
The Bitcoin Apocalypse Is Coming in Mid-November - pk2200
http://blog.rongarret.info/2017/09/the-bitcoin-apocalypse-is-coming.html
======
toomim
This author confuses a _hard fork_ for a _github fork_ :

> The bitcoin chain has been hard-forked at least five times, [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks)

Ouch! Those aren't hard forks— they are forks of the github repo!

In reality Bitcoin has only been hard-forked twice. Once, to fix the bug as
described in BIP 50, and once for Bitcoin Cash.

Here's a better resource: [http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/patrick.mc-
corry/atomically-tr...](http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/patrick.mc-
corry/atomically-trading-roger.pdf)

~~~
Flowdalic
A common mistake made by "self-appointed" bitcoin experts and IMHO a good
indicator for more red flags.

> On one side are those who believe that Bitcoin is … money, currency, …. On
> the other side are those who believe that it is a commodity, ….

That is the other red flag: Trying to construct two different exclusive camps.
This goes along with not mentioning the Lightning Network (LN). Some people
still don't see that LN could enable bitcoin to be both: A currency _and_ a
commodity.

~~~
olegkikin
LN has been vaporware for a long time, and it's always 18 months before it's
ready. Recently the developers openly admitted they don't know how to scale it
beyond 10000+ channels, because they don't know how to solve distributed
routing.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/719vis/lightning_dev_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/719vis/lightning_dev_there_are_protocol_scaling_issues/)

[https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-
that-...](https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-
lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-
solution-1b8147650800)

~~~
Flowdalic
That is a very pessimistic view on the current state of LN. There are three
independent open-source LN implementations [1, 2, 3] out there that are being
worked on and already implement basic functionality. All three contribute to
an document, called Basics Of The Lightning Network (BOLT) [4], which forms an
open standard for LN.

I wouldn't call it vaporware. Yes, there are unsurprisingly open questions.
But nothing which can't be solved.

1:
[https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd)
2: [https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair](https://github.com/ACINQ/eclair) 3:
[https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning](https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning)
4: [https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-
rfc](https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lightning-rfc)

~~~
olegkikin
In the broad terms, how do you even imagine LN to work? Let's say I want to
buy a $3 coffee at some random Starbucks I'm walking by. Do we have to first
open and fund the channel? How much will it all cost just for that one off
purchase?

Give particular figures please, no vague nonsense I hear all the time.

As for these implementations, I will believe it when I see it. You didn't even
try to address the particular issue I mentioned.

~~~
apapli
You could be transacting your coffee with any crypto that Starbucks supports,
and which is compatible with the lightning network. Litecoin will work for
this example.

So Starbucks ask you to pay via Litecoin, which is fine by you even though you
don't have a Litecoin balance. Atomic swaps over lightning network funded by
some bitcoin you own, converted to Litecoin, is how you'll pay for your
coffee.

~~~
olegkikin
What if they only accept bitcoin? That's the case for most businesses
accepting cryptocurrencies.

Both of you are suspiciously avoiding a direct and simple question. How does
LN work on Bitcoin in this case?

------
justboxing
> I am fully cognizant of the perils of making bearish predictions about new
> technology.

> But, to quote another well-worn and wholly unreliable aphorism, this time
> it's different. It really is.

and

>... because the only other alternative is chaos, and probably the end of the
whole Bitcoin experiment.

I'm very much a Bitcoin skeptic, but, I'm not sure this time is different, or
that Bitcoin will die.

For the last 8 years, various sources have been predicting a Bitcoin collapse
over and over again. It's still here, alive and well and quite high.

3 years ago: Business Week - Bitcoin Is Collapsing =>
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893616)

4 years ago: latimes.com - Bitcoin virtual currency is on verge of collapse =>
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7306035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7306035)

6 years ago: theatlantic.com - The Bitcoin Economy Is Collapsing with No Sign
of Recovery (2011) =>
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431092)

6 years ago: Bitcoin & Gresham's Law - the economic inevitability of Collapse
=>
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3623549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3623549)

~~~
wpietri
In one sense, it's already dead.

In theory, Bitcoin is supposed to be a payment system, digital cash. But that
seems to be pretty much dead. Consider the opinion of Fred Wilson, a big
Bitcoin booster, who has stopped using it for payments:
[http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-
system/](http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/)

Merchant acceptance is actually in retreat:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/merchants-arent-accepting-
bit...](http://www.businessinsider.com/merchants-arent-accepting-
bitcoin-2017-7)

It is still being used for speculation, of course. And for some crime. But the
2010 vision of a digital cash that replaces Western Union, Visa, etc? It
certainly hasn't arrived, and it seems farther off than ever.

