It is time for Jihan to stand up for Bitcoin

[rizzlarolla]

Roger Ver ‏@rogerkver
.@JihanWu's prediction is coming true. Due to full blocks and high fees Bitcoin now has its lowest market share ever

So when will Jihan act?
It is time to step up... now.

Are the Chinese miners really going to let Bitcoin just slowly, painfully, slip away, on instruction from Core?
It is clear Core have fucked Jihan and the miners over, and plan to do much more of that in the future.
Complicated, forever changing high fees and mempool backlogs fuck adoption and present users.

We hardly need a block size increase now adoption has ceased, users moving on.
Core have had their opportunity. They have failed

Jihan. step up. Time has run out.
(you have helped to bring this situation by supporting Core, against Classic or BU.)

[rogerver]

This is what I am complaining about:

https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/756540394905755652

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

This is what I am complaining about:

https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/756540394905755652

Mr. Wu is 100% correct.

The only people standing in our way for now are those that see the small picture.

[rizzlarolla]

Mr. Wu is 100% correct.

@rogerkver .@JihanWu's prediction is coming true. Due to full blocks and high fees Bitcoin now has its lowest market share ever

Lowest market share versus other alts obviously. Probably all the short term ETH ponzi traders. Now x 2.
Do you know any ETH/ETC traders...? LOL.
(hope Jihan is not mining that other market share?)

[rizzlarolla]

With any block size increase hard fork, the fees will need reevaluating.
Core's satoshi per byte is too complicated and confused. It drives away low value transactions, while giving no assurance of comfirmation to high value transactions. It is all based on guess work and luck.

21fees has updated their site. https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ Now in division of 20 satoshi/byte.
They show how many transactions are waiting, but not how many bytes.
They tell you a cost in dollars, against a moving median transaction size.
WTF.

21fees is as good as useless to make your own informed decision. And the recommended fee can still leave your transaction underfunded.
Even when using the current recommended fee, you can have near zero chance of getting into the next block.
(i have called 21's recommended fee to be wrong at times, and i was proven right)
If you cannot get into the next block, you may have to wait many more blocks to get 1st confirmation.


Fees must be based on a % of bitcoin value per transaction. (like maybe 0.0001 per bitcoin sent, or 0.00001)
A Clear, simple and understandable solution.
Bitcoin needs distribution in these earlier years.
(of course, miners can still pick and choose transactions, and users can apply extra fees to gain a more certain chance of quick confirmation etc.)

How do you logically calculate Core fees? Nobody knows.
Just pick a number and hope for the best?
The ridiculous Core dynamic fees calculation algorithm is killing adoption.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

With any block size increase hard fork, the fees will need reevaluating.
Core's satoshi per byte is too complicated and confused. It drives away low value transactions, while giving no assurance of comfirmation to high value transactions. It is all based on guess work and luck.

21fees has updated their site. https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ Now in division of 20 satoshi/byte.
They show how many transactions are waiting, but not how many bytes.
They tell you a cost in dollars, against a moving median transaction size.
WTF.

21fees is as good as useless to make your own informed decision. And the recommended fee can still leave your transaction underfunded.
Even when using the current recommended fee, you can have near zero chance of getting into the next block.
(i have called 21's recommended fee to be wrong at times, and i was proven right)
If you cannot get into the next block, you may have to wait many more blocks to get 1st confirmation.


Fees must be based on a % of bitcoin value per transaction. (like maybe 0.0001 per bitcoin sent, or 0.00001)
A Clear, simple and understandable solution.
Bitcoin needs distribution in these earlier years.
(of course, miners can still pick and choose transactions, and users can apply extra fees to gain a more certain chance of quick confirmation etc.)

How do you logically calculate Core fees? Nobody knows.
Just pick a number and hope for the best?
The ridiculous Core dynamic fees calculation algorithm is killing adoption.

A max fee of 2 cents was working well for a long time!

[rizzlarolla]

With any block size increase hard fork, the fees will need reevaluating.
Core's satoshi per byte is too complicated and confused. It drives away low value transactions, while giving no assurance of comfirmation to high value transactions. It is all based on guess work and luck.

21fees has updated their site. https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ Now in division of 20 satoshi/byte.
They show how many transactions are waiting, but not how many bytes.
They tell you a cost in dollars, against a moving median transaction size.
WTF.

21fees is as good as useless to make your own informed decision. And the recommended fee can still leave your transaction underfunded.
Even when using the current recommended fee, you can have near zero chance of getting into the next block.
(i have called 21's recommended fee to be wrong at times, and i was proven right)
If you cannot get into the next block, you may have to wait many more blocks to get 1st confirmation.


Fees must be based on a % of bitcoin value per transaction. (like maybe 0.0001 per bitcoin sent, or 0.00001)
A Clear, simple and understandable solution.
Bitcoin needs distribution in these earlier years.
(of course, miners can still pick and choose transactions, and users can apply extra fees to gain a more certain chance of quick confirmation etc.)

How do you logically calculate Core fees? Nobody knows.
Just pick a number and hope for the best?
The ridiculous Core dynamic fees calculation algorithm is killing adoption.

