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gavinandresen
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:27 pm

I'll answer a few more, but can't go on forever...
1. Do you have any suggestion regarding how mining can be decentralized again?

2. If blocksize is not raised above 1mb, will you leave bitcoin core development?
1. I think mining centralization will swing back and forth between being more and less centralized. I hope some smart hardware engineers are working on ways to bring mining hardware back to the masses...

2. No.

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gavinandresen
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:29 pm

Do you see blockchains changing significantly any time soon? I'm thinking along the lines of Tangle but basically things other than single monolithic chains becoming the more popular implementations.
No, but I might be wrong. As I said earlier, I'm a big fan of simple, so I like the bitcoin blockchain's simple, brute-force approach to securing the network (if you dig down there's a lot of subtlety even with Bitcoin, so any more complex solution starts to scare the pants off me).

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gavinandresen
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:32 pm


Sure, and that's why BIP101 started with "what is reasonable for somebody with a somewhat-above-average Internet connection."
Please forgive me if I'm missing it but I don't see that language anywhere in the BIP. Am I looking in the right place? :

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/ma ... .mediawiki
BIPs are for implementors, so they don't go into excruciating detail on every design decision. You can see detail on my blog: http://gavinandresen.ninja/does-more-tr ... entralized

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:36 pm

My recollection of your major projects in Bitcoin are: 1. multisignature transactions in 2014, and 2. increase block size in 2015. What will you focus on in 2016? (Assuming, for this question, that the block size increase issue is settled one way or another.)
Right now, I'm planning on focusing on optimizing information propagation across the network, so I'm reading a lot about error-correcting codes and gossip networks.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:38 pm

With Confidential Transactions working on a sidechain, what roadblocks do you see in getting this implemented in core? What can the community do to help spur movement to get this merged into core?
Good question for Greg... I don't know, I haven't looked.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:42 pm

What are your thoughts on MIT's college atmosphere and opportunities? What areas of computer science and tech would be the most beneficial to study if Bitcoin tech development is the end goal?
I've never been a student at MIT, so I don't know. Personally, I think I'd prefer a university like Princeton that is not in the middle of a major city (I'm not a city person).

What PARTICULAR areas of computer science and tech.... uhh.... hard to pick one, Bitcoin touches on so many different aspects of computer science-- networking, crypto, security, distributed systems, databases, user interface / design....

Pick something that is interesting to you and that you think you can be pretty good at, and do lots of that.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:49 pm

Thanks for doing this Gavin,

What are the realistic possibilities for a 51% attack as the ecosystem becomes more mainstream with more diverse resources and interests at stake?

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gavinandresen
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:49 pm

Hey Gavin,
Do you see the halving having any major impact to the ecosystem? Ever worry that miners will not be getting paid enough in the long run or that fees will be astronomical putting off many new users to make up for having less of a block reward?
I think the second halving will be a non-event, just like the first halving was.

I don't worry too much about miners not getting paid enough, because anybody who is using the blockchain has some incentive for it to be secure. So if it is not secure enough for whatever is their use case (because there isn't enough mining) they'll find a way to make it more secure (either they'll pay fees, or mine themselves, or will find some other way to secure their transactions).

There probably is a failure mode where transactions that have a little bit of extra trust associated with them (e.g. people involved in the transaction know each other and have some trust and/or some off-blockchain mechanism like a court system to resolve disputes) use the chain because it is "secure enough" for their use. But it is not secure enough for perfectly anonymous transactions.

I do worry about fees getting so high very few people can afford to submit transactions directly to the blockchain. The Poon/Dryja talk at Montreal was excellent on that (see https://scalingbitcoin.org/montreal2015 ... sDryja.pdf ).

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:01 pm

Question: I see you've been inactive on bitcointalk.org, have you given up on them? If so, why? Is it because theymos' stance on XT?
I just found it wasn't worth my time to try to have a productive conversation there-- too many people who seemed to be actively trying to derail good discussion.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:07 pm

I had a dream that an artificial intelligence entity ended up with most of the bitcoin that remained, is it possible that our future economy might be mostly directed by AI? Also, in this dream the artificially entity kept buying bitcoin miners and kept getting larger and larger and ended up with a majority of the Hashing power.
Last edited by czr5014 on Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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gavinandresen
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:08 pm

After this answer, I'm done for now:
Hi Gavin and thank you and the team for the great work you've been doing for Bitcoin,
For somebody learning to code , and wanting to go into writing smart contracts and contributing to the cryptocurrencies community , where do I start?
Any specific programming languages I should master?
How deep my knowledge of cryptography and distributed networks be?
Any specific cryptocurrency resources I should look into ?
Which direction you see the need for coders is going (smart contracts, ethereal, banking? ,,, sorry for the last word :D )
I dunno nuthin about writing smart contracts.

