Author Topic: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion  (Read 402621 times)

MystryBox

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #500 on: October 29, 2017, 09:29:33 AM »
I'm torn, I think the 2X fork is wreckless and poorly executed because it doesn't have replay protection, but I wouldn't mind seeing some hashrate go to another chain to allow BTCs difficulty to go down or at the very least hold steady for a while.

The 2X/1X fork is being executed this way on purpose by both sides.  The value in bitcoin is no longer in its technology--it's not remotely leading tech anymore, and it's barely usable by comparison to other coins due to delays and fees--its value is in the Bitcoin brand.  Neither side wants to implement replay protection because whoever changes and implements replay protection becomes the altcoin and arguably won't get the "bitcoin"/"btc" branding.  So both sides are playing a game of chicken to see who will take majority hashing and usage to walk away with the brand and forcing the other side into vanishing or "altcoining" itself.

To me the whole thing is risking the value (and lead coin status) of BTC.  Ethereum took a huge hit in value when it forked off classic without replay protection (though it eventually rebounded).  No matter how it goes I think it's another nail in the coffin of bitcoin maximalism.  The fault lies squarely with Core and its complete inability to cooperate with bitcoin mining, business, and user communities.  Unfortunately I don't see Core improving its leadership abilities and even if 1X wins it only means there will be even more drama soon (or perhaps a defection of businesses and usage to Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum).

Full-Life

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #501 on: October 29, 2017, 09:48:03 AM »
How do you manage your Crypto-Currency Portfolios?

On the basis of market capatilization I'm planning to invest in the top 5 crypto currencies and to rebalance every month.
Like a typical passiv index fonds. What is a cheap and simple way to do this? 

PS. I haven't read every post in this threat, only the first pages and couldn't find an answer.

maizefolk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #502 on: October 29, 2017, 10:00:00 AM »
How do you manage your Crypto-Currency Portfolios?

On the basis of market capatilization I'm planning to invest in the top 5 crypto currencies and to rebalance every month.
Like a typical passiv index fonds. What is a cheap and simple way to do this? 

PS. I haven't read every post in this threat, only the first pages and couldn't find an answer.

If you're trying to replicate a cap weighted index fund you shouldn't be doing any rebalancing at all. In addition, rebalancing every month would either mean losing an awful lot in transaction fees or keeping your cryptocurrency at an exchange, which is a very bad idea.

I'd highly suggest reading MystryBox's post on the previous page about things to do and things not to do when investing in cryptocurrencies before you actually spend any money.

Full-Life

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #503 on: October 29, 2017, 10:12:52 AM »
Thanks for the link. These are exactly the information what  I need Very informative. Especially the taxation and changing to firat currencies.

I'm planing to invest every month 100,-€ in crypto currencies. Money that doesn't hurt me if lost. Rebalancing for me would mean to buy to rebalance and to sell only if the currencies is not in the top 5 anymore.

How do you recommend to invest constantly passiv in crypto currencies?


lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #504 on: October 29, 2017, 12:20:25 PM »
The 2X/1X fork is being executed this way on purpose by both sides.  The value in bitcoin is no longer in its technology--it's not remotely leading tech anymore, and it's barely usable by comparison to other coins due to delays and fees--its value is in the Bitcoin brand.  Neither side wants to implement replay protection because whoever changes and implements replay protection becomes the altcoin and arguably won't get the "bitcoin"/"btc" branding.  So both sides are playing a game of chicken to see who will take majority hashing and usage to walk away with the brand and forcing the other side into vanishing or "altcoining" itself.

To me the whole thing is risking the value (and lead coin status) of BTC.  Ethereum took a huge hit in value when it forked off classic without replay protection (though it eventually rebounded).  No matter how it goes I think it's another nail in the coffin of bitcoin maximalism.  The fault lies squarely with Core and its complete inability to cooperate with bitcoin mining, business, and user communities.  Unfortunately I don't see Core improving its leadership abilities and even if 1X wins it only means there will be even more drama soon (or perhaps a defection of businesses and usage to Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum).


I've been observing the space before my mmm account age. It's highly political. Both sides are not without blemish and information distortion. However, I believe core is the greater evil.


I'm going to have to disagree here. Every fork should have replay protection of some form implemented to protect the user base and their money. If a hard fork is implemented with replay protection and it has enough community support, then the value, the name of Bitcoin, the community, hashrate, and all will follow it. If there is a fork and non of those things follow, then the community has spoken that the fork is not Bitcoin. Implementing a fork without replay protection should be seen as an attack on Bitcoin itself since it is trying to accomplish altering Bitcoin without consensus. Luckily support for 2X has been declining rapidly lately. Unfortunately, if 2X still goes forward, there is still the risk of fraudulent transactions due to no replay protection.

The Core development team isn't evil, they're conservative and I'm greatful for that since I have money in Bitcoin. It is what has made the Bitcoin network as stable as it is. SegWit was just activated and there needs to be time given to see how that impacts the network before implementing additional changes. As far as fees go, most of the high fees are actually due to poor wallet fee estimation. Most wallets that don't allow the user to directly specify a fee use fee algorithms that way overestimate what fee should be used for a transactions. Luckily, this has also been changing lately as many popular wallets are now allowing the user to specific fee rates. At the moment I can send transactions consistently for 20-30 Satoshis per byte which is very low. This is without SegWit even being widely utilized yet. Implementing a irreversible hardfork to increase the blocksize to 2MB when it isn't necessary yet and to do so without implementing replay protection is wreckless.

B2X is already being listed by most exchanges as different than BTC, so continuing forward in order to capture the Bitcoin name is futile since they attempted to do so without community support.

waltworks

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #505 on: October 29, 2017, 12:45:31 PM »
Wait, wait, a cabal of self-interested people who are only slightly answerable to the participants is running the show?!?

Sounds sort of a like... government.

-W


MystryBox

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #506 on: October 29, 2017, 12:51:38 PM »

We'll have to disagree on these points. I really want to avoid the politics here, but if you insist, I can provide a statement.

I'm with you.  Nothing stated in all that had any basis in reality, but I'll just shut my mouth.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #507 on: October 29, 2017, 12:56:48 PM »
We'll have to disagree on these points. I really want to avoid the politics here, but if you insist, I can provide a statement.

That's fine. This thread is one large debate regarding Bitcoin and crypto-currencies, so I don't think discussing the technical and logistical aspects of Bitcoin and its various forks necessarily needs to be political or negative. But, I don't think you avoided anything by calling Bitcoin core the "greater evil" either.   ;-)

Wait, wait, a cabal of self-interested people who are only slightly answerable to the participants is running the show?!?

Sounds sort of a like... government.

-W

Haha, well depending on how the 2X fork goes, they could be shown to be fully answerable. Time will tell.

JAYSLOL

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #508 on: October 29, 2017, 01:43:09 PM »
Wait, wait, a cabal of self-interested people who are only slightly answerable to the participants is running the show?!?

Sounds sort of a like... government.

-W

Can I just say how much I love your posts

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #509 on: October 30, 2017, 11:38:41 AM »
I figured I'd post this for all the crypto lovers here to maybe stoke some even more love you all have for the promise of crypto-currencies. It is an old article (2010) related to the 2008 global financial crisis that I saved to refer back to when I want to be reminded of the blatant fraud that occurs on Wall Street and the promise the crypto-currencies could bring to the table by being counterfeit proof. The article is still relevant today though. It is when I read articles like this that I get really excited about crypto-currencies and how they can help fix our broken economy and help revolutionize our financial sector. It is an excellent read from Rolling Stone if you haven't read it before. It isn't just the US economy that operates like this either, it is the entire world economy that operates on a counterfeit and fraudulent basis.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/wall-streets-naked-swindle-20100405

If anyone ever tells you that Bitcoin or crypto-currencies are in a bubble, just have them read this article. When you can have 12 paper oil barrels trading for every 1 physical oil barrel, then it isn't Bitcoin that should be worried about a bubble. Our whole economy is based on counterfeit trading.

The fact that Bitcoin is counterfeit proof gives it a leg up on the rest of the economy. At least the Bitcoin I own I know are real and legitimate Bitcoin.

That being said, I'd imagine that once derivatives trading starts becoming more popular with Bitcoin, then those derivatives would likely be vulnerable to the same counterfeiting which is why it is always good advice to just invest and hold directly in Bitcoin and not in any derivative markets.

Enjoy the read and go buy some Bitcoin!

MystryBox

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #510 on: October 30, 2017, 02:06:09 PM »
The fact that Bitcoin is counterfeit proof gives it a leg up on the rest of the economy. At least the Bitcoin I own I know are real and legitimate Bitcoin.

That being said, I'd imagine that once derivatives trading starts becoming more popular with Bitcoin, then those derivatives would likely be vulnerable to the same counterfeiting which is why it is always good advice to just invest and hold directly in Bitcoin and not in any derivative markets.

Too bad core, who you seem to love, is busy killing the original design of bitcoin and turning it into a settlement system that they will then use to power higher level derivative networks like sidechains and lightning.  I had a big argument with nullc (Greg Maxwell) a few years back about how they were moving away from the "digital property" breakthrough that bitcoin achieved to create a bunch of derivatives on top of bitcoin which would start right down the same road of the mainstream financial system.  He didn't care, he's never cared about those aspects of bitcoin.

Their entire refusal to increase the blocksize is not what they claim, it is to obsolete the old bitcoin model and force any new usage into newer derivative technologies (which they of course profit from).   So why bother posting about how great those attributes of bitcoin are when you are cheering the group that is killing those attributes?
« Last Edit: October 30, 2017, 02:09:43 PM by MystryBox »

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #511 on: October 30, 2017, 04:01:43 PM »
Too bad core, who you seem to love, is busy killing the original design of bitcoin and turning it into a settlement system that they will then use to power higher level derivative networks like sidechains and lightning.  I had a big argument with nullc (Greg Maxwell) a few years back about how they were moving away from the "digital property" breakthrough that bitcoin achieved to create a bunch of derivatives on top of bitcoin which would start right down the same road of the mainstream financial system.  He didn't care, he's never cared about those aspects of bitcoin.

Their entire refusal to increase the blocksize is not what they claim, it is to obsolete the old bitcoin model and force any new usage into newer derivative technologies (which they of course profit from).   So why bother posting about how great those attributes of bitcoin are when you are cheering the group that is killing those attributes?