A max fee of 2 cents was working well for a long time!

Yeah it kind of was I guess. In the early days. (did you mean max fee or min?)
If you chose to pay 2 cents. You might have chosen to pay nothing also! (and still have fast confirmation)

Bigger blocks mean lower dynamic fees. Maybe very low. Just like the old days.
If fees are really going to be low(er), "2 cents" would deter lower value transactions that are more complicated than other tx's.
Low value (today) bitcoin tx's are priced out needlessly. They have a value to miners of user adoption, imo.
(i know what your thinking here, just put a lower fee!)

Moving 1000 bitcoins, valued at over half a million dollars can also be moved for 2 cents?
(i know what you are thinking here, if you moved 1000 bitcoin you WOULD put a bigger fee!)

I can explain to people who enquire about Bitcoin that fees are 0.00001% (or whatever it would be) of transaction value (with maybe min fee of 0.0000001 sat?, or whatever that may be)
How am I supposed to explain fees are based on satoshis per byte, which varies depending on how busy the network is, how many inputs they plan on using, how quickly they want to get confirmation, how accurately they need these calculations to be, blah blah too late they died of boredom/confusion. WTF.

Miners do, and can continue to, include any tx they choose.
Users can still choose witch fee suits them.
At least we would have a system that could be understood by normal beardless people.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

With any block size increase hard fork, the fees will need reevaluating.
Core's satoshi per byte is too complicated and confused. It drives away low value transactions, while giving no assurance of comfirmation to high value transactions. It is all based on guess work and luck.

21fees has updated their site. https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ Now in division of 20 satoshi/byte.
They show how many transactions are waiting, but not how many bytes.
They tell you a cost in dollars, against a moving median transaction size.
WTF.

21fees is as good as useless to make your own informed decision. And the recommended fee can still leave your transaction underfunded.
Even when using the current recommended fee, you can have near zero chance of getting into the next block.
(i have called 21's recommended fee to be wrong at times, and i was proven right)
If you cannot get into the next block, you may have to wait many more blocks to get 1st confirmation.


Fees must be based on a % of bitcoin value per transaction. (like maybe 0.0001 per bitcoin sent, or 0.00001)
A Clear, simple and understandable solution.
Bitcoin needs distribution in these earlier years.
(of course, miners can still pick and choose transactions, and users can apply extra fees to gain a more certain chance of quick confirmation etc.)

How do you logically calculate Core fees? Nobody knows.
Just pick a number and hope for the best?
The ridiculous Core dynamic fees calculation algorithm is killing adoption.

A max fee of 2 cents was working well for a long time!

Yeah it kind of was I guess. In the early days. (did you mean max fee or min?)
If you chose to pay 2 cents. You might have chosen to pay nothing also! (and still have fast confirmation)

Bigger blocks mean lower dynamic fees. Maybe very low. Just like the old days.
If fees are really going to be low(er), "2 cents" would deter lower value transactions that are more complicated than other tx's.
Low value (today) bitcoin tx's are priced out needlessly. They have a value to miners of user adoption, imo.
(i know what your thinking here, just put a lower fee!)

Moving 1000 bitcoins, valued at over half a million dollars can also be moved for 2 cents?
(i know what you are thinking here, if you moved 1000 bitcoin you WOULD put a bigger fee!)

I can explain to people who enquire about Bitcoin that fees are 0.00001% (or whatever it would be) of transaction value (with maybe min fee of 0.0000001 sat?, or whatever that may be)
How am I supposed to explain fees are based on satoshis per byte, which varies depending on how busy the network is, how many inputs they plan on using, how quickly they want to get confirmation, how accurately they need these calculations to be, blah blah too late they died of boredom/confusion. WTF.

Miners do, and can continue to, include any tx they choose.
Users can still choose witch fee suits them.
At least we would have a system that could be understood by normal beardless people.

Max-fee, blockchain.info was charging around 2 cents for a long time, it was the right price to "avoid" spam attacks.

My personal opinion is that Bitcoin transactions should be free, I don't buy this cost of "security to maintain the network". That's just a sales pitch.

[rizzlarolla]

Max-fee, blockchain.info was charging around 2 cents for a long time, it was the right price to "avoid" spam attacks.
My personal opinion is that Bitcoin transactions should be free, I don't buy this cost of "security to maintain the network". That's just a sales pitch.

Oh, ok. Free. Yet 2 cents was good to keep spam away. Have you thought this through?
Doesn't matter.

[rizzlarolla]

BW.COM are mining "smaller" blocks.

It should have the effect of extra delays in confirmation times for users, fuller mempool, more complaints about block size.
But no, no one even noticed. Users are deserting Bitcoin. Adoption is halted. Businesses cannot fit in.

Blocks are no longer full.
Wake up Miners. Your loss.

We wont need more blockspace soon. We'll need less.
Or none.

[Skin_in_the_game]

The Volume dominance Index on coincap is meaningless when Bitcoin is the other pair of these trade. The altcoins market is completly dependant on Bitcoin except a few exceptions like ETHUSD and the volume are not significant compared to the bitcoin-altcoins pairs and Bitcoin-fiat. I know you understand this so I'm at loss on why you are using this as an arugment.