~~~
espadrine
It was set to die by design.

Bitcoin has a predetermined graph of coin production with time that converges
soon. In 2022, 90% of all bitcoins will be produced, and the ideal inflation
will be lower than most fiat currencies.

But inevitably, people die, and the knowledge of their private key with them,
removing bitcoins from circulation. The amount of bitcoin will therefore
decrease impredictably

All in all, it will be as volatile as currently traded gold (which is not as
good a long-term store of value as fiat money as a result), and slower to use
in transactions (in November, the European Central Bank will launch SCT Inst,
a SEPA mechanism that provides transactions in less than 15 seconds, which is
better than Bitcoin's recommended 2 hours).

Beating the improvements of traditional systems will require new
cryptocurrency designs.

~~~
xTrader
> But inevitably, people die, and the knowledge of their private key with
> them, removing bitcoins from circulation. The amount of bitcoin will
> therefore decrease impredictably

Maybe a bit late, but you finally understood why Bitcoins get more valuable
over time: their number grows slowly or maybe decreases, while the number of
people wanting them increases.

That's why Bitcoin is the best Store Of Value ever devised.

~~~
brianwawok
Ok put your entire life savings in BC, i will put mine in the SP500. Lets see
how things look in 40 years?

~~~
Fjolsvith
How has the SP500 compared to BC since its inception in 2009?

~~~
alexasmyths
The SP500 has been growing consistently, has for quite a long time, and it's a
bet on the future growth of the American economy. There will be ups and downs,
but by enlarge, steady growth.

BTC has been on a wild ride, and could evaporate at any moment. I don't think
it will, but it could, since there's no reason for anyone anywhere to own it.

There's no question the safer bet is S&P 500.

Now - in the range of outcomes, admittedly, the BTC owns the higher end of the
spectrum - no doubt, there are possibilities where BTC completely outraces the
S&P, however, it also owns the lower end of the spectrum of outcomes, where a
lot of those outcomes are 0.

~~~
wpietri
It surprises me to see this downvoted.

One fundamental of investing is that stocks represent an economically
productive asset. In contrast, commodities just sit there. If I buy a chunk of
a company, that company is working to become a bigger, more effective, more
value-generating company. If I buy an ounce of gold, it stays an ounce of
gold.

Index funds represent a broader bet still. Because they're composed of many
things, volatility is lower and you're betting on whatever the common factors
of the index are. So buying an SP500 index fund could easily be said to be a
bet on the American economy.

And in many ways, Bitcoin is worse than gold. The historical value of gold is
known. Bitcoin is new. Gold's floor price is set by the practical use value of
it, both industrial and decorative. Bitcoin's floor price is that of bits.
That is, zero. The gold market is broad, with producers and consumers all over
the world, and open markets in many countries. Bitcoin is effectively
controlled by a relatively small number of people and requires careful long-
term cooperation of those people.

So it seems pretty obvious to me that Bitcoin is much higher risk. Which can
mean higher reward. But as anybody who has shares in a failed startup knows,
higher risk doesn't guarantee higher reward.

~~~
Fjolsvith
I beg to differ with regards to your valuation of Bitcoin. It, like gold, has
a practical use value. It, also like gold, has a value attributed to it due to
it's rarity. However, Bitcoin has an advantage over gold, in that it can be
traded without having to be transported _at cost_. This is why so many people
are bullish on it.

