7 ms·

What I love about all this is that it is almost entirely developed by the community, without any central authority preventing it from going in any particular di

by tw1010 9y ago

What I love about all this is that it is almost entirely developed by the community, without any central authority preventing it from going in any particular direction. (There might be powerful players incentivizing certain branches, but that has limited effect for a thing like this.) So despite what critics say (and I admit to agreeing with them on some points), it just feels like this whole thing has such a momentum and enthusiasm behind it that something really cool will come out of it within 5-10 years, no matter what problems people point out about it at the moment.

nosuchthing 9y ago
Wait what? Blockstream's business model depends on selling services to enterprises, that's why they keep attempting to prevent upgrades to the blocksize, to the detriment of high fees and a clogged network. The paper here is written by a single member employed by Blockstream.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  bitmain blocked the blocksize increase of segwit for almost a year. Take it up with them.
- grubles 9y ago
  The block size limit has been increased for a number of months now, which was supported by everyone at Blockstream AFAIK. >to the detriment of high fees and a clogged network. Sigh. It is astonishingly cheap to spend bitcoin right now. In fact, I paid the absolute minimum fee (1000 satoshis, or a handful of cents) the other day.
  - nsomaru 9y ago
    How long did your payment take to clear?
    - once_inc 9y ago
      Mine was 5 sat/byte. 3 conf in 30min.
  - uncletammy 9y ago
    > It is astonishingly cheap to spend bitcoin right now. Yep, that's what happens when demand decreases for a good or service. Someone put it very well the other day when they said "The only winners in the scaling debate has been alt coins"
    - grubles 9y ago
      When the demand for a good increases, the price increases - which is why currently a single bitcoin goes for ~$6,400.
      - nosuchthing 9y ago
        Well, hardly anyone is using it for anything other than speculating it might be useful one day. Everyone buys and lets the coins sit and for some reason people think this is a good useful thing to do? Also it's quiet interesting that every major price increase, and nose dive has been associated with multi-million dollar margin trading on Bitfinix via Tether markets (which are suspected to be created out of thin air). If the allegations are true, Bitcoin's price is mostly the result of a market controlled by a single exchange, who now holds a significant percentage of the supply. https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest
        grubles 9y ago
        It's perfectly reasonable to simply buy bitcoin and sit on it, if only for the reason it acts as a store of value relative to unstable government currency (eg. Venezuela, Zimbabwe). The Bitfinex conspiracy is fun and entertaining to read about but more likely than not the guy probably sold early and is trying to affect the markets with FUD.
        nosuchthing 9y ago
        The store of value is a myth, as the value requires buyers on the markets. The unregulated exchanges are able to act in fractional reserve as they're not required to audit their deposits. The exchanges are also able, and have been wash trading, front running, and spoofing orders, creating a false sense of volume and activity. https://i.imgur.com/ZwQ63OE.png https://i.imgur.com/ZwQ63OE.png Transaction volume took a cliff dive once Chinese regulators forced exchanges to charge per transaction. Bitcoins are produced for a nominal value, it's not magic or limited in supply, it's reproducible software. The same service is offered by many other blockchain networks.
deftnerd 9y ago
This statement confuses me since Blockstream has positioned itself to be the central authority. They seem to be attempting to remove power from users, businesses, and miners in order to centralize and consolidate power so they are the only people who make decisions regarding Bitcoin. Effectively, a company that's only been around for a few years has been attempting to put itself into a monopoly controlling position of a 100-billion dollar commodity.
- hudon 9y ago
  https://i.redd.it/q0334spe5fny.png https://i.redd.it/q0334spe5fny.png 2 out of the top 10 committers work for Blockstream (matt works at Chaincode Labs now). Care to revisit your conspiracy? Or is something wrong with the data?
  - tomglynch 9y ago
    There's 3.
    - hudon 9y ago
      re-read my comment please
  - ericb 9y ago
    They've managed to kick or drive out anyone who has disagreed, so yeah, the sheep that are left are not problematic and produce only the appropriate agreeable noises. Garzik, Hearn, Andresen. Gone.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - nullc 9y ago
      This is simply untrue, and not a claim that even any of those people have had the audacity to make. The extent of Hearn's involvement in the project was a couple commits in 2013 and 2014. Gavin-- once a fairly active and appreciated contributor-- sunsetted himself years before, primarily to focus on creating the "Bitcoin Foundation" though he later alienated himself completely after the foundation discredited itself and largely imploded with rather abusive public attacks ("should be fired") and by vigorously backing a pretty obvious scammer. But in spite the bad blood there, you don't see support for your conspiracy theories -- because there really just isn't any substance to them. If you look at active project competition most of the same people who are most active today have been most active pretty much all along: /----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Non-merge commits in Bitcoin project git | 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 All | Active months |----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Wladimir 1 349 159 115 384 193 197 93 1491 | 73 |Pieter 0 51 227 111 170 89 156 112 916 | 75 |Matt 0 101 71 38 25 54 100 143 532 | 66 |Gavin 17 152 139 112 47 17 1 2 487 | 61 |Garzik 0 38 106 35 48 7 0 0 234 | 36 |Hearn 0 0 1 7 2 1 0 0 11 | 8 ...

