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From my experience in the community years ago, Bitcoin Core was a very insidious group of people that seized control of Bitcoin from within, obtained control of

From my experience in the community years ago, Bitcoin Core was a very insidious group of people that seized control of Bitcoin from within, obtained control of the Bitcoin subreddit and started banning anyone with even the most reasonable objections. They started promulgating this absurd notion that Bitcoin was a "store of value" exclusively: that is to say, was not intended to be "peer to peer electronic cash" (as Satoshi obviously intended) and that its value was purely related to "how much the other guy was willing to pay for your Bitcoin". So they turned it into this purely speculative thing. The whole fallacy of the "store of value" thing is two-fold: (1) Bitcoin's success and utility as a currency gives it a stable point to base its value around. For example, the value would be related to the net amount of transactions occurring (on the darknet usually) and the velocity of money, which would create a sort of natural equilibrium price where people are buying bitcoin as they need it, rather than hodling it to speculate. (2) Bitcoin, like any asset, is a store of value, but its ability to store value is the same whether it's worth $.0001 per coin or $40,000 per coin. So they basically turned it into a purely speculative instrument. --- The takeover of Bitcoin from within was a big red-pill moment for me. It was an attack vector I should have seen coming but didn't. I strongly belief that any cryptocurrency community where 99% of users are speculators who view the thing as a stock ticker and nothing more, basically dooms a cryptocurrency to failure. Anyway, Bitcoin Core as a whole and Blockstream as a company are very malicious actors who destroyed the beauty and elegance of Bitcoin so that they could build a company around exploiting the delta between what the tx fees should be and what they were. And beyond the unjustifiable censorship / suppression, they advanced tons of bogus arguments such as the notion that increasing the block size would ruin the decentralization of the bitcoin network. --- Oh, and lastly there will be a great need for public blockchain cryptos like Bitcoin: for example, if I donate to a non-profit I'd want all their transactions to be publicly viewable. But for normal usage-as-a-currency, I am a huge believer in XMR (monero), which masks who you're sending money to, how much money you sent, and how much money you have. It also has a lot of neat tech like adaptive block size limits, etc that avoided the transaction fee debacle of BTC.

