On business, herds and tyranny - the battle over block size expansion

There are no schools of thought in doing business. There are only two kinds of businessmen in the world, those who make money and those who don't.

- Big Bear Rabbit

1) Only with rice can there be a future.

If you are given a task to do, and you need to spend a considerable amount of time and energy on it, and then you are told that you will not get any fame or profit, will you still do it? Believe me, most people will not. Those who still rush forward without hesitation under such a premise are either wise men who have realized the truth and give back to society by combining knowledge and action, or they are fools.

Why do I say this? Because Bitcoin is like all other industries. No one is obligated to do charity. Let's put aside the sentiment of free currency. To run a company in the Bitcoin ecosystem, you must make a profit, otherwise everyone will suffer. Take mining as an example. It is first and foremost a business. Sites, materials, mining machines, electricity, labor, depreciation, which one does not cost money? Why are there still people rushing to do it with such a high threshold? Because it makes money, and it makes a lot of money.

From 2013 to 2016, which companies in the Bitcoin circle have gradually grown, which companies have become weaker, and who still has a voice in the market, you can know everything by looking at it. Hardware wallets, e-commerce, payment, and reward companies are all miserable because they are all losing money. There are only two types of companies that really make money in the Bitcoin circle, exchanges, and mining machine manufacturers (mining).

Bitcoin startups are still business, and the most taboo thing is to follow the crowd and get high when hearing venture capital figures. Dear dreamers, let alone how much water there is in these figures, please list the company's balance sheet after you finish your fantasy, and see if the return on total assets and cash flow are brilliant, and then it's not too late to make a conclusion.
The picture of the monk is broken.

Let’s talk about capacity expansion.
Want to hard fork to expand capacity? Sure. Sorry, I need to do some calculations to see if it will be cut to your branch.
With a gun and a few bullets in hand, if you can't kill the prey, you will starve to death. This is the philosophy of survival. If the mining machine is not turned on for a day, it means losing money. If the mined coins plummet, the machine will be turned off. If the mined money is not enough to pay the electricity bill, sorry, the company will be liquidated and you will be out.

Do you want to ask me if I support capacity expansion? I do.
You ask me if I should still mine forked coins if the price drops to shit?

It is also nonsense to say that Chinese miners only care about making money and ignore community development. There was no venture capital in early mining, and everyone took their own risks and had to worry about eating Guilinggao at any time. Without these miners, the security of the Bitcoin network would be out of the question. If there is a fork, there will be a fork. Who will be responsible for the losses of mining? The answer is no one.
This is the fact, those who truly understand never speak, but those who speak are always the middlemen who only know the surface.
Gosh, you sanctimonious bitch who blindly supports capacity expansion, why don’t you clarify your thoughts first before considering whether to expand the capacity or not.

When doing business, you have to make money.

b) Buns and cages.

Why invest in Bitcoin? Because those who hold the coins do not expect a return rate of 10% or 20%, but 1000%, or even 2000%, or even higher than you dare to think of. The reason is ultimately the lack of domestic investment channels.

The Chinese people are different from the people in any other country in the world. The World Bank conducted statistics in 2013, and found that China's total savings accounted for nearly 50% of GDP, and it has been growing in recent years, ranking first in the world. The United States, which ranks first among developed countries, has a total savings ratio of less than 20%.

What does this mean? It means that domestic investment efficiency is extremely low, and net capital will only continue to flow out. Even if you use your toes to figure it out, if there are efficient investment channels, who would still put money in the bank? After the 1992 Southern Tour, those who were bold enough to go into business made a lot of money. In 2003, the average price of a house in Dongcheng District, Beijing was less than 3,900 yuan. With a 30% down payment leverage, the rate of return was not bad.

The people have no corn to fill their stomachs, so why don't they eat meat porridge?

Except for a few die-hards, most people who hold coins are still speculators. Bitcoin is just one of their investment targets. Crude oil futures and commodities have experienced a greater rise and fall than Bitcoin in a certain period of time.

Speculation has never been a derogatory term. It is investment that exceeds the margin of safety, with more forecasting and less valuation, that's all.

Most discussions about Bitcoin on the Internet have a high signal-to-noise ratio and low value. Is it the public that decides the direction of Bitcoin? Is it all the people who hold the currency who sign and vote to decide whether to fork? Wrong, absolutely wrong.

In this world, the IQ of the group is always lower than that of the individual.

True insights will inevitably be drowned in the torrent of bits. The decision on whether Bitcoin will fork is made by none other than the miners who hold a large amount of computing power. The reason is simple. Once the decision to fork is made, the computing power will quickly switch to the more supported fork, immediately, instantly, and without any hesitation. On the unsupported fork, the computing power will be withdrawn in a very short time and dropped to almost zero.

The situation where the two forks each account for half of the computing power will never occur. This is not a prisoner's dilemma. There are no so-called two types of Bitcoin circulating separately and accounting for computing power respectively.
If this is true, Bitcoin will also return to zero, pure zero.

Do miners decide everything? Of course not. Don't underestimate those smart people hidden in the crowd. They will make a judgment the moment they know that the development team has gone off track, and decide whether to immediately clear all the chips in their hands. The market will amplify emotions 100 times.

As smart as you are, you won’t fall into a cage just to eat buns.

3) Victims.

In the British political system, the cabinet is a special entity. It is a creation, but it has the power to destroy its creator. It is both an executive body appointed by the legislature and an executive body that can destroy the legislature. It is derivative in origin, but destructive in action.

What does it mean? Creation destroys its creator. Does it sound familiar? Bitcoin is Pandora's box. Once opened, it cannot be closed. The market with a market value of more than 6 billion US dollars today is not a game played by a few developers at will. Today you can fork Bitcoin XT, tomorrow you can fork Bitcoin Classic, a hundred schools of thought contend, doesn't it sound good, the community is prosperous, and innovation is continuous. Wrong, completely wrong.

Whether it is Bitcoin Classic or Bitcoin XT, without the support of computing power, they are all altcoins. Please tell me what the essential difference is between these forked versions and altcoins. The answer is no. Since the birth of Bitcoin, how hundreds of altcoins have developed is up to you.

Some people may ask, how to define altcoin.
Back to the original point, any currency that is not supported by more than 99% of the computing power is a copycat currency and has zero value.
Let me ask, is digital currency a channel for storing value? If it is, then great, would you rather sleep on the edge of a cliff holding a gold brick, or lie down and rest in a solid house holding it? It goes without saying.

The security and stability of Bitcoin are above all else, and the rest should be left to the application.
Please go back and read Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper to understand why Bitcoin can be trusted without requiring trust before discussing other viewpoints.

Rights, rights and interests are always tied together. The key to the problem is not who can submit code or who can release a new version, but whether the value symbol of the Bitcoin development team, whether it is Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Classic, has gained the trust of the community. If the hard fork to 2MB can temporarily alleviate the problem of network congestion, then what happens next? Has Bitcoin Classic come up with a perfect solution? If not, is it worth the 6 months to come up with a new solution and the cost of the hard fork? There is a question mark here. Or, it is correct for Bitcoin itself to focus on settlement and security, and expand the scale of payments and the number of simultaneous transactions by third-party offchain companies.

I don't see any benefit in forking for the sake of forking.

Everyone is eyeing the jewel-encrusted crown and wants to stand on a high place and overlook the earth, but not everyone can wear the crown, and not everyone can earn money.

There will definitely be victims in the violent struggle for power, but hopefully it will lay the foundation for the wild growth of Bitcoin.