by tw1010 9y ago

nosuchthing 9y ago

Wait what? Blockstream's business model depends on selling services to enterprises, that's why they keep attempting to prevent upgrades to the blocksize, to the detriment of high fees and a clogged network. The paper here is written by a single member employed by Blockstream.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
bitmain blocked the blocksize increase of segwit for almost a year. Take it up with them.
grubles 9y ago
The block size limit has been increased for a number of months now, which was supported by everyone at Blockstream AFAIK. >to the detriment of high fees and a clogged network. Sigh. It is astonishingly cheap to spend bitcoin right now. In fact, I paid the absolute minimum fee (1000 satoshis, or a handful of cents) the other day.
- nsomaru 9y ago
  How long did your payment take to clear?
  - once_inc 9y ago
    Mine was 5 sat/byte. 3 conf in 30min.
- uncletammy 9y ago
  > It is astonishingly cheap to spend bitcoin right now. Yep, that's what happens when demand decreases for a good or service. Someone put it very well the other day when they said "The only winners in the scaling debate has been alt coins"
  - grubles 9y ago
    When the demand for a good increases, the price increases - which is why currently a single bitcoin goes for ~$6,400.
    - nosuchthing 9y ago
      Well, hardly anyone is using it for anything other than speculating it might be useful one day. Everyone buys and lets the coins sit and for some reason people think this is a good useful thing to do? Also it's quiet interesting that every major price increase, and nose dive has been associated with multi-million dollar margin trading on Bitfinix via Tether markets (which are suspected to be created out of thin air). If the allegations are true, Bitcoin's price is mostly the result of a market controlled by a single exchange, who now holds a significant percentage of the supply. https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/latest
      - grubles 9y ago
        It's perfectly reasonable to simply buy bitcoin and sit on it, if only for the reason it acts as a store of value relative to unstable government currency (eg. Venezuela, Zimbabwe). The Bitfinex conspiracy is fun and entertaining to read about but more likely than not the guy probably sold early and is trying to affect the markets with FUD.
        nosuchthing 9y ago
        The store of value is a myth, as the value requires buyers on the markets. The unregulated exchanges are able to act in fractional reserve as they're not required to audit their deposits. The exchanges are also able, and have been wash trading, front running, and spoofing orders, creating a false sense of volume and activity. https://i.imgur.com/ZwQ63OE.png https://i.imgur.com/ZwQ63OE.png Transaction volume took a cliff dive once Chinese regulators forced exchanges to charge per transaction. Bitcoins are produced for a nominal value, it's not magic or limited in supply, it's reproducible software. The same service is offered by many other blockchain networks.

deftnerd 9y ago

This statement confuses me since Blockstream has positioned itself to be the central authority. They seem to be attempting to remove power from users, businesses, and miners in order to centralize and consolidate power so they are the only people who make decisions regarding Bitcoin. Effectively, a company that's only been around for a few years has been attempting to put itself into a monopoly controlling position of a 100-billion dollar commodity.

hudon 9y ago
https://i.redd.it/q0334spe5fny.png https://i.redd.it/q0334spe5fny.png 2 out of the top 10 committers work for Blockstream (matt works at Chaincode Labs now). Care to revisit your conspiracy? Or is something wrong with the data?
- tomglynch 9y ago
  There's 3.
  - hudon 9y ago
    re-read my comment please
- ericb 9y ago
  They've managed to kick or drive out anyone who has disagreed, so yeah, the sheep that are left are not problematic and produce only the appropriate agreeable noises. Garzik, Hearn, Andresen. Gone.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nullc 9y ago
    This is simply untrue, and not a claim that even any of those people have had the audacity to make. The extent of Hearn's involvement in the project was a couple commits in 2013 and 2014. Gavin-- once a fairly active and appreciated contributor-- sunsetted himself years before, primarily to focus on creating the "Bitcoin Foundation" though he later alienated himself completely after the foundation discredited itself and largely imploded with rather abusive public attacks ("should be fired") and by vigorously backing a pretty obvious scammer. But in spite the bad blood there, you don't see support for your conspiracy theories -- because there really just isn't any substance to them. If you look at active project competition most of the same people who are most active today have been most active pretty much all along: /----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Non-merge commits in Bitcoin project git | 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 All | Active months |----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Wladimir 1 349 159 115 384 193 197 93 1491 | 73 |Pieter 0 51 227 111 170 89 156 112 916 | 75 |Matt 0 101 71 38 25 54 100 143 532 | 66 |Gavin 17 152 139 112 47 17 1 2 487 | 61 |Garzik 0 38 106 35 48 7 0 0 234 | 36 |Hearn 0 0 1 7 2 1 0 0 11 | 8 ...