Wow, MystryBox, you're very antagonistic. First you comment about how my post has no basis in reality (without actually refuting anything), then you comment about how you're going to instead keep quiet on the matter. Then you follow that up with another aggressive post and tell me not to bother posting things about the merits and benefits of Bitcoin as if somehow I'm not a big believer and proponent of the tech.

First off, if you look through this thread and others on this forum, you'll see I am a big advocate of Bitcoin and its capabilities. I'm a firm believer in all that Bitcoin stands for...decentralization, cryptography, open source, consensus, deflationary, etc.

Second, I never said that I love Bitcoin core, I said that they're not evil. For the record, I do support increasing the block size, just not right now and certainly not with the awful SegWit2X implementation that has no active development behind it and doesn't implement replay protection properly. Support for the 2X fork in November has been crumbling lately. Tell me, what defense do you have for any hardfork that doesn't implement replay protection?

Third, increasing the block size is not a scaling solution. If we want Bitcoin to be usable as a medium of exchange, it needs to go beyond just 7 tx/sec (1MB blocks), 14 tx/sec (2MB blocks), or even 55 tx/sec (8MB blocks). Those are not scaling solutions. Bitcoin as it is designed will never be capable of processing transactions at the same rate that VISA is capable of if we're trying to just stick with on-chain transaction blocks. I agree that we absolutely need to increase the block size in order to increase the number of on-chain transactions, but using that as a scaling solution in hopes that it will continue to support the growing demands of all transaction is not going to work. Unless we find a way to move transactions off-chain, then Bitcoin can't scale to what we all want it to become. That is, I would love for a day to come where I can purchase a drink with Bitcoin.

Fourth, that doesn't even touch on the fact that in order for the network to be able to support transaction rates that high, the network would end up being much more centralized. Which out of all properties for Bitcoin, its decentralized nature is probably one of the most important to have come from Satoshi's original whitepaper. It is extremely important for Bitcoin to remain decentralized. At the moment, my Bitcoin node taxes my home network a lot. It took almost a week to download the whole chain. But, it isn't storage that I'm concerned about. I can always purchase additional storage, that's cheap and always getting cheaper. However, the bandwidth that my node uses is a lot and if the block size were to increase much more, then that would probably make it so that I wouldn't be able to host my own node in the very foreseeable future.

Also, sidechains are completely opt-in. No one is forced to use them. That's why SegWit was implemented with a UASF. Bitcoin as it is today is and can still be used the same as it was previously. If a production Lightning Network goes live, no one has to force you to use it. Those who choose to can however. The settlement still happens on the Bitcoin blockchain however and therefore the Lightning Network is still backed by the same verifiable and counterfeit proof Bitcoin blockchain. Explain to me how the Lightning Network is a derivative of Bitcoin as you say? The Lightning Network still settles in Bitcoin. When payment channels close, they're confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain and payment channel transactions are multisig between the parties involved, so either party can broadcast the transaction in the event of a dispute. I'm not saying that Lightning Network is perfect. I don't like how payment channels need to be constantly monitored, for example. But it isn't a derivative and it is a much longer term scaling solution than simply increasing the blocksize.

Finally, I just wanted to add (I touched on this earlier) that one of Bitcoin's highest risks come from other capable cypto-currencies taking its place as the number one currency and making Bitcoin obsolete. Crypto-currencies are constantly coming up with new ideas and features. There aren't many ways that I could see Bitcoin ever going to $0, but one of those ways that I could see it happening is if a better currency came along to take its place. I believe sidechains will have greatly reduced that risk of ever occuring. They allow Bitcoin to be much more responsive to what the market needs it to be. If Bitcoin requires vastly higher transaction speeds to meet demand or micro-transaction capability, then sidechains will allow for that to occur, thus keeping the value of POS transactions strictly on the Bitcoin network as opposed to having that use-case go to another competitive currency.

Anyway, I just wanted to clear the air. I don't like it when people attempt to call me delusional without at least giving me the courteousy of telling me why the think so. If you want to have a debate with me, go ahead and do so. I'm capable of having a debate based on information without the need to be antagonistic or aggressive.

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #512 on: October 30, 2017, 07:30:24 PM »
First off, if you look through this thread and others on this forum, you'll see I am a big advocate of Bitcoin and its capabilities. I'm a firm believer in all that Bitcoin stands for...decentralization, cryptography, open source, consensus, deflationary, etc.

you are certainly an awesome advocate and you know your stuff.  i am debating with myself whether or not to reply to your individual points -- but what the hell.  this isn't r/bitcoin -- so we can have a debate!  in fact, the exact same debate that's been had zillions of times since blocks have been full.

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I do support increasing the block size, just not right now...

blocks have been full for a while -- it should have never even got close to this point.  the block size limit should have been doubled to 2MB years ago, and probably doubled again at least once more by now.  even if monetizing sidechains or the lightning network is the surreptitious goal, you need to raise the block size for it all to work.

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Third, increasing the block size is not a scaling solution ... Bitcoin as it is designed will never be capable of processing transactions at the same rate that VISA is capable of.

VISA levels of tx/sec is a straw man argument.  no one is trying to get that to work at this point.  2MB-8MB blocks are more than enough for the next few years.

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Fourth, that doesn't even touch on the fact that in order for the network to be able to support transaction rates that high, the network would end up being much more centralized. Which out of all properties for Bitcoin, its decentralized nature is probably one of the most important to have come from Satoshi's original whitepaper.

the original unmodified white paper mentions that "server farms" would be nodes, not individual users.  most folks don't run their own email server or web server, yet the internet remains decentralized.

also, the lightning network by design relies on centralization.  if you're concerned the peer-to-peer qualities of bitcoin are at risk then you should be against the current lightning network proposals.

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Also, sidechains are completely opt-in. No one is forced to use them... the Lightning Network is still backed by the same verifiable and counterfeit proof Bitcoin blockchain

sidechains are not opt-in if the block size is 1MB and you're in a bidding war to even get your tx in a block.

the lightning network destroys the original alignment of incentives that give us the incredible security of the today's bitcoin mining network.  if fewer people can make on-chain transactions, and the block reward has been halved a few times, why would the miners even mine any longer?

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sidechains ... allow Bitcoin to be much more responsive to what the market needs it to be.

so do hard forks.  any feature could be added to bitcoin.  bitcoin's supposed to be a honey badger, not a deer in the headlights.  increasing the block size limit to 2MB-8MB by the way isn't a "feature" -- it's a much simpler change than that: it allows bitcoin to perform the same way it's performed since 2009.

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If you want to have a debate with me, go ahead and do so. I'm capable of having a debate based on information without the need to be antagonistic or aggressive.

i think we're all on the same page with that here.  agreed.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #513 on: October 30, 2017, 08:23:14 PM »
you are certainly an awesome advocate and you know your stuff.  i am debating with myself whether or not to reply to your individual points -- but what the hell.  this isn't r/bitcoin -- so we can have a debate!  in fact, the exact same debate that's been had zillions of times since blocks have been full.

I enjoy good debates, so I certainly welcome any counterpoints and am an open-minded individual.

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blocks have been full for a while -- it should have never even got close to this point.  the block size limit should have been doubled to 2MB years ago, and probably doubled again at least once more by now.  even if monetizing sidechains or the lightning network is the surreptitious goal, you need to raise the block size for it all to work.

The mempool was completely empty this week, so that would go against the argument that the current blocksize is not sufficient to handle the current transaction rate demanded of the network. The mempool backup that occurred over the summer was due to a lot of transaction spam in an effort to push support for a blocksize increase. Furthermore, Segwit is a 2MB blocksize increase without demanding 2MB of per block data of the Bitcoin network.

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VISA levels of tx/sec is a straw man argument.  no one is trying to get that to work at this point.  2MB-8MB blocks are more than enough for the next few years.

It isn't a strawman argument if it is constantly called into question the idea that Bitcoin is being moved in a direction that is against Satoshi's original vision. That vision was to have Bitcoin be a peer-to-peer payment network that would be a direct competitor against current payment networks like VISA that charge 3% fees to merchants. If Bitcoin is to truly be a competitor to that, then it needs to scale way beyond just 60 tx/sec. That's especially true if the adoption rate kicks into high gear and becomes exponential again like it did this year. You talk about how the blocksize should been increased long ago. That can certainly be argued, but how can that be argued now and at the same time not argue for looking further down the road again and see the writing on the wall that Bitcoin might not be up to the task of handling transactions should adoption exponentially increase yet again.

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the original unmodified white paper mentions that "server farms" would be nodes, not individual users.  most folks don't run their own email server or web server, yet the internet remains decentralized.

also, the lightning network by design relies on centralization.  if you're concerned the peer-to-peer qualities of bitcoin are at risk then you should be against the current lightning network proposals.

There is a difference between trust-based centralization and trust-less centralization. First, most folks don't run their own email server, but they can if they choose to (I choose to). If Bitcoin is forced into a centralized structure, then that puts Bitcoin into more and more control of centralized parties. If Bitcoin is forced to be hosted on nodes that are only hosted by larger organizations, then those very organizations become targets for government pressure and that means that Bitcoin can be controlled. That's much harder to do if your common everyday user is also capable of hosting nodes as well. Look at the response that the community has had against the threat of the 2X fork (https://coin.dance/nodes/core). The number of Bitcoin Core nodes has dramatically gone up over the last month or so and that is all possible because your common user can do so. That's against the very aim of a decentralized peer-to-peer system. The Lightning Network can (and likely will) lead to centralized "credit union" style hubs, but like I said, the Lightning Network is completely opt-in. So no one is forced into using centralized hubs if they don't want to.

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sidechains are not opt-in if the block size is 1MB and you're in a bidding war to even get your tx in a block.

the lightning network destroys the original alignment of incentives that give us the incredible security of the today's bitcoin mining network.  if fewer people can make on-chain transactions, and the block reward has been halved a few times, why would the miners even mine any longer?

In one argument you're talking about blocks being completely full which would force users into sidechains. Then in the next argument you're talking about blocks being empty which would cause miners to stop mining. Which is it? You can't argue both. The truth is that neither of those scenarios would come to pass. In order to open payment channels on the Lightning Network, you'd still need to put confirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Opening and closing payment channels requires that to happen. Therefore, even in a fully utilized Lightning Network, there will still be Bitcoin transactions being broadcast on the network. Also, the Lightning Network is ideally used for smaller payments as payment channels will likely be opened with smaller payments in mind. This makes it possible for micro-transactions and everyday transactions to occur between parties. Larger transactions that aren't ideal for the Lightning Network would still be broadcast on the Bitcoin network as usual and if they require larger fees, then that's OK because a $2 fee to send $10,000 is a pretty darn good deal.

