Charlie is bored of the politics happening in bitcoin community and wants to stay out of it.Quote
16. I heard there are rumours that mining pools are trying to force the developers to make a hard fork. Is there any truth to that?Charlie Lee:Yes, there’s truth to that. Some pools are bringing Bitcoin politics into Litecoin and wants to have Litecoin set an example for Bitcoin. I am not playing that game. Leave Bitcoin politicis out of Litecoin. If you don’t have Litecoin’s best interest in mind, I have no interest in talking to you.
http://news.8btc.com/charlie-lee-amamining-pools-are-trying-to-force-the-developers-to-make-a-hard-fork

That is the biggest issue why miners doesnt give out enough consensus due to this reasons. I dont thing hardfork is the best solution both for bitcoin and litecoin. If there are any possible ways to increase the blocksize in bitcoin rather than hardforking then it is good to go. As to litecoin, it is already a good coin without issues at all and thats why I agree to Charlie Lee that mining pools should just leave Litecoin alone.

After reading the article, it certainly looks like the Group promoting Segwit has paid Charlie Lee off to support LN and the Counterfeiting that will go along with it. Shame , Shame Charlie.   Exactly how do you Counterfeit LTC on LN.Form a group of collusion between the Miners that control 51%,Send 5000 LTC to an address. Now follow the steps on LN to Lock up that 5000 LTC on the Blockchain.Whether LN requires 1 or 6 confirmations , as soon as LN confirms the representation of LN notes match your amount.You and your colluding friends, rewrite the blockchain and include a transaction moving that 5000 LTC to another address before the lock took place.You now still have your 5000 LTC Free & Clear Onchain, and a representation value of 5000 LTC Offchain on LN .(Which you can use for LN transactions forever.)LTC Onchain Transactions does not allow Counterfeiting , LN Offchain Transactions will bring Counterfeiting into Crypto  FYI:Odds are high the PoW Miners Block Segwit on LTC also.No one wants Segwit or the counterfeiting it will bring to crypto. FYI2:Combined the Chinese Mining Pools control more than 51% of BTC & LTC.

I read carefully the answers and views of Lee had given and I would like to ask your opinion of the following,1. It seems to me that bitcoin miners keep a wait and see policy because they want to see what would be happened if LTC segwit is activated. 2. It seems strange to me that Lee said about some pools are forcing bitcoin devs for hardfork. If the profit is the main incentive for miners what is the meaning to do a hardfork with bigger blocksize? Of course every block will have more transactions but with lower fees so the sum after every block mining will be the same more or less but hardfork is more dangerous than soft one(speaking about the reputation and price of the coin). So, why Lee told something like that? In addition, why bitcoin miners want hardfork solution, given that anything told Lee is truth? Or he has any political or financial motivation?

Make the hardfork and get over this; fuck; why is everyone so angry all the time?

Just what hard-fork are you suggesting, segwit or pow?
Would you care being more explicit.

Because Litecoin has 0 fundamentals at this point and the Chinese do not care. They control Litecoin and it’ll be like this until it is unprofitable to mine, then they will just close shop.

I think it was said previously that if miners took control of Litecoin, the devs would change the Litecoin PoW.

I’m not sure why I took this bait.

My original argument you dismissed because you couldn’t see it on your phone.

And apparently you don’t think ANY value will be lost if a hardfork occurs. I really hope it does hardfork, because it is only LTC after all.

^ My last sentiment agrees with you. Hardfork. May I have upvotes now?

Make the hardfork and get over this; fuck; why is everyone so angry all the time?

What is THE hardfork, please?

(if you cannot define it clearly, you already have a part of the answer to your question)

Quote from: sportis on February 09, 2017, 11:57:25 AM
I read carefully the answers and views of Lee had given and I would like to ask your opinion of the following,1. It seems to me that bitcoin miners keep a wait and see policy because they want to see what would be happened if LTC segwit is activated. 2. It seems strange to me that Lee said about some pools are forcing bitcoin devs for hardfork. If the profit is the main incentive for miners what is the meaning to do a hardfork with bigger blocksize? Of course every block will have more transactions but with lower fees so the sum after every block mining will be the same more or less but hardfork is more dangerous than soft one(speaking about the reputation and price of the coin). So, why Lee told something like that? In addition, why bitcoin miners want hardfork solution, given that anything told Lee is truth? Or he has any political or financial motivation?

Here is HSL’s take on the AMA.  Jiang Zhuo’er said that LTC devs had asked miners to accept 2% donation to LTC devs. The plan was hard-coded the receiving address into the client. But consensus was not reached. http://www.8btc.com/ltc_ama

miners are not trying to force the devs to hard fork(the empty word people use to make people think its about splits)SMART PEOPLE of the community just want PROPER CONSENSUSplease dont assume hark fork = splitin both a hard and soft situation there are three subcategoriessoftfork: consensus - >94% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: small 5% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced and deadsoftfork: controversial - >50% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: long big% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced and deadsoftfork: bilateral - intentionally ignoring/banning opposing rules and not including them. result: 2 chainshardfork: consensus - >94% nodes, then >94% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: 5% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced / deadhardfork: controversial - >50% nodes, then >50% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: big% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced / deadhardfork: bilateral - intentionally ignoring/banning opposing rules and not including them. result: 2 chainswhen reading hard fork or soft fork. do not automatically assume best case for soft, worst case for hard.the truth is much simplersoft.. pool votes nodes dont.hard.. nodes vote then pools.and the smart community want CONSENSUS not bilateralreal funny part. is charlie lee. pretends to not want to get involved. yet is getting involved by following orders from his brother (bobby lee:BTCC) which is a strong advocate of blockstream due to the partnership and funding blockstream and btcc get from the same guy (barry silbert: DGC)

Don’t have time for that. Litecoin will be dead by then.

