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greenabacus
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 5:44 pm

On block size: when push comes to shove, companies like 21 inc and others might be in a position to broadly encourage bip101 via their hardware node/mining devices (hopefully many will own them).

Generally, what thoughts do you have on the industry creating ecosystems that would naturally prefer/promote XT--perhaps transparently to the end users--and is the timing of this looking workable?

Thanks Mike - lots of respect for your work.

+PS: Thought being that if XT and its cause is too abstract for individual users to understand and articulate preferences for in a democratic way, will companies be proxying that or capturing user votes in the competing hardware devices they market to consumers / developers.

joeydekoning
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:05 pm

Hi Mike.

Best case solutions aside, what do you think is the most likely state of the blocksize debate two years from now?

Thanks!

Joey

MikeHearn
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:07 pm

I've added another batch of answers. Thanks for all the kind words everyone!

JalToorey
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:16 pm

Have you read John Nash's "Ideal Money"?

imaginary_username
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:39 pm

A prominent Chinese mining operator (Marshall Long) recently stated that they not only won't switch to XT, they in fact do not update their software at all, under almost all circumstances (because it's "a waste of money") unless they "have to", i.e. forced by something overwhelming. Given that the Chinese control >51% of hashpower combined, it seems like this attitude can stagnate the code forever, XT or Core - and was probably what caused the BIP66 soft-fork fiasco, as they opted to simply flag their blocks instead of actually upgrading software to enforce anything. The only Chinese pool that seemed to actively care about Bitcoin, so far, seemed to be Antpool/Bitmain.

Do you think there's a way to overcome this? What can the rest of the community do to force their hands?


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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:57 pm

Can you imagine hard forking XT before there is a super majority of miners for it and letting the market decide which coin they value more?
In theory you only need 51%. But miners do have to be on board to at least some extent, obviously, as they're the ones making the blocks.
I'm talking about a fork where you keep both sides of the split and blocks on either side are incompatible. You can do this with any percentage of miners. Not just 51% or more. If users decide to value one coin more, that coin will automatically attract more miners.

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:01 pm

Thanks for your work and contributions!

I have a light question, do not answer it if you don't want to :P

What was your first physical item you bought with bitcoin?

Keep up the good work! I hope that the dirty tactics (lies, FUD, censorship) from the Blockstream/Core side won't ever discourage you from participating. :)

brodown
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:14 pm

Why has "thin blocks" never been implemented in Core? It seems like the most obvious possible scalability improvement for transmitting new blocks, and I've seen very old posts on Bitcointalk talking as though it was expected to be done. Is the fact that it provides a constant improvement that does not affect the big-O properties so compelling as to shelve it until now in XT?

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:27 pm

Have you read John Nash's "Ideal Money"?
I'm replying to this on the thread because the answer is boring: no I haven't. If you could summarise it and how it relates to Bitcoin, I'm sure that'd be interesting for all of us.

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 8:23 pm

(Provided that the block size limit is raised and Bitcoin continues to be widely adopted...) Do you think it will be common in coffee shops/restaurants for users to just hand merchants signed transactions rather than broadcasting them to the Bitcoin network themselves? I was in a restaurant once with a poor internet connection and couldn't pay with Bitcoin, which I found frustrating because I realized it wasn't necessary... with credit cards, you "sign" a transaction and then they (the merchants) connect to the VISA/Mastercard data centers themselves. Is this a reasonable direction for the Bitcoin ecosystem to go?

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 8:31 pm

Hey Mike,

Would you be willing to reconsider your involvement with the scaling conference? Sometimes you have to take the high ground, I think you should reconsider and reengage. Bitcoin is more important than all of us.

JalToorey
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 8:43 pm

Have you read John Nash's "Ideal Money"?
I'm replying to this on the thread because the answer is boring: no I haven't. If you could summarise it and how it relates to Bitcoin, I'm sure that'd be interesting for all of us.
John Nash spent the last 20 years of his life giving the extensive argument that the keynesian era of targeting inflation through money printing will asymptotically fall to the advent of a politically neutral money in the form of a stably issued supply. He goes over the history of money standards and relates them to the economic circumstances of their time. He defines what ideal money would be and relates the concept of gresham's law throughout the known history of man. He suggests money should be thought of as a telecommunications and that we can use science and reason to extrapolate what the future of money should be based on the history and evolution of it.

You ignore his works and words in your proposal.

You see. You come to the table from a developer perspective. Actually I am sure the title I should call you is far above that and more prestigious, I don't mean to talk down to your accomplishments. I mean to suggest that you have a viewpoint from inside that box, and it ignores a bigger view that is far more important and far more useful. You are ignoring economics.

Ideal Money was conceived in the 1950's. I try my best to write something useful here but it takes great energy to overcome the frustration that we could be so ignorant to ignore this mans works and talks on the subject.

Bitcoin is not economically useful as a coffee money, regardless of whether or not you COULD design it that way. What this world needs incredibly badly is a akin new gold standard. It would be silly for me to explain why, the argument has been perfectly and extensively laid out by Nash.