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so do hard forks.  any feature could be added to bitcoin.  bitcoin's supposed to be a honey badger, not a deer in the headlights.  increasing the block size limit to 2MB-8MB by the way isn't a "feature" -- it's a much simpler change than that: it allows bitcoin to perform the same way it's performed since 2009.

I agree, hard forks are great too...so long as replay protection is used for those forks to protect the end users' money. Like I said, I'm OK with increasing the block size and I'm not necessarily advocating against it. But I am advocating against the SegWit2X hardfork that is planned for November since it has been poorly planned, it's timing doesn't give SegWit a chance, it fails to implement replay protection, and doesn't have community support behind it.

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i think we're all on the same page with that here.  agreed.

Yup, thanks for the response!   :)

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #514 on: October 30, 2017, 09:41:17 PM »
The mempool was completely empty this week, so that would go against the argument that the current blocksize is not sufficient to handle the current transaction rate demanded of the network.

you can't cherry pick data to fit your argument.  blocks had been getting closer to being full for years, and now they have been full for some time: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all&daysAverageString=7

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If Bitcoin is to truly be a competitor to that, then it needs to scale way beyond just 60 tx/sec. That's especially true if the adoption rate kicks into high gear and becomes exponential again like it did this year. You talk about how the blocksize should been increased long ago. That can certainly be argued, but how can that be argued now and at the same time not argue for looking further down the road again and see the writing on the wall that Bitcoin might not be up to the task of handling transactions should adoption exponentially increase yet again.

it seems silly to have to say this but doubling the block size as needed and working on sidechains and lightning network are not mutually exclusive.  it's pretty simple: if most of the network agrees that blocks are full, then double the block size limit if current technology can handle it.  if the block size can't be doubled for technical reasons, then yes unveil the next iteration of whatever sidechain solution you have.

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the original unmodified white paper mentions that "server farms" would be nodes, not individual users.  most folks don't run their own email server or web server, yet the internet remains decentralized.

my mistake -- the mining farms were mentioned in a satoshi email, not the whitepaper: http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/

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There is a difference between trust-based centralization and trust-less centralization. ... The Lightning Network can (and likely will) lead to centralized "credit union" style hubs, but like I said, the Lightning Network is completely opt-in.

again i think the VISA argument is arbitrary straw man but just to clarify -- in your scenario on the order of 10-100s of tx/sec are on-chain with "trust-less centralization" and on the order of 10,000s tx/sec are off-chain on lightning network hubs with "trust-based" centralization -- and that's ok?  where only a few percent of users can use bitcoin in a trustless manner?

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In one argument you're talking about blocks being completely full which would force users into sidechains. Then in the next argument you're talking about blocks being empty which would cause miners to stop mining. Which is it? You can't argue both.

nope, in my argument the tiny blocks are full as you say with lightning channel opening/closing tx, and the block reward is trending to zero.  difficulty however is not trending to zero, so miners are now mining at a loss because they're not capturing fees for the bulk of transactions, which are off-chain.  somewhere before this scenario occurs the miners and users will simply migrate to a chain with larger blocks so they can capture more tx fees.

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I am advocating against the SegWit2X hardfork that is planned for November since it has been poorly planned, it's timing doesn't give SegWit a chance, it fails to implement replay protection, and doesn't have community support behind it.

the fork has had >80% support since mid-june.  https://coin.dance/blocks/proposals

if segwit can't compete with 2MB blocks then perhaps the time isn't right for more intricate solutions, see my point above.  if bitcoin will exist for years there will be plenty of time to introduce these new wrinkles.  the conservative solution is simply increasing the block size now (by "now" i mean after segwit -- the really conservative solution would have been just 2MB) and in the meantime yes, by all means, continuing to work on all manner of "down the road" scaling solutions.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #515 on: October 31, 2017, 06:26:12 AM »
you can't cherry pick data to fit your argument.  blocks had been getting closer to being full for years, and now they have been full for some time: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all&daysAverageString=7

You say I'm cherry picking data, and then you link to a chart about the block size? The mempool is a better correlation as to whether the network is backed up than block size is now. Many blocks are not even full. Blocks are able to go beyond 1MB now, so saying they're completely full is extremely misleading of you. The effect of this is that I'm able to send transactions with extremely low fees (20 Satoshi's per byte) and have them confirmed in under an hour. As SegWit continues to get adopted, this trend will continue with more transactions per block with low fees.

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it seems silly to have to say this but doubling the block size as needed and working on sidechains and lightning network are not mutually exclusive.  it's pretty simple: if most of the network agrees that blocks are full, then double the block size limit if current technology can handle it.  if the block size can't be doubled for technical reasons, then yes unveil the next iteration of whatever sidechain solution you have.

They can absolutely be worked on at the same time, but that doesn't mean they need to be implemented at the same time. A UASF is much less impactful on the network than a hard fork is. Again, you're making statements that aren't true. Blocks aren't full to the point where transactions aren't being confirmed in a timely fashion. Transaction fees aren't high. Most wallets miscalculate fee estimates and that's a bigger problem than fee competition is right now. The mempool, which as I said is a better indicator of a bottleneck, is not overloaded with unconfirmed transactions.

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again i think the VISA argument is arbitrary straw man but just to clarify -- in your scenario on the order of 10-100s of tx/sec are on-chain with "trust-less centralization" and on the order of 10,000s tx/sec are off-chain on lightning network hubs with "trust-based" centralization -- and that's ok?  where only a few percent of users can use bitcoin in a trustless manner?

You misunderstand my statement on trust-less versus trust-based. My reference to trust-based was in regards to VISA. Performing transactions over the VISA network requires that you trust them. They're the ultimate mediator of transactions. Transactions are reversible because of this and a lot of fraud occurs which becomes a large cost to VISA. This results in VISA charging large fees to merchants and therefore gives VISA a lot of power. Centralized hubs on the Lightning Network however are trust-less. Those hubs don't control the transactions that traverse through them. They only control which payment channels are set up with who. Furthermore, the Lightning Network can allow for additional anonymity that currently isn't present today with Bitcoin because transactions each payment channel that a transaction traverses is only aware of the intermediary route it is taking (similar to Tor), not necessarily the originator or final recipient.

Also, using the Lightning Network doesn't force you to also use centralized hubs. The two are exclusive of each other. You can still use the Lightning Network without using hubs. Again, it is all opt-in which gives the users options on how they'd like to use their money. This is a very good thing for adoption.

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nope, in my argument the tiny blocks are full as you say with lightning channel opening/closing tx, and the block reward is trending to zero.  difficulty however is not trending to zero, so miners are now mining at a loss because they're not capturing fees for the bulk of transactions, which are off-chain.  somewhere before this scenario occurs the miners and users will simply migrate to a chain with larger blocks so they can capture more tx fees.

How are miners not capturing fees with full blocks as you say? If blocks are full, then they'd be capturing a lot of fees. You're contradicting yourself. The percentage of total transactions that are off-chain is completely irrelevant here when talking about the fee economy for miners. If blocks are full, then miners are getting paid. The reverse of your scenario is much more likely to be true. If you have overly large blocks that are never full, then what would be the point of ever adding a fee to your transaction if it will get confirmed anyway? Vastly empty blocks is bad for the fee economy for miners.

I bolded the statement you just made there that makes absolutely no sense. It is highly contradictory of the entire argument that is ever had for larger blocks. Larger blocks result in lower fees because there is more space than is needed for transactions and therefore there is no reason to include a large fee with your transaction. With the Lightning Network, it enables the capability for micro-transactions to occur (since fees would be non-existent or negligible on the LN), and on-chain transactions where payment channels are opened and larger transactions are made that won't fit on the Lightning Network will have higher fees to accommodate the tighter block sizes.

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the fork has had >80% support since mid-june.  https://coin.dance/blocks/proposals

if segwit can't compete with 2MB blocks then perhaps the time isn't right for more intricate solutions, see my point above.  if bitcoin will exist for years there will be plenty of time to introduce these new wrinkles.  the conservative solution is simply increasing the block size now (by "now" i mean after segwit -- the really conservative solution would have been just 2MB) and in the meantime yes, by all means, continuing to work on all manner of "down the road" scaling solutions.

What do you mean if SegWit can't compete? SegWit had wide support right up until adoption and that support had to remain for a vast majority of blocks in order for it to be activated. Support for SegWit2X however has been declining a lot lately. The support numbers you're showing is just miner signaling (of which Bitmain is a heavy SegWit2X supporter) and miners don't own and dictate the entire network. How is a hard fork (with no replay protection) a more conservative solution than a UASF that was thoroughly tested and even saw exposure on another very similar blockchain (LTC)?? I've yet to hear of a defense for having a hardfork without replay protection.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #516 on: October 31, 2017, 11:51:59 AM »
I'm not sure where you're getting your information from and how you're evaluating it. Most of your statements, like above, are inaccurate.

Segwit did not have the support it needed for adoption until the majority of the business and mining community got together and signed the New York agreement to first upgrade the protocol to segwit and then later to 2mb. This was the only way segwit passed.

https://medium.com/@DCGco/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consensus-2017-133521fe9a77

Like I said, I support a block size increase to 2MB, just not now and not how it is being implemented currently. I don't believe anything I've said is untrue and if you feel I am being misleading, that is not my intention.

However, you call me misleading and then you link to the NYA agreement as if it was some binding agreement among all those involved with Bitcoin is extremely misleading. The NYA agreement was a closed door meeting involving the Digital Currency Group which is really just a group of financial investors and venture capitalists that claim to represent the overall Bitcoin community (http://dcg.co/who-we-are/). That meeting didn't involve anyone from the development team that has worked years on developing Bitcoin. Anyone who values the concept that Bitcoin is resistant to influential entities from manipulating the direction that Bitcoin takes should be troubled by the concept that a small group of investors were able to push a plan forward in the way that they did.

Many of the original companies that signed onto the NYA back in spring after it was announced simply signed on because they wanted to see progress in scaling Bitcoin. I use Coinbase heavily (probably more so than most since I use the Shift debit card for all my daily transactions that is tied to their system). I don't think they are evil and the same goes for many of those companies. I just think they're stuck in a very difficult position. Ultimately their latest announcement regarding how they're going to handle the fork is one of their few options they have without resulting in countless lawsuits if they decided not to support one chain or the other. I was supportive of the NYA agreement at the time as well. I remember when the news came out that I got really excited about the future of Bitcoin and that finally it would be scaled appropriately after years of debate.

