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The dream lives on in Bitcoin Cash. Edited to provide additional information: - low fees ($0.01) to have your transaction confirmed in next block - zero conf

The dream lives on in Bitcoin Cash. Edited to provide additional information: - low fees ($0.01) to have your transaction confirmed in next block - zero confirmation transactions safe for most users - same pre-fork ledger - businesses are starting to integrate with the technology because it's usable again (e.g. yours.org)

lawlessone 9y ago
No that was just a scam to avoid the implementation of segwit and off chain transactions. Even satoshi(before you try to cite him) himself said off chain might be needed.
- snikeris 9y ago
  If Bitcoin Cash is still going strong in a year, with businesses continuing to build on it, would you still consider it a scam?
  - lawlessone 9y ago
    Yes i will, there are some other terrible coins still going(tron, IOTA).It's survival doesn't make it not a scam. Doge coin is still going even though the creator did it as a joke. Bitcoin cash has by forking from bitcoin itself also guaranteed it would have users as it gave everyone who had bitcoin some bitcoin cash. It's a clone of bitcoin with the brakes removed.
    - snikeris 9y ago
      What would change your mind about Bitcoin Cash being a scam? For me, it would be its value plummeting to near-zero. If no one values it or uses it for anything, I'll be convinced it was a scam. Now, your turn.
      - lawlessone 9y ago
        But just by being adopted and mined it can't go to zero. It's a scam because it was designed to keep all transactions on chain so miners would benefit from high fees(and they would be high if it replaced bitcoin) It was designed to avoid a fix that would prevent the use of asicboost. You're goalpost of a zero or near zero value is bad. Even fake art can be sold.
        ericb 9y ago
        The "purpose" of whoever started it is irrelevant, just as it is with Bitcoin core. It can be forked. It is an offering with a different approach to scaling. Nothing you described says "scam" to me. The only reason core promoters fight so hard against it is because it is threatening because it works!
        snikeris 9y ago
        I'm not a miner, but I want my transactions on chain. Also, I'm happy to pay a (reasonable) fee to miners to compensate them for the resources they spend in keeping the network secure for me.
        ago 9y ago
        How is it a scam to keep it working like it was intended to work? I did not buy into Bitcoin to hold it forever, I bought it to use it as cash. Therefore I do feel defrauded by the current developers, until just yesterday they advertised one thing on their website but delivered something different. I have kind of mixed feelings about removing ASIC boost. I do feel it is everyones right to innovate and get an advantage, then patent that advantage. It takes money to do that R&D, so it should be protected. Others can do so as well, or operate from countries where these patents are not respected. On the other hand, others have so far been unable to get their own advantages, so maybe it is time to hardfork (yes, hardfork, SegWit does not fix it, not until > 90% of transactions are using SegWit) to prevent getting this advantage.
      - ericb 9y ago
        snikeris, When you find that no evidence would convince the person you're arguing with, it is actually a good sign--It raises the probability that your opinion is correct! This scenario is very different than the introspection needed when you encounter someone rational and open minded with a different opinion.
    - JustinAiken 9y ago
      > It's a clone of bitcoin with the brakes removed. Actually... I like that, just phrased a little different - Bitcoin Cash - it's bitcoin with the parking break disengaged!
dantillberg 9y ago
(I downvoted the parent comment not because I believe it is wrong or without merit, but because it doesn't describe the why or the how.)
kneel 9y ago
Litecoin has cheap fees, expanded capacity, brand name recognition, widescale adoption, segwit, lightning network, competent developers, and upcoming features with NONE of the scandals surrounding bcash.
- ericb 9y ago
  Litecoin is philosophically a small-block currency. The moment the blocks fill up, your money will be trapped by high transaction fees in the same way that they would be on bitcoin core. Not to mention the creator sold his entire stash. That's a pretty clear sell signal--I would never develop around a dying open source project, so why would I trust my money to one.
- JustinAiken 9y ago
  > surrounding bcash ... if you have to result to namecalling, you'll probably a shill.
ericb 9y ago
The bitcoin innovations that work for a currency, but not for a store of value are moving to bitcoin cash. Colored coins, weak blocks for fast confirmations, scripting, graphene... There's a lot of dev work going on. I am 100% convinced that currency + store of value > store of value. The degree to which Lightning "fixes" anything is exactly the degree to which it is centralized. There's an anti-miner narrative that bitcoin core is selling, but in the end, the market will decide.
makomk 9y ago
Zero-confirmation transactions on Bitcoin Cash can't even be relied on if the sender, the receiver and all of the miners are trustworthy because transaction malleability can cause them to just vanish. The developers intentionally removed the proposed fix for malleability to break the Lightning Network, because they failed to realise it was actually a broader problem. This broke withdrawals for at least one exchange; their withdrawal transactions disappeared and had to be very carefully manually redone. (The reason supporters had to push zero-confirmation transactions so hard is because the original design had a flawed difficulty adjustment algorithm that led to block times over an hour a lot of the time, so the supposed benefit of being faster than Bitcoin fell apart the moment you needed even a single confirmation.)