I’d rather LTC die than for miners to become our ‘overlords’.

It honestly potentially saves a lot of time if it’s done as a HF with a long delay before activation.

Here is HSL’s take on the AMA. Jiang Zhuo’er said that LTC devs had asked miners to accept 2% donation to LTC devs. The plan was hard-coded the receiving address into the client. But consensus was not reached.
http://www.8btc.com/ltc_ama

Quote from: franky1 on February 10, 2017, 04:28:14 AM
real funny part. is charlie lee. pretends to not want to get involved. yet is getting involved by following orders from his brother (bobby lee:BTCC) which is a strong advocate of blockstream due to the partnership and funding blockstream and btcc get from the same guy (barry silbert: DGC)
Just more Chinese corruption.  It’s in their blood. 

Quote from: RawDog on February 10, 2017, 05:52:31 PM

Quote from: franky1 on February 10, 2017, 04:28:14 AM
real funny part. is charlie lee. pretends to not want to get involved. yet is getting involved by following orders from his brother (bobby lee:BTCC) which is a strong advocate of blockstream due to the partnership and funding blockstream and btcc get from the same guy (barry silbert: DGC)
Just more Chinese corruption.  It’s in their blood.  

your fooling yourself.its the yanks pointing in the direction of the chinese.behind BTCC is a yank (both of the lee’s are being paid by american investors)the yanks are pulling on the chinese strings.if things go wrong blame the chinese. if things go right the yanks take the glorywhile they have you distracted looking at bob and chuck. your not looking at the puppeteer in america pulling all the strings of blockstream AND the pools.all while the puppeteer is getting its grip on bitcoin to play out its little tale while the bankers grow hyperledger

The whole point of Segwit is that it can be done in a safer soft-fork manner. Hard-forking still means the miners will have to upgrade and nothing points out that they’re more willing to do so in case of a hard-fork. Which means a hard-fork will be creating a new alt coin with no hashpower to secure it even if it has Segwit enabled.

There is already a solution and it’s been coded into the latest version of Litecoin. I agree that it’s a choice which you prefer; but, either method works. So why not just move on and adopt? It shouldn’t come down to people just rejecting something because they didn’t get their way. Frankly that would be childish.

For the record I don’t care if it’s done by a softfork or hardfork. Consensus is more important than individual egos. A decision needs to be made…..sometimes that means you don’t get your way.

Lol. I would love to see them fork themselves out while the real litecoin still doesn’t give a fuck about segwit.

If the economic nodes are all in favor of SegWit

If they all are in favor ! wtf if charlie says they are all in favor then they are all in favor, right ?

while i don’t know anything about the litecoin ecosystem, i will say that there is an important check in the ecosystem of any cryptocurrency that if the miners do not act in the best interest of the ecosystem as a whole that the rest of the ecosystem can leave them behind. the miners shouldn’t be able to force the rest of the ecosystem to do or not do anything. that’s not to say that the miners aren’t important or that their vote doesn’t matter, but they are only 1 section of the ecosystem as a whole. the threat of changing proof of work, even if it isn’t used certainly keeps them honest and acting in the best interest of the ecosystem.

Did they trademark LTC?

Litebutts may be up shit creek with a turd for a paddle.

Whats the futures market on powswitch seglite?

And why the fuck doesnt everybody just use groestlecoin?

Its got a stupid PoW, segdev, im sure other shit too. Its like the perfect threat embodied in an altcoin with a name that protects it from contention.

And the price of Litecoin keeps going down. It’s almost like he’s trying to destroy Litecoin.

if the miners do not act in the best interest of the ecosystem as a whole that the rest of the ecosystem can leave them behind.

No, not quite.

The miners of any cryptocurrency own and operate network, just like Coca-Cola owns and operates its factories. All the other players are their users.

Like Coca-Cola, the Litecoin (or Bitcoin) miners will do with their network whathever is best for them. Like Coca-Cola, that usually means not making the customers too upset, or they will leave for other coins. But they will often choose to do things that the customers don’t like; and most of the customers will usually grumble but submit, rather than switching.

So, in particular, the miners will implement SegWit if they think that it will mean more money for them than the alternative. Will it?

What is this?

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5uf679/charlie_lee_people_dont_realize_what_segwit_is/ddu2rmv/

But because SegWit is a softfork, there’s another option to force this softfork even if we don’t get miner consensus. I will go into details later on if we need to go there.

Any ideas on what he is talking about?

I think we have a new term guys…FORCED SOFTFORK

Charlie is throwing a fit right now. He thinks he sees an opportunity to bring litecoin to the forefront as a legitimate competitor to Bitcoin. But instead, he’s just killing litecoin by inappropriately throwing his weight around (hardly any at all). Their price keeps dropping and dropping. I was hoping they would adopt SWSF and kill themselves off but it appears Charlie will be able to do that all by himself.

