You cannot kill a cryptocurrency, remember? 

If the idealists do as above, there will be a "rebel bitcoin" with a tiny mining network, and the "cartel's bitcoin", with all the old hashpower (since the ASIC miners would not have other choice than to mine it).  Guess which one will keep most of the value of the original bitcoins.  It is like the Captain "defeating" a mutiny by taking off alone in a small lifeboat, and declaring it to be the real ship.

Moreover, even the rebels will still have their coins waiting for them on the cartel's chain; so why would they not sell and trade them? Ignoring those coins would be their loss, not the cartel's.

When you mine for a pool, do you know what transactions you are mining?  Do you know who owns the pool?  Would you switch from a pool that pays above market (subsidized) to a pool that may not pay out anything (if the cartel prevails) or half as much as the other (if the cartel fails)?

Do you know who are the miners in the pools? Do you know how whether they agree that 21 M is holy, 25M is evil?

Yes, I distinctly remember how the dollar lost all its value when the US government removed its silver backing. No one would exchange anything of value for those pieces of green paper.   It was a suicidal move for the USG, they never recovered from that. 

As said before, the "small group" will be the top 4-6 miners, who already have enough power to overcome all the others.

That is a paradoxical thing about the bitcoin protocol: no matter how massive he mining network, there will always be a potential enemy with the all power needed to take control of it.  Just as, no matter how big of an army a country has, it will never be big enough to protect it from a military coup...


Yes, they would need to have somewhat more than that (say, 65%) for extra safety against "heroic miners" bringing up their uneconomical miners to fight them.  The cartel would also have to divide their resources between jamming the old chain and mining the new one, constantly adjusting the split so as to retain a majority in both.

However, once the "attack" is announced, many "weak soul" miners would surely switch, followed by the "semi-starving" miners who cannot afford the blockade; so the cartel's position will become more and more comfortable as the "attack" progresses.  Indeed, if the cartel plays the PR well, there may not be any disruption: most everybody would upgrade before the deadline. 


Yes, it would be an altcoin that starts off with the state and history of the bitcoin blockchain, and uses the same keys so that all bitcoin users are automatically users of that chain also.

Anyone can create such an altcoin, by making a few cosmetic changes to the standard software so that the messages can be distinguished.  After publising the 25 M software, a cartel with 51% of the hashpower is able to render the old 21M chain unusable, by orphaning all blocks found by other miners and ignoring all transactions directed at it.  Therefore they can impose any change to the protocol (such as the 25 M limit) that would be less damaging to the clienst than the jamming itself.


First, similar forks happened twice already.  In both cases the developers got most of the miners to agree to the fork, even though it meant rewinding the blockchain by several dozen blocks.  The excuses were quite good, so there was no dispute.

As said above, it is risky to undertake such a move without a comfortable margin, and without a good discourse that would lessen the PR damage.  The cartel members must also stick together for the duration of the "attack".  These conditions did not exist before. (It is only recently that the top 51% became all-Chinese.) Those condition may well exist one year from now.  The motivation, for the top miners, is huge.

The funds, and anyone who only holds bitcoins without moving them, can just wait for the outcome and then upgrade or not, as appropriate.

Like other active bitcoin users, the exchanges and payment processors will have to choose between upgrading their software and working only with the 25 M chain, or sticking to the 21 M chain and having all their coins frozen, until if and when the "attack" fails.   While trading inside each exchange could continue with no problems, all bitcoin withdrawals and deposits would be blocked.  For those companies too, switching (and urging clients to switch) should be a no-brainer.

I discussed that "attack" at length in another thread.  It will be a small group of half a dozen miners, but it will have more than half of the global hashpower.  WIth that power they can still profitably mine the 25 M chain and jam the original one so that it becomes unusable and un-mineable. 

So, for the individual miner, he either joins the cartel on the 25 M chain, and keeps earning as much BTC as before, or keeps mining the old chain, and has all his blocks orphaned by the cartel jamming.  For the typical miner, switching should be a no-brainer.

Moreover, each client who has N coins on the original chain will get another N coins on the 25 M chain, accessible through teh same keys, whether he wants them or not. So each client can upgrade his software (at any time, before or after the fork) and use his coins, or refuse to upgrade and have his coins blocked until if and when the "attack" fails.  On the other hand, if he upgrades and the attack then fails, his coins will still be there on the 21 M chain, unspent.  Again, for the typical user, the decision to upgrade should be a no-brainer.

Already replied to that.  It is a subjective prediction of how "the bitcoiners" would behave. My view of "the bitcoiners" and their motivations is obviously very different from yours.


Today, the new investors (those who buy or earn coins and hold them for a while) are quite happily paying 900'000 $/day to the miners, plus who-knows-how-much to the earlier investors who are selling; money that will never come back to the system.  The new investors cannot be entirely conscious of that.  So, if the halving were to be postponed, they would probably not take notice, and continue pouring in the same daily amounts, either way.

By the way, don't expect the price to immediately double when the next halving happens.  The miners will put 1800 fewer coins per day on the markets, but many earlier investors will start selling their coins once the price rises a little.  In other words, there is lots of hidden liquidity in the old hoards, that will readily absorb the 450'000 k$/day that the miners will stop receiving.

Did you read the posts?

