[scotty79]

>> Aim of bitcoin is not to be the fastest cryptocurrency but the most mined one (thus safest?).

> Which once again has nothing to do with the artificial useless block limit.

It has everything to do with block limit because its whole purpose is to make each block more valuable for the miners so that a lot of hashpower competes to mine that block.

Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners. Increasing block size would be same as decreasing payout (of tx fees) for each block. Since transaction fees will eventually become the only reward for the miners tampering with their value would be just as frightening as tampering with the block reward (like doubling it or halving it on a whim). It would affect miners. And miners are ultimately who decide with their legs on what version of crypto to secure.

> The cryptocurrency that is most mined is the one in which mining is most profitable, the US federal reserve could launch a competitor tomorrow with a goal directly opposed to every other cryptocurrency in existence and if they paid more per SHA256 hash rate unit they would become the most mined cryptocurrency.

Sure, but if you are not federal reserve and can't invest billions of your own money in your crypto then what bitcoin does is exactly how you get to be the most mined crypto.

[etherael]

> It has everything to do with block limit because its whole purpose is to make each block more valuable for the miners so that a lot of hashpower competes to mine that block.

Wrong, this assumes it is the only way to make each block more valuable, it is not only not the only way, it is the most stupid way imaginable; an artificial production quota completely unhinged from underlying physical reality.

> Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners.

Transaction fees per given data volume is less important than net profit on actual services provided, a chain that has a thousand times the capacity and a hundred times lower costs is still ten times more profitable than the competition.

> Increasing block size would be same as decreasing payout (of tx fees) for each block.

Just as stupid as saying that increasing seats on a train decreases the ticket revenue on that train. Completely false.

> Since transaction fees will eventually become the only reward for the miners tampering with their value would be just as frightening as tampering with the block reward

Tampering with the value of transaction fees is exactly what setting an unjustified artificial production quota does. And yes, this is "frightening" to a certain extent, but if you're still around on BTC by now, nothing is going to frighten you into abandoning it because it's absolutely valueless and idiotically stupid at this point in time, propped up only by the self-admitted unbacked charade that is transparent USDT manipulations.

> It would affect miners. And miners are ultimately who decide with their legs on what version of crypto to secure.

And as a miner, we will mine whatever pays the highest immediate return on invested power, no matter how ridiculously stupid that thing appears to be to us, it still makes sense to do that and immediately sell it and pocket the difference between the nearest sensible competitor to that for those who actually accrue proper genuine working cryptocurrencies with utility or whatever other legitimate financial instrument you care to mention that isn't transparently sabotaged and utterly broken.

> Sure, but if you are not federal reserve and can't invest billions of your own money in your crypto then what bitcoin does is exactly how you get to be the most mined crypto.

On the contrary; if you are the federal reserve, or that clique of financial manipulators (see AXA investment in Blockstream), and you're desperate to protect your collapsing imaginary financial system from genuine auditable competition, taking control of BTC and ploughing money into an avenue anybody with an ounce of sense could tell immediately was a dead end just from the specifications of the chain is how you get to be the most mined crypto whilst maintaining plausible deniability that you're meddling in the process at all.

[scotty79]

>> Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners. > Transaction fees per given data volume is less important than net profit on actual services provided, a chain that has a thousand times the capacity and a hundred times lower costs is still ten times more profitable than the competition.

That's true but you it's not guaranteed that you'd get 1000 times more transactions when you increase capacity 100 times. It's a gamble and if bitcoin did that it would get unpredictable result but show miners that it is willing to gamble with their profitability.

>> Increasing block size would be same as decreasing payout (of tx fees) for each block.

>Just as stupid as saying that increasing seats on a train decreases the ticket revenue on that train. Completely false.

Increasing number of seats might cause the train to be partially empty and if this one isn't the next one might be. Since people get tickets on auction then non-full trains bring no revenue because tickets for them cost zero. So it might be not sufficiently attractive to participate in the burden of sending more trains.

