Re: So it looks like Cobra is planning on passing on the Bitcoin.org domain
Hey Cøbra, mucho gusto conocerte. I know that we have had interactions previously, but I am getting to know that you have a lot of nonsense in your thinking.
OK.
Think about it. Your statement is a bit crazy. I accept the idea that no inventor is necessarily going to be able to see several steps ahead in order to know how his/her invention is going to play out or how it is going to be used, but surely Satoshi knew enough about what he was inventing to be able to understand what it was attempting to achieve, so your criticisms of Satoshi's purported lackings are presumptuous at best, and really show your own seemingly lack of understanding of the topic in which you are trying to spout out knowledge.
What's so crazy about an inventor of a piece of technology not fully understand its future implications? There's nothing to suggest Satoshi anticipated these hard fork dramas, and if he did, there was no warning from him, which would have been nice.
Can't really disagree with what you are saying here, yet you seem to be describing a kind of objective value rather than subjective value. Currencies achieve values that are systematic and does not really matter what the individual assigns to it or the various actors within those systems.
I wasn't talking about value, I was talking about attributing the name "Bitcoin" to something. Value is derived from the free market and is systemic as you say, but attribution requires subjective interpretation. Let's assume two chains derived from Bitcoin compete in the free market, with one valued more than the other, you don't determine the "real" Bitcoin from value alone because the market might put a premium on a chain that disagrees with your ideals (e.g. the chain increases the 21M limit).
So there remains a need to differentiate bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies in making this kind of assessment in order to recognize both how it compares to gold and fiat and how it differs from gold and fiat in that bitcoin is more sound than both gold and fiat.. Of course, there is a bit of a spectrum with gold being more sound than fiat and less sound than bitcoin, but some of these matters are sometimes questioned too and speculated on, and maybe that is where you are trying to play out the subjective matters to some extent, which surely cause individuals to act in different ways in trying to recognize the differing values of different asset classes - including assessing how present value might diverge from future value and how others might be getting their calculations right or wrong in regards to future value.
How can you claim gold is less sound than Bitcoin? Bitcoin has existed for a little over a decade as money. Gold has been used as money for thousands of years. In all that time, gold has never really changed. We need to let more time pass before we can even begin consider claiming Bitcoin is more sound than gold.
I doubt that whether any of us is running a node or not is very relevant in terms of our ability to attempt to assess the soundness of the money, bitcoin compared with fiat and gold and other assets such as equities.... bitcoin is more sound, and sure some of that soundness comes from the fact that a lot of individuals can run nodes and make sure... so bitcoin becomes assessed as being sound than gold or fiat.. so we would rather spend our fiat or gold first before spending our bitcoin.. (that is if we have a choice and options and apportionment of different assets in our various wallets).
I would argue a lot more than "some" of that soundness comes from users running nodes and verifying that everybody is following the rules. But again, we can't say Bitcoin is more sound than fiat, gold or equities because Bitcoin simply hasn't been around long, and we need to let more time pass before we can make such claims.
In the end, who gives any shits about your various subjective values. You either choose to use bitcoin or you do not, and you can also choose your level of allocation, it is not an all or nothing decision. I might have 25% of my value in bitcoin, and the other 75% in a variety of other assets.. maybe a couple percent in shitcoins and gold and maybe I have several assets that are tied to fiat values in various ways which might include having a few percentage points in actual cash for a kind of floating balance which is going to vary from person to person depending on a variety of individual reasons including how far they need to project out their expenses (whether a few months for someone who lives with mom and dad or maybe 18 to 24 months for someone who has a variety of complicated business arrangements or needs to support various families), and I might have some property (real estate), so if I have less confidence in bitcoin or where I perceive it to be going then I will reduce my allocations in it or decide NOT allocate into it or to use it versus some other assets or currencies.
I didn't say it was an all or nothing decision, you can allocate whatever value you want into Bitcoin. My point has been that there are possible scenarios in the future where you might have to do your own evaluation of whether something actually is Bitcoin or not compared to your specific subjective ideals.
Again. A big so fucking what? If half of the people use one bitcoin and the other half uses the other bitcoin, then who cares? People can choose to use what they want, and if there is no real perceivable difference in their soundness of money including network effects, then maybe some kind of balance will be reached there in which people allocate 50/50 in each. Most likely with the passage of time, however, one might show itself to have a more sound money aspect which would likely cause more people to allocate towards the asset with the more sound money aspect.. but in the end, who fucking cares if they gravitate or not or if they recognize one for being more sound or not, and even if they pick the one with the less sound money aspect for utility reasons or something, I don't see why it matters. Individuals can decide to allocate however they like, even if they are wrong from an objective viewpoint.