Things have changed for numerous reasons since then however. SegWit adoption is only at around ~8% currently. The original Segwit2MB proposal was heavily in favor of SegWit adoption and seeing that in action prior to a 2MB hard fork. It also suggested that 95% of the hashrate signal for the hard fork and that it should be delayed if necessary. The fact that many companies have for a long time used "high fees" as a reason to support SegWit2MB and yet many of those same companies have yet to implement SegWit in their platforms before moving on with a hard fork shows that ultimately they didn't care about actually adopting SegWit to begin with and they certainly didn't care about reducing fees.

I work in IT and never have I ever seen a system get put into production unless we knew that there would be absolutely minimal impact in doing so. This is a $100 billion market now. That can't be said with how the SegWit2X/BTC1 fork has been implemented. As I've said numerous times, a lack of replay protection, naming it BTC1 (confusing users), lack of active development, limited testing, transaction spamming, declining support signaling leading up to the fork date; all of these things make performing a hard fork at this time extremely risky. This is especially true given the fact that additional adoption of SegWit to allow for more transactions per block is an immediate win that can take place without having any impact on the network at all while at the same time introduce additional benefits like

Anyway, like I said, I think we all agree on what needs to happen to Bitcoin to scale it into the future, we just ultimately disagree on the timing on when those things should occur.

My original comment that started this debate was simply that Bitcoin core devs are not evil. I find it odd that you talk about how others are calling companies supportive of SegWit2X as "enemies of bitcoin" and yet there are some in this thread that have ostracized the core dev team as "evil" themselves. I still stand by that statement that they're not evil and you can read this thread by one of the core devs that discusses some of the advances they've made that we should all be grateful for if we want to see Bitcoin succeed.

https://medium.com/@jfnewbery/what-did-bitcoin-core-contributors-ever-do-for-us-39fc2fedb5ef

trollwithamustache

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #517 on: October 31, 2017, 01:33:11 PM »
meh, all this old man arguing about forks is boring.

lets spice this S%$(* with derivatives.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/31/cme-plans-to-launch-bitcoin-futures-by-year-end.html

this is like holy guacamole exciting for BTC holders. It makes the Alt coins pretty alternative if you can sling your BTC around on the CME like granddad used to do with his pork bellies.

Tonyahu

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #518 on: October 31, 2017, 01:57:00 PM »
You guys really had to bring the block weight debate in here huh lol.

Glad everyone is participating and contributing.

QUESTION: Do you see Bitcoin out-performing Alts next year?

It's an interesting discussion to be had given that Hedge Funds are rapidly moving into the space and now we already have 2 derivative providers. I personally still feel Alts (the quality ones) will outperform but the debate can definitely be had for the opposing view.

trollwithamustache

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #519 on: October 31, 2017, 02:42:21 PM »
The liquidity on any individual BTC exchange just isn't that great compared to markets my grandfather would accept as "real".  With CME futures and hedge fund activity you will see a hell of a lot more volume of BTC being moved or needed for hedging ect than any Alt coin will have.

Plus, the futures let you play BTC without forcing a BTC transaction, so the big boys can sling a billion dollars/euros/whatever around amongst future months and it doesn't affect the network. Day after Day of this.

liquidity begets respectability. Or, maybe it will let enough money rush in to really get us to a bubble.


lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #520 on: November 01, 2017, 07:36:11 AM »
The CME futures announcement worries me. I knew it was only a matter of time before Bitcoin derivatives would start getting traded, but it is still so early in the game without a $100 billion dollar market cap. I was hoping that derivatives would be supplemented to Bitcoin's growth, but at this stage it could end up driving growth which I don't think is good.

My post above about the global financial crisis was in direct regards to the derivative manipulation that happens on Wall Street. Also, futures won't actually create demand for Bitcoin today, they'll just be trading "paper bitcoin" today. I can foresee hundreds of thousands of paper bitcoin being traded where only a fraction of that is backed up by actual bitcoin on the blockchain. That's dangerous. I'm curious to see how this ends up getting regulated.

The whole point about bitcoin is that it can't be counterfeit. If you hold bitcoin on the blockchain, then you know it is 100% real. That's not the case with derivatives.

Either way, the news is good for bitcoin however as it just gives it more press and legitimacy to those who actually trade in the real deal.

trollwithamustache

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #521 on: November 01, 2017, 08:19:39 AM »
why are futures so worrying to you?

Sure, the futures contract for a given forward month may have a huge number of open contracts or a small number.  There will be a self correcting effect if to many contracts are out there and traders are nervous about getting BTC to cover them, they simply buy/sell as appropriate to close the contracts.  Most commodity contracts are closed out like this prior to delivery.

Derivatives are dangerous for the institution issuing them if a counter party cannot pay and they end up with a very very highly leveraged position on a security. This is neither good nor bad for the underlying security.  When derivatives trigger indexes to be bought and sold, this creates volume that stock following computers pick up on and amplify.  But, since the Merc future is the only place those kind of guys can trade, how can they wreck the underlying?


This all may be hyperbole and have no effect if the BTC future is USD settled off an index. If that's the case, institutions may not really trade the futures since they cannot hold underlying to offset positions.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #522 on: November 01, 2017, 08:46:41 AM »
why are futures so worrying to you?

Sure, the futures contract for a given forward month may have a huge number of open contracts or a small number.  There will be a self correcting effect if to many contracts are out there and traders are nervous about getting BTC to cover them, they simply buy/sell as appropriate to close the contracts.  Most commodity contracts are closed out like this prior to delivery.

Derivatives are dangerous for the institution issuing them if a counter party cannot pay and they end up with a very very highly leveraged position on a security. This is neither good nor bad for the underlying security.  When derivatives trigger indexes to be bought and sold, this creates volume that stock following computers pick up on and amplify.  But, since the Merc future is the only place those kind of guys can trade, how can they wreck the underlying?


This all may be hyperbole and have no effect if the BTC future is USD settled off an index. If that's the case, institutions may not really trade the futures since they cannot hold underlying to offset positions.

Read the Rolling Stone article above that I link to. It is an excellent read with eye-opening info on how Wall Street handles derivatives.

On paper it may seem like a good thing, but the truth of the matter is that with the corruption on Wall Street, there will likely be 10 "paper bitcoins" being traded for every one bitcoin that is actually on-chain. People might think their derivative is backed by real bitcoins, but the reality is that they probably aren't.

Again, I'm not saying this will be the case with CMEs futures contracts. I'm just saying that going down the derivative road will likely lead this to be true considering that it is true for just about everything else that is traded on Wall Street; oil, soy beans, gold, even US Treasury bonds.

Holding bitcoin on-chain will keep you safe since they can't be counterfeit, but I'd stay as far away from holding any bitcoin derivative of any kind as possible.

"Your key, your bitcoin. Not your key, not your bitcoin."

trollwithamustache

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #523 on: November 02, 2017, 03:59:11 PM »
It appears the futures will be dollar settled, so while at times, the number of open contracts could exceed the number of bitcoins, the settlement of contracts won't force BTC transactions.

maizefolk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #524 on: November 02, 2017, 07:07:04 PM »
So what's the use case of buying or selling a bitcoin future rather than a bitcoin itself? The hedging purposes of futures make sense to me for things that are constantly being produced and where industrial buyers know they will need to purchase fixed amounts at regular timepoints (like oil or porkbellies), but I still cannot wrap my head around this for cytocurrencies.

Are they significant futures markets for euros or RMB? If so, what do people use them for?

hgjjgkj

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #525 on: November 02, 2017, 10:49:42 PM »
Two Questions

1) Is there money in BTC exchange arb? Buying low on one exchange and selling on another?

2) For BTC investors who have seen recent high gains, how do you plan you strategy going forward? Do you take gains and put them in something more stable? How do you think about incremental additional investments when this will now raise your cost basis a ton?

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #526 on: November 03, 2017, 07:18:45 AM »
IF they pass the law proposal that you can spend like $600 a transaction tax free, I might use it to pay my household bills or buy more mining hardware.

That is a big IF! I would LOVE for that legislation to pass. If it did, bitcoin would become my main tax-free spending money in my early retirement years while my pre-tax accounts get laddered into my Roth.

MVal

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #527 on: November 03, 2017, 08:42:37 AM »
Is anyone here using Bitconnect? I've got a little Bitcoin on there making me a few dollars a week and I'm planning on doing the continuous re-lending thing for a while and see how it goes.

Also, who is buying more Bitcoin before the hard fork this month? I'm hesitant to with Bitcoin rallying like it is right now, but I'm lured by the prospect of "doubling" my coin with the Segwit2x thing.

maizefolk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #528 on: November 03, 2017, 03:31:33 PM »
So what's the use case of buying or selling a bitcoin future rather than a bitcoin itself? The hedging purposes of futures make sense to me for things that are constantly being produced and where industrial buyers know they will need to purchase fixed amounts at regular timepoints (like oil or porkbellies), but I still cannot wrap my head around this for cytocurrencies.

Are they significant futures markets for euros or RMB? If so, what do people use them for?

The two main areas I know of.
1. Leverage... You can buy A LOT of bets for (call) or against (put) which sell in lots of 100 for very cheap. Most of the cost is time value... So if BTC moves $1 in an hour (very possible) you can make $100 with a relatively small investment. I am not sure what the premium is going to be since BTC itself is so scarce, but my guess is it will be fractionalized up the a**.
2. Gets around rules to allow trading on the main exchanges "pretend BTC" which is really cash based and has no real conneciton with reality without being an accredited investor so everyone can buy in.

This may either propel BTC to stupid crazy high prices fast because of the hype or stabalize the price... I am not sure which way it will go.

I thought there was a difference between futures contracts and options contracts (puts/calls). With futures you generally pay "full price" now, for delivery at some point in the future. If you look at the pricing for futures contracts on corn or oil or porkbellies they tend to be in the neighborhood as current prices (perhaps a bit higher or a bit lower based on what the market expects future demand to look like). But okay, if we're talking about options contracts rather than futures, I agree with you on point #1, you can certainly lever up a lot more with options than with the underlying asset and as a result make (or lose) a lot more money with a lot less starting capital.

For #2, if the trading is entirely cash based and a lot of the buyers and sellers on non-accredited investors it seems like the counter party risk would be through the roof. Even if you made a killing on bitcoin options contracts, is whoever you bet against actually going to have the money to pay?