I used to be on agreement with you on most things Roger and I thought you would manage better than this basic way of solving cognitive dissonance. Human beings are very flawed, they will try to alter reality to fit their belief rather than the reverse. Spend a few minutes on ANY subbredit where people have strong beliefs, it's almost comical.

You are obviously obssesed with Bitcoin blocksize and I think this completly distorts you view on many things these days. You should totally take a step back and reflect. Moreoever your obsession with the blocksize means you are focussing all your energy (and your evangelical zeal, something that made you one of I guess the biggest holder and well known figure of the Bitcoin community) on this with little success and at the detriement of other areas of Bitcoin. I understand where this comes from (you feel it's an absolute priority and threat) and you have a strong desire to fight for the right cause in your personnality. But you should consider the possibilities that 1/ you might be wrong on your cause (I'm not saying you are, you might be right too, but it is probably not clear cut) 2/ you might be wrong in the importance you attribute to the cause.

I'm sure there are plenty of areas of Bitcoin where you could have a real impact, the blocksize issue is not the only thing in Bitcoin now. It's one among others. I don't even know how you can live like this. I'm totally depressed after spending a few hours on r/btc. How can you live inside this bubble even if it fits your current belief, I can't understand.

[rogerver]

Thank you for making many valid points, but this is the one I disagree with the most:

You are obviously obssesed with Bitcoin blocksize

I'm not obsessed with the block size. I'm obsessed with allowing Bitcoin to scale to be able to challenge the Euro, the Dollar, or the Yen.
I don't care what the scaling method is, but it needs to be done soon, or Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage to something else.
We are already starting to see that happen.
I'm regularly paying tens of dollars in network fees for a single Bitcoin transaction now, and Bitcoin.com is having to start to utilize altcoins ourselves due to Bitcoin's poor performance due to network congestion at the moment.
Please spend a moment to realize how serious of an issue that is.
Bitcoin.com is having to use alt coins because the Bitcoin network is too congested!
This is a real problem, that is happening today.

Many of the earliest greatest technical minds involved with Bitcoin all say that bigger blocks are needed in order to allow Bitcoin to scale.
Those minds included:

• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Gavin Andresen
• Adam Back
• Many many more

Their only disagreements are how soon the blocks need to be made bigger, and exactly how the data within those blocks will be used.

As someone who has been using Bitcoin for real commerce for longer than just about anyone else in the world, and for larger amounts than just about any other individual in the world, I can tell you 100% for sure, the network performance is far worse today than it was previously due to network congestion.

Luckily all the supporting infrastructure such as exchanges, merchants, wallets, and other businesses are millions of times better than they were previously, but all of that infrastructure will quickly switch to something other than Bitcoin if the current network issues are not solved ASAP.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

Thank you for making many valid points, but this is the one I disagree with the most:

You are obviously obssesed with Bitcoin blocksize

I'm not obsessed with the block size. I'm obsessed with allowing Bitcoin to scale to be able to challenge the Euro, the Dollar, or the Yen.
I don't care what the scaling method is, but it needs to be done soon, or Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage to something else.
We are already starting to see that happen.
I'm regularly paying tens of dollars in network fees for a single Bitcoin transaction now, and Bitcoin.com is having to start to utilize altcoins ourselves due to Bitcoin's poor performance due to network congestion at the moment.
Please spend a moment to realize how serious of an issue that is.
Bitcoin.com is having to use alt coins because the Bitcoin network is too congested!
This is a real problem, that is happening today.

Many of the earliest greatest technical minds involved with Bitcoin all say that bigger blocks are needed in order to allow Bitcoin to scale.
Those minds included:

• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Gavin Andresen
• Adam Back
• Many many more

Their only disagreements are how soon the blocks need to be made bigger, and exactly how the data within those blocks will be used.

As someone who has been using Bitcoin for real commerce for longer than just about anyone else in the world, and for larger amounts than just about any other individual in the world, I can tell you 100% for sure, the network performance is far worse today than it was previously due to network congestion.

Luckily all the supporting infrastructure such as exchanges, merchants, wallets, and other businesses are millions of times better than they were previously, but all of that infrastructure will quickly switch to something other than Bitcoin if the current network issues are not solved ASAP.

Everything you say is true.

Scammers continue to cripple Bitcoin, it's why we are where we are.

Smart people see this, do the logistics and realize we need to take Bitcoin with us. I'm not going to leave decisions up to some clueless miners of whom have proved they are poor businessmen.

Roger, you have enough power, and money, we have all the important businesses on our side and young + old blood. Some miners are going to take some losses for their actions, that's their problem. You leave these guys and they are fucked, game theory over.

Time to launch BTC on bitcoin.com in the fall and build the market, as well as let any alt promote their currency. Each business has a wright to promote their own altcoin as a payment method. Banks are making their own alts, it isn't hard to understand why, we're working on it too.

The current Core devs are not BTC, they are just a bunch of spaced out amateurs who managed to con Gavin Andreesen through some game theory. Now they don't really know what to do because every route will end in disaster.

Let's just put Bitcoin back into proper open-source development with-out any interference. Let it grow for the next few decades, that's the smart move.