I'm not sure anybody actually knows enough about writing smart contracts yet for me to recommend that anybody start writing smart contracts that actually secure anything of value.

Where to start... the developer documentation on bitcoin.org is great: https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-documentation
Specific programming languages: doesn't really matter a good programmer can pick up a new programming language pretty quickly (I've worked in C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript... and have written just enough to gett my feet wet in Snobol, Rexx, APL and ML over the course of my career).

Coders will be needed all up and down the technology stack for the forseeable future, so pick something interesting and then dive in and learn and do a lot.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 9:21 pm

Pick something that is interesting to you and that you think you can be pretty good at, and do lots of that.
Thanks for the advice!

I'm currently heading into a project which will be implementing BIP 70 and as you are the BIP's author I figured I'd ask if you have any advice or any additional documentation besides the BIP document?

Also, what are your thoughts on bitpay's bitcore library?

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 10:15 pm

1 question

when the good damn issue about the block limit will be solved? do you intend to solve it with sidechain at this point or you believe in an alternative way? because it's clear that the XT fork is not working, literally it's dead, well it was expected after all....

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 11:11 pm

1 question

when the good damn issue about the block limit will be solved? do you intend to solve it with sidechain at this point or you believe in an alternative way? because it's clear that the XT fork is not working, literally it's dead, well it was expected after all....
You know he may as well ask you the same question?
He's not Bitcoin CEO and he makes no decisions.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 11:19 pm

Sure, and that's why BIP101 started with "what is reasonable for somebody with a somewhat-above-average Internet connection."
So basically BIP101 makes an assumption that people with for example 1Mbps upstream or using TOR are not going to be able to host nodes?

I just want that to be clear to people if that is the case as it seems somewhat important.

Notice Gavin never replied to this one. I've been unable to get him to comment about TOR and non-data center hosted nodes. Perhaps that's not a concern of his, but that should not prevent him from making his feelings about it explicit. Frankly, I think this is the root of the difference of opinion of the two sides. The fact that Gavin seems to dodge makes me tend to believe his side has something more to hide.

Yes I'm being presumptuous but it's hard to assume anything different if I can ask an explicit question and not get an explicit answer.

TOR nodes would seemingly be important regarding privacy and robustness of the bitcoin network should there start to be a regulatory attack on bitcoin. This issue should be discussed instead of pretending it doesn't exist - IMHO.

The link Gavin provided: http://gavinandresen.ninja/does-more-tr ... entralized mentions "Hosting and bandwidth costs of $10 per month are trivial even to a cash-starved startup. Finding and hiring good people is expensive, and that is what is driving companies to outsource blockchain maintenance. A larger maximum block size won’t change that equation." However, unless I'm somehow mistaken the issue is that if all or most nodes were hosted in datacenters they'd be vulnerable to forced shut down.

I think this is critical, but would love to hear other thoughts on it. A network that scales but that can be shut down does not preserve the key tenet of bitcoin: "permission-less innovation".

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 02, 2015 11:32 pm

Hello Gavin Andreson,

I am very excited to be able to ask you questions.
(I am from Europe, my english not perfect, sorry)
You said you don't know Satoshi Nakamoto and you only ever communicated with the creator in non-real-time. And I understand that you are probably tired of questions about Satoshi.
As a real bitcoin fan and user, the mystery surrounding the creator of Bitcoin is the only thing I really don't understand. We know the creators of Facebook, Google, Internet. why the hell we don't know nothing about the creator of Bitcoin??

Keep up the good work!
Last edited by bitc0in on Thu Nov 05, 2015 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
:mrgreen:

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 2:39 am

^^ I understand your frustration with not knowing who the creator of bitcoin was but I have noticed that over time this doesn't matter, it is actually one of the reasons I love bitcoin so much, there is no one person to blame if something was to go wrong. It was a genius move on his behalf and just about as perfect as bitcoin itself.
Working for Kim Jong-un, lol, are you joking? He would rather blow up the world than help it.

@Gavin. I am not an expert in the bitcoin protocol so don't really have any serious questions for you, the whole blocksize debate does worry me a little but since I don't know enough I don't get involved, that's why there is a team of experts working on bitcoin, even if they don't always agree nobody always agrees with each other, it's human nature. plus as far as I am aware anyone can put in a pull request on github and help the network.