kordlessagain 6y ago
Lots of "they" in there and very little substantive evidence of who "they" actually are and what actions were connected to other "theys" involved. I'm not saying there isn't a group that is in tighter control of the codebase, but given the code they produce is independent of the actual data (the blockchain) I'm ok with that as long as others audit their work and then talk about it publicly (which they do): https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1351855414103715842/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/135185541410371584.... Keep in mind that some developers who disagreed with other developers ends up creating a fork. Bitcoin's "fiat" value is pretty much a speculative/opinionated/consensus of belief thing, by nature. This is really no different than the fed saying these 100,000 things are worth this much in dollars. It's an opinion based in observation, but still an opinion, albeit a collective one. The value of the Bitcoin network itself to provide a wide range of authentication and payment integrations is quite high and a technology potential for changing markets. That is only valuable if it is found long term to be a secure store of integer values.
- dylkil 6y ago
  >Lots of "they" in there and very little substantive evidence of who "they" actually are and what actions were connected to other "theys" involved. This [1] is a good recap of what happened [1]https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-timeline-6108081dbada https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-ti...
jonny_eh 6y ago
I wonder if this is because BTC's use as currency has definitively failed, and is now being used as an elaborate ponzi scheme to extract money from investors.
- dylkil 6y ago
  The failure to raise the block size limit is the very reason bitcoin has failed as a currency. The main people against against raising the block size limit were blockstream and bitcoin core devs. A competing client to Bitcoin core which supported a block size increase was Bitcoin XT. At one stage it had 50% of the market share, until nodes running XT started getting DDoS'd. Then the censorship began, any posts about bitcoin XT and block size limit increase were banned from bitcointalk and r/bitcoin. [1] [1] https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-timeline-6108081dbada https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-ti...
  - CraigRood 6y ago
    Block size argument has absolutely no relation to Bitcoin failing as a currency. Block size is some weird inside baseball argument that has little real world validity. Truth is, Bitcoin was never in a position to even fail, because it never succeeded in being a currency. Bitcoin only really got any attention because of Silkroad. Without the darkweb market place Bitcoin would be a fun little internet toy. You can see this reasoning today in chains like Bitcoin Cash, these are cheaper, these do have larger blocks, but they have nowhere near the amount of currency transactions to legitimately call it a currency. These chains don't even pull in any extra load when Bitcoin fees start to creep up. XT is not really worth talking about. It ended up being a failed power grab. BIP101 failed because both sides failed to work together, instead one side got upset and created a hard fork at the next opportunity. Then attempted to call themselves Bitcoin, knowing full well they didn't have the hash rate and subsequent proof of work.
    - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
      > Bitcoin only really got any attention because of Silkroad You just refuted your own argument. Bitcoin got attention because of its utility as a currency, in this case for illicit drug purchases. Now as soon as I have to pay an $80 fee, it ceases to be useful as a currency (except ironically for illegal drugs, if you had no other option - which is not the case btw because you can just use monero or bitcoin cash - some users would still pay a 50% fee to get their illegal drugs) > but they have nowhere near the amount of currency transactions to legitimately call it a currency What the hell is your definition of currency? A currency is whatever people use as a currency, and by that definition BCH or what have you is absolutely a currency. And fortunately you can send a transaction on-chain for 1 satoshi per byte, instead of having to use a stupid side chain / lightning network pseudo-solution > instead one side got upset and created a hard fork at the next opportunity. Then attempted to call themselves Bitcoin, knowing full well they didn't have the hash rate and subsequent proof of work. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works. Within a protocol, the "real" chain is the longest chain. But when a hard fork occurs it splits into two different universes, where BCH people don't recognize BTC as valid and vice versa. Frankly the software ignorance of so many shows when they discuss this topic of forking. It's worth nothing that the "soft fork" vs "hard fork" distinction, while somewhat real, is part of the whole Bitcoin Core propaganda belief system; they believe that there must be some arbitrary "legitimacy" to a hard fork (where legitimacy is defined as who can shout the loudest after having conveniently censored all the sane people out of the room).
rlt 6y ago
I’m not ideological about this, but I don’t understand how it’s not obvious to anyone technical that Bitcoin can’t simply keep increasing block size to meet global/mainstream demand for payments without eventually sacrificing decentralization, which is the only characteristic of Bitcoin that makes it valuable. Sure, doubling the block size a few times would likely be fine, so Bitcoin may be overly conservative right now, but I firmly believe any long term solution will require some form of “layer 2” for payments.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  It's true that long term adoption will likely require "layer 2" solutions, but it's the worst form of "premature optimisation" to deliberately limit "layer 1" and force users into a single "official" proposed solution. A better approach would have been to let the block size scale in line with average connection speeds and storage capacities (per dollar), and let multiple competing groups implement different "layer 2" approaches that users can opt in to.
- tromp 6y ago
  Without a backlog of high fee paying transactions, Bitcoin mining becomes unstable in the long term when block subsidy dwindles to insignificance, as discussed at [1]. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5306354.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5306354.0
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    This issue resolves itself. Miners will refuse to uptake transactions into blocks that pay insufficient fees. There's no need to arbitrarily force $80+ transaction fees. As a review for anyone reading, miners are compensated via the block reward - a direct grant of Bitcoin to the miner - as well as transaction fees for any transactions they decide to include in their block. (The person who mines the block gets to unilaterally decide which transactions go in the block; functionally this means they just sort in descending order of $/kb and include as many as they can)
  - Paul-E 6y ago
    The paper that relies on turns out to have some inaccurate assumptions. The paper assumes that miners can flip their hardware on/off at essentially instantaneous intervals. The assume this to argue that miners will strategically turn their hardware off when the expected value of mining a block drops below the cost of power. It turns out that many of the big miners have long term contracts with power companies to consumer power; they wouldn't save money by turning their hardware off for short periods of time. Power companies like this arrangement because it lets them predict demand better, and miners like it because they get "bulk rates" on electricity for being predictable in their consumption. The arrangement falls apart when miners turn their hardware on and off.
gruez 6y ago
>But for normal usage-as-a-currency, I am a huge believer in XMR (monero), which masks who you're sending money to There was a talk[1] a few years ago that basically argued that this property only really holds if you look at individual transactions in isolation. It basically boils down to: if you make one transaction to a darknet market, it's impossible to know whether you were actually sending to a darknet market, or whether that was just a decoy transaction. However, if you make repeated transactions to a darknet market, the chances that all of your transactions had a darknet market decoy approaches zero, and you'll be considered suspicious. At that point the police can get a warrant to search your house, or put surveillance on you so they can catch you slipping up irl. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3EbSKDA3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3EbSKDA3o core argument starts at around 10 minutes.
- tromp 6y ago
  That is a weakness of decoy based systems. This chart [1] shows how various blockchain designs offer different tradeoffs in privacy leaks versus scalability. [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart

