For those of us that may not have access to sound; what does the audio file say and/or state?

Sitarow - You seem to have some accurate understanding of how the market is currently operating. I think I'm slowly grasping what you are suggestions but still struggling a bit and want to see if I can confirm this theory. So  the price of USD/BTC is pushed higher in value by using the sale of LTC/USD. When USD/BTC hits the sufficient peak the corresponding price of BTC/LTC is low, so the funds are transferred into this commodity, which in turn once again starts the rise of LTC to BTC and LTC/USD. Then this cycle continues? Basically washing ltc/usd gains in and out of btc/usd to continuously increase holdings by having the two commodities face off against one another. Is this a near accurate grasp? And you are suggesting that you can see the patterns that start on the chinese exchanges and then finish on btce and so when btce is at the highest, the cycle is already complete and or too late to try and join the game. Rinse repeat? Thanks for any insight you can help provide.

I think it makes sense. So take a look at what's been going on @ BTC-E for the last section of time.

Right now:
1) they are Dumping bitcoin for litecoin. This is decreasing the cost of bitcoin and raising the cost of litecoin.
2) they are then selling litecoin for usd.
3) then they can buy bitcoin w/ usd, cheaper than what it was previously being sold at.

The inverse also happens when pumping bitcoin to increase litecoin holdings. It's a nice little triangluar pattern that they've been doing since the last bubble.
That combined with the massive amount of shorts has allowed market makers to increase holdings/profits while keeping others suppressed. IMHO

What's even sicker is the trades seem to happen near instantaneously between ltc/btc and ltc/usd, which as Sitarow suggests, keeps value at equilibrium.
I just wish I could understand it a little bit better to try and play the swings.

Is he basically selling, shorters better stop shorting or you're gonna kill the goose that lays the golden egg? lol?

So looking at the charts, it appears LTC has been trading sideways for the last few days while bitcoin price has been continuing to decline.
would the next logical step be to dump LTC in order to pump BTC up
or
would you pump LTC to continue to force BTC lower before reversing the trend and doing it all over again?

I think once the silkroad trial is finished some big moves will start occurring but that is just pure speculation... hence this thread...

I'd beg to differ that a 10btc move doesnt move markets as they seem to be relatively thin?

How would another drop take out the retail shorts. Wouldn't they keep them open until they close and take profit? Then open new longs?

I like to see the LTC/BTC dumping; went sideways for too long. Arise BTC/USD. Popcorn. /eat.

Assuming the Silk Road Trial concludes this week, any thoughts on what the outcome of that will herald?

I think they are just consolidating via ltc/btc for the next pump. Maybe they set a target of around $225btc and $.0085 LTC. They just don't seem to be having the LTC success they want so dump/pump is stalling.

That was masterfully executed. Like watching a battle with two swordsmen. My only question is why usd/btc and ltc/btc both going up as opposed to inverse like usual? Still can't figure out ultimate direction either. I would guess down as ltc/btc is still rising? :/

I want to believe that you are right with this but I could easily see certain events unfolding which push us back down to similar levels. I think there are still a few elephants hiding in the closet that need to be dealt with. I am concerned about the next block of coins getting sold by USM. I think this could bring us down a bit again depending on how the sales work out. Also strangely enough I think if the SR trial went in Ross's favor I think the price would drop. And last but not least are those pesky NY Bitlicense Regs. I think we will hang sideways here going up at $10 increments weekly as the whales dangle some kelp? Wishful thinking?

Can anyone recommend a good charting website if bitcoinwisdom is down for btce?

So finally Ltc/btc dropped in relation to btc/usd but still not as much as I would have expected. Alts seem to be holding surprisingly steady.  Would it be beneficial to continue to support the higher alt price points? I recognize it's minimal volatility but still...

I think it could be close minded to assume that large corporations do not hedge against currency fluctuations. In and by doing so they need to convert between various currencies. Once sufficient instruments are in place btc could be used to move funds  internally between a corporations different subsidiaries. The placeholder is what I see as being crucial.

Does this image have significance of a falling wedge which would be indicative of a possible trend reversal?
It was posted in the trading sim thread. Not mine. I just found it illuminating. I figure we could just continue longer at this stage but it still doesn't change the fact that a reversal seems to be suggested? Albeit possibly short lived due to the proliferation of shorts. Just wondering. Also wondering where those dark profits will go, i.e., back into BTC or LTC.

Gentleman, thank you for the insight. These charts can look so convincing; they remind me of statistics... Paint the picture however you want...

Seeing the action in NMC/PPC is a bit of a sigh of relief. I'm used to the pumps/dumps in BTC then being cashed out via pump/dumps in LTC/PPC/NMC but haven't seen any activity in that for so long. PPC @ 0.00147 has been lingering indefinitely. The movement in ppc/nmc/drk, makes me think we will continue sideways for a bit more after a dump/pump in LTC and then have some extreme volatility in BTC/USD. It's nice to see the volatility in the alts again. My understanding is it's a way to continue status quo in BTC but cash out USD in other avenues.

I had a random question that might be slightly off topic... So typically I've noticed and have been able to follow the pattern of changing strength between btc/usd, btc/ltc, and ltc/usd. I noticed that LTC is now ranked last on the chart for bitcoinwisdom and was wondering if anyone knew why that was. Additionally I was wondering if anyone has noticed btc-e delaying coin transaction withdrawals to competitor exchanges (cryptsy). It took around 12 hours for a withdrawal to confirm on the ltc block chain and show up at another exchange. I was wondering if this was purposefully done to attempt to limit the ability to arbitrage? I thought I remember reading that this was the case but couldn't remember and just wanted another opinion. Usually when we see drops in ltc/btc, we are priming for moon... lol... any day now ^_^

Thanks for the update Sitarow-

I'm not really sure what to think about the markets right now. We seem to just be holding steady and going sideways in a pattern on multiple fronts or slightly down in all of BTC/LTC/NMC/PPC. There just isn't much volume anywhere either.   LTC has been especially stagnant except for few attempts to move the market. (Random Cryptsy dumps filling the buy/order book). Nothing happened after those moves though; just strange. I'd expect a correlated rise or fall which would inversely transfer into another market, i.e. from ltc into btc or vice versa, but nothings happening in any arena. Is it relatively safe to say that everyone is just waiting on 'something' to happen? I.e., 30 days until implementation of NY Bitlicense and/or the Marshalls Auction? (Is the auction next week)? I was expecting to see some significant movement leading up to the auction but maybe it's still a bit premature? One way or another my popcorn is getting cold! I was expecting a show!

On another note, anywhere care to speculate on what the effects of the NY BTL will have on the markets and/or exchanges? Think they will try to assert jurisdiction over BTC-E? And has anyone noticed delays moving coins? (I made a withdrawal of ltc that took far too long to move for my comfort levels).

Very interesting regarding btc-e and licensing. I hope they do. I would be interested in helping contribute depending on what they sold shares at. You could try to use lighthouse to crowdfund the business lol. Make it a DAC. Working on the legal intricacies would be a blast too. It's funny when you look at what's happened with some of the other 'licensed' exchanges and then you compare that to btc-e's op/sec and they still seem to be standing strong but then again there could be an unintended or intended consequence of not going after them... I figure they'ed also need msb/regs too though, the total cost + licensing would be steep I figure. You might be able to buy like a deli who already has a mtl but that would lock you in just for that state.

sitarow- that gif was great. lol

Is it unreasonable to not expect an increase on or after the BTC Marshall Auction?
I'm trying to wrap my head around it's impact. What the significance of the sale being off exchange and what would happen if those coins were bought on an exchange.

So they are selling 50,000 btc. The current coin price is say $236 usd.
So if you could push the price down to say, $220, coins worth  = $11.million
So if you could push the price up to say     $250, coins worth  =  $12.5 million
Or to push it further say -$36 at $200, coins worth = $10 million
And then say +36 say at $272, coins worth = $13.6 million
Plus whatever premium to not move markets and buy otc.


I guess I'm trying to understand how much of a premium buying these coins would represent.
Looking through the order books, it seems realistic that if someone wanted to buy and accumulate around 50k coins using the existent exchanges;
this would result in some rather extreme buying pressure. The markets still seem too young to be able to handle this sort of action without significant volatility.

So if you were an institutional investor it would appear that it might be in your interest to systematically push the price down to accumulate? Or is this just delusional bull thoughts and it's not that the value is being suppressed but support is floundering. Thoughts?

Well, with this pump i'm quite confused. Why would you want the price to go up before the auction unless bull trap? Or trying to make it tougher and more expensive to purchase the lot of coins? So confused with all this green. I like the movement though! CCMF?

is someone just trying to take out shorts? I loved the coordinated LTC/BTC dump taking place the same time as BTC/USD began sky rocketing

Wow, as soon as you said that, +++ 258. they just keep hitting stops it seems. and then $259. I was thinking they were done for the night, make a slow decline. or dump the hell w/ some new shorts set to make it going both ways. wow, i need more popcorn.

Sorry, I haven't been following the EVO drama very closely.
I remember reading that some funds had gone to btc-e possibly but has the withdrawal transactions actually been traced to an exchange?
Assuming they have, I guess a lot of the market movement starts to make sense, they have a crap ton of coins to clean and move and not destroy markets too much.
Any particular reason you think they're primarily using DASH/DRK as their medium of choice? Does it actually offer some modicum of anonymity or easier to manipulate?

You said withdrawal 'constants,' however did you mean 'constraints'?
Are you referencing BTC-e's time delay for new accounts? I.e. they wouldn't want to withdraw from x account due to 48 hour internal lock?
 I.e., is it actually easier to get coins out of some other exchanges like Cryptsy then BTCE because of this?
Any thoughts as to why they would pump DRK/DASH as opposed to NMC/PPC/LTC or something else?
It's just been interesting to see all of this momentum coming from drk/dash... I just... I dunno, never figured it would move like this...
Regardless it's certainly interesting, talk about an exit scam...

Would the XMR/BTC movement also help explain the downward pressure on LTC?
I.e., if you look at the Poloniex market, the trading index currencies seem to be BTC/XMR/USD.
So it looks like they're directly converting LTC to XMR, and cashing out into BTC/USD.
It looks like they accumulate ltc on btce then move to poloniex to continue the game?
I don't see a bump in BTC with accumulation though it seems they're just strictly cashing out?
Am I missing something? Won't this just result in some steady downward pressure until they've finished?

I'd like to argue they are waiting for the final implementation of the NY DFS Bitlicense. The comment period had been extended for 30 days from on or around ~2/24; so it should have ended just a few days ago. I  thought it usually takes 90 days to implement the regulations but maybe it could be a lot sooner rather than later. I'd prefer not to be stuck going sideways until 'Summer.' If after they implement we don't see some serious movement I'd say sideways and doom and gloom for another year. So, building inventory at $150-$250 pending enough accumulation to push the markets into madness?

SO, hypothetically;

There could be a premium for having funds invested in a licensed OTC Market. You don't have to deal with securing your coins yet you still are screwed if the trusts coins get taken... I guess it could be more palatable to investors to understand how their funds were invested. (In the GBTC units not in some shadowy exchange). I'm assuming there could also be some sort of tax benefits for investment avenues, ira's/roths/etc? But ultimately, coins could be so much cheaper bought on the open market. Is there really enough of a premium to be getting shares in the GBTC vs some thing like coinbase?

I think we will go sideways until Bitlicense is implemented and then all hell will break free. NY Ip's all get banned; DHS seizes Btc-e and Cryptsy. Then Wallstreet rolls in with their licensed ivory towers and gated communities. /Popcorn. Am I overestimating the possible impact of NY regulations? I just see it as both a significant impediment and tipping point. Thoughts?

Isn't this what seems to have been happening since January 2015? It seems like market makers are having an easier time pushing the price down to increase holdings off shorts than longs. It seems like it can't be nearly as profitable as it once was though and I have to wonder how much longer this trend can continue. Are these realistic sentiments I'm having or am I just too brainwashed by my own belief in BTC's success? It did seem a little weird about silbert's comment on another bull run. I still think people are waiting on the bit-license to go active. I'd like to set some bids in the low 200's but just don't feel like they will get filled at this rate. I'm a bit surprised we haven't gone down as much as I think they were trying to push the price. Thoughts?

Arguably yes, the possibility exists of the funds being accepted and confirmed faster w/ ltc than btc. However on the few occasions I've tried with this, the LTC transfers have been sufficiently delayed for whatever reason close the window on any said opportunity. Likewise not all exchanges accept LTC and offer that arbitrage opportunity. Theoretically it makes a lot of sense and I've heard (as I'm sure we all have) of users successfully rotating through such a system for small profits.

I think you may have overlooked the fact that blacklisting of coins and addresses already exists in the bitcoin space. It is well known that entry/exit points between bitcoin and fiat exist and that these gatekeepers monitor transactions. It is also know that certain bitcoin addresses have been identified and continue to be monitored. This is evident both in the knowledge of exchange addresses, along with gambling wallet addresses (think justdice), and various darknet markets ( think Agora/SR1/2/etc). We have seen that responsive entities have the ability to successfully track and seize coins and in some instances the community itself has agreed or attempted to block or not propagate bad transactions. But this leads to part of the reason why bitcoin could ultimately succeed. Although it may gut the traditional bread and butter business of various financial and legal business entities, it provides a way to limit money laundering and tax evasion.