Anyway, whatever I think of the rationality of the motivations, I at least understand what the motivations might be now, thanks!

Tonyahu

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #529 on: November 06, 2017, 11:48:29 AM »
Bitconnect is a ponzi.

This is 100% correct. It's officially blocked and banned by Malware Bytes as well.

http://cryptocougar.com/malwarebytes-anti-malware-software-added-bitconnect-blocked-website-list/

LMFAO, please watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbR1SXIje1U

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #530 on: November 08, 2017, 11:38:59 AM »
The Segwit2X hardfork has been suspended this month. Bitcoin rallies! There was much rejoicing! I'm happy there will not be a split in the community.

Edit: "hardfork" not "hardwork"...stupid autocorrect.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2017, 09:09:45 PM by lifeanon269 »

powskier

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #531 on: November 08, 2017, 03:49:03 PM »

LMFAO, please watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbR1SXIje1U

Looks like another well known non tax paying scam. It's amazing how gullible people can be.

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #532 on: November 12, 2017, 12:02:35 AM »
The Segwit2X hardfork has been suspended this month. Bitcoin rallies! There was much rejoicing! I'm happy there will not be a split in the community.

i don't think we're out of the woods quite yet.  we'll see if some group of miners goes forward with the 2x fork, we'll see what happens with the new BCH DAA, and the BTC mempool is getting huge.

things are even crazier than normal in the bitcoin world with BTC crashing and BCH going vertical (for the time being).  from a bitcoin portfolios perspective i still think the safest option is to do nothing (don't buy or sell any bitcoin on any fork) and wait (weeks/months) for some sort of resolution.  it seems too easy to me to publish a statement saying "2x is canceled" in an attempt to manipulate the market, miners are free to hop from chain to chain, exchanges still have to react to the 2x cancellation, etc.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #533 on: November 13, 2017, 06:33:56 AM »
i don't think we're out of the woods quite yet.  we'll see if some group of miners goes forward with the 2x fork, we'll see what happens with the new BCH DAA, and the BTC mempool is getting huge.

things are even crazier than normal in the bitcoin world with BTC crashing and BCH going vertical (for the time being).  from a bitcoin portfolios perspective i still think the safest option is to do nothing (don't buy or sell any bitcoin on any fork) and wait (weeks/months) for some sort of resolution.  it seems too easy to me to publish a statement saying "2x is canceled" in an attempt to manipulate the market, miners are free to hop from chain to chain, exchanges still have to react to the 2x cancellation, etc.

Yup, that was posted immediately after the SegWit2x cancellation. Crazy times indeed. The bouncing between BCH and BTC has been seen before as well as the pump and dump between the two. It is currently over 4 times more profitable to mine BTC than BCH at the moment. BCH is down over 30% since yesterday and BTC is rebounding. This is the same type of pattern we saw back in August/September after the hard fork. The BTC mempool is clearing out now as well. Once the new BCH DAA goes through, that should help prevent miners from jumping back and forth and simply using BCH as a quick means of profit manipulation.

I'm not so sure having miners push through the SegWit2x hard fork is in their best interest. The same miners that are pro-BCH are the ones that were pro-SegWit2X. So that would just split their hash power between the two even more which would give Bitcoin Core even further strength against them both. I would think BCH is more inline with the big blocker agenda anyway since they didn't really want SegWit activated to begin with. But, hey, I guess you never know, anything can happen.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #534 on: November 16, 2017, 10:08:25 AM »
How do people feel about the CME futures market that will supposedly be opening up in mid-December. Since it is all cash settled, I'm wondering what this will do for the demand of actual on-chain bitcoin. Market makers will want to hedge long bets to ensure that the actual bitcoin market goes up on the exchanges where the price is pegged. Do you guys think that the market makers will end up holding bitcoin to back these futures contracts or do we think that this market will just balloon up to astronomical proportions and dwarf the actual bitcoin markets and thus suppress demand for actual on-chain bitcoin. This could certainly help decrease volatility, but I'm worried it might depress demand for actual bitcoin.

On the upside, I do think this will give more legitimacy to bitcoin as an asset and if the futures market is massive then that will make it that much lower of a likelihood that the government would ever want to squash bitcoin since a lot of institutional investors will have money now in play.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #535 on: November 17, 2017, 09:36:03 AM »
Unbelievable. So nodes that were running the BTC1 software for the SegWit2X hardfork that was planned to go through today ended up getting stuck on block 494782. It appears as if Jeff Garzik made an off-by-one mistake in his code. The reason why that wasn't caught was because there was ZERO code review for those for code commits. And this is the way that they want to develop software that's expected to support a $120 billion dollar market? Insane! This is exactly what I was talking about in my earlier posts about why we should have been concerned about this hardfork that they were trying to push through. Imagine if the community supported this hot mess? We're talking about billions of dollars likely being lost as a result of the panic that would ensue as all the nodes on the network would cease functioning until the entire network received appropriate patches to fix it. People may critique the bitcoin core devs for being too conservative, but this is exactly why you don't rush things with code that is expected to support a multi-billion dollar industry.

https://twitter.com/AaronvanW/status/931513254861471749
https://twitter.com/pierre_rochard/status/931529855245496321
https://twitter.com/pierre_rochard/status/931530935983656962

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #536 on: November 17, 2017, 04:35:05 PM »
the segwit2x fork bug is a good example of why we need miners and nodes to run bitcoin implementations published by multiple development teams.  i believe some miners use their own bitcoin implementations, but this would have definitely broken many nodes and miners, shaken confidence, and probably caused a price crash.

sorry but core is plainly the opposite of conservative -- to support their business model they changed and added thousands of lines of new code rather than changing a single line of code for max block size.  as a result bitcoin fees skyrocketed this week in the frenzy after the 2x cancellation... and the mempool is still at 90MB with tens of thousands of unconfirmed transactions.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #537 on: November 17, 2017, 07:29:05 PM »
the segwit2x fork bug is a good example of why we need miners and nodes to run bitcoin implementations published by multiple development teams.  i believe some miners use their own bitcoin implementations, but this would have definitely broken many nodes and miners, shaken confidence, and probably caused a price crash.

sorry but core is plainly the opposite of conservative -- to support their business model they changed and added thousands of lines of new code rather than changing a single line of code for max block size.  as a result bitcoin fees skyrocketed this week in the frenzy after the 2x cancellation... and the mempool is still at 90MB with tens of thousands of unconfirmed transactions.

You don't determine the future and direction of a currency based on the number of lines of code it takes to implement design decisions. SegWit was tested thoroughly on testnet for over a year and a half. On top of that, SegWit also saw real world production usage on the Litecoin network to see how it would behave in action with real life money. To say that they were the opposite of conservative simply because the number of lines of code involved is a misunderstanding of a proper development lifecycle.

Regarding fees, first off, one of the biggest factors in rising fees for bitcoin is simply due to the fact that the price of a single bitcoin has risen astronomically over the last 2 years. Rather than focusing on the fee paid in USD for any given transaction, it should be the fee rate that should be of primary concentration. When you look at fee rates on Bitcoin Cash, the median fee rate is somewhere around 60-70 satoshis/byte. That results in a fee of about 18 cents on the Bitcoin Cash network for a transaction of average size. That same fee rate would result in a fee of $1.15 if the price of Bitcoin Cash were equivalent to the price of Bitcoin today (~$7700). Now, the median fee rate on the bitcoin network today is around 90 satoshis/byte. With an average transaction size of about 230 bytes, this results in your median fee being around $1.60 on the bitcoin network. That's not too far from what the Bitcoin Cash network would look like now if its price were the same as Bitcoin's.

However, obviously, the load on these two networks are drastically different. The bitcoin cash network sees a much lower volume of transactions than bitcoin does. So at the moment, the bitcoin core network measures block density through block weight (not block size) due to the SegWit implementation. The percentage of SegWit transactions is only around 10-11%. This means that there is still potential to decrease these fees by not only freeing up block weight space for additional transactions and thus decreasing competition in the fee market (lowering the fee rate), but also by decreasing the average size of a transaction using SegWit enabled wallets/addresses. But where does bitcoin cash go with an increasing load? Competition for block space is already low due to the low transaction volume and large block size. Therefore there isn't much capability for bitcoin cash to decrease the actual fee rate paid and fee of transactions in USD from where they are today. If bitcoin cash were to see the same load of the bitcoin network then that would mean the only option to keep the fee rate the same as it is today would be to increase the block size yet again. Decreasing the fee rate is what is ultimately critical if you want to maintain the capability to make a coffee purchase under conditions where the price of the token in question could potentially rise into the tens of thousands. This is where second layer solutions will be really needed in order to allow for micro-transactions long into the future.

If increasing the block size only allows you to maintain the fee rate that we have today, that means that if the price of bitcoin cash were to increase dramatically, then we'd be in the same position with high fees (in USD) while at the same time decreasing centralization immensely.

Now let's talk about centralization. The SegWit2X network consisted of almost 90% AWS nodes that were likely spun up by a single entity given the fact that they appeared and disappeared in dramatic fashion very quickly. The hashrate of both the SegWit2x and BCH network are also greatly centralized consisting of mostly  miners out of China. I think this is a perfect example on why having a smaller block size yields a more decentralized network as whole. Bitcoin's decentralization is its key characteristic that will determine its survival in the long run. There appear to be two different approaches here. One sacrifices decentralization in an effort (a faulty one) to support coffee purchases. The other sacrifices the ability to purchase coffee to maintain its decentralization. Given the fact that there are many solutions out there that can support purchasing coffee and yet no valid solutions out there that are completely decentralized and trustless, it is my opinion that we should not sacrifice one for the other. There are always second layer approaches to enable coffee purchases with crypto-currencies, but there is only one option for keeping a network decentralized at layer 1.

Finally, as far as unconfirmed transactions go, there was clearly a transaction spam campaign that occurred after the fork cancellation due to the enormous number of transactions that were broadcast that all had fees of 10 satoshis/byte or lower. This was a very anomalous event. However, this doesn't impact legitimate users who are trying to get transactions through since all it takes to prioritize a legitimate transaction over one of these spam transactions is to submit a fee that is just a few satoshis/byte higher than those spam transactions. That means those spam transactions are simply just sitting there in the mempool, but don't actually effect the fee market much since they're not really competitive with regards to fees. So saying that transactions are backed up is extremely misleading in the current circumstances.