You may got it all wrong. Bitcoins miners , and litecoin apparently, are taking their cues from big blockists, the economic majority of the community. They have plenty of support. The losers here are core dev, small blockists, and now Charlie.

I think perhaps that exactly who is leaving who behind is somewhat a matter of perspective.

Exactly why is it so desperate that segwit must be implemented urgently to the point of taking the PoW change nuclear option? That kind of action surely would not be good for the value of the coin. And none of the existing miners are going to adopt this new pow change so it is going to be a fork in the chain and in a hostile setting. The miners could easily attack the other branch as well - mining empty blocks if they have sufficient funds.

Perhaps miners feel that segwit opens the door to layer 2 transactions that will suck up the majority of the fees and yet will rely on their hard work in securing the chain to anchor all those layer 2 transactions.

Miners can’t force anyone to stay with or use a particular coin that they are mining - if the ecosystem feels strongly enough, people can trade their coins for something else. They could pick some coin that has already implemented segwit for example…

junseth2, for once, I agree with you. 😀

It’s a surprise. But if you think about it hard enough, you can figure it out.

Wow is it me or has /r/btc turned into a place just as bad as /r/bitcoin.

Enlighten me then. What is wrong in what I wrote?

yeah - I am interested to hear what you mean by saying that. Perhaps you can elaborate.

Miners don’t own the network. They are paid to validate transactions and add to the blockchain. They get paid very well in fact. If anything, they are the factory workers paid to do the job. The users own it. If the owners want the factory workers to make Sprite in addition to Coke, and the factory workers refuse, what’s going to happen? Just accept it and grumble?

I replied.

Also, what if miners want to pay themselves 26 LTC instead of 25 LTC. That shouldn’t make the customers too upset right? Tell me what happens then.

I always held a small balance on ltc as hedge. so I always keep an eye on the ltc sub.

it hurts me to see how a few people can damage a long standing coin so easy. the coin development is too centralized.

but that’s the way it is.

Miners don’t own the network.

Of course they do. They own the mining equipment, the controlling computers, and rent the internet connections through which all transactions and blocks must go. That is the network.

You may be thinking of the community of users. But they are jusy that, users of the network — not their owners.

The users own it.

No, the owners are those investors who put up the money that bought all that equipment (and get the rewards — as profit, not as salaries).

If the owners want the factory workers to make Sprite in addition to Coke, and the factory workers refuse, what’s going to happen?

If the Coca-Cola customers want Coca-Cola to make Sprite, but Coca-Cola refuses because it thinks that it will not be profitable, what will happen?

I’m excited about Litecoin implementing SegWit, it seems like the perfect solution. If it works well with Litecoin then it can be started on Bitcoin. What’s the problem?

No point in arguing. Your understanding of how Bitcoin consensus works is different than mine. I take back my harsh criticism. Sorry about that.

Hang on there. Software that creates the coins protocol is released and miners start to invest in equipment to mine coins. They make the investment based on the properties of the coin which they believe will allow it to have utility and therefore value. If they feel like the properties of the coin are being changed in such a way that will reduce its value then they are within their rights, surely, as the whole basis for which they invested has changed.

If the users get pissed off enough and start migrating away from the coin it will also impact the miners - so they would likely acquiesce eventually (but only if the reaction is strong enough - which is exactly stolfi’s point).

Minimally, miners need a network among themselves to keep mining. They don’t need anyone’s permission to keep building on the chain and no one can stop them or ever physically force them to upgrade.

If you can’t convince them that there is a benefit to both ecosystem and them then there has to be something seriously wrong with either the proposal or the communication (or both).

Without miners there would be no coins in the first place - this seems to be a fact that many devs just cannot accept.

That is a judgment call that users would make and would depend on the context as to how people react. If there is a strong counter reaction possible miners would be foolish to do it - but they absolutely can do it if they united together and you absolutely cannot stop them either - they can buy their own nodes and carry on without you. If their customer desert them then they will lose their investment - but that is within their control, not yours.

You jest, i find that both humorous and disgusting at the same time. So much for “consensus”. It’s obvious it only means what you want it to mean when it is most convenient for you. I think it’s quite a problem for one person to run around acting like they make the decisions.

Sorry, but I don’t understand what you are talking about.

And that is exactly why you fail to understand Bitcoin/Litecoin consensus.

If miners mined a 26LTC block, they are not mining Litecoin. It will immediately get rejected by everyone else. Sure, miners can create their own little world that accepts their own alternative Litecoin. You are right, no one can stop them. But they won’t be making money from their fake litecoins either.

yes, but if the ecosystem changes the proof of work and leaves the miners behind, then they are stuck mining coins that don’t do anything useful. if it is true that the entirety of the ecosystem has left, then new miners will form around this new ecosystem.

my point isn’t that they will change it. it’s that they can, and the fact that they can is important, because it forces the miners to consider the rest of the ecosystem when it makes decisions, because it is in their best interest to do so.

EDIT: I criticized too harshly, so removed.

You have got this backwards. Miners started investing in mining equipment because of users started to collect and value the coins which increased its price and the profitability of mining it.

People can draw their own conclusions. Charlie running around threatening a hard fork or forced soft fork to force segwit onto litecoin is something to which people might object. Just pointing it out

You personally threatened a hard fork or forced soft fork. Read the OP. And you say “It’s a surprise”. Why would you joke about that?

