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What Is Bitcoin XT: A Primer For Everyone
Submitted by John Smith
Bitcoin XT: Premature intervention?
TLDR: Bitcoin XT proposes a premature fix to a potential problem; let's first wait and see how market forces react
These viewpoints illustrate my main objections to the Bitcoin XT proposal.
They are NOT comprehensive explanations of the proposed changes!
-PUBELIUS
BITCOIN XT FOR ACCOUNTANTS:
"The Blockchain" is Bitcoin's global ledger. It contains pages ("blocks") of ledger entries ("transactions"). Thousands of people maintain complete copies of the ledger worldwide. Having many copies of the ledger improves the resilience of the Bitcoin network.
The first 2 years of ledger pages (2009-2011) are largely blank. Since then, almost every page has some entries. Some of the recent pages are almost full.
Bitcoin XT proposes that everyone switch to using a redesigned extra tall ledger, whose pages have room for 8 times as many entries. Every two years thereafter, the page size will double.
The original and new ledgers are incompatible. Unless A) everyone keeps using the old books, or B) everyone switches to the new books, then everyone will get screwed by 2 diverging sets of books.
I prefer option A, keeping the existing ledgers:
- If there are too many transactions to fit on a new page, just write down the most important transactions, and leave the unimportant ones pending.
- Ledger space is valuable - the costs of storing each entry are multiplied by the number of ledgers worldwide for all time.
- fewer people will maintain ledgers if those exponentially increase in size (thus decreasing the network's resilience.)
BITCOIN XT FOR ECONOMISTS:
Let "transaction bandwidth" be a scarce resource that is required to settle a pending Bitcoin transaction.
A technical decision made in 2009 set the transaction bandwidth available in each Bitcoin block at 1 megabyte; thus to date it has always had the same fixed supply.
Due to altruistic miners and plenty of spare room in blocks, Bitcoin users are accustomed to obtaining transaction bandwidth for free or minimal cost. There's always room for all transactions - so far.
Thus the unit cost of transaction bandwidth (the amount you must pay for your Bitcoin transaction to be settled) is, today, currently low or zero.
And, today, the demand for transaction bandwidth in a given block is nearly always less than the supply.
However, once demand exceeds the supply of transaction bandwidth (when transactions become so frequent that it becomes normal to see more than 1Mb pending transactions at each block) then some of these transactions will never settle.
Bitcoin XT proposes to modify Bitcoin to increase the maximum block size at 8mb, i.e. to increase the supply of transaction bandwidth eightfold; and thereafter to automatically increase it exponentially, doubling every two years.
I oppose the proposal because:
- The market for transaction bandwidth is immature and has not yet seen competition or price discovery, thus intervention may well be premature
- Increasing the limit reduces or removes market pressures to use available transaction bandwidth for important transactions instead of unimportant transactions
- Changing a resource from a flat, fixed supply to an exponentially increasing could possibly, just maybe, lead to unwelcome and unknown side effects
- This is probably the first large scale opportunity to see whether unrestricted market forces actually do optimize a supply curve
- Storage costs are externalized so users have no disincentive to spam unimportant transactions
BITCOIN XT FOR DEVS:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bitcoin+xt
BITCOIN XT FOR ENGINEERS:
Let Bitcoin be a black box having inputs: "bitcoin users" and "consensus rules"
and outputs: "blockchain state" and "unconfirmed transactions".
Theory suggests that if we don't touch the inputs, the blockchain state will continue updating but eventually there will be many unconfirmed transactions.
Theory also suggests that if we modify the block size limit, the blockchain state will continue updating, and there will be no unconfirmed transactions.
Has anyone yet asked why we care about confirming every transaction?
Could we add a killswitch to pending transactions after 24 hours, so you can try again with a more reasonable transaction fee?
As a reminder, this is a 3.5 billion dollar production system with 6 years of uptime that depends on human interaction and is sort of magic, are you SURE that we should fuck with its inputs?
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BitcoinXT is a test of the decentralization parameters of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin succeeds in adapting through this, either via a rejection of the fork proposal or a successive launch of the updated protocol, the network will come out on the otherside stronger for it.
Not that I think it was actually Satoshi but someone used his account to bash XT.
Why did something so bullet proof need to be modified?
I mean, we've all been called idiots for not "understanding" the power of bigcoin, so why did it need to be improved?
It wasn't designed to have the success that it has, but XT addresses this.
I'm a skeptic but if you think the big monetary shake-up is on the way and consider how bitcoin has reacted to Cyprus Greece and the Ruble crisis its worth acquiring a little, which I have.
Yay! MOAR BITCOIN!!
We see both sides of this debate but honestly for teh time being, Bitcoin should concentrate on gaining popularity and acceptance before the "bleeding edge" mentality that fractures teh Linux/open source community into a billion disparate pieces takes hold. IMHO quite happy seeing BTC as a digital savings bond for teh time being rather than digital nickels and dimes to buy coffee.
This article is only half the truth.
The XT protocol is "premature", but if they wait until it is not, then it will be too late.
What the author fails to mention is that the 1meg block limit will be reached as early the first of next year.