Bitcoin is in fact a double edged sword specifically due to the open nature of the public ledger. So long as you have sufficiently secured the entry/exit points, you will have strong currency control. This is what will make it successful and a great benefit to monitoring transactions and preserving public opinion but also has resulted in it being co-opted for an alternative usage. Bitcoin is not a libertarian's answer but the government's answer to cash.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/citi-economist-says-it-might-be-time-to-abolish-cash

With Bitcoin you have the ability to track and monitor what every address does with coins. This is an auditor's pie dream. Look at the ease by which the two investigator's were taken down as part of the SilkRoad operation. There was a public trail of everything they did, no matter how hard they tried to cover their tracks. They created LLC's to attempt to wash money and clean their trail but ultimately; bitcoin leaves the bitcoin network and it is at those choke points you are most vulnerable. As it is punishable as an individual to convert bitcoin to cash on behalf of another and many entry/exit points into fiat have begun requesting documentation of mining operations, the future is quite clear; it just hasn't been implemented yet (bitlicense). Welcome to bitcoin 2.0; you trade success and wealth for 24/7 surveillance. I think ultimately even if you don't want it to succeed, it will.

If bitcoin truly offered anonymity, don't you think we would be seeing a little more pushback? I think a better question is to ask why aren't we?

I'd say down and sideways until June, 1 (or whenever bit-license goes live); and then we see some interesting moves... I think we will continue to have downward pressure to help facilitate accumulation.

"In the future I don't expect to buy foreign currency and take cash with me."

This is what is especially exciting; foreign settlements for business transfers. Instead of wiring money to different departments, you just click 'send'. I think the biggest hurdle is regulatory uncertainty and fluctuating market spreads and that will be addressed overtime. The market IS STILL too immature to support actual business to business of any significant real volume. I think once the Bitlicense takes effect you will begin to see more groundwork. Wall street will cannibalize itself and their existing markets to be the biggest vampire in this new market. It will be a race to the bottom in terms of cutting costs and will be very disruptive. FINTECH is dangerous to the status quo of finance. Big sharks will get eaten by tiny minnows. I think September will be exciting.

Is this with or rather through a self-funded roth ira? Sorry, I'm not overly familiar and just wanted to pick your brains a bit. This seems, well frankly, like an amazing vehicle for preserving growth.
So, if I understand correctly, you would have deposited up to $5500 for the year of contributions or how ever little; then you just bought the individual shares.

The money you've spent on this has already been taxed. So, assuming it is a qualified withdrawal; if you bought basically a coin at $420, if at the time it is withdrawn, the coin/share is now worth $1,000; you do not pay taxes on that $580 increase in value? And likewise; if the coin is worth say $32,000... you wouldn't pay tax on that additionally $31,000 in appreciation assuming it's a valid withdrawal?

That seems almost to good to be true lol. How is this not amazing!? lol?

So, assuming we just had a double bottom of around ~$215ish; could we hit that resistance level again for a triple bottom? Is that realistic at all?  I just can't see us breaking out above $260 until the bit-license stuff comes out. Even if we start getting momentum; I think marketmakers could just use the new licensing standards to either push price down or push it up depending their own personal timeline concerning market manipulation. Have I just had my hopes of a new trend crushed to many time? I'm thinking $350 ~ July? W/ lots of stuff having been onramped by then (gemini,winki,etc,etc...)? But for now I just see sideways until June at least and just staying between 200-300 channel trend. Thoughts?

Has anyone been keeping track of the remainder of the hacked darknet coins? With that significant sell order yesterday, which pushed us back to ~$37, there was a corresponding price move with ltc. It's interesting if you look at LTC, it's really been just steadily moving sideways the last few months and has seemed to predict the channel btc will follow. Sideways with everything for another couple months i guess? Is the last marshalls auction coming up in this September?

During an interview, DFS Superintendent Lawsky indicated the BitLicense would be out at the 'End' of may. However, this could be similar to 'Soon,' and 'Two Weeks'.

Although initially it appears that markets are truly moving sideways; when you track the correlating changes between ltc/btc, you see a slightly different picture. Before the significant drop in BTC recently, LTC made some moves. More recently, ltc has been climbing from .0072 to .0075. I think you could easily see a significant drop again in ltc followed by a significant move in btc. Whether that move is up or down is unclear. However, it's June and the bitlicense is coming soon. I would guess a sharp downward trend when it is announced followed by steady sharp rise. this is however, all speculation afterall...

I would disagree that the bitlicense has been priced in. Various trading exchanges have indicated that they may or may not exclude NY as a potential market. Although the most recent draft seemed to allow for the possibility of slowly on-ramping into compliance, it is unclear as to which exchanges will choose to comply. I know there have been issues with changes in wire transfer regulations. I thought I remember reading that some of the asian market exchanges were looking into ensuring compliance with the market. It could however act as a significant temporary price destabilizer if NY was temporarily blacklisted.

What would be even more interesting however is what would happen to the exchanges allowed to continue to operate in the jurisdiction; i.e. coinbase, etc. Clearly once you have coins, they are your coins, and you can transfer them where you will; it's kindof all for naught but it could result in some significant arbitrage opportunities. I also think that the bitlicense will act as the informal go ahead for the launching of an exchange run by a pair of twins. I think ultimately it paves the way to 'legitimacy' and whatever that is but could operate also be used as a last ditch effort to push the price down again. Or i'm horribly wrong and this week we already saw the last leg of the bear market and it's only up from here.  I'm hoping for some bad greek news and some surging btc spikes and volatility

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/speeches/sp1506031.htm

http://www.dfs.ny.gov/legal/regulations/adoptions/dfsp200t.pdf

(This is crazy, they posted his speech already, but it's also going on live right now... mind blown)


"I’d like to turn now to the BitLicense.

Today, we are issuing the final BitLicense framework for regulating virtual currency firms.

This framework is the product of a nearly two-year-long regulatory inquiry that the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) began in 2013. In fact, this is the third and final version of the regulation we have put forward.

Over the course of our inquiry, we have received an immense amount of public feedback, which we believe significantly improved the final product.

Indeed, the second version of the regulation we put forward incorporated a number of substantial changes from our initial draft in response to those comments. In particular, we sought to help provide an on-ramp for start-ups – while still ensuring robust standards for consumer protection, cyber security, and anti-money-laundering compliance.

The third and final version does not include the type of major changes we saw in the last round. However, we did want to make several points clear today in order to allay various concerns we have heard during the public comment period.

To that end, we wanted to make crystal clear that:

First, companies will not need prior approval for standard software or app updates – only for material changes to their products or business models. (A good example of a material change would be if a firm that was licensed as a wallet service decided to begin offering exchange services. We have no interest in micro-managing minor app updates. We’re not Apple.)
Second, we have no intention of being a regulator of software developers – only financial intermediaries. For example, students or other innovators who are simply developing software and are not holding onto customer funds are not required to apply for a BitLicense. There is an important reason for making this distinction when a company becomes a financial intermediary: There is a basic bargain that when a financial company is entrusted with safeguarding customer funds and receives a license from the state to do so – it accepts the need for heightened regulatory scrutiny to help ensure that a consumer’s money does not just disappear into a black hole.
Third, we are not going to require a duplicative set of application submissions for firms that want both a BitLicense and a money transmitter license. Firms will be able to cross-satisfy many of those license requirements. Companies will be able to work with us to have a “one-stop” application submission that covers all the bases they need.
Fourth, companies that already file suspicious activity reports (also called “SARs”) with federal regulators such as FinCEN do not have to file a duplicate set of those same SARs with our agency. Our goal is to avoid duplication where possible. And we generally already have access to that information when we need it through information sharing arrangements with federal regulators.
Fifth, companies also would not need prior approval from NYDFS for every new round of venture capital funding. Generally, a company would only need prior approval if the investor wants to direct the management and policies of the firm (which is known as a “control person” in regulatory jargon). In other words, that provision is not targeted at truly “passive investors.”  The notion of approving a “control person” is pretty standard in the regulation of financial companies and is generally intended to help stop known fraudsters from having direct access to customer funds. Large new investors (i.e. those with a 10 percent or more stake) would simply need to document and demonstrate that they are not going to have such a role. Additionally, under the regulation, simply because someone sits on a company’s board does not necessarily mean they are considered a control person.
We understand, of course, that we are not going to satisfy everyone with these new regulations.

Some have even suggested removing all anti-money laundering requirements for certain financial companies involved in digital currency, which we do not believe is warranted.

Again, we recognize that we are not going to please everyone. That is the nature of regulatory oversight.

For example, when we write new regulations for Wall Street, if the banks are completely happy with something we've drafted, it probably means we haven't done our jobs right.

Our goal, as always, is to be sensible and fair. "

So within the BTL some other interesting changes:

Capitalization/bonding, they struck explicit language and opted for a more flexible framework; bonding/insurance amounts based on an overall calculation of the business, which, to a certain extent is horrible as they do not explicitly mandate how they come to their calculations. concerning deposits, they use a similar approach where they look at the makeup of assets but no longer require them to be strictly held in USD/cash but a number of other options; still subject to commissioners discretion. so it looks more like a living guidebook to be used as a sword or a shield as the makers see fit. they will record every transaction for 7 years... along with any/all information associated with that... inaction for 5 years = abandoned property...

it does not necessarily eliminate coins designed to facilitate anonymity... so long as you record details of the sender and destination.. as it doesn't necessarily conceal/obfuscate but I'll admit this
 is a rather loose interpretation of the language

(g) No Licensee shall engage in, facilitate, or knowingly allow the transfer or transmission of Virtual
Currency when such action will obfuscate or conceal the identity of an individual customer or counter-party.
Nothing in this Section, however, shall be construed to require a Licensee to make available to the general
public the fact or nature of the movement of Virtual Currency by individual customers or counter-parties.


Section 200.21 Transitional Period
A Person already engaged in Virtual Currency Business Activity must apply for a license in accordance with
this Part within 45 days of the effective date of this regulation. In doing so, such applicant shall be deemed in
compliance with the licensure requirements of this Part until it has been notified by the superintendent that its
application has been denied, in which case it shall immediately cease operating in this state and doing business
with New York State Residents. Any Person engaged in Virtual Currency Business Activity that fails to submit
an application for a license within 45 days of the effective date of this regulation shall be deemed to be
conducting unlicensed Virtual Currency Business Activity.

All in all, it's not bad. The loose guidelines concerning bonding requirements/capitalization concern me the most. There is no clearly defined outline concerning properly calculating requirements but such an omission  can cut both ways concerning smaller startups. I think a lot of this will depend on how the commissioner decides to enforce things. That 45 day on-ramp is interesting... So maybe some fireworks in August?

I think this clause would mainly relate to VC's like Ripple and the like. Or, something like a pre-mine. Regulators would have severe difficulty attributing this language to bitcoin per se or litecoin, dogecoin, and all the hundreds of others. The miners ultimately decide whether or not to incorporate any changes so regardless of what a developer suggests, there is still a consensus based network decision making which would need to apply. They might be able to force this language onto a controlling mining pool. However, as long as they are <50% one would argue that they are not, defacto, 'controlling.' I'd like to say this could result in greater decentralization to avoid being seen as controlling. However, it creates some uncertainty with how pools distribute found blocks. I.e., in the short interim between block payouts, would the pool have been considered to be administered a vc? I've always laughed about how they seek to regulate exchanges but not regulate pools themselves; it creates a certain legal gray area full of ambiguities and potential litigation.

Administering/issuing seems to target pre-sale operations, so theoretically, something like ethereum... could possibly find itself in the crosshairs of both nydfs and sec. Which is interesting, because there is clearly no vested interest in seeing one VC succeed over another... or is there? Ripple certainly seems to be trying to play catchup but still... Regardless, this would certainly spell DOOM for something like 'paycoin' lmao. It could create some interesting footwork for cloud based hasing services also. Are the mining shares to a certain extent basically a dividend yielding virtual currency?

Was hoping for some movement but, it appears all is quiet on the western front :/
Even if we did go sideways for a year; that's kindof a good thing. You can continue to accumulate and age your virtual assets. That is for those of you abiding by tax rules and regs, remember capone? So, when and if an opportunity manifests iteself sometime in the near to not to distant future, you can sell and use long term capital gains taxation strategies as opposed to something else. And yes, the biggest thing this does is provide a strong documented paper trail mandating exchanges to track transactions for tax purposes; uncle sam and the queen all need their cut.

Yeah, I recall seeing this too. They showed that an increase in the blocktime would affect their mining profits. I think they suggested gradual scaling starting with like 4mb or 6mb blocks and continuing to increase from there as the network demanded. Regardless, they seemed to document an actual financial incentive and justification for not unilaterally increasing to 20mb immediately.

