Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin Splits in Two Amid Feud (cnet.com)
Bitcoin is dividing in two. Disagreements about how to operate the cryptocurrency have led to a new strand called Bitcoin Cash, which is breaking off from the bitcoin system. From a report: Bitcoin Cash launches Tuesday in what is known as a "hard fork" from bitcoin, a virtual currency based on peer-to-peer transactions without any central authority or bank behind it. The new offshoot is a response to the increasing popularity of bitcoin, which is struggling to deal with massive numbers of transactions with its underpinning technology. The main bitcoin currency is adopting a system called Segwit2x that moves transactions out of the current blockchain, while bitcoin Cash will use bigger blocks within the blockchain. Bitcoin holders are set to receive the same amount of bitcoin cash as they have in bitcoin if the exchanges and wallets they use support the new coin, another report added. Exchanges including Kraken and ViaBTC have said they'll support both, while others like Coinbase and Poloniex have said they won't, citing uncertainty that bitcoin cash will have lasting market value.
I fixed the headline...this is clearly a shell game of some sort. Someone is going to get very rich and a lot of little folks are about to get screwed.
I must be missing something. I assume everyone involved is working toward strengthening the currency as a whole and not trying to undermine it's success. With that goal in mind it would seem coming to terms over it's future would make a lot more sense than segmenting it's user base.
BTC "wins" because some Chinese mining pools are making money hand over fist from transaction fees. Obviously they don't want that to end. It also "wins" because many people holding BTC don't want the supply to effectively double with a hard fork, as that devalues their "investment".
The ultimate problem with Bitcoin is that it involves multiple parties who are strongly motivated to operate at cross-purposes for their own personal gain. Bitcoin Cash won't be the last hard fork.
Anyone with even a bit of a critical mind should realize fairly quickly that Bitcoin can't work in wide use or long term (and the more use, the shorter the life).
Anyone with even a bit of common sense and the ability to read some economic theory should figure out the financial theory behind Bitcoin is crap and won't work.
Anyone with any understanding of human nature and business should know instantly that centralization and fraud was all that would come of it.
But there's another sucker born every minute, and the Internet lets the con artists reach them so much more efficiently than in the old days. And then the backfire effect kicks in and they dig in their heels even if you try to help them.
I went from curious, to attempting to help those who were being drawn in, to teasing the nut cases... and now I'm at the point of schadenfreude - I just love it when idiots get scammed.
My only problem with it all now is that just because their are rubes to fleece doesn't make it OK to fleece them, nor does it make being a con artist acceptable.
How does a thing like this even work? What I'm reading is that everyone with bitcoin will now have an equal amount of bitcoin cash, and from now on the value of each will be uncoupled. Does this mean in the short run after the split the value of bitcoin is halved (at least), until the market decides how this will play out? What if I don't have a wallet that supports both at the outset, am I locked out from getting my bitcoin cash issue?
I'm starting ANOTHER new ripUoffCurrency.
K Coin now available! Just send you CASH to PO BOX 7184
That's how this works, right? :)
but not much technical discussion... sigh. Is increasing block size much of a solution?
" Bitcoin holders are set to receive the same amount of bitcoin cash as they have in bitcoin IF the exchanges and wallets they use support the new coin" big if!
I predict this will fail.
Still have HOURS-long confirmation times, tiny block size, etc.. makes it useless for F2F transactions, merchant payments, etc..
Not really, And BCC is not a viable solution to BTC's problems.
There's more to making robust network software than constructing a shiny UI or simply hacking operations parameters to reach a higher size per TX; the actual protocol implementation has to be robust to scale with those features and not blow up.
Current NYC maxes out at 7 transactions per second. Visa, MasterCard, etc do thousands of transactions per second.
One of these are the future and it won't be the one where you max out transactions at a mere 7.
If Amazon accept bitcoin it would only ship .5% of what other payment processing. Simply because of the number of transactions that take place daily.
Can you imagine waiting in line at the grocery store for 20 minutes to get a credit card approved? Bitcoin is measured in hours
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Anyone with even a bit of a critical mind should realize fairly quickly that Bitcoin can't work in wide use or long term (and the more use, the shorter the life).
Anyone with even a bit of common sense and the ability to read some economic theory should figure out the financial theory behind Bitcoin is crap and won't work.