It would have been better if "the market" and inovation would have come up with a fix before that brick wall was hit, but it did not and now they are forced to take action before the blockchain runs out of space in 6-9 months
If you don't hold it, you don't own it. Bitcoin only exists in the matrix. I'm all for free markets and competing currencies, but personally I'm choosing silver.
Is this sponsored content?
BITCOIN XT: because there's now a sucker born every second
ZEROHEDGE: Because some dopes enjoy living in teh past.
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-bitcoin-ceos-arrest-leaves-trail-of-u...
BitCON reeks of joo scam.
Yes, in teh minds of the ignorant ZH foggies.. everything not understood by their simple minds is reduced to "a scam" or "a ponzi". Basically, 99% of everything in existence is a scam!
I finally gave in a bought some via fax from a guy in NIgeria who said that mine was physically segregated and insured
Slightly OT: Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed talks about Ross Ulbricht, The Silk Road takedown and the radicalization of teh internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eml2PLYUXrc
Let's see... bitcoin doesn't depend on a central bank, and it can't be diluted whenever Janet feels like it.
YAY!
on the other hand, it does depend on:
1 - Electricity
2- Access to the internet
3 - Access to the bitcoin site
4 - the security of cyberspace, where it is 'stored'
Sounds like a winner
Come on ... at least troll with accuracy..
3 - is flatly not true - that would be a centralized system .. the opposite of Bitcoin
4 - also not true - it relies on the security of cryptography... and the private keys to your Bitcoins are not stored anywhere 'in cyberspace'. Look up paper wallets ... and now tell everyone that something on paper is in cyberspace!
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
If Bitcoiners got off the money claim and focused on the actual value of their non-money -- a convenient way to wire money around capital controls and to make purchases anonymously -- I think there would actually be a shot at some popularity.
My degree is in computer science and I have spent my career working on software development.
I am pretty sure that I have a pretty good understanding of what bitcoin is.
For now it is worth less than empty beer cans in the state of New York. Empty beer cans I can take to one of thousands of places and exchange for US currency which at the present will buy you anything. Bitcoin? Not really.
If there is a major economic collapse the beer cans will likely be worthless as will bitcoin.
The beer cans at least might have some use. Aluminum has many applications.
Don't know if this is a real comment or sarcasm ... voting direction confused.
I dunno what the Jewish folk have to do with BC but I prophesy many getting scammed.
...due to your post and your thoughts existing in the matrix people should pay absolutely no attention to it by that logic.
It means more network congestion, latency.. it's not teh end of teh world....
It is a p2p network, and as such, there are always resource constraints; in this case, the topic of contention is the "throughput" of the network. Basically, the question is, should Bitcoin behave more like digital gold -- a digital wire transfer, where I can send you large payments unrestrained but at at similar wire-transfer costs, or should it be financial services for all at the cost of decentralization, ie, the network is maintained by a a handful of computers in large data centers, subject to gov't seizure/intervention, but everyone can pay for their coffee with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin. Because electricity is forever.
Correct. Electricity is forever. Any other questions?
Okay, I finally had to go take a look at BTC source.
Here is amount.h, guys. nSatoshisPerK... lololo.
// Copyright (c) 2009-2010 Satoshi Nakamoto
// Copyright (c) 2009-2014 The Bitcoin Core developers
// Distributed under the MIT software license, see the accompanying
// file COPYING or http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php.
#include "amount.h"
#include "tinyformat.h"
const std::string CURRENCY_UNIT = "BTC";
CFeeRate::CFeeRate(const CAmount& nFeePaid, size_t nSize)
{
if (nSize > 0)
nSatoshisPerK = nFeePaid*1000/nSize;
else
nSatoshisPerK = 0;
}
CAmount CFeeRate::GetFee(size_t nSize) const
{
CAmount nFee = nSatoshisPerK*nSize / 1000;
if (nFee == 0 && nSatoshisPerK > 0)
nFee = nSatoshisPerK;
return nFee;
}
std::string CFeeRate::ToString() const
{
return strprintf("%d.%08d %s/kB", nSatoshisPerK / COIN, nSatoshisPerK % COIN, CURRENCY_UNIT);
}
If you're trying to imply that there is some "perk" for satoshi, you're misreading entirely. This function is talking about the transaction fee, calculated into the number of Satoshis (the base unit, 0.00000001 bitcoin) required per 1000 bytes of transactional information.
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of the NSA cryptologist Tatsuaki Okamoto who wrote about a dozen papers on digital crypto currencies from 1991 to 1995.
e.g.
1. Tony Eng and Tatsuaki Okamoto, Single-Term Divisible Electronic Coins, Advances in Cryptology EUROCRYPT '94, Springer-Verlag, pp. 311-323.
2. Tatsuaki Okamoto, An Efficient Divisible Electronic Cash Scheme, Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO '95, Springer-Verlag, pp. 438-451.
3. Tatsuaki Okamoto and Kazuo Ohta, Universal Electronic Cash, Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO '91, Springer-Verlag, pp. 324-337.
No, it's a pseudonym for Barack Obama!
Equally as much evidence for both of our statements.
And yes, the .gov did work on crypto early, but BTC was and is completely different in that there was no central issuing authority. No government would ever create something like that--not on purpose.