Any thoughts as to what the weekend holds? I was hoping for the usual thursday night volatility but it seems it's been pretty quiet besides the usual laundering with ltc...

Are you suggesting this whole block-size debacle was in part due to self-interest? [Viacoin!?] Would it be more apt to describe it as, 'corporate' interest? Does blockstream really have a conflict of interest? Isn't everyone just painting the Blockstream group in bad light?  

Although we have had some input by various mining entities that expressed their desire to have no more than 8mb blocks, it seems like there are other parties who have been notably silent during this whole block size dramastorm. Specifically, those parties who have been investing significant amounts of financing into the bitcoin space. I.e., the '2.0' space. Coinbase, Circle, Gemini, 21', etc etc. I think for the big players, the longer bitcoin is seen as 'unsuccessful' the stronger their ultimate products and success will be.

I mean hypothetically, say bitcoin does fork. now you have chain A and Chain B. If the exchanges go to Chain A or stay on Chain a, regardless of the incentive of block finding, wouldn't miners gravitate towards Chain A, simply because there is an exchange that would handle the product? I think the greater issue would be if you have 2-3 exchanges on Chain A and 2-3 exchanges on Chain B. That could turn into mud quickly. Alts?

Alternatively, for large financial institutions, isn't there a hidden incentive for blocks to fill up; this would allow it ultimately to 'be' a tool of elites, i mean bitcoin. I'm just thinking of bitcoin like NYC property in the 70's and 80's even California for that matter. Supply is limited, it serves a purpose, and there is a need. Accumulate, figure out plan for world domination later. /end rant.

Yeah, that was a slightly significant decrease. Now with the LTC drop I'm wondering if we coil for a BTC spring... however, it's not Thursday yet so i'm thinking down and sideways until tomorrow?

Sitarow, I've missed your commentary as of late. Any thoughts concerning what may happen over the next 60 days; especially concerning various exchanges, ny, & regulation?
To me, it really is all feeling like the calm before the storm... Just wondering

They finally published:
Financial Services, Department of 7 / Regulation of the Conduct of Virtual Currency Businesses (A)
http://docs.dos.ny.gov/info/register/2015/june24/toc.html

I would love to know what the ltc/btc target is. I see we just broke .013+ on various exchanges. Maybe it's a .015 target, then you see a large ltc/usd correction with profits re-invested back into btc/usd and that makes us break 265? Didn't expect such sharp moves, was expecting things to be a little bit more gradual...

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/ltcbtc  --- .0141 @ Bitfinex - didn't see that coming, but maybe soon another BTC leg? These fireworks took off pretty quick!

What are your thoughts on a re-entry point? I had a similar move as you just on a much smaller scale! I'm figuring we go sideways for a bit and btc starts to rise some more?

Is BTC-E down for anyone else? I know first we had coinbase, but they seem to be back up. Anyone know when they went down if they are? It could just be my internet, ugh. Was just wondering. Wanted to play these bounces a bit... :/ (N/m, BTCE up again if it was actually down /sigh)

""""""metals have a intrinsic value while bitcoins does not. i no longer trust bitcoin because it is, in my opinion, manipulated by whales and exchanges.your in the club or your not... their are predators out hunting for some poor newb who invests a bunch money into the scheme while they pump it and then they turn around and dump on them causing them to fear and dump their coins at a loss for their gain.. you trying to claim that is a system we can trust ?? this is my new opinion about bitcoin.

the haircuts come from bank accounts, and then from the reset of the value of things into the new metals backed currency. if you own metals then you will trade the metals for the full value of the metal for the new metals backed currency. in my opinion the govy would prefer their citizens to buy metals. the reason they would want citizens to buy metals is because it keeps those metals in the country, and those metals will eventually be returned to the govy when the citizens trade them into the depository in exchange for the metals backed currency... all the citizens who are stacking act as a giant savings account of metals for the govy .. the govy doesnt want or need bitcoins, they want and need metals. """"""

So it is common knowledge that there has been and is ongoing manipulation of the precious metals markets. We know that there was collusion with Libor, Gold, and Silver. What other markets have been manipulated and rigged? Well, it's fairly safe to assume Bitcoin is one of them. If you look at quantitative easing and stated backed asset purchases (i.e. stocks), one would argue that that's some additional continued, and ongoing manipulation. So basically, the whole system has been rigged, is currently rigged, and will go on continuing to be rigged. Gold?

Gold is important, and I think you make a valid assessment that it has intrinsic worth. I think the difficulty remains with how you transact or conduct global finance using shiny coins. Say a middle east country wants to sell oil to a north american country. If 'paper' is no longer valid, what do they do? Does the deal get held up until the gold is physically transported? To me, that seems unduly complex. So, what's the alternative? A trusted third party? Really? Who could you trust to hold your gold for you? Who would not run the risk of absconding with your shiny coins? Isn't that exactly the reason various entities have been, and are continuing to seek repatriation of their gold? What's the alternative?

Enter Bitcoin OR another similar cryptocurrency. If you were facing a 'haircut' the currency has a universally renown cost associated with it. You can convert for yuan or gbp or yen. It's fungible. So although it may be back by USD, it's also backed by everything and anything else. A better question would be whether or not it has reached critical mass; and I'd say it's still a bit pre-mature.

 But what's the alternative though, seriously? I mean honestly, suppose the situation was reversed and you had the US in a similar position as Greece? What if they proposed treating the US in a similar manner? Would that stand? I mean, if their economic circumstances were similar, examine finances and current market turmoil of US/China/Russia/France, etc. There is a significant amount of Debt, it's a hot potato and no one wants to get caught holding it. The difference is the US would go to war. Carry a big stick and the like.

They say the Greek Saga is finished but in all honesty, it seems like it has only just begun. The Euro Wars/clone wars have begun.

What is the overall sentiment now? It seems like Greece is between a rock and a hard place with equally foul tasting poisons. The medicine as bad as the sickness. Is there any real choice? Is it so critical to stay in the EU that they should cede island ownership and assets? My understanding is that even if Greek left the EU, the creditors would still take the gold and everything else. Cursed every which way but up as they say. Thoughts? Just wondering, thanks.  Crappy times.

Re; Putin; Very suggestive statements. Using a blockchain  for citizen identification, namecoin? to prevent ID fraud. It seems as if a cryptoeconomist has his ear. More forward thinking than I would have thought. Interesting approach in light of being plagued by various extremist groups. Interesting.

Yeah, this doesn't suprise me; I'd just like to know where we will bottom w/ LTC. In trying to read the charts, is it safe to assume that BTC/USD is remaining constant and profits are being taken out of ltc/usd from the most recent uptrend? I.E, since it's coming out of LTC, the price in USD for BTC is remaining relatively constant?

So the chart, from my simple understanding and looking at the top,

seems to show a significant decrease in ltc/btc

however, it also shows the value of btc/usd remaining constant

this is, in my opinion, kind of interesting. besides ltc/btc value decreasing, shouldn't something happen to btc?

well, if you look at ltc/usd it seems to be showing the inverse correlation (it's going down)

so my guess is they're taking money out via ltc/usd? /shrug, i'm not very good at reading the charts, I just try to get a feel for the big moves and trends up/down

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but NY's Bitlicense goes into effect next Monday, 8/8/15? Is this accurate?
Any thoughts concerning which/what exchanges will be compliant and the possible market impact?
Just trying to wrap my head around what this means...

I believe you are referencing PPC/ NuBits? UIAB(upon information and belief) Nubits is pegged/ tied to each one being worth $1

Jorge:

Regarding Ceo/BTC/ALTCOIN, I do think it is a little disturbing.
Re; Todd, although he has his 'viacoin' it does not seem to have much action with it lately. It seem's most of todd's time is spent involved with bitcoin nowadays. This seemed to be the opposite during the heyday of pump/dump penny crypto boiler rooms... and he was distancing himself from btc...

I think it is safe to say that there are significant and competing visions for bitcoin and that most parties involved in the space have alternative motives.
At the same time I think if you view bitcoin as a snowball, it's starting rolling down the mountain, gaining more and more mass and speed.

I have a nagging suspicion that the block size debate has been nothing but a big distraction; a red herring meant simply to delay and inhibit bitcoin growth as long as possible.

More importantly though, I think the overstock news is very 'dangerous.'

"New York City-based securities trading hedge fund Clique Fund on Tuesday borrowed $10 million in stock using the Bitcoin blockchain, reported Wired.
The hedge fund used Overstock.com’s new, in-beta operation, TŘ.com, to borrow shares in the 30 stocks that constitute the Dow Jones Industrial Average."

If you have read some of Byrne's comments regarding wall street, it looks like he is getting ready to eat their lunch. I think it would be interesting to see parties begin porting things like chaindb or t0.com to alternative blockchains, i.e. LTC / PPC or what have you. I think that is like the iceberg facing bitcoin.

It will be interesting to see how this all develops...

Re: IGE    http://archive.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-12/ff_ige?currentPage=all

Re: Sunlot http://64.62.227.18/economy/2014/04/failed-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox-may-yet-be-revived-by-david-zeiler-2617652.html

So Jorge, although many western technical indicators suggest the world and global economy is in a 'recession,' do you think it is?
What do you think the US Fed will do with 0% rates? Will they raise before 2016? Does more global economic turbulence represent a watershed moment for bitcoin?

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to see if there were any comments regarding the new pre-mine fair launch coin, SETLcoin, and how it could possibly take away marketshare and volume from Bitcoin.
My understanding is that they will allow FPGs, ASIC's, and probably GPU's to mine Setl's. I wasnt able to find how many will be created or at what values they're be allocated, but I thought it was interesting.

"The patent application addresses chain of custody of an asset, counterparty risk and settlement through a cryptocurrency called SETLcoin. According to the patent application viewed by Bitcoin Magazine, SETLcoin ownership can be used to prevent fraud, including float fraud such as kiting."

http://www.tradersmagazine.com/news/brokerage/goldman-sachs-files-patent-to-settle-securities-in-bitcoin-114721-1.html


Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Why use BTC when you can just SETL...?

I was hoping for that joke! Yeah, I was wondering how you would prevent 3rd party mining interaction/manipulation/attacks. I guess they could have some sort of proprietary asics and only these registered device are permitted to secure their blockchain but we've seen how quickly code and devices have been adapted for mining... I'm not sure if they could ensure a closed network without it really just being a database? 


http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-the-blockchain-can-change-well-everything-2015-12?r=UK&IR=T

Boroujerdi says: "Bitcoin was just the opening act, with the Blockchain ready to take center stage."

Despite Boroujerdi's seeming runaway optimism, he does note that there are some drawbacks. One worry is the potential cost of developing and maintaining the network. Another is the lack of a regulatory framework. And a third is concerns over the capacity of the blockchain.

I guess the real question is how much hash power they would have to throw at SETLcoin to avoid, prevent, mitigate, a possible 51% attack and how that compares to being cost effective to just using BTC or a different altcoin.

I think ultimately, the banks will steal/co-opt/centralize bitcoin, make it their own, force the price up, and push the cypherpunks/anarchists to alt coins and I think the miners and hodlers will let this happen because $ /shrug.   I just have issues seeing how you can have a blockchain function without a token or maintenance device; maybe something along the lines of peercoin & nubits, but it didn't sound like it based on referencing asics and fpgs

Sorry, I should have simply included the patent link.
I hope their patent is denied but I'm not surprised they filed. Maybe coinbase will do something like tesla :/

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20150332395&OS=20150332395&RS=20150332395?p=cite_Brian_Cohen_or_Bitcoin_Magazine


[0049] The teachings of the software and/or hardware facilities provided herein can be applied to other systems, not necessarily the system described herein. The elements and acts of the various embodiments described herein can be combined to provide further embodiments.

[0050] These and other changes can be made to the software and/or hardware facilities in light of the above Detailed Description. While the above description details certain embodiments of the technology and describes the best mode contemplated, no matter how detailed the above appears in text, the described technology can be practiced in many ways. The described technology may vary considerably in its implementation details, while still being encompassed by the technology disclosed herein. As noted above, particular terminology used when describing certain features or aspects of the described technology facilities should not be taken to imply that the terminology is being redefined herein to be restricted to any specific characteristics, features, or aspects of the technology with which that terminology is associated. In general, the terms used in the following claims should not be construed to limit the described technology facilities to the specific embodiments disclosed in the specification, unless the above Detailed Description section explicitly defines such terms. Accordingly, the actual scope of the described technology encompasses not only the disclosed embodiments, but also all equivalent ways of practicing or implementing the described technology.

[0051] To reduce the number of claims, certain aspects of the invention are presented below in certain claim forms, but the applicant contemplates the various aspects of the invention in any number of claim forms. Accordingly, the applicant reserves the right to pursue additional claims after filing this application to pursue such additional claim forms, in either this application or in a continuing application.

So, I know I don't know much about patents, but it sounds like this would also act as a patent on bitcoin almost? just simply changing the name...?

