if you're curious about BU's background...
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-unl...-andrew-stone/

this alone is enough to discredit the rest of your post immediately and entirely.

How exactly do banks with little money tied to bitcoin, make money with off chain solutions. Do they essentially start charging a fee themselves on the off chain transactions, then transfer them on chain for less?

My best understanding is there could be a world where bitcoin transactions on the 1MB bitcoin network may cost $100 per. The blockstream channels would purchase one of these, but then funnel say (for easy math) 300 transfers through it and charge customers $1 each profiting $200 on that single transaction. They do this ****loads of times per block over and over.

Overall as a user I see two things but I can't say I'm highly educated. First, these high >$1 fees are so ****ing pathetic and not how I envision bitcoin. Second, I've never understood why SW and an increase in size in the mean time can't work together. And they'd work great together since they'd multiple through afaik. Why people on both sides are so polarized makes no sense to me.

I do have a question for anyone though: If BU comes through and smashes the mining majority essentially collapsing Core overnight, what happens to Blockstream the company and its $75m (or whatever) of VC?

Honestly I think it sounds like a ****ty solution. I can see why miners would be pissed, it would kind of be like hijacking bitcoin. However the miners need to get there head out of there asses and realize this type of stuff will happen if you try and charge alot per transaction.

The way the whole system works is the miners will be working for miner fees in the future so if you cut them out, you lose the network. Essentially grouping transactions could be never ending. Like someone groups a bunch then makes a transfer to someone else who is collecting a bunch of grouped transfers, then they transfer to big wig who then groups a bunch of grouped grouped transfers then puts it on the blockchain.

The more I see the weird situation this is all in, the more I like ETH. They have a proposed solution for everything. Doesn't mean they will be able to do it, but at least they have a shot.

If ETH does do everything the only reason I can think of to use btc is to escape volatility and store funds in BTC like people do gold. However if eth becomes big enough that people do that, it may becomes less volatile then BTC, so then there would be no need for it.

I think a couple of things:
First, most of them have verbally committed to keeping alive the minority fork of bitcoin core, so I'm guessing the minority fork will hang on longer than it should out of spite.

Second, I'm guessing BS will continue to develop a lightning network for use on bitcoin or on Litecoin. As noted by just about everyone, even with on chain scaling, bitcoin will still probably need 2nd layer solutions. The only difference is that there's significantly less value in it short term (like the next 5 years or so). Since 5 years is a long, long time in VC money, the probability that the BS founders/shareholders get filthy rich diminishes greatly.

In the end, the BU chain will implement a transaction malleability fix, Lightning will happen someday, bitcoin on chain fees will drop back to manageable levels and remain there for the foreseeable future. The initial shareholders of BS will probably get washed out with future rounds of financing, but eventually someone will make a bunch of money off it.

Once again.. how in the hell could the etf get approved if they are talking about splitting it very soon. Etf has stated they will follow the majority chain. Didn't say anything about giving people the 2nd coin. It's just a **** show. Still don't known why the **** I don't unload right now.

There may be a problem with this. If the miners decide to switch over to BU once 75% has been reached, then more may follow bringing the mining majority to hypothetically 90%. It would then take, again hypothetically, not 14 days to lower the hash rate but 140 days and during that time blocks would only process once every 100 minutes which I think kills core nearly instantly. They would have to be really damn stubborn to continue on in cases like this which I think are relatively probable. In this situation, I'm confused as to how Blockstream continues because its a lot of money/time/research sunk into a product that seems dead.

I'm all for employing multiple solutions. I think 2nd layer solutions, as an option, is a great idea. I don't know why so many people are such dicks about only allowing people to do one thing. Larger blocks, SW, 2nd layer solutions (when they are ready for deployment) and letting people choose among the options for using bitcoin based on their strengths/weaknesses depending on their situation seems all too practical to me.

Perhaps, on reflection, we are just running into big business/big government type problems where a lot of theoretical ideas make a lot of sense but there is too much corruption and inefficiency running amuck for sane common sense ideas to exist.

FWIW I bought more BTC today.

Being 'dicks' is an inaccurate tool for predicting what people will do.

The same immutability that protects the total emission (21 million) as a scarce economic resource now protects a new scarcity, room on the chain.

Segwit is very unlikely to go through without some centralized force pushing it.

BU could fork any time they have 5-10%. If they haven't yet they are unlikely to.

I can't believe people actually think BU is a good idea.

Anybody know if sec usually reports in the am or what? Will be interesting to see if BTC rallies as the day goes on as there's less and less chance to get a no decision. Will also be interesting to see how the markets act on a silent pass because of the uncertainty in the fact that Monday is actually the last day. You'd think the sec would put out a yes or no to keep any confusion from happening.

A 'source' said the SEC will decide on Friday. I really don't see a no decision happening by the end of Monday.

http://www.coindesk.com/sec-decide-b...f-fate-friday/

I just hope it happens when I'm free and not tied up with stuff.

Nothing happens tomorrow until 6pm imo.

I'll take the under

Why would they wait till 6? They don't work normal business hours?

BU is a terrible idea. Bigger blocks itself isn't that bad (in fact: segwit is a blocksize increase too.) Just the part where they change "consensus" (a CRUCIAL part of bitcoin) to miner-decided "emergent consensus" is a huge security risk and risk for decentralization of bitcoin.

I will sell all my BUcoins the moment they are on exchanges. I know a lot of Bitcoin Core supporters who would do the same. Of course Ver&Wu might do the opposite. And for sure traders will take the opportunity to just short it all. Overall it will be a complete mess and a huge loss in value.

Anyone comparing this to ETC and assumes it will be okay, is very naive IMO: 1) the community was divided MUCH less on Ethereum 2) the economic usage on Ethereum is MUCH less (replay attack losses were limited to Coinbase AFAIK) 3) Ethereum positions itself more as experimental while Bitcoin investors assume more security. A blockchain split on Bitcoin will be much worse IMO.

The BU crowd seems to be driven by idiotic conspiracy theories. All BU supporters in this thread seems to give "Blockstream" as argument which is just stupid/naive:

Someone has a ELI5 link that explains the war going on about the protocol?

So what happens to the short-term eth price when the ETF announcement comes out?

wow... nice candle forming .... today is going to be funny

holy **** what a pump

Assume a 6+ hour wait now. Still taking before 6pm.

If the sec doesn't say anything, it has to be the most uncertain time ever as Monday has been said to be the final day, so no one can really bank on it being approved. Does the sec just like to **** with people? I mean they clearly know which way they are going and know it's been hyped, why the **** not just come out and say it. When did they announce the delays?

BU pretty much fights any peer review. Their entire process is closed and subject to vote from closed membership. No one serious reviews their code anymore since any time a problem is found, they reject it. The premise is utterly broken so reviewing really wouldn't do much good anyway.

Conspiracy theorists are fun. This has no basis in fact. LN is decentralized and open-source. Users are the only beneficiaries here. No one can extract profit from this. You've been had.


Pretty much this.