> The bitcoin chain has been hard-forked at least five times, [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks
Ouch! Those aren't hard forks— they are forks of the github repo!
In reality Bitcoin has only been hard-forked twice. Once, to fix the bug as described in BIP 50, and once for Bitcoin Cash.
Here's a better resource: http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/patrick.mc-corry/atomically-tr...
> On one side are those who believe that Bitcoin is … money, currency, …. On the other side are those who believe that it is a commodity, ….
That is the other red flag: Trying to construct two different exclusive camps. This goes along with not mentioning the Lightning Network (LN). Some people still don't see that LN could enable bitcoin to be both: A currency and a commodity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/719vis/lightning_dev_t...
https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-...
If for some reason you don't believe that, then there will always exist credit card companies that could provide instant transactions with guarantee as a middle man. Alternatively, there exists solutions like BitNotes.
†https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3819#msg3819
> But, to quote another well-worn and wholly unreliable aphorism, this time it's different. It really is.
and
>... because the only other alternative is chaos, and probably the end of the whole Bitcoin experiment.
I'm very much a Bitcoin skeptic, but, I'm not sure this time is different, or that Bitcoin will die.
For the last 8 years, various sources have been predicting a Bitcoin collapse over and over again. It's still here, alive and well and quite high.
3 years ago: Business Week - Bitcoin Is Collapsing => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893616
4 years ago: latimes.com - Bitcoin virtual currency is on verge of collapse => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7306035
6 years ago: theatlantic.com - The Bitcoin Economy Is Collapsing with No Sign of Recovery (2011) => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431092
6 years ago: Bitcoin & Gresham's Law - the economic inevitability of Collapse => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3623549
In theory, Bitcoin is supposed to be a payment system, digital cash. But that seems to be pretty much dead. Consider the opinion of Fred Wilson, a big Bitcoin booster, who has stopped using it for payments: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/
Merchant acceptance is actually in retreat: http://www.businessinsider.com/merchants-arent-accepting-bit...
It is still being used for speculation, of course. And for some crime. But the 2010 vision of a digital cash that replaces Western Union, Visa, etc? It certainly hasn't arrived, and it seems farther off than ever.
Bitcoin has a predetermined graph of coin production with time that converges soon. In 2022, 90% of all bitcoins will be produced, and the ideal inflation will be lower than most fiat currencies.
But inevitably, people die, and the knowledge of their private key with them, removing bitcoins from circulation. The amount of bitcoin will therefore decrease impredictably
All in all, it will be as volatile as currently traded gold (which is not as good a long-term store of value as fiat money as a result), and slower to use in transactions (in November, the European Central Bank will launch SCT Inst, a SEPA mechanism that provides transactions in less than 15 seconds, which is better than Bitcoin's recommended 2 hours).
Beating the improvements of traditional systems will require new cryptocurrency designs.
Wrong. Bitcoin payments processors report growth, eg. BitPay processes $1 billion in payments per year, up 328%! https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-growth-2017/
The source you quoted is laughably bad: it tries to estimate payment growth by looking at how many of 500 retailers accept Bitcoin. That's like saying "out of 500 persons only 3 own (not bought) a Porsche this year compared to 4 last year, so worldwide Porsche sales are down."
It's other description, as a form of digital gold, applies now more than ever though and I think that's how the market is treating it: largely as a hedge and store of fungible value.
While other cryptocurrencies may give you near perfect anonymity or sub-second transaction times with no fees, none of them are so secure and dependable.
Edit To replies: It does if the SEC decides the concept of cryptocurrency is one which fundamentally exists to bypass regulations for the purpose of fraud. I’d disagree, you’d disagree, but only their agreement matters.
They are already doing just that in the last couple of months, and bitcoin remains unaffected.
The SEC only has jurisdiction in the US. I don't see how this would impact Bitcoin's use in the rest of the world. Bitcoin is a phenomenon that's worldwide.
It's 'high' mostly because there are a large number of holders who are just sitting there on it.
If it's not being used as a currency, than I can't see how in the long term, people consider it to be a 'store of value' when it could be regulated, deemed illegal, or declared all sorts of things by regulatory bodies which fundamentally change it's nature.
And as an arbitrary store of value? We have tons of 'stores of value' available to us already that are considerably less volatile and more liquid.
So what is the point again? What problem does it solve, and why should anyone want it for a material reason?