Oh, and so many people "who are in control of it" have too much of their own
money invested into it to allow it to fail.

~~~
saalweachter
The advantage of gold over Bitcoin is that you can evaluate the non-"it's
gold!" uses of gold and make a good guess of its floor value, what it'd be
worth if people weren't hoarding it, and say something like "it might be 2-3x
overpriced right now, but probably not more than 10x overpriced right now". So
you can say, worst case, you probably won't lose more than half the money you
put in gold, and almost certainly not _all_ of it.

What is the floor price of Bitcoin, once you eliminate all
speculation/hoarding?

------
AgentME
As a Bitcoin fan (and someone who owns a little), I think it's a pretty good
article.

Some more tidbits of information from my perspective:

>The anti-2Xers argue that the NYA should not be binding because it was
negotiated behind closed doors, and that a change of this magnitude needs to
be more carefully considered before it is adopted.

No active developers were part of the NYA. Some in the NYA have said that they
agreed because they believed Core was party to the NYA.

>But there is another school of thought, which is that Bitcoin is (or should
be) a currency rather than a commodity, primarily a medium of exchange rather
than a store of value. These are the folks who want you to be able to buy a
cup of coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoins.

I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction
throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has
large costs that need to be carefully considered. The (backward-compatible)
Segwit capacity upgrade just happened, and it takes time for people to update
their software to make the newer more-efficient transactions. (... If the
consensus was that Bitcoin really was urgently hurting for transaction
capacity, you'd expect people to be updating to Segwit transactions faster
than they are now.) The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so
soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly. The idea that it should be
decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.

>The 2X advocates have refused, citing the NYA, and secure (at least
apparently) in their belief that enough people will update their code that
there will be no doubt that 2X is the One True Chain.

Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a
fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and
that none plan on contributing to. Many have said that if Bitcoin "fails"
after the fork, they have no interest in contributing to the Segwit2x fork's
software. (The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years,
politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs
be the target of harassment; imagining that unpaid volunteers are going to
switch to working on a project made by the latest iteration of that is ... to
call it wishful thinking seems too kind.)

~~~
mrb
A block size increase is in fact very _urgently_ needed. 99% of blocks are
maxed out at ~4M weight DESPITE segwit, because segwit's adoption is too low
(7%). Adoption isn't happening faster not because it's unneeded, but because
of inertia among wallet developers. Consequently, full blocks and high fees
have caused Bitcoin to lose many users to alts (LTC, ETH, ETC, DASH...) All
this user loss and tx market loss has been happening over the last year, so we
urgently need a block size increase, since we can't magically accelerate
segwit's adoption rate.

I think you fail to envision how the dynamics will play out if Segwit2x wins.
Core will simply merge the ~1k lines of code that make up the segwit2x
features, and mostly everyone will be back to business running Bitcoin Core
instead of BTC1, since the two code bases would be equivalent. That's it. No
big war. No mass resignation of Core devs. No ceding the control of Bitcoin to
"another group". Most Segwit2x supporters want a smooth "reintegration"
scenario like that to take place. We don't want to "fire Core" or such
nonsense you might read on r/Bitcoin.

Things would be a lot simpler if Core simply agreed to double the block size.
That's all we want. A one-time block size increase, to give the blockchain
some breathing room while we all continue to work on off-chain scaling
(NimbleWimble, LN...) that we all already agree are the proper long-term
solutions.

~~~
beaner
> 99% of blocks are maxed out at ~4M weight DESPITE segwit

Hasn't been true since July: [https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-
size](https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size)

> full blocks and high fees have caused Bitcoin to lose many users to alts
> (LTC, ETH, ETC, DASH...)

What's the evidence for this? All my friends own btc and alts... but none of
them transact in it. They own them only for investment purposes. I don't think
anybody is using alts for their higher throughput.

~~~
mrb
« _Hasn 't been true_»

Yes it's true. I said WEIGHT not SIZE. A distinction few understand. Check the
kWU column at [https://blockchain.info](https://blockchain.info) If a full
node has built a 4Mweight/1MB block, it is full, because non-segwit txs have
wasted the 4M weight quota and prevented the block from growing over 1MB. If
segwit adoption stays low, blocks WON'T be able to grow much beyond 1MB.

In fact the problem is that the rate of adoption of segwit is too low compared
to the rate of increased txs that Bitcoin needs to be able to support.
Therefore blocks are going to continue to stay at or near the ~4M weight
quota.

------
altoz
Opt-in replay protection was merged in a few days ago.
[https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a56...](https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a560ae89c0fcbadfbe73dc)

In any case, if you believe Bitcoin's main value proposition is as a great
store of value, then replay protection simply doesn't matter that much. You
wouldn't be transacting enough to matter.

~~~
tfha
You are right, I suppose because we don't trade gold much, it doesn't make
sense to ensure that it's secure when we transfer it. We transfer it so
infrequently, there's nothing to worry about...

For the opt-in replay protection, that is a proposal which requires people to
update their software to protect themselves. That's unacceptable, many people
are unlikely to even know that a fork happened. Replay protection needs to be
automatic for un-upgraded nodes.

~~~
altoz
If you're transacting with an exchange or a merchant and accidentally send
both coins (as a result of a replay attack) instead of one, they're going to
give it back. It's not nearly the disaster this article makes it out to be.