[Skin_in_the_game]

I'm not obsessed with the block size. I'm obsessed with allowing Bitcoin to scale to be able to challenge the Euro, the Dollar, or the Yen.
I don't care what the scaling method is, but it needs to be done soon, or Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage to something else.
We are already starting to see that happen.
I'm regularly paying tens of dollars in network fees for a single Bitcoin transaction now, and Bitcoin.com is having to start to utilize altcoins ourselves due to Bitcoin's poor performance due to network congestion at the moment.
Please spend a moment to realize how serious of an issue that is.
Bitcoin.com is having to use alt coins because the Bitcoin network is too congested!
This is a real problem, that is happening today.

Many of the earliest greatest technical minds involved with Bitcoin all say that bigger blocks are needed in order to allow Bitcoin to scale.
Those minds included:

• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Gavin Andresen
• Adam Back
• Many many more

Their only disagreements are how soon the blocks need to be made bigger, and exactly how the data within those blocks will be used.

As someone who has been using Bitcoin for real commerce for longer than just about anyone else in the world, and for larger amounts than just about any other individual in the world, I can tell you 100% for sure, the network performance is far worse today than it was previously due to network congestion.

Luckily all the supporting infrastructure such as exchanges, merchants, wallets, and other businesses are millions of times better than they were previously, but all of that infrastructure will quickly switch to something other than Bitcoin if the current network issues are not solved ASAP.

I agree on the first point, I guess mostly everyone except maybe Lukejr think the blocksize will need to be increased at some point. Many people think it could be done now too. Where I disagree is splitting the community into 2 sides hating eah other on this and making it the central issue in Bitcoin more important than anything else.

First I would like to ask you this question: Are you using Bitcoin just because it's more efficient and/or cheaper in your business transactions ? Or are you using it out of ideological motives (you favor a decentralized, non government controlled currency that you hope will one day replaces fiat money ?)

And then how many people do you think are using Bitcoin like you ? I guess you had to spend a lot of time to convince anyone you are involved with to use Bitcoin to transact. How many people are willing to do that ? It's still a hassle to transact in Bitcoin for fiat to fiat. Bitcoin is great for the people who already own Bitcoins. I feel like people will come to use naturally Bitcoin and it won't need convincing in these case whenit's REALLY superior to the alternative or better when there is no alternative. OR when people hold Bitcoins becasue they see its fiat value is growing

Personnally all the people I know are using Bitcoin as a speculative assets or store of value and then they start using it eventually to pay for things like vpn, gambling, meds, steam. For most of these you can or could deal with unconfirmed transactions.

But more importantly, l I think you are overly preoccuppied and overestimating the threat of Altcoins. Which according to me is probably at least partly influenced by the fact that you really hold A LOT of value in Bitcoin, also being the majority of your assets. And your Bitcoin holdings are a less liquid than the random holder because you have so many. This is a very specific situation that concerns only a handful of individuals.

I used to be afraid of Litecoin ! because I thought it would be used as way to split the community. It's one of the oldest argument against cryptocurencies since the beginning: Since it's open source and easy to copy/paste, why Bitcoin and won't a million clones destroy its value.

But the truth is, it's very hard to switch to an altcoin because no altcoin has any liquidity necessary to do fiat to fiat transfer. Bitcoin is mostly powered by people who are buying it as speculation and as a store of value. It becomes more useful as a transfer system when 1/ more people hold Bitcoins and don't just do fiat>fiat 2/ when there is more liquidity. As I said in another post I think wanting to develop transactions before the market cap is putting the cart before the horse. Investors/Speculators don't care about the transactions fees at this point. And they are right as they should be forward looking.

You can't just switch to any altcoin. Marketcap matters. Liquidity matters. What makes Bitcoin big is .. that it is big. And in fact Bitcoin still has very low liquidity in most currencies outside of Dollars and RMB.

Altcoins have little to no fiat liquidty at ALL. The only reason you were able to use altcoins for your transaction is that these altcoins are traded against Bitcoins! So what about Ethereum ? It's much younger and had a distribution through IPO, both resulting in coins that must be much more concentrated than in Bitcoin and gains that still have to be realized. You can't just skip the distribution phase and you can't skip time. Something people might miss is that Bitcoin's first mover advantage results in a much better distribution. It was there first, it is distributed through fair mining from the start and its distribution will always be more efficient that anything that will come after. You can't erase the time difference. Nothing can change this.

Ok, they have faster confirmations. At what price ? Their current situation is a mess and I think it's highly probable it will be reflected in the marketcap as people understand what just happened. We have seen what a true lack of decentralization means. And some say Bitcoins devs are too powerful ? Again, please have a look at Ethereum.

At this point in time, I feel like security should be the absolute focus, and I feel like people should be much more worried about having safe centralized wallets (necessary because frankly random people can't even deal with Blockchain.info). Because Bitcoinica, Mtgox, Bitstamp and Bitfinex did 1000x more damage than transaction fees. And I'd rather have you spend your time on lobbying Bitcoin exchanges to provide more security transparency and things like proof of reserve!