That doesn't even take into consideration the poor wallet fee estimation that also plays a very large part in users overpaying for fees at the moment that I spoke about earlier.

I hope this clears up some information as I feel like there is a lot of misinformation out there on fees, scaling, etc with regards to the bitcoin network.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2017, 07:31:15 PM by lifeanon269 »

maizefolk

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #538 on: November 18, 2017, 11:27:03 AM »
Regarding fees, first off, one of the biggest factors in rising fees for bitcoin is simply due to the fact that the price of a single bitcoin has risen astronomically over the last 2 years. Rather than focusing on the fee paid in USD for any given transaction, it should be the fee rate that should be of primary concentration. When you look at fee rates on Bitcoin Cash, the median fee rate is somewhere around 60-70 satoshis/byte. That results in a fee of about 18 cents on the Bitcoin Cash network for a transaction of average size. That same fee rate would result in a fee of $1.15 if the price of Bitcoin Cash were equivalent to the price of Bitcoin today (~$7700). Now, the median fee rate on the bitcoin network today is around 90 satoshis/byte. With an average transaction size of about 230 bytes, this results in your median fee being around $1.60 on the bitcoin network. That's not too far from what the Bitcoin Cash network would look like now if its price were the same as Bitcoin's.

Could you tell me a bit more about why you'd expect transaction fees priced in satoshis to stay constant as the price of the currency (in dollars/RMB/euros) increases?

Here's why I'm having trouble with that assumption: Transaction fees should be driven by supply and demand. Since the block size is currently fixed for both currencies, we can put aside the supply side entirely (technically I believe this is called having completely inelastic supply). If the price of the currency doubles but people are buying and selling the same goods (from cups of coffee to drug deals to purchases on overstock.com) for the same prices in USD, wouldn't you expect demand curve for bitcoin transactions to stay the same? For example, if I'm willing to buy a $5 cup of coffee with bitcoins if I have to up to but no more than $0.50 in transaction fees when the price of bitcoin was $3,500/bitcoin, I don't think it necessarily true that if the price of bitcoin doubles to $7,000 that I'm now willing to pay up to $1.00 in transaction fees to buy the same $5 cup of coffee.

What I suspect is actually happening is that as the price of conventional bitcoin continues to increase, it draws in more total people (whether they're using the currency as intended or buying in the hopes that the the price continues to increase), which creates more transactions trying to be confirmed, raising the minimum price people have to pay to ensure their transactions get included in a block. This still means that as prices (in USD/RMB/EURO) go up, transaction fees (USD/RMB/EURO) go up, but if I'm right then there is indeed a positive correlation between increasing cryptocurrency price and increasing transaction fees, however there is no reason to think the two increases are linked at a 1:1 rate. If bitcoin doubles in price it might bring in 50% more people (4:3), if bitcoin doubles in price it might bring in twice as many new people as are in the current user community (2:3).* But that 1:1 link is what you'd need for transaction fees to stay constant in terms of satoshis/byte.

*Technically it's not the number of people, it's the number of transactions. A single new user who is going to make 30 bitcoin transactions a month is going to increase the demand curve for bitcoin transactions more than twenty new users who are going to make 1 transaction a month each.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #539 on: November 18, 2017, 01:15:32 PM »
Regarding fees, first off, one of the biggest factors in rising fees for bitcoin is simply due to the fact that the price of a single bitcoin has risen astronomically over the last 2 years. Rather than focusing on the fee paid in USD for any given transaction, it should be the fee rate that should be of primary concentration. When you look at fee rates on Bitcoin Cash, the median fee rate is somewhere around 60-70 satoshis/byte. That results in a fee of about 18 cents on the Bitcoin Cash network for a transaction of average size. That same fee rate would result in a fee of $1.15 if the price of Bitcoin Cash were equivalent to the price of Bitcoin today (~$7700). Now, the median fee rate on the bitcoin network today is around 90 satoshis/byte. With an average transaction size of about 230 bytes, this results in your median fee being around $1.60 on the bitcoin network. That's not too far from what the Bitcoin Cash network would look like now if its price were the same as Bitcoin's.

Could you tell me a bit more about why you'd expect transaction fees priced in satoshis to stay constant as the price of the currency (in dollars/RMB/euros) increases?

Here's why I'm having trouble with that assumption: Transaction fees should be driven by supply and demand. Since the block size is currently fixed for both currencies, we can put aside the supply side entirely (technically I believe this is called having completely inelastic supply). If the price of the currency doubles but people are buying and selling the same goods (from cups of coffee to drug deals to purchases on overstock.com) for the same prices in USD, wouldn't you expect demand curve for bitcoin transactions to stay the same? For example, if I'm willing to buy a $5 cup of coffee with bitcoins if I have to up to but no more than $0.50 in transaction fees when the price of bitcoin was $3,500/bitcoin, I don't think it necessarily true that if the price of bitcoin doubles to $7,000 that I'm now willing to pay up to $1.00 in transaction fees to buy the same $5 cup of coffee.

What I suspect is actually happening is that as the price of conventional bitcoin continues to increase, it draws in more total people (whether they're using the currency as intended or buying in the hopes that the the price continues to increase), which creates more transactions trying to be confirmed, raising the minimum price people have to pay to ensure their transactions get included in a block. This still means that as prices (in USD/RMB/EURO) go up, transaction fees (USD/RMB/EURO) go up, but if I'm right then there is indeed a positive correlation between increasing cryptocurrency price and increasing transaction fees, however there is no reason to think the two increases are linked at a 1:1 rate. If bitcoin doubles in price it might bring in 50% more people (4:3), if bitcoin doubles in price it might bring in twice as many new people as are in the current user community (2:3).* But that 1:1 link is what you'd need for transaction fees to stay constant in terms of satoshis/byte.

*Technically it's not the number of people, it's the number of transactions. A single new user who is going to make 30 bitcoin transactions a month is going to increase the demand curve for bitcoin transactions more than twenty new users who are going to make 1 transaction a month each.

I wasn't trying to imply that the increase in the price of bitcoin is the sole reason why transaction fees have drastically risen over the last year (as priced in USD), but I do feel that it is the largest driver thus far given the fact that the price in bitcoin has increased at a much faster rate than the total number of transactions has. Coffee transactions don't just have to compete with other coffee transactions. They have to compete for block space with other large monetary transactions as well. Obviously a fair fee for larger monetary transactions is much higher than that of a fair fee for a small coffee payment. There will always need to be competition for block space. If there is no competition, then there is no need to apply a fee to any transaction at all, regardless of the size. Therefore, if the fee market requires a block size that forces certain transactions to wait to be confirmed in order to promote a fee market, then it will always be the smallest transactions (priced in USD) that are forced out of the block and be suspended in the mempool for a given duration because of the limited willingness to use a higher fee for such a small monetary transaction. This very model makes it unsuitable to scale for micro-transactions.

In the instance of bitcoin cash, since block size is essentially being used as the sole means of scalability, this means that the fee market is a delicate balance between ensuring that the mempool isn't always empty and that the blocks aren't always full. As I said above, since large monetary transactions are competing for the same block space as micro-transactions, then it will always be the micro-tranactions that are priced out of the block first. Now, that doesn't mean that in the long term the fee rate won't go down if it were to ever reach mainstream adoption and the adoption S-curve stabilized. However, reaching mainstream adoption depends directly on a token price that increases dramatically in order to support billions of users and a massive influx of money. This also means that the number of transactions will sky-rocket and the block size would need to be adjusted accordingly. In order to maintain a fee market during this phase of increasing adoption, it would absolutely require micro-transactions to be priced out of the block space since the fee rate would likely not decrease correspondingly since large monetary transactions are willing to pay those fee rates.

As you said in your last paragraph, there is a difference between the number of users versus the number of transactions. There is certainly a correlation between the two, but likewise there is a correlation between the value of the token and the number of users. So if there are 100 users on the network, the token will likely have a higher value than a network with only 10 users (regardless of the number of transactions taking place). This is the network effect that has been shown to essentially explain about 90% of bitcoin's price movement since inception. So if we are to expect that a network like bitcoin cash is to scale to accomodate a certain number of users as its adopted, then it should be expected that the value of the token would rise in relation. Since the fee market depends on forcing some transactions out of the block, then again micro-transactions will always be the first to go since their fees can't compete against the fees of larger transactions. This is why I feel the fee rate will result in higher and higher fees (priced in USD) during the adoption phase of a crypto-currency.

Obviously this doesn't discuss the feasibility of such block size increases to even accomodate a number of transactions that could potentially increase parabolically. For that discussion, I'll simply refer to Andreas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AecPrwqjbGw

In my opinion, the only scalability solution that will feasibly work long term is to use secondary layers where fees for micro-transactions don't need to compete directly against fees for large monetary transactions and where enormous amounts of transactions don't need to fit into a block of any given size at any given time.

PS. I hope that makes sense, I did a lot of rambling. Feel free to correct me where you feel I may have made incorrect conclusions.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2017, 01:18:05 PM by lifeanon269 »

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #540 on: November 18, 2017, 03:05:39 PM »
No, thanks that's a set of interesting thoughts.

I completely agree with you that relatively small transactions are going to be the first ones to be priced out of inclusion in blocks when demand for bitcoin (or bitcoin cash) transactions exceeds supply. The reason I focused on something like buying coffee is that these smaller commercial transactions also tend to be the marginal transactions which are more sensitive to transaction fees, and hence they play an outsized role in determining what the transaction fees actually end up looking like for everyone.

Imagine a world with 4 transactions per block, and right now in each block there are are five people trying to make transactions, one willing to pay $0.50 in transaction fees, one willing to pay $10 in transaction fees, and three willing to pay $100 in transaction fees. Right now the market clearing transaction fee is $0.51, because at that price, the number of potential transactions willing to pay that price equals the number of transactions which can be included in the block. Now imagine one additional person decides they want to make a transaction and is willing to pay up to $20 in fees. It make take a few blocks for supply and demand to work itself out, but when the dust settles the market clearing price has jumped from $0.51 to $10.01, which is enough to price out two of the people who wanted to spend bitcoin, so supply equals demand again. A 20% increase in the number of potential transactions produced a 2,000% increase in price. The change in the price of transaction fees doesn't have to have a linear relationship with the number of potential transactions.