I wasn't LOLing out of syntactic misunderstanding of per-1000-units as the English word "perk" (I see how someone can think that though), but rather at the fact that the base unit of measure is a Satoshi. It looks hilarious to see it in code.
Agree "nope-1004".
What's next, Ethercoin XP?
Sure why not? Heaven forbid technology advance and people are required to stay on top of those advancements. Or would you rather things stay slow and simple for teh LCD of society?
There be dragons here.
Thanks Skateboarder, there seem to be a lot of MIT/ Goldman Sachs connections.
Innuendo? yes, Conspiracy? maybe. Facts? ........................
https://www.google.com/#q=goldman+sachs+mit+connections
Nope-1004
It was always intended to be modified as it grew. These are growing pains that everyone saw as a problem years ago. It has not been addressed before now due to core developer politics.
So does this constitute a "glitch" in the "Matrix"?
You were called an idiot because you are an idiot. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the bitcoin supporters here said that BTC had flaws which have been addressed by some of the myriad altcoins out there, and that bitcoin would have to adapt or it would die. IE we were exactly right.
I like Dash because it allows for instant transactions and is far, FAR more anonymous than BTC transactions. There might be others that are better.
Also, Ethereum is a scam or useless. Don't buy into the hype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84WO2vq7Y1E
.
Btc Xt = Paranormal Fiats...
Elegant
"Premature intervention?" Don't they make some kind of numbing cream for that?
Bitcoin or Bitcoin XT, whats the difference?
Dump all your phys, buy bitcoin and wait for the power to go out, you'll be rich!!!!
Bitcoin, because it's been around for thousands of years.
If only I bought bitcoin instead, that boating accident wouldnt have mattered.
Breaking: an audit of the Federal Reserve is finally being approved, but they're telling us right up front that, instead of gold pet rocks, we are going to find tons of Bitcoin Promises. As secure as my computer.
So did everyone read the above article and understand it and understand all the ramifications of it? It's just new and improved. It was the best, now it's the bestest.
So ready to plow your estate into Bitcoin?
Brilliant idea... when investigating new technologies or investments, always make sure they have been around a few thousand years first. Way to make sure you are a loser and will remain so!
If you reincarnate again, please do not come back as "Hillary Air". We all thank you in advance!
`If`, lol.
Yeah I knew some pretty smart people who were buying bitcoin when it was priced higher than gold, i tried to warn them... i guess logic goes out the window when the herd starts running. After that epic drop I wonder if bitcoin will ever go north up $300-400 again
Bitcoin will overtake gold again (in "Dollar" terms and in real purchasing power).
Bitcoin was never worth more than gold in any sensible comparision. An ounce of gold is not a comparable amount to 1 bitcoin.
Yea, I bought a pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum on Amazon this morning. $31 with free drone delivery. I paid with my bitcoin wallet.
It should just take another 32 hours for the blockchain to synchronize then I can purchase another pack of Juicy Fruit on Amazon with free drone delivery.
Its a messy & complicated debate in the Bitcoin world. The issue is highly technical, and there is no full agreement because very few programmers understand exactly what should be done (nor I am a programmer). But, it will likely be resolved by a consensus at some point.
EDIT:
summerof71 (first reply) summarizes it nicely IMO.
No, summer71 is not correct, XT is merely the latest proof that Bitcoin is ungovernable. Two of the five core devs (developers who can commit Bitcoin changes to the network) are in open revolt and have launched their own version. If 100% of Bitcoin moves over, fine, it can continue. But it's more likely that orphan coins on the previous version will still be mined and will still have some market value. That means there will be two Bitcoins...and oops it will be possible to spend the same one in two places: magic money indeed. Governance was always the Achilles heel, coupla hundred million in VC money circling the drain. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
http://qntra.net/2015/08/hearns-blacklist-shenanigans/
I should have been more clear that I am not anything close to an expert on BTC.
It DOES appear that there are BIG EGOS at work obstructing a consensus. But the reading that I have been doing does not spell "Doom" for Bitcoin in all of this.
I am an expert. They're screwed. It may not disappear but it will never be what people were hyperventilating about. At the moment 50% of Bitcoins are owned by less than 1000 people, and only 350,000 people have more than 1 BTC after 6 years of trying. 24h volume was +/- $25M, one guy at one desk at one bank in one ccy pair will blow that away as soon as the first bank steps up on the Bitcoin alternatives. Toast.
Burnt toast, can't even feed it to the birds.
Bitcoin reminds me of a religion based on faith wracked by internecine conflict.
I wholly concur, using the Episcopalian model ensures f(r)actional destruction.
Just to be clear. No one can force code to the network. Anyone can take the existing bitcoin code, change it, and release it. But this has zero effect unless the stakeholders decide to run that software version instead of their current one. The system of everyone typically using the software released by the core devs, was because there was consensus - everyone agreed with all the changes they made. This is the first time there's been a large enough disagreement in the system at large that there are two viable, incompatible, choices for the software going forward.
It's how it's supposed to work. The code of both versions is open, the debate is open. There's no hidden information, it's now up to the stakeholders to reach a majority decision on one version or the other before next year. This is the fairest way bitcoin can be 'governed' and the way most likely to lead to the best result for the system as a whole. No one controls bitcoin, so this is how differences of opinion get resolved - by the free market.