It’s not a joke. I’m not going to go into details about what the plan is as that will ruin the surprise. Like I said, I will elaborate on it if we need to go there. But if you understand how softfork works, how Bitcoin/Litecoin consensus works, and the check and balances in this consensus, then you can figure it out for yourself what’s a safe way to move forward even when we can’t reach miner majority. That’s all I’m going to say for now.

Yes, it’s actually worst IMO.

If you want to split the coin, go for it. That’s a judgement call the nodes can take. Market will decide. Good for you that you have come around to the same conclusion that BU has, but for litecoin. Why do you fail to see the same conclusion for the currently 20% of hashpower and whatever percentage of nodes for bitcoin? there are many pools and businesses that are willing to make a move. I think you should be careful what you ask for, OR demonstrate exactly what is possible.

And that is exactly why you fail to understand Bitcoin/Litecoin consensus.

No, i’m sorry, you fail to understand:

Miners + nodes = a currency network.

nodes without miners is just nodes.

Miners + nodes without customers = $0 coin - but it is still a coin..(looks cheap I might buy some!)

you are conflating some kind of economic consensus with network consensus. A majority of nodes, does not a coin network make. A majority of hash power communicating via at least some nodes does.

I have never said it would be wise for miners to follow a course of action to increase the reward (far from it) - but they absolutely can do it.

You are confusing miner transaction selection policy with consensus.

Miners have absolute power to select which valid transactions they include in a block. Miners have the absolute power, by hashrate to extend the blockchain with valid blocks. And in the case of two valid chains, >51% of the hashrate have absolute power to decide which wins - by virtue that the full nodes are programmed to follow the whatever valid chain has the most work.

Miners absolutely will do what is in their own financial interests and avoid doing things which harm their revenue (or the valid of Bitcoin overall). That’s the main assumption of Bitcoin, that miners will remain honest because it’s in their economic interest.

At no point do miners have the ability to change the consensus rules because the moment they create an invalid block, they will get banned from the network. Some people suggest miners can force nodes to switch consensus rules somehow and that the economy will follow. Miners would immediately lose revenue from mining invalid blocks on a gamble that the entire ecosystem would suddenly switch. You tell me who is likely to switch first, the entire economy, or the miners as quickly as a cat falling into the bath when they realise they arent getting paid.

What u/junseth2 is clearly stating is if the miners start working against the interests of the ecosystem, the response will be to ignore them by switching the PoW. The chances of that happening are pretty slim because miners are not going to commit suicide, risking billions in infrastructure and investment, based on a hope and a prayer.

So, in particular, the miners will implement SegWit if they think that it will mean more money for them than the alternative. Will it?

The big blockers say “bigger blocks means more fees” so if that is true, then yes, miners will select it. I think its not true initially, bigger blocks will reduce fees until blocks get fuller, at that point, they will absolutely make more revenue in fees.

How can a coin have any value before it has even been mined??? You are not making any sense at all to me. No miners - No Coins. Mining comes first, surely.

I hope it happens with Bitcoin first, rather than learn a cautionary tale from Litecoin. The grandiosity of thinking they can change PoW and everyone will follow by default could cause them to finally relinquish control over the network.

For ONE person to run around and make the claims you are making, and then patronize me how consensus works is…interesting

Haha, ok. If you say so.

if the ecosystem changes the proof of work and leaves the miners behind

That is a conceited view of reality…

Users cannot “change” the PoW, What can happen is some “rebel commando” creates an altcoin — NewBitcoin — that branches off the bitcoin blockchain at some point, but uses a different PoW from that point on.

The new altcoin will start with a puny network of GPUs. The current network — even miners who would otherwise be sympathetic to the rebels — will of course continue to mine the old Bitcoin. Then the rebels must convince all users to burn their (old) Bitcoins and use only the NewBitcoins instead.

The users must burn, not dump; because if the old bitcoins are sold, the buyers will continue to use them; and if there are users, there will be exchanges too. Thus, in order to “fire the miners”, most users must be convinced to throw away any value that their old coins might have.

It is hard to imagine something that the miners could want to do, and users would hate so much that most of them would rather burn their old bitcoins than continue to use them. I don’t think that raising the 21 million cap would be enough. If the users can put up with this…

Life is full of interesting things. 😀

Trying to lighten the mood a bit. Sorry for being patronizing. Just had a long day, week, and month.

Hi Charlie, I am interested in hearing about this method. Not sure why it needs to be so secretive.

No worries

You may find out soon enough. Sorry. 🙁

LOL, yes, open subs are worse than censored ones, from the perspective of caricatures of cypherpunks.

Of course miners would not simply start mining blocks that client software rejects as invalid.

But a simple majority of the miners can impose any soft fork that they like, without the consent of users, developers, servces, or the minority miners. Such as a higher minimum fee, or a demurrage tax, or a lower max transaction size.

And a supermajority (say, 60%) can even force a hard fork, such as an increase in the block reward. That would take a bit more work and time, because they must force all users to upgrade their software. They can do that by promising to “jam” any minority branch after the change is activated.

Some “rebel” users may create an altcoin with an incompatible PoW that retains the old block reward; but that would not prevent the miners cartel from going forward with their change. The clients would have to upgrade anyway; and they will download both versions, because both coins will probably have some value, and it would be foolish to throw that value away.