One thing to keep in mind is that transaction fees are only a relatively small part of the revenue miners get from adding to the blockchain at the moment. Right now the block reward is still 12.5 bitcoins (~$100,000). The average transaction fees per block are only 2.2 bitcoins (~$17,000). Even if there was some empty space in some blocks, I think there will always be lots of microtransactions or dust transactions which would be happy to pay lower but greater than zero fees to be included in the blockchain. However you won't see these in the mempool because people know they'd never get confirmed and so don't even bother to try to get them to go through.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #541 on: November 18, 2017, 04:29:00 PM »
No, thanks that's a set of interesting thoughts.

I completely agree with you that relatively small transactions are going to be the first ones to be priced out of inclusion in blocks when demand for bitcoin (or bitcoin cash) transactions exceeds supply. The reason I focused on something like buying coffee is that these smaller commercial transactions also tend to be the marginal transactions which are more sensitive to transaction fees, and hence they play an outsized role in determining what the transaction fees actually end up looking like for everyone.

...

One thing to keep in mind is that transaction fees are only a relatively small part of the revenue miners get from adding to the blockchain at the moment. Right now the block reward is still 12.5 bitcoins (~$100,000). The average transaction fees per block are only 2.2 bitcoins (~$17,000). Even if there was some empty space in some blocks, I think there will always be lots of microtransactions or dust transactions which would be happy to pay lower but greater than zero fees to be included in the blockchain. However you won't see these in the mempool because people know they'd never get confirmed and so don't even bother to try to get them to go through.

I totally agree that the micro-transactions are the transactions that ultimately dictate the fee rate. If a $10,000 transaction is willing to pay $100 in fees, but only needs to pay $1 to get a transaction confirmed, then why pay $100? There are a much larger number of micro-transactions than there are large sum transfers. If the block size is large enough to accomodate all large sum transfers, then it is ultimately only the micro-transactions that need to compete for block space. Since these are the only competitors, then they're the ones that will set the fee rate for all others.

The thing about the bitcoin network is that at the very start, there weren't very many large sum transfers since not many people were willing to use the network with large sums of money. So I don't think we really saw much competition between small and large transactions. Also, since the block size wasn't a limit, large sum transactions were getting a really good fee deal in the beginning. I feel that the more institutional money comes in, we're going to see more and more large sum money transactions that will end up competing for block space.

As far as the number of micro-transactions that could potentially be included in blocks, but are never broadcasted to begin with; this raises another important consideration. Transaction spamming needs to always be considered when determining the approriate block size and unfortunately it is almost impossible to do because of the fact that it isn't something that you can easily predict. Anyone can broadcast any number of transactions using any fee rate they choose (at a cost obviously). Therefore, if there is always a large amount of transactions that are borderline missing out completely from block space, this can be easily abused with transaction spamming. Since a massive influx of transactions at small fee rate (10 satoshis/byte) will effectively blanket all transactions at that fee rate, then all micro-transactions at that fee rate that want to get confirmed will need to marginally increase their fee rate to 11 satoshis/byte. Since transactions at 10 satoshis/byte are no longer being confirmed, then the spammer doesn't need to worry about actually paying many of those fees and they've effectively raised the fee rate on the network for the lowest margin and most vulnerable transactions. This is another problem that the fee market doesn't have a good solution for when it comes to accomodating micro-transactions and is another reason why second layer solutions are necessary. Block sizes consisting of mostly larger sum transactions won't have this problem since these transactions can support larger fees and since some of the spammed transactions actually do go through, it will be much more costly for the spammer to conduct such a campaign.

I think the predictability of fees is another problem that has caused many people to pay much larger fees than they actually need to. Until wallets can accurately predict the lowest fee necessary, then we'll always have people pay $2 for a transaction when they could've easily only paid $1 and been confirmed in the same amount of time. Having a network vulnerable to transaction spamming only exacerbates the problem with fee estimation algorithms.

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #542 on: November 18, 2017, 07:01:59 PM »
To say that they were the opposite of conservative simply because the number of lines of code involved is a misunderstanding of a proper development lifecycle.

core allowed blocks to get full rather than making a one-line code change.  they allowed fees to increase and have killed user enthusiasm and adoption for bitcoin because they refused to make a conservative one-line code change.  they are the opposite of conservative.

yes, by all means, test segwit code for years and on other coins before deploying it.  but the conservative move was to change the one line of code while doing the testing to avoid this transaction fee market escalation.

Regarding fees, first off, one of the biggest factors in rising fees for bitcoin is simply due to the fact that the price of a single bitcoin has risen astronomically over the last 2 years.

this is wrong.  the price does not determine rising fees.  rising fees are explained by available block space going to zero.  look at the first chart in this link:

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#30d
(or see chart image attachment on this post)

many transactions remain unconfirmed with low fees (<10 sat/byte) because there's no available block space.  users/wallets ARE attempting to send low-fee transactions, they just isn't room to confirm them.

Rather than focusing on the fee paid in USD for any given transaction, it should be the fee rate that should be of primary concentration.

i disagree.  to grow the user base for bitcoin, the actual paid USD fee is the important number.  a $0.05 median fee means users and merchants will use the coin, and a $1.00 (or lately for BTC, $3.00+) fee means users and merchants will abandon the coin.

When you look at fee rates on Bitcoin Cash, the median fee rate is somewhere around 60-70 satoshis/byte. That results in a fee of about 18 cents on the Bitcoin Cash network for a transaction of average size.

again, this is wrong.  where are you getting your data for median fees (in satoshis/byte) for BCH?  i couldn't find it anywhere.   i'll provide a link below that shows the median fee for bitcoin cash has recently spiked to 11 cents, and for the last few months has often been well below 4 cents.  well below your "18 cents" value given.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/median_transaction_fee-bch.html#3m

That same fee rate would result in a fee of $1.15 if the price of Bitcoin Cash were equivalent to the price of Bitcoin today (~$7700). Now, the median fee rate on the bitcoin network today is around 90 satoshis/byte. With an average transaction size of about 230 bytes, this results in your median fee being around $1.60 on the bitcoin network. That's not too far from what the Bitcoin Cash network would look like now if its price were the same as Bitcoin's.

fees are determined by the fee market, not the price of the coin.  you cannot compare the fees in sat/bye of BTC, with full blocks, to BCH, where blocks are not full.  just to show the data, here is average block size of BTC vs BCH, showing BTC blocks are full and BCH blocks are not:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/size-btc-bch.html#3m

The percentage of SegWit transactions is only around 10-11%. This means that there is still potential to decrease these fees by not only freeing up block weight space for additional transactions and thus decreasing competition in the fee market (lowering the fee rate), but also by decreasing the average size of a transaction using SegWit enabled wallets/addresses.

BTC users could use segwit transactions, which should increase the supply of available space for transactions to 2MB:

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4ff0kw/36_mb_blocks_on_the_segwit_testnet/d28lljd/

we'll see if users begin to do that more often.  but given an equal size of the user base and an equal coin price in USD, full 2MB BTC blocks will require higher fees than full 8MB BCH blocks.

But where does bitcoin cash go with an increasing load? Competition for block space is already low due to the low transaction volume and large block size. Therefore there isn't much capability for bitcoin cash to decrease the actual fee rate paid and fee of transactions in USD from where they are today.  If bitcoin cash were to see the same load of the bitcoin network then that would mean the only option to keep the fee rate the same as it is today would be to increase the block size yet again.

this is not true.  BCH blocks are not full, so users/wallets could send lower fee transactions TODAY, even 0-fee transactions.

yes obviously, if BCH blocks were full then increasing block size would be the only way to lower fees.  supply and demand.

If increasing the block size only allows you to maintain the fee rate that we have today, that means that if the price of bitcoin cash were to increase dramatically, then we'd be in the same position with high fees (in USD) while at the same time decreasing centralization immensely.

you're basing this on your above false premise that BCH fees cannot be lowered today.

Finally, as far as unconfirmed transactions go, there was clearly a transaction spam campaign that occurred after the fork cancellation due to the enormous number of transactions that were broadcast that all had fees of 10 satoshis/byte or lower. This was a very anomalous event.

again, you are spreading misinformation.  please stop doing this.  where are you getting your data from?  below is a link (first "unconfirmed transaction count" chart) that shows the number of unconfirmed 0-10 satoshis/byte transactions on BTC did not suddenly increase after the fork cancellation on November 8th:

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#30d
(or see chart image attachment on this post)

if anything it shows a clear linear accumulation of 0-5 sat/byte fee transactions since Oct 26th and a relatively constant number of unconfirmed 5-10 sat/byte free transactions since then -- nobody is spamming these transactions.

I hope this clears up some information as I feel like there is a lot of misinformation out there on fees, scaling, etc with regards to the bitcoin network.

you are spreading misinformation without citing your sources.  you are systematically using false premises to make it seem like BCH would have the same transaction fees as BTC if their USD price was the same.  BCH has 8MB blocks, and BTC has 1MB blocks (or 1.7MB-2MB blocks if segwit is used, see link below).  it's supply and demand.  an 8MB block will have a lower-priced fee market than a 2MB block.  it's a simple as that.

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4ff0kw/36_mb_blocks_on_the_segwit_testnet/d28lljd/

I wasn't trying to imply that the increase in the price of bitcoin is the sole reason why transaction fees have drastically risen over the last year (as priced in USD), but I do feel that it is the largest driver thus far given the fact that the price in bitcoin has increased at a much faster rate than the total number of transactions has.

and why do you think the number of transactions hasn't increased?  it's because blocks are full.  transaction fees are going up because blocks are full.

In the instance of bitcoin cash, since block size is essentially being used as the sole means of scalability, this means that the fee market is a delicate balance between ensuring that the mempool isn't always empty and that the blocks aren't always full.

the fee market is simply the supply of block space vs. the demand for making transactions.  it has nothing to do with ensuring the mempool isn't always empty.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #543 on: November 18, 2017, 09:20:29 PM »
Phil22,

I agree with much of what you're saying. Rereading your original response I see that you're comment was mainly in regards to the recent run up in fees and transactions related to the fork event. Like I said, this was highly anomalous. Taking out events such as the forks in August and November and things look much different with transactions in the 10-20 satoshi/byte range routinely getting processed each day.

My points weren't to compare the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash networks as they are in their own states today. That's obviously not a fair comparison for several reasons, some of which were touched on by the both of us. For one, as was said, Bitcoin Cash's blocks aren't full. Therefore discussing a fee market where blocks aren't full is like simply trying to compare the generosity of one userbase to a competitive fee market in another. Blocks on the Bitcoin network only started getting regularly full around March of this year. Bitcoin Cash is a good demonstration of this however. As I said earlier, often wallets over-estimate fees and this is clearly seen on the BCH network in action as well. The same is true on the BTC network. Unfortunately, a lot of work still needs to occur to accurately estimate proper fees. If wallets/users would estimate fees appropriately, this would do a lot to drive down the median fee rate on the BTC network. It doesn't benefit anyone to pay a higher fee than necessary (except the miners of course).

