Blocksize isn't about pace or price of transactions. If the blocksize has an infinite size, it will always just keep increasing with sh*t transactions. In theory the ideal blocksize would be the biggest blocksize possible that doesn't negatively affect full nodes (and miners) as technology advances (both hardware and software.)

IMO the most rational thing to do is: activate SW as "quick" safe soft-fork (needs only some weeks if miners support it.) Analyze how the effective 1.85MB blocksize increase affects the network after some weeks/months (less/more nodes, transaction/block propagation, how many transactions, etc.) See if Lightning (and other L2 tech) works practical and will really help for micro/small payments (and what effects it has on the blockchain/transactions.) Partly based on that data, make a dynamic blocksize increase with a safe HF (long activation time, high signaling requirements, etc.)

TBH it seems rather obvious to go that path. Too bad that there are still irrational people supporting a completely reckless EC proposal that gives all power over the blocksize to just some miners, will never get majority support from the community and will be guaranteed to cause an undesirable split. Mainly because they believe some boring/false "Blockstream conspiracy theories". The BU/EC crowd is effectively blocking scaling solutions at this point.

So you are denying that intrinsic value exists? Thats, an...interesting perspective...........

p.s. those homes don't have a market value of $0. that's just the part that goes to the present owner. the costs you agree to pay are also part of the price: property taxes, etc.

I'm not. But I was secretly hoping someone here would talk me out of that.

However when denying intrinsic value exists and lologic like this:

are the only arguments you guys can make -- I think I can be reasonably confident I've made the correct decision.

Will BTC go to $2,000 or more? Maybe. Just like I might win if I put it all on Red. That's not the point. I want to make sound investments, not get lucky and win.

No just that it is not a very useful semantic expression. I just saying that price is mostly set by supply and demand. Fiat, Bitcoin etc have very low intrinsic value, still they are very valuable because they have a high demand and limited supply. Water is very valuable in the dessert but not in the jungle, but the intrinsic value is the same in both places, it's just water.

If SW soft fork gets activated:

1) How long do you think it will take after activation for fees to become competitive again? (let's use <$0.05 as a generous definition for competitive)
2) How long after activation do you think it will take for TX backlogs to disappear to where if I pay a $0.05 TX fee, I will be assured of getting into the next 1-2 blocks?
3) How long do you expect that bitcoin will maintain that level of competitiveness before slipping back into the problems that it has now?


My guess is that with SW, 1 and 2 might not happen and in ~6-8 months we will be right back where we are now. I'm basing this on the historical growth rate of transactions on the bitcoin network, which has followed a largely predictable pattern.

If my guess is at all in the ball park, then it's not worth making everyone important in the bitcoin space upgrade their software for SW when they will need to re-upgrade their software again in 6-8 months to a better solution.

That means we're doing 2 major forks within a year when we've already said doing forks that require virtually everyone to upgrade their software in a short amount of time is hard.

seqwit isn't a scaling solution. its just touted as one sometimes to appease big blockers. the benefits of segwit go beyond bumping block size and tx/s by 2x.

I'm looking to have my withdrawal limits increased on poloniex and they want to do a video interview to have the compliance officer ask me some questions. I'm guessing what I do for a living will be one of them. Is polo under the same constraints as the others when it comes to gambling? Just wonder if it's ok to say poker or not.

Saying poker couldn't possibly be better than lying. Just lie.

Just say you're an free lance investment consultant or something. Should be fine.

From Bifnex website

"For example, Bifinex has decided to take a different approach than the one proffered by Poloniex."

"After much analysis, we have chosen to handle the accounting of margin trading and funding based on the model of how stock spinoffs, dividends, and distributions are handled in equity markets. Specifically, in the case of a hardfork event, lenders will receive both BTC and BTU"

Holy **** you have to be kidding me. Their dumb ****ing reasoning for what they did last time with ETH/ETC was "because this is what poloniex is doing!" Even though it went against all logic, Polo was doing so they did. When I look back now that ETH has done so well it's cost me a **** ton of money.