kordlessagain 6y ago

Lots of "they" in there and very little substantive evidence of who "they" actually are and what actions were connected to other "theys" involved. I'm not saying there isn't a group that is in tighter control of the codebase, but given the code they produce is independent of the actual data (the blockchain) I'm ok with that as long as others audit their work and then talk about it publicly (which they do): https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1351855414103715842/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/135185541410371584.... Keep in mind that some developers who disagreed with other developers ends up creating a fork. Bitcoin's "fiat" value is pretty much a speculative/opinionated/consensus of belief thing, by nature. This is really no different than the fed saying these 100,000 things are worth this much in dollars. It's an opinion based in observation, but still an opinion, albeit a collective one. The value of the Bitcoin network itself to provide a wide range of authentication and payment integrations is quite high and a technology potential for changing markets. That is only valuable if it is found long term to be a secure store of integer values.

dylkil 6y ago
>Lots of "they" in there and very little substantive evidence of who "they" actually are and what actions were connected to other "theys" involved. This [1] is a good recap of what happened [1]https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-timeline-6108081dbada https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-ti...

jonny_eh 6y ago

I wonder if this is because BTC's use as currency has definitively failed, and is now being used as an elaborate ponzi scheme to extract money from investors.

dylkil 6y ago
The failure to raise the block size limit is the very reason bitcoin has failed as a currency. The main people against against raising the block size limit were blockstream and bitcoin core devs. A competing client to Bitcoin core which supported a block size increase was Bitcoin XT. At one stage it had 50% of the market share, until nodes running XT started getting DDoS'd. Then the censorship began, any posts about bitcoin XT and block size limit increase were banned from bitcointalk and r/bitcoin. [1] [1] https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-timeline-6108081dbada https://hackernoon.com/the-great-bitcoin-scaling-debate-a-ti...
- CraigRood 6y ago
  Block size argument has absolutely no relation to Bitcoin failing as a currency. Block size is some weird inside baseball argument that has little real world validity. Truth is, Bitcoin was never in a position to even fail, because it never succeeded in being a currency. Bitcoin only really got any attention because of Silkroad. Without the darkweb market place Bitcoin would be a fun little internet toy. You can see this reasoning today in chains like Bitcoin Cash, these are cheaper, these do have larger blocks, but they have nowhere near the amount of currency transactions to legitimately call it a currency. These chains don't even pull in any extra load when Bitcoin fees start to creep up. XT is not really worth talking about. It ended up being a failed power grab. BIP101 failed because both sides failed to work together, instead one side got upset and created a hard fork at the next opportunity. Then attempted to call themselves Bitcoin, knowing full well they didn't have the hash rate and subsequent proof of work.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    > Bitcoin only really got any attention because of Silkroad You just refuted your own argument. Bitcoin got attention because of its utility as a currency, in this case for illicit drug purchases. Now as soon as I have to pay an $80 fee, it ceases to be useful as a currency (except ironically for illegal drugs, if you had no other option - which is not the case btw because you can just use monero or bitcoin cash - some users would still pay a 50% fee to get their illegal drugs) > but they have nowhere near the amount of currency transactions to legitimately call it a currency What the hell is your definition of currency? A currency is whatever people use as a currency, and by that definition BCH or what have you is absolutely a currency. And fortunately you can send a transaction on-chain for 1 satoshi per byte, instead of having to use a stupid side chain / lightning network pseudo-solution > instead one side got upset and created a hard fork at the next opportunity. Then attempted to call themselves Bitcoin, knowing full well they didn't have the hash rate and subsequent proof of work. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works. Within a protocol, the "real" chain is the longest chain. But when a hard fork occurs it splits into two different universes, where BCH people don't recognize BTC as valid and vice versa. Frankly the software ignorance of so many shows when they discuss this topic of forking. It's worth nothing that the "soft fork" vs "hard fork" distinction, while somewhat real, is part of the whole Bitcoin Core propaganda belief system; they believe that there must be some arbitrary "legitimacy" to a hard fork (where legitimacy is defined as who can shout the loudest after having conveniently censored all the sane people out of the room).