When there were ton of transactions fees skyrocketed but in weeks they went back to normal and tx fees revenue for miners dropped. Tx fees dropping to too low value in times where they are main income source for miners might be what kills bitcoin. Same way that low traffic might kill a train line if trains are running mostly empty and tickets don't have fixed price and their are auctioned instead.

Again. Bitcoin is built and governed for survivability first. You can do it differently with other cryptos. You can even fork bitcoin. People did. Miners voted with their legs on which solution they prefer. It's really miners that decide everything.

I don't get where you were going with federal reserve tangent. I'm just getting a vibe that you overestimate politics and underestimate economy.

[etherael]

> That's true but you it's not guaranteed that you'd get 1000 times more transactions when you increase capacity 100 times. It's a gamble and if bitcoin did that it would get unpredictable result but show miners that it is willing to gamble with their profitability.

This argument is stupid both because it justifies restricting the chain throughput even further to whatever arbitrary number you like above zero and assumes it's always an unalloyed positive because the artificial scarcity should always drive up the price, and because it is completely ignorant of the fact that failing to raise the limit as originally planned has already resulted in 50+ USD transaction fees as an actual result, followed by a mass abandonment of the BTC chain relative to the volume at the time, followed by an uptake of competitive chains.

All existing empirical evidence makes a complete mockery of it, as if it weren't enough from an economic perspective to actually be trying to justify an artificial production quota forcibly imposed from a central committee up front.

> Increasing number of seats might cause the train to be partially empty and if this one isn't the next one might be

And yet still the promotion of artificial scarcity in volume businesses is seen as idiotic, which it is. Perhaps your assumptions are wrong and capacity planning actually aims to serve estimated demand in every other field except the BTC one.

> Since people get tickets on auction then non-full trains bring no revenue because tickets for them cost zero.

This is false, tx fees on non full blocks on chains that aren't sabotaged like BTC are still not zero, and there's no arbitrary limit on what they might be. Suggestions have even been made that the tx fees should be set by a second lowest bid auction where all transactions above the second lowest fee are accepted and that is set as the net as both the most customer and revenue friendly option in BCH for example.

> When there were ton of transactions fees skyrocketed but in weeks they went back to normal and tx fees revenue for miners dropped.

Which is to say a business failed utterly to scale and was largely abandoned by its customers, with the knock on effects on the share price of that business, yes. This is not by any measure a success, and only a complete moron like Greg Maxwell would "pop champaign" (sic) over the event.

> Tx fees dropping to too low value in times where they are main income source for miners might be what kills bitcoin.

This doesn't make even theoretical sense, if the miners don't want to mine blocks at a given revenue level, it is up to the customers to raise their tx fee bids in order to ensure the flow of blocks, and it doesn't matter what the block limit is in question for that to be the case, no matter how high or low it is, it's still true.

> Same way that low traffic might kill a train line if trains are running mostly empty and tickets don't have fixed price and their are auctioned instead.

And this is even more idiotic, low traffic might indeed kill a train line, setting auctions on the tickets that exist in order to save it absent demand isn't a solution, it's a ploy of abject desperation guaranteed to fail, which is why nobody else in the history of time perhaps has ever been that stupid.

> Again. Bitcoin is built and governed for survivability first.

BTC is built and governed to be hamstrung and useless, and the post-hoc narrative after changes that implement that hamstringing will be whatever idiots suck up and accept. By and large actual usage moves on because customers don't care about unconvincing and frankly idiotic justifications for obviously stupid moves. And that's exactly what we actually see in reality on this question.

> You can do it differently with other cryptos.

And every single other crypto in existence agrees that it is in fact stupid to do it the BTC way and does indeed do it differently. Which is supposed to be "just some weird coincidence" or everyone else in the world being wrong and the core coterie being inexplicably right.

> You can even fork bitcoin. People did.

As well they should, since BTC is useless and sabotaged.

> Miners voted with their legs on which solution they prefer. It's really miners that decide everything.