The only case where this is a problem are business to consumer transactions
and p2p txs both of which you rarely do, if ever if you use BTC as a store of
value.

~~~
tfha
It's not that simple. Once a transaction gets confirmed on one chain, it's
permanently able to be spent on the other. If, due to fees or other reasons,
that transaction is not confirmed quickly, the merchant may not be able to
return the funds.

Also, automated system may have no way of handling it if those automated
systems are not upgraded. Which means a merchant could end up with thousands
of payments that they have to manually fix. And, those merchants will be
forced into adopting the new software to correct the issue, they will have no
choice to o ignore it.

It FORCES every deployed system in the entire ecosystem to upgrade, even
systems that don't consent to the change. That's absolutely unacceptable.

~~~
altoz
> Once a transaction gets confirmed on one chain, it's permanently able to be
> spent on the other.

That's simply not true. If the utxo gets spent on the other chain, the two
coins are permanently split.

> Also, automated system may have no way of handling it if those automated
> systems are not upgraded. Which means a merchant could end up with thousands
> of payments that they have to manually fix. And, those merchants will be
> forced into adopting the new software to correct the issue, they will have
> no choice to o ignore it.

And incur legal liability? Businesses will gladly do lots of manual work to
avoid thousands of lawsuits.

Fact is, it's really only a problem for the businesses and even without _any_
replay protection, they can very easily split coins by using either post-split
coinbase coins or any coins ever mixed with any post-split coinbase coins.

~~~
tfha
> And incur legal liability? Businesses will gladly do lots of manual work to
> avoid thousands of lawsuits.

Pretty sure that forcing thousands of businesses to upgrade their systems to
avoid defrauding users is grounds for a lawsuit itself.

Imagine if Google, Apple, and Microsoft teamed up to make an incompatible
change to web browsers that broke all existing websites and exposed all of the
users of those websites to risk of finical loss of the website admins did not
perform an upgrade.

Who is liable? The admins who didn't even realize an upgrade was required, or
Google, Microsoft, and Apple for creating the situation?

------
freedomben
This is a good write-up. There is an insane amount of FUD surrounding Bitcoin,
and not all of it is unfounded. I certainly hope that Bitcoin gets its act
together, because the volatility makes driving adoption significantly harder
than it would otherwise be.

It has been very interesting to see how he Ethereum has handled many of these
same problems. I would be interested in seeing analysis about the impact to
alternative crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin, if Bitcoin ends
up blowing up over this.

~~~
iopuy
I may not be as technical as the author but I truly believe Litecoin is the
future. Charlie Lee is about the best face of a digital currency as possible.
He's and ex-googler, MIT grad, with a clear vision and an outstanding team.
Like VC's bet on people and not always ideas, he is the one to take us to the
next step.

~~~
gruez
to be fair, part of the reason why there's so much drama with bitcoin is
because it's biggest by market cap. when there's more at stake, people show
their true intentions.

~~~
iopuy
Very true, people often point out that Litecoin will suffer the same growing
pains as Bitcoin as volume increases, and there is definitely an element of
true to this. I trusted Gavin to help guide Bitcoin and since his departure I
have not felt reassured of anyones true intentions in the Bitcoin community.
With Litecoin, Charlie wanted it to be as fair as possible from the beginning.
He refused to pre-mine the coin and repeatedly encourage critical thinking of
coins in general and even advocated for Bitcoin above the coin he created!!!
With the recent events in the Bitcoin community you can understand why people
have flocked to Litecoin. His leadership is direct and highly visible.

------
kccqzy
Personally I’m of the opinion that Bitcoin is already “too big to fail”: there
are so many interested parties and stakeholders who want it to succeed that it
will be kept alive through sheer will, despite internal politics.

~~~
Kelab
So you think Chinese government cant afford to corner the mining hashes?

------
zby
The main thesis of the article is outdated and now wrong - as someone pointed
in its comments:
[https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a56...](https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a560ae89c0fcbadfbe73dc)
All the rest might be interesting to someone completely new to the subject -
but it also contains many mistakes. One is confusing git forks of the source
code with the blockchain forks. Another is his claim that "everyone agrees
that the capacity of the Blockchain needs to be increased" \- bitcoin needs
capacity increases - but it does not need to be on-chain - there are proposals
like Lightning Network that would do that off-chain.

------
kirbypineapple
Bitfinex allows you to bet on the outcome of this whole situation[1]:

> Bitfinex is introducing new CSTs that will allow traders to speculate on the
> potential activation and mining of the Segwit2x consensus protocol. We are
> designating these CSTs as BT1 (Incumbent Bitcoin Blockchain) and BT2
> (Bitcoin Segwit2x).

[1] [https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/221](https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/221)

~~~
awemany
Anyone who wants to invest there should read the T&C very carefully.