Isn't this similar to arguing about apples and oranges?
To me, it seems more likely that since crypto currencies occupy multiple spaces in realty, both a unit with inherent value, a representative direct transfer of said inherent value, and as a secure proof of existence ledger based on the security/hash power of the underlying item, that use cases would naturally gravitate to these options?

so with an altcoin like litecoin, it has a relatively fast transfer speed and nominal value worth but on the other hand, it's hash-power isn't necessarily as strong as bitcoin

then you have bitcoin which has a slower transfer speed, but possibly due to scarcity and first mover recognition, larger fiat value, but more importantly operates as a stronger public ledger.

so, if you are going to buy a cup of coffee, or transact a nominal value equivalent of a cup of coffee, or register an item of similar value, and then record that or transfer it to another individual, there are certain use cases which will naturally lend themselves to this option as they do not need enormous security behind it

on the other hand
if you are buying a car, or leasing a car, or perhaps a fleet of cars, or a multi-year,million dollar commercial property lease; this is a deal with significant financial liability associated with it; here as time is not necessarily an immediate concern but the concern is more over the duration of the contractual option and that proof of two parties entering into this agreement, you would want something harder to tamper with and more secure, which naturally would lead you to supporting a blockchain with more hash power.

I apologize if this doesn't come out as clear as I would like it to but in essence I'm arguing that it is naive to think Bitcoin will do everything for everyone. It won't. Already, you are divided into groups of people; those with bitcoins and those without. There is already a higher barrier of entry for someone without bitcoin than with bitcoin and this will only grow more divergent as the network continues to age.  I think that is one of the main issues surrounding the current block size debate. Who is bitcoin 'for,' can it realistically be for 'everyone' and who decides that? I think it's more important to see that it has opened the door and the genie is out of the bottle. It's difficult not to recognize how cryptocurrencies are an inherent threat to the status quo as central planners lack control. I think you will ultimately begin to see state sponsored mining entities in both an offensive and defensive capacity and that banks will be unable to simply use the system without contributing to it or open themselves up to massive liability.

If citigroup uses bitcoin to confirm a lease; and that lease has not been entered into the public ledger after the person leaves with the vehicle, and there is an accident; you could see how a confirmation delay could result in a sticky situation concerning liability. But enough already. The battle is over the block size & core and who bitcoin is for. I think a fork is inevitable and once block size increases, wall street will move in en masse. Until then, this is all a distraction to suppress asset price to facilitate accumulation.

I think it is important not to immediately dismiss the fact that cryptocurrencies have value, different market sizes, and different liquidity functions. We already are seeing how the economics are playing out. The big players have ALREADY gone to bitcoin. If you examine the current digital landscape, CoinBase, Circle, Bitpay, Yogabbagabba hey, etc etc etc lol, they use bitcoin not another currency. Large banks are either looking at integrating with Bitcoin or attempting to weaken it. You don't see such similar actions with any of the altcoins to any significant degree as compared to bitcoin. As such I think it is safe to say that bitcoin is being used by big players. This doesn't mean bitcoin has the most liquidity, offers the easiest means of transfering money, or provides currency stability.

If you bought $500k of bitcoin off an exchange, how would that impact the bitcoin market as compared to $500k LTC or $500k Dogecoin, or $500k ethereum. The bigger question is on which exchange is the transaction taking place? An exchange with sufficiently deep orderbooks might have no impact whereas on a different exchange you could see a drastically different effect. So you need to look not only at the liquidity of the single asset but also transferrable assets and slippage. It could be easier to cash out in one coin than another and there seems to be links in market movements between various crypto commodities. I think it's dangerous to only see the competing nature of variable cryptos and not recognize that they also operate hand in hand.

I guess the question would be, whether the market has seen an uptick in litecoin usage given the recent bitcoin block size debacle. If you examine the bitcoin/ltc price ration, the answer, apparently, would be no.

I think an interesting question would be if litecoin had the same hashpower as bitcoin, what would happen to bitcoin usage?


If you can have coke or pepsi but generic cola is 1/5 the price, why do so many people keep drinking coke and pepsi?

I think you're point has significant merit but at the same time you can't waive a magic wand and eliminate speed of transaction from the real world equation. Transactions seem to be prioritized, in part, based on what, if any fee, is associated with them. If you use BTC and your transaction had a small fee, it might take significantly longer to confirm then if you paid more or used an altcoin. To some people, this has value, look at HFT. In a similar fashion, your later point assumes that sidechains will eliminate the need for other coins which offer differing values of utility (or I thought it was your point, I can't find it anymore lol).
We have to first share a commun understanding of what the system we are discussing is/does/maturity level, does it have fully implemented side chains? Have we eliminated the block reward or rather 'exhausted it'; does it fully function based off fees now? What is the fiat/value of the underlying commodity? Who are the mining conglomerates, what country do they operate from, and do their nation state interests correlate with the rest of the world or my location's interests?

Depending on the answer to these questions, there could be significant value in alternative blockchains which are able to survive simply off the crumbs of the main blockchain. Some people throw out there redeemable cans but other people can use them. Hypotehtically, a satoshi in future could cost more than it would to propagate a transaction on an alternative blockchain. Bitcoin banned in XYZ coutnry but no Countrycoin and there happens to be an exchange facilitating conversion between the two? All of a sudden, multiple block chains start to have merit.


Your assumptions also seems to neglect the fact that people like choices. Coke/Pepsi, Visa/Mastercard/Amex/Discover. Some people find value in simply having a backup, hence people might carry, both a mastercard AND amex ( SHOCK AND AWE!). But regardless, people still have brand loyalty. Maybe I only drink pepsi, but if I'm out for drinks at a restuarant, and my choices are coke or no drink; I might go with the coke. However, that decision takes nothing away from pepsi, as pepsi was never on option. Pepsi pepsi hamburger...

" shitcoins will be used for low-valuesecurity/importance txs and btc will be used for high value security/importance txs."

Sure some miners will goto a coin with more value, but that doesn't necessarily equate to more profitability. If the coin has a significant influx of miners, difficulty rises, and your profits will be less.

I guess what i'm trying to say, is, I need help understanding why there should be only one coin. I think you can have too many coins, but just having one doesn't seem to make sense.

I guess I agree with you in theory but need more clarification. Can dust transactions serve a purpose? Do they ever serve a purpose? For example, could someone else's dust transaction also include like a time/date/stamp of an event taking place? Or, essentially, by including such event information, it would transform the dust transaction into a larger transaction, and therefore not be dust? Did that make sense?

thanks, that makes sense. happy miner, happy blockchain. So, he who controls the means of production...

Hey Jimbo, Any thoughts on how long we'll move sideways now? Also would you care to comment and throw in a few bits regarding core/blocksize/bitpay/coinbase current loggerjam/loggerhead? not sure which its supposed to be with regards to above term lol. Thanks.

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/687352747465830400

Jeff Garzik ‏@jgarzik  2h2 hours ago
The #bitcoin community should get behind http://BitcoinClassic.com  the best hope for moving past current blockage.
Added my name. More soon!

So, essentially sideways between ~415-~460 for the next one to two  months?
Assuming Gemini launches alts on their exchange, which might be Soon(TM) there could be some btc/alt/pumpage.
Then blocksize will magically reach consensus and increase and we'll be just about time for the halving and start of higher highs?

With regards to 2mb limit... I wanted to throw my $0.02 for bitcoin core/classic/unlimited.
So it's recognized, essentially, that behind the great firewall of china, lies ~+50% BTC hashpower y network strength.
China has difficulty getting data out due to that firewall delaying everything.
So... the faster and sooner you can bump above 1mb, this could help places maybe outside china and mitigate/limit
 the impact of china btc mining? It seems that, yes, need an increase at some point for big bank applications but also china mining power clearly has to be of concern to big banks and usg.
Maybe? or No higher highs until we drop below 400 again?

I'm not sure if you guys have read this yet but it's crazy...

Mike Hearn's exit mic drop

I find it tough to dispute his arguments. It's getting close to fork or die time...

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.m7ipd85nk

Brian Armstrong ‏@brian_armstrong  11h11 hours ago
Theory: Mike Hearn has not left bitcoin, he is just trying to help the industry move off core, which we should have done a long time ago.


^
|
-  
 
So here's what I think is happening. I think R3, likes bitcoin and is secretly developing applications that could be used on bitcoin/litecoin and other 'blockchains.' I don't think they like china's mining capacity and they see it as a threat to this sweet deals that they could otherwise conduct using bitcoin. I think it's likely that some of their applications require an increase, 2mb would work, but they want to make sure things will ALWAYS work hence the exponential scaling suggestions. If blocks got huge, it could also mitigate the impact of China's mining capacity.

So, increase blocks = weaken china = have cake and eat it too. I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a market drop; 13000 btc AND 300000k, LTC, that's like ~$6mil or somethign right?  

I think it's all a game to implement classic, prepping the ignition for launch                 

How is increasing to 2mb as bad as increasing supply past 21m?

An Open Letter from Sam Cole (CEO of KNC Miner)
Post reputation: 4 Quote
Fri Jan 15, 2016 4:49 pm

Sam Cole, CEO of KNC wrote:
All.


Maybe e-mail is not the best place to do this, but there aren’t many better choices that come to mind right now. Please feel free to quote me and forward this to anyone you see fit. You may even Post it on Reddit or other forums or simply ignore it.

To anyone reading this who was not on the original To: list. It simply means that you were not at the top of my inbox and nothing else. no one has been excluded on purpose at all.


We are clearly facing a crises like we have never faced before in the bitcoin echo-system. It appears to be completely caused by humans this time. It should be seen as a success issue, even if it’s not a nice problem to have.

Bitcoin is, as I hope you all agree, still very very small on the size of global acceptance. We have a long way to go before it actually realizes its true potential. I personally believe that bitcoin can become a great system for many things in the future. We may all have different ideas on where Bitcoin is going but I don’t believe for one second that anyone here will want it to stop and stay exactly where it is.

The issue is by doing nothing we are actually forcing it to stop growing and stay where it is.

We have on-boarded about as many users as we can. There simply is no space left to expand bitcoin. There are many competing ideas there are many smart people and possibly to many ideas. The fact remains the same:
Most of the latest development ideas coming out are not addressing our issues this time. So it will fall back on us to protect what we have built and let it expand into what we think it can become.

So I propose that we jump to 2mb in the Bitcoin classic idea. Not only will this allow us to expand bitcoin and on board more users, it will also show that:

· We will protect our investments and businesses.
· Sound economic rules govern bitcoin businesses and not just ideological ideas.
· Under pressure we can make tough decisions that are for the best of bitcoin and not for any one individual company.
· The ideas and fixes the development team produce need to be more influenced by the economic requirements we have, not just the technical ones.

Now for the other maybe good maybe bad things

· It will cause more rifts in the development teams.
· It will cause us all to go through the pain of a hard fork.

The lists above are not meant to be extensive or exhaustive and there are many that can be added to either side, but the main point is this: It’s no longer really a choice to simply stand still and wait for others to fix this problem.

I propose that we all simply stand up and stand behind bitcoin. Allow it to grow more in the simplest way possible, and I can’t emphasize enough how important simple is to this process. Humans are making this complex we don’t need technology to make it more complex.

So with the above said: We will be changing our code to run 2mb bitcoin classic ASAP, please join me in changing your code to run the same or public show your support.


Thanks,
Sam

Med vänlig hälsning | Best regards
Sam Cole
KnC
http://www.kncgroup.com

https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/an-open-letter-from-sam-cole-ceo-of-knc-miner-t4868.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/413mhn/an_open_letter_from_sam_cole_ceo_of_knc_miner/

Yeah, sorry, I might have been tricked lol. I was having issues seeing how the two could be remotely the same and I think it's what they call a strawman argument? I mean I recognize there is a contingent that wants small blocks but I'd rather see larger blocks, increasing price, and have people use alts for more nefarious activity /shrug. I mean... it is an OPEN LEDGER... lol

Jorge, You always have interesting comments. I liked the points you made on /btc regarding Jtoomin's discussion on addressing fees in the future. That was pretty sweet seeing the back and forth discussion regarding bitcoin economics. Sorry, economics are still sexy to me lol. I know I could just do a google search but have you written any interesting papers lately regarding bitcoin? It's a topic that I havent seen a lot of substantial academic research on. Just wondering Keep up the great discussion

Assuming there will be at least two competing chains/forks, how would you best take advantage of such a scenario?

You have registered exchanges that allow you to sell bitcoin.

So, you first would have to own bitcoin and actually be holding your private keys, correct?

Then, you need fungibility of coins on both forks?

You would then export your wallet/private key and open it in Fork#1 wallet

You would also open that same wallet/private key in Fork#2 Wallet


As of this point, is it safe to say that you have the same keys in two separate wallets? I'm assuming one of these wallets would be the bitcoinqt(core) and then bitcoin classic wallet?

So this is great, you almost have double the coins. However, I am now faced with the issue of where I would be selling these coins, correct? Currently, my understanding, is that bitstamp,coinbase,okcoin will accept classic

so I can trade core possibly on kraken, circle, gemini?