When bitcoin first came out, I thought that; I still don't want anything to do with Bitcoin, but, I've got to give it my grudging respect. Not only has it lasted a lot longer than I (or most people) thought it would, it's got quite a loyal fanbase, keeps evolving and growing, and is (in general) increasing in value at quite a nice rate.
No, it can't go on increasing in value like that forever, but even if it only goes another 10 years before it pops, it's been a very profitable experiment for many people and lasted longer than an average tech company.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A reasonable solution is to offer derivatives........a 'sub-bitcoin' offering that is backed by bitcoin, but doesn't require a full calculation on each transaction.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I presume only one fork will really survive. After a period of double-spend shenanigans, I expect the larger block size fork will be the sole survivor. Since it's effectively evicting all of the Chinese miners, some 40% of the mining power of the network, the block difficulty for the new, larger block chain should plummet, making mining far more attractive to individuals again. In addition, the new chain should have radically cheaper transaction fees, which will tend to push transactions to use it. Where the people go, so goeth the cryptocurrency. I doubt even the Chinese population that uses Bitcoin will stick with the original fork; they hate transaction fees as much as anyone else, if not more.
Bitcoin might actually be useful for microtransactions again. Sorry, bitcoin Cash...
a 'sub-bitcoin' offering that is backed by bitcoin, but doesn't require a full calculation on each transaction.
Like put all the bitcoin somewhere safe like Fort Knox and issue paper substitutes?
Bitcoin would disappear tomorrow if there was an actually anonymous (Bitcoin isn't even really anonymous) way of sending literally anything of value. This need is most fervently expressed by privacy advocates, but lets be real: a huge amount of bitcoin's actual transactions are sketchy, and at least a decent number are outright criminal.
So many things about Bitcoin should ring alarm bells. The fact that there's huge amounts of the blocks that have been mined and never moved. The fact that it's set up to be almost mined completely out not merely in our lifetimes, but reasonably soon (unlike, for instance, a precious metal- 70% of all possible bitcoins have already been mined). The fact that there's numerous vulnerabilities if enough of the network is under control of a bad actor. The fact that it markets so heavily to principle-driven libertarian types with an anarchist or minarchist mindset. The fact that the bulk of the mining is taking place in China, specifically where electricity is cheap, and is controlled by a few shadowy men. It's a a goddamned parade of red flags.
And yet, there's still a desire to subscribe to suicidegirls without your wife finding out, and there's still a desire to get weed mailed to you or whatever. So it still has value, because it is providing a market need, even though everyone knows in their hearts it is just like, so fake. Just so super doubleduper fake.
Essentially, yeah, except they will be in some bitcoin wallet where it's possible to verify that no money has left, and the derivatives will be merely another blockchain backed by bitcoin.
It's inevitable that all the strategies used for traditional money will eventually become part of e-coin.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
WHOOOOOOSSSSHHH!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
That doesn't make Bitcoin inferior. It just means you can't use it for tons of tine, pointless transactions with instant confirmation.
If you DO want to use it for that, pay a transaction fee.
People are only forking because they want to have their cake and eat it too. They're even resorting to scaremongering and FUD with the whole spiel about the Chinese. Hint: If the fork takes off, the Chinese farms will switch over and the situation will repeat itself.
Gold was made illegal in the US for decades.
Current NYC maxes out at 7 transactions per second. Visa, MasterCard, etc do thousands of transactions per second.
Just when they were on the point of selling out the first field of black tulips!
Bitcoin would disappear tomorrow if there was an actually anonymous (Bitcoin isn't even really anonymous) way of sending literally anything of value.
Monero is (mathmatically) provably anonymous, provided you download the Monero blockchain and run a full Monero node to send funds (and take the usual steps to anonymize your network connection).
I use a bot that trades bitcoin and altcoins automatically for me, So far it has bought me a new GPU and a PS4 Pro.... So yeah, you're ignorant.
I also paid with Bitcoin, at Newegg.
First how does this split prevent double spending ? Each block chain initially has all the wealth records of everyone. So now if I pay bob 1 bitcoin by posting the transaction to BTcash my wallet over on bitcoinOriginal isn't debited. Why can't I now pay Anna the same coin but posting the transaction on btOriginal?
Second question is about your clever derivative idea. Someone has to hold they key to the Reserve backing the derivative. What happens if they decide to spend the reserve?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Don't think anything flew over the poster... Such a system would still (if reasonably designed) keep most/all advantages with bitcoin while removing the problems of some idiotic* design choices.