It’s the sybil attacks that can fool people. Unfortunately, there’s no good solution for that for a forum.

Bitcoin had no market value in the beginning.

Users were mining because that was a feature of the original client and it was cheap to do so.

Hobbyists and collectors started taking interest in accumulating because of speculation or curiosity. Eventually demand was such that a market for coins emerged which resulted in a price and therefore further incentives for people to invest in mining rather than do it as a by-product of running the software.

It’s very obvious that the hashing power has followed the price all along, which tells you how the incentives are aligned.

Ok, thanks.

The big blockers say “bigger blocks means more fees” … I think its not true initially, bigger blocks will reduce fees until blocks get fuller, at that point, they will absolutely make more revenue in fees.

Those may be the “not-so-big-blockers” perhaps. Real big blockers say that the network must never be allowed to become congested; that is, the block size limit must be big enough for it to be irrelevant.

Fixing a low block size limit is a stupid (sorry but it is the right word) way to increase the miners revenue. The right way is what all businesses do: the supplier posts the price that maximizes its profit, taking into account the price x demand curve of the market and the expected reaction of other suppliers. And then he serves all the demand that is willing to pay that price — the more, the better.

Your implication is insulting. There are 27,000 subscribers to this sub.

Miners absolutely will do what is in their own financial interests and avoid doing things which harm their revenue

That is true…

or the value of Bitcoin overall

That is not necessarily true. For one thing, a miner whose equipment will be obsolete in 1 year will want to maximize his revenue in that 1 year, even if it causes the price to crash after that.

Or, suppose the next halving of the reward is coming up, and the miners are considering a hard fork that will suppress it and keep the reward constant. If forcing that hard fork would cause the price to drop 30%, that would still be worh for the miners (maybe 100 M USD or more).

Moreover, the interest of miners may depend on other factors besides the price of bitcoin. Suppose that the Chinese government calls the major Chinese pools and tells them to reverse a certain transaction that was confirmed yesterday, or else. Their interest will be to comply, even if that causes the price to crash and forces them to close afterwards…

Nobody is really that interested in Blockstream approved definitions. Thanks though

This happens on both r/btc and r/bitcoin by both camps likely. So I’m not trying to be insulting.

Arguing over who owns the network is pointless. It’s like trying to describe which leg of a table holds it up.

I apologize then, but I still disagree that sybils play any kind of major role in either sub.

It seems that you and the litecoin devs (devaluators) are able to fool the majority of the litecoiners who’s coins are losing every day vs. Bitcoin. At Bitcoin, the miners fortunately emancipate from the core devaluators. They are not ready for a network suicide, as ViaBTC called that softfork attack.

Are you guys talking about orphaning block that don’t signal segwit?

Then why set up a 75% threshold if you guy intended to force activation?

Would you say that /r/bitcoin is Sybil attacked, since most users holding certain points-of-view are silenced?

You are more than welcome to say whatever you like in this subreddit. If you get down voted, that doesn’t mean the subreddit is sybil attacked, maybe it just means your opinions are unpopular. I know this not how rediquette is supposed to work, but let’s be real and acknowledge that that’s how up and down votes are used in practice.

Might as well just put a flag day in at that point

Demonstrating a contentious hard fork could be beneficial to Bitcoin too.

On another note, I think it is interesting to see how the creator of Litecoin tries to influence the coin since I often wonder what Satoshi thinks about the current situation.

I’m not interested in convincing those who don’t want to see things for what they are. You are free to remain in your bubble.

Agreed, I warned him of that. He may end up having the opposite effect he wants.

while i don’t know anything about the litecoin ecosystem, i will say that there is an important check in the ecosystem of any cryptocurrency that if the miners do not act in the best interest of the ecosystem as a whole that the rest of the ecosystem can leave them behind.

You cannot.

If you change the PoW you go an a separate ledger.
Bitcoin/litecoin or whatever currency is concerned will work just fine.

the threat of changing proof of work, even if it isn’t used certainly keeps them honest and acting in the best interest of the ecosystem.

The are not kept honest because they are threatened by the community, they are kept honest because they are incentived to do so.

Bitcoin 101.

You’re saying we are all sockpuppets?

Where have I heard that before?

Well, I know I’m a sockpuppet.

Some interesting points.

Suppose that the Chinese government calls the major Chinese pools and tells them to reverse a certain transaction that was confirmed yesterday, or else. Their interest will be to comply, even if that causes the price to crash and forces them to close afterwards…

Would be pretty difficult since miners would have to create a 144 block reorg by outmining the current chain, ok so 80% of the hashrate stop mining the tip, goes back to the block before the tx they want to censor and starts mining again, that would take a day + 25% to do. I dont see how that would work in the incentives of miners to do given the disruption, effect on price and general WTF that would illicit from the community. It’s an interesting thought experiment for sure, but a bit OTT at the same time 🙂

yes, but if the ecosystem changes the proof of work and le>aves the miners behind, then they are stuck mining coins that don’t do anything useful.

You are wrong.

They are not left behind, they will keep mining the currency, the whole ecosystem is still compatible with (supporting the new currency will require updates), many economics participants will not even be aware of event and the security of the PoW of the new currency will be many order of magnitude smaller for a long time.