I guess my concern is who is going to support core after the fork and how could I essentially sell the same coins twice?
So far I have yet to see any exchange say they will continue to support core post fork.

Thanks for any help that can be provided. I'm trying to wrap me head around the market implications and how to properly proceed with coin storage. Or should I just convert to fiat with money ready to be wired to exchanges to buy? The delay concerns me, as markets move fast. If only there was a more expedient option.

Yeah, sorry. I must have missed the memo? I saw that source code is end of next week and binaries in early feb? I guess it just would seem silly for a place like coinbase to support both classic and core, in light of their support for classic. (kinda like pepsi supporting coke or vice versa) Now a place like cryptsy or poloniex, I could see them having an incentive to offer both. Any thoughts as to how BTC-E will respond? Maybe wait on what happens to the markets?

From Cointelegraph article, 7/2015 back regarding prior blocksize debate
http://cointelegraph.com/news/114776/knc-miner-slush-pool-bitfury-at-odds-over-block-size-increase

BitFury

Unfortunately, the biggest Western mining pool – BitFury - did not respond to CoinTelegraph's inquiry regarding the block size limit. According to Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik, however, the Dutch-American pool that accounts for some 13% of hash power on the Bitcoin network is conservative as it comes to raising this limit. Garzik, who knows the team behind BitFury from several Bitcoin conferences*, said on IRC that BitFury is willing to raise the maximum block size to 2 MB, but not much more.

On the IRC channel for Bitcoin development, #bitcoin-dev, Garzik commented:

“Just heard from the BitFury guys – they are pro-conservative. [...] 2 MB is ok, more is potentially worrisome. [That in] contrast with [Chinese] suggestion [for] 8 MB.”




Given the fact that Classic has essentially issued an ultimatum, is it safe to say that, the 'gloves are off' and they have no choice but to attempt a fork?
Regardless of whether core decides to make changes can classic implement changes faster? It seems like a game of chicken that needs an ending

Ok, So crazy question, I goto valery vavilov's twitter page... and I can't find this 1/15/16 tweet supporting core. I mean, if i click on the link you provided, it shows me his tweet. However, if I'm on his page, his tweet seemingly does not exist. Conspiracy time?

Ok, Thanks, found it. That seems pretty cut and dry then, doesn't it?
So, 2mb HF at some point, is coming. LN/Segwit, wait and see whether or not it's just more bitcoin vaporware. Not like we haven't been promised moon before...

http://pastebin.com/B8YQr5TQ


Hey Jorge, I was wondering if you have time and could possibly comment later about the exchange between JToomin and Guy Corem?
It's a long read but it lays out the history post hk scaling convention and recent development of classic.
It then goes on to discuss post classic activation.

Advanced Warning, It's a long read... But super informative and IMHO provides a good understanding of the competing interests and goals...

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7388#issuecomment-173563835

wangchun commented 8 hours ago
ACK

RBF is steal. This PR should be merged asap to prevent potential financial loss.



So,

Wangchun says:

1) 2 MB HF
2) No RBF


And core responds with... 2017 maybe we'll do something? After segwit? That's funny, cause Wanghun says segwit should be HF and after 2mb hf.

I understand your position but respectfully disagree. Wangchun commented regarding RBF and his English was very good but not perfect. I wouldn't be surprised if his speaking ability is similar.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7388#issuecomment-173563835

wangchun commented 8 hours ago - "ACK   RBF is steal. This PR should be merged asap to prevent potential financial loss."


Edit. Bolded for emphasis. Bolding was my decision, not found in pull request. Can I just say that Peter Todd is a poopyhead ever since viacoin. I hate him. I lost so much due to that crappy coin. I swear, him and his free-crypto crap is just stupid and fails the economic rationality test. Sorry, getting rid of lukejr and peter todd, imho, would result in a more balanced dev atmosphere. Just my $.02. I get angry when I see his responses, the crap he has done, and it doesn't surprise me that he left RC3 or whatever the proper acronym is.

Yeah, cause you can surely tell that this satisfied his objection lol. It gets better... (He knows his $$ comes from the users, not the devs...)


wangchun commented 8 hours ago: "@jonasschnelli Could you please tell me which wallet has been ready to warn users for potential RBF transactions? What the average user without much Bitcoin knowledge can do when he/she see this warning?"


wangchun commented 8 hours ago:  "So you admit nobody has yet been ready for opt-in RBF but deploy it in the next release IMHO this is no better than force a hard fork without consensus" (Bolded by my decision)

Assume for the record that Bitcoin Classic is a coup d'etat, Assume that it is a Trojan Horse for BIP 101...
Isn't that better than having to deal and negotiate with the likes of Peter Todd and LukeJR?

Hey guys, let's just change the POW for Lulz! They might be technologically intelligent, but they have no common sense, no ability to compromise, and no ability to consider economical rampifications of their decisions. The interview With Guy Corem is particularly illuminating. Bitcoin is for cryptopunks/cypherpunks and not for anyone else. Main street users need not apply, asics not allowed, this is a gpu club only, which is absurd because assuming for a moment that you can prevent asics, you would still be left with server farms of gpus whose break even is still based on the geographical cost of electricity, you will not have massive price increases without addressing aml/kyc regulations. If you want anonymity go use anoncoin or this new fangled zerocash which is what their vision of bitcoin is.

Ultimately this all comes down to another battle over the vision of bitcoin. Is it to buy drugs on the dark net or something bigger? Can it be both? Not anymore...

/Rabble rabble. Grabs pitch fork and a torch!

com·mu·nism
ˈkämyəˌnizəm/Submit
noun
noun: communism; noun: Communism; plural noun: Communisms
a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.


So what have we learned today? The same word can have multiple and rather vastly different meanings depending on your geographic location and historical understanding.

Can we get back to slinging some mud for core and classic? Thinking we might hit 370 again?

http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/21/bitfury-ceo-valery-vavilov-on-increasing-the-size-of-bitcoin-blocks/

"Earlier today in Davos, where afternoon temperatures reached a balmy 20 degrees (and evening temps have dropped to limb-numbing f-f-five degrees Fahrenheit), CEO Valery Vavilov of the bitcoin infrastructure provider and transaction processing company BitFury swung by our temporary  studio.

Among those topics addressed with senior editor Matt Burns: What BitFury does exactly, why the venture-backed company is supporting a somewhat controversial proposal within the bitcoin community to increase bitcoin bandwidth from the current one megabyte “block” to two megabytes (Vavilov thinks it will increase the scalability of the bitcoin blockchain), and those cases where bitcoin is likely to become very useful. (For one thing, says Vavilov, think property rights registration.)"

So this is good news for bitcoin? Classic price will go up and core will go down?

Sorry, I was thinking more along the lines of liberalism, socialism, anarchyism? (is that a word? I don't think so...). Hat tips to the prior discussion involving communism, although I'd probably still try to jump in the ring on stolfi's side as my thinking was similarly misplaced :/  

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/425ihq/someone_calls_out_btcdrak_and_peter_todd_for/

https://np.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3xrxz9/some_questions_that_the_core_devs_are_unable_to/cy7c8lm?context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/42422x/launch_of_segregated_witness_testnet/cz7ohsj


https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/688043887408099329

Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc @brianchoffman @matthew_d_green viacoin is the same protcol as Bitcoin. (and I was never worked on it they hired me to work on Bitcoin Core)


Peter Todd - Development Update Dec 25, 2014 2 minute read
CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY
As you may know CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY is now live on Viacoin testnet, and will go live on Viacoin mainnet as of block 598,725, which should occur around January 7th, 2015. I’ve also submitted a pull-req to Bitcoin Core to make it possible to test CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, although currently there is no schedule for when it’ll be adopted.

http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/12/25/petertodd-dev-update.html


I dunno, past and present behavior just doesn't pass the smell test. Especially when  said actions have lead us to where we are today. I'm just happy peter todd keeps rubbing salt in the wounds of miner's. I mean, if they can crash bitcoin maybe their viacoin holdings will finally be worth something meaninful.


http://blog.viacoin.org/2014/11/13/petertodd-dev-update.html




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Also: Say hi to Bitcoin's BIP 102:

jgarzik commented on Jul 16, 2015
BIP 102 - hard fork increase to 2M on flag day (currently May 5 2016)

Specification summary:

Increase MAX_BLOCK_SIZE to 2,000,000 bytes at trigger point.
Increase max block sigops by similar factor, preserving size/50 formula.
Trigger: (1) Block time 00:00:00 on flag day, AND (2) 95% of the last 1,000 blocks have signaled support via IsSuperMajority (ISM).

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6451#issuecomment-172346251

wangchun commented 5 days ago
I agree the 95% rule. But the voting process should be AFTER the merge of this PR. If 95% cannot be met, nothing happens, if we have 95% in the future, as the code is already there, it is not only running on miners' side, but also on countless users and merchants. It saves us lots of time and could absolutely accelerate the fork process. In fact the switch over of BIP 34/66 was exactly like that.


Get ready for moon... and just in time for halving...

http://www.coindesk.com/blockstream-ceo-bitcoin-industry-creating-toxic-environment-for-developers/

Thoughts?

Oh, I've got lots of thoughts! I just didn't want to sway anyone's unbiased opinion's with my firm support of a 2mb increase asap.
I think Hill has grave concerns that bitcoin is not doing what he wants it to. I think he has a lot of eggs in one basket and it seems like he believed he had spent enough money to ensure that his vision of bitcoin would be achieved. It seems as if he is now realizing that he 'made a huge mistake' think arrested development phrase.

I recognize that the article was published by coindesk which was recently acquired by barry silbert and that these two parties may have conflicting interests. However, to me, he came off as desperate. I say desperate, as compared to other notable figures in the bitcoin space, most still talk about how everything is great, things will work out, bitcoin will be scale, and the block size will increase. Hill didn't come off that way. I don't want to be dark, but I laughed when I finished the article.

However, with confirmation bias and the like, I wanted to see what others thought as I assume this is just my interpretation and not universally shared.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/42fggm/chinese_community_has_voiced_consensus_opinion_to/

I think this is why we are starting to go up. Miners providing clear road map.

Also, I'm interpreting this as a miner revolt. Not siding with core or classic. Just changing 1mb to 2mb and nothing else. I'm happy with the move but not everyone might be.


Copied from Google translate.


[Currency] 1992 consensus reached circle gathering support 2MB, against less than 90% count bifurcated force consensus
Lai Bite mine pool | 01-24 | Look landlord
This post was last at 2016-1-24 22:25 edited by 莱比特 mine pool

Author : Lai Bite mine pond river Thatcher stakeholders : Bitcoin / litecoin miners, who hold out

January 23 afternoon, the coldest day in Beijing, good Bitcoin (haobtc.com) organized a party in full swing in currency circles. Participants in the development of good bitcoins, bitcoin block expansion, force mining operator, on Bitcoin future prospects and other topics heated discussion.

On the block expansion, the participants reached the following consensus and hoped that all bitcoin businesses and users to join this broad nine (90%) di (2MB) consensus:

1, Bitcoin need expansion to 2MB.
2, against less than 90% count bifurcated force consensus.

Meeting participants :
Good Bitcoin CEO Wu Gang, super bitcoin, Thief, Bear, etc.
Continental CEO Wu Ji Han Bit
Ants mine pool Panzhi Biao
Ants mining machine Li Ying Fei
Guo Hong Btc123 only
Wells Fargo Funds Zhao Guofeng
Cloud coins cat
Too wallet than Wenhao
Look currency Fangfang
Soso Bitcoin Linjia Peng
(Many participants, if missing, please forgive me)

Consensus [Interpretation]
As we all know, this block expansion is no longer a technical issue, but a conflict of interest due to political problems. Background see previous article: " [Bitcoin facing a critical choice] urge all people to support macro news 2MB expansion . "

Miami Bitcoin Assembly yesterday did not reach any substantive program or conclusions, in the case of the community unable to agree on the bifurcation to the Classic program, in order to avoid splitting the community, it is necessary to seek common ground and reach a more basic consensus. Core agree that the expansion is not at risk, need consensus, we gave him a consensus. This consensus is necessary to be able to reach a broad consensus to avoid split in order to appease the market, but also a future operability.

90% consensus from the community on any separatist act resolutely resist , to ensure the continued development of the security community .

2MB consensus from Nakamoto white paper - " a peer to peer electronic cash system ", rather than" a peer to peer electronic clearing system , "according to Nakamoto Bitcoin design is the currency, rather than clearing system, 1MB not may meet the demand for money, we can not even meet the needs of the settlement system (1MB = 7 strokes / sec, SWIFT = 60 strokes / sec ).

On the basis of consensus, welcomes all bitcoin businesses and users to join other further views and programs, for example, the discussion in the party on the collision of a good program:
Quote: If the premise of full block occurs, and the Core program is not upgraded to 2MB, Classic program has not been a broad consensus in the case, to support mine pool in the community has reached a broad consensus on the expansion, and 90 percent have considered the force of consensus, according to Nakamoto given block expansion plan in 2010 ( [PATCH] Increase Block size limit ), on the basis of the existing version, simply modify the line of code, will be upgraded to 1MB 2MB, in order to meet their urgent needs, so that communities are more fully time to discuss the pros and cons of different options.