Yes, which is another reason that Dash is better. Probably other altcoins address the same problem as well.
no way to control what kind of "extra" data is put in the bigger blocks.
more hands to grip the golden goose's throat
XT contains no change to the structure of transactions themselves. Blocks will still only contain valid transactions, they'll just be able to fit more of them in a block..
This XT Shit Sounds Like Paranormal Fiats.
I imagine the inventors of bearer bonds had as difficult a time explaining why promises on paper were good as gold to the unwashed illiterate peasantry as the btc folks have explaining blockchains and bandwidths to we troglodytes as we fondle our barbarous relics and scratch our hairy backs with our clubs. You mean, you commit time to work and add value to inanimate objects to make them useful to humanity, and you then exchange the product for abstract language? This is a brand new concept! Never been done before!
Cut out the middlemen and just trade in joules.
We could go full retard philosophical abstraction and just trade trades. oh wait
Quit trying to fool us. Microsoft stopped supporting XT a long time ago.
That would work if most energy storage mechanisms didn't allow for decay (ie were durable). Also doesn't help that hoarding energy harms the economy (less energy to use for production), where no-one loses out when gold or bitcoins are hoarded.
Craftsmen and Barter?
Bullshit on the brand new concept drivel.
Broad communication has been around for quite a while, Masons moving cathedral to cathedral across Europe as an example.
The only thing new under the sun about this is that the mining produces a product that is aether (alchemy) and the speed and distance that potential riches can travel from satrap to satrap.
Who knew PUBELIUS worked for the dark side?
BITCOIN XT FOR BANKSTERS:
Why shouldn't we kick the can?
Or you could just buy more physical.
Whatever, man. Too technical for me.
I'll hold out for the Bitcoin 80286.
I have about 5 barrels of those, in the 68 pin pkg. Good as... Well, you know the rest...
Wow there's something better than bitcoin? Who could have guessed? I'm going all in on XT.
On a more laughably serious note, if this works then we can expect upgrades every year, just like operating systems.
Yeah it's just so hard keeping up isn't it? Are you typing on a Windows 95 computer? Teh comments here remind me of old foggie cutomers when we worked for AT&T Wireless... "but I just upgraded my phone 8 years ago! What do you mean it's not going to work anymore?!?!?"
I invested about $1,000 in my Windows 95 computer after using one at work.
See the difference, peckerhead?
Don't worry about it just buy low and sell high.
Bitcoin must scale going forward. Years of talk and no action prompted Satoshi's #1 man to try and fix the stalemate among devs. This will be solved by global consensus one way or another. This is the beauty of open source and global distributed consensus networks.
Great to still see stupid things being said about 'ol BTC here in the echo chamber, too bad anti-BTC dopes are utterly incapable of even original insults towards it now. Funny. Commenters and the Tylers themselves to an extent have been 100% wrong on BTC for years, why change now eh (although the Tylers seem to be pulling their heads out a bit lately)?
Bitcoin and more importantly blockchain tech isn't going anywhere, BTChez
You may already be reading this, Haole, but if not, FYI:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1160153.0
If BitCoin 'scales' it will have the same downside as fiat, which 'SCALES' so much it is close to worthless.
Commentators have only been commenting for 7 years, by the way, which is hardly a long time.
You could be right that blockchain tech isn't 'going anywhere' however.
The size of the blocks mined will scale to allow for a much higher volume ecosystem transactionally among other things from what I understand, not the ultimate number of units or "fungibility", etc. You're misinterpreting what's proposed here or it's potential real world changes.
If you had put two words together that made a readable sentence, I would have left you alone.
I seldom misinterpret Junk language , intent, or insults.
Do you have a problem with me or do you just have a problem?
I tried to explain that what he thought was happenng is not, I'm no authority on Bitcoin, just trying to help.
Where do you see insult in that and my English is fine? "Junk language", "intent", I don't have the faintest what you have running around in your version of reality but I didn't deserve that.
Anything to add to the topic or are you just going to go down at this juncture as the hypocritical douchenozzle that can do nothing other than insult someone else apparently?
Huh, well?
Scaling bitcoin has nothing to do with increasing the monetary supply. There will still only be 21 million ever. This is related to how many transactions per day the system can handle.
You should change your name to strawman.
There are ledgers for gold too. Just not open source--which is a major part of the reason it is so easy to suppress.
I am all for alternative currencies that challange todays status quo, though I am very sceptical about a currency that is mainly electronic! Yes, I am aware that we are still to experience a total electrical shutdown worldwide but let us assume that it does happen. Then what?
You hear this argument alot on ZH, its very odd and it lends credence to Bitcoin when peoples arguments against it is the ending of electricity globally forever? which is of course absurd.
If theres a power outage globally bitcoin is still safe because the blockchain is stored on harddrives. If you are worried to get involved because you beleive electricity is going to vanish forever then you are a very hard sell indeed.
OK, but what happens if you need it when the lights are out?
How can it be annonymous when everything you do on-line is tracked & recorded?
How can something totally worthless act as a store of value (applies to paper too)
Sort those out and I might be interested.
