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Looks like that article was written on the 23rd of December. That's the same time period around which Coinbase abruptly released Bcash. That time period was a

Looks like that article was written on the 23rd of December. That's the same time period around which Coinbase abruptly released Bcash. That time period was a barrage of negative kerfuffles for them. Historically Coinbase/GDAX has enjoyed "inflated" BTC/USD prices because of their trustworthiness. Contrast with Bitfinex which does not serve US customers, has been hacked in the past, and is (last I heard) in debt from said hack. Or contrast with any of the other exchanges which are either questionable or located outside the U.S. Gemini is the only other state-side trustworthy exchange besides them. (I say inflated, but it's probably more appropriate to say that the price is a discount on all other exchanges; a discount which accounts for the counterparty risk and difficulty moving USD in/out of them.) The late December fiascos that Coinbase suffered has likely shaken that sense of trust, at least in the short-term, resulting in both reduced trading volume and reduced prices relative to other exchanges. So the question is, which theory is more likely? That a single trading bot has complete control over Bitcoin's price and its discovery has resulted in the dismantlement of the program? Or that traders are reacting to the news of "insider trading" by Coinbase employee's? Or maybe it's as simple as being the end of December. The winter holidays slow down markets.

__blockcipher__ 9y ago
Serious question: Why does hackernews seem to be biased towards BTC over BCH? In my opinion, any honest examination of the tradeoffs between block size, orphan block rate, cost to run a non-mining node (which do not contribute to network security except indirectly via serving SPV wallets), and mining fees, will show that a 1-1.7MB block size limit is just too low for current tx volumes. The current BTC network is unusable due to the massive fees. Even worse, those who actually used the currency (sorry, I mean store of value?) get penalized for having so many UTXOs. UTXOs directly increase the size in bytes of the transaction, increasing the fees you pay. I've paid probably an average of $30 fees over the last 2 months, with the highest fee being $100 on a $4000 transaction (fee is related to size in bytes, not dollar value transmitted, I'm giving those numbers just to show how ridiculous it is) EDIT: Also worth mentioning that the Coinbase CEO does not like blockstream because they censored Brian Armstrong (the CEO) for supporting BIP 101. Bitcoin Core has used a lot of heavy handed and very sketchy tactics to wrest control of the ecosystem in Satoshi's absence. They view themselves as the sole guardians of "consensus".
- davej 9y ago
  Increasing block size is not a sustainable solution for scaling transactions. Transaction fees are too high and BTC should move to 2MB as a short-term fix but the long-term fix is off-chain solutions like Lightning.
  - AboutTheWhisles 9y ago
    The Bitcoin Unlimited team has tested 1 GB blocks and presented their research and findings at conferences already. That being said, the least sustainable solution is to keep blocks at 1 MB for btc. The core group have ousted and alienated everyone who made bitcoin work originally. The fees have priced out everyone who created the ecosystem originally. It is crystal clear to anyone even slightly paying attention that they have done nothing but lie and censor. If you are getting all your information from /r/bitcoin you should know that it is censored into oblivion and has been nothing but propaganda for years now. Bigger blocks obviously work and the 'lighting network' not only has raises enormous questions about how it can work, it has been promised as just around the corner for multiple years now.
    - gizmo686 9y ago
      The Bitcoin Unlimited team tested on a tiny network ; ~6 miners with a highly simplified set of transactions that made some of the statistics collected so meaningless that they explicitly left them out of the talk. Under these conditions, they found that 1GB was the point where the network broke under its own weight [0]. If you were to run the full sized bitcoin network, you would likely see problems much sooner than 1GB. As far as I recall, they did not even address the centralization argument (eg. the network may "work", but give a disproportionate advantage to large miners). [0] This actually happened a couple of times earlier, but those were fixable with straightforward software optimizations.
      - makomk 9y ago
        Apparently we're already seeing block size increases give disproportionate advantage to large miners on Ethereum, which allows miner voting on block size similar to Bitcoin Unlimited's proposal and is processing the most transactions out of all the major coins, at much smaller transaction rates than that: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7pfshh/why_is_8m_gas_causing_so_many_uncles/dsh12cs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7pfshh/why_is_8m_... (Ethereum probably isn't as highly optimized as Bitcoin though.)
JeremyBanks 9y ago
*Bitcoin Cash, not BCash. If you're not Satoshi, don't try to enforce an imaginary trademark. It looks petty and detracts from serious arguments.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  it's a scam
  - JeremyBanks 9y ago
    and BitCoin Core is corrupt and broken. Pick your poison.