- snikeris 9y ago
  I was under the impression that transaction malleability is more of an issue on the legacy chain. Where can I read more about the issues you mention?
  - ago 9y ago
    Have a look at my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16210897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16210897
- ago 9y ago
  Transaction malleability has nothing to do with the security properties of zero conf, it only allows you to change the signature of a transaction, not the contents. So if you malleated a transaction, you would still end up with a transaction paying the merchant, in no way vanishing like you describe. What does affect the security is if miners violate the first seen rule, which is not a consensus rule, to include transactions that were seen later but have higher fees into their blocks. This allows you to essentially replace a transaction by bribing a miner with a higher fee. Generally the risk of this is seen as low, generally lower than the risk of credit card fraud, so for low value transactions it is generally fine. Malleability breaking the withdrawals of an exchange is a problem with that exchange, not with Bitcoin Cash. As for developers removing the malleability fix (SegWit) to break the LN, that is just a plain lie. First, SegWit was removed because it is just an hack that can be achieved in much better ways. SegWit is such technical debt because it did in a soft fork what should have been done in a hard fork. Second, you can see on the development mailing list that fixing it has been discussed well, and a fix for third party malleability is actually already active. You can also see that nobody is against 2nd layer systems like Lightning Network, and it will be supported if and when it is actually useful. The EDA that was in place in the first 3 months was indeed a big mistake and has since been replaced with a well performing fast acting DAA, but it is not the reason people push for 0-conf. 0-conf was a pretty well used and working feature of BTC before the blocks first became full. It is only logical to use it again on a chain that does not intend to let its blocks become full.
vec 9y ago
Yeah, but the volatility is still a nonstarter. A quick glance at the price chart shows the price has dropped 50% in the past month. A longer view shows something like a 1,700% difference between the six month low and high. Meanwhile first-world fiat currencies consider it a bad year if they can't maintain a constant inflation rate between 2% and 3%. There's always going to be niche markets for people who can't use fiat currencies for one reason or another (international commerce, failed states, black markets, etc.), and there's probably going to be some number of hobbyists who want to transact in crypto as a political or technical end in itself. But why would the median consumer possibly want to migrate to a world where their real net worth could halve or double literally overnight, repeatedly, at any time, for reasons they can neither predict nor control?
- hndamien 9y ago
  The AUD against USD dropped close to 50% in a couple of weeks in 2008. It sucked having all of my wealth in AUD at that time. Recently a similar thing happened with BTC, but at least it was after a rapid gain. Diversification is the key. http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y
koonsolo 9y ago
Last week when I used BCH, it was slow as hell. 3rd gen tech is here, with instant transactions and 0 fees. Look at RaiBlocks and IOTA, these things make microtransactions a reality. I passed funds with RaiBlocks the other day, fast as hell, 0 fees. Try to beat that.
- ago 9y ago
  BCH for small transactions with 0-conf is not slow as hell. When you require confirmations a system like Bitcoin has a quite random time between blocks, but 10 minutes on average. IOTA has an absolutely unprofessional development team, doing things like saying critical security vulnerabilities are there on purpose so they can point it out when someone forks or saying that the network being unusable due to a DOS attack is fine because they can use it for testing. Don't forget the time they turned off the network for 2 days without any prior notice (yes, they can do that). I'm all for new technology, but Bitcoin is 9 year old proven technology at this point, while IOTA and RaiBlocks are both new and unproven. Let them mature a bit before suggesting people rely on them. Would be quite bad if someone turned off IOTA when you need your money, wouldn't it?
  - koonsolo 9y ago
    I was shifting both bitcoin and bitcoin cash from an old wallet. I didn't notice any real difference in transaction time. I agree with you that bitcoin derivatives (with blockchain) have proven themselves with a robust security implementation. But if you look at adoption, none of the cryptocurrencies really proved itself. Bitcoin was even dropped by some (such as Steam). And with the high transaction fees, you couldn't really blame them, it just makes no sense. I also agree with you that RaiBlocks hasn't proved itself yet in security and scaling. But in my opinion, instant and free transactions is a total game changer. If these technologies are able to stand, it's a total game changer for all cryptocurrencies that focus on fast transactions and low fees. That includes Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. As for IOTA, I consider that tech in alpha stage. They are not trying hard to make it usable, but it seems they are putting all their focus on trying to build up a standard for the industry. All the partnerships and relations they have going on make sense. Is it usable for end users? No. But RaiBlocks is. And instant feeless transactions indeed could have nice synergy with IOT. These are definitely interesting times. But I wish more focus would be put on applications and use cases than on the market cap of each coin.