(* IMHO, no make that IMAO)
Bit coin is not limited to that rate of transactions. It's rate limit is infinitely higher than Visa. What you are confusing is transactions and mining events. Mining events happen slowly as you indicate. But each event can process an unlimited number of pending transactions. Thus the latency of transactions is ten minutes but the bandwidth is unlimited-- it's like a station wagon full of microSd cards has higher bandwidth than the internet just high latency
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No the block chain just hashes the old block chain and truncated it
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I've often commented to friends that gradually banks will come up with a bank-authenticated blockchain system, where instead of requiring hundreds of gigawatts per day, the banks simply dictate a set of machines which are allowed to do the authenticating. The need for the computational pissing contest is the weak link of bitcoin. It's an interesting experiment, and something that should be seen and watched as just that: a financial, computational, and sociological experiment.
John_Chalisque
The point was not that 'the ownership of gold cannot be made illegal', but rather 'Gold cannot be made illegal'.
In other words, the substance 'gold' still exists, regardless of any law (aside from a global law compelling the nuclear transmutation of all gold). The Gold Reserve Act wasn't the only time that private citizens had been prohibited from owning gold, Eygpt banned it around 1200BC, Sparta around 600BC. But gold still retained value afterwards because despite these bans the substance itself continued to exist. It's very robust stuff. By comparison, cryptocurrency is exceptionally fragile.
Nah, GP, like yourself, seems to think that only the "advantages" of paper money will be "folded" into bitcoin, whereas the rest of us are just sitting here laughing a tech bros once again reinventing the wheel.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
WTF is the underlying value behind BTC (or Ethereum, etc.) other than its own artificially created scarcity? Gold, cars, jewelry and other "investments" have value whether it's aesthetic or whatever, so can usually be enjoyed in some fashion while you own it. And real American $$ have the advantage of being - you know - legal tender for all debts, public and private" so is immensely useful/valuable. BTC, from all I can see, is just fools gambling. What am I missing?
Ripple can do 1000 transactions per second, it's market cap makes it the third largest crytpo and it is supported by international banks. No doubt that is where investors will be headed after pulling out of BTC, BCC and Ethereum.
Bitcoin would disappear tomorrow if there was an actually anonymous (Bitcoin isn't even really anonymous) way of sending literally anything of value. This need is most fervently expressed by privacy advocates, but lets be real: a huge amount of bitcoin's actual transactions are sketchy, and at least a decent number are outright criminal.
Dude, I buy lunch with bitcoin. If that's sketchy to you, how do you justify using actual money?
A huge amount of american dollars' actual transactions are sketchy, and at least a decent number are outright criminal (thinking bankers here). Does that mean that banks, dollars, or bankers are bad, or that only the specific transactions are? And if it's just the transactions that are bad and not the technology, then why make the point at all?
It's the difference between protected speech and speech. Just because people say bad things doesn't mean we must stop speaking altogether.
Does that include such classics as "loitering" and "walking while black"?
Bitcoin would disappear tomorrow if there was an actually anonymous (Bitcoin isn't even really anonymous) way of sending literally anything of value.
BTC should be reasonably anonymous if you take the appropriate precaution of either mining your own currency or paying for BTC with cash. There are also other newer currencies like Zcash that are designed from the ground up to tackle the privacy issue.
Thanks. You're dumb because you lack reading comprehension. The GP (who is me), never said that only the advantages of paper money will be ported to bitcoin. That was your own stupid bias that read that, it's not in the text.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah, I pay taxes on unregulated currency..... sure buddy.
Credit cards are analogous to a BTC exchange. For the majority of their transactions, no actual cash (BTC) is touched; at the end of the month, you pay (or are paid) the outstanding balance. Those sorts of "paper" transactions are nearly instantaneous.
But yes, all crypto currencies are doomed to failure by their very nature. Confirming a transaction has to be computationally expensive or the whole thing is too easy to break. The world is already wasting an unbelievable amount of energy on this bullshit.
Because it's a tangible, physical object in my possession that I physically transfer to someone else's possession. It does not require any 3rd party to authenticate, or verify, and it doesn't get recorded in a public f'ing ledger for all eternity.
Or they could have lost it all, depending on which Bitcoin exchange they used.
What's even scarier is that the price of Bitcoin can STILL swing as much as 25% in a day even now. Anybody who's treating their Bitcoin as a serious investment is smoking crack.
Just goes to prove you don't need a government or central bank to eff up a currency.
