MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-08-02 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] bitcoin chaos
|
anyone mining bitcoins?
Check this out
https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-is-splitting-in-two-now-what/
Imagine logging into your checking account and seeing that you now also
have a second account, stocked with an equal amount of a newly created
currency. It could happen this morning to many people who hold the
cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Not long after 8 am EDT, a new currency called Bitcoin Cash is due to
appear, split from bitcoin in a technical maneuver called a “hard fork.”
It’s the project of a group that says bitcoin’s keepers are limiting its
reach by resisting change.
The creation of Bitcoin Cash is the most striking result yet of a
2-year-old feud over bitcoin’s future. Bitcoin is collectively valued at
$47 billion but remains a niche product. Backers of the new currency say
it’s necessary if bitcoin is to make a real mark on how the world uses
money.
Bitcoin Cash’s confusing origin—and name—risk making it harder for
cryptocurrency to gain wider acceptance. “Bitcoin’s an incredibly
well-known brand, and to the extent it’s fracturing into various pieces,
that’s confusing to regulators and consumers,” says Dan Morehead,
founder and CEO of Pantera Capital, which invests in bitcoin and
digital-currency startups. Morehead says he’s neutral on the dispute.
“It just sounds bad; we’re not used to currencies that split into two.”
Adding to the confusion: Not everyone who holds bitcoin will get an
instant stash of Bitcoin Cash today. Some leading bitcoin-storage
services have said they won’t recognize the new currency, forcing people
to move their business if they want to claim the new variety of cryptocoins.
Bitcoin was created by a pseudonymous coder (or coders) known as Satoshi
Nakamoto, who released the software that powers the currency in 2009. It
relies on a network of computers linked over the internet that
collaborate to process and record all transactions in a digital ledger
called the blockchain. Computers dubbed “miners” keep the ledger updated
by adding to the sequence of “blocks” that make up the blockchain as new
transactions take place. Proponents say this system creates a
trustworthy currency free from political oversight and capable of
faster, cheaper digital transactions than possible with conventional
currencies.
Acrimony among bitcoiners stems from disagreement about limits on the
blockchain’s capacity baked into Nakamoto’s design, and what to do about
them. The bitcoin network can only support around seven transactions per
second, compared with thousands per second piped through conventional
financial networks such as Visa.
Bitcoin Cash is a variation on bitcoin’s design, incorporating much
bigger blocks, allowing for more transactions in a given time.
Supporters say their project is necessary because planned changes that
could expand bitcoin’s capacity are not sufficient. “At this point, it
seems that the differences are irreconcilable and a split is
unavoidable,” says Amaury Séchet, an ex-Facebook engineer who has
developed code to implement Bitcoin Cash.
Related Stories
Cade Metz
7,500 Faceless Coders Paid in Bitcoin Built a Hedge Fund's Brain
Cade Metz
The Bitcoin Schism Shows the Genius of Open Source
Cade Metz
Stellar Emerges From Shadow of Bitcoin to Find a Home Overseas
Owners of pre-split bitcoin will be recorded as owning cryptocoins on
both blockchains. Some bitcoin exchanges—where owners transact and store
cryptocurrency—have said that they will support the new currency and
credit customer accounts with Bitcoin Cash when it appears. But others
will not.
Bitcoin Cash’s value, and its effect on cryptocurrency’s place in the
world, will be determined by how many investors and users switch from
traditional bitcoin. Late Monday, one futures market pegged the value of
a unit of Bitcoin Cash at about $300, roughly 1/10 the value of one Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Cash adjustment to Nakamoto’s original creation does help
address the currency’s capacity problem, says Emin Gün Sirer, an
associate professor at Cornell who has studied bitcoin’s design. “The
science to the extent we’ve measured it aligns with their reasoning,” he
says. More important, and trickier, is whether enough people will use
and invest in Bitcoin Cash to keep it going. “The crucial part is the
amount of economic interest in this new currency,” Sirer says.
Support by bitcoin exchanges will enable use of Bitcoin Cash. Crucially,
that could motivate more miners to put their computing power to work on
maintaining Bitcoin Cash’s new blockchain, making it more reliable and
stable, Sirer says. Miners are incentivized with new bitcoins for their
work, and if Bitcoin Cash looks healthy, earning some early could strike
miners as a good bet.
Would success for Bitcoin Cash come at the expense of the original
bitcoin’s ideals? It depends on whom you ask.
Defenders of the original design say too sharp an increase in capacity
could raise the computer hardware requirements for contributing to the
blockchain too much, opening the door to centralizing control in the
hands of a few dominant players. Séchet argues he’s fighting for the
soul of bitcoin, and Bitcoin Cash will force the cryptocurrency
community to take scalability more seriously, even if the project fails.
“Either bitcoin does not scale and Bitcoin Cash will overtake it over
time, or it will scale because of the pressure created by Bitcoin Cash,”
Séchet says. “Either is a win for bitcoin users.”
Some trying to build businesses on top of bitcoin are becoming
frustrated by the ongoing arguments. “It really has dragged on,” says
Morehead of Pantera Capital. Nobody ever said that upending the
financial system would be easy.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
_______________________________________________
Hangout mailing list
Hangout-at-nylxs.com
http://www.nylxs.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
|
|
