Not sure I want to get involved in all this but I'll be running a node again at some point so trying to get beyond the trolling and do what is best for Bitcoin.

Right now I'm pro segwit because it is a sensible refactoring and optimization, regardless of whether it includes transaction malleability fix or not and the fact that it does enables lot so potential solutions to real scaling because onchain scaling is not a thing. I don't care who wrote it or who they work.

The argument on core's side (and core != Blockstream) are around avoiding a hard fork, which will cause orphan drama in a split consensus, and enabling off-chain scaling, which is essential.

The arguments of BU seem to be that Blockstream will have too much power if segwit activates and the unrealistic dream that getting rid of the block size limit will somehow mean infinite and therefore free transactions for everyone. Also Ver seems convinced that more usage = higher price which ignores velocity and isn't necessarily true. Supply and demand still applies no matter what.

Some things that strike as being lost are
- Blockstream does not need Segwit to implement LN so if it's just an attempt to force them into a dynamic blocksize in the hope of sabotaging their ambitions it won't work and may give a more consumer orientated business or altcoin the opportunity to use the infighting in BTC to take that market.
- Dash, ZCash, the banks, the likes of Microsoft, MPesa and governments aren't sitting still. I'd rather Blockstream made money and used it to invest in the network than Bitcoin fail for being sanctimoniously pure about things that new users won't give a shit about. There's too much expectation of something for nothing.
- They also don't have a monopoly on LN. There's already multiple implementations competing as well as other solutions like in the works if they make too much.
- If they become a hub, so what? It takes load of the main chain and lessens the power of miners. So long as I am still in full control of my BTC that is fine by me.
- Users of transactions who don't care about about store of value or who don't even know their money is going through a blockchain will use the cheapest and fastest, whether it is LN or Litecoin. Somebody is going to make a business acting as trusted third parties to enable consumers. Get over it.
- Onchain can never scale to a remotely large number of transactions. It's a O(n) increase to an O(n^2) problem. Has nobody in the BU/XT/Classic camp ever dealt with internet level scaling and knows what O(n^2) means because I never see it this debate, just politics of Ver vs Blockstream. There's a reason a lot of smart software engineers and architects said BItcoin wasn't scalable and why there's been conferences call SCALING BITCOIN every year with some of the smartest people working on it: because just letting the blocksize increase ISN'T SCALABLE. Was that all a waste of time because we could just bump the max size?
- Miners want high fees so why do BU people think that they will choose to mine for free. How exactly is BU going to lead to magical times and free transactions for everyone?
- The BU code might be the best ever but changing the consensus rules of everyone setting their own parameters is untested and the game theory is a lot harder to get right than the code. A straight 2mb upgrade I'd be happier with. Segwit only alters the rules slightly by tipping the weight of UTXOs

If Bitcoin is to grow at the rate of a network (n^2) it has to have an extra DIMENSION of scaling even if we let the blocksize increase linearly, either vertical through a second layer like LN or vertically through side chains or through some mathematical enabler of Log(N) like MimbleWimble.

Blocking Segwit seems to be just anti-Blockstream paranoia or a ploy by miners to keep the fees up for as long as they can.

Can someone explain the BU solution to all these issues because it seems to be let's just increase the blocksize according to some convoluted rules and see what happens because segwit is bad m'kay?

Unless an anti-segwit person comes up with and implements a real alternative scaling solution

What are the transactions that people are sending through bitcoin?

Why are they paying large fees and not holding off or using another channel? Why do they have to go through bitcoin if they aren't to do with bitcoin speculation?

Do people sending BTC transactions even know that they are going into a clogged up queue?

I heard about Stratis because of the .Net angle as I'm a C# dev and did put a bit into the ico.

My interpretation of the video was that NBitcoin is currently a partial port of Bitcoin Core into .Net and that Dorier is bringing that up to be a full node that will target the Bitcoin blockchain and that a fork of that (the code not the chain) will become Stratis.

My understanding is that the maths and crypto that is in core, including the odd kinks, must be replicated but there's no reason that a C# port can't do that same math and broadcast the transaction confirmations and signatures to the Bitcoin blockchain. It does mean that NBitcoin will need choose when to fork whenever their is a fork in core and implement any new feature like segwit too.

From an investors perspective I had some reservations about getting traction for what is essentially a plain altcoin and the questions around marketing so could see why some might get out. At the same time there would be a market for a .Net blockchain platform if 'blockchain' lives up to the business hype.

