scientastics

I am a software engineer, and I have some idea about how to scale things and the limitations of algorithms. I also try to inform myself and hear both sides. But it's becoming increasingly difficult with all the hate-posts. It's like the Democrats and the Republicans all over again.

In the final analysis, I keep coming back to this simple question. Does it really make any sense, from any point of view (practical, technical, ideological, anything) for my daily coffee purchase to be replicated to thousands of nodes and then recorded for-stinkin'-ever?

No. Again, no. I can't think of any good reason it HAS to be this way. And I can think of plenty of reasons (scalability, privacy, practica

Who's with me?! Who thinks this is the way Bitcoin was meant to be, forever? /sarc

I am a software engineer, and I have some idea about how to scale things and the limitations of algorithms. I also try to inform myself by reading both r/bitcoin and r/btc to hear both sides. But it's becoming increasingly difficult with all the hate-posts. It's like the Democrats and the Republicans all over again.

In the final analysis, I keep coming back to this simple question. Does it really make any sense, from any point of view (practical, technical, ideological, anything) for my daily coffee purchase to be replicated to thousands of nodes and then recorded for-stinkin'-ever?

No. Again, no. I can

I'm sorry to have to say this, but both sides of this debate have become far too politicized and engaged in name calling. I do lean toward SegWit and smaller blocks, for various reasons, but I have also tried to understand the case for bigger blocks and have also tried to understand why some think SegWit is a problematic implementation.

As such, I have done some listening to the live feed (now recorded) of the Future of Bitcoin conference. There are some valid points made. But one claim by Craig Wright that I had to challenge is that storage will continue to double at the same speed as Bitcoin.

Moore's Law is the observation that the number of transistors on a given area have been doubling

See for example: http://uasf.saltylemon.org/?graph=percent

Today it spiked from 10% up to about 42%, bumped down a bit, then dropped again to 10%.

What is going on?

There's a simple reason why the Bitcoin price crashes so hard and fast. It is that bitcoins are very easy to move around, whereas fiat takes a lot of time and there's a lot of friction in the system for moving it.

When everyone is bullish on Bitcoin, they start making accounts at the exchanges, putting in $500 here, $1000 there, sometimes more, sometimes less. But usually it takes a few days for most kinds of dollar transfers. In other words, BUY orders trickle in steadily and slowly over time.

When sentiment turns bearish, everyone can fund their exchange accounts with bitcoins in an hour or less. So the market gets flooded with SELL orders all of a sudden. Even if there are buyers w

Today showed that Bitcoin's value cannot be built on speculation and as a store of value alone.

The only reason it is coming back is because enough people are still bullish on it. If sentiment were to go completely negative, Bitcoin's value would crash much, much farther and faster than today.

If you really care about a) the value of your bitcoins growing and b) making possible a revolutionary new payment system that breaks down barriers and serves as a restraint on institutional and governmental abuse of current fiscal systems (i.e. if you care about the idea of Bitcoin), then please-- I repeat-- SPEND some of your bitcoins! Feel free to replenish them again, and keep/hold more than y