Bitcoin Is Forking. Again. (vice.com) 121
Merely weeks after it was announced that Bitcoin was splitting into two separate entities, the initial version of bitcoin and it's new "bitcoin cash," the network is adding a third version, according to a report. From the article: On Wednesday, a group of bitcoiners scheduled yet another split for the network in November, which would create a third version of bitcoin. So, what makes this version different from the others? Right now, the bitcoin network can sometimes take a long time to process transactions due to so many people using it. This is because the "blocks" of transaction data that get added to bitcoin's public ledger, the blockchain, are getting full. In the weeks preceding the fork, bitcoin coalesced around a solution called "segregated witness," which will change how data is stored in blocks to free up some space when it kicks in later in August. But the size of the blocks themselves will stay at one megabyte on the original bitcoin blockchain. Still, some bitcoiners maintained that the only way to speed bitcoin up for the foreseeable future was to increase the size of blocks themselves. So, a group of bitcoin companies and developers got together and launched a fork called bitcoin cash, which does not include segregated witness. It bumped the size of blocks up to a maximum of eight megabytes. That fork was widely anticipated to be a failure before it happened, but at the time of writing, bitcoin cash is trading above $300 USD per coin, which is comparable to cryptocurrencies like ethereum. Sounds like everyone got what they wanted, right? Oh, no. There's a third group of bitcoin developers, companies, and users who advocate for a "best of both worlds approach." This group includes Bitmain, the largest bitcoin infrastructure company in the world, and legendary bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik. They got together back in May and signed what is known as the "New York Agreement," which bound them to implement a two megabyte block size increase alongside segregated witness via a hard fork within six months of the time of signing. They call the fork Segwit2x. Now, that's exactly what's happening. According to an announcement posted to the Segwit2x GitHub repository, a bitcoin block between one and two megabytes will be created at block 494,784.
Sounds like (Score:3)
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, paper money is at least backed by something. Even if that backing is only the full faith and credit of the US Government it's still better than being backed by absolutely nothing.
Also, one money.
You don't see California or New England creating its own US currency in parallel.
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What about Australian dollar or the Singapore dollar. A lot of the world is outside the United states
When they create sites where we all want to go and bitch about things, then we'll discuss your less significant countries and perhaps even their own fiat currencies.
Almost every fucking day a foreigner comes to this US-based site and reminds us of the rest of the world, and we still don't give a shit, because it doesn't matter asshole.
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Do tell... what makes this site "US-based"?
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Actually, we did see it, some years back, in California. Though some California-esque FUBARness, the state government couldn't pay its bills right away, so it issued some sort of chit or voucher or scrip (I forget the details).
It wasn't money, of course, because, well, it just wasn't, OK? Get off my back!
So the state was buying office supplies and electricity and whatnot with these post-dated-checks-that-were-not-really-checks-and-were-not-even-post-dated slips of paper.
Kind of a bummer if you ran a b
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The US government went a bit crazy with the money printer
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And by extension of the US government's backing, said paper money is backed by lots of large tangibles like real estate and vehicles in the form of loan collateral.
e.g. My mortgage is payable in USD only. Taking out a loan in cryptocurrency these days would mean far too much volatility over the loan period.
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Mine the landfills?
Re: Sounds like (Score:2)
Gold is kind of like petroleum -- we've already mined the easy stuff, but the amount STILL LEFT is enormous, limited mainly by how much money it's worth spending to extract. Kind of like how we were officially "running out" of oil when it was cheap, but at 2-3 times the "cheap" price, the US has actually become a net EXPORTER of petroleum (because it's now valuable enough to refine from tar sand, at substantially higher cost than pumping it from a Saudi oil well). The same is true for gold. At current price
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US Dollars are nearly entirely backed by debt. In the case of paper money, it is Treasury bonds and other suitable collateral, deposited by banks at the Federal Reserve, in exchange for the paper notes they give people at teller windows and ATMs. In the case of checking balances, those are backed by bank loans. Debt instruments are assets, which are bought and sold on the market all the time, but they are unwieldy for buying coffee or gasoline. Dollars are uniform sized units which are more convenient f
Re:Sounds like (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't Bitcoin backed by the full faith and credit of all Bitcoin owners?