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

Thank you for making many valid points, but this is the one I disagree with the most:

You are obviously obssesed with Bitcoin blocksize

I'm not obsessed with the block size. I'm obsessed with allowing Bitcoin to scale to be able to challenge the Euro, the Dollar, or the Yen.
I don't care what the scaling method is, but it needs to be done soon, or Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage to something else.
We are already starting to see that happen.
I'm regularly paying tens of dollars in network fees for a single Bitcoin transaction now, and Bitcoin.com is having to start to utilize altcoins ourselves due to Bitcoin's poor performance due to network congestion at the moment.
Please spend a moment to realize how serious of an issue that is.
Bitcoin.com is having to use alt coins because the Bitcoin network is too congested!
This is a real problem, that is happening today.

Many of the earliest greatest technical minds involved with Bitcoin all say that bigger blocks are needed in order to allow Bitcoin to scale.
Those minds included:

• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Gavin Andresen
• Adam Back
• Many many more

Their only disagreements are how soon the blocks need to be made bigger, and exactly how the data within those blocks will be used.

As someone who has been using Bitcoin for real commerce for longer than just about anyone else in the world, and for larger amounts than just about any other individual in the world, I can tell you 100% for sure, the network performance is far worse today than it was previously due to network congestion.

Luckily all the supporting infrastructure such as exchanges, merchants, wallets, and other businesses are millions of times better than they were previously, but all of that infrastructure will quickly switch to something other than Bitcoin if the current network issues are not solved ASAP.

I agree on the first point, I guess mostly everyone except maybe Lukejr think the blocksize will need to be increased at some point. Many people think it could be done now too. Where I disagree is splitting the community into 2 sides hating eah other on this and making it the central issue in Bitcoin more important than anything else.

First I would like to ask you this question: Are you using Bitcoin just because it's more efficient and/or cheaper in your business transactions ? Or are you using it out of ideological motives (you favor a decentralized, non government controlled currency that you hope will one day replaces fiat money ?)

And then how many people do you think are using Bitcoin like you ? I guess you had to spend a lot of time to convince anyone you are involved with to use Bitcoin to transact. How many people are willing to do that ? It's still a hassle to transact in Bitcoin for fiat to fiat. Bitcoin is great for the people who already own Bitcoins. I feel like people will come to use naturally Bitcoin and it won't need convincing in these case whenit's REALLY superior to the alternative or better when there is no alternative. OR when people hold Bitcoins becasue they see its fiat value is growing

Personnally all the people I know are using Bitcoin as a speculative assets or store of value and then they start using it eventually to pay for things like vpn, gambling, meds, steam. For most of these you can or could deal with unconfirmed transactions.

But more importantly, l I think you are overly preoccuppied and overestimating the threat of Altcoins. Which according to me is probably at least partly influenced by the fact that you really hold A LOT of value in Bitcoin, also being the majority of your assets. And your Bitcoin holdings are a less liquid than the random holder because you have so many. This is a very specific situation that concerns only a handful of individuals.

I used to be afraid of Litecoin ! because I thought it would be used as way to split the community. It's one of the oldest argument against cryptocurencies since the beginning: Since it's open source and easy to copy/paste, why Bitcoin and won't a million clones destroy its value.

But the truth is, it's very hard to switch to an altcoin because no altcoin has any liquidity necessary to do fiat to fiat transfer. Bitcoin is mostly powered by people who are buying it as speculation and as a store of value. It becomes more useful as a transfer system when 1/ more people hold Bitcoins and don't just do fiat>fiat 2/ when there is more liquidity. As I said in another post I think wanting to develop transactions before the market cap is putting the cart before the horse. Investors/Speculators don't care about the transactions fees at this point. And they are right as they should be forward looking.

You can't just switch to any altcoin. Marketcap matters. Liquidity matters. What makes Bitcoin big is .. that it is big. And in fact Bitcoin still has very low liquidity in most currencies outside of Dollars and RMB.

Altcoins have little to no fiat liquidty at ALL. The only reason you were able to use altcoins for your transaction is that these altcoins are traded against Bitcoins! So what about Ethereum ? It's much younger and had a distribution through IPO, both resulting in coins that must be much more concentrated than in Bitcoin and gains that still have to be realized. You can't just skip the distribution phase and you can't skip time. Something people might miss is that Bitcoin's first mover advantage results in a much better distribution. It was there first, it is distributed through fair mining from the start and its distribution will always be more efficient that anything that will come after. You can't erase the time difference. Nothing can change this.

Ok, they have faster confirmations. At what price ? Their current situation is a mess and I think it's highly probable it will be reflected in the marketcap as people understand what just happened. We have seen what a true lack of decentralization means. And some say Bitcoins devs are too powerful ? Again, please have a look at Ethereum.

At this point in time, I feel like security should be the absolute focus, and I feel like people should be much more worried about having safe centralized wallets (necessary because frankly random people can't even deal with Blockchain.info). Because Bitcoinica, Mtgox, Bitstamp and Bitfinex did 1000x more damage than transaction fees. And I'd rather have you spend your time on lobbying Bitcoin exchanges to provide more security transparency and things like proof of reserve!

