Quote from: johnyj on December 29, 2015, 04:29:19 AM

Quote from: VeritasSapere on December 29, 2015, 03:40:02 AM

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And just because of this, anyone who understand a little bit more about bitcoin will strongly against it. So they will prevent the hyper inflation by instantly sell the weaker fork into alt-coin level value and once that coin's value has crashed, miners will immediately leave it due to the loss of mining worthless coins, it will end pretty quick

You are wrong, first of all when Bitcoin splits it does not increase the supply of Bitcoin, that remains the same, they just become two separate currencies. In the same way that the Zimbabwe dollar does not make the US dollar more inflationary, and altcoins do not make Bitcoin more inflationary.

Such a fork can only really take place when there is a fundamental disagreement, I am not sure what you are even suggesting as an alternative, the tyranny of consensus? I even expect Bitcoin to split, if not over this blocksize debate then it will be over something else in the future, I see this as being of political necessity.

If you truly believe that Bitcoin would be broken when there is a split then you should probably leave now, even a minority could bring about a hard fork and a split and there is nothing any one could do to stop it. According to your own logic Bitcoin is therefore already broken.

It is also wrong that you say that people are forced without their consent, this process of hard forking is exactly what allows Bitcoin to remain voluntary and consensual even when developers make controversial changes, people can choose not to adopt these changes, or conversely introduce changes that the "reference client" refuses to merge. It is this mechanism that ensures the continued decentralization and freedom of the protocol, it protects against the tyranny of the majority and minority, it protects our right to self determination. If it was not for the ability to hard fork and split I would not even be interested in Bitcoin, since for me it is this that solves some very fundamental governance issues.

The ability to hard fork is the very mechanism that is meant to keep any development team in check. If you think that hard forks and the possibility of splitting are the equivalent to mutually assured destruction, then you basically end up with centralized technocratic control over the protocol by Core. What I am suggesting is decentralized governance of the protocol through proof of work, the ability to hard fork is critical in this conception.

One of the things that I always loved about Bitcoin is the concept of "trust" without centralized authority, and that Bitcoin is freedom. If what you are suggesting is true then Bitcoin would no longer represent these things, fortunately I do not think that you are correct and I am confident that the original vision of Satoshi will triumph.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

It is very misleading claim that bitcoin users do not need to trust centralized authority, in fact every one uses bitcoin is trusting this centralized protocol originally designed by Satoshi: Every miners, nodes, exchanges, merchants, users, no exception

The difference is that there are not any people at the center of power, the power to change the rules of Bitcoin should be determined in a bottom up fashion, not top down.

Quote from: johnyj on December 29, 2015, 04:29:19 AM

You can use what ever alt-coin you like, but those coins do not have any meaningful value, because they are inflation in cryptocurrency world. In order to have limited total money supply, you can not have more than one coin, otherwise there will just be endless inflation in the name of fork freedom, what is the purpose for anyone participating in such endless money printing game?

You say that we can not have more then one coin yet the reality at the present time contradicts this statement. The advantages of fork freedom outweigh the benefit of one for all, how could everyone possible agree with the economic policy and features of Bitcoin, I think this idea borders on totalitarian, the existence of altcoins are in the spirit of decentralization and freedom, it is what guarantees that the cryptocurrency revolution will live on, no matter what happens to Bitcoin.

If you think that everyone has to ascribe to the same view points and beliefs then you are mistaken, not everyone agrees with deflationary economics for instance, some people might prefer a 2% inflation on a proof of stake currency for several reasons. I like Bitcoin do not get me wrong, but we are in a situation now where there are irreconcilable differences which can not be resolved. The only way to solve this if consensus is not found is to split, unless you suggest that one side needs to lose and leave Bitcoin, or live under rules that they do not agree with and a vision then they might not have originally signed up for. That does not sit right with me if Bitcoin is meant to be freedom.

Another alternative is that one side moves out of Bitcoin into another cryptocurrency, obviously neither side would want to do this, already being invested in Bitcoin, with the advantages of name and network effect. This is why splitting under this scenario is the more fair solution. If you insist on the altcoin alternative then it can be argued that the side which upholds the original vision of the project should stay, which is to increase the blocksize, otherwise it can be argued that by not increasing the blocksize Core is breaking the social contract. Changing the vision and underlying nature of what people initially signed up for. Obviously the ability to hard fork elegantly solves these problems, which I think is one of the greatest innovations in Bitcoin and possible governance for a long time.

Quote from: johnyj on December 29, 2015, 04:29:19 AM

And the analogy of Zimbabwe dollar vs US dollar is wrong, since they are two different economy. Now we are talking about increase the money supply in existing ecosystem, equal to double the amount of USD in US. It is not another alt-coin, because all the pre-fork coins can be spent on both chains, thus a double of the existing coin supply overnight, but you can not double the economy overnight, so the result is a total crash of the whole monetary system or one of the fork die immediately

Cryptocurrency is part of the world economy, this economy is vast and Bitcoin is just a small drop of water in the ocean of this capital. Bitcoin is growing and an exponential rate, in almost all of the metrics. It is not true that there is a finite amount of capital in the cryptocurrency market, price discovery also does not necessarily work this way either.

You are incorrect, the coin supply is not doubled, the currency splits and becomes two. So for instance in the case of a split there would be fifteen million coins in BitcoinA, and fifteen million coins in BitcoinB. Another example would be the existence of Litecoin, Litecoin did not increase the supply of Bitcoin right? I am starting to think that you might not understand how this would work. Another example, if I had one Bitcoin before the split. Then after the split I would have one Bitcoin in both chains, however I would only be able to spend one Bitcoin per chain, the total supply of the individual chain is not increased.

The monetary "system" will not crash overnight as you claim, this is not fiat. Even if the price went down because of this it would recover eventually and the two chains would gain market cap based on their own merit and utility. I certainly would not leave Bitcoin. If anything I would become more bullish because for me this would mean that Bitcoins governance mechanism has succeeded and proven itself to function.

I do think in the case of such a split the most likely scenario is that only one chain would survive, however in the case where there is a sufficient enough division, I do think that both chains could survive and that this would be a good thing. I find it hard to understand your opposition to this considering that this is just a reflection of peoples free will.

Quote from: johnyj on December 29, 2015, 04:29:19 AM

Regarding the governance of the protocol, I think it is not very difficult to reach a consensus if it is a simple fact and everyone understand it. However if you go the radical or complex route, then your fork will just become orphaned

BIP101 is rather simple really which is one of its advantageous, Bitcoin Unlimited might be complex to understand in terms of all of the game theory, code and economics, however the underlying concepts are actually rather simple to understand, just like the Bitcoin protocol itself. Everyone has the freedom of choice.