Quote from: Dorky on April 19, 2017, 09:55:10 AM

Quote from: dinofelis on April 19, 2017, 07:34:37 AM

Uh, the way I understand what you say: the bitcoin price, is the price of 1 BTC in $$, right ? Commensurate, is proportional, right ?
Let us say that the proportionality is 0.0001. Then that means that a fee is 0.0001 BTC, no ? So if BTC = $1000,-, a fee is $0.10, if BTC is $1000 000,- then the fee, with the same proportionality, is $100,- , no ?

Yes, you are correct.

Or do you mean "transaction amount" instead of "bitcoin price" ?

But then the miners will only take those transactions with highest absolute fee, so only the very large transactions. Because for them, at a certain point, including an extra transaction (and risking the loss of the entire block) will not be beneficial any more below a certain absolute fee.

That would mean miners only care about transactions that involve buying mansions, yachts, private jets, etc. No, as long as the fee is proportional to the price of bitcoin, it doesn't matter if they accept transactions for buying a private jet or a transaction for buying an apple. In a block to be mined, the total fee will be a fixed % of the total transactions in that block.

The point is that treating a transaction has a cost in terms of processing/networking for a miner even though it is small, that cost brings in a small delay that increases this miner's chance to MISS the whole block (another miner being faster) and having wasted all the hash rate on it. So at a certain point, it is better NOT to include a transaction with a small fee, and increase slightly your speed of winning a block, rather than to want to get a small extra fee, and risk somewhat more the loss of the entire block to the competition.

And that, only if blocks are unlimited. If blocks are limited to 1 MB (as it most probably will remain on bitcoin), then of course the room is limited, and only the highest fee transactions will ever be included. This is in my opinion how bitcoin's design (with 1 MB blocks frozen in now) is pushing towards the selling of the scarce resource of transaction room, making this an expensive thing. Every byte on the block chain, being scarce, will be sold at a relatively high price: the fee needed to get your transaction included.
The price of a byte on the chain will come from the need of bitcoin holders to do transactions (they are locked into their bitcoins which are worthless without the possibility to transact) versus the hard scarcity of the block size (1MB) which can even be arbitrarily made smaller by miners spamming the chain (which doesn't cost them anything, because they get back the fee they pay to themselves).

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So a miner does not need to have bias on which block to mine. A block may have just 10 transactions involving purchases of a private jet each. Another block may have 1000 transactions involving purchases of a bike each.

Point is that if the block limit remains (I think so), then if, as a miner, you can only place 5000 transactions in a block, you only take those with highest fees from the pool. If there is no block limit, then you will take only those, that bring in net benefit (that is, higher fee than the extra cost of treating a transaction).

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Something like that. But from both blocks, miners will earn similar fee and will have no bias on which block to mine.

Of course they will. The 10 jet purchases are slightly faster to process into a block and propagate, than the 1000 bikes, so you ever so slightly reduce your chances to win the bike block against the jet block.

But essentially, at a certain point, miners will PRE-SELL the room on the chain to the highest bidder.

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Ask yourself this. If you were back in 2009/2010 and you happened to mine 100,000 units of bitcoin (worth $120,000,000 today), will you travel around the world giving talks about how wonderful is bitcoin? Bear in mind back in 2009/2010, 100,000 bitcoins may be worth just $10.

Well, if you think that by doing so, you will rise the price of a bitcoin to $2,-, then you can already do some travelling. But if you can get enthusiasts doing so on the internet, creating a buzz, that's even much better and it costs you less. Libertarians are an easy crowd to get going (I know, I'm part of them).

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Will you fly around the world to give free speeches if you have 100,000 of bitcoins worth $120 mil today but worth just $10 back then?

Who did so ?

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Did you really see it coming? You think everything is coincidence? You think the shadow elites are in power because they think it was just a coincidence for them to be in power?

Yes. There's no such thing as merit, or the intelligence of success. Success and power is a matter of luck. The only "merit" there is, is to recognize the opportunity (which, in itself, is a random phenomenon, the fact that you "recognize it"). Power and success are the result of pure lottery. But people in power like to think that they are special, have a gift, and have the intelligence. They don't. It is a pure lottery. This is why they are not capable to do something intelligent with their power.

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And most dumb thing is, you think some genuine whales would be interested in an almost worthless, useless and unproven digital tokens back in 2009/2010? You know back in 2009/2010, we didn't have as much bullish news of bitcoin developement that we have today. We didn't hear news of so and so corporation adopting bitcoin, we didn't hear news of countries legalizing bitcoin, we didn't hear of news of merchants accepting bitcoins. In that time, bitcoin was almost truly worthless, useless, and unproven. You think a whale wanna take a bet on that?
I wouldn't even want to waste $1,000 even if I was a whale back then.[/b][/color]

Well, there were some believers. There are always believers. But these believers were worth gold, because they were naive, motivated, somewhat greedy, starry-eyed, and could make the message pass that they were going to change the world for the better. The analogy with the internet, remember. They succeeded in creating a buzz, and the time was ripe. The MtGox guy, Karpeles, sleazy business type on the outlook of easy money, saw the opportunity. That's all there is to it.

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If there were powerful dark forces behind bitcoin, they would have twisted Amazon's hand to accept bitcoin: the story would have been entirely different. Bitcoin, as a payment system, is essentially a failure. However, as a greater-fool game, it works marvellously, for the time being, like all greater-fool games, that promise quick riches (and yes, there are a few hundred of quick riches in bitcoin, living off all the donations by the "adoption" crowd).

Things are working out smoothly, not abruptly.

The window of opportunity to rule the world with bitcoin is closing. No 'dark forces' wait 8 years to get their thing going, when it starts to show cracks.

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You are underestimating the explosive combination of useful idiots believing in some libertarian dream, combined with the power of greed and the illusions of quick rich. THAT is the power behind bitcoin. Not "organized dark forces", but an explosive mix of foolish idealism and greed. It is what keeps it up, and this is more powerful than any cigar-smoking "elite" making evil plans that never work out as expected. Greed and naive idealism. What more do you need ? What is better than naive people thinking that their idealistic nonsense is going to make them immensely rich, combined with some smart money that sees the opportunity to exploit this enthusiastic propaganda for making a lot of bucks from starry-eyed greedy idealists "adopting" their new toy ?

What evil elite plans that you even know of, never mind if you know they never work out? If you think a bunch of idiots/sheeps can be so organized and effective that they can make bitcoin to where it is today within 8 years, you are way overestimating the idiots/sheeps. You may believe what you choose to believe. You may believe the idiots/sheeps are transforming into some advanced beings that finally have the tools and power to topple all governments and bankers in the world, that the governments and bankers are just helpless to do anything but tag along like a dog. You may think that way... Anything that makes you feel good, dude.

Occam's razor. If you don't need a master plan, and can explain a phenomenon without it, it is better than to have to think up an inconsistently sounding evil master plan that was too hard to foresee back then, that took too long, and that had too much power on one side, and too many backlashes on the other in order to be coherent.

I don't need a master plan, as the ingredients: naive idealism and greed, are sufficient to explain where we are today.

I don't know how crypto will evolve. I think the bubble will burst at a certain moment, but niche applications will remain. My personal impression is that bitcoin's absolute reign is coming to an end, and that in the next few years, its first mover advantage will have been consumed. The scammy coins in line to succeed illustrate the medium future of crypto, in the line of its evolution during the last years: away from "real world economy" and more and more centered on gambling and trading. I think block chains have shown their limits, and at the same time, their use in certain applications. What crypto turned out not to be, is "money on the internet", except for niche applications, such as dark markets.