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Coinbase's handling of this is completely reasonable. Anyone can create an altcoin fork of Bitcoin at any time, and they can do it as many times as they want.
by nullc 9y ago
Coinbase's handling of this is completely reasonable.
Anyone can create an altcoin fork of Bitcoin at any time, and they can do it as many times as they want. Coinbase may not even know about it.
ABC isn't the first fork to award coins to existing Bitcoin users, there have been several others like Clams and bitcore (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0) (how deceptive these jerks are...).
In spite of the seriously short notice coinbase had done an admirable job taking a clear and consistent position and communicating it to the public. It's a position that can be applied to any further such events. In ABC's case they took serious bludgeoning just to get the most basic replay protection into place-- and they still have many unnecessary conflicts with Bitcoin: duplicate address types, duplicate p2p port, duplicate p2p magic, duplicate data dir... all making it unnecessarily complicated and risky for people who want to use their altcoin.
Consider if they went another way-- what about the next one? and the one after it? People could effectively flood them with them, a fork a week-- forks that contain malware backdoors that steal Bitcoin keys, forks that will never have more than a few dozen users. forks that are only publicly announced months after they split off (but pretend to have been public all along).. etc.
No one can reasonably keep up with that. If you want to chase some of these silly things, that is your decision-- one which you have the freedom to make by keeping your Bitcoin's in your custody. Expecting other people to deal with those potentially unbounded costs on your behalf wouldn't be reasonable.
- MichaelBurge 9y agoBCC is not actually a fork but is the original chain/software, isn't it? That could be an important distinction compared to these altcoins.
- gfody 9y agoit's a fork, the code is here: https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc the original client is here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
- MichaelBurge 9y agoI suppose there's actually 3 forks in scope: The Segwit chain that Coinbase is supporting, the big-blocks ABC chain that they are denouncing, and the original chain that nobody seems to want. And I think I heard rumors of a Segwit + 2MB blocks fork? Or are the Segwit chains completely irrelevant here?
- gfody 9y agothe third fork is https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin which combines segwit and large blocks, afaik they all support segwit - they just differ in how they reach consensus. I don't think anyone is pushing for no change since transaction fees and latency what they are it's pretty clear something has to change.
- nullc 9y ago> I suppose there's actually 3 forks in scope: No, segwit is an optional backwards compatible protocol extension that people can choose to use... not a fork. You can bridge an original bitcoin node onto the network using segwit and modulo segwit unrelated software bugs that just make it get stuck, it will reach consensus with the network fine.
- vancan1ty 9y agoWhile bitcoin abc is the main bitcoin cash implementation for now, the plan is to have multiple "independent development teams" for BCC [https://www.bitcoincash.org/ https://www.bitcoincash.org/]. It is true that BCC will be a continuation of the original chain, and it is also true that in some substantial sense bitcoin cash can be said to be a continuation of the original bitcoin blockchain and incentive model to a greater degree than bitcoin core will soon be, as bitcoin core moves over to segregated witness with a "block weight cap" rather than "block size cap". I therefore rate MichaelBurge's sentence "BCC is not actually a fork but is the original chain/software, isn't it?" as false (it is a fork), true (it is a continuation of the original chain), and true (it is a continuation of the original software).
- Atheros 9y agoNot only is it a fork of the software, it is a fork of the blockchain. Traditional alt-coins fork the software but start over with their own blockchain.
- nullc 9y agoMore than a few altcoins have started with another altcoin's blockchain. Litecoin is more popular but it's been done before with Bitcoin too. (taking the whole chain has some pretty serious disadvantages however).
- gressquel 9y agoSomeone ban nullc asap and delete this as its part of BCC vs BTC campaign. Same message has been posted on other pages such as https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q0odk/email_from_coinbase/dktud5q/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q0odk/email_from_...
- martinko 9y agoThe post is informative and pretty objective. I feel someone else here is a part of the 'campaign'.
- VMG 9y agoisn't "censorship" the main talking point of the BTC-detractors?
- gressquel 9y agothis isnt about censorship but automated spamming. If he had written an entire new comment it would be ok.
- yorwba 9y agoIt would have been nice if there had been some kind of indication of the cross-posting, but this looks more like simple copy-pasting than a spambot. HN voting can absolutely handle that. (Have you you noticed the recent spam campaign about oh so easy ways to make money working from home? Probably not, if you don't have showdead on.)
- nullc 9y agoMy comment wasn't made anywhere else on HN. :( (I also left an almost identical one on reddit on the same issue though.)
- jdc0589 9y ago> Coinbase's handling of this is completely reasonable. Aside from the timing of the announcement. A few days isn't enough warning for something like this, especially with how long it can take to withdraw.
- nullc 9y agoI don't think they could have done that much about the timing, aside from having a general policy announced in advance: Just a couple weeks ago this "UAHF" thing was something Bitmain saying they would only do if BIP148 resulted in a split chain (which seemed pretty unlikely).