Can someone explain the basics of Rootstock (RSK) & lumino without getting too technical?

My understanding is that it is effectively a sidechain intended to be run by trusted third parties (current estimates there to be 50, including Xapo and Bitpay) to facilitate the BTC transfers.

"In addition to RSK’s advanced smart contract capabilities, the sidechain also has the potential to decrease the transaction burden on the main Bitcoin blockchain. “We have the Lumino Transaction Compression Protocol (LTCP), which allows 2,000 transactions per second on chain and the Lumino Network which will allow up to 20,000 transactions per second off chain,” said Kurman. “Every single developer is going to be able to plug in, and run their contracts. It’s going to operate against the Bitcoin testnet for a month approximately, and then we’re going to apply [it] to the Bitcoin mainnet.”"

https://bravenewcoin.com/news/ethere...tcoin-in-june/

"To that end, the firm last year raised a $1m seed round and gathered 25 bitcoin startups included Bitfinex, BitPay, Bitstamp, BTCC and Xapo to commit to helping develop bitcoin smart contracts via its sidechain solution."

http://www.coindesk.com/rootstocks-m...tracts-effort/

We also know Jihan Wu is a major investor. So RSK seems like this will have support from the big merchants, exchanges, and miners. And deployment is expected in June.

I am curious why this is not super bullish or being discussed more? I've also read that RSK supports segwit activation to enhance the sidechain.

Can someone explain to me what is going on with the Bitcoin blockchain right now?

Why is the number of unconfirmed transactions and the backlog increasing so much?
https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Why has the number of new blocks and transactions fallen off a cliff on these charts?
http://blockr.io/charts

I have sends from a few days ago that are still unconfirmed and showing as pending. Can someone explain to me what is happening? Thanks for the help.

Zenzor, it is bullish. part of why a bitcoin is worth >$1k usd.

bb, variance. when confused, zoom out. Post the transaction ID of pending tx and we can take a look. maybe calculate your fee based on satoshis/byte and see how it looks compared to the mempool stats (https://bitcoinfees.21.co/)

https://blockchain.info/tx/8ee26bfe5...c7c74e74a7cc7c

It looks like 120 sat/B was paid so I would think this should have gone through quite some time ago?

I have a few more similar transactions.

I don't know much about RSK, just learned about it, but how does it work? Do you have to send your transactions to RSK or something. Like if I want to deposit money on an exchange what would be the process?

Not gonna lie, I went major overweight in ETH because of the issues with BTC being slow and expensive. It has paid off big, but if this RSK makes bitcoin compete again, there's not going to be much reason for people to switch to ETH. Granted I know ETH has a million other things going for it, my fav is proof of stake, but that's not 100% to work. I just moved some ETH to BTC, I'm now 70% ETH, 30% BTC.

If ETH gets a sky is falling reaction to this I'll def be looking to add. This is the type of stuff that gets you the pullbacks people have been waiting for.

I've only heard about it recently as well. I am hoping TC or NLNico or someone more technical can elaborate on its features.

First off its worth mentioning that RSK will be compatible with everything developed on ethereum.

My understanding is that RSK is a semi-federated sidechain of Bitcoin. The "onramp" to transfer Bitcoins to the RSK sidechain in exchange for "smart bitcoins" is operated by a selection of 25 of the "leading bitcoin operators" -- mostly exchanges. The coins on the Bitcoin blockchain are held in a multi-sig wallet with keys held separately by the federation and the miners.

Contracts require pay for storage for using the RSK chain, and fuel is expected to cost 1/10th of what it costs on Ethereum.

I have read about the RSK economic incentives that may satisfy all parties and actually get this thing adopted:
- 80% of fuel fees goes to miners
- 18% of fuel fees goes to RSK investors (Jihan was the #1 investor in the last round of funding)
- 1% of fuel fees goes to federation members
- 1% of fuel fees to full nodes on the sidechain
- Possibly a reward for full nodes on the BTC network

Another benefit for miners is that RSK can be merge mined with ASIC hardware.