__blockcipher__ 9y ago

Serious question: Why does hackernews seem to be biased towards BTC over BCH? In my opinion, any honest examination of the tradeoffs between block size, orphan block rate, cost to run a non-mining node (which do not contribute to network security except indirectly via serving SPV wallets), and mining fees, will show that a 1-1.7MB block size limit is just too low for current tx volumes. The current BTC network is unusable due to the massive fees. Even worse, those who actually used the currency (sorry, I mean store of value?) get penalized for having so many UTXOs. UTXOs directly increase the size in bytes of the transaction, increasing the fees you pay. I've paid probably an average of $30 fees over the last 2 months, with the highest fee being $100 on a $4000 transaction (fee is related to size in bytes, not dollar value transmitted, I'm giving those numbers just to show how ridiculous it is) EDIT: Also worth mentioning that the Coinbase CEO does not like blockstream because they censored Brian Armstrong (the CEO) for supporting BIP 101. Bitcoin Core has used a lot of heavy handed and very sketchy tactics to wrest control of the ecosystem in Satoshi's absence. They view themselves as the sole guardians of "consensus".

davej 9y ago
Increasing block size is not a sustainable solution for scaling transactions. Transaction fees are too high and BTC should move to 2MB as a short-term fix but the long-term fix is off-chain solutions like Lightning.
- AboutTheWhisles 9y ago
  The Bitcoin Unlimited team has tested 1 GB blocks and presented their research and findings at conferences already. That being said, the least sustainable solution is to keep blocks at 1 MB for btc. The core group have ousted and alienated everyone who made bitcoin work originally. The fees have priced out everyone who created the ecosystem originally. It is crystal clear to anyone even slightly paying attention that they have done nothing but lie and censor. If you are getting all your information from /r/bitcoin you should know that it is censored into oblivion and has been nothing but propaganda for years now. Bigger blocks obviously work and the 'lighting network' not only has raises enormous questions about how it can work, it has been promised as just around the corner for multiple years now.
  - gizmo686 9y ago
    The Bitcoin Unlimited team tested on a tiny network ; ~6 miners with a highly simplified set of transactions that made some of the statistics collected so meaningless that they explicitly left them out of the talk. Under these conditions, they found that 1GB was the point where the network broke under its own weight [0]. If you were to run the full sized bitcoin network, you would likely see problems much sooner than 1GB. As far as I recall, they did not even address the centralization argument (eg. the network may "work", but give a disproportionate advantage to large miners). [0] This actually happened a couple of times earlier, but those were fixable with straightforward software optimizations.
    - makomk 9y ago
      Apparently we're already seeing block size increases give disproportionate advantage to large miners on Ethereum, which allows miner voting on block size similar to Bitcoin Unlimited's proposal and is processing the most transactions out of all the major coins, at much smaller transaction rates than that: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7pfshh/why_is_8m_gas_causing_so_many_uncles/dsh12cs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7pfshh/why_is_8m_... (Ethereum probably isn't as highly optimized as Bitcoin though.)

JeremyBanks 9y ago

*Bitcoin Cash, not BCash. If you're not Satoshi, don't try to enforce an imaginary trademark. It looks petty and detracts from serious arguments.

lawlessone 9y ago
it's a scam
- JeremyBanks 9y ago
  and BitCoin Core is corrupt and broken. Pick your poison.