“This is the radical Bitcoin upgrade insiders never saw coming.”
Alex Fredericks, head of DigitalLaunch.com and leader of the Billion Hero Campaign to give away a billion dollars promoting digital currency adoption, recently sat down with Stan Larimer, the Godfather of BitShares, at his possibly fictitious country farm in Virginia to plot the upcoming Campaign strategy. We join the conversation in progress…
Alex Fredericks: This blows my mind! Just when I thought this couldn’t get any better you throw in a complete overhaul of Bitcoin itself!
Stan Larimer: Heh, yeah, we tend to be full of surprises…
Alex: But how can you do that? I mean, doesn’t Bitcoin have an official set of software developers that decide what changes to make? How can you just walk in and upgrade the whole thing?
Stan: Well, they sort of used to … but these days there are multiple sets of developers backed by different special interests in the industry. There’s a constant struggle to determine which group will prevail. This pretty much gridlocks development since they can’t agree on much and will eventually split Bitcoin into two or more coins. Almost happened in August…still might.
Alex: So you think it’s better to have three?
Stan: We'd really prefer that Bitcoin not split, but if there are going to be factions taking separate baby steps splitting Bitcoin into multiple coins anyway, we figure we might as well offer a robust version that fixes everything. Still, all things considered we’d prefer them to leave Bitcoin alone and quit trying to make it something it’s not. It’s a great store of wealth, “digital gold”, but it’s awful as a medium of exchange. It’s the electronic equivalent of a slow armored car moving physical gold.
Alex: Slow? I thought Bitcoin’s claim to fame was fast transactions?
Stan: Well, compared to the many days it takes for the banks to wire money, sure. But lately it can take days to transfer Bitcoin too, unless you are willing to pay extra to move up in the backlog. Even then it takes a big chunk out of an hour. On the other hand, Bitcoin United will complete every transaction in less than three seconds at the full workload of any major credit card. We can deal BTC-U (aka BTC.BTS) faster than you can spin a slot machine.
Alex: But they can’t really leave it alone, can they? It’s saturated already and demand is growing exponentially. People are complaining about waiting days…
Stan: That’s because they are trying to use it as a medium of exchange. There are better, faster, cheaper currencies for that. Hundreds of them on the BitShares network alone, take you pick! If people used any one of them for daily transactions it would offload Bitcoin for the occasional transfer of “digital gold” from one cold wallet to another. That’s really what happens on most exchanges anyway. A customer does one slow Bitcoin transaction to establish a balance and then leaves them there in the exchange’s cold wallet while trading with exchange issued tokens – like casino chips. BitShares tokens work the same way; only there is no counterparty risk like in the centralized exchanges.
Alex: So, your saying people can use slow BTC to buy fast BTC.BTS on the BitShares platform and then trade with them at light speed until the time comes to exit, then buy slow BTC again just before shoving them in their safe on a stick next to their gold coins?
Stan: Or trade them directly to fiat. I don’t think people will ever see the need to go back to slow BTC when their fast BTC.BTS are just as secure on a state of the art BitShares blockchain. Have been for years. But, I guess they could…
Alex: So why do you call it a “pitch fork”?
)Stan: Well, a fork is just any change in the software that causes two differing blockchains to spin off with differing ledgers. A “pitch fork” is where you pitch the whole code base and replace it with something better. That’s what BitShares did a couple of years ago when it upgraded to real time. It took three seconds to switch and was immediately available to claim in the new wallet. That’s all we are offering Bitcoin.
Alex: But BitShares’ pitch fork shut off the old chain so there was only one true BitShares still running. Doesn’t seem likely here…
Stan: No, just like Ethereum now has two competing chains, Bitcoin will have three to choose from. If the fork is done intentionally like the Bitcoin factions often threaten to do, the competing ledgers start out the same and everybody gets a copy of their balances on each chain. After that they can be spent differently and tend to take on different prices depending on relative demand. Right now the two Ethereum forks have settled in with a factor of 10 or so difference in price.
Alex: So won’t that happen to BTC, and BTC-U (aka BTC.BTS) and, say, BCC, too? What makes you think BTC.BTS will have the same price as the others?
Stan: Oh I’m sure it won’t. Initially the demand for the two slow BTC forks will probably be greater because their factions are better known. But, while folks are sorting out which of those two is best, BTC.BTS will be basking in the same discussion with best performance in every way. Some speculators are bound to see the opportunity to scarf some up cheap – dreaming of being one of those famous Bitcoin millionaires one day. This is the stuff of legends!
Alex: So as people claim their BTC.BTS, some will dump theirs into the eager hands of speculators, who will compete for them driving up the price, I suppose. Won’t the dumpers overpower the speculators?
Stan: They might, but I don’t think so. Consider this. Initially 100% of the BTC.BTS supply will be locked up on the BitShares blockchain - unclaimed. BitShares lovers will claim theirs and probably hold onto them tightly. So the total available supply for speculators to buy will be just those who a) have heard of BTC.BTS and b) take it seriously enough to claim them, but c) aren’t smart enough to see their value yet. That’s a pretty small cross section. I think the buy pressure from speculators will far exceed the sell pressure from dumpers long enough to establish a great price on coinmarketcap.