Here is ONE of the MANY pieces of lectures and papers on the subject: http://fermatslibrary.com/s/ideal-money ... deal-money

Please, you are trying to propose to the world what our money should be, at least CONSIDER reading 20 years of talks and writing on the subject based on 70 years of contemplation and study.

Thanks for all the hard work.

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 9:15 pm

Hi Mike do have time for an interview on The Crypto Show some time soon? Email us at the1cryptoshow@gmail.com

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 10:35 pm

Hi Mike

Thanks for doing this AMA, and more importantly thank you for all your work to improve bitcoin.

I wanted to ask your perspective on Bitcoin-NG. What I understand, it has found a solution through mining to decide who gets to decide the next block contents whereas bitcoin currently allows miners to decide on the current block contents. This would allow near immediate confirmations.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you see XT as a stepping stone to NG or would NG not be needed with XT? Do you agree that the core Dev monopoly currently plaguing bitcoin would also be an impediment to NG and that NG supporters should also work to break the core devs stranglehold of development decisions?

Thanks
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Developer of the RegisterDocuments.com Document Registration Service (using the Bitcoin Cash blockchain).

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 10:42 pm

Could you answer the question from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHXfEJD6DUk

Why do we hire Bitcoin?
Hi Mike,

I think you may have missed this question since it's on the first page, but I don't see it answered yet. Would love to hear your thoughts.

MikeHearn
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Nov 07, 2015 10:44 pm

Hey Jordan,

I skipped that question because I didn't understand it. What does "to hire bitcoin" mean? I didn't watch the video as it's over 40 minutes long. Please rephrase your question. Thanks!

cryptorebel
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sun Nov 08, 2015 12:40 am

Hey Jordan,

I skipped that question because I didn't understand it. What does "to hire bitcoin" mean? I didn't watch the video as it's over 40 minutes long. Please rephrase your question. Thanks!
I saw that video, it was by Trace Mayer. He was saying we need people to hire Bitcoin, and he said the value/price of Bitcoin correlates with how many fees people are willing to pay. So in order to raise the price he was suggesting we need to get people willing to pay fees. He was coming out against a blocksize increase saying it was not that important, and we can work on other things that will make people hire bitcoin and pay fees. I was pretty skeptical of what he was saying. I think too high of a fee would be bad because part of the appeal of Bitcoin is that its cheap to use. People will be more likely to buy Bitcoin if fees are low, resulting in higher price. But Trace was saying its good to have high fees instead. It didn't make much sense to me. He was totally missing the importance of a blocksize increase.

Possible
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sun Nov 08, 2015 6:27 am

If you mean practical details, it's on the website: https://bitcoinxt.software/

If you mean the higher level story, you can read my article "Why is Bitcoin forking?" https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-b ... 47312d22c1
For reference, the article provided me with some great details.

No need to respond further, but I would love to hear from anyone that would like to help me determine whether I can provide hashpower to an XT pool (do they exist yet?), or perhaps an XT node.

adam3us
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sun Nov 08, 2015 3:15 pm

Hey Jordan,

I skipped that question because I didn't understand it. What does "to hire bitcoin" mean? I didn't watch the video as it's over 40 minutes long. Please rephrase your question. Thanks!
It's quite an interesting and subtle question, though it's a strange (economic theory) way to phrase it. Trace explained it to Gavin, Greg & myself over supper in Montreal.

I explained it in this reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/commen ... entiating/

(Btw To be fair to the OP he did link to the video offset where Trace said this, so it's not "40 minutes" he was expecting you to listen to.)

Adam

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sun Nov 08, 2015 6:31 pm

"Trace Mayer recently posed the question "What do you hire Bitcoin for". That's a bit unclear so here's an unpacking of what I think he means. Interested in peoples answers.

a) What are Bitcoin's most important differentiating properties to you? And similarly what do you think avid users consider the most important properties? What are Bitcoin's unique selling points that make it interesting, vs other money, payment systems etc that make you want to adopt it, use it, hold it, or work on developing it. (And therefore buy it, hence as he says "hire it" to hold as an investment or transact in because you value it's properties).

b) Then using economic arguments, Trace reasons that the people who most value Bitcoin's properties would pay more for them - eg more per BTC or higher fees to transact, or more for bitcoin services like vault services or hardware wallets or security services. He argues we should try to determine, say by market research, what types of users most value Bitcoin, the fanatical enthusiastic users who are completely sold on it, and what features of Bitcoin it is that they most value. (The logic is that you can tell on average which users most value Bitcoin and which features they value because they would pay more for Bitcoin and for those features than others, and then we have identified Bitcoin's niche, or selling point.) He suggests as a Bitcoin strategy that the technical and business community then work to improve the differentiating features of Bitcoin and provide services supporting them or advertise it to people with those interests, once we understand what they are.

c) A related and perhaps illuminating question to help think about what you value is: what shift in properties would make you stop using Bitcoin? (Thanks /u/thehumblewon).