Wrong, miners mine what is most profitable, not what solution they prefer, and according to the core coterie, miners decide absolutely nothing, in fact your idol gmaxwell has literally said that if miners disagree with the way that the core council runs bitcoin that they should be fired. In response, miners have demonstrated that they don't give a damn if BTC dies completely and will happily mine whatever else is more profitable than it as a result. The fact that the BTC faithful aren't concerned about this despite the slow adjustment of the BTC DAA is just another indication of just how stupid said faithful actually are, as it's an obvious existential risk to the chain.

> I don't get where you were going with federal reserve tangent. I'm just getting a vibe that you overestimate politics and underestimate economy.

This, like every other point you made, is wrong, but since you admit you don't even understand the point I'm not going to bother discussing it. What "vibe" you get from admitted ignorance on a subject isn't worth addressing.

[scotty79]

I wrote down my understanding of bitcoin and influence of the block size as a train analogy. Here it is for you to make fun of:

Imagine there’s a train line. Trains go at regular intervals and have fixed number of seats.

Operator of the train line gradually issues unfalsifiable coins which there will eventually be specific number of and not one more. You can carry any amount of coins while you ride the train. People started to find them valuable so you can buy them before departure and sell on arrival.

Tickets for the train are auctioned for coins. Only the people who bid most can ride the next train. You can even bid 0 coins and get on the next train for free if not enough people outbid you.

Making train go is the cheap and easy part. What’s expensive is securing it from robbers that could disrupt the service and tank the value of the coins. Operator outsources this task to Miners&co. They make the train secure proportionally to the amount of real money they spend. To compensate them operator pays them with freshly minted coins for securing each train. Since operator intends to emit a predetermined number of coins in total it has to periodically lower Miners&co reward for each train secured.

There’s a risk that the price of the coins won’t grow fast enough and securing trains will get less and less profitable for Miners&co and they will secure trains less and less until train line falls victim to the robbers.

To create a second source of income for Miners&co operator gives them the fees that people bid to be on the next train. Operator is not sure if it will suffice but that’s the best he could come up with.

There’s a surge in coin price and people start to ride trains like mad to sell their coins at places where there are buyers. People outbid themselves to be on the next train to the point that travel becomes uneconomical for casual travelers. Some of the travelers say: “Make the trains larger so we can all fit in for cheap”. Operator could do that at no cost, because running trains of any size is the cheap and easy part.

If the operator decides to make the trains larger he is lowering the amount of coins that people will have to pay to travel and thus lowers income of Miners&co and thus lower the incentive to maintain high security of the trains. Incentive that the operator already wasn’t sure was sufficient to keep Miners&co interested forever. Operator would be taking away profitability from Miners&co and make them worry that he could just take away more of their profitability in the future on a whim. What’s next? Even less fees? Maybe no base reward for securing trains? Maybe fixed or increasing reward that makes coins not scarce anymore and thus less valuable in terms of real money?

If the operator decides to not make the trains larger, he makes the casual travellers that like to travel often with a small amount of coins unhappy, to the point of using other trains and coins altogether. But the operator keeps Miners&co profitable and communicate to them that he doesn’t intend to change any core rules in a way that negatively affects their profitability

Travellers say, if the operator makes the trains larger, and as a result makes travel faster and fees lower then more people will travel and coin will become more valuable offsetting any loss of profitability that Miners&co suffers as a result of larger trains.

But the operator knows that what makes his coins valuable is not that his trains are fast, or large or cheap or used often. What makes coins valuable is that they are in strictly limited supply and that the trains will operate forever secured strongly enough to never get disrupted by robbers. So the operator chooses not to make trains larger because Miners&co profitability and trust must be considered before anything else because security they provide is one of the two necessary things for the coins to be valuable.

Some people are very upset and they make their own train line and coins (which they give to people that own operators coins). Miners&co prefers to secure operators trains more and the new larger ones less. Price of operators coins doesn’t suffer and follows usual curves it previously followed around moments of high interest. Operator can infer from that that he chose correctly.