lawlessone 9y ago

No that was just a scam to avoid the implementation of segwit and off chain transactions. Even satoshi(before you try to cite him) himself said off chain might be needed.

snikeris 9y ago
If Bitcoin Cash is still going strong in a year, with businesses continuing to build on it, would you still consider it a scam?
- lawlessone 9y ago
  Yes i will, there are some other terrible coins still going(tron, IOTA).It's survival doesn't make it not a scam. Doge coin is still going even though the creator did it as a joke. Bitcoin cash has by forking from bitcoin itself also guaranteed it would have users as it gave everyone who had bitcoin some bitcoin cash. It's a clone of bitcoin with the brakes removed.
  - snikeris 9y ago
    What would change your mind about Bitcoin Cash being a scam? For me, it would be its value plummeting to near-zero. If no one values it or uses it for anything, I'll be convinced it was a scam. Now, your turn.
    - lawlessone 9y ago
      But just by being adopted and mined it can't go to zero. It's a scam because it was designed to keep all transactions on chain so miners would benefit from high fees(and they would be high if it replaced bitcoin) It was designed to avoid a fix that would prevent the use of asicboost. You're goalpost of a zero or near zero value is bad. Even fake art can be sold.
      - ericb 9y ago
        The "purpose" of whoever started it is irrelevant, just as it is with Bitcoin core. It can be forked. It is an offering with a different approach to scaling. Nothing you described says "scam" to me. The only reason core promoters fight so hard against it is because it is threatening because it works!
      - snikeris 9y ago
        I'm not a miner, but I want my transactions on chain. Also, I'm happy to pay a (reasonable) fee to miners to compensate them for the resources they spend in keeping the network secure for me.
      - ago 9y ago
        How is it a scam to keep it working like it was intended to work? I did not buy into Bitcoin to hold it forever, I bought it to use it as cash. Therefore I do feel defrauded by the current developers, until just yesterday they advertised one thing on their website but delivered something different. I have kind of mixed feelings about removing ASIC boost. I do feel it is everyones right to innovate and get an advantage, then patent that advantage. It takes money to do that R&D, so it should be protected. Others can do so as well, or operate from countries where these patents are not respected. On the other hand, others have so far been unable to get their own advantages, so maybe it is time to hardfork (yes, hardfork, SegWit does not fix it, not until > 90% of transactions are using SegWit) to prevent getting this advantage.
    - ericb 9y ago
      snikeris, When you find that no evidence would convince the person you're arguing with, it is actually a good sign--It raises the probability that your opinion is correct! This scenario is very different than the introspection needed when you encounter someone rational and open minded with a different opinion.
  - JustinAiken 9y ago
    > It's a clone of bitcoin with the brakes removed. Actually... I like that, just phrased a little different - Bitcoin Cash - it's bitcoin with the parking break disengaged!

dantillberg 9y ago

(I downvoted the parent comment not because I believe it is wrong or without merit, but because it doesn't describe the why or the how.)

kneel 9y ago

Litecoin has cheap fees, expanded capacity, brand name recognition, widescale adoption, segwit, lightning network, competent developers, and upcoming features with NONE of the scandals surrounding bcash.

ericb 9y ago
Litecoin is philosophically a small-block currency. The moment the blocks fill up, your money will be trapped by high transaction fees in the same way that they would be on bitcoin core. Not to mention the creator sold his entire stash. That's a pretty clear sell signal--I would never develop around a dying open source project, so why would I trust my money to one.
JustinAiken 9y ago
> surrounding bcash ... if you have to result to namecalling, you'll probably a shill.

ericb 9y ago

The bitcoin innovations that work for a currency, but not for a store of value are moving to bitcoin cash. Colored coins, weak blocks for fast confirmations, scripting, graphene... There's a lot of dev work going on. I am 100% convinced that currency + store of value > store of value. The degree to which Lightning "fixes" anything is exactly the degree to which it is centralized. There's an anti-miner narrative that bitcoin core is selling, but in the end, the market will decide.

makomk 9y ago

Zero-confirmation transactions on Bitcoin Cash can't even be relied on if the sender, the receiver and all of the miners are trustworthy because transaction malleability can cause them to just vanish. The developers intentionally removed the proposed fix for malleability to break the Lightning Network, because they failed to realise it was actually a broader problem. This broke withdrawals for at least one exchange; their withdrawal transactions disappeared and had to be very carefully manually redone. (The reason supporters had to push zero-confirmation transactions so hard is because the original design had a flawed difficulty adjustment algorithm that led to block times over an hour a lot of the time, so the supposed benefit of being faster than Bitcoin fell apart the moment you needed even a single confirmation.)