You don't get it. It's not sound money if it can split up in that way, definitely not more sound than gold. You can put all your value in gold and at least be assured that it won't split apart into two competing forms of money. You won't ever need to allocate between two different forms of gold and watch them compete with each other in the free market. Your casual dismissal of Bitcoin breaking into two with a "so fucking what?" shows that you don't really understand why Bitcoin has value in the first place.
First of all, those both should be referred to as bcash variants, and second of all they are NOT ahead of bitcoin in any regard because they are just inadequate imitations (snake oils) that are trying to pose as if they have the same or similar qualities as bitcoin when they do not. They have very few network effects, which also seems to be reflected in why they have way lower prices than bitcoin to the extent that either one might also be artificially pumped up by bullshit smoke and mirror nonsense.
They are ahead in acknowledging the politics more openly.
Too strong of a statement, Cøbra. You want to point out and exaggerate political attributes in bitcoin, when there seems to be a striving to remove a lot of the political, and sure probably the political cannot be removed completely, but that does not make bitcoin hyperpoliticized merely because you are striving to ascribe such a label to it.
Bitcoin extends political disagreements in the community into the money. How hard is that to understand? I'm not exaggerating anything. Go look at UASF, where a small minority of users got together in a movement and pressured Bitcoin miners to activate Segwit with the threat that they would reject their blocks otherwise. Here, the reasonable technical solution to preserve value was to just wait it out. But these users were willing to fork themselves off the Bitcoin network if they didn't get their Segwit activated right now. You won't find this level of naked populism and politics in any other form of money. Can you imagine if a minority of Americans threatened to use their own spinoff version of the U.S. dollar unless the treasury made certain economic concessions to them?
I doubt people are giving as much weight to some supposed hate of Roger Ver as you would like to believe, and throughout this post, you, Cøbra, seem to be attempting to ascribe and fantasize way more about political nonsense than what really exists. Might be a good thing that you are retiring your Cøbra persona, but I doubt that you are retiring your inclinations to overly politicize matters.
It's not fantasy, I'm just telling you the realities of Bitcoin that most people have figured out already but you haven't.
Wrong presumption.
Bitcoin is already a success, and likely if it does not change for 100 years, it will still be a success. That's a big presumption because people and institutions are going to continue to build on bitcoin. Maybe they have to build second layer, but bitcoin is not broken, even if it stays the same forever and ever from here on out.
Bitcoin is already a success, and likely if it does not change for 100 years, it will still be a success. That's a big presumption because people and institutions are going to continue to build on bitcoin. Maybe they have to build second layer, but bitcoin is not broken, even if it stays the same forever and ever from here on out.
I didn't say Bitcoin wasn't a success, but it's a success because of continued change and improvement.
That all seemed to work out pretty well, even though there was a lot of drama at the time. I was there and I followed a lot of it. So, maybe my experience was different than yours, but it seemed to have worked out pretty well in the end in terms of getting segwit and not getting that 2x bullshit. And, also not having to resort to something less than overwhelming consensus to get segwit passed.
Surely, various people are going to get different lessons from that experience, and hopefully, it can help with future situations like that, if they were to happen and maybe how to deal with those kinds of situations similarly or differently depending on how any such future similar situation might present itself.
Surely, various people are going to get different lessons from that experience, and hopefully, it can help with future situations like that, if they were to happen and maybe how to deal with those kinds of situations similarly or differently depending on how any such future similar situation might present itself.
Segwit2x burned out a lot of people, it was stressful and caused massive amounts of harm and distrust among members of the community. We can't go through that each and every time a faction of the community wants to change Bitcoin in some way.
I also want you to pay attention to your language, because the language we use reveals a lot, you say "And, also not having to resort to something less than overwhelming consensus to get segwit passed", does that not almost sound like a legislative battle, something that would be said about a political process? Replace the word "segwit" with "obamacare" and it sounds like a sentence you would hear to describe something that happened in congress.
You can't just bury your head in the sand and completely ignore how political this stuff is. You do yourself a disservice, presumably you have a lot of money tied up in Bitcoin, just like most of us. So you should really know what you're getting involved with here.
Wow, is Cobra alright? 
I'm fine mate.
So, even if there have been a lot of seeming generalizations batted around by categorizing purported political camps in bitcoin, sometimes some specifics might be necessary to call some of the generalizations into question.... so surely, in any case, if we consider segwit as good or bad, we might tailor our views accordingly, and perhaps part of my criticism of Cøbra has evolved into an impression that he is one of the whiners in terms of his having difficulties accepting segwit as a valid transition that had already happened nearly three years ago in bitcoin.. with of course, subsequent and ongoing building upon that nearly 3 year ago transition that has value and establishes our messy bitcoin in its current state of "as is" rather than wishing it to be something that it is not.
I've never had a problem with Segwit, and it's funny how you immediately jumped to that conclusion. You likely assumed that because we disagree on some stuff today, we must also also disagree on Segwit (another thing that got heavily politicized).