Will the operator be able to keep trains running safely forever? Nobody knows, because outside of well modeled problems, nobody knows what the future will be. And this train line is the first of its kind. I you think it’s doomed you are free to ride any other. There are so many now that do various things differently. Choose wisely because many of them already died abandoned by Miners&co.

[etherael]

> I wrote down my understanding of bitcoin and influence of the block size as a train analogy. Here it is for you to make fun of:

You and people like you think I am making fun of you because you are flatly wrong about so many things in the space, and seem to have no idea that you have been conned. I'm not making fun of you at all, I'm pointing out the ways in which you are wrong.

> You can even bid 0 coins and get on the next train for free if not enough people outbid you.

Wrong, you can have an empty block with bids in the mempool below the threshold which miners are willing to incorporate, and they still don't get into the block. You don't magically get into the block on a zero bid just because it's not full.

> Making train go is the cheap and easy part. What’s expensive is securing it from robbers that could disrupt the service and tank the value of the coins.

Wrong, on the security front we have proof of work output in the ~800k USD equivalent every hour range, on the actual functionality front, the primary chain has been sabotaged to be so dysfunctional it barely matches a fax machine in raw throughput, this is equivalent to a depleted uranium armoured rail car with a convoy of tanks as an escort, but it's only 5x5 inches and it runs on a mousewheel. Other node software not subject to the BTC sabotage runs enormously better, things like flowee the hub getting up into tens of thousands of validated transactions per second on commodity hardware, but they're so poorly adopted as to be basically unknown. In terms of deployed infrastructure, we're stuck with the 5x5 mousewheel pushcarts because of the BTC sabotage.

> Since operator intends to emit a predetermined number of coins in total it has to periodically lower Miners&co reward for each train secured.

Wrong once again, there's no "has to" about it, the emission schedule could have been a completely linear flat rate. It was chosen to be a steeply declining curve to bomb the project if it turns out not to actually be a useful service for which people are actually willing to pay, that is, uptake and increased usage is intended to make up for the lost value of the decreasing block reward. The steeply declining curve ensures that the interests of all the maintainers of the Bitcoin network are aligned, as only an insane fool would ever try and actually sabotage the network to be dysfunctional knowing that this would be the inevitable fate if they did.

The BTC sabotage turns this on its head and assumes that instead scaling should be crippled on purpose, and an artificial limit should be forcibly imposed in order that the supply quota can hopefully address the diminishing block reward over time.

This, like basically everything else in BTC, is extremely, indescribably stupid. The inevitable fate remains the inevitable fate for the aforementioned stupidity.

> There’s a risk that the price of the coins won’t grow fast enough and securing trains will get less and less profitable for Miners&co and they will secure trains less and less until train line falls victim to the robbers.

Wrong, because the price of coins is not the only variable that dictates how much security is invested into each block. BTC simply attempts to force it to be so for no good reason and this is transparent sabotage.

> Operator could do that at no cost, because running trains of any size is the cheap and easy part.

Wrong. Operator alone does not get to choose to do that period, a block limit of x does not imply a block floor of x, miners can and do still choose to emit blocks significantly below the block ceiling.

The entire rest of your analogy collapses because it based upon these incorrect assumptions.

[scotty79]

> ... it justifies restricting the chain throughput even further ...

Yes. There might come a time when block reward is miniscule, volume of transactions is too low to support mining at reasonable level, and the only way to incetivize the miners will be to reduce block size.

> already resulted in 50+ USD transaction fees as an actual result

Briefly. And 50$ is not an unreasonable fee if you are transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars in value to sell it at the peak.

> followed by a mass abandonment of the BTC chain relative to the volume at the time, followed by an uptake of competitive chains

Which is completely fine because small fraction of bitcoin value comes from it being transferred. Bulk comes from it being scarce and secure which limited block size helps to ensure.

> This doesn't make even theoretical sense, if the miners don't want to mine blocks at a given revenue level, it is up to the customers to raise their tx fee bids in order to ensure the flow of blocks

Single miner can ensure flow of the blocks once difficulty adjusts. Bitcoins doesn't die because it stops transferring. Bitcoin dies when so many miners leave it to make double spend attack trivial.