This would be a good and simple, the most likely to reach a broad consensus. There is such a final feasible solution possible pro (bi) make (po) Core reconciliation initiative.

[Risk] isolation witness
Core developers tried to isolate the witness (segwit) to indirectly achieve expansion effect, but there is a big problem and a safety hazard.

First, isolation witness in the case of single signature transactions 100%, up only 1.6MB achieve expansion effect, segregation witness the complexity and huge development effort, making it difficult to update other applications, not even update. Suppose you have 50% use transaction that is equivalent, after 6-12 months to achieve the expansion effect 1.3MB, it does not make sense.

Secondly, the isolation testimony to Bitcoin underlying logic changes a lot, developing a huge workload and a high degree of risk, under the pressure of expansion in the community, Core development there must rush, the bit continent CEO Wu Han bogey on the party yesterday confirmed the "Core development work ten hours a day presence crashing" . Bitcoin user a lot of people are technical background, you rush out very clearly what is the quality of the code.

And many people's minds, "stable and reliable" Bitcoin different bit on history there have been many loopholes credits (" History vulnerability disclosure "). For example, 15 August 2010, hackers have used integer overflow vulnerability brush coins (" Bitcoin had been brushed out of 184 400 000 000 ").

Now "stable", is six years constantly fixing bugs results Bitcoin. If the hurried work on the line isolation witness, once similar serious loopholes, currency price volatility is not a simple one or two hundred, but to directly erase a number and cause irreparable long-term adverse impact on the reputation of Bitcoin . Thus preventing on-line Core hastily without adequate verification of isolation testimony is very important.

[Consensus Action]
We will do our best to invite Bitcoin companies added to this basic consensus.
Please all Bitcoin users, replies to support this consensus basis, thank you for your support for Bitcoin!

Additional information: Why are 90% considered force consensus?
Because some operators not force open the mine pool (solo mining or private pool), which is considered part of the force is difficult to directly express their will,
remove this part of the silent count force, requiring 90% considered force consensus, in fact, it requires 95%

"Whether the purported scaling concerns are real enough to undermine BTC fundamentals (I hate to give that issue so much credit but the presentation of the issue can play into perceptions), we have some dynamics that could allow for a price drop into the lower $300s or even into the upper $200s."

I'm hoping we drop sub 300. I'd like to pick up some cheap CHEAP coins but feel this is unrealistic. There's been too much support @>$325. I think we could have a quick mtgox/DPR drop but that would recover quickly if classic/core goes nuclear. I'm hoping for a HF to 2mb; for some slight to significant market drop and plan on buying at that time. I know source code has been released, binaries are being compiled, and slush & antpool support classic.

 I don't really have much liquid to play with and I've had issues losing keys before so I use various services to hold my coins. I recognize that I'm dependent on what the institutions do after a possible core/classic split since they store mine... (Yeah, they're not your coins unless you have them... but better than losing your coins or suffering an improper backup.. NOOOOOOOO). (just a few alts... /cry). ~$600 lost /sigh

I don't see any major corrections until the core classic debate gets resolved afterwhich there will by craziness bad and then super good. /shrug  my $.02

I'd just like to know how long we will go downward sideways like this for.


My understanding on BTC-E differential is that the price difference is due to cost of their fees. I believe ~+/- 2%

Re: Nioc - Electrum, Good point. I might as well move some coins here in case of catastrophic failure. Write down words on paper. Put paper in safe... Bury safe in backyard? Lol..., no but seriously. Buried in back yard or safety deposit box? Lol... (backyard?)

Re: JayJuanGee - I think you are too quick to discount the recent scaling debate & divisiveness. I think the issue now, is that this issue hasn't gone away but gotten worse. Although this scaling fight, in essence, has been present since Gavin's transition, it is now festering and the price is being affected. It started with Hearns XT and blacklisting of TOR nodes, which allegedly was not blacklisted but... and then you have blockstream, Core, RBF, lightning, stubbornness. As a lay user, I no longer trust either camp (Hearn/Core). Everyone has a secret agenda but Core's agenda no longer seems to co-exist with the goals of miners, users, or exchanges. I see no significant issue with a pure 1mb increase (2mb total) and restoration of no RBF. Essentially, IMO, continuation of the status quo while Bitcoin was run by Gavin. Core desperately doesn't want this and has failed to explain to me why their way is better.

There has been a lot of bluster on both sides and I think this holding pattern may simply continue until Bitfury releases the new Asics...  but still... Bitcoin has started to smell,  I don't like segwit, I don't trust it. I think it sounds good, but it sounds too good to be true. If this wasn't bitcoin, maybe I'd bite. However, there are lots of smoke and mirrors in cryptoland and this stinks worse than the alternatives.  

I think ultimately you have two sets of institutional investors, aka super powers, probably even more, whom all have different designs for bitcoin. BlockStream & PWC vs. Coinbase Et al. Until there is a clear winner or loser I don't see much happening out in the open or changes in price. I see continued stagnation. In private however, it seems like there is some super sexy development going on... which will push price up when the time is right. I.E., continue to Hodl until the big boys are done playing... and they start the pump.

I wish I had a Family Guy Meme, "You know what really grinds my gears,"  the viewpoint that, "Miners, Exchanges, & Users don't matter."
It makes me think of the beta max vs vhs fiasco and Google/ Adsense/Adwords 0% initial fees for users. Adoption is key and I don't think we've hit critical mass yet. Regardless, as soon as Bitfury release their chips, and re-sellers have consumer mining equipment for sale again, I'm buying back in so I can cast my vote. I miss the sound of whrring fans lol.

How secure is something like electrum's word wallet generation vs coinbase 2 day vault + multisig. My inherent risk is institutional failure vs. me deleting wallet, losing keys, or (however unlikely) someone guessing the wallet words? Since talk of the fork I've flip flopped about 8 times for withdrawing or splitting coins. After my recent hardware restoration am a bit more pessimistic...

https://www.coinbase.com/vault?locale=en

Gonna go withdraw coins this week, well... some... lol.

Ok, so wtf is going on with dgc, Blockstream,  and pwc.

Blockstream received like 100m in more vc recently. Silbert conceded that blockstream/core position on small blocks isn't necessarily shared by his other investments. Is this like a weird backend move to buy/blockstream/core w bribes for larger blocks sooner via vc? You talk about centralization in btc... dgc has some crazy positions...

This btc rise is weird since there is also a slight ltc rise which isn't usual. Maybe unloading from the doge/eth pump and dump into btc?

Also launching a node, it takes so long to sync... I think they are purposefully limiting bitcoin with smaller blocks to show their control. I dont believe Maxwell, LukeJr, or Ptodd's lies anymore. I'd rather a known three letter agency operating bitcoin then let those three continue to destroy it. At least with gavnista and tor blacklisting, these were known entities, scaling is supported, and the network would still work. After reading gmaxwells explanation (if you can even call it that) of decentralization in relation to LN I can't see how SegWit & LN are not unlike a 1920's cheap parlor trick or magician sleight of hand trick. I for one welcome the 75% fork... Let's see them change POW to prevent asics from ruining their coin.

(Sorry, but that argument is crazy. Prevent decentralization by breaking asics so you have to gpu mine. He who has the most cash still rules with that regard, it changes nothing.)

Mining becomes centralized regardless based on equipment & utility costs when hashpower is used to secure the network


*See edits for clarity of thoughts.

So, switching to a different algorithm supportive of GPUs and not asics, I would assume, would result in a decreased amount of hashpower. Like any new coin starting out, you would begin with decentralized hashing but then as those with money and power buy more equipment it would again become more centralized and mining would migrate to locations with cheap power. Resulting again in a highly centralized mining cartel. Except this time, you would have people maybe a little upset that they had previously invested in mining equipment that was made obsolete. So the question would be if whether the new non-asic coin is more secure than the asic coin.

I read it and I think they are calling blockchain technology blockchain technology.
They did not mention bitcoin or even allude to bitcoin. IMHO.

I thought technically it could? Can't any change theoretically be done via soft fork? Which is stupid, imho, and smarter to do a HF to avoid consensus issues? I dunno. I'm sick of all the bickering. Decided to invest in something really solid. Sold all my BTC and bought viacoin.

I forgot my coffee at home today. Then I read this article. It has almost made my morning. I still need some coffee.

I enjoyed the slideshow. I thought /u/coblee's response earlier was better but the slideshow was interesting. What's a bit scary is the discussion of an the unreleased (redacted) version... That gives me the willies, not the bot.


So BJB, you said... 'other coin' what options are you looking at if you don't mind me asking? Just looking to expand after viacoin... lol

Hey Jimbo! What's the good word? Any idea where this current move is going? I thought we'd be going down and sideways a bit longer. Really didn't expect this! How's the weather?

So is the current upward trend based on anything specific? It doesn't seem that any fundamental disagreements have been resolved. Is this simply people hunting shorts to push it up to then ride shorts down?

(I expected some movement due to alter pump and dumps but was still surprised with this. I expected some ltc movement before btc movement. )

What's driving this up trend and what's the thought as to where we are going? I guess I expected more 380 sideways until 2mb resolved. I'm happy for the increase, it just doesn't seem real and I'm having difficulty believing we are now upward and onward. Like weird btc ptsd lol

I thought it was confirmed that LN is still broken, despite the existence of code. My understanding is that it isn't "trust-less" or "decentralized" and depends on a central authority. So, is it like adding ripple to bitcoin...?I thought G.Maxwell reluctantly conceded that it hasn't completely been figured out how to get rid of the central authority and trust issue. If I recall, his response to this line of questioning was, it doesn't work now but we'll fix it and it will work in the future.

I.e., LTC to Gox! Soon! Is this correct in paraphrasing?

FYI, I'm having a sale on bridges. Especially the golden ones...

LN isn't distributed. There is no satisfactory answer to this issue yet. (AFAIK). I think that's what /nullc was reluctantly admitting.
So, essentially, by adopting LN using a centralized authority, you are allowing bitcoin to be co-opted and trading decentralization for an alleged scaling solution. I dunno, this seems insidious. Seems like 2mbs is safer and less co-option but what do I know, i use coinbase so my voice doesn't matter and i'm not a bitcoiner... (bought a trezor... Soon...)

Adam, I think you are 100% correct. But I am big block biased. However, statements speak for themselves.




Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
1/ So to talk about safety @digitsu @olivierjanss, first we need to establish a common understanding. What is the end game?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
2/ Are we taking about switching to Classic to reach 2MB via HF, and then back to Core after they follow with increase?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
3/ Or is this a permanent switch to Classic forever whereby we abandon Core?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
4/ and Core keeps writing code & fixing security issues to give to Classic team so they can merge and change 1 to 2 before re-releasing?
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 Samson Mow ‏@Excellion  8h8 hours ago
5/ If it's the latter, we should ask @petertoddbtc @morcosa @pwuille if they are okay with that arrangement. It's the polite thing to do.
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 Olivier Janssens ‏@olivierjanss  8h8 hours ago
@Excellion 1/ We're not here to replace core but to compete on merits. Our priority/goal is to scale Bitcoin on-chain first.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion What's relevant here isn't Bitcoin Core vs Bitcoin Classic, but rather, Bitcoin protocol vs Classic protocol.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion Protocol competition is a winner take all, as there can only be one winning protocol w/o screwing up BTC economy.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion Alternative is protocol development _cooperation_, where compromises can be made between different parties.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion e.g. the Bitcoin Core scaling proposal is a significant compromise in how it uses segwit to increase blocksize.
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 Olivier Janssens ‏@olivierjanss  8h8 hours ago
@petertoddbtc @Excellion Compromise to who? Segwit is something Core proposed. Many people want 2MB HF first.
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 Peter Todd ‏@petertoddbtc  8h8 hours ago
@olivierjanss @Excellion Segwit didn't need to be implemented as blocksize increase; using it to increase blocksize was a compromise.
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Peter Todd
‏@petertoddbtc
@olivierjanss @Excellion There's many - including myself - who would prefer to do no increase at all for now. But we must compromise.


My understanding of Todd's position, is that Segwit IS the blocksize increase. /golfclap

"3.In the next 3 weeks, we need the Bitcoin Core developers to work with us and clarify the roadmap with respect to a future hard-fork which includes an increase of the block size. Currently we are in discussions to determine the next best steps. We are as a matter of principle against unduly rushed or controversial hard-forks irrespective of the team proposing and we will not run such code on production systems nor mine any block from that hard-fork. We urge everyone to act rationally and hold off on making any decision to run a contentious hard-fork (Classic/XT or any other)."

