Quote from: inBitweTrust on February 17, 2015, 07:22:56 PM

Quote from: tvbcof on February 17, 2015, 07:13:48 PM

I would say that this is a tough break for Bitcoin, but the story is still in play. When the final chapter is written it may end up the case that the existence, place, and time of Mr. Andresen in Bitcoin's history was key to it's success and/or it's failure.

While he has been a valuable asset to our community, I am not aware that he is involved in any mining thus he has ultimately no say in whether this fork goes through or not.

"The miners decide if a hard fork happens" is a fallacy that has already been covered in this thread.

Quote from: danielpbarron on January 31, 2015, 07:16:10 PM

Quote from: Mircea Popescu http://trilema.com/2015/lets-address-some-of-the-more-common-pseudo-arguments-raised-by-the-very-stupid-people-that-like-the-gavin-scamcoin-proposal/

VII. The minersⁱ decide.

No, they do not. The miners make some minor decisions in Bitcoin, but major decisions such as block forks are not at their disposition alone, and this for excellent reasons you'll readily understand if you stop and think about it.

There are two specific methods to control miners on this matter, which will make the scamcoin Gavin is trying to replace everyone's Bitcoin with only replace some people's Bitcoin. The first and most obvious is that irrespective of what miners mine, each single full node will reject illegal blocks. This is a fact. If all the miners out there suddenly quit Bitcon and go mine Keiser's Aurora scamcoin instead, from the perspective of the Bitcoin network hash rate simply dropped and that's all. There's absolutely no difference between Keiser's scamcoin and Gavin's scam coin as far as the network is concerned : while one's a scammer that I humiliatingly defeated in the past whereas the other a scammer that I humiliatingly defeat in the future, this makes no difference for Bitcoin. As far as anyone will be able to perceive, miners simply left.

The second and perhaps not as obvious has nevertheless been discussed at length on multiple occasions on #bitcoin-assets. Consider this terse explanation from March. 2013.

Quote

mircea_popescu: whoever has enough money to matter is likely to pick one chain for whatever reason
mircea_popescu: since fork means btc can be spent independently on either chain
mircea_popescu: he will sell his btc on one and perhaps buy on the other.
mircea_popescu: as a result prices will rapidly diverge, panicking the mass of users, and the fork is economically resolved.

The situation here is aggravated by the fact that the fork proposed is not simply nondeterministic behaviourⁱⁱ, and so the holdings on the two chains aren't notionally equivalent. Instead, all the holdings on the Bitcoin chain are accepted as valid on both Bitcoin and Gavincoin, but holdings on Gavincoin are rejected by Bitcoin. Consequently, everyone involved with the fork is writing options to everyone in Bitcoin, free of charge. That they have no ready way to finance these should be obvious, and consequently the grim prospects of the Gavin side of the fork should be just as obvious. At least, to people who understand economy to any degree.

To summarize, the miners will mine the chain that makes them the most money. Do you think you can provide more support than MP? The guy is a billionaire.