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To be "backed by" something, in my understanding, means that it is a symbolic representation of that other thing. For example, if you store gold at my house, I can issue you a receipt. We agree that I will give this gold to anyone who presents me with this (paper) receipt. Hence, the paper is "backed" by gold. The paper literally s
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How about future tax receipts?
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Paper money is backed by the threat of violence. Cryptocurrency is backed by cryptography.
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the full faith and credit of the US Government
What does that mean, exactly? That phrase has baffled me for years.
If that backing were reduced to, say, 50% of "the full faith and credit of the US Government", what would be different? What about a less drastic cut to say, 90% of "the full faith and credit of the US Government"?
Or were you being sarcastic, and I missed the joke?
Re: Sounds like (Score:4, Informative)
So, nothing tangible or of any real value whatsoever.
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Also, if I have paper money, I can give it to a cashier and get tangible goods immediately even when connectivity is down. I don't have to wait and/or pay money to make sure that over 50% of banks think my twenties are legal.
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Just like the dollar
The support of the US government is nice. However it's not the important bit. The important bit is that you need to pay taxes in dollars. If you want to drive a car around the USA you have to pay your registration fee. If I buy up all the dollars, then I know that eventually people will pay almost any number of worthless bit/main/cash/eriums in order to be allowed to move their cars. The rest of the value follows indirectly from this, including the fact that oil contracts are valued in dollars.
If you b
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Please ask someone...
Well I would, but apparently I am "clearly a moron," so it probably wouldn't do any good.
Kind of like trying to reason with a self-righteous asshole.
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Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds like (Score:4, Funny)
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to print more when there's a problem
well quite a failure, chain is not dead, but (Score:4, Interesting)
> That fork was widely anticipated to be a failure before it happened, but at the time of writing, bitcoin cash is trading above $300 USD per coin, which is comparable to cryptocurrencies like ethereum.
Well it is quite a failure in terms that it was given to each Bitcoin owner, and yet most owners dropped it, resulting in price drop from default 100% (you had N bitcoins and N of BCH "bitcoin-cash" tokens)
through 50% (two times more BCH was sold then bought) - on futures market
through 20% - when real trading opened, not just futures,
then 10%
now trading at 6-8% of original Bitcoin price.
Also this does not account for all the people who did not yet bothered to sell the BCH "bitcoin-cash" tokens they are given (e.g. because it's in cold-wallet, burried somewhere, or on address not used in years) - or because it is simply lost forever (all addresses that had N amount of BTC on August 1, were "given" also N of BCH).
Another metric is hashing power (mining power), it is at around 10% of original Bitcoin's.
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Blockchains seem to split every time there is a contentious upgrade. The blockchain cryptocurrency that wins out will be the one that is most widely accepted. The best way to think about it is that it is a fair inflation. It's (almost) instantaneous and fairly distributed to all those, who hold the legacy coin. Fears of too much dilution are pure FUD. Dilution is only bad, when it robs savers of their money. If savers have double the coins after the inflationary event (fork), then they were not robbed.
There
In the future... (Score:5, Funny)
In the future, everyone will have their own cryptocurrency for 15 minutes.
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I'm still waiting for Slashdotcoin! Maybe the trolls can exchange them for karma points!
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Split 3X (Score:5, Insightful)
When one pyramid scheme isn't enough to fuel speculation, triple down on it.
If only bitcoin could die... (Score:1)
If only bitcoin could die ... people would finally stop with all their cryptoshit talking and their scam ICO ponzi schemes....
Re: If only bitcoin could die... (Score:2, Funny)
Cryptos are consuming more and more electricity when humanity should save it up... Bitcoin and etheruem miners are RUINING THE EARTH !!!
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I'm sure TrumpCoin will take over and everyone will leave BitCoin behind.
(Yes, TrumpCoin exists....)
eventually, a good idea is diluted (Score:2)
Bitcoin's worst nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
The "success" of Bitcoin Cash has shown the way, as it is currently worth > $300 without impacting the price of BTC. Free money, right? So it will be seen as a no-brainer to keep doing hard forks, as long as different parties in the BTC ecosystem see some advantage to it.
But at some point, all of these hard forks will make it abundantly clear to everyone that there is nothing special about any cryptocurrency. They're all made up out of the ether. They may provide some marginal utility for currency transfer across borders, but as investment vehicles (which is what is driving the current price spikes), putting your money in a cryptocurrency is like getting involved in a bidding war for a patch of tulips sitting in the middle of a infinite field of them.