This is what to currently watch. 2/11 + 21( 3 weeks) = ~ Early March. So say by 3/10/16, Core should have a plan for an increase. Miners wanted a 1 year delay for a block size increase and THEN to examine Segwit. They like segwit, but they don't trust it. At least that was my interpretation. HF first, segwit maybe later. This does not align with core's suggestion for Segwit in may & Segwit IS block increase. Miners think this is too rushed and that there hasn't been enough testing. Miners also didn't like RBF and felt like core was taking $$ from Miners. I think if Core doesn't play ball, they could be in some serious trouble. However, around this same time, new Asics should start to come online and out for distribution, right? Honestly, if Blockstream is intent on keeping small blocks they should be investing in mining hardware to support their position. I think it's foolish to discount the power of the miners. If you use the analogy of a car, it's like saying the driver controls everything. Sure, that may be true... And then its like saying how the car is built determines how the driver will use it. Sure, that's also true. But at the end of the day, if the car requires fuel to run, and you have no fuel, aka, you're out of gas. You're screwed.

I dunno, I can see a weekend dump back to 370's and stayin in 370-420 for the next 3 weeks until Core makes their move. With this sort of a time line, you are looking at stuff happening in april. Good/bad/indifferent, stuffs gonna be 'cray cray.' It's been nice to see us staying in the 400's though. I'd like the resistance to hold, I'm just not feeling very optimistic with all this outstanding debt essentially. Gotta pay the piper first before we get eaten by the blockstream rats.

I think this could just be a temporary problem depending on what happens with new hardware like bitfuy's mining lightbulbs, the 21inc machines, and just the new chips coming out. If wall street is serious, they will need hashpower to ensure their transactions get included in blocks. However, to make a large capital expenditure without having any clear roadmap of planning can make business people wary. I mean, if you can't plan on what's going to happen with bitcoin size how can you develop your applications. It's safer to maybe premine your own currency /shrug.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Excellion/status/700870021753384960

Mows exchange about how consensus was reached is a good laugh. Any pools tweets seem to suggest continued sw reservations and desire simply for hf. I guess they're keeping classic in the table for pressure until we see some results? Hope to see 460d again soon anyway. Feels like a nice reprieve.

Right?  Very well done. As an aside, I thought mows discussion of  blockstream in the satire was interesting. He discussed blockstream as bringing happy meal toys and having everyone drink their kool-aid. Its like the miners see two sides of core now. /shrug

It could correct more but just as easily increase. Good time to take small profits /shrug. I don't like 2017 deadline because I don't trust core. If classic said 2017 deadline I would believe it and accept it. Sometimes you should shoot the deliverer of bad news?

Rbf?

So...

I think this is interesting.
Didn't expect knc to throw in /shrug

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/477iun/kncminer_just_mined_a_classic_block_4th_block_in/

roadmap/roadmap2016.md

Note: This is our initial roadmap proposal. We will run this by miners, companies and users for feedback, before it is finalized.

Bitcoin Classic 2016 Roadmap

The Bitcoin Classic team will help realize Satoshi’s vision of making Bitcoin scale into a global peer to peer cash system, and not just a settlement network. We believe on-chain scaling is crucial for the long term health of Bitcoin. On-chain scaling maximizes transaction volume, whose fees are needed to replace miner rewards on the medium to long term scale.

Our preferred strategy for on-chain scaling, is to eliminate the need for blocks to be synced within seconds. We will implement solutions that make continuous block syncing possible. Instead of transmitting the data for a new block all at once when it is found, we can significantly optimize current bandwidth by sending data during the full ten-minute interval between blocks. This will enable the Bitcoin network to scale to significant new levels, without endangering decentralization. We will scale using a 3-pronged approach:

Phase 1 (Q1-Q2)

Urgently resolve issue of blocks being almost full

Implement BIP 109: Raise block size limit from 1MB to 2MB.
Hard fork with 75% activation threshold (750 of 1000 blocks), 28 day activation grace period.
Software based on Bitcoin Core implementation 0.11.2 and 0.12.0.
Note: 0.11.2 is already finished and available for download here.

Phase 2 (Q2-Q3)

Eliminate the need for blocks to be sent within seconds

Reduce the effect of block propagation times on orphan rates (lost miner income)
De-emphasize block size as an obstacle for scaling and open up potential for on-chain transaction throughput gains using several improvements (listed below).
Optimizations for bandwidth constrained nodes via improvements to the P2P layer
Note: We intend to discuss various solutions such as the ones listed below and pick the best ones.

Parallel validation of blocks (theoretically reduces the profitability of excessive-sized block attacks).
Headers-first mining (largely nullifies excessive-sized block attacks).
Thin blocks: Blocks refer to transactions that have been well propagated rather than including them, allowing for minimization of bandwidth use.
Weak blocks: allow miners to pre-announce the blocks they are working on, to minimize the data sent once a block is found.
Validate Once: Transactions that have been validated when entering a node’s memory pool do not need to be revalidated when included in a block (speeds up block validation).
Phase 3 (Q3-Q4)

Make the block size limit dynamic

Note: This phase will only happen when miners & companies confirm Phase 2 successfully addressed their blocksize concerns.

Use a variation of Steven Pair’s/BitPay proposal. Validation cost of a block must be less than a small multiple of the average cost over the last difficulty adjustment period
Simplified version of Segregated Witness from Core, when it is available
Technical details

A more technical version of the roadmap can be found here

Conference

We plan to hold an on-chain scaling conference soon, where these and future scaling solutions & concerns can be discussed among the community.




I think the timing of the above in connection with f2pool ddos is interesting. I sense a bigger incoming drop.  Maybe we test like 407s?

So... price went up. Didn't expect that. Thought price would go down. Is this the 'settlement pump?'
Should I start buying silver or gold

Yes. Amongst the pictures of trains and car crashes, you occasionally find gems of insight. The topics range from what constitutes socialism /anarchism/libertarianism to who is a government operative and sometimes they even talk about market movements. Like how if btc market share increases by 160 billion we get 32k coins. I'm just here for the free food.

Maybe? Buy half now and wait for breakout to determine up or down. I like the sideways.

Re:ddos, who's getting dosed again?
Re: trump immigration, the world's immigration policy is a mess due to multiple failed nation states. The eu is on the verge of collapse. The us doesn't face the same level of crisis. US southern immigration seems to be suffering also from low oil and narcotics operations. On the flip side, farms need immigrant labor in order to function.  Increased labor cost = more food spoilage. If you built a southern wall this would just change the path of immigration from the south to elsewhere. Normalizing wages could help but labor is cheap and will relocate to continue to be cheap. It was China than southeast Asia and probably eventually Africa or mideast when oil profits leave. /bitcoin?

If you do a premine can I have a few million coins ^_^? (Seriously though, that's a great idea lol)
I remember back in the day of alts a really snazzy website promoting some fake coin which was admittedly a fake coin where it talked about the sole purpose was to make the creator rich and steal investor money lol oh bitcoinspace you are silly

Ok, Aztec, Quick question: Why does it matter who the current President is? How would this impact your analysis? Why is 'gimpcoin' in your opinion not rising in value until after that point.

Why not LTC, PPC, or NMC? Ltc especially. I'm already knee deep in losses; I already bought Peter Todd & Drak's VIA. They promised it would be revolutionary~!
Was this the plan all along? BTC breaks due to transaction backlog, forces adoption of alts. BTC co-opted by someone magical. Banks/Govt?
Seems like things are playing out exactly as they wanted?

I figure we go sideways another 3-4 months and then magically things get fixed and we have halving pump.

However, this stuff is disconcerting: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/48fw9u/f2pool_operator_was_pressured_into_accepting_hk/
[–]macbook-airBitcoin Miner - F2Pool 75 points 4 hours ago
In HK, Alex asked me to “respect” his time by agree the consensus asap. Also someone else told me he had bought long position just before the roundtable, if we did not agree, he would lose huge financially. If it was not these two, I would probably have escaped away that night.

This is why the conspiracy theories start to seem less theory and more just shady business as usual crap. I.e., scammers gonna scam.
I'm tempted to liquidate 75% of my remaining btc, throw it into LTC for stability/functionality and just wait, maybe buy some of this ethereum crap (seems way overbought imho, but it keeps having slight ups and downs enough to profit). Maybe a different percentage of the above. Quite discouraged by the big block vs small block fight. (Disclosure, I didn't buy Via. Well, I did, just not recently. Lost so much )
Is this what they call the despair stage?

So, just keep calm and hodl on? I've transferred to my 'own' wallet finally. Bury it in the backyard and just check out until next year? I'm torn between wanting liquidity to increase holdings if there is doom and not wanting to sell due to possible moon. Back to waiting for Godot I guess, right? Not like i can get btc to an exchange in a timely fashion anyway, there should be some market action one way or another soon'.

Quadruple means large action coming up? Like, a price rise? So mid next week something happens finally?

So, I'm liking the uptrend. A bit sad we didn't recover as quickly as I would have liked but I would assume that's due to unresolved and long standing philosophical differences. Still, up is up.

Bank Cryptocoins

#1 RSCOIN

https://github.com/gdanezis/rscoin

In other news, so, I see Bank of England wants to use a central bank cryptocoin, RSCoin. Those jerks. I read some of the white paper and it's a bit above me. Anyone bored enough to take a run at it to explain to us in laymens terms? I understood a bit more about their scaling, 2000 tps for 30 minettes and scalable by simply adding more minettes (expanding the decentralized network to propogate transactions of the centralized distributor). It takes a lot of the good things and bends them to the will of central banks. I guess the central bank has the encryption key to simply make more 'coins' and are sent however they feel like sending them.

I get concerned that btc is losing first mover status. At the same time I realize that such feelings could have been created as an attempt to undermine market confidence to allowe for parties to accumulate. All this 'blockchain' crap is different than 2013/2014 when it was  XYZ Corp invests in "BITCOIN". Is this the despair phase just at a 'higher' price? lol. /shrug just my $0.02 (less than the fee cost of a btc transaction these days, right?)


https://thestack.com/cloud/2016/03/10/bank-of-england-looks-into-centralised-bitcoin-alternative-rscoin/
http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.06895
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.06895v2.pdf


#2 Juno

https://github.com/buckie/juno
https://github.com/buckie/juno/blob/master/README.md (Watch the demo... I don't know whats going on, but its cool...)

(So I think they took what they liked from Bitcoin, combined it with what they liked in Ethereum, and they made Juno. Which is funny, get it, like the movie... "juno," about a baby. I won't lie, i'm sitting here laughing about the name. If I'm write, it's a heckuva swipe, like a mic drop. This is some dangerous stuff, in terms of, imho, mainstream adoption of non bank controlled cryptocoins, ie. btc/ltc/eth/etcetcetcf. I don't even mean bitcoin, just in general. Institutions recognize there is merit to a cryptographic currency and distributed ledger and they are running with this stuff. I'm a little bit less certain that we are going to eat their lunch. It looks like they're pulling out all the stops.

JpMorgan - https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/jpmorgan-unveils-juno-prototype-at-hyperledger-meeting-1457629074

Considering the debate over blockchain capacity in the Bitcoin network, scalability is, of course, the elephant in the room. With an un-optimized instance running on a MacBook Pro, Juno managed throughput of consensus of 500 per second, and 2ms latency of consensus. This is very big news. Due to restrictions in its block size, Bitcoin can process only up to seven transactions per second. In comparison, Visa’s network processes on average around 2,000 transactions per second. Juno doesn’t require anonymous participation, this has been explicitly disabled. Use of Tangaroa also removes the need for mining.
The team has identified issues that would require human input to fix, including differences in incremental hashes among Followers in the network.

#3 - BTC - I'd still argue more secure than the above. But scalability seems like it is more and more a critical issue and will be a bigger one in the future.   

Adam, is that possible due to upcoming futures settlements? Just wondering.

JJG - Wait, so... based on your current trade strategy, have you simply stopped accumulating? Now you are just strictly selling after each slight rise? I feel like I'm getting half the picture here.

And, can that coin that shall not be named just go away already? /sigh. I keep waiting for a giant drop and it keeps just not happening. Which is frustrating, because there is no reason a company would want to use that coin when they could simply copycoin their own... for free. Grr.

So, the small rise in BTC... Is it related to a change in the alt market? Just wondering. I'd hope we would break 420 but we haven't so it would be nice to know if it is all just profit taking or if funds are being put into something else.

Thanks Elwar, I feel like CB's right here with us! Maybe next time use MS paint or something to try to mirror the green / red ?
But yeah, in other news, right back to the 414's, was hoping we could break out of >420 but maybe next week

Yeah, failed the rise yesterday so down we go... well, kindof. We'll see soon how far and when the recovery starts.

Replace Cash? Why wouldn't there be an institutional agenda to replace cash? Cash IS anonymous. It can go missing; inventory, sales, payroll, can all be adjusted using cash. People don't like paying taxes. Transactions recorded on a ledger have more difficulty being fudged. How do you implement negative interest rates when people are using cash? It's difficult. Bitcoin is amazing and I think we will see a bump around July but don't kid yourself the government wants it to succeed, or rather, their version, the one that allows data tracking on everything. The question then is which version is theirs and which is the liberty people's. (Maybe they all are?).  