See also:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74mgka/why_bitfinexs_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74mgka/why_bitfinexs_chain_split_tokens_are_completely/)

------
Alex3917
The interesting thing is that unlike in July where the price crashed, this
time the price is completely stable despite the fact that it's a much bigger
clusterfuck. It seems like perhaps the "you can't bet against the apocalypse"
rule is being applied.

~~~
nullc
> fact that it's a much bigger clusterfuck

Why is it that people so quickly jump to "markets be crazy" as an explanation
rather than "perhaps I don't understand the situation and have been sold an
exaggerated version by people who profit from clicks or chaos"?

~~~
Myrmornis
Because it’s more exciting / entertaining. Remember that for most people
following these discussions is basically a hobby they do in their free time.

------
shanusmagnus
Despite all the histrionics about 2X -- just read r/bitcoin -- nobody in the
2X movement is a bad actor, they're people who've come to some different
conclusions about what needs to be done.

It's funny to think what an _actual_ bad actor could do to the platform. Every
time I hear the cryptocurrency people crowing about the amazing un-censorable
power of the technology I just smile.

------
rphlx
> ... no obvious way to tell which is the One True Chain.

One obvious way - whether you agree with it or not - is to use hashrate. It's
quite unlikely that both chains will have a nearly-equal hashrate for a
sustained period of time.

~~~
TD-Linux
That's probably a bad idea - miners target profits. There was a lot of
oscillation in hashrate when BCH split - and it had a lot less support. It
briefly exceeded Bitcoin's hashrate.
[http://fork.lol/pow/hashrate](http://fork.lol/pow/hashrate)

------
RyanShook
I disagree with this logic. Plenty of people said that SegWit was going to
cause issues and it didn’t. If Bitcoin fails it will be from external market
pressures, not internal politics.

~~~
kbaker
SegWit was an upgrade though, this is more like a coup.

SegWit2x is basically the mining faction stealing the network away from the
Core development group, forcing everyone in Bitcoin to switch software if they
still want their transactions confirmed.

Not that I really disagree with them - as _something_ needed to happen, as
demand (whether real or manufactured) has led to 100% full blocks for months,
resulting in long transaction delays and high fees, and the rise of competing
currencies, fracturing the market.

We will see if one side backs down before the HF, but due to both incredibly
entrenched positions I think we are going over the edge.

I think that 2X will destroy a lot of confidence in Bitcoin, as it proves that
the network can be stolen away to change the rules, and would be managed by a
much smaller dev group.

Though, the Bitcoin network can survive as a zombie forever with just a couple
miners and zero devs. So it may not 'fail' in that sense, just become very
stable.

~~~
DennisP
The "mining faction" is just carrying out the governance model described in
Satoshi's Bitcoin paper:

"The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in
majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-
vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work
is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the
longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it."

[https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf](https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf)

Just because one group of devs calls themselves the arbitrators of all things
Bitcoin doesn't make it so.

~~~
psyc
Obviously, this refers to how automated ‘decisions’ are made by the software,
and does not mean that hash power gives you weight in social decisions in the
real world. More importantly, there are two levels of decision making that
people tend to conflate.

Hash power is relevant to 'regular' forks, as the longest chain _that follows
the rules_ will be followed. However hash power is not relevant for deciding
what those rules are. That is done by full nodes, whether miners or not, and
doesn’t depend on costly work or anything else. Nodes that don’t agree on the
rules just stop talking to each other, and the network splits.

Then, the final decision about which network and chain trades as “BTC” is made
by ordinary real world consensus, probably mainly among exchanges, wallets,
and users in general.

Edit: Changed 'soft fork' to 'regular fork' because a soft fork is a protocol
change. POW chain-following doesn't even rise to that level.

~~~
DennisP
I actually have a lot of sympathy with this point of view. But there's a
counterargument: if one fork has much greater hash power than another, then
the minority is vulnerable to 51% attack from a fraction of the majority. So
it's not like we can just ignore mining power, unless we make a fork that
changes the hash function.

For Bitcoin, the difficulty adjustment would also need to be sped up, to keep
the minority chain from being very slow for a while.