The currency being forked off will not be I affected, I wouldn’t be surprised if the exchange rate barely move, it is the new currency (wilth the PoW) that will have everything to prove.

The users own it.

Well I don’t think anybody own the network.

It is the point of cryptocurrency, it has not center.

Love your prose.

“They have now latched onto…”

“obviously they think that forcing…”

“They keep claiming…”

You keep using the word they. Who exactly are you referring to?

Segwitians

And the truth is that this exactly how blockchains are supposed to work on the development end.

If a disagreement is significant enough they are free to do a software fork and go do their own thing, and this is encouraged.

Like this whole mess, they want to do something that the bulk of both Bitcoin and Litecoin communities do not want. SegWit is poorly implemented garbage on both sides as a soft fork. We know it. Miners know it. SegWit adoption is floundering hard, and numbers don’t lie.

Charlie, Adam, Greg, you are all free to split off and leave the rest of us alone if you want SegWit so damn bad, and please do. Use what is left of your pathetic little VC backed war chest and build new ASICs for a new algo and call it something else. If you are all so confident in your own visions, you should have no problem branching off and actually competing with Bitcoin instead of trying to steal it and mutilate it like cowards.

sounds like a test - let those who want to do it, do it.

https://imgflip.com/i/1jtilk

I don’t understand how they don’t understand that if they change the algo, they created a new coin that is no longer Bitcoin/Litecoin. This is exactly what Litecoin is to Bitcoin, which is Bitcoin with Scrypt instead of SHA256. It is truly mind boggling. Are these people actually insane?

They also don’t get apparently don’t understand how open source software and forks work either.

Without mining nodes there is no network. Are you losing your mind?

Charlie is a nutcase. He’s flailing all over trying to take advantage of the situation to make litecoin relevant

Does it involve orphaning block votes you don’t like?

Well said

One thing I noticed: he fully expects the whole node network to accept SegWit. His argument against the potential for a 51% attack using anyone-can-spend is that the nodes will still not recognize this as valid, but the whole point of a softfork is that older nodes don’t need to change. Anyone using an older node might still accept the blocks where SegWit transactions are simply spent by miners or anyone else, and if a significant portion of nodes and a majority of miners use a non-SegWit client.. well, which network is the true Litecoin/Bitcoin? Probably the non-SegWit one.

A soft fork activation can be forced on the network.

As long as 51% support the soft fork, miner just need to orphaned block that doesn’t support segwit.

By doing so they are guaranteed to reach any threshold.

But look very much like an attack on the network.

Yes It would be a extremely agressive way to force an upgrade..

Whatever cryptocurrency going trough such event would loose all credibility to me..

Not to mention people will loose money (block being orphaned).. it is unethical to say the least.

The point of a blockchain is that it has internal business logic and operating constitution of it’s own.

Bitcoin owns itself, miners and developers are effectively contractors that work for it based on a set of rules, and users/holders of the coin are essentially shareholders. Those coins, or shares, are backed by the utility, service, and infrastructure of the whole network. Imagine if you could spend your Google stock on coffee with no middleman. It is the first working example of an autonomous self-propelled business, in this case a financial and banking service.

To truly embrace this technology you really must let go of any preconceived notions of traditional business structures, because this is a whole new arena, which is grossly misunderstood by most.

Charlie, why do you have harsh words to say about /r/btc but do not do the same for /r/bitcoin? I think it would be interesting to hear your take on the pros and cons of each of the two subreddits.

stick to computer science, you don’t understand markets AT ALL

Anyone can be a miner

The whole point of this particular portion of the thread I am in where it was mentioned that a POW change could keep the miners in check seems to be that the ecosystem can just fire the miners by a POW change. And I am here to tell you that the coins are worthless without miners mining them and without miners continuing to mine blocks so that transactions can take place (albeit increasingly slowly on the stagnating bitcoin blockchain) - ultimately what gives coins their value is the fact that the blockchain is secured by a majority of “honest” hash. When people start pulling out the big guns of POW change threats they don’t realize just how much of a nuclear option that is - you think existing miners are going to play ball with that? You think that the new rules are going to be secured with an equivalent amount of hash - not very likely. It might suit some people’s agenda to see miners as merely filling blocks and crunching a few numbers and slavishly following their dev masters or whatever - but like it or not, when a coin network is in full flight, much like Dr Frankenstein discovered, the original creator is no longer in control of the creation.

It is a bootstrapping situation, people started mining out of interest and fascination, the tiniest value became attributed to the coins, the mining network gathers more interest, value kept increasing and then more serious investment occurred. You cannot have a valuable coin without people wanting to hold it or use it, and you cannot use it if it is not secured and operated by the miners. Devs on the other hand should regard both coin consumer and miners as their clients whose interest they seek to serve by offering a range of potential improvements and seeking to explain the benefits - without trying to threaten, bully, cajole, deride or dismiss concerns of the respective parties.

Ultimately the miners need consumers to use the coins (holding is a use case) which is why it is in their self interest to have a flourishing ecosystem - such as might be able to continue to grow were the blocksize limit raised in a more open ended fashion and self adjusting fashion.