There's no reason for any bitcoin user to give any transaction fee if all transactions fit in the next block. Even if all but one miner leave bitcoin.

> low traffic might indeed kill a train line, setting auctions on the tickets that exist in order to save it absent demand isn't a solution

You misunderstood. I'm not saying that auctioning tickets is supposed to save train line dying to low traffic. What I was saying is that train lines can die to low traffic even more likely if tickets don't have fixed price but they are auctioned instead (like bitcoin tx fees).

> Suggestions have even been made that the tx fees should be set by a second lowest bid auction where all transactions above the second lowest fee are accepted and that is set as the net as both the most customer and revenue friendly option in BCH for example.

From what I'm getting, you don't only want to increase block size but also change how should fees work.

Maybe you should focus your advocacy efforts on other crypto that's closer to your liking because you don't seem to like anything about bitcoin except for the name and perhaps popularity that it managed to accumulate from the ground up and hold without your enlightened guidance.

> Wrong, miners mine what is most profitable, not what solution they prefer

They prefer the solution that is most profitable for them. Or are you saying that they cry all the way to the bank?

> ... your idol gmaxwell ...

I have no idea who that is.

I'm speaking purely from what I know about how bitcoin works and what I think makes it successful. I'm not familiar with other peoples opinions on the subject let alone which specific people hold which specific opinions.

> gmaxwell has literally said that if miners disagree with the way that the core council runs bitcoin that they should be fired

Not sure if you can fire someone you never hired and have no relationship with. But in a sense yes. If you don't like what bitcoin is you are free to mine something else. But statistically you will want to mine bitcoin because it's built to be most profitable for you.

> they don't give a damn if BTC dies completely

Can you show me some data that indicates that bitcoin is close to dying?

Also, why do you give so much of a damn if BTC dies or not? There are so many cryptos. You can jump ship at any time. Why are you so attached to bitcoin?

General remark: When I think something is stupid, innane, idiotic, moronic and useless that's usually for me an indication that I don't quite understand the thing or at least the reasons why a lot of seemingly reasonable people pursue it and I should learn more.

> What "vibe" you get from admitted ignorance on a subject isn't worth addressing.

Do you admit ignorance often? Because it is a declaration of openness to information and it usually prompts people that have some point worth communicating to clarify it. If you do not admit ignorance you are missing out on a lot.

[etherael]

> Yes. There might come a time when block reward..

And if artificial scarcity to increase miner revenue is not only not objectionable but desirable as well as entirely effective, there is no reason that this should not be done repeatedly, and right now.

Of course, that's not actually true, and that's why it's not happening. The argument is invalid.

> Briefly. And 50$ is not an unreasonable fee

In a competitive free market, any fee is an unreasonable fee if it's imposed ignorant of the fact that you are in a competitive free market that doesn't impose the artificial scarcity promoting production quotas your inefficient operation does. This describes the state of every other blockchain absent the sabotaged and useless BTC chain.

> Which is completely fine because small fraction of bitcoin value comes from it being transferred. Bulk comes from it being scarce and secure

A pile of dogshit from a particular dog now deceased close to the reactor meltdown site in Chernobyl is both scarce and secure, it is also completely valueless because it has no utility and even as fertiliser there is a universe of potential substitute goods available. BTC has no value beyond stupid people heavily invested in it unaware they have been flatly conned and not understanding how any of this works or what the original plans actually were. The end result of that is obvious.

> Single miner can ensure flow of the blocks once difficulty adjusts

Which will never happen if the rate of the departure of hashing power exceeds the rate at which the chain proceeds towards the next DAA interval. That rate is not even 8% per day. The chain will be destroyed entirely if hashing power departs faster than that, and the only way to "fix it" will be a hard fork, which BTC morons have been propagandised to believe is dangerously fatal, and thus as a final fate for BTC it can't be ruled out.

