This author confuses a <i>hard fork</i> for a <i>github fork</i>:<p>> The bitcoin chain has been hard-forked at least five times, [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks</a><p>Ouch! Those aren't hard forks— they are forks of the github repo!<p>In reality Bitcoin has only been hard-forked twice. Once, to fix the bug as described in BIP 50, and once for Bitcoin Cash.<p>Here's a better resource: <a href="http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/patrick.mc-corry/atomically-trading-roger.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/patrick.mc-corry/atomically-tr...</a>
> I am fully cognizant of the perils of making bearish predictions about new technology.<p>> But, to quote another well-worn and wholly unreliable aphorism, this time it's different. It really is.<p>and<p>>... because the only other alternative is chaos, and probably the end of the whole Bitcoin experiment.<p>I'm very much a Bitcoin skeptic, but, I'm not sure this time is different, or that Bitcoin will die.<p>For the last 8 years, various sources have been predicting a Bitcoin collapse over and over again. It's still here, alive and well and quite high.<p>3 years ago: Business Week - Bitcoin Is Collapsing => <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893616" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893616</a><p>4 years ago: latimes.com - Bitcoin virtual currency is on verge of collapse => <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7306035" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7306035</a><p>6 years ago: theatlantic.com - The Bitcoin Economy Is Collapsing with No Sign of Recovery (2011) => <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431092" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8431092</a><p>6 years ago: Bitcoin & Gresham's Law - the economic inevitability of Collapse => <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3623549" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3623549</a>
As a Bitcoin fan (and someone who owns a little), I think it's a pretty good article.<p>Some more tidbits of information from my perspective:<p>>The anti-2Xers argue that the NYA should not be binding because it was negotiated behind closed doors, and that a change of this magnitude needs to be more carefully considered before it is adopted.<p>No active developers were part of the NYA. Some in the NYA have said that they agreed because they believed Core was party to the NYA.<p>>But there is another school of thought, which is that Bitcoin is (or should be) a currency rather than a commodity, primarily a medium of exchange rather than a store of value. These are the folks who want you to be able to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoins.<p>I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has large costs that need to be carefully considered. The (backward-compatible) Segwit capacity upgrade just happened, and it takes time for people to update their software to make the newer more-efficient transactions. (... If the consensus was that Bitcoin really was urgently hurting for transaction capacity, you'd expect people to be updating to Segwit transactions faster than they are now.) The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly. The idea that it should be decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.<p>>The 2X advocates have refused, citing the NYA, and secure (at least apparently) in their belief that enough people will update their code that there will be no doubt that 2X is the One True Chain.<p>Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and that none plan on contributing to. Many have said that if Bitcoin "fails" after the fork, they have no interest in contributing to the Segwit2x fork's software. (The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years, politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs be the target of harassment; imagining that unpaid volunteers are going to switch to working on a project made by the latest iteration of that is ... to call it wishful thinking seems too kind.)
Opt-in replay protection was merged in a few days ago. <a href="https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a560ae89c0fcbadfbe73dc" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a56...</a><p>In any case, if you believe Bitcoin's main value proposition is as a great store of value, then replay protection simply doesn't matter that much. You wouldn't be transacting enough to matter.
This is a good write-up. There is an insane amount of FUD surrounding Bitcoin, and not all of it is unfounded. I certainly hope that Bitcoin gets its act together, because the volatility makes driving adoption significantly harder than it would otherwise be.<p>It has been very interesting to see how he Ethereum has handled many of these same problems. I would be interested in seeing analysis about the impact to alternative crypto currencies such as Ethereum and Litecoin, if Bitcoin ends up blowing up over this.
Personally I’m of the opinion that Bitcoin is already “too big to fail”: there are so many interested parties and stakeholders who want it to succeed that it will be kept alive through sheer will, despite internal politics.
The main thesis of the article is outdated and now wrong - as someone pointed in its comments: <a href="https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a560ae89c0fcbadfbe73dc" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin/commit/a3c41256984bf11d95a56...</a>
All the rest might be interesting to someone completely new to the subject - but it also contains many mistakes. One is confusing git forks of the source code with the blockchain forks. Another is his claim that "everyone agrees that the capacity of the Blockchain needs to be increased" - bitcoin needs capacity increases - but it does not need to be on-chain - there are proposals like Lightning Network that would do that off-chain.
Bitfinex allows you to bet on the outcome of this whole situation[1]:<p>> Bitfinex is introducing new CSTs that will allow traders to speculate on the potential activation and mining of the Segwit2x consensus protocol. We are designating these CSTs as BT1 (Incumbent Bitcoin Blockchain) and BT2 (Bitcoin Segwit2x).<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/221" rel="nofollow">https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/221</a>
The interesting thing is that unlike in July where the price crashed, this time the price is completely stable despite the fact that it's a much bigger clusterfuck. It seems like perhaps the "you can't bet against the apocalypse" rule is being applied.
Despite all the histrionics about 2X -- just read r/bitcoin -- nobody in the 2X movement is a bad actor, they're people who've come to some different conclusions about what needs to be done.<p>It's funny to think what an _actual_ bad actor could do to the platform. Every time I hear the cryptocurrency people crowing about the amazing un-censorable power of the technology I just smile.
> ... no obvious way to tell which is the One True Chain.<p>One obvious way - whether you agree with it or not - is to use hashrate. It's quite unlikely that both chains will have a nearly-equal hashrate for a sustained period of time.
I disagree with this logic. Plenty of people said that SegWit was going to cause issues and it didn’t. If Bitcoin fails it will be from external market pressures, not internal politics.
the dumb money isnt even all in yet, so how can it be coming to an end? stuff like pension funds, mutual funds, there isnt even a bitcoin etc yet. Until this happens it will rise even more.
Folks, I give you the disruptive infinitely scalable technology the likes of which the world has never seen. It will bring down the entrenched losers like Visa and cash-based economy.<p>Just hold on tight, let's see if it can survive protocol upgrades and get more than 4 transactions a second.
The article correctly notices that the market was more worried around the time of the BCH fork, but misses some of the reasons why. The BCH was a more credible threat to the value proposition of Bitcoin because the market could be convinced it was like a dividend to the BTC chain, the market cap of the latter was clearly at risk.<p>The design of B2X is based on getting every user of Bitcoin to switch software before November. If commerce continues on the legacy chain, the value proposition falls in its entirety. B2X has no replay protection to speak of and no emergency difficulty adjustment is possible. The market correctly reflects the probability that B2X will replace BTC. Feel free to bet on it should you disagree, Bitfinex offers futures trading on BTC/B2X.
Interesting article, but doesn't explain why the situation is anything close to an apocalypse.<p>My only piece of advice is that while it's fine to take money off the table before such events, pay very close attention to what is going on and NEVER PANIC SELL. Anyone who has done so before (myself included) has regreted it.<p>Bitcoin has been pronounced dead many times before and yet is very well alive.
There are Segwit2x and Core futures, as well as shorts with high leverage. If the author is so confident of the coming apocalypse, he stands to make an absurd amount of money if he's right (or lose if wrong).<p>He should put his money where his mouth is (but of course he probably won't).
With estimates of a majority of hash power being from Chinese miners, I wonder how the recent change in attitude by the Chinese government will affect the outcome of this battle.<p>I haven't been keeping up lately, but I would guess that whichever camp the Chinese miners were in is going to lose, since Chinese mining itself may be headed for rapid decline.
Bitcoin doesn't have a real world use case, the fees is too high and it's too slow 10 mins<p>I just went to steemit blog network, now my grandma can use a blockchain