1) Meet in person and kiss phones and wait?
2) It's not anonymous unless one goes to lengths to make it so. It's psuedononymous for most but it's quite easily trackable if anyone wants to do so. Nobody who knows anything about Bitcoin claims that it's anonymous. Many people have paid quite a lot of money in cap gains to their tax agencies over the last couple of years. It's the future that could go to zero, interesting metaphor for our times.
3) Because it's not worthless, takes a lot of technology and electricity to produce and there is this thing called a global, trustless, consensus network which says that it is currently worth ~US$230 for one of them on the open exchanges.
I think it's you who needs to sort a few things out for yourself.
Bitcoin is just fine and doesn't care what you think.
So you're down in moms basement and you saved up $230 from mowing lawns.
Why not wait another 3 months and spend the $1200 that you saved from mowing and your allowance on a proven winner, gold?
Your friends in the btc-e.com chat window will not think you're kool?
There are no IP address associated with bitcoin transactions. If I made a transaction now how are you or google or the government or whoever going to know who I paid? The only way is under a highly concerntrated surveillance effort of a targetted individual, on a mass scale no one knows who is paying who in Bitcoin.
How can something worthless act as a store of value is easy but what you need to get straight is what value is. Someone providing a service is of worth, likewise someone producing goods is of worth, goods and services is what makes up all value in the economy, both are derived from the time and energy of people <-- this is value therefore all it takes for a worthless thing to act as a store of value is for said people to accept it in exchange for their time and energy. This is the same mechanism that makes worthless fiat a store of value.
It doesnt mean that the worthless thing has inhernt value, that value can never be divorced from the its source (people), even in the case of gold, it is money it acts as a tool for the exchange of value it is not the value itself.
Then kill yourself and beat the rush. 95% dead within a year, assuming power doesn't come back up quick. And that's assuming the power didn't go out due to EMP from a worldwide nuclear war, in which case it's 99.9% dead, and 100% within two more generations at best.
Why do people insist on going full retard with this "end of the world" nonsense. Sure, bad things can happen, even really, REALLY bad things. But the power going out worldwide? Might as well ask what good crypto will be when the sun explodes.
Good fucking god tmosley, how this place has sunk in a few years in terms of the comments sections eh?
I'm astounded at the abject idiocy that passes for intelligence here now, it's even upvoted FFS.
Haole/Strawman you've made some interesting points. Although I still don't see how BTC is competitive enough to substitute as a store of value or a wide acceptance transacting tool IE the dollar.
If it becomes a store of value it attracts speculators. If it becomes an alternative transaction/trade tool .GUV wants their cut and ultimately it will be regulated and taxed to oblivion
My question is, say a blackout or EMP do happen while the BTC servers and many wallet websites are up and running. Isn't it possible for the blackout be so severe that servers get wiped out and data are lost - for people to lose their investments almost instantaneously?
All just a confidence game, and I applaud you for playing it. Have fun, good luck getting the hard sells on ZH on that bandwagon and that includes me.
I mean look at the stockmarket in China, you can't even unload some shares without the semi-commies come knocking on your door LOL.
You can't tax that which is formless. Crypto in general, and especially newer generation crypto, largely makes government obsolete! They can point all the guns at it they want, but it is not possible to take down the system without also destroying the network, something which humanity would or will soon die without, even if they did have such power.
And no, it is not possible for a blackout to be that severe. Copies of the blockchain are kept in underground EMP sheilded bunkers. If a single even wipes ALL of those out then all of humanity will be gone right along with it. Might as well claim that DNA is a bad way to store data because it can be unwound. If all the DNA is gone, then GUESS WHAT!
In XT, it's easier to extend the total number of outstanding coins.
BTC didn't have that feature. All wallets times 1.3 in a mouseclick.
That is a complete lie. It changes nothing regarding the money supply, no one would run it if it did.
I have some questions. When the network that includes all or most full nodes are owned and managed by Uncle Sam (probably read as Rchild's), consensus rules will mean nothing as your VOT does now. Later if they want to tax blockchains users or even transactions, take payments, all those nodes agreeing will be easier then taking candy from a baby. Right now they don't manage and run all the fuil nodes that ultimately make the decision of transactions, but who's to say they won't in the future? Or even start enough the take the majority?
The network consensus is not determined singularly by nodes -- nodes for all intents and purposes determine which transactions are relayed across the network and are responsible for parsing and maintaining copies of the transaction ledger. The consensus rules are governed more by the miners than the nodes, as the miners will mine only on the "true" blockchain as to do anything else would be pissing away money to the wind. It is hard to imagine a world where there is any value in a Uncle Sam blockchain system.
What you're describing is known as the 51% problem/attack. It's been pretty thoroughly explored.
I'll just rip this from the wiki since it explains the risk and possibilities and impossibilities. Such an attack is serious but doesn't enable taxation or anything you're describing:
Attacker has a lot of computing powerAn attacker that controls more than 50% of the network's computing power can, for the time that he is in control, exclude and modify the ordering of transactions. This allows him to:
The attacker can't:
With less than 50%, the same kind of attacks are possible, but with less than 100% rate of success. For example, someone with only 40% of the network computing power can overcome a 6-deep confirmed transaction with a 50% success rate.