snikeris 9y ago
I was under the impression that transaction malleability is more of an issue on the legacy chain. Where can I read more about the issues you mention?
- ago 9y ago
  Have a look at my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16210897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16210897
ago 9y ago
Transaction malleability has nothing to do with the security properties of zero conf, it only allows you to change the signature of a transaction, not the contents. So if you malleated a transaction, you would still end up with a transaction paying the merchant, in no way vanishing like you describe. What does affect the security is if miners violate the first seen rule, which is not a consensus rule, to include transactions that were seen later but have higher fees into their blocks. This allows you to essentially replace a transaction by bribing a miner with a higher fee. Generally the risk of this is seen as low, generally lower than the risk of credit card fraud, so for low value transactions it is generally fine. Malleability breaking the withdrawals of an exchange is a problem with that exchange, not with Bitcoin Cash. As for developers removing the malleability fix (SegWit) to break the LN, that is just a plain lie. First, SegWit was removed because it is just an hack that can be achieved in much better ways. SegWit is such technical debt because it did in a soft fork what should have been done in a hard fork. Second, you can see on the development mailing list that fixing it has been discussed well, and a fix for third party malleability is actually already active. You can also see that nobody is against 2nd layer systems like Lightning Network, and it will be supported if and when it is actually useful. The EDA that was in place in the first 3 months was indeed a big mistake and has since been replaced with a well performing fast acting DAA, but it is not the reason people push for 0-conf. 0-conf was a pretty well used and working feature of BTC before the blocks first became full. It is only logical to use it again on a chain that does not intend to let its blocks become full.

vec 9y ago

Yeah, but the volatility is still a nonstarter. A quick glance at the price chart shows the price has dropped 50% in the past month. A longer view shows something like a 1,700% difference between the six month low and high. Meanwhile first-world fiat currencies consider it a bad year if they can't maintain a constant inflation rate between 2% and 3%. There's always going to be niche markets for people who can't use fiat currencies for one reason or another (international commerce, failed states, black markets, etc.), and there's probably going to be some number of hobbyists who want to transact in crypto as a political or technical end in itself. But why would the median consumer possibly want to migrate to a world where their real net worth could halve or double literally overnight, repeatedly, at any time, for reasons they can neither predict nor control?

hndamien 9y ago
The AUD against USD dropped close to 50% in a couple of weeks in 2008. It sucked having all of my wealth in AUD at that time. Recently a similar thing happened with BTC, but at least it was after a rapid gain. Diversification is the key. http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD&view=10Y

koonsolo 9y ago

Last week when I used BCH, it was slow as hell. 3rd gen tech is here, with instant transactions and 0 fees. Look at RaiBlocks and IOTA, these things make microtransactions a reality. I passed funds with RaiBlocks the other day, fast as hell, 0 fees. Try to beat that.

ago 9y ago
BCH for small transactions with 0-conf is not slow as hell. When you require confirmations a system like Bitcoin has a quite random time between blocks, but 10 minutes on average. IOTA has an absolutely unprofessional development team, doing things like saying critical security vulnerabilities are there on purpose so they can point it out when someone forks or saying that the network being unusable due to a DOS attack is fine because they can use it for testing. Don't forget the time they turned off the network for 2 days without any prior notice (yes, they can do that). I'm all for new technology, but Bitcoin is 9 year old proven technology at this point, while IOTA and RaiBlocks are both new and unproven. Let them mature a bit before suggesting people rely on them. Would be quite bad if someone turned off IOTA when you need your money, wouldn't it?
- koonsolo 9y ago
  I was shifting both bitcoin and bitcoin cash from an old wallet. I didn't notice any real difference in transaction time. I agree with you that bitcoin derivatives (with blockchain) have proven themselves with a robust security implementation. But if you look at adoption, none of the cryptocurrencies really proved itself. Bitcoin was even dropped by some (such as Steam). And with the high transaction fees, you couldn't really blame them, it just makes no sense. I also agree with you that RaiBlocks hasn't proved itself yet in security and scaling. But in my opinion, instant and free transactions is a total game changer. If these technologies are able to stand, it's a total game changer for all cryptocurrencies that focus on fast transactions and low fees. That includes Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. As for IOTA, I consider that tech in alpha stage. They are not trying hard to make it usable, but it seems they are putting all their focus on trying to build up a standard for the industry. All the partnerships and relations they have going on make sense. Is it usable for end users? No. But RaiBlocks is. And instant feeless transactions indeed could have nice synergy with IOT. These are definitely interesting times. But I wish more focus would be put on applications and use cases than on the market cap of each coin.