
Bitcoin: Update network descriptions to be more accurate - SnowProblem
https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/2010
======
r3demon
The problem is Bitcoin Core, at least some part of it’s developers, pushing
their own agenda to implement SegWit and Lightning network. Both solutions
have a lot of technical debt and possible security problems, they were
controversial from the beginning, that’s why miners were refusing to implement
SegWit for over a year. Now we have Bitcoin Cash which has solved those
problems in a simple way, at least for now. Bitcoin Cash is more like a
desperate effort to fix the damage done by Bitcoin Core and make Bitcoin
usable again.

~~~
erentz
Stop spreading false information. Segwit is implemented, it’s working. 90% of
the miners are working on the Bitcoin chain which has Segwit. One large miner
did not support it because the Segwit change also removed a bug in Bitcoin
that enabled them to “cheat” with the mining using something they patented
called ASICBOOST. They could use it but nobody else could. So they had a
perverse incentive to block and delay Segwit and Now to promote BCH.

~~~
slindz
And Segwit did not move the needle at all.

The BTC chain is SCREAMING for more transaction capacity and the Blockstream
team is popping champaign (sic) that they've introduced a fee system 100 years
ahead of schedule.

Bitcoin Cash is simply the manifestation of the original vision surviving a
hostile takeover attempt.

How anybody can defend a crypto scaling plan introduced by a Bilderberg
Group/AXA funded team is beyond me.

------
conanbatt
I'm actually surprised at how much bitcoin cash pushing there is. I started
thinking it was trolling and spam accounts, but im getting convinced of
otherwise by now.

Its like a storm brewing.

~~~
erentz
It’s disturbing because there’s really nothing good technically to support it
and it’s highly centralized. If you believe in the ideas behind Bitcoin and
decentralized crypto currencies in general you would in theory be very opposed
to Bitcoin Cash. And if you’re not so concerned about tenants of
decentralization then you’d be assessing currencies more like businesses or
startups: look at the development team, the management, etc. and in that case
there are much better alternatives to BCH. It’s very bizarre and sad for the
damage it’s doing, really seemingly just to enrich a few.

~~~
candiodari
Surely from a decentralization point of view almost nothing would beat iota.

~~~
arcticbull
Surely, IOTA is a pile of insanity, right?

It is still centralized right? [1] The whole thing is still implemented in
ternary [2] for some reason right? Implemented by the people who rolled their
own crypto, then when they - days later - were told it was obviously and
trivially broken (collisions discovered via differential cryptanalysis)
claimed they left it broken as some sort of copy protection mechanism? [3] And
then pretended Microsoft was involved? [4]

The one of which Schneier wrote: “In 2017, leaving your crypto algorithm
vulnerable to differential cryptanalysis is a rookie mistake. It says that no
one of any calibre analyzed their system, and that the odds that their fix
makes the system secure is low.”

That IOTA?

[1] [https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is-
centralized-6289246e7b4d](https://medium.com/@ercwl/iota-is-
centralized-6289246e7b4d)

[2] [https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-
alarming-934f1...](https://hackernoon.com/why-i-find-iota-deeply-
alarming-934f1908194b)

[3] [https://gist.github.com/Come-from-
Beyond/a84ab8615aac13a4543...](https://gist.github.com/Come-from-
Beyond/a84ab8615aac13a4543c786f9e35b84a)

[4] [https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/12/12/iota-
partnership-...](https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2017/12/12/iota-partnership-
microsoft-marketplace/)

~~~
candiodari
Unfortunately they all are. There were 5-6 years when bitcoin actually wasn't
totally insance, but unfortunately the way the "powers that be" (exchanges +
hash pool managers) are treating the rest of us, that ended definitively in
September (actually more like Februari, but ...).

You can't transact in bitcoin, and nothing else has any acceptance ... That
breaks cryptocurrency, so all one looks at is finding interesting toys.

So I guess I'm doing the same thing as all your posts you linked to, I'm
saying "I'm excited, if 'the tangle' demonstrates that it can scale, I'd love
to see that happen".

I would suggest nobody invest in any cryptocurrency. That said, having 50$ of
play money in iota (and others) is both fun and interesting.

------
raverbashing
Yeah the PR tells it as it is

Ignoring btc's problems and calling forks"scams" won't fly for long

~~~
litn
btc has put in some fixes for the problems though, everyone is now waiting for
them to be adopted. Coinbase could cut their fees if they implemented Segwit.
There are more improvements coming like schnorr signatures, and then obviously
side chains. The philosophy has been to try the solutions they think will work
before they increase block sizes. There are good reasons why some forks are
called scams, especially if they are ran not as an open source community but
as a company with a CEO.

The nature of bitcoin makes it one that the developers should be very
cautiously improving and very skeptical of proposals. The linux kernel is the
same way. The high stakes requires everyone to scrutinize changes, especially
corporate backed ones. There are real concerns about raising block sizes as
one of the key ideas of bitcoin is preventing scenarios that can lead to
centeralization. "Core" is a large open source community, not a single leader
who rejected raising block sizes for political reasons.