RSK plans to launch its public testnet on May 22nd- day of the Consensus 2017 conference.

Fwiw I probably have like 80% of this stuff wrong. I haven't found ELI5 explanations of RSK anywhere

I don't know if I'm understanding it correctly. Crazy how much **** they'll pull out of their ass. If they are basically selling you funny money for bitcoin and holding the keys to them, I'm not impressed. It's stuff like this and hard forks when you start to realize how non-intrinsic cryptos are.

Short-term I am debating whether to FOMO the RSK speculation before it begins.

The market is desperate for news of transaction relief that is not a contentious hard fork. If RSK is a solution that is mutually beneficial for miners and exchanges, which it appears to be, then it should be extremely bullish.

The success/failure of RSK imo depends on user adoption. Obviously the exchanges are supportive and it would shock me if most Bitcoin holders actually give a **** about trustlessness. Most people have their coins stored on web wallets and exchanges ffs.

What I am curious about is whether RSK will make micropayments possible again.

I'm on the sidelines right now, but I am very intrigued by the potential impact RSK can/will have on price. There just isn't enough information available about it yet, and perhaps there wont be until May 22nd.

I need to look into it more but isn't RSK still on chain? How does that speed up confirmation time..

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk

I'm not arguing. The subject has been beaten to death in this thread. Most bitcoiners are tired of it, which is why not many people respond to your posts. There are more interesting things to discuss and debate then if ethbtc thinks Bitcoin is a good investment.

I think the crypto market in general just has a massive bull market ahead of it. It is almost feeling kind of bubbly right now just like it did back when BTC made it's first and 2nd "bubble" to 220 and 1200 or whatever it was. Random coins would go up 100's of % on nothing with everyone hoping to catch the next bitcoin. The exact same thing is happening now. Only now it's narrowed down to a handful of coins.

Like I wake up and LTC has been stagnate for years and out of nowhere it's up 100%!?!?! Ripple same thing, up over 300% over short period of time after being stagnate for years. I don't think it's a bad thing, it means money is flowing in. The coins that actual get used will stand the test of time. So what's different about now and then?

Well everything has matured a bit with now having exchanges all over the world. The BIGGEST difference is BTC is at full capacity, in that people/companies are actually using it. That right there is what allows for this time to be different. It's no longer pure speculation.

Back in the day I made a bunch of money in BTC and cashed out to USD. Now I made a bunch on ETH and cashed some out to BTC. I think that goes to say a lot.

On a sidenote, what the hell else is there to invest in? Everything seems so overpriced and overvalued. The housing market is high so you can scratch trying to make money in the rental market. The stock market is high. You can pay $20 bil for snapchat though if you want.

To me, cryptos seem to be not only the most undervalued "asset class" I can think of, but the only not over valued asset class. Makes for pretty explosive possibilities.

Just wanted that I am very impressed by your work for geting the Bitcoin logo at /r/place =)

I'm still trying to understand it myself.

RSK is definitely a sidechain (drivechain, altchain, idk).

I know you receive "smart bitcoins" as they are called on the RSK chain by sending your Bitcoins to a wallet held by a federation member (currently 25 exchanges are expected to be federation members). Your Bitcoins and Smart Bitcoins are linked via some sort of 2 way peg. It's estimated to take around 6 hours to receive your smart bitcoins. However once on the sidechain, transactions are virtually instant.

The economic incentives align interest from all the exchanges, businesses, and miners. Jihan is a major investor in RSK, so he earns $ from transaction fees merge mining both chains, and investors get 20% of fees on the sidechain. I assume RSK will require more hashpower(?) which may boost his hardware sales, too.

Anyway, I do not understand it too well. There's no RSK ELI5 version anywhere (would greatly appreciate if anyone here can give one), but it sounds very promising.

When thinking about 1mb vs BU
or
segwit vs BU
or
whatever vs whatever

think about this:



http://tomtunguz.com/when-to-sell/

guess which chips they are talking about.

this is huge. like gigantic huge.



https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pi...il/013996.html

Deleted;

Answered my own question.