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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.
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.
> I assume everyone involved is working toward strengthening the currency as a whole and not trying to undermine it's success.
You assume wrong. Blockstream, Inc, a company financed by the second largest mainstream financial company (AXA), hired most of bitcoin's core developers, and drove off many of the rest. They have roadblocked bitcoin's expansion in order to force transactions "off-chain" onto private settlement networks, the kind that AXA can collect fees off of.
A "block" is a set of bitcoin transactions secured with a cryptographic hash, so you can verify the contents are correct. Until now, the block size limit has been 1 MB. Since blocks are generated every ten minutes on average, this works out to slightly less than old 14.4K telephone modem speed. This is an absurdly low limit on transaction rate, but was not a problem until last fall, when the volume of transactions hit that limit. The core developers had refused to raise the limit, so that instigated the software fork.
Bitcoin is open-source software, so it can be forked like any other OSS project. The split happening today is a simple change to the code, to allow up to 8 MB blocks. That amounts to 107 kbps, which is still well within modern broadband capacity. All the transaction up to this point is identical for both forks, but once the new fork generates a block > 1 MB, the other fork won't recognize it as valid. From that point forward their blockhains will have different histories. Any bitcoins you had previously will be represented on both ledgers, and it is up to the user to choose which software they want to use to handle future transactions.
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.
How will double spending be handled? If my BTC are represented on both ledgers and I spend mine on one ledger, how and when does the transaction show up on the other ledger?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Not really like a split. More like a clone. This doesn't happen in the stock or currency world. Basically you now have two chains that operate on the same history but are now divergent.
I have no idea how the value of this will play out because it will depend on how strong the support is for each. If each gains equal support, I imagine a decline in valuation for both back to "normal". Otherwise you'll have one absorb the transaction space of the other and essentially just eliminate the loser's value overnight, probably. Depending on how long that plays out people are going to be trading on both which means potential volatility.
Popcorn-worthy from my seat.
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.
But my GPU did math for a while! Certainly this is a worthy of exchange for goods and services!
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).