Alex: This sounds like it could be the equivalent of the World’s Biggest ICO…
Stan: People who remember how early bitcoin holders were able to buy up millions of bitcoins for pennies will be there bidding for these. This will bid the price of the few of them up establishing BTC.BTS with a serious market cap, which will get it noticed. This might bring both buyers and sellers to BitShares to claim the supply as it is gradually unlocked in a new gold rush. Since most Bitcoin maximalists will decline to claim their BTC.BTS, these will remain locked up for a long time. So we just need to bring in more new people than BTC.BTS dumpers to cause the price of BTC.BTS to grow …especially since we’ll be giving away a billion dollars in prizes to draw attention to it.
Alex: Speaking of which, we’re supposed to be planning the Billion Hero Campaign…
Stan: Let me go grab a couple of cold sarsaparillas and we’ll get started.
Stan Larimer, President
Cryptonomex
The Godfather of BitShares, Fast Bitcoin, and the HERO
Image credits: see embedded links
About the Author -- Stan Larimer
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Greatest Hits
Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics
Engineering Trust with Charles Hoskinson
The Origin of BitShares
The Hero from BitShares Island
And the good news for BitShares just keeps on coming! Well played @stan! Now that's a real Godfather move!
If Bitcoin Cash (BCC) forks a new implementation of Bitcoin Segwit (BTC) and Bitcoin United (BTC-U) follows suit, all three will be making identical arguments of legitimacy, forcing us to wind up with only one Bitcoin when the dust settles.
It will either by reductio ad absurdum
(a) reinforce the legitimacy of one of the self-elected BTC, leading to a United Bitcoin.
(b) or it will reinforce the idea that the best implementation should prevail leading to Bitcoin United.
Note that
Ethereum Classic (ETC) is analogous to BTC
Ethereum (ETH) is the new BCC or BTC-U.
So who ultimately wins depends on the market not any argument about preserving a design or operating philosophy or some inherited sovereign right of a particular group.
And it is possible for multiple winners. Holding ETC is nothing to sneeze at.
'There is no fork' Neo
that's only in the movie ... in real life ... people will get forked :)
Divided It Falls.
Submitted the medium article to reddit:
Great post! Like everybody else I was taken by surprise only to realize that BTC is forking after all. I am regularly watching what is happening in crypto world either through YouTube videos or following important influencers in bitcoin on twitter. Two days ago everyobdy was celebrating taking BTC to the moon surpassing its ATH only to see the whole market taking a dip again. It kind of plays in my favour since I am awaiting for some fresh funds but who knows where the fork will take the BTC.... Too much manipulation in the market!
In this highly speculative platform of crypto trading.... what remains to be fundamental and are most likely to outlast all others are coins with inherent better features and if we all just get our acts together then we can have better digital coins to dominate the market. Bitshares is one safe bet to hold on for long term.
Oh good, a faster way to burn through petroleum for computing power. If we are going to all come together for the "perfect global currency", maybe we should make it sustainable? Bitcoin ecosystem is already old and better replacements have already emerged.
Precisely. Bitcoin United gets rid of those costly miners. The total energy needed to run the network is the energy of a couple dozen PC's scattered across 24 time zones. This is Huge! It costs hundreds of millions of dollars less per year to run BitShares and Bitcoin United gets a free ride on that network!
That would be amazing.
Ain't no party like a pitchfork party! ;)
I'll bring the torches
post anda sangat menarik dan luar biasa.saya menyukai post anda karena dalam atau isi dari post anda sangat bermanfaat.saya berharap semoga anda kedepan selalu bisa memberikan post yang menarik dan selalu bermanfaa.selama atas percapain yang anda dapatkan,semoga sukses selalu
I will be first in line to relieve the POW crowd of their worthless BTCU tokens...
i will kindly join you in relieve it too @johnsmith
I'd like to fill up a bag of these myself. If bitcoin does split into three coins why not load up on BTCU and grab a few of the other two as well?
I sure hope that does not happen. I wish they would stop messing with my money!
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The next month is going to be very interesting.
When polo?
Great post.. thanks for this material.. this is very helpful. I upvoted and follow you. I wish you do the same ;)
great vid keep them coming
meep
How can it be Bitcoin if it's completely different technology? Bitcoin is what it is because of the protocol, the code, the mining process. If you propose something completely different, it's not longer Bitcoin anymore.
Also - how can I mine BTC-U? Does BTC-U has open source code on github and everyone can propose a change to it?
One of the big issues with BTC is PoW. Mining was a MEANS to an end, not the end itself! Many Bitcoiners (mostly miners!) tend to forget that. The idea is to decentralize/distribute power. It doesn't matter what method you use. Delegated Proof Of Stake (DPOS) is superior to Proof Of Work (PoW) in every way.