As for the twitter spam that I also got today, it doesn't give a good impression but anyone likely to know enough to buy any will have enough intelligence to google to find out the truth and will discover that it is a genuine project, so it might help with the pump or it might put them off but anyone genuine will ignore it.

Bitcoin is the way out of the ponzi scheme that is the dollar.

A ponzi scheme is when early adopters are promised a return on top what they put in that comes from later contributors.

The Fed created a ponzi scheme after the default of the gold standard by promising returns of 15% to bond holders to rescue the dollar from collapse. Where would this 15% return magically come from? From borrowers taking on ever more debt to buy ever increasing assets while savers buy the bonds at ever decreasing interest rates. Until they can't go any lower then it blows it up when no more takers of the debt can be found.

Now those early joiners from the 80s are sat on multi million pound houses after lowering their borrowing costs along the way while someone joining now is stuck between borrowing at 2% to buy a house that will take 25 years to pay for and probably be worth less at the end, buying stocks at huge risk or sticking their money in a bank to get less than inflation. Now they have another choice. They can save their money as bitcoin.

Reading two articles recently, one about how the web has become all about selling you as a product and mining data to sell you ads and one about the New Jersey goons confiscating all the code of an MIT student who did a proof of concept (although this was done in the early days of mining) to mine bitcoins in a web browser.

Wouldn't it be great if government just got the f**k out of the way and let website providers use their viewers browsers to mine for coins? Yes, ask their permission first but nobody is going to mind clicking OK to let the website earn a bit of more if it means less tracking of our every move, so long as they aren't getting their battery drained.

It overcomes the micro-payment barrier effortlessly, what's a few more pence on the electric bill, makes more efficient use of power and means those who produce content that keeps eyeballs for longest earn more instead of the short attention span crap that floods the web now. All it requires is for the anti-money laundering crap to get out of the way and allow an actual economy to grow on the web instead of artists and writers gradually earning less and less while Google and Facebook slowly take over the world.

Would it work with Bitcoin if enough viewers joined in? If you got a few thousands willing hits a day would you earn anything close to decent? You could always get your script to switch to a more profitable alt coin. The security would be tricky too but as an idea I think the MIT guy was spot on.

It's government bonds that are the ponzi. To save the dollar from collapse after the default from the gold standard early investors were promised 15% returns which would magically come from somewhere. Somewhere being the increasing debts of later entrants who have to borrow more and more to buy the same house. They only keep that ponzi going by offering less and less return with the threat of inflation.

Bitcoin now offers an alternative and will bring an end to their scam.

I guess the question is what will the idea ever take off then? I guess they all just got hoarded too. As for the design, I know you can't have the private key visible. I remember some gift cards being shown on TV and a viewer just scanned the QR code at took them (he did give them back). Good lesson but shows that things need to a lot more foolproof for ordinary people to start using them.

Those are just paper wallets. I was thinking more of fixed amounts with the amount on the front to simplify it for non techies.

Ideally you wouldn't be able to send coins to the address and only redeem the whole amount but there'd be no incentive to do anything else anyway.

The point is making them usable as cash.

Thinking about easing use of BTC just two days ago I thought why nobody has introduced BTC certificates that would act like Cassius coins but be just paper and disposable if you wanted to 'redeem' them digitally. The note would be like a scratchcard that had a QR of a public address so that you could verify that it hasn't been spent with a quick scan of the BitScan or similar app. The private key would then be under a tamper proof seal with a signature from the issuing company on the front to verify it isn't fake.

Once enough of these in various denominations are in circulation people would begin to see that they can't be faked and will get used to trusting their value without bothering to verify that the address contains the balance. You then have circulating cash that needs no technical knowledge, just the old school wisdom of spotting a fake and not letting people nick your real wallet.

It was only hours after I had this thought that Max Keiser started tweeting about Prypto cards that seem to be several steps ahead of me. Searching on here it seems only the germans are onto this. Any reason why there's less talk of a cash form in English?

The only problem I see it how the issuing company makes a profit enough to cover the risks but I guess Prypto has a plan.

It seems to me that what is required is more pools that are as easy to join and as efficient as GHash. We just need more competition. Once the difference in pool returns is small enough, the incentive for miners to move to a smaller pool to protect BTC overall will overcome the advantages of GHash over any other pool. Basically, BTC Guild and others need to get better. The rest of the community should be subsidizing the underdogs and helping them catch up.

Ease of use is still needed. I think targeting those without access to the ease of credit cards is a good place to start. Once it is as easy to use as mPesa I think we'll hit the tipping point of mass adoption. B-pesa is leading the way but there is a lot of work to do.

