fyp.

i'd imagine there are waaaaay more people who bought bitcoin at $0.7 crying than there are laughing today

I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to hold through all the events since <$1 bitcoins. Anyone resilient (or insane?) enough not to sell any coins over the years deserves the wealth.

:O

I agree that re-orgs on test net are no big deal normally, but...

When you look at the failure mode you realize that SW soft fork is really a hard fork in disguise. Not only does SW relegate non-upgraded nodes to SPV only, but it also prevents them from mining and prevents them from participating in relaying blocks with SW nodes.

So after the soft fork non-upgraded nodes
-can't validate all transactions
-can't be used for mining
-can't propagate blocks to the majority of the network

At that point, there's not really any functionality left for non-upgraded nodes.

And that's before you factor in the UASF ******edness. The reason chain splits are happening is because a relatively high % of nodes on test net are non-upgraded (maybe 25% I've heard). If you try to do the stupid UASF that people are proposing, you are basically guaranteed to get chain splits.

Where's the FUD in that Tom? Those are just facts.

Good thing 75%+ of the nodes are SegWit ready! If you cannot find a single SegWit peer out of that, not sure what to tell you.

First one - doesn't matter as much because you don't use the feature. They absolutely CAN be use for mining, they just need a border node to protect against invalid blocks. And it doesn't matter one bit if they can't propagate blocks to the upgraded nodes.


No functionality left? You can use it just as you can today.

What makes you think UASF is "******ed"? That's the way upgrades to the network ought to occur. Miner signalling is unreliable anyway. BIP66 anyone? Miners said they were ready, turns out they were SPV mining and lying.


There is little chance of a chain split from a UASF. It occurs if people want it, and miners have a strong incentive not to split the chain. This is done by having a border node (which just about every miner already has). The split only occurs if the miners are suicidal or want to make a power play. In which case, perhaps a split exists for a small period of time and then they realize no one wants to buy their coins. Sucks for them.

Bitcoincore devs on blocksize limit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/com...n_your_vision/

^ I agree with that "current blocksize is too large" fwiw.

Luke knows his ****.

Citation needed. Why 85%? Sounds like a number pulled out of someones...

I'd like to see an actual survey on this. I use bitcoin frequently for poker. Block size has nothing to do with why I don't run a full node. I don't run a full node because there's no need if I'm only processing a few TX per month. I'll let the hundreds of companies that rely on bitcoin run full nodes (miners, wallets, exchanges, payment processors, companies accepting bitcoin, etc).

Xthin and compact blocks changed the system so that this is no longer true. Luke should keep up with technology development around bitcoin.

I don't think that vision of bitcoin will succeed, but obviously that's what the whole debate is about. If bitcoin can't process on-chain TX at a reasonable pace and price, people will move to ETH long before LN ever comes in to save the day...if LN even can save the day.

Interestingly, Luke put out a poll a week or two about on r/bitcoin that turned up the exact opposite result. But I guess listening to data has never been a strong suit there.

Recent results on the test net show otherwise. Not being able to propagate blocks to upgraded nodes can result in a chain split.

Dipped my toe into buying some ETH. Have them on my trezor wallet using this site.

https://www.myetherwallet.com/#send-transaction

Assume these ETH are as safe from theft as my BTC? Also is there a accepted ETH price that is widely used? Not sure where i should be getting my valuation from.

Cheers.

Do you mind telling me how you got them from myether to your trezor? I can't seem to get it. I use my trezor on my ether and see the balance but I can't see the ether balance on my trezor or send them from myether to trezor

Ty

This is just my experience but I think today most people get their USD/BTC rate from bitstamp. Some people use www.preev.com or www.coinmarketcap.com but since China had weird prices people found it a bit skewed.

For BTC/ETH I find that most people just use Poloniex. The are so many arb-bots and since Bitcoin doesn't suck nearly as bad as fiat, difference are so low that there is very little issues with just using this. As for ETH/USD I think most people use coinmarketcap. There is some bias with the korean exchanges, but since so much of the trade is happening BTC<->ETH the influence of this is pretty small. Using Kraken or Poloniex is harder because they are not as liquid as BTC/ETH.

It only works through the MEW website. You won't "see" your ether anywhere else.

Do some research. Trezor has a tutorial on how to generate txns.

https://blog.trezor.io/trezor-integr...t-3e217a652e08

Ye i just followed that guide far as i understand it they are stored on the MEW site but require your trezor passcodes to access. No idea how secure that is why i asked about security. If the MEW site gets hacked not sure how secure my ethers are vs bitcoin on trezor which as far as i understand are more or less a safe as they can be.

Thanks heltok have been using stamp for a while as my guidline for BTC was unsure about ether will check those sites out thanks.

Luke holds a lot of odd opinions, but I'm in general agreement with his overall thesis.