BTC would thus benefit immensely from this upgrade to BTC-U
Yeah, Ive seen superior dpos when steem whitneses were buying votes on steemit. Its not real decentralization in my opinion which doesnt mean it cant have its place on the market.
Real decentralization then is when three Big Mining companies operating in an authoritarian country control over half the hash power? Or does it help to add three more big mining pools where all the members of each pool are doing is working to find hash codes for the one operator who gets to decide what software gets run? There are far fewer people choosing that software in Bitcoin than there are in BitShares and in BitShares they are chosen by the shareholders based on their earned reputations - not based on self-appointed ownership of processing power. You can vote out a bad node in BitShares and it has to rebuild its reputation to play again - almost impossible. Bitcoin can't stop a bad actor from hashing with their hash power forever.
Bitcoin is completely coercible by compromising just a few people. Power is forced to be distributed uniformly among BitShare's elected witnesses. Find them and coerce them and new witnesses pop up elsewhere automagically. Try that in Bitcoin.
For Bitcoin we have #UASF - the users, as a community, forced the miners to enable SegWit. It shows who really controls Bitcoin.
Good improvement, which proves we were right with DPOS.
Now, when will bitcoin start to catch up in performance?
Answer: When we remove the miners for them.
LN looks promissing but we will see :)
I answered that question in this post:
The Platform Independence Movement
It's bitcoin in that it's an identical distribution at the time of snapshot, so everyone that holds btc will be eligible to acquire an equal amount in btc-u. Is bitcoin not worth something because of the userbase behind it?
You can't. There would be no more BTC-U created after the initial snapshot issuance, no miners to pay for maintenance as it will be running on top of the BTS DEX which is a self-sustaining DAC.
BTC-U doesn't need its own dedicated client (though you can create one) nor a dedicated blockchain, the BTS DEX (Bitshares) is entirely open source right now on GitHub and MIT licensed. Anyone can indeed propose a change to Bitshares via BSIPs and voting.
A dedicated client for BTC-U would be one honking good idea. Make adoption really really easy!
Wouldn't be difficult at all to do, you can easily customize and host your own BTC-U themed BTS DEX (web wallet).
Not only because of that.
Certainly not, however its distribution and established userbase is massively valuable, followed by its service/exchange integration then the brand awareness. In terms of tech specs, it's back in the stone age currently.
I think the BTC name drives demand at this point. After that its about building use cases and letting mainstream decide which one is the most secure and technologically viable.
I'm not into the tech part of understanding the ins and out of blockchain, but it appears to me that Bitshares is going to be the one that comes out on top of all this . Or is that the plan anyway?
Heh, that's always been the plan, but the Bitshares folks always seem to be confused about why that's so hard to accomplish...
It's beneficial for both bitcoin and bitshares.
Nice write up. Informative.
Anyone knows is poloniex nice exchange?
I'd use the Bitshares decentralized exchange over poloniex.
it is ok.
Very good :) I hope it is very big :)
this is awesome @stan
keep it up
looking forward to see more. i just follow you @omodeleolumide
Voted!
Great article Stan. I prefer that Bitcoin does not split, but if it does I will take a few BTCU coins for posterity. Thanks for the info
Great Post , Bitcoin is the future:)
Just now digging into bitcoin and steemit, but i use to own a stock brokerage firm and find this so interesting, will master it soon, i hope
Shared for others to read. Thank You @stan!
Awesome news!
So when BTC-U gonna happen? I'm trading in openledger.io with open-btc. Is that open-btc as same as BTC-U? What is the difference?
Open.BTC is a token that runs on BitShares platform that claims to be redeemable for bitcoin.
BTC-U is a token that runs on the BitShares platform that claims to BE bitcoin - moved to a new platform.
BTC-U is one of three implementations of the bitcoin ledger at a point in time that evolve independently from that common branch point. Since it is the same owners of the same tokens in all three cases, all are equally legitimate. The only question is which accounting system people prefer to use for those tokens from that point on.
Its a good news for Bitshares... Thaank you for sharing the information.. I loved the content :)
Great Article
Omg we are future millioners XD
This is brilliant! One more Billion Dollar Idea!
Which Exchanges will support the Fork: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@nottinhill/which-exchanges-will-support-the-1st-of-august-2017-chain-split-and-auto-split-your-btc
Good post. Very informative and useful to readers. Got really good information. Will continue to follow post.
Sir, i want to know about the bitcoin potential for a common people, how can a common people can earn profit from bitcoin. I have 100 dollar can i earn profit from bitcoin?
Thanks for the informative post. All along I thought it would fork into two. Lets see how it plays out . . .
Good post, thanks for sharing @stan
Pitchfork great article thank you Stan
Hi, newbie here...I really needed this read today. Thanks, something alot of us can learn from!
Time to invest in #litecoin #ltc #$ltc
Hello there @stan , recently we publish something related to cryptocurrency , can you share your reviews on it? Kindly? and UPVOTE MAYBE?
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@haky-speaks/what-is-cryptocurrency-how-it-emerged-as-a-side-product-of-digital-money-ultimate-guide-part-2