BTC is "special", because there are only 21 million of them, right? Except maybe if there are 210 million, or 21 billion, or 21 trillion, because hey, here comes another hard fork of the blockchain by some group that wants to get rich quick. At some point the whole cryptocurrency mania collapses as everyone realizes just how limitless they really are. That is something that the people pushing BTC do not want to happen, but it is inevitable.
There are interesting times ahead for cryptocurrencies.
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There is something special about gold though- it can't be created out of thin air. Its limited. So is fiat currency from a government- they don't just print an extra trillion to cover their debts, because if the supply goes up, it inflates and they know this. The same is not true for cryptocurrency- there is nobody in charge and capable of preventing runaway printing, and there's an advantage to doing so (even if that advantage comes at the cost of devaluing the original currency). So the GP is right
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Quantitative Easing (QE) involves the central bank buying treasuries (or in some cases private sector securities) from the private sector by paying with newly created reserves.
Quantitative easing simply swaps one type of asset on private sector balance sheets (typically treasuries) for another type (deposits backed by bank reserves, or simply bank reserves if a bank did the selling.)
QE
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Of course there is inflation, too much money chasing limited supply of goods. Macro scale, bubble after bubble after bubble goes pop. Micro scale, you wont find a single person here saying they actually want prices of things they buy daily to keep climbing, but they sure do keep climbing.
So yes, you can claim no inflation on super special magic double bond accounting paper, hold it up for everyone to see, and point at the special bold words on the page, but for regular people there definitely is inflation
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Metal is very useful for practical purposes. Gold became valuable originally because people wanted to use it, not hoard it.
After the singularity... (Score:1)
Bitcoin will be able to go fork itself.
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Bitcoin is getting to be forking ridiculous. Go short now.
The eventual result... (Score:3)
Oblig. XKCD (Score:2)
https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
"it's new" (Score:2)
What I don't understand... (Score:5, Interesting)
What I don't understand, is why bitcoin is being valued so stupidly highly. To me, this kind of instability is frightening. The risk of losing value is so high that only a fool would invest.
And yet in the real world, I'm the fool because if I had bought bitcoin earlier on, I'd be filthy rich now.
Re:What I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And yet in the real world, I'm the fool because if I had bought bitcoin earlier on, I'd be filthy rich now.
This is wrong-headed. When you starting thinking this way, remind yourself: "The best possible investment is buying winning lottery tickets. Not the losing tickets, those are for suckers, just buy the winning ones."
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What I don't understand, is why bitcoin is being valued so stupidly highly. To me, this kind of instability is frightening. The risk of losing value is so high that only a fool would invest.
And yet in the real world, I'm the fool because if I had bought bitcoin earlier on, I'd be filthy rich now.
The question is what's the true price of Bitcoin? Everyone thought that back when it was trading at $100, and now that's a distant memory.
I think I'm going to drop $1000 into bitcoin and etherium, it's money I can afford to lose, but if one of those cryptocurrencies goes legit big time then at least I'll be able to stop kicking myself.
unbelievable (Score:2)
This is forking unbelievable.
for anywone that cares: (Score:1)
Once you realise bitcoins are a commodity.
The coin that wins will be the commodity that is most useful. You need a lump of tin, gold, platinum or perhaps something like silicon instead?
As with most metals they are in small particles with impurities deep in the ground. Then you have to use a lot of energy to extract them in useful quantities and have the right equipment. Assets required to mine bitcoins are a server farm of hardware and a measure of energy.
they behave like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki [wikipedia.org]
The true utility may be (will be?) (Score:3)
You've got to be ... (Score:1)
Re: 8==N=I=G==C=O=I=N==D ~~-_. (Score:1)
In that case:
8> This is white nationalist coin. :D This is alt-right Nazi coin.
Im sure this will get modded down by some over sensitive little Trump supporter.
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Well... Paypal won't take their money anymore. If the Neo Nazi's are already moving their sites to the dark net, it only makes sense for them to start using cryptocurrency as well.
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dammit! I was hoping for a more clever logo. They should rotate the hash lines more like this: =G=oatce Coin