No one should expect bitcoin today to be able to ever scale without a series of hardforks in the future, all of which most likely will diametrically change the fundamental properties of bitcoin that give it value today. In 2017, these properties are:

1- it just ****ing works
2- its ****ing secure
3- it has a known rarity

Now juxtapose those 3 properties (and 10 more you can think of in your own mind) against: Ethereum, XMR, zcash

Its just not technically feasible to expect bitcoin to ever scale today without removing some or all of the properties that make bitcoin valuable today. In 2008, no one could make an argument about the lens of which bitcoin would be viewed from by 2017. I'm being dramatic here-- but the point is that ideas about how bitcoin was supposed to be in the future from 2008 are completely irrelevant today in 2017.

Further, a lot of hardliners and ideologues such as Luke will argue that users are supposed to validate their own coins and broadcast transactions through full nodes. In 2017, bitcoin's entire blockchain is about 120gb with a fixed and known maximum increase in size over time thanks to the blocksize limit. For many people in 2017 this seems overly dogmatic, boring, or downright stupid but the reality for those people whove had bitcoin before 2012 is that this is the method you use to guarantee you're on the right chain, right client, and right network because you've removed all counterparty risk. This is what makes your bitcoin secure.

It should be clear to people by now that bitcoin will never scale without removing some of the critical properties that make it valuable today in 2017. It's a digital currency that is a store of value. If you want to create a network that can handle a ridiculous throughput, dont use bitcoin. No one in 2013 or 2017 was ever going to pay for coffee in bitcoins, and there is no reason that through the lens of 2017 that we should ever expect anyone does in 2027.



edit: because i know the r/btc ******s are out in full force:
i personally do not believe that the blocksize should be 300k as luke suggests
i personally am 1000% against any hardfork that increases blocksize post segwit

hi.

they are not stored on mew.

they are not stored on a website.

they are not stored on your trezor.

everyone's ether is "stored" on the "blockchain"

your trezor has the keys from which you can sign txns and "broadcast" them onto the "blockchain" .

(it really hurt to write that last sentence)

How should we define reasonable pace and price though? Transactions will keep growing until the block is full. I don't know if we can just keep doubling the block size forever.


I remember reading something on twitter by Charles Lee along the lines of there are always going to be tradeoffs among these factors:

1) Cost
2) Security
3) Speed

If we want to boost one, one of the other two has to take a hit. There is no "perfect" solution that is going to make the system amazing in all three aspects.

Soooo when Ethereum or Dash or some other coin can achieve better performance at scale in all three of those areas than Bitcoin, then we should gladly pivot over to that.

Great to see you highlight the real use case of bitcoin- to track numbers and changes of these numbers, all of which cannot be over-written or corrupted without consensus (and that is all! nothing else). Happens to be an extremely valuable system if we decide to peg these numbers to money.


I actually suspect Luke was trying to make a point with the 300 kb to the people who just shout "big blocks" and haven't investigated any deeper.
If I started off being a big blocker and yet am somewhat intelligent, and I see someone that technically sound actually recommend a block size decrease, a position that is so drastically opposite to my own views, I probably would sit down and ask myself if I really understood the problem as well as I thought I did.

So what's the safest play to store ether? Myetherwallet seems to be the consensus pick right now

Ledger Nano S

I also like syncing the blockchain and using ethereum wallet. I wrote the following as a PM to someone

i keep ETH keys on ledger blue. hoping the ledger wallets can support XMR soon too.

i tried the Trezor and myetherwallet this am. worked as advertised. i would consider storing some on the trezor now too.

please check pm

Great post. I think the bolded part is a big part of what the debate should be about.

I think it should be obvious that when the pace = unpredictable, Bitcoin becomes pretty much unuseable for most transaction types, steam purchases, gambling, other internet commerce, and especially LN transactions, as settlement dispute has a time function (# of blocks function more accurately).

If pace is predictable in that it's typically 10 min, and at most ~90 min to find a block and get your TX through, that's liveable for most transaction types.

As for cost, if you're not competitive, people will move on to other things, you'll lose your network effect and Bitcoin will become MySpace. So the question is, what is competitive? That's a different answer for a lot of people. Some people already left because $0.50 is too high. Some think $10+/TX is reasonable. I'd argue the people in the latter camp are wrong.

If TX fees aren't close enough to the fees for ETH and Monero people will switch. If enough people switch, bitcoin will lose it's network effect advantage and will be surpassed as the coin that people use for on line commerce. Once that scale tips, there's probably no going back. From what I can tell from most bitcoin user's I've chatted with, $1 fees aren't close enough. $0.01 to $0.10 fees probably are for most people, so that's my thought on where the line is.

As for security, that's a much longer discussion. Most argue that a smaller block size leads to more security. I think you should actually consider the alternate view, that a small block size inherently has lower security.

If anyone has Stars and wants btc or eth, I'm happy to trade. PM me.

It should also be noted that they are not only competing for the current users but also for users who will be getting their first crypto in the future. An African farmer or a self driving car might have a very different opinion on $1 vs $0.01 than we have.

For myself, I have stopped recruiting people to Bitcoin by giving them $1. Instead I give them Ethereum that way. I find the fee a bit embarrassing when I try to tell people that crypto is the future. Ethereum with very low fees 15s confirmations and soon 4s confirmations provides the wow experience I want when I demo it!