Quote from: nanobtc on Today at 04:26:58 PM

jbreher and I have PM a few times. He owns some historic world-class music instruments. You have heard it on famous recordings.

Just some grudges here. More about the FUD on Segwit’s security than anything else. Although I do not regret any of my opinions about jbreher, I regret having brought it up now if it’s irritating some decent folks here. I was just tossing Jay a zinger, not discussing a current-events issue on which I would pull no punches with my opinions.

Quote from: JayJuanGee on Today at 03:56:30 PM

I am not sure how fruitful it is to remember who said what in terms of the blocksize limitation wars, even though surely from time to time it does come in handy to see those kinds of historical stances that various people/businesses took.

Hahah, Jay. Funny to see ~~you~~ uie-pooie feeling that I am too merciless and unforgiving towards the biiiiiiiig blocker. Wink

Quote from: AlcoHoDL on Today at 04:42:08 PM

I believe/remember that jbreher had done some mathematical calculation that showed that, at the current (small block) transaction rate (transactions per second—tps) it would take several decades for the entire world population to own BTC on-chain. I think it was a simple division operation, dividing the world population by Bitcoin's transaction rate, to compute the time needed to get the entire world population on Bitcoin's blockchain.

I want to defend the ability of anyone who is sufficiently motivated to run a BYOB node. I deeply appreciate how Core has kept it possible to run a node on minimal hardware—for example, by keeping the blocksize reasonable; and see how zealously I defend Blockstream Satellite! However, I don’t think that the world’s entire population will ever even own BTC on mainnet—much less transact on mainnet. I don’t think it is realistic.

My vision of this has various parts; in some part, it is more or less not dissimilar to Hal’s:

Quote from: Hal on December 30, 2010, 01:38:40 AM

Actually there is a very good reason for Bitcoin-backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency, redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical for medium to large value purchases.

Bitcoin backed banks will solve these problems. They can work like banks did before nationalization of currency. Different banks can have different policies, some more aggressive, some more conservative. Some would be fractional reserve while others may be 100% Bitcoin backed. Interest rates may vary. Cash from some banks may trade at a discount to that from others.

George Selgin has worked out the theory of competitive free banking in detail, and he argues that such a system would be stable, inflation resistant and self-regulating.

I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today.

Aside—I have a theory about this, which I should probably post in its own thread sometime... Let’s just say that if we have free, permissionless banking, and all manner of permissionless finance, then we can expect some failures. And the failures need to fail. They need to fail catastrophically. They need to die painfully, with unrecoverable financial losses. SBF bailing them out only creates moral hazard, thus incentivizing bigger and worse failures in the future.

Quote from: AlcoHoDL on Today at 04:42:08 PM

My opinion on this matter, is that Bitcoin is not a static entity and is open to changes, as and when they are needed.

I 1000% supported Segwit, which many Bcashers (and worse, later, BSVers) considered an unacceptable change. Now, I am advocating for my longtime dream of zero-knowledge proof privacy in Bitcoin; some people here probably consider that scandalous, despite the fact that the technology was originally invented for Bitcoin.

I definitely do not see Bitcoin as a static entity. I do see it as conservative, reliable sound money, which needs to change slowly and carefully—most of all, to avoid network hardforks unless there is some terrifically overwhelming reason to hardfork (e.g., a potential Quantum Computing Apocalypse).

Quote from: AlcoHoDL on Today at 04:42:08 PM

When the time comes for changes relating to the block size (or any other modifications or improvements to the code), they will be adopted in a structured, orderly manner, based on rigorous and thorough testing, and via a worldwide consensus mechanism. The problem with BCH (a.k.a. Bcash) and BSV is that they are governed by arrogant, selfish, toxic individuals that effectively attempted to take control of Bitcoin for their own, insidious, malevolent motives. To that, the community has clearly objected, as reflected by the subsequent failure of these attempts, and indicated by the current value of these forked coins, as compared to BTC.

Agreed. And to me, the worst part was how they lied. Worst of all are the liars.

The campaign of lying delayed Segwit activation for a very long time. It did lasting long-term damage to Bitcoin, by delaying Segwit activation: Where would we be today, if Segwit had activated earlier?

For instance, Bcash promoters promulgated a malicious fantasy that miners could steal Segwit coins. Scammers created this lie, and they wove it in plausible-seeming terms that would require considerable technical understanding to untangle. They duped many people, some of whom were acting in good faith. Not naming names, but I think that at least one reputable, currently-active WO regular briefly fell for it at a time when Segwit was not yet active, so we couldn’t yet see what would happen.

I myself took the allegation seriously enough to devote time and effort to improving my Bitcoin technical knowledge: I strove to attain higher expertise, so that I could competently evaluate it. I spent many, many hours studying this specific issue—fairly and objectively considering all arguments.

When I finally reached the point of a decision, it was the point at which I watched a ridiculous sham fall apart before my eyes; and with Segwit now running on mainnet for almost five years, empirical evidence has proved my evaluation absolutely correct. I was particularly peeved that for whatever (un)reason, some people continued to push this nonsense even when there were already billions of dollars worth of BTC in Segwit UTXOs, safe and sound.

Relevant to my attitude about a certain picnic-bear.

Observation on human nature: Those who start as fence-sitters, and choose one side or the other through conscious effort, are likely to become much more forceful in their opinions than those who take a shallow “our team” approach. I didn’t support Core and Segwit because of “our team”. I don’t support BTC today because of “our team”. I seek the truth, and I support whatever I evaluate as the best.

There was a time when, in private, I gave Bcasher arguments such a fair reading that many people here would accuse me of betraying “our team”. I don’t care. If they had been right, then I would have supported them; but rather, I found that they were dead wrong. I evaluated the matter thoroughly before I opined in public, so I never made a fool of myself.