Trace talks about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHXfEJD6DUk

Trace goes through a much more comprehensive list of reasons here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYkQBBg55q8

(Trace's answer for what he "hires bitcoin for" was "Financial Sovereignty".)

Twitter version https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/663356633720954880 "
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More informations about Bitcoin and scaling BTC on

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https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/c ... reases-faq

&
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Mon Nov 09, 2015 7:59 pm

Thanks for your last answer, very helpful.

2. In your view, it is an inherent property of Bitcoin that it "converges to a single state in an economically-reasonable amount of time"?

If yes, the obvious implied follow up question would be:

3. If Phenomenon X caused Bitcoin to take an economically-unreasonable amount of time (weeks or months) to converge to a single state, would you say that "Phenomenon X had successfully destroyed Bitcoin"?

Stefan Huber
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Wed Nov 18, 2015 7:32 pm

Hi Mike,

thx for creating bitcoinj, which is a great learning resource for me. As a developer the best and easiest way to learn the inner workings of bitcoin have been researching the bitcoinj codebase, also the many code comments!

I am in the process of developing a simple and basic bitcoin point of sale app. At least for me, the way how satoshi solved the double spend problem, is the most impressive innovation in bitcoin. Still, bitcoin works great if you have time to wait for 6 confirmations, however for POS scenarios this is not the case. I have very general questions, which consider SPV and 0 confirmation transaction acceptance:
  • Consider a POS scenario. After a transaction was broadcasted into the network and all "random" connections (of a SPV-based POS app) have received the transaction, one could accept the payment with zero confirmations.
  • Can an attacker "override" the transaction inside the memory pools of miners, if he is using higher transaction fees?
  • If I can find out (e.g. via blockcypher's confidence factor) that a transaction (which has normal fees) reached most miners of the world. Could there still be an attack, which could somehow "override" or "prioritize" a double spend transaction?

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Wed Mar 16, 2016 7:11 pm

hello mike,

what is your opinion on posts and people as such:

https://fixingtao.com/2016/01/point-by- ... coin-post/

...?

(a.k.a. how do you feel about peoples' bullshit alarm bells ringing when discussing you)

iFixBTCmemoryIssues
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Wed Mar 16, 2016 8:38 pm

Revival of the douche bag threads?? ;)
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If you are running a version of Bitcoin Core, stop using it. Upgrade to Bitcoin Unlimited or Classic immediately.

Fix Your Unconfirmed Transaction.

Vote for the future of our Bitcoin network!

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kalki
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Thu Mar 31, 2016 12:34 am

Hello, I am a host for a anarchist radio program and I would like to know If you (or anyone knowledgeable) would be willing to share an hour or two discussing Bitcoin. I think establishing methods of FREEtrade is essential. Basically, the radio program is made for people who already understand there's something wrong with this world, but are looking for solutions that we ourselves can incorporate that do not involve government.
thanks a lot,
Kalki

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LiteCoinGuy
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:06 am

Hello, I am a host for a anarchist radio program and I would like to know If you (or anyone knowledgeable) would be willing to share an hour or two discussing Bitcoin. I think establishing methods of FREEtrade is essential. Basically, the radio program is made for people who already understand there's something wrong with this world, but are looking for solutions that we ourselves can incorporate that do not involve government.
thanks a lot,
Kalki
maybe Roger Ver would be a good person for that. you can PM him.
********************************************
More informations about Bitcoin and scaling BTC on

bitcoin.org/en/

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/c ... reases-faq

&
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:07 am

Hi Mike and welcome :) ,

lets assume that there will be a blocksize solution in december or january and XT will never gain enough traction.

What are your plans in that scenario? Will you stay in the bitcoin ecosphere? Will you participape in the bitcoin development?



Thanks
LCG

Now is know his plans ;)
********************************************
More informations about Bitcoin and scaling BTC on

bitcoin.org/en/

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/c ... reases-faq

&
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

iFixBTCmemoryIssues
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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Sat Apr 02, 2016 9:17 pm

Hi Mike and welcome :) ,

lets assume that there will be a blocksize solution in december or january and XT will never gain enough traction.

What are your plans in that scenario? Will you stay in the bitcoin ecosphere? Will you participape in the bitcoin development?



Thanks
LCG

Now is know his plans ;)
"I am going to whine like a baby, jump ship, whine some more"

;)
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If you are running a version of Bitcoin Core, stop using it. Upgrade to Bitcoin Unlimited or Classic immediately.

Fix Your Unconfirmed Transaction.

Vote for the future of our Bitcoin network!

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Re: I'm Mike Hearn, creator of Lighthouse, bitcoinj and Bitcoin XT. Ask me anything!

Mon Jun 06, 2016 7:29 pm

Mike,
You may not have seen my post at:
dev-tech-talk/reducing-miners-electrici ... t8510.html

I would appreciate our opinion about this.
Thanks.

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