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I witnessed the events as they unfolded yesterday, I'll try to give as objective summary as possible. Here's what happened:
The bitcoin blocksize is currently limited to 1MB. Two out of five bitcoin developers who have access to repository are worried that this is not enough to compete with VISA (in the number of transactions processed per second). The dispute to increase the blocksize has been ongoing for months. The two developers suggested to use the bitcoin built-in voting process (which has been designed in it ages ago), where the voting goes as follows:
1. the software is updated in such a way that larger block sizes are not used unless 750 out of past 1000 blocks are mined by miners who in the blockheader say "yes to bigger blocksize".
2. If such blocks (which are still below 1MB, but simply have this "yes" vote) are not mined, then the status-quo remains and nothing happens.
Three other developers have blocked any commits, and dedicated themselves to maintain the even stronger status-quo, by simply disallowing such vote to proceed. The two other developers finally decided to publish a new bitcoin client, called bitcoin XT, which has only one small change that would allow such voting to proceed. The linked blogpost presents one side of this argument, honestly I couldn't find a blogpost that would present the opposing viewpoint. If someone here has a link to nice writeup done by the other side of this argument please let us know.
The bitcoin reddit got furious yesterday night (to the point of a civil war with moderators), when the top voted and most discussed thread "why is bitcoin forking?" was deleted by one of the moderators. Interesting to note, that it had 528 upvotes at the moment of deletion and currently it has 687 upvotes, and also googling for 'why is bitcoin forking' links to this deleted thread. Before it was deleted the discussion seemed reasonable, now it's just a Streisand effect about censorship and about how few influential people are trying to prevent the voting from happening.
What it means for regular bitcoin users? Here's how it goes:
1. If the voting rejects the larger blocksize then both bitcoin clients, 'bitcoin' and 'bitcoin XT' will work as normal on the same blockchain. And in fact nothing will happen, people will be able to choose which client to use and eventually the 'bitcoin XT' will lose its momentum, fade out and stop being used.
2. If the voting goes in favor of larger blocksize, then both bitcoin clients will start operating on two different blockchains. The 'bitcoin XT' blockchain will have 75% of hashing power (by the definition of how this vote is implemented), and the 'bitcoin' blockchain wil have the remaining 25% of hashing power. Shops and exchanges will run aghast in circles trying to protect from double spending by quickly upgrading their software to use the stronger 'bitcoin XT' blockchain. The weaker blockchain with only 25% hashing power will be susceptible to attacks. And whatever bitcoins you have right now will co-exist twice in each of those blockchains. You would be able to spend them in one of the blockchains and keep them for yourself in the other blockchain. People who have changed to 'bitcoin XT' client beforehand will be safe from whatever might happen with the weaker chain, since their clients work with both blockchains, until they acquire the voting 75% majority.
The voting process as it happens can be seen live on site that shows number of clients and mined blocks that opted for larger blocksize.
I know that perhaps I am not as objective as I wanted to be. I tried to present the facts only, if I failed, then blame me and correct me in the comments. Happy discussing!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday August 16 2015, @09:57PM
The problem with that is that the difficulty in obtaining something (a.k.a. the supply) is not the sole factor in something's value. The perceived usefulness of whatever it is also matters a great deal.
For example, let's say somebody invents a new doohickey at a maker lab somewhere, making 1 with a 3-D printer. They try playing around with it for a while, and then come to the conclusion that the doohickey isn't all that useful or exciting, and promptly throws it away. That doohickey is incredibly rare - exactly 1 exists - but because nobody perceives it as useful it has no value (actually, negative value if you factor in the cost of trucking it to the landfill).
By contrast, there are billions of houses in the world, but they're quite valuable because almost everybody sees their potential use.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 17 2015, @01:05AM
Couple points....
1) Anything made on a 3D printer can be replicated any number of times. Because nobody bothered to make another doesn't make it valuable. Because its easy to do should any one want to do so. Remember I said
difficulty of creating/obtaining something (scarcity)
.
2) Perceived Usefulness may appear to be a desirable feature of a medium of exchange, but there are many cases where this is not true [wikipedia.org]. US Dollar bills have just about no value (other than patching bicycle tires) [blogspot.com] were it not for the government edict that it is legal tender.
But often perceived usefulness in a currency is a good idea, especially when you are not too sure of the scarcity. You can always make things out of gold, even if some new discovered reserves doubles the amount of gold in the world. Same with livestock. Use for currency in some places, but you can eat it if the market crashes.
3) There are lots of houses, but building a new one takes a lot of money. So even old houses cost a lot of money. It takes a lot of effort to obtain a house. You will spend at least 30% of your life's earnings on housing (on average). As a unit of exchange houses make a poor currency. Not too liquid, not all that portable, hard to make change. So not a good medium of exchange.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.