Anyway thanks for all your time and effort you have put into bitcoin so far.
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:15 am

Yes, Gavin, can you tell me how to stop subconsciously typing reddit.com/r/bitcoin into my browser address bar and somehow remove it from my muscle memory?

Ok, a serious question, what do you think of /r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org forum moderation since XT?
Last edited by mrmadden on Mon Dec 07, 2015 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:33 am

I had a dream that an artificial intelligence entity ended up with most of the bitcoin that remained, is it possible that our future economy might be mostly directed by AI? Also, in this dream the artificially entity kept buying bitcoin miners and kept getting larger and larger and ended up with a majority of the Hashing power.
Thanks for that, I have not laughed that hard about a post in a long time, you must really have a good imagination if your getting dreams like that.
That is a great movie idea right there but please don't release it for a few years, it might scare people off bitcoin.
Please help Ross and his family during this hard time by donating to the https://freeross.org/ fund. Play at the best provably fair Bitcoin games site here: games.bitcoin.com Need a fantastic Bitcoin wallet Pick up some great Bitcoin.com swag here

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 3:50 am

Hi Gavin-----A more pressing need is to encrypt everybody's interaction with the internet. Do you foresee yourself getting involved with that effort in any way in the future? I feel that even bitcoin will loose its neutrality freedoms eventually.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 4:13 am

Heya,

Have you ever felt your time has been wasted with Bitcoin? It's a decentralised system which has the people who put the work in not receiving benefits (Apart from donations) which sorta breaks simple game theory. Obviously your enthusiastic but has there been times where you've felt unappreciated?
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 9:44 am

1 question

when the good damn issue about the block limit will be solved? do you intend to solve it with sidechain at this point or you believe in an alternative way? because it's clear that the XT fork is not working, literally it's dead, well it was expected after all....
You know he may as well ask you the same question?
He's not Bitcoin CEO and he makes no decisions.
well maybe he know something since he worked as a dev you know, so your point is 100% moot

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 10:42 am

Hello Gavin.

Thank you for everything you have done for Bitcoin. Just a quick question or two :

Is the divide in the development of Bitcoin good for the future of this technology? Many big companies see this as a threat.

How can we get these parties together to work for one goal? :?:
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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:00 pm

Hi Gavin, thanks for doing the AMA. I appreciate the hard work you put in to push Bitcoin forward... especially in the face of some terrible journalism and senseless opinion pieces built on misunderstandings... Anyway here are my questions:

What cool things have you bought with bitcoin?

What Bitcoin accepting/related services do you like using?

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:51 pm

I had a dream that an artificial intelligence entity ended up with most of the bitcoin that remained, is it possible that our future economy might be mostly directed by AI? Also, in this dream the artificially entity kept buying bitcoin miners and kept getting larger and larger and ended up with a majority of the Hashing power.
Thanks for that, I have not laughed that hard about a post in a long time, you must really have a good imagination if your getting dreams like that.
That is a great movie idea right there but please don't release it for a few years, it might scare people off bitcoin.
in my dream iam riding on an orange honey badger with my AI friend and we are celebrating that bitcoin surpassed 1 Mio USD :D

--------------------

HINT : AMA HAS ENDED. THX ALL!
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bitcoin.org/en/

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reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Thu Nov 05, 2015 9:13 pm

Hi Gavin what is your favorite bitcoin related picture?

thanks for the Bitcoin development stuff :D
Last edited by btcartgallery on Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:02 pm

Hi Gavin,

You did a very interesting talk at Web Summit, have a nice time in Dublin?

Cheers

Jamie

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Sun Nov 08, 2015 2:15 pm

Things I get asked a lot that I'll answer up front:

No, I'm not him. No, I don't know who he is; we only ever communicated in non-real-time via email or forum message.

I stumbled across Bitcoin in May of 2010 (this InfoWorld article).

Yes, I really did give away 10,000 bitcoin through the Bitcoin Faucet. No, sorry, they're all gone, I don't have any more to give away.
With how much bitcoin are you now left with? Can you post the exact conversation between you and 'him' that happened through emails/forum messages?
Tip : 1FNjchqX9VMXnn5vc4cnppKCFuumah6r95

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 09, 2015 3:02 am

Hi Gavin,

I think of joining bitcoin company, but what is your salaries? is it better than traditional financial institute?

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Re: I'm Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin geek. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 09, 2015 3:26 am

What do you think will happen to Bitcoin if Bitcoin XT does not catch on?

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