https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=distributed+exchange Keeping decentralized tech like bisq / bitsquare / bitshares / openledger / etherdelta / counterparty / etc in mind is essential now that centralized exchanges are becoming a serious arbitrary / regulatory / privacy counterparty risk.

On Sun, 24 Dec 2017 09:40:58 -0500 Lee Clagett wrote:

On Sat, 23 Dec 2017 20:08:00 +0000 Bitcoin Cash Shills Be Like wrote:

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I will try to keep my post as easy to digest as possible, but this is a lot of information that actually stems back to cpunks and the help of a very based anon.

1. Pre-August 2017 - /pol/ anon makes post warning other anons about the implications of the User-Activated Soft Fork on Bitcoin's blockchain. This User-Activated Soft Fork activates software called Segregated Witness, a "scaling solution" funded by a company called Blockstream, who happens to be funded by venture capital groups. This "network upgrade" initiates on August 8th 2017, and if all the miners do not follow the abundance of nodes on the network, a chain split results, which looks terrible for Bitcoin. Because of this, and previous arrangements that will benefit the miners later on, Segwit is activated. Right before activation, Roger Ver states that he does not agree with what SegWit claims to do for Bitcoin, and in turn hard forks the network in order to preserve Bitcoin's ecosystem before this radical upgrade took place.

Segwit was activated because it was a logical improvement to the network in several areas. The primary objection I am aware of is how it was implemented via soft fork. If enough participates are not enforcing Segwit, then user funds could theoretically be stolen. The way this is discussed on bitcoin.com in particular is confusing to the average person. That problem exists with _every_ blockchain. If a majority of the nodes are skipping signature checks due to the cost, you are still in the stealing-user-funds doomsday scenario. The only complications added by Segwit were: (1) how quickly do users upgrade nodes, and (2) would it encourage more people to skip signature checks since it would save on bandwidth (miners have been proven to do this previously due to the CPU latency savings). AFAIK, its impossible to enforce nodes to check signatures so (2) is only a problem if the majority of nodes are constrained on bandwidth but not CPU, and (1) was mitigated by releasing software nearly a year advance and watching the miners/nodes for self reporting their version numbers. And even then, people could simply never create a Segwit address if they were still concerned about the potential security (i.e. its use is completely optional, and sending or receiving money from a Segwit address in no way changes your security).

This does bring up an interesting point, what happens if the blocksize is increased to the point where nodes become a little CPU bound? Do a sizeable portion of the nodes begin to skip signature checks? Has the security of the system decreased as a result of increasing the blocksize?

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WHAT IS SEGWIT?

Segregated Witness is a software upgrade that forces every-day users such as you and I off of the main blockchain. It does this using a fee-based "solution". Fees to broadcast to the main blockchain are raised x1000, going from less than $1 to $1000 EOY 2018. Instead, average users will go through Side-Chains - a patented software that allows banks to control their own centralized blockchains, this means that they choose the transactions that will and will not be allowed to be broadcasted to the main blockchain, while you as an individual must pay them a fee to even use the sidechains. This means that banks have control over who can and cannot send money, something that was previously not possible with Bitcoin.

Segwit is not forcing people off of the main chain - the limited block space is forcing people off the main chain. Concerns of a sidechain patent are also dubious. There are many ways for people to exchange between crypto-currencies, including one decentralized p2p exchange "bisq". The adoption of Bitcoin Cash by Coinbase and other parties seems to indicate that Blockstream has no control over where the transactions occur. People do not have to use "the main chain" for settlement at all! This is the worst part of the Blockstream is ruining Bitcoin narrative, if they push that hard people are just going to fork to their own variant. I think it would even be possible to take control of the Bitcoin name away from "core" if they were deemed that untrustworthy (the Monero community did this with "thankful_for_today").

I did forget that using a sidechain means you still technically own "Bitcoin". So the situation is a bit different than exchanging to another coin. Although the primary point still stands - Blockstream can try to influence Bitcoin heavily if they want, but it will simply push more people to fork the project out of their control entirely.

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2. Post-August 2017

Roger Ver splits the Bitcoin blockchain with his hardfork, resulting in a new Bitcoin offspring named "Bitcoin Cash (BCH)" - Bitcoin Cash follows the original roadmap laid out by Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, while Bitcoin (BTC) is now a science project of Bitcoin Core and Blockstream. Nothing is too bad on 4chan, a lot of people talking shit about Bitcoin Cash, but from my perspective it seems to be pure ignorance rather than any actual shilling.

WHAT IS BITCOIN CASH?

Bitcoin Cash is the original idea of Bitcoin, laid out by the creator of Bitcoin, and using solutions that Satoshi Nakamoto explicitly states exist for the future of the currency. These solutions allow for Bitcoin to scale according to the amount of users on the network, without the high-fee-based scalability model. This means that regardless of whether you are rich or poor, if you have Bitcoin Cash (BCH) you can broadcast your transaction to the blockchain for close to nothing. Censorship-resistant money.

