the road, lightning. This endless debate with both parts of the community calling the other's solution unsafe is what is currently crippling Bitcoins potential.
rmah 9y ago
The scale problem exists because of two things: 1) currently, only about 6 blocks can be verified by the network per hour. That is fixed, any faster and the difficulty rises. Any slower and the difficulty declines. With the current code in use, it will always be about 6 blocks per hour. 2) currently, blocks are limited to 1MB in size. This means that only a certain number of transactions can be processed per block (apx 1200 to 2500). Thus, only 24 * 6 * #txns_per_block => 170k to 350k transactions can be processed per day. It doesn't matter how many computers are verifying new blocks in the blockchain. This is an... issue. Note, a "transaction" is moving BTC from one wallet to another wallet.

davidbeep 9y ago

Terribly uninformative. I'm actually surprised the coin is trading as high as it is considering all the uncertainty. I expected a greater freak out from technologically inapt investors/speculators.

cableshaft 9y ago

> "Be wary of storing your bitcoins on an exchange or any service that doesn’t allow you to make a local backup copy of your private keys." I know a couple people who have some bitcoin on Coinbase and aren't too comfortable moving it to a local wallet (Coinbase is just easier for them, they don't have to worry about the security of their personal computer). Does Coinbase allow making a local backup of private keys? I'm thinking they might not, but maybe they do.

pat2man 9y ago
When ETH split Coinbase chose one fork and allowed you to transfer your other ETH out.

wittgenstein 9y ago

Does anyone know how Coinbase is going to handle this?

buttershakes 9y ago

This will go down as a massive failure in governance. The Bitcoin core guys have completely created this situation by taking a hard liner stance based on a non issue. Committing to a 2 megabyte hard fork 2+ years ago would have averted this situation and kept control within the core dev team. Now we see miners taking a stance because SegWit doesn't necessarily benefit them. Further payment channels and other off chain scaling haven't really been tested or materialized, and the SegWit code itself is a series of changes to the fundamentals of Bitcoin without requiring a hard fork. In other words it is overly engineered to avoid having to have real consensus. Further the almost rabid attacks against a 2mb increase are bordering on complete insanity. No serious software engineer would say that an additional 1 megabyte of traffic every 10 minutes is a problem in any way. Instead we are stuck with a proportional increase in bandwidth and processing to support segwit and a minor increase in block size, which is through some convoluted logic preventing centralization. This whole thing is a power grab, plain and simple. Now the alternative implementations are racing to complete something the miners will agree with, the sole purpose being to wrest control away from the "Bitcoin core" development group which has made some a complete mess of governance. Anyone who invested in Blockstream has to seriously be scratching their heads and wondering why they are killing the golden goose over some ideological bs instead of making what is really a trivial change. I think at this point they have screamed so loudly for so long that back tracking would reveal them to be hypocritical in the extreme. To couch this whole debate as a rallying cry against centralized interests instead of a corporate power grab is completely absurdist.

zhoujianfu 9y ago
Well put and 100% correct in my opinion. I feel like everybody's starving and there are hundreds of free hamburgers sitting right in front of them and core is blocking everybody from grabbing them while yelling "Don't eat those or you'll all die of heart attacks some day!!!"
mmagin 9y ago
As an outsider, I find it especially amusing that cryptocurrencies are supposed to make it so that users don't have to live with the politics surrounding traditional currency.

pyroinferno 9y ago

Good, good. Bitcoin will fall, and eth will become king.

kristianp 9y ago

Here's part of the warning message on bitcointalk [1]: 1. Ensure that you have no BTC deposited with a Bitcoin bank or other trusted third-party before Aug 1. If there's no technical way for you to export the private keys for your BTC, then that BTC is at risk. Some Bitcoin banks may assure you that they'll definitely keep your BTC safe, but I absolutely wouldn't trust them. 2. Do not send transactions or trust received transactions starting 12 hours before Aug 1 at midnight UTC, and continue this until you hear the "all clear" from several trustworthy sources. For example, I will post a forum news item if everything is OK, or if everything is not OK and action is required. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2017191.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2017191.0

kanzure 9y ago

follow-up thread was posted over here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14788663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14788663