Adam wrote that it was so difficult to get consensus on even trivial changes like increasing block size, imagine on postponing the halving.  I just pointed out that the miners will have no monetary gain with larger blocks, but would have a huge one with the postponement.

Last time I checked, the top 4-6 miners had more than 51% and were all in China.  Do we know what they may want?  

Since that "attack" would not be risk free, the top miners will not want to risk it unless they have much more than 51%.  Also, if the price more than doubles before that, say 800 $/BTC by early 2016, they would probably regain a comfortable profit margin and may be happy with it.

But with the price at 800 $/BTC, on the other hand, postponing the halving would give them ~500 M$ of extra revenue per year...

The miners have nothing to gain by increasing the block size limit.  On the other hand, if they succeeded in delaying the next halving by 2 years, at the current BTC price, they would get about 320 million dollars extra revenue. 

The last reward halving (on 20111-11-11) did not have any visible effect on price.  The price kept rising gradually from the recent low of ~10 to ~13, and lingered there until 2013-01-06, when the first 2013 rally started.  Thus, a postponement of the 2016 halving, by itself, would probably have little effect on the price -- unless the purists go around spreading their FUD and causing the chickens to scramble out in panic...

The bitcoiners who can understand the risk say so, obviously because they have no other hope to cling on.  But what about all those Chinese day-traders, drug buyers, currency remitters -- would they just give up on bitcoin too?  Would Coinbase and all other bitcoin business shut their doors -- or will they side with the majority miners, and reasure clients that the change is harmless, really?


Not many decades ago, revenue tax used a progressive schedule whose brackets did not stop at 35% (or whatever is now the top rate).  People with higher incomes paid as much as 60% tax on their earnings.  I don't know whether some made it to the 90% bracket of higher.  But the point is that no human decision is impossible, not even 90% tax on earnings.

(By the way, the reason we are seeing increasing concentration of wealth now is that the progressive revenue tax was abolished (in Reagan's time, or perhaps earlier), and there are so many tax exemptions that only the richest can use.)

That is the only "defense" I have seen against that "attack".  But it is only wishful thinking about how the users and other players would react.

I bet that, if that "attack" were to happen, 99% of the users would not even understand what it means, or care to know. They would just see the notice "new client release available, please upgrade before 01/Mar/2016", and will comply.

Even the ideological bitcoiners who understand and hate the change would comply, and even support the change; because making a fuss about it would be suicide for them.

Just close your eyes and repeat "om mani blockchain hum, bitcoin was meant to have a 25 M BTC cap, the current cap is wrong".  After saying it a few thousand times, hopefully your soul will open and you will see the light.  

Adam, you should really edit that post before directing your customers to it:

... unless, surprise, the top mining pools decide (with the main developers' blessing) that the next reward halvings need to be postponed for a couple of years, in order to ensure that mining remains profitable and they are not forced to abuse their overwhelming hashpower in nastier ways.

...no one except ransomware hackers and corrupt DEA agents, you mean, for now, ...

In the 1980s I spent uncountable hours bullshitting on the usenet space exploration forums. Then I followed the cold fusion fiasco since day 1, for a couple of years.  (I even contributed 25 dollars to a Fact-Finding Mission by one of the fellow debaters.) When I got tired of that, the community had degenerated to a handful of crazed believers and petty crooks, repeating the same things over and over.  Then I became immersed for several years in the Voynich manuscript (that was by far the most enjoyable obsession, I still hope to go back to it).  I worked hard on Wikipedia for a few years more, and still contribute occasionally. After the Fukushima disaster I followed it for a year, maybe two.  Then came bitcoin...

Said another way: 400 million $ of VC investment brought the price down from 1200$ to 240$, an 80% loss.  Imagine what the next round of VC investment may do.  

That is a good question; speaking of which, what happened to the OP?

While bitcoiners are justified in ignoring Ripple, they should want to know why they are justified to do so.

As was pointed out by others (including many Ripple haters and Ripple lovers), "Ripple" means two things that are about as related to each other as steel springs are related to water springs. 

The "Ripple network" is a system for interbank settlements and currency swaps.  It uses some crypto tools that bitcoin  uses, and is distributed to some extent, but it is centrally managed by a closed consortium.  It should be ignored by bitcoiners because it is not meant to be used or accessed by anyone except the banks, so it is not a competitor to bitcoin.  Even if banks one day decide to deal with bitcoins, they may not use the network for it, and/or the bitcoin network will not have to be aware of that use.

The Ripple coin (XRP) is an altcoin created and managed by the same company that is developing the network.  Perhaps, when the project started, it was meant to be a central piece of the Ripple network; but it is clear now that the network does not need it, and probably will not want to carry it.   Bitcoiners should ignore it because it has most of  the defects of bitcoin but does not have bitcoins defining virtue, namely absence of a central authority.

Isn't this correct?

A surprising development in the MtGOX case was recently posted to /r/bitcoin, but got deleted after collecting more than 240 upvotes in a couple of hours.  A gag order, perhaps?

EDIT: it got undeleted now.

Back in April 2014, user @BTCat asked people to give their predictions for today's  price price.  As you can imagine, most of the predictions were well above 1000 $/BTC.  So one guy who guessed 135$ had a very easy win.  The same user also posted a second prediction of 266$ on June 2, but it was disqualified for being one day too late.

So now you know who has been manipulating the price all along.