rlt 6y ago

I’m not ideological about this, but I don’t understand how it’s not obvious to anyone technical that Bitcoin can’t simply keep increasing block size to meet global/mainstream demand for payments without eventually sacrificing decentralization, which is the only characteristic of Bitcoin that makes it valuable. Sure, doubling the block size a few times would likely be fine, so Bitcoin may be overly conservative right now, but I firmly believe any long term solution will require some form of “layer 2” for payments.

dane-pgp 6y ago
It's true that long term adoption will likely require "layer 2" solutions, but it's the worst form of "premature optimisation" to deliberately limit "layer 1" and force users into a single "official" proposed solution. A better approach would have been to let the block size scale in line with average connection speeds and storage capacities (per dollar), and let multiple competing groups implement different "layer 2" approaches that users can opt in to.
tromp 6y ago
Without a backlog of high fee paying transactions, Bitcoin mining becomes unstable in the long term when block subsidy dwindles to insignificance, as discussed at [1]. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5306354.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5306354.0
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  This issue resolves itself. Miners will refuse to uptake transactions into blocks that pay insufficient fees. There's no need to arbitrarily force $80+ transaction fees. As a review for anyone reading, miners are compensated via the block reward - a direct grant of Bitcoin to the miner - as well as transaction fees for any transactions they decide to include in their block. (The person who mines the block gets to unilaterally decide which transactions go in the block; functionally this means they just sort in descending order of $/kb and include as many as they can)
- Paul-E 6y ago
  The paper that relies on turns out to have some inaccurate assumptions. The paper assumes that miners can flip their hardware on/off at essentially instantaneous intervals. The assume this to argue that miners will strategically turn their hardware off when the expected value of mining a block drops below the cost of power. It turns out that many of the big miners have long term contracts with power companies to consumer power; they wouldn't save money by turning their hardware off for short periods of time. Power companies like this arrangement because it lets them predict demand better, and miners like it because they get "bulk rates" on electricity for being predictable in their consumption. The arrangement falls apart when miners turn their hardware on and off.

gruez 6y ago

>But for normal usage-as-a-currency, I am a huge believer in XMR (monero), which masks who you're sending money to There was a talk[1] a few years ago that basically argued that this property only really holds if you look at individual transactions in isolation. It basically boils down to: if you make one transaction to a darknet market, it's impossible to know whether you were actually sending to a darknet market, or whether that was just a decoy transaction. However, if you make repeated transactions to a darknet market, the chances that all of your transactions had a darknet market decoy approaches zero, and you'll be considered suspicious. At that point the police can get a warrant to search your house, or put surveillance on you so they can catch you slipping up irl. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3EbSKDA3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s3EbSKDA3o core argument starts at around 10 minutes.

tromp 6y ago
That is a weakness of decoy based systems. This chart [1] shows how various blockchain designs offer different tradeoffs in privacy leaks versus scalability. [1] https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart https://forum.grin.mw/t/scalability-vs-privacy-chart