I too agree that it will be around for a very long time, but what happens when the very speculative press - and even HN readers get 'bored' of all the news? When the Google queries start to wane (and BTW I think BTC will enjoy a huge surge in interest by 'everyday folks of the world' for a while before it wanes), but eventually, people will lose interest if it's just a 'store of value'.
Some more tidbits of information from my perspective:
>The anti-2Xers argue that the NYA should not be binding because it was negotiated behind closed doors, and that a change of this magnitude needs to be more carefully considered before it is adopted.
No active developers were part of the NYA. Some in the NYA have said that they agreed because they believed Core was party to the NYA.
>But there is another school of thought, which is that Bitcoin is (or should be) a currency rather than a commodity, primarily a medium of exchange rather than a store of value. These are the folks who want you to be able to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoins.
I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has large costs that need to be carefully considered. The (backward-compatible) Segwit capacity upgrade just happened, and it takes time for people to update their software to make the newer more-efficient transactions. (... If the consensus was that Bitcoin really was urgently hurting for transaction capacity, you'd expect people to be updating to Segwit transactions faster than they are now.) The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly. The idea that it should be decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.
>The 2X advocates have refused, citing the NYA, and secure (at least apparently) in their belief that enough people will update their code that there will be no doubt that 2X is the One True Chain.
Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and that none plan on contributing to. Many have said that if Bitcoin "fails" after the fork, they have no interest in contributing to the Segwit2x fork's software. (The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years, politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs be the target of harassment; imagining that unpaid volunteers are going to switch to working on a project made by the latest iteration of that is ... to call it wishful thinking seems too kind.)
I think you fail to envision how the dynamics will play out if Segwit2x wins. Core will simply merge the ~1k lines of code that make up the segwit2x features, and mostly everyone will be back to business running Bitcoin Core instead of BTC1, since the two code bases would be equivalent. That's it. No big war. No mass resignation of Core devs. No ceding the control of Bitcoin to "another group". Most Segwit2x supporters want a smooth "reintegration" scenario like that to take place. We don't want to "fire Core" or such nonsense you might read on r/Bitcoin.
Things would be a lot simpler if Core simply agreed to double the block size. That's all we want. A one-time block size increase, to give the blockchain some breathing room while we all continue to work on off-chain scaling (NimbleWimble, LN...) that we all already agree are the proper long-term solutions.
Hasn't been true since July: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size
> full blocks and high fees have caused Bitcoin to lose many users to alts (LTC, ETH, ETC, DASH...)
What's the evidence for this? All my friends own btc and alts... but none of them transact in it. They own them only for investment purposes. I don't think anybody is using alts for their higher throughput.
7% in two months. What kind of adoption had you expected? Everyone won't switch over night, that's the whole problem behind why flag dates in distributed systems are hard, and why many people adocate backwards compatible changes whenever possible.
> if Core simply agreed to double the block size
Core is the name of the Bitcoin software. Perhaps you mean the Bitcoin community? The functionality needed to roughly double the block size was released last year and finally took effect in August. If that's too slow for your use case, then you are probably on the edge of where Bitcoin is useful anyway. It's hard to imagine any sort non-contentious hard fork planned and executed in less time than that, without endangering other people's money.
The NYA happening with a few CEOs "behind closed doors", was pretty much a result of the year and a half of no progress on the safe hard fork part. Also remember the miners aren't really a fan of cheap transactions, which eats into their profits, and does fundamentally alter their ROI.
Segwit2X was originally sold as a compromise. Activate SegWit for the future since it requires software updates as you noted for the additional transaction formats, and schedule a 2X HF to help the network grow immediately.
> The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years, politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs be the target of harassment
I agree sadly, but unfortunately it was the same story on the reverse side. Look at the ridicule and scorn Mike Hearn and Gavin got for their big block proposals in 2015.
They were invited but declined: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74ow7f/erik_voorhees_o...
> I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has large costs that need to be carefully considered.
Meanwhile, no one has yet provided a believable scenario how miners can get paid in the long term that isn't high transaction volume at low cost.
> The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly.
This debate is ongoing since almost four years. I wouldn't call that rushed.
> The idea that it should be decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.
See above, regarding invitations.
> Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and that none plan on contributing to.
And many others see 2x as the first real sign of the incentive system actually working.
So just merge (or reimplement) segwit2x's consensus changes back into Core and continue as if nothing happened?
In any case, if you believe Bitcoin's main value proposition is as a great store of value, then replay protection simply doesn't matter that much. You wouldn't be transacting enough to matter.
