have you ever been chased by a green badger riding a lamb shooting bolts of lighting?

Some corporation or other will always be there to try to bareback our little network. I'm calling it the Fidelity problem.

I'm glad you're finding it hilarious. I don't. Because I invested non-trivial portion of my portfolio into Bitcoin and I'd hate it all to go "poof!" if a hostile hard fork backfires and the net DOES split into two. Are you willing to bet ALL your BTC that this has a zero chance of happening? I would not be so sure.

That's why wallet devs are eager to make their products compatible with the planned upgrade (presently undergoing testing).

There is some poetic justice in the price tanking because of Mike's rage-quit and the block size war.  There would have been no war and no rage-quit, if some segment of the community had not sided with Blockstream out of stupid greed -- because they imagined that Blockstream's plan would make the price of bitcoin go up, even though it meant giving up the very goal that motivated Satoshi to create it,and the only thing that justifies its existence.

You mean you're not all in?!

Still almost $26MM in leveraged longs on BFX. If this results in a margin call cascade, we could go under $200 again. Nobody can post dollar margin until Monday.

[snip]

I don't have enough knowledge of the field to look for bugs.  However, the paper has been circulated for a month or so, at least, and was presented at the Monteral scaling conference.  So, if there are bugs, they must not be very obvious.

On the other hand, it is hard to foresee all the bad things that could happen in systems that that include human elements.  One example of a problem that was not quite foreseen when bitcoin was designed is the extreme concentration of bitcoin mining (with 54% of the hashrate now in the hands three Chinese pools).  The protocol becoming the property of a single company was another.  The fast price rise (that made the block reward be worth ~$8/tx) was yet another.  

So, who knows what failure modes the "NG" blockchain coudl have.

Anyway, I see little chance that the proposal will be implemented in bitcoin.  There is already too much software developed out there that assumes the current design.  Implementing a change of that magnitude would be like swimming in molasses.  Maybe some altcoin will adopt the idea.

No, it is just that I believe bitcoin is doomed either way, so it is easy for me to be neutral. 

Well, first, I doubt that it is actually "developing" and "entrenching itself".  There are many companies that need it to survive, and several hundred millions available for marketing and PR efforts (like the St. Petersburg Bowl, fat discounts for bitcoin purchases, slots on Bloomberg, etc.).  However, the few minimally reliable and meaningful data about adoption do not show that it is growing, and hint that it may be decreasing.

Second, the failure modes that I can imagine are not going to be detectable in advance.  A killer bug may surface, a much better remote payment method may arise, the price may drop further (even if there will be another bubble or two before that) causing most of the miners to stop, there may be a successful majority miner attack, the US may ban it,  etc.  More likely, competition from other digital payment systems will cause the user base to shrink.

Bitcoin's economic structure is unsustainable because mining is being supported by new investors (to the tune of 800'000 USD/day) instead of its users; and there is no plausible roadmap to fix that situation that will not go through a price and network collapse.  Moreover, the radical "free market" system that is supposed to define the transaction fees in that post-reward era, with unpredictable fees and no service guarantee, cannot possibly work.  Because of the mirage of "deflationary currency", its price is 90% o more due to speculation, rather than use as currency.  The huge and unpredictable price swings are a consequence of that.   And so on.

Another possible outcome is a mining cartel taking over and  becoming a de facto central authority, with power to change the protocol, set minimum fees, cancel transactions and seize funds, etc.. Believers have convinced themselves that such takeover is impossible because the "economic majority" has control.  I have looked into those arguments and I believe thay are just wishful thinking.  The only choice that the "economic majority" will have is to accept the cartel's takeover (and tell everybody that it is actually "good for bitcoin", hoping that the coin will not lose much value), or to lose everything.  If that happens, perhaps bitcoin will continue to exist, and will continue to be used as a speculative intrument (as it is in China) and/or as a payment system.  However, if it becomes centralized, it would have failed in its goal.