I don't think anyone is talking about creating an altcoin of Bitcoin.

We're taking BTC and giving it back to its users. That means, taking the currency symbol and existing network away from Blockstream Core.

You underestimate the power of your users and that they signed up for Bitcoin according to the whitepaper.

If you would like to create technology to work with the existing Bitcoin protocol as is, by all means.

We have the money, power and people to sustain Bitcoin on its original path.

There is nothing you can do or say to fix this situation, you guys are scammers and completely fucked up your first, second and third chances. Do you think nobody knows the history of Core and Blockstream staff? Do you think they just appeared out of no-where with some bios? When billions are on the line, we have people that do the digging.

Members of Core and Blockstream are the ones who divided the community, first by stealing from Gavin, then by stealing from The Dao and forming ETC, to manipulating the BTC market.

Nobody wants your financial games which end in disaster, see Bitfinex.

Bitcoin provides a peer 2 peer digital cash system, for poor and rich. We're fine with waiting 30 to 50 years to make a real impact in the way the world conducts finance.

[Skin_in_the_game]

You are cluttering the space with these huge quotes, and you can't articulate any sort of logical thinking. Can you go try to ruin a conversation elsewhere?

[rogerver]

Where I disagree is splitting the community into 2 sides hating eah other on this and making it the central issue in Bitcoin more important than anything else.

This is 100% a direct result of Theymos' policies. Before he started banning people like myself from participating on /r/Bitcoin and Bitcointalk.org, there was heated debate, but no hate or hostility. That all changed the moment he started suppressing dissenting opinions.

First I would like to ask you this question: Are you using Bitcoin just because it's more efficient and/or cheaper in your business transactions ? Or are you using it out of ideological motives (you favor a decentralized, non government controlled currency that you hope will one day replaces fiat money ?)

I'm very clearly motivated for idealogical reasons, but the only way Bitcoin has a chance of bringing those goals to fruition is if it is much cheaper/faster/useful/better in nearly every way than the existing financial system. Unsafe zero confirmation transactions, long double spend windows, and high fees are destroying Bitcoin's ability to achieve any of the idealogical goals I hold dear.

And then how many people do you think are using Bitcoin like you ? I guess you had to spend a lot of time to convince anyone you are involved with to use Bitcoin to transact. How many people are willing to do that ? It's still a hassle to transact in Bitcoin for fiat to fiat. Bitcoin is great for the people who already own Bitcoins. I feel like people will come to use naturally Bitcoin and it won't need convincing in these case whenit's REALLY superior to the alternative or better when there is no alternative. OR when people hold Bitcoins becasue they see its fiat value is growing)

Yes, but for those things to happen, bitcoin needs to be much cheaper/faster/useful/better than the current system. Before the block congestion, that was getting closer to being true. Now Bitcoin is becoming less useful than it was before.

Personnally all the people I know are using Bitcoin as a speculative assets or store of value and then they start using it eventually to pay for things like vpn, gambling, meds, steam. For most of these you can or could deal with unconfirmed transactions.

Actually the double spending window being so much longer is becoming a big problem for these issues too. Look at games.bitcoin.com for example. How much more horrible would the user experience be if the user had to wait ~ 20 minutes to several hours for two confirmations to start playing?
Instead I'm paying $500 a month to Blockcypher to determine which transactions are likely safe enough to accept as zero-conf, and which ones aren't.
As a community, we should strive to make zero-conf as safe as possible. The current Core team's policies have been doing the exact opposite.

But more importantly, l I think you are overly preoccuppied and overestimating the threat of Altcoins. Which according to me is probably at least partly influenced by the fact that you really hold A LOT of value in Bitcoin, also being the majority of your assets. And your Bitcoin holdings are a less liquid than the random holder because you have so many. This is a very specific situation that concerns only a handful of individuals.

This is a valid criticism, which makes it seem so strange when small block people like Greg Maxwell accuse me of being an alt coin pumper. I'm terrified of Bitcoin losing its top spot because I'm so heavily invested.

Bitcoin is mostly powered by people who are buying it as speculation and as a store of value. It becomes more useful as a transfer system when 1/ more people hold Bitcoins and don't just do fiat>fiat 2/ when there is more liquidity. As I said in another post I think wanting to develop transactions before the market cap is putting the cart before the horse. Investors/Speculators don't care about the transactions fees at this point. And they are right as they should be forward looking.

As one of the earliest and biggest investors/speculators, I completely disagree. People using it as a payment system is what drives liquidity and market cap to increase, not the other way around.

You can't just switch to any altcoin. Marketcap matters. Liquidity matters. What makes Bitcoin big is .. that it is big.

But now we can switch easily and instantly with things like Shapeshift.io. Bitcoin's share of market cap and trade volume has been declining since around the same time its network became congested, and the user experience began degrading. I don't think this is a coincidence.

Altcoins have little to no fiat liquidty at ALL.

Not yet, but that liquidity is coming like a tidal wave. Every exchange and wallet is busy integrating alt coins because of Bitcoin's current network congestion and poor user experience because of it.