I like the idea. I just wouldn't trust a device with any kind of connectivity. I guess recycling an old disabled smart phone (no wifi, no sim, no bluetooth) would be a good starting point. Maybe I should get the patent in now.

After just reading on another thread about the difficulty of entered a high entropy private it seems that what is needed is a device that has no connectivity and whose purpose is only to sign transactions.

How about a device with a camera that can scan a destination address then a private 256 QR code key like Armory's, lets you enter an amount and then displays a QR for the signed tx that can then be scanned by an online device?

If you could make this trustworthy it would make secure signing of txs user friendly.

Is anyone working on something like this or is the idea flawed?

The risk of you forgetting a pass phrase, losing a piece paper or having a USB die is probably higher than you getting hacked.

Personally I'd go for an encrypted copy of a key on USBs or paper in at least two locations.

If you have a significant amount then you need to think about the risk of you getting hit by a bus. For this a 5 part key where 3 out of the 5 will produce the main key could work well. Maybe keep 2 at home, 2 with your next of kin and one with a solicitor or bank manager?

I do have some FX experience working for banks but I'm not really looking to work with bitcoin myself TBH. I just wondered how much activity there is and if I'd pop up in any database search from head hunters and get included in one of their automated emails. A bit like scouring patent applications for clues as to whether to buys shares in Apple/Google.

Does anyone have any source of interest in jobs involving Bitcoin?

I have mentioned developing with bitcoin APIs on my CV/resume and uploaded it to jobs websites just to glean whether there is any interesting development going on in private companies, maybe even banks.

So far, after a month, I've not had any calls or emails mentioning it. It's not much of a signal but it's not a particularly good sign. A single enquiry would make me much more positive about the prospects for wider adoption.

Has anyone tried the same and had any interest?

I kind of agree with the OP but see it differently.

Modern economic policy seems to be based on two irrational biases of people, the wealth effect and inflation apathy. When home owners see the price of their house go up, they spend more even though they still just own the same house. Meanwhile workers don't complain about their wages being worth less each year but if you asked them to take a 2% cut nominal terms they'd go on strike.

Politicians and bankers have known this since last century which is why they target 2% inflation to keep people working just in order to keep up and create full employment and avoid revolt.

The FRB now comes in because in order to keep doing this there has to be an increase in debt to pay the debts of those earlier in the ponzi scheme. Easy solution, pump house prices every time there's a recession so late comers have to borrow more to buy the same house. To do this you lower interest rates and the discount rate and assets go up. Those voters who bought houses before the dot com crash are sorted while anyone who didn't is screwed.

Even this is unsustainable and the GFC should have been the end but they kept it going a bit longer with QE, taking more money from the property poor and giving it to the asset rich. What happens next time people can't make their payments even at 2%? They can't lower rates any more so then we could get the depression that we think we've avoided?

Not much publicity (yet). I just spotted this blog post yesterday http://blog.coinfloor.co.uk

Could bring in some new money from the UK?

Sounds like an opportunity for someone to write some wallet software that will keep track of an individual or business's gains and losses and tax liabilities. Possibly tied to the block chain for auditing purposes. It might be an attempt at a cock block but nothing that can't be worked around. It will be interesting to see what happens in contrast to the UK which has pretty much decided it's a currency (http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/briefs/vat/brief0914.htm). I wonder if London will be taking a lot of BTC business from New York.

I sent a 5 figure amount via SEPA from Barclays (UK) after converting to Euros and that was deposited after 4 days.

Upon wiring a second similar amount I got a call from the bank to confirm and after a week of worrying I got a Know Your Customer email from Bitstamp:


We received your deposit transfer and in order to provide a high quality and reliable service when certain volume or frequency thresholds are met further KYC procedure is needed. We also kindly ask you to please help us better understand the nature of your use of our service by answering the following KYC questioner:
1. How did you learn about Bitcoin?
2. What is the purpose of your trading on Bitstamp?
3. What type of trading will be conducted? Buying/selling/both? Estimated trade volume per month?
4. Which bank are you using? Please provide the complete address and SWIFT code.
5. Estimated amount that you would be depositing/withdrawing to/from your Bitstamp account per month (in USD and BTC)?
6. What is the origin of the funds which you are depositing to your Bitstamp account? Please provide any financial documentation which can confirm the origin.

All to be expected but the delay has cost me dearly unless the price drops back, although most will be sold through localbitcoin at a set mark up.