It's much more difficult to change historical blocks, and it becomes exponentially more difficult the further back you go. As above, changing historical blocks only allows you to exclude and change the ordering of transactions. It's impossible to change blocks created before the last checkpoint.
Since this attack doesn't permit all that much power over the network, it is expected that no one will attempt it. A profit-seeking person will always gain more by just following the rules, and even someone trying to destroy the system will probably find other attacks more attractive. However, if this attack is successfully executed, it will be difficult or impossible to "untangle" the mess created -- any changes the attacker makes might become permanent.
Breaking compatibiity is retarded and market-based solutions are better.
I think expiring transactions and doing something that drives small transactions into sidechains for consolidation makes more sense.
Unfortunately there's already some reasonably sized support for XT, but the whole vibe of it just rubs me the wrong way. On the bright side, at least all this crap is out in the open unlike pretty much every other payment system/fiat.
It's only breaking "compatability" if the XT fork happens and some don't make the jump from their new cripplecoin.
Many agree that Mike and Gavin's method is way too aggressive, many do not trust Mike in the least from what I gather but the time for talk is definitely over. I agree that there has to be a better way.
Andreas says it's all completely overblown so if Gavin and especially Andreas aren't worried...
If you do not want Mike Hearns other XT contributions you could always just run the version with the block limit changes: here
That is just the BIP101 changes with nothing else .. and is also supplued by Mike and Gavin
Expiring transactions are insane !!
They are a really issue that means 0-conf transactions are unpredictable.
If you could rely on a transaction not being randomly lost during the period before it gets recorded in the blockchain, you would be less concerned about how long that took.
I've read Mike Hearn's arguments for XT: https://medium.com/faith-and-future/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1, and I've read Adam Back's interview at IEEE Spectrum: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/the-bitcoin-for-is.... Both sides of the Bitcoin fork argument claim the other side is not behaving reasonably. It's hard for an outsider to know what the truth is, however if Back's claim is true that increasing the block size is on the discussion table, then Hearn dishonestly characterizes the problem and the argument. In that case, the breakaway XT developers are the problem.
It would really suck if Bitcoin were ultimately defeated by ego and an uncooperative attitude amoung the developers.
It's not like ego and lack of cooperation have ever ruined anything before!
;-)
IT professionals and programmers love to create problems to solve. Happens all the time at work.
A few years ago I was chatting with my Indian neighbor who worked for Dell and I was lamenting how when I got out of college programmers were getting $100 an hour and that now there aren't opportunities like that. He said no that that was not true. The opportunity to make big money at the time was writing viruses.
And as people argue BC and BCXT, GOLD justs sits there with nothing to say...and it tells no lies.
"THIS JUST IN - Developers say they have a new BCXT algorithm ready to that will create more bitcoins faster than before. And in a related story, Janet Yellen claims she has a new supernova exploding at the New York Fed ready to print more physical gold."
WHICH HYPOTHETICAL IS MORE PLAUSIBLE?
What a crock. "Bitcoin XT proposes a premature fix to a potential problem; let's first wait and see how market forces react" This is total bollocks. There already is a problem. It's called settlement. Bitcoin transactions take too long to settle. What Mr. Smith wants to do is to create an artificial market by creating an artificial shortage in "transaction bandwidth". If bitcoin is to become ubiquitous, transactions needed to be completed in a timely manner and the cost needs to be kept low. What Mr. Smith wants is the exact opposite of this so that he can make a bit of money for himself. And just to touch on another false point that he makes, NO MINERS ARE NOT BEING ALTRUISTIC!!! They are in it to make money. But the short sided view of Mr. Smith shows that he wants to make less money on pushing up the cost of each transaction (and ultimately reducing the quantity of transactions taking place on the block chain) which would render bitcoin into a niche currency rather than increasing the market for everyone by keeping the cost low (thus leading to far higher volumes of transactions) that would allow bitcoin to become ubiquitous. His arguments are just utter utter BS!!!
He has a valid argument. You say that Bitcoin transactions take too long to settle, but the settlement time is a fundamental tradeoff in the design. It would be physically impossible to get a reliable global settlement in less than a minute or so (what you would need for everyday transactions). Data can take close to half a second to go around the globe and back, and there need to be multiple rounds of communications and computational work for every settlement.
Bitcoin's design aims to create a system that works on a global scale and that strongly resists centralization. These are the higher priority objectives. As a lower priority objective it is desirable to minimize settlement times. For Bitcoin transactions to be considered settled it takes something on the order of one hour (10 minutes on average for a single confirmation, but that is not certain enough and reliable enough). That's still a huge improvement over the coveted in financial circles T+1 (day) or the present T+3 for stocks, not to mention physical gold settlement. But again, the more important part is that Bitcoin has no problem scaling geographically over the entire planet and that it is decentralized (though this is hard to measure and many think it is not decentralized enough).
If there is a way at all to get reliable global settlement in less than a minute or so, it won't be based on Bitcoin's consensus design - it would have to be something very different and as of yet unknown. But clearly some transactions need to happen in less time than what Bitcoin can do and for these purposes there are and will be various other solutions that either have different tradeoffs (e.g. not global, but local; not decentralized, but with a certain kind of trust in third parties) or are a fundamentally different thing, i.e. transactions are not immediately settled, but are instead netted or on credit or something else (e.g. lightning network).