At this point in time, I feel like security should be the absolute focus, and I feel like people should be much more worried about having safe centralized wallets (necessary because frankly random people can't even deal with Blockchain.info). Because Bitcoinica, Mtgox, Bitstamp and Bitfinex did 1000x more damage than transaction fees. And I'd rather have you spend your time on lobbying Bitcoin exchanges to provide more security transparency and things like proof of reserve!

But high network fees and slow transaction times motivate people to use centralized off chain solutions like the ones you mentioned above. It is cheaper and faster to transfer funds between users on an off chain centralized exchange, than it is to do it as a real bitcoin transaction due to the high fees and slow confirmation times.

[rizzlarolla]

Overall, a good response Roger to a rather tl;dr post.
Seems to me skininthegame does more or less agree, it's just not his personal priority at the moment.
Below, I have compiled a summery of recent skininthegame posts on this topic. (spread over 3 threads)
I've tried to keep it a fair representation in context.

----

skininthegame,
"I'm a succesful trader with years of experience
I'd rather have you spend your time on lobbying Bitcoin exchanges to provide more security

I have the same goals and concerns but 8mb or even 50mb doesn't bring us there either. Which is not a reason to stay stuck at 1mb if we can upgrade safely for sure!
I guess mostly everyone except maybe Lukejr think the blocksize will need to be increased at some point
I agree overall that these things are holding back bitcoins...
I agree it's defintly made worse by the current small size of blocks.

I guess you had to spend a lot of time to convince anyone you are involved with to use Bitcoin to transact.
Personnally all the people I know are using Bitcoin as a speculative assets or store of value and then they start using it

I think your scenario is that mainstream adoption will push the price but my perspective is that bitcoin will be big (in $) before it is widely used.
What makes Bitcoin big is .. that it is big.

I think you are wasting your time by focusing too much on scaling and not on other issues."
If one day we really need blocksize scaling, we can hard fork if it's not done by that time.

----

So, no need to worry Roger.
skininthegame says we can fork the day we need bigger blocks. Simple.

[Skin_in_the_game]

I'm saying I agree 1mb is not ideal and will need to be increased, Bitcoin also still has larger scaling issues overall like Roger examples of transactions with multiple inputs cost so much because of how they have to be constructed (and that wouldn't be solved unless blockspace was almost free which is obviously not possible).

But I think the most important thing I want to say is don't overestimate altcoins and embark Bitcoins in a dangerous path because of an irrational fear that altcoins are going to take over.

A service like shapeshit doesn't change anything to the fundamental problem that liquidity begets liquidity. Altcoins are completly dependant on Bitcoin. People can use altcoins to transfer money with maybe cheaper fees only because ultimately these altcoins are traded against Bitcoin. There is just not enough money to sustain that many crypto-fiat pairs. Bitcoin-altcoins and Bitcoin-fiat dominates all volumes. Altcoins-fiat pair liquidity should not be overestimated when it's the result of Arbitrage.

I'm not convinced of Bitcoin utility to do fiat>fiat and even less convinced of altcoins utility to do fiat>fiat. Bitcoin is useful if at least one of the party sees Bitcoin as the final settlement. Or said differently what one can keep as money.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

I'm saying I agree 1mb is not ideal and will need to be increased, Bitcoin also still has larger scaling issues overall like Roger examples of transactions with multiple inputs cost so much because of how they have to be constructed (and that wouldn't be solved unless blockspace was almost free which is obviously not possible).

But I think the most important thing I want to say is don't overestimate altcoins and embark Bitcoins in a dangerous path because of an irrational fear that altcoins are going to take over.

A service like shapeshit doesn't change anything to the fundamental problem that liquidity begets liquidity. Altcoins are completly dependant on Bitcoin. People can use altcoins to transfer money with maybe cheaper fees only because ultimately these altcoins are traded against Bitcoin. There is just not enough money to sustain that many crypto-fiat pairs. Bitcoin-altcoins and Bitcoin-fiat dominates all volumes. Altcoins-fiat pair liquidity should not be overestimated when it's the result of Arbitrage.

I'm not convinced of Bitcoin utility to do fiat>fiat and even less convinced of altcoins utility to do fiat>fiat. Bitcoin is useful if at least one of the party sees Bitcoin as the final settlement. Or said differently what one can keep as money.

Bitcoin needs to stay on its original path.

Look how far we have come and think of how far we will be in 50 years!!!!!!!!

[rizzlarolla]

Seems to me skininthegame does more or less agree, it's just not his personal priority at the moment.

I'm saying I agree 1mb is not ideal and will need to be increased,

Thanks, that's what I though you meant.

[rizzlarolla]

As we now enter the period of realisation that segwit through soft fork does not, and could not ever work, will the miners now HF.
Are the miners going to let their business go down the pan as Core stifle adoption?

Of course they will not.
(how long it takes for the miners to realise they need to act is another matter)
The calm before the storm. I suspect battle plans are being drawn.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

As we now enter the period of realisation that segwit through soft fork does not, and could not ever work, will the miners now HF.
Are the miners going to let their business go down the pan as Core stifle adoption?

Of course they will not.
(how long it takes for the miners to realise they need to act is another matter)
The calm before the storm. I suspect battle plans are being drawn.