Just fork it :)
aaaaaaa
Anyone with an ounce of humility would realize that the behavior of a giant distributed system like BitCoin will be impossible to predict, particularly since nothing very much like it has ever been attempted before at this scale. The only wise thing to do is shut up, sit back, stop trying to make foolish predictions about what "obviously will happen", and watch what actually does happen (and don't invest any money in it that you aren't willing to lose suddenly).
Maybe in another 50-100 years we'll understand the technical and social dynamics of blockchain currencies well enough to make solid predictions about their behaviors. Then again, we've had traditional currencies for several thousand years already and we still can't predict those markets with solid accuracy, so perhaps not.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Get over yourself. I wasn't just talking about you. Take that pedantic shit somewhere where they give a crap.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
DIAF you magnificent bastard. also ltr
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"I love the old dismissive posters who don't really understand the blockchain or cryptocurrency"
There's nothing to understand about the walking train wreck that is a permission-less distributed database (what you try calling a blockchain, but it's not new technology, you're just new to this industry and fall for buzzwords just like any child.) It was shown to be a bad idea in the fucking 70s and it's still bad now for the exact same reasons - scaling and information transfer requirements.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Take that pedantic shit somewhere where they give a crap."
Apparently you forgot where the fuck you are, son.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
If you had bitcoins before the fork you will have them in both branches. If you acquire them in one branch you will not have them in the other. Now one branch will have the ability to do 8 times as many transactions as the other and lower transaction fees. We now have 3 types of coins. Ones from before the fork and ones on each fork. The ones after the fork will have different values/exchange rates. The ones still unspent from before the fork will likely have a value that is the sum of the two. Now if one fork gains more traction than the other that fork will become more valuable. My bet is on bitcoin cash because it is more useful for me. I don't speculate on bitcoin, I don't use it as a store of wealth and I don't use it to measure the value of anything. I use it strictly for transactions, to exchange value with others. The old system was limited to a rather pathetically slow rate.
Bitcoin was mostly safe from a quantum computer since you only revealed you public key at the time you created an input to a transaction. Before that, all people saw was the hash of your public key. Now however when you spend a pre-fork bitcoin on one side of the branch you reveal your public key, someone with a quantum computer could then figure out your private key and spend the bitcoin in the other side of the fork. I would therefore recommend that everyone cycle their current bitcoin in both forks sometime in the next 5 years, just to be paranoid.
Alarm bells of what kind? Whats your hypothesis in the first place? That criminals like money and often have to move it? That power hungry business is done where power is cheap if at all possible? Wow, what amazing insights.
"Being in possession of an offensive wife"
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
I might be movin' to Montana soon
Just to raise me up a crop of
crypto coins
[...]
Movin' to montana soon
Gonna be a bitcoin tycoon
[...]
By myself I wouldn't
Have no boss,
But I'd be raisin' my lonely
crypto coins
Raisin' my lonely
crypto coins
Because it's a tangible, physical object in my possession that I physically transfer to someone else's possession. It does not require any 3rd party to authenticate, or verify, and it doesn't get recorded in a public f'ing ledger for all eternity.
No. Money is not a tangible object. It is a system of accounting. I.e. a ledger. The difference is that it's a distributed ledger, while block-chain based currencies use one centralized ledger (centralized in the sense that all entries are collected together in one dataset, not in the sense that one entity runs it).
The bills and coins you have are tangible objects, but they are not money. They are entries in the ledger.
I see you shilling. Anything except off block chain payments is fucking around in the margins, it's the only thing which can have a big impact.
Pushing increased block size forward is just a silly distraction, that was going to happen eventually any way. This is all about ASIC miners protecting their investment.
No, I know where I am. Doesn't mean I got to like it.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Mod Parent up.
That doesn't stop me from wanting to see a cryptocurrency that gets around the problem using the Worgl Miracle- taxing the CryptoCurrency at 10% per month until that bitcoin disappears, thus freeing its ID to be mined again.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
One good targeted computer virus could eliminate BTC forever.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So which one do we pay our ransom to?
Impetuous! Homeric!
And checks too days to clear. What is your point?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
making tens of thousands of dollars trading BTC and other cryptocurrency
This is called creating a bubble out of thin air. You might make money, but you're doing it by (effectively) taking other people's money. That's little better than a standard old pyramid scheme. Get out while you can, and leave someone else holding the bag.
The IRS says that is income just the same as if you robed someone.