It is important to keep in mind what Bitcoin is and not to try to change it to something very different (otherwise, create a new thing).
So clearly the Bitcoin network alone cannot and need not cover the entire spectrum of desired settlement times. Then having a market for settlement times of 10 minutes (average) or longer is not unreasonable. You can always get the minimum settlement time for a price, or save on fees if you are not in a hurry. If that is unsatisfactory for your use case, then the Bitcoin network is not the right tool for that particular job. For Bitcoin to be successful the Bitcoin network doesn't need to cover all use cases - just the most important one (the fundamental settlement layer over which everything else can be built). If the Bitcoin network is successful in that one critical use case then the bitcoin currency will also be successful and it will be the preferred currency that will flow in those other networks (it's important to realize this).
So the first priority is making sure that the Bitcoin network does not become centralized in a certain geographical area or among a small number of miners and nodes (or ones that can be controlled). The block size limit affects that balance in multiple ways. The XT proposal for block size increase (it's not the only proposal) is particularly reckless, since it assumes that by the year 2036 bandwidth, storage and transaction validation speed (CPU) will be able to keep up with a 8000 times increase in block size. And everyone is expected to make a call on this 20 years beforehand. Let's be a little more careful, shall we?
" but the settlement time is a fundamental tradeoff in the design"
Dash did it. Transactions confirm in seconds.
OK, great. But I guess that introduces some more assumptions, like some level of trust in those Masternodes that Dash introduces (I'm not very familiar with how Dash works). It's a different tool for different purposes.
Let the best things win. But I can't help but think that much of that altcoin innovation could use a mutually beneficial relationship with Bitcoin, like some kind of common proof of work (like merged mining) or using the same (e.g. lightning network) or related currency as bitcoin (like a two way pegged currency in a sidechain).
To an extent, this has been done between Litecoin and Dogecoin as these have merged their mining to secure both their coins. Both have gotten benefits from it, although there's not much interaction between their users. The nice thing is that Dogecoin has a one-minute transaction time, but that can vary and you may see blocks settle in just seconds, then 2 or 3 minutes to the next. Not perfect yet.
I bought a pack of gum. It took about 38 hours to sync the chain man.
You see - that's the point. The main Bitcoin network and blockchain is not the right tool for such a use case. The whole world doesn't need to know or record that you've just bought a pack of gum. Simply increasing the Bitcoin block size limit is not going to make that practical in the future.
The real flaw in Bitcoin is that there is no protocol to update. That means everyone running a full node should use the so-called reference implemenation, a Rube Goldberg device implemented in code. Improved implementations (cbitcoin, picocoin) get sidelined and you end up with the 21st century equivalent of MS's old IE and Word formats that were famously incompatible with everyone else's code.
Its just a proposed update to increase the transaction limit introduced in the early days of Bitcoin to prevent the blocksize becoming too large which could of hindered adoption. Now its not needed, the blocksize cap could be removed entirely but being conservative and to please most its set to raise from 1mb to 8mb. A group of developers were trying to lay claim to being the only authority on providing updates for bitcoin and didnt want to let Bitcoin scale and wanted people to use 'side chains' for paymanets instead. XT is proving that it doesnt matter what they claim the community of what the majority of users want will happen and that is they want Bitcoin to scale therefore XT.
Has anyone asked the NSA what it thinks about these changes to its baby?
Too early yet. No pending crisis that moves the masses into demanding an 'alternative'. The push for cashless is already on however, so it won't be much longer I suspect. 2 - 5 years max.
the rightful concern about going cashless is that all digital payments are centralised by the bank and so those central authroitys could then prevent you from making payments or recieiving payments or making any payments the taxman cannot see etc, these are valid concerns.
Bitcoin is actually a complete solution to this, because it IS cash, it is cash made digital. All the attributes of cash are in Bitcoin, both are peer to peer technologies. You have no third partie recourse if you lose either, transactions are anonmyous etc etc.
The reason cashless was so dangerous before was because all cashless payments before Bitcoin were governed by central authroitys.
Theres a reason Satoshi named his Whitepaper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"
One would hope, then, that Satoshi's thinking never becomes obsolete .
Philo Farnsworth Model.
Bitcoin might be cash, but it ain't money.
Sorry, Knuks, but it is, in fact, money. It has all of the features of money, and that is all it takes to be money.
I luv how these idiots keep calling it anonymous. Anonymous, pseudo anonymous, no anonymous.
Usually deceit and trickery don't mix well with new unproven currencies.
It is money because of the inherent value. You can't just "add" bitcoins to it unless they were either earned by your mining, received as payment or as a gift, stolen from someone else through their carelessness, greed or sheer misfortune, or that you just plain bought an amount of BTC from someone with fiat cash or through an exchange with other alt coins such as LTC or DOGE.
Not only that, but consider what the government does when a crook overseas scams a US taxpayer out of their refund. The Fed and IRS actually makes the taxpayer whole. Nice, but that adds inflation to the mix as that lost money had to be PRINTED. With Bitcoin, you lose it - it's LOST! However, it causes no inflationary effects on all other BTC users.