I remember when litecoin started. The whole thing was a troll on bitcoin and a get rich quick scheme. Sadly the get rich quick trolls also joined up and lite has been trolling ever since.

sybil attacks

You’re not shy to use a forum to attack reputations are you Charlie?. What was it you said about those 7 alt coins that came before Litecoin again…

Charlie says … ‘they were not launched fairly basically launched by people who are greedy that wanted to strike it rich..

https://youtu.be/P7jBwrvN-uA?list=PL0q5EDt0zwYpu4LVuWP0M1BwfeMqdc6DF&t=106

What’s the real reason you created Litecoin Charlie ?

Do you have a rough ETA? Days? Weeks?

Sounds like he will hide an update to segwit, miners will upgrade without knowing.

If he changes the PoW nobody will care, miners will keep mining litecoin with the old PoW and the altcoin of the altcoin generated by a PoW change will be completely ignored.

One thing is to create a new blockchain (anyone can do it), and another thing is to create the whole idea. You can’t compare this clown to Satoshi.

dont see how that would work in the incentives of miners to do given the disruption

Not going to jail is an incentive that trumps any monetary profits.

If 60% of the miners announce that they are doing it because they have no choice, and can convince the world of their commitment, the other 40% will join them; because any work spent on the minority chain would be wasted.

By the way, in that case the 1 MB limit will cause a huge backlog, since those 144 MB of transactions will be added to the normal incoming traffic; and there will be some wasted hashpower until the minority gets smart and joins the reorg. That would happen at any multi-block reorg, in fact. The backlog means that several days might pass between a transaction being un-confirmed by the reorg and being reconfirmed again in the new chain. If the limit were removed, there would be no backlog, and reconfirmation of confirmed transactions would be “instantaneous”.

RIP litecoin then..

No. Just no.

That would actually be devs taking control over the entire network. The solution is a lot more decentralised, and doesn’t include orphaning non-segwit blocks. That would be censoring.

the miners shouldn’t be able to force the rest of the ecosystem to do or not do anything.

Agreed. Anything otherwise would be giving up total control to miners, who as a syndicate would be able to overwhelmingly control the network, by censoring transactions and new features.

That analogy isn’t the best to describe the situation.

I think you could say that miners will always strive to make maximum profit, and through that mechanism, it allows miners to make bad decisions which can be good for them in the short term, but bad in the long term.

Your understanding of the market isn’t the best though.

They own the mining equipment, the controlling computers, and rent the internet connections through which all transactions and blocks must go. That is the network.

That is not the network. The network is the entire ecosystem, and miners play a part in verifying transactions + some other things.

Miners shouldn’t be able to censor transactions, to censor features, to censor rules. It is the users who should be able to do that. Litecoin is a decentralised currency, and consensus is meant to be reached by the majority of its users. Not a small group of miners.

As a decentralised network, the users of the network represent the owners. And to say that either developers or miners are the owners of the network is fundamentally wrong.

That’s a judgement call the nodes can take. Market will decide.

This is meant to be a last resort, so hopefully the PoW change doesn’t happen. I think it’s fair to say that Litecoin deserves to die if either miners or developers manage to get complete control of the network. As we would be breaking one of the biggest fundamentals of LTC, it’s decentralisation nature.

Well what is that mysterious solutions?

anyone that gains more than 51% hash power of the network can force anything they want on the network

that is why core set the bar so unrealistically high for SW, they hoped more people would not notice 95% is BullShit to begin with

This is why having multiple compatible client versions on the network is significantly more important than this block size misdirection, it is a direct supplement to the security of the miners and multiple pool distribution and we should be driving for MORE compatible clients and MORE collaborative development groups

That is not the network. The network is the entire ecosystem,

You may call things anyway you want, but it is the miners who own and operate the equipment that keeps the system working.

That is what is usually called the “network” in other industries. The “phone network”, the “electric power network”, the “sewage network” etc. do not include the users, or the companies that work around it.

Miners shouldn’t be able to censor transactions, to censor features, to censor rules. It is the users who should be able to do that.

By “shouldn’t” you mean “we the users don’t want them to”. But that is not what the protocol says. By design, a majority of miners has the power to censor transactions (and even reverse them). That gives them the power to block or impose changes to the protocol — either by “stealth deployment”, in the case of soft forks, or by jamming minority branches, in the case of hard forks.

And “majority of hashpower rules” is an essential feature of bitcoin; it is Satoshi’s invention that made decentralized consensus possible, thus solving the double-spend problem that had been open for 25 years. Replacing “majority of hashpower” by any other criterion — such as “majority or users” or “majority of holders” — will completely break the system.

Bitcoin was designed to be a network of miners, run by the miners, for the miners’ benefit. That has not changed, and the altcoins based on bitcoin have inherited that basic design.

Power hungry developers? There’s a strong consensus among the community to upgrade to segwit the only people stopping the softfork would be the miners. The only way he would force it is after the 1 year time frame as well.

The users must burn, not dump; because if the old bitcoins are sold, the buyers will continue to use them;

You can’t really be that incapable of understanding basic price mechanisms. If a large part of holders sell their coins, the price will obviously go down, making it much less worthy. The few buyers will end up buying lots of coins for a dime, and in the end there will be less users, and thus there will be less demand for infrastructure.

That’s obvious even for a socialist. So why do you claim they’d need to burn the coins instead?

Two WeeksTM

He’s not hiding anything. He’s announcing his intentions openly and clearly. I respect him for that. It’s up to people to support him and move in the direction he leads or to dissent. But I don’t think we’re going to see any such machinations.