~~~
nlperguiy
Bitcoin Core developers still didn't implement a SegWit wallet. I guess
Coinbase can't be sure that their SegWit implementation is going to be used
correctly.

------
shiado
"It's no one's fault in particular that Bitcoin's user experience has changed"
\- jlopp . Apparently blocking all proposed changes relating to scaling
Bitcoin and lowering fees is the fault of "no one".

~~~
erentz
Segwit was implemented and lightning is being tested as we speak. If everyone
used Segwit and certain miners weren’t playing games spamming the network to
promote BCH there’d be no problem. There is solid development going on to
improve Bitcoin. All the naysayers who don’t understand the technology and
it’s true long term scaling limits are welcome to go to Bitcoin Cash. But BCH
won’t scale in the long term to be usable as a currency for the 5 billion
unbanked without cutting and pasting the enhancements that Bitcoin is building
right now.

~~~
slindz
Much of BCH's value has been in removing Core's 'improvements' Preventing
Segwit preserves a full chain of signatures on chain. Removing RBF (replace by
fee) has preserved practical 0 confirmation times of a few seconds for small
purchases.

Segwit is not implemented on Core's main client.

Lightning has been 18 months away since 2015. (It is still 18 months away)

Lightning will not work with the current block size that Blockstream is so
fiercely protective of.

Please admit that if a credit card company wanted to maximally destroy the
threat of Bitcoin, the last few years would serve as a pretty good
blueprint...

*Edit: removed word that mangled sentence.

------
aphextron
Can someone suggest a _stable_ priced crypto that is actually useful for
transactions? I have zero interest in speculating on the values of these
things, but I would really like to start using crypto currency obtained from
cash ATM's for all of my online purchases and avoid ever entering a credit
card number anywhere again. Why hasn't that been solved?

~~~
tbabb
If the crypto doesn't have a central bank to institute monetary policy and
manage supply, it's unsolvable.

I feel like a broken record saying this: Demand for the currency will
fluctuate. If the supply is fixed, the price will be demand-driven. Which
means volatile. Fiat currency has a central bank with active control over the
supply, so it is capable of keeping a stable price if the central bank does
its job.

[http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-
money...](http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money-works/)

~~~
Joeri
I have stopped looking at bitcoin as a currency and have started looking at it
as a stock or bond without any backing collateral or assets. The only
particular properties are that it trades in a special way (in fractional
quantities and round the clock) and that the number of shares is known in
advance.

Otherwise it has the same volatility as a stock. It can gain or lose half its
value in a few hours. Just like a stock the way to take volatility out of it
is to diversify.

The volatility has nothing to do in my opinion with the lack of a central
authority distributing it. It has to do with heavy speculation of this
particular stock. Central banks can only correct for long term price
evolutions, not for short term fluctuations.

~~~
tbabb
> The volatility has nothing to do with the lack of a central authority
> distributing it

If you know/believe that supply will generally adjust to cancel demand, then
you have much less incentive to speculate.

~~~
Joeri
Not if you make short term plays. Stock shares are also distributed by a
central authority incentivized to make the price go up and therefore constrain
supply, yet stocks are volatile.

------
LogicalBorg
I don't see what the excitement is about blockchain. Can't you do the same
stuff with SQL?

Blockchain:

* Separates your transactions into blocks and hashes the blocks together.

* Uses proof-of-work to add new blocks.

* Is slow (a block has to be filled).

* Is unreliable (your transaction may be rejected).

* Locks transactions at the block level.

* Easy for user to lose unique tokens (coins).

My SQL design for blockchain replacement:

* Take a database table.

* Allow INSERT permission only.

* Hash each record and insert the hash into next record, which chains them together like blockchain.

* Replicate the database.

This is like blockchain, because it hashes the records together, can't be
modified, and has backups to ensure it can't be modified.

Unlike blockchain, it:

* Is centralized but still has backups.

* Is cheap (does not require proof of work).

* Is fast (one transaction at a time).

* Is reliable (ACID transactions).

* Locks transactions at the record level.

* User not required to keep track of coins.

So what's so great about blockchain compared to this design? The only thing
blockchain does better is that there is no central server, so it's hard to
shut down. But for industry use, no one is going to shut down their intranet
servers. Only criminals need to worry about being shut down.

~~~
noggin
Under your design, it sounds like it would very much be possible to produce a
modified history that remains valid, by repeating the hash chaining process
from the point of the edit. You couldn't do it un-noticed because the hashes
would change, but you would still end up with a valid database entry at the
end.

More to the wider philosophical point, having a single centralised server
means putting trust in a single authority - I'm not talking so much about the
possibility of being shut down (although that ought to be a worry for more
than just criminals) but about the power, implicitly granted to whoever
maintains the central database, to act as gatekeeper.

Essentially, if you're happy having a single central authority (if you're
willing to trust that they'll always play fair, never try to interfere with
transactions, never exploit their position for profit, never deny service to
particular customers) then all the hashing and chaining is a meaningless
veneer and you might as well just use Paypal. If you're _not_ happy with a
single central authority then "Just use a database" misses the point entirely.