I know he spoke at a convention in the last few years. Does anyone recall how his discussion went? Just wondering. I don't think he is; but maybe he was part of the team.

http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2016-May/029323.html

[Cryptography] Proof-of-Satoshi fails Proof-of-Proof.
ianG iang at iang.org
Wed May 4 18:44:46 EDT 2016
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On 3/05/2016 04:43 am, Robert Hettinga wrote:
>
>> On May 2, 2016, at 2:17 PM, Erik Granger <erikgranger at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'll believe it when he signs arbitrary messages with satoshis key. No signature, no story.
>
> Spend the coins.
>
> Pics or it didn’t happen.
>
> Cheers,
> RAH



That ain't gonna happen, sorry folks!  Not to rag at RAH, I'm just
picking up his perfect foil, and for reasons he'll wryly smile to:
Physics. Humanity. Frailty. Complexity. Of the sort that we've all being
talking about since forever on this list and many others.



Let's break it down.

Firstly, we all on this list know that cryptographic keys prove that a
private key did a maths transform that a public key can confirm.  Full Stop.

What cryptographic proofs do not confirm is that a human said something
meaningful to another human. Indeed, the more that the Bitcoin community
and the tabloid press demand a proof-of-spend and examine the results
they're given, the more it demonstrates how humans seem to be isolated
by cryptography not joined.

In theory, keys are mathware, humans are wetware and the two do not
easily mix.

How does this play out in real life?  We know that the human experiment
known as cryptographic signing has failed. We know that there is at
least one tiny little country - Estonia - clinging to the European dream
of using smart cards to identify humans, but statistically the world has
failed to make human signing with public key cryptography work. People
write books about this, I simply point it out as a significant data
point of where many thousands of people really really tried to use keys
to prove meaningful human things.  And failed.



Let's get more topical. There are strident, demanding calls for people
who make statements concerning the identity of one said Satoshi Nakamoto
to back those statements up with cryptographic proof. Yet these demands
are .. unfounded, and that is the kindest thing that could be said about
them. Why?

Anyone offering information to the world has no necessary call to offer
more information. When I say that Craig Wright was the leader of the
team known as Satoshi Nakamoto, I do not contract to say more. Nor did
Gavin or Jon or others in any sense contract to say more than they did.
They don't owe anyone anything. Even if they made errors, it is not on
them to correct them. "Extraordinary claims calls for extraordinary
proof" is only a standard for academia, it has little place in human
affairs, especially in that democratic tradition known as open
discourse, nor in the human standards of proof that have been honed over
a thousand years of legal history.

In fact, I contracted to say less - as well all do, when we join the
encryption business, we covenant to keep peoples' privacy. When I
started what became Project Prometheus a few years ago, I promoted their
privacy as a goal - because the team known as Satoshi Nakamoto asked for
their privacy by posting here in 2008 and disappearing entirely 2 years
later. Now, when I come out and say that Craig Wright was the leader of
Satoshi Nakamoto, it is only because he himself finally announced it. I
remain committed to privacy even if the community Satoshi wrought is
revealing themselves to be a pack of rabid statist wolves looking to rip
the wool off of the backs of the sheep that they call their customers
and future users.



Sorry, guys, it gets worse, and I hope the Bitcoin community dissolves
itself in collective shame as to their inability to even contemplate
protecting their own.



As we know in cryptographic affairs, key management is hard. Keys can be
lost. Misplaced. Traded.  Breached and stolen.  Keys can be spoofed - we
have an entire cryptographic security system called SSL/HTTPS which is
blighted by phishing, based on misuse of cryptographic proof of
identity. Let's not go into the details, but I shall revise here FTR the
claim of secure browsing: the identities are cryptographically proven.
Which apparent claim does not reveal itself to the humans in sufficient
reliability in order to defeat basic common or garden social
engineering. If the IETF's biggest, bravest and most educated can fail
to protect the browsing public from the obvious, known and counted
threat, what hope the rest?

Even if the above were not sufficient, let me get precise and particular
as to why the Proof-of-Satoshi is dead-on-arrival. There are several
facts which apply in this case.

Firstly, Satoshi Nakamoto is not one human being. It is or was a team.
Craig Wright named one person in his recent communications, being the
late Dave Kleinman. Craig did not name others, nor should I. While he
was the quintessential genius who had the original idea for Bitcoin and
wrote the lion's share of the code, Craig could not have done it alone.
Satoshi Nakamoto was a team effort.

Indeed, a sort of proof is right there in front of you - when you look
at Craig Wright, you do not see Satoshi. When you look at Satoshi
Nakamoto, you're seeing some measure of the influence of Dave Kleinman,
and it isn't possible for Dave to prove anything anymore to anyone.
Team Satoshi is ephemeral, and no cryptographic multisig can now capture
those that aren't around any more.

This team effort was one of a most severe cost to all members of that
team, and only privacy is holding us back from recognising it.

Further, the keys that controlled critical parts were moved several
times between various persons. Which is to say that control of the keys
does not indicate more than the holder being trustworthy to the goals of
the team at a point in time.  Even if Craig manages to sign over a coin,
it does not and cannot prove he is "the one," only that he was at one
point in time a trusted member of the team. Albeit, the team that he
founded, but a wise leader controls for all risks, including those risks
posed by the leader himself.

More: control at any time does not necessarily indicate ownership,
either in the minds of the team nor in the eyes of the law.  Recalling
the reports of late 2015, can you rule out that the keys haven't been
stolen?

Finally, as has been reported, the headline bulk of the value is
controlled by a trust. Any movement of those coins needs to operate
according to trust rules; if not, then we are in a state of sin. What
that means is not something that can be described in mathematical terms,
but it can certainly be described in hysterical terms - the logic de
jure of the Bitcoin community.  As an aside, I really strongly suggest
that the Bitcoin community not press for the breaking of the trust.  If
unsure on this point, ask your miners to explain that old curse "be
careful what you wish for."  Breaking the trust is way off the scale of
what anyone will desire.



I suggest that it is therefore impossible for any reasonable person to
conclude that a "spend" of a Bitcoin coin proves anything beyond that
the erstwhile signer was at some point in some way related to a key.  A
host of factors make the 'proof' too impractical to describe at a press
or media level. And, if we have to call in opposing experts to argue the
case, what's the point of the "proof"?

It is with incredible sadness that I watch an entire community
misunderstand the lesson that Satoshi originally taught - trust in
mathematics to prove accountancy. Yes, cryptography can prove that a
coin is available and disposable pending an attempt to further dispose
it. But the Bitcoin design was deliberately weak when it came to proof
of persons. Especially, when it comes to known and now revealed
weaknesses in the persona once known as Satoshi Nakamoto, there is no
proof in mathematics that can satisfy that community's yearning for yet
another meal.

By all means, take that lamb for yet another feast of slaughter, but do
not soil the good name of mathematics for your Pavlovian hunger.



iang, CARS.



ps; after writing this, I stumbled across:
http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/04/logical-fallacies-hunt-satoshi/

pps; This post reflects no commercial agenda or position of myself or
any person related to me.  I have no position in BTC and have never had
any BTC other than a few pence lost in some test wallet somewhere.
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Two weeks...

So, we have 38 days until the halving. Price is at ~$530. KNC just went Bankrupt, There is no scaling solution. Is it realistic to expect moon? I think maybe we'll have moon like October, but I don't see really anything hugely positive unless all the demand comes from China due to ongoing currency devaluations. I'd like to see another leg up this weekend but I'm not sure anymore.

I know, but I'm not talking about Ethereum, I'm talking about bitcoin here. You can split hairs if you want, but scaling = TPS = if blocks are full of transactions, not all transactions are being included, transactions are being delayed = scaling issues. But please, tell me more.

I wanted to ask more about your thoughts on this possible jump back into the above mentioned channel; then the price rose ~$4 lol. What is the range of that channel that we would expect it to stay within, 3620 - 3580 ish? It seemed before that 3600 was acting as support until it broke.

Switch scaling for hard fork code changes and my point remains the same.

So, LN is in Alpha but needs Segwit. SOME miners won't agree to segwit unless it is as a HF AND includes 2mb code release. Moon? DMOON? What am I missing? I think you would get moon if a compromise exists with participant buy in, otherwise I figure maybe a bump before halving and sharp decrease thereafter and maybe some stability at +/- $600's. Halving is great, I'm just concerned that there won't be benefits until coin supply tightens say around October/November. Thoughts?

Revolt against Bitmain? LOL. Right, who else is producing mining hardware these days? Remind me? Spoondolies? KNC? Hmmmmmm?

Hey Jimbo, think this recent correction was it and we will break $600 this weekend or maybe some further downtrend. In other news, Bruce Fenton is allegedly resigning from Bitcoin Foundation. Not sure what that means for the foundation, but probably not the best news in the world. 

How would you describe the last 3-4 days of market trading? Does it look like accumulation? Been staring at charts to much today. Just wondering.

I'll certainly admit that the recent drop doesn't look good, but as long as we stay above 660 shouldn't the trend be intact and this be ok? Seems that bitcoins death has been greatly exaggerated, again. No?

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4twzwp/interesting_bullet_points_from_bitmain_rd/

The more I read and understand about LN, the more of a mess it seems.
I do not think any of this bodes well.

I think LN is the trojan horse to make miners less important. It results in transactions being conducted in huds and increases the importance of nodes. I think along with increasing transaction capacity it serves the dual purpose of hindering miner control.

I think it's a bit early to call the war over. As hash rate continues to drop... let's at least wait until the middle of August... If we rally >850, /shrug war is over. But if we don't and soon. I think we will have some excitement. I hope to be wrong however. If anything, recent developments simply show how committed each party is to their entrenched values. There is no compromise. This is war.

I'm just wondering why everyone seems so bearish? We've been going in this sideways channel for what seems like two weeks. I think we need some doom news to go down; I just don't see it happening. I think best chance for a flash crash will be around 8/1 depending on what happens, if anything, with the chinese mining cartel. I recognize that no one believes a 2mb HF is still on the table, and they are probably right, but I think it's important to recognize the societal and cultural disrespect heaped upon the miners... Gonna get interesting I think... (DISCLAIMER: I am a biased 2mb big blocker who is skeptical about SW/LN and who thinks that any substantial change should be as a HF not SF).

Maybe we move $10 up here? Meh.

I heard there is some sort of a secret meeting concerning mining. I don't think anything has been decided yet. I think whatever news we get will be used to push price down until it slingshots up.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/researchers-bitcoin-blockchain-secured-inspite-of-51-attack/


All hail our new overlords. 1mb4life :/

I think core is attempting to, and successfully, using the resultant recent smart contract coin change and split, to argue that there should never be any bitcoin forks because, 'see what happens'. I think they are succeeding in this argument. And sorry, I'm being facetious with regards to 1mb4eva since even Nullc conceded that LN needs bigger blocks (4mb). However, all of this will be done under the benevolent leadership of our overlords. Hail hydra.. err core. I think this proposal allows them to continue to consolidate power. I think you are right that we need to show that hard forks are pretty easy. And the most recent hard fork was pretty easy, then polo started screwing everyone and made a bundle of money and stabbed the ecosystem in the back. I have hope for a miner revolt but this just means it needs to happen sooner or the opportunity will be lost forever.

Finex confirmed hacked

https://twitter.com/collincrypto/status/760537737107824641

https://bitfinex.statuspage.io/

Security Breach Subscribe
Investigating - Today we discovered a security breach that requires us to halt all trading on Bitfinex, as well as halt all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from Bitfinex.

We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.

The theft is being reported to—and we are co-operating with—law enforcement.

As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, and/or collateral affected by the breach. Any settlements will be at the current market prices as of 18:00 UTC. We are taking this necessary accounting step to normalize account balances with the objective of resuming operations. We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation. While we are halting all operations at this time, we can confirm that the breach was limited to bitcoin wallets; the other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected.

We will post updates as and when appropriate on our status page (Bitfinex.statuspage.io) and on the maintenance page. We are deeply concerned about this issue and we are committing every resource to try to resolve it. We ask for the community’s patience as we unravel the causes and consequences of this breach.
Aug 2, 18:06 UTC

Yeah, they put together the estimate by looking at p2sh movements, 150k moved today... allegedly related to finex hack, so, if you do the math...

https://twitter.com/jyap/status/760586477151539201

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4vupa6/p2shinfo_shows_movement_out_of_multisig_wallets/

@adam,

I know this is from bitmex, but there weekly analysis is usually pretty good. This time they evaluate the finex hack.
Everyone keeps telling me to be bullish, but I'm not feeling it. I'm surprised we recovered so quickly and thought we would have dumped back to low 500's.

Regardless, enclosed is article link;

https://blog.bitmex.com/youve-been-buttfinessed/

Thoughts?

gearbest.com has some nice stuff too

Also, it appears that the polo hack from 2015 is legit, and some of the login/pwd information is still working if those users have not recently changed pwds.
So, Public service announcement, Change your PWDS!