More business for us

[SOF]

Thank you for making many valid points, but this is the one I disagree with the most:

You are obviously obssesed with Bitcoin blocksize

I'm not obsessed with the block size. I'm obsessed with allowing Bitcoin to scale to be able to challenge the Euro, the Dollar, or the Yen.
I don't care what the scaling method is, but it needs to be done soon, or Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage to something else.
We are already starting to see that happen.
I'm regularly paying tens of dollars in network fees for a single Bitcoin transaction now, and Bitcoin.com is having to start to utilize altcoins ourselves due to Bitcoin's poor performance due to network congestion at the moment.
Please spend a moment to realize how serious of an issue that is.
Bitcoin.com is having to use alt coins because the Bitcoin network is too congested!
This is a real problem, that is happening today.

Many of the earliest greatest technical minds involved with Bitcoin all say that bigger blocks are needed in order to allow Bitcoin to scale.
Those minds included:

• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Gavin Andresen
• Adam Back
• Many many more

Their only disagreements are how soon the blocks need to be made bigger, and exactly how the data within those blocks will be used.

As someone who has been using Bitcoin for real commerce for longer than just about anyone else in the world, and for larger amounts than just about any other individual in the world, I can tell you 100% for sure, the network performance is far worse today than it was previously due to network congestion.

Luckily all the supporting infrastructure such as exchanges, merchants, wallets, and other businesses are millions of times better than they were previously, but all of that infrastructure will quickly switch to something other than Bitcoin if the current network issues are not solved ASAP.

I can't believe I am reading this in August 2016. As far as today's tech goes this lack of progress is a very bad sign for technology based systems like Bitcoin.

Roger is right on all counts in the above post. Bitcoin is losing its initial 'beach head' and credibility fast as this drags on by the day.

I joined Bitcoin half a year ago because Roger Ver came on V's channel. I don't get how V and Bix are still talking about it in glowing terms in this broadcast though, it seems they are unaware of the block chain issue or don't think its that big a deal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKz51N21I3Y

So Bitcoin goes down in popularity and usability, so does our best chance to swipe the goods from under the banksters' vulture beaks without resorting to pointless Occupy protests and 'freeman' movements.

People should be acting like their hair is on fire in response to this.

The fact this is still being talked about 6 months on should be shocking to everyone.

Or is there something about the fact that programming is not my field that I don't seem to get when it comes to trying to understand the supporters of limiting block chain size to 1MB regardless of the problems its causing?

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

Thank you for making many valid points, but this is the one I disagree with the most:

You are obviously obssesed with Bitcoin blocksize

I'm not obsessed with the block size. I'm obsessed with allowing Bitcoin to scale to be able to challenge the Euro, the Dollar, or the Yen.
I don't care what the scaling method is, but it needs to be done soon, or Bitcoin will lose it's first mover advantage to something else.
We are already starting to see that happen.
I'm regularly paying tens of dollars in network fees for a single Bitcoin transaction now, and Bitcoin.com is having to start to utilize altcoins ourselves due to Bitcoin's poor performance due to network congestion at the moment.
Please spend a moment to realize how serious of an issue that is.
Bitcoin.com is having to use alt coins because the Bitcoin network is too congested!
This is a real problem, that is happening today.

Many of the earliest greatest technical minds involved with Bitcoin all say that bigger blocks are needed in order to allow Bitcoin to scale.
Those minds included:

• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Gavin Andresen
• Adam Back
• Many many more

Their only disagreements are how soon the blocks need to be made bigger, and exactly how the data within those blocks will be used.

As someone who has been using Bitcoin for real commerce for longer than just about anyone else in the world, and for larger amounts than just about any other individual in the world, I can tell you 100% for sure, the network performance is far worse today than it was previously due to network congestion.

Luckily all the supporting infrastructure such as exchanges, merchants, wallets, and other businesses are millions of times better than they were previously, but all of that infrastructure will quickly switch to something other than Bitcoin if the current network issues are not solved ASAP.

I can't believe I am reading this in August 2016. As far as today's tech goes this lack of progress is a very bad sign for technology based systems like Bitcoin.

Roger is right on all counts in the above post. Bitcoin is losing its initial 'beach head' and credibility fast as this drags on by the day.

I joined Bitcoin half a year ago because Roger Ver came on V's channel. I don't get how V and Bix are still talking about it in glowing terms in this broadcast though, it seems they are unaware of the block chain issue or don't think its that big a deal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKz51N21I3Y

So Bitcoin goes down in popularity and usability, so does our best chance to swipe the goods from under the banksters' vulture beaks without resorting to pointless Occupy protests and 'freeman' movements.

People should be acting like their hair is on fire in response to this.

The fact this is still being talked about 6 months on should be shocking to everyone.

Or is there something about the fact that programming is not my field that I don't seem to get when it comes to trying to understand the supporters of limiting block chain size to 1MB regardless of the problems its causing?

The blocksize is important.

Protecting our foundation against attacks from Governments and banks is important as well. Don't capture the software.

[edin]

Rather, they are there to protect the innocent with the rationale that we would rather sometimes acquit the guilty then convict the innocent.