My primary objection to this portion is this statement:

allow for Bitcoin to scale according to the amount of users on the network, without the high-fee-based scalability model.

Increasing the blocksize allows more transactions in a block, but it also increases the network/cpu/memory/storage costs to miners and full node operators. Right now the costs are low enough where light=weight based wallets can connect to a full node for free to retrieve the necessary information. Raising the blocksize faster than the relative costs of running a full node likely will result in node operators requiring payment from light-weight type wallets to provide that service. There is no "free lunch" here; either the costs of processing on-chain transactions is so low that the light-weight wallet services can be provided cheaply, or more revenue needs to be generated for those nodes to offset the larger cost of processing the transactions. The first test to see what happens in this regard might be Ethereum, as running a node seems to have high costs already.

Also this statement:

Censorship-resistant money.

was likely intended to be an objection to the higher transaction fees that could be effectively pricing people out of the market. I suppose this is a form of censorship, albeit in a way different than most think about it. I think mining centralizing is a bigger concern - no amount of money can technically offset a "banning" in the worst case. Perhaps my scenario is less likely to happen? It seems like people can move to another crypto-currency if either is that problematic.

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3. Bitcoin Cash Gains A Foothold

As Bitcoin's (BTC) fees grow in price, less people begin to use it, the promise of Lightning Network and Sidechains are still being worked on, according to Core and Blockstream, but as of now, there is no immediate solution to these people. Raising the blocksize past 1MB is not possible. In turn, many businesses begin to drop Bitcoin, some turning to Bitcoin Cash, which results in newfound confidence and a new floor @ $1000 USD. At this point, 4chan begins to see many people shilling against Bitcoin Cash and either attempting to point people's attention toward alt-coins as the successor to Bitcoin, rather than Bitcoin Cash, which shares the same Genesis Block with Bitcoin.

WHAT COINS ARE BEING SHILLED?

With the failure of BTC being just around the corner, shills see this as an opportunity to begin their attack. They choose very specific coins for a VERY specific reason. Ethereum and Litecoin are the main alts being shilled.

Are you not shilling for Bitcoin Cash right now?

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WHY ETHEREUM?

Ethereum Enterprise Alliance - search it.

WHY LITECOIN?

Litecoin, created by Charlie Lee, is a fork of Bitcoin created in or around 2013. What is so special about Litecoin? Nothing anymore. The most notable feature though, would be Segregated Witness, which was activated on Litecoin FAR before it was activated on Bitcoin. Since Segwit is software owned by Blockstream, if the majority of Bitcoin's market cap were to flow into Litecoin, banks would have won regardless of whether BTC dies or not. Either way both have Segwit activated, so Blockstream and banks win.

Why would banks win if Segwit adoption spreads? This is such an obvious falsehood to anyone who understands the technology that the sentence reads as complete incomprehensible garbage.

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4. Bitcoin Cash Begins to Suck the Life Out of Bitcoin

As of Nov 15th 2017, Bitcoin Cash has begun to absorb Bitcoin's market dominance at a rapid rate, swinging between .1 and .3 Satoshi in comparison to BTC. Eventually Bitcoin Cash is projected to be at a 1:1 ratio with BTC, and afterwards will kill BTC completely, as they both work using the same hardware and mining algorithms. Bitcoin Cash has some added features including an adjusted DAA that stop miners from being able to kill the network by making it to expensive to mine at a loss when hashpower is removed. In other words, Bitcoin Cash's blockchain is a lot stronger and more resistant to the chain-death spiral that could completely (and will) kill Bitcoin.

I cannot grok the phrase "making it expensive to mine at a loss when hashpower is removed". If they removed the hashpower, what are they mining? Anyway, the Bitcoin Cash algorithm was designed to react quicker to a loss in hashrate. It can cause oscillation problems as miners move between different networks due to changes in difficulty/price of various coins with the same PoW. I don't see this as a positive or negative for Bitcoin Cash, the programmers appeared to make a best effort judgement call to keep the network going.

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5. Coinbrase adds Bitcoin Cash

As of Dec 20th 2017, Coinbrase announces that it will add Bitcoin Cash as a USD pair, shaking confidence in BTC and bringing the market down for a short period of time. Due to not enough liquidity, the price of Bitcoin Cash shoots from $4000 USD to $9000 USD within 6 minutes, and coinbrase disables trading, as they do not believe the price is healthy and may be manipulated.

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WHY IS ANY OF THIS IMPORTANT?

As Bitcoin Cash has grown, BTC has began to die, which ultimately was the plan of banks anyway, they never wanted Bitcoin to work. They want to kill it or control it, now they have a big issue to deal with.

The banks planned for Bitcoin to die? Then why allow open-source code that can easily be copied and forked to do what Bitcoin Cash is doing? I realize that you are clearly shilling non-sense for Bitcoin Cash, but the rhetoric was so over the top in this post I couldn't help but respond to the stupidity.

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POINT?

Anyone calling Bitcoin Cash "Bcash" is doing so in an attempt at shifting the narrative and pulling Bitcoin Cash away from the "Bitcoin" name.

Lee