For the opt-in replay protection, that is a proposal which requires people to update their software to protect themselves. That's unacceptable, many people are unlikely to even know that a fork happened. Replay protection needs to be automatic for un-upgraded nodes.
The only case where this is a problem are business to consumer transactions and p2p txs both of which you rarely do, if ever if you use BTC as a store of value.
It has been very interesting to see how he Ethereum has handled many of these same problems. I would be interested in seeing analysis about the impact to alternative crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin, if Bitcoin ends up blowing up over this.
Adoption increases market depths, which in turn decreases volatility. And volatility is sharply decreasing: https://mobile.twitter.com/lsukernik/status/8649208737189519...
> Bitfinex is introducing new CSTs that will allow traders to speculate on the potential activation and mining of the Segwit2x consensus protocol. We are designating these CSTs as BT1 (Incumbent Bitcoin Blockchain) and BT2 (Bitcoin Segwit2x).
See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74mgka/why_bitfinexs_c...
Why is it that people so quickly jump to "markets be crazy" as an explanation rather than "perhaps I don't understand the situation and have been sold an exaggerated version by people who profit from clicks or chaos"?
You can easily bet against local apocalypses.
You can't trade, on a market, on the market ceasing to exist. You can of course trade on other markets against the first market, if they're connected.
These companies have definitely lost users due to their support of 2x, and that hasn't gone unnoticed.
It's funny to think what an _actual_ bad actor could do to the platform. Every time I hear the cryptocurrency people crowing about the amazing un-censorable power of the technology I just smile.
One obvious way - whether you agree with it or not - is to use hashrate. It's quite unlikely that both chains will have a nearly-equal hashrate for a sustained period of time.
SegWit2x is basically the mining faction stealing the network away from the Core development group, forcing everyone in Bitcoin to switch software if they still want their transactions confirmed.
Not that I really disagree with them - as _something_ needed to happen, as demand (whether real or manufactured) has led to 100% full blocks for months, resulting in long transaction delays and high fees, and the rise of competing currencies, fracturing the market.
We will see if one side backs down before the HF, but due to both incredibly entrenched positions I think we are going over the edge.
I think that 2X will destroy a lot of confidence in Bitcoin, as it proves that the network can be stolen away to change the rules, and would be managed by a much smaller dev group.
Though, the Bitcoin network can survive as a zombie forever with just a couple miners and zero devs. So it may not 'fail' in that sense, just become very stable.
"The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it."
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Just because one group of devs calls themselves the arbitrators of all things Bitcoin doesn't make it so.
That language is very revealing: It never belonged to 'the Core development group' in the first place.
In theory, the "economic majority" controls the consensus rules, not miners or developers. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority
I'm guessing Core will be prepared to reluctantly merge segwit2x's consensus rules and release a new version in the case that segwit2x succeeds. Core wouldn't lose much market share if they act quickly.
What makes you think the end cannot come before pensions and mutual funds start investing? What if panic selling triggers a deep loss in value, which then triggers miners to shut down as the mining reward falls below the energy cost; if enough miners shut down, someone could pull off a double-spending attack, and when people see that it will further reduce their confidence in the system. The result could be that confidence in Bitcoin never recovers.
Or Bitcoin could just be a fad that slows unwinds and fades away, and twenty years from now we'll all be laughing about it over drinks. I can think of a few other technologies that were "definitely going to take over" and are barely remembered today...
If a pension fund were bullish on Bitcoin, I think they'd be much better of going long a VC fund that is investing in the space.
dot com stocks themselves may have been a lot of hype but at least they had the precedence of several hundred years of capital market infrastructure around them to lend some credence.
Just hold on tight, let's see if it can survive protocol upgrades and get more than 4 transactions a second.
The design of B2X is based on getting every user of Bitcoin to switch software before November. If commerce continues on the legacy chain, the value proposition falls in its entirety. B2X has no replay protection to speak of and no emergency difficulty adjustment is possible. The market correctly reflects the probability that B2X will replace BTC. Feel free to bet on it should you disagree, Bitfinex offers futures trading on BTC/B2X.
My only piece of advice is that while it's fine to take money off the table before such events, pay very close attention to what is going on and NEVER PANIC SELL. Anyone who has done so before (myself included) has regreted it.
Bitcoin has been pronounced dead many times before and yet is very well alive.
He should put his money where his mouth is (but of course he probably won't).
I haven't been keeping up lately, but I would guess that whichever camp the Chinese miners were in is going to lose, since Chinese mining itself may be headed for rapid decline.
I just went to steemit blog network, now my grandma can use a blockchain