I agree that since BCH blocks aren't full, then the fee rate could potentially be lower. But, my point was that 8MB won't always be empty. They're empty because the network isn't utilized. The same critiques against BTC today could be had against BCH in a few years if its adoption rate matched BTC's. So how would full blocks at 8MB be any different than full blocks at 1MB with regards to the fee market? The points discussed between Maizeman and I would still hold true with regards to fee competition. Like I said, the only option then to once again alleviate the strain on the fee market would be to increase block size, to which I linked the Andreas video as to why that is not a viable long term solution.

Also, since BCH blocks are never full, then essentially that means that transactions never need to wait more than the next block to be confirmed (which thankfully with the latest DAA adjustment will be more regular). So one thing that hasn't been discussed in this conversation yet is time. The fee market is all about competing for block space and paying a fee to be included in that block space. But, the third part of that equation that hasn't been discussed is time. It often isn't necessary for all transactions (especially micro-transactions) to be included in the next block, or even the next 5 blocks. That's why I find John Newberry's response to Erik Voorhees' tweet a little while back very honest about the state of Bitcoin fees:

https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/927615263058653184

Often, fees are looked at as an average or median over the course of time (whether that's a day, and hour, etc). But, rather the fees in any given block is essentially a snapshot of what the fee market looked like at the time the block was mined. That doesn't tell you how long those transactions were waiting in the mempool prior to that block being mined. If we can assume that allowing for a micro-transaction to be confirmed within a day is reasonable, then saying that the blocks are full is extremely misleading since we know that all the blocks in any given day are not all full. At the moment, transactions with fees less than 10 satoshis/byte are being cleared out of the mempool. Outside of the anomaly transaction loads that I mentioned, 10-20 satoshis/byte fees are routinely being processed each day. Also, like I said, SegWit is opt-in and only being about 10% utilized on the network. If more people (and companies) would chose to utilize it, it would make fee rates of 20 satoshis/byte be even lower when denominated in USD because you're lowering the byte side of the fee rate as well.

Again, to reiterate, just because a blocksize increase is a simple change to make, doesn't mean it is an easy one or the right one. Once you increase the block size, you can't go backward. So it is absolutely critical that if it is chosen to go forward with such a decision, it is done when it is absolutely necessary and right to do so. Given all of our options for fees and scalability on the network as it stands already, I don't think the right conclusion is to make a decision to hardfork to a higher block size.

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #544 on: November 18, 2017, 09:56:08 PM »
That is a really cool visualization of the mempool phil22, thanks for the link!

I got curious about the huge spike in pending transactions a week ago. Looks like bitcoin lost almost half of its hashing power to BCC for about two days. On Nov 11th and 12th, the blocktime was all the way up at 18 minutes (it's supposed to be 10) because the hash rate on the BTC network was so low.

Anyone know if there are any plans to change how fast BTC's difficulty adjusts as the hashrate changes? Having two compatible blockchains with valuations and hash rates of the same order of magnitude would seem to make it much more likely that we'll see more big swings in hashing power on time scales shorter than the 14 days that it normally takes the difficulty rate to adjust.

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #545 on: November 19, 2017, 10:34:19 AM »
Rereading your original response I see that you're comment was mainly in regards to the recent run up in fees and transactions related to the fork event. Like I said, this was highly anomalous. Taking out events such as the forks in August and November and things look much different with transactions in the 10-20 satoshi/byte range routinely getting processed each day.

the size of the spike is anomalous... but spikes in the mempool size are NOT anomalous.  you can see in the 3-month chart link below (the bottom chart on the page, "mempool size in MB") that the BTC mempool regularly spiked above 10MB throughout September and October (requiring users to wait 10 blocks for their transactions to clear):

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#3m
(or see attached chart to this post)

So how would full blocks at 8MB be any different than full blocks at 1MB with regards to the fee market?

it's supply and demand.  you make the point later with larger segwit bloks: with a larger supply of block space, given the same demand that can fill both 8MB and 1MB blocks, fees will be lower on the 8MB blocks.

Once you increase the block size, you can't go backward. So it is absolutely critical that if it is chosen to go forward with such a decision, it is done when it is absolutely necessary and right to do so.

this is not true.  after you increase the block size, if a really good 2nd-layer solution is developed and actually gets traction and allows users to make small transactions off-chain, you could then theoretically lower the block size.

lifeanon269

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #546 on: November 19, 2017, 01:09:18 PM »
the size of the spike is anomalous... but spikes in the mempool size are NOT anomalous.  you can see in the 3-month chart link below (the bottom chart on the page, "mempool size in MB") that the BTC mempool regularly spiked above 10MB throughout September and October (requiring users to wait 10 blocks for their transactions to clear):

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#3m
(or see attached chart to this post)

So how would full blocks at 8MB be any different than full blocks at 1MB with regards to the fee market?

it's supply and demand.  you make the point later with larger segwit bloks: with a larger supply of block space, given the same demand that can fill both 8MB and 1MB blocks, fees will be lower on the 8MB blocks.

this is not true.  after you increase the block size, if a really good 2nd-layer solution is developed and actually gets traction and allows users to make small transactions off-chain, you could then theoretically lower the block size.

Spikes in the mempool are not a problem so long as they drop and the netwok starts clearing out lower fee transactions (10-20 satoshis/byte) in a reasonable amount of time. Taking out the anomalous spikes around the fork dates and the large spikes in transactions all drop down with in a day or so down to the point where 0-20 satoshi/byte transactions are being cleared out. Waiting a day for a micro-transaction to be confirmed is not going to kill adoption. Especially given the fact that with credit cards, a merchant needs to wait 30 days to receive payment and payments are potentially reversible. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and waiting a day to receive a small transaction to be confirmed on the network is not a problem. Merchants even take risk when accepting cash for transactions given the fact that they likely are not checking for counterfeits on transactions so small. I think the biggest problem is the fact that wallets have not done a good enough job in allowing users to specify a reasonable fee for their transactions to make it easier for them to judge what type of fee to use for their transaction. Perhaps wallets can even start including some of the fee data from websites like earn.com (some wallets do).

Do you feel it is a problem that 30 cent fees for smaller transactions take a day to confirm?

I think you missed my point regarding full 8MB blocks and full 1MB blocks. The point I was making is that, regardless of the block size, if you have full blocks, then that means you have to force some transactions to wait to be confirmed (not a bad thing as I mentioned) and thus this promotes fee competition (again, not a bad thing). The point I was making was that if 8MB blocks are full and transaction demand gets to the point where 8MB blocks are not sufficient, then the only option is to increase the block size yet again (I've talked about why that is not a good solution).

Also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread. I'm not against raising the block size to 2MB. It would be good if this were planned for 2018. I was against the SegWit2X fork due to the poor implementation of it (and was proven to be the case). I don't think block size increases should be immediately used whenever we start to have some transaction congestion. Like I said, once you increase the block size, you can't go back and if you could, it wouldn't exactly be easy. That's because Bitcoin nodes, when they download the blockchain, they validate all the blocks that they receive. If their rules state that all blocks must be 1MB, then they'll stop accepting blocks up to the point where a larger block is received. Maybe you could state rules that blocks between say 500000-510000 are allowed to be 2MB, but that isn't exactly an elegate solution and likely getting consensus around something like that would be difficult. With a network that requires consensus, you don't implement solutions around the idea that they could potentially be removed later knowing full well how difficult it is to get new rules implemented to begin with. Second layer solutions are a much better alternative to prevent micro-transactions from having to compete with large transactions in the same fee market.

phil22

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #547 on: November 19, 2017, 02:14:54 PM »
Waiting a day for a micro-transaction to be confirmed is not going to kill adoption. Especially given the fact that with credit cards, a merchant needs to wait 30 days to receive payment and payments are potentially reversible. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible and waiting a day to receive a small transaction to be confirmed on the network is not a problem.

bitcoin doesn't compete with just credit cards.  it competes with all other cryptocurrencies.  preventing use of microtransactions now, when there's no reason to do so, is harming adoption.  bitcoin is crippling itself at its own peril.

Do you feel it is a problem that 30 cent fees for smaller transactions take a day to confirm?

i agree that waiting a few hours or up to a day in the worst case is probably fine for most small transactions IF users and merchants are willing to do that rather than use a different cryptocurrency.  merchants shouldn't have trouble with that.  the problem is when a transaction for a $200 purchase on overstock or newegg, or even a $5 cup of coffee, is stuck in the mempool for several days and is eventually dropped completely out of the mempool altogether.  then the merchant would rather wait 30 days for a credit card transaction rather than get no payment at all.

and i think 5 cent fees taking a day to confirm is bearable in the worst case -- 30 cent fees should be much quicker than a full day.  a 30 cent fee is 3% of a $10 transaction, which is where we are with credit cards.

if 5 cent fees require 20MB blocks then yes that's too much too soon.  we may need good 2nd-layer solutions to allow those microtransactions to work, but the wrong way to do that is to force users to other cryptocurrencies at this stage by artificially keeping the block size low.  the decision to attempt to incentivize users to use off-chain transactions by artificially keeping the block size low was either intentional to try to kill bitcoin, or an attempt to redirect transaction fees to entities other than miners, or plain stupidity.

The point I was making was that if 8MB blocks are full and transaction demand gets to the point where 8MB blocks are not sufficient, then the only option is to increase the block size yet again (I've talked about why that is not a good solution).

you could continue to develop and roll out 2nd-layer solutions to keep smaller transactions off-chain.  you don't necessarily need to always increase block size.  but if a large majority of nodes can handle larger blocks, then there's no reason not to increase the max block size -- and this is where we are now.

Tonyahu

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #548 on: November 21, 2017, 05:08:14 PM »
I want to point out that Bitcoin is up 296% since the original posting of this thread which was roughly 5 months ago.

Cheers to all who are in this market :]
« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 05:10:04 PM by Tonyahu »

GuitarStv

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Re: OFFICIAL: Blockchain / Crypto-Currency Portfolios and Discussion
« Reply #549 on: November 21, 2017, 06:07:59 PM »
Agreed.  When you're on a hot streak, the best thing to do is to keep gambling.  It never ends poorly.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!