~~~
psyc
This is all true. The way I think about it is this would be just like any
other 51% attack, except that the motivation is specifically to compete by
killing the former network. But game theoretically, it's still an attack, not
a valid way to achieve consensus. So, as you say, the correct response is for
the original network to hard fork.

To be clear, I'm not saying 2X is itself an attack (IMO, awfully close to
crossing the line, though). I'm assuming that in your scenario, some mining
faction is spending part of its compute on running 2X, and part on explicitly
51% attacking the original network.

------
AznHisoka
the dumb money isnt even all in yet, so how can it be coming to an end? stuff
like pension funds, mutual funds, there isnt even a bitcoin etc yet. Until
this happens it will rise even more.

~~~
betterunix2
Pension funds will not even consider Bitcoin until it becomes much more
stable. Pensions are an _obligation_ and therefore demand much lower risk --
if a 5% change in value in a single day is not considered newsworthy there is
no way pensions will make that investment.

What makes you think the end cannot come before pensions and mutual funds
start investing? What if panic selling triggers a deep loss in value, which
then triggers miners to shut down as the mining reward falls below the energy
cost; if enough miners shut down, someone could pull off a double-spending
attack, and when people see that it will further reduce their confidence in
the system. The result could be that confidence in Bitcoin never recovers.

Or Bitcoin could just be a fad that slows unwinds and fades away, and twenty
years from now we'll all be laughing about it over drinks. I can think of a
few other technologies that were "definitely going to take over" and are
barely remembered today...

~~~
abecedarius
I don't understand quantitative finance, but I had the impression portfolio
theory can find a place for any amount of volatility. If the volatility is
very great or it's correlated with the rest of your portfolio, then your
appetite may be small, but high returns may make it still worth buying some.
Is that wrong? I also have the impression that bitcoin's volatility has been
relatively uncorrelated with other asset classes, so that'd be a plus. (Maybe
I'm wrong about that too.)

~~~
natalyarostova
No, you're right. For portfolios It's all about the covariance matrix. Having
said that, there is probably still the more banal reality of pensions or
institutional funds actually needing a portfolio manager to go out and buy
bitcoin, which probably would be a publicitly/legal nightmare if done poorly,
or if the first person to do it gets burned.

~~~
xbzbanna
On the other hand, if one pension starts a trend, there might be big benefits
to being first in. How do does one fit such outcomes into the volatility
calculation...

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dmitriid
Folks, I give you the disruptive infinitely scalable technology the likes of
which the world has never seen. It will bring down the entrenched losers like
Visa and cash-based economy.

Just hold on tight, let's see if it can survive protocol upgrades and get more
than 4 transactions a second.

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xorcist
The article correctly notices that the market was more worried around the time
of the BCH fork, but misses some of the reasons why. The BCH was a more
credible threat to the value proposition of Bitcoin because the market could
be convinced it was like a dividend to the BTC chain, the market cap of the
latter was clearly at risk.

The design of B2X is based on getting every user of Bitcoin to switch software
before November. If commerce continues on the legacy chain, the value
proposition falls in its entirety. B2X has no replay protection to speak of
and no emergency difficulty adjustment is possible. The market correctly
reflects the probability that B2X will replace BTC. Feel free to bet on it
should you disagree, Bitfinex offers futures trading on BTC/B2X.

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yuvadam
Interesting article, but doesn't explain why the situation is anything close
to an apocalypse.

My only piece of advice is that while it's fine to take money off the table
before such events, pay very close attention to what is going on and NEVER
PANIC SELL. Anyone who has done so before (myself included) has regreted it.

Bitcoin has been pronounced dead many times before and yet is very well alive.

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Vadoff
There are Segwit2x and Core futures, as well as shorts with high leverage. If
the author is so confident of the coming apocalypse, he stands to make an
absurd amount of money if he's right (or lose if wrong).

He should put his money where his mouth is (but of course he probably won't).

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blunte
With estimates of a majority of hash power being from Chinese miners, I wonder
how the recent change in attitude by the Chinese government will affect the
outcome of this battle.

I haven't been keeping up lately, but I would guess that whichever camp the
Chinese miners were in is going to lose, since Chinese mining itself may be
headed for rapid decline.

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pttrn
“Disclaimer: I am not an expert in Bitcoin” -> close tab.

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Kelab
Bitcoin doesn't have a real world use case, the fees is too high and it's too
slow 10 mins

I just went to steemit blog network, now my grandma can use a blockchain