That’s not fair. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that has everything to do speculation about the upcoming bitcoin ETF and nothing to do with litecoin specifically.

The are not kept honest because they are threatened by the community, they are kept honest because they are incentived to do so.

The two aren’t entirely unrelated. It’s misleading to imply that they are. Empty threats incentivize no one. But informing people what you’re about to do and letting them respond how they like is ideal in any functional economy.

I never say they are related.

I used a double negative which might have been confusing. You’re implying they’re not related. I’m directly saying they are.

So you are saying there is incentive without threat?

Kind of. I’m saying that miner’s are motivated by incentives. Threats are just communicating intentions. If they’re sincere they are a vaild form of incentive. A distasteful form, but a valid form-if they’re sincere/credible.

So threats and incentives are not mutually exclusive sets. That’s all I meant.

EDIT: To be more clear Yes. But also all the other things I said.

The few buyers

How do you know that they will be “few”?

Check the ETH/ETC fork. Many fans of each coin rushed to dump their holdings of the other coin. But neither succeeded in driving the other to the ground.

Suppose the miners impose a change in the halving schedule that doubles the cap to 42 million. Those hodlers who “grew up” believing that 21 M is the magic untouchable number may dump, horrified. But for those who buy their coins at $200, an issuance cap of 42 M would still mean 5x the potential “moonfall” that one could hope for when buying at $1000 with a 21 M cap.

For them, 42 M will be the magic untouchable number. Like the 21 M cap, it will not be “guaranteed by math”, but only by the solemn promises of human beings…

Umm, if you’re going to hard fork for PoW anyway, why would you want to carry all the unneeded complexity of “soft” fork SegWit? Paging Captain Logic.

e: Also, Scrypt is hardly as ASIC intensive as SHA256, so a change to even the most CPU-intenstive PoW may bring only a marginal changing in voting results.

Don’t divert from the point of my message, please.

You wrote that only if the supporters of a particular fork burn their holdings they would stand a chance of winning. Selling, you claimed, would not be work.

That’s obviously false and you know it. Burning your holdings would eliminate your share of demand, but it would as well decrease the supply. Selling would increase the supply. It’s the most effective action to bring down that asset price. I’m pretty sure Jorge Stolfi, despite being a socialist, can understand that. Then why did you say that?

Burning your holdings would eliminate your share of demand, but it would as well decrease the supply. Selling would increase the supply.

We are discussing which of two impossible scenarios is more likely to work.

Suppose that, as you say, the bitcoin holders who prefer X-bitcoin to Y-bitcoin decide to sell all their Y-bitcoins as quickly as possible, For that, there must be an exchange that provides trading of Y-bitcoin (as Poloniex smartly did after the Ethereum split).

The price would surely crash, but not to zero. Every trade has a seller and a buyer, so there will be people buying those bargain coins.

Then Y-Bitcoin would have Hodlers (people who hold coins hoping for a large price rise in the indefinite future): namely, those buyers. It will have an exchange, and hence it will have Traders (people who buy and sell on the short term, trying to exploit variations in price). And it can have Users (people who use the coins as paymentfor goods or services).

The new Hodlers will obviously be people who believe that Y-bitcoin is the good one, and, rightly or wrongly, trust that Y-bitcoin will go to the moon one day. The Traders will not care about the technicals, the ideologies, or even the price: all they care is that they can buy and sell the coin, and that the price varies. The Users too won’t care about ideologies or the price, but care about having their payments delivered promptly. If X-bitcoin has backlogs, and Y-bitcoin doesn’t have…

So, Y-bitcoin will not die, even of most current holders dump their hoards. For its price to go to zero, all people who currently have bitcoin, for any purpose, would have to dump them; and those coins must find no buyers. Call this the “Dump Death”.

Now about burning. Indeed, if only some of the people who own bitcoins burn their Y-coins and leave, the price should not be significantly affected, because they take away both potential supply and future demand. To kill Y-bitcoin, all people who currently own bitcoin would have to burn them. Call this the “Burn Death”.

A variant on the Burn Death is the “Drop Death”, where all owners of bitcoin simply leave their Y-bitcoins where they are and never try to move them.

Note that the three death modes are equivalent, in the sense that the bitcoin holders get no value out of their Y-coins. The main difference is that in the Dump Death an Y-bitcoin exchange gets created, and all holders put their coin for sale there — but no trades get executed.

All three scenarios — Dump Death, Burn Death, and Drop Death — are impossible, except in one case: when the Y-bitcoin is not functional — either because it has too few miners to sustain a usable block rate, or because the majority of them miners is mining the X branch and is actively jamming the Y branch.

In that case, however, no exchange will offer trading on Y-coins. So the Y-coin will actually die of a Drop Death.

And this is the natural outcome of any hard-fork that gets a 75% miner vote; which will very likely become 100% miner adoption during the grace period. Then the Y-coin will be the unforked version, and it will die of Drop Death. Note that, if 75% of the miners want a hard-fork change in the rules, it is because they expect that their revenue (from fees and rewards) will increase as a result, in spite of an eventual effect on the price.

On the other hand, if some of the miners try a hard fork for other reasons (as was the case with Ethereum), the unforked version is likely to retain the support of enough miners to make it viable, thus avoiding death (of any kind).