At one time, I accidentally transmitted just over a quarter BTC to an address which I didn't have control over any longer. That amount is lost in limbo and I'll never get the Private Key to reclaim it. At that time, Bitcoin was worth around $50 USD so I lost no sleep whatsoever over it and had plenty more to spare. None of you will ever find the Private Key for it either. The sheer number of addresses possible would take so many lifetimes to find, and reverse-hashing an SHA256 has never been done.
Also, I have the only Bitcoin Node in my region, the nearest being 125 miles away. I also keep backups of all the juicy stuff, including Bitcoin and the several Gb of blockchain. All it will take to resume operations are just a handful of nodes working again. I still think it's a decent way to shoot the bird at criminal bank$ters who have bought up our politicians.
"inherent value" of bitcoin = zero
Then the inherent value of gold is also zero.
Please, PLEASE point out the traits that gold has that bitcoin doesn't and explain how that makes it money while bitcoin isn't.
The only thing gold has that BTC doesn't is that it has existed for a longer time. That alone is enough reason to doubt it, but not to dismiss it. That is why you don't put more than about 5% if you are speculating, 2% if you are conserving.
knukles .... some one relevant at the Bank of England disagrees with you
Read about it here
The government really didn't think this through when they invented Bitcoin, did they.
TPTB will not embrace Bitcoin. Banks are, however, working on blockchain technology to act as a clearing house between financial institutions. Bitcoin itself will be replaced with something blessed by TPTB. The reality is Bitcoin (like anything else that holds no intrinsic value) relies upon faith that people will value it tomorrow, next month, next year, etc. Bitcoin really is much like fiat currencies in most respects. Thus, by investing in Bitcoin, you're gambling on the tolerance of the TPTB towards this particular cryptocurrency, not to mention the potential for exploits, political infighting (like the Core vs XT debate), etc. All you're seeing here is precisely what happened in the Linux community. So much drama resulted in different flavors being developed by disparate development teams. The same will happen with Bitcoin, and frankly I think it will be worse off for it.
It's not "like fiat", it's the ultimate fiat.
Absolutely no backing or obligation of any kind.
What is gold backed by?
You MORONS don't understand basic fucking WORDS, why should anyone value your nonsensical opinions?
Under the current rule regime, based on the "temporary anti-spam measure" limiting blocks to 1 MB, 5/1000th of 1% of the world is permitted to make a transaction using the Bitcoin blockchain per day. 99.9995% of humanity is explicitly excluded from writing to the blockchain. A Fringe Curiosity at most.
Bitcoin worth ZERO following a Carrington event
To automatically increase the block size exponentially, by doubling every two years, seems insane to me.
You increase things like that as required, not automatically.
Who cares?
wrg
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the anti-privacy features of Bitcoin XT.
Please search on:
Bitcoin XT tor ip blacklist disableipprio
SEE:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.0
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/privacy-backdoor-bitcoin-xt/
http://cointelegraph.com/news/115153/bitcoin-xt-fork-can-blacklist-tor-e...
ALSO - don't forget Gavin's allegiance is now to MIT:
http://cointelegraph.com/news/114046/mit-to-take-over-funding-of-three-b...
I can't imagine that the MIT has any links to the NSA or military complex, can you?
Why are they called `core` developers and not NSA stooges?
A better solution would be a dynamic block size which adjusts itself to what's required over a period of time, similar to how the difficulty adjusts itself up or down depending on what's required.
No point eventually growing to a multi GB block size and it's 99% empty.
No one is talking about empty huge blocks. All that is being relaxed is a limit .
Individual blocks are exactly the size needed by the transactions in it.
Making the limit 8Mb will not change the size of any block. It just allows larger blocks if they are actually needed.
This is a rather deceptive article. It claims to be a "primer for everybody", but is actually a very opinionated one-sided attack against Bitcoin XT. An attack which is extremely harmful to Bitcoin in the long term. For example, take a look at the author's 3 main points:
It is not up to you -- nor anyone else -- to determine which transactions are important or unimportant. That would be like the equivalent of determining which emails are important enough to get sent and which ones don't get the privilege of being sent. If Bitcoin is to thrive as a decentralized currency that is open to all human beings, then all transactions must be treated with the same importance.
This is a circular argument that makes no sense whatsoever. You nor I nor any of the miners need to worry about the storage space required for ALL THE LEDGERS WORLDWIDE. Each miner just needs to be concerned about the ledger space required on their own hard drives. It would take 6 years to fill up a single 3 TB drive if all the 8 MB blocks were full.
The miners and "ledger keepers" (full node operators) have already stated that this is not true. Their storage space and their bandwidth costs are the very least of their costs. It is the electricity costs which are their biggest expenses, not storage space.
For what it's worth, the money seems to agree with you - https://bitbet.us/bet/1191/the-hearn-gavin-scamcoin-will-fizzle-in-2016/
All I know is I put $200 USD into a Bitcoin ATM around 2pm EST during Tuesday's Bitcoin flash crash and was rewarded with $1,400 worth of Bitcoin.
I already spent it on gold of course!