> There's no reason for any bitcoin user to give any transaction fee if all transactions fit in the next block.

Flatly wrong no matter how many times you repeat it, because miners choose which transactions go in the block and their choice is not contingent solely upon available block space.

> From what I'm getting, you don't only want to increase block size but also change how should fees work.

I don't care at all what BTC does, I consider it a useless lost cause at this stage and have no opinion of it beyond that. My point was many other chains are looking at many other alternatives to ensure that their chain is the one that ends up with the most economically optimal usage of hashpower, and I cited an example of that as something I had heard come up in discussions for BCH.

> Maybe you should focus your advocacy efforts on other crypto that's closer to your liking because you don't seem to like anything about bitcoin except for the name and perhaps popularity that it managed to accumulate from the ground up and hold without your enlightened guidance.

I was a Bitcoin maximalist from the very beginning, largely ignored every single other coin in existence, and frankly when Mike Hearn left his description of the situation and the suggestion that the chain would actually refuse to scale in the future even when the demand was clearly there was so puzzling to me I flatly refused to even believe it until the 2017 BCH split actually happened and everything unfolded exactly as he had said.

You and those like you don't seem to grasp just how utterly idiotic what has been done in BTC actually is. It is so foolish, and the justifications for the behaviour so hamfisted and constantly shifting, that the only reasonable conclusion to explain it is outright sabotage.

And I do focus my advocacy efforts solely on other crypto, and warn people in as strong terms as I am able since the BCH fork that BTC has been outright sabotaged to uselessness and is very likely doomed.

> They prefer the solution that is most profitable for them. Or are you saying that they cry all the way to the bank?

Every miner who I've spoken to about the situation who actually understands what happened is indeed very concerned for the long term health of the ecosystem given the equilibrium which the BTC sabotage has resulted in. Not a single one of them ever intended for this idiocy to actually take hold, and yes, we're all just trying to make the best out of an insanely bad situation. If you want to call that "crying all the way to the bank" go right ahead.

> I have no idea who that is.

The person largely responsible for the sabotage in question, and from whom the flatly wrong arguments you are attempting to throw around actually originated.

> But statistically you will want to mine bitcoin because it's built to be most profitable for you.

Until it's not, and then you will very happily see it destroyed and be relieved this insane episode is over and done with.

> Can you show me some data that indicates that bitcoin is close to dying?

Everything we've discussed so far.

> Also, why do you give so much of a damn if BTC dies or not?

Because all fatally stupid ideas should die, and the more fatally stupid, the more so this is. BTC is about the most fatally stupid architecture I have ever heard of in my entire life, and its continued existence is an affront to sensibility.

> here are so many cryptos. You can jump ship at any time. Why are you so attached to bitcoin?

I jumped ship to actual Bitcoin BCH back in 2017 already. I'm not attached to BTC at all, I only want it to die.

> General remark: When I think something is stupid, innane, idiotic, moronic and useless that's usually for me an indication that I don't quite understand the thing or at least the reasons why a lot of seemingly reasonable people pursue it and I should learn more

Great, follow your own logic and stop bothering me, go watch Jersey Shore re-runs, a lot of seemingly reasonable people pursue that as well as a raft of other things I'm equally confident as marking out as absolutely without value. In the meantime, I'll be happy with the observation of many decades of experience in the technology industry which tells me what the BTC chain doing is in fact utterly idiotic, completely unjustified as a point of fact, and it has indeed been the victim of a well financed external sabotage attack.

> Do you admit ignorance often?

I admit ignorance whenever I know that I am ignorant of something, or when I find out post-hoc that I was previously ignorant of something. This doesn't apply in this case, it is you and the people like you who are so clearly and flatly wrong, and it is extremely easy to in detail dismantle your position and explain precisely why.

[freeAgent]

I'd like to comment here just to say that you're my hero.

Signed,

Another Bitcoin early adopter who became totally disillusioned with the BTC/Bitcoin Core project due to precisely the BS you've highlighted in this thread