Core Bitcoin Devs Leave Project, Create New Currency Called Decred (softpedia.com) 122
An anonymous reader writes: Core developers in the Bitcoin project have left and started a new currency called Decred. Developers are citing a lack of transparency and a conflict of interests between the group that funds the actual Bitcoin software development, and the decisions taken inside the project. Jacob Yocom-Piatt, CEO at Company 0, who has funded development of Bitcoin since early 2013: "This is in part due to a lack of mechanisms and pathways for funding development work directly from the community, and as a result Bitcoin development is funded by external entities that create conflicts of interest between the developers and the representative power of the community that uses Bitcoin."
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
"We can't make any more money off Bitcoin, so we decided to create our own currency."
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Informative)
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It is not Bitcoin compatible, hence it is not an "alternative" in the sense you are implying. It's a completely different network that uses for the most part the network logic also found in Bitcoin.
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Incredibly misleading title. These devs made a Go alternative implementation of bitcoind. This is danger of taking press release titles at face value.
bitcoind? Is that yet another thing that could be bundled in w/ systemd? Maybe THAT will gain systemd some supporters - the ability to mint money from having it
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If they were running the Bitcoin software on a spare machine, just for shits & giggles, back when it first came out?
Then yeah. They made a metric fuckload of money. Essentially for free.
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They made a metric fuckload of money.
Just out of curiosity, how does the metric fuckload differ from the good old canonical American fuckload?
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2.27 MFt to 1.0 AFt.
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Agreed, Bitcoin's transparent blockchain means all of your activities are published to the world, and tracked actively by dozens of corps and goverment TLAs.
For that reason, I prefer to transact using XMR, which offers cryptographic guarantees of privacy, using an opaque blockchain protected by iterated ring signatures. I can still send BTC to bitcoin wallets by using xmr.to or shapeshift.io, making it no less liquid and usable than bitcoin, and I know that none of my activities can be traced back to me un
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
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"...and we're using it for hookers and blackjack."
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From their website..
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad but these days the business model seems to revolve around selling tech companies, not selling the output of said tech companies.
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That's because in the tech world there are several mega conglomerates that have effective monopolies, whose operating mode is to buy up any competitors and destroy their products, either by discontinuing them outright or by starving new features by reassigning the developers.
The only thing that any startup founder can look forward to, if successful, is being an overpaid employee of one of these conglomerates who has to take orders from career executives.
Things won't change *technologically* until patents ar
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In a twisted way, this makes sense. One is oftentimes better off by mining a currency like AltCoin, DASH, or another cryptocurrency, then trading that for BTC, as opposed to trying to just mine BitCoins, just due to the requirement of having a huge investment in ASICs (not to mention a cheap energy source) to mine BTC oneself.
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I did a little BC mining myself as a hobby. I never aimed to make money off it, I just wanted to play with the technology. I learned enough to run the numbers and determine that it really isn't practical to mine BC for profit except on a very large scale - even if you have free power (ie, live in college dorm), the payback period for a miner is long enough that the miner will be obsolete by the end. The only way it an work is if you have not only cheap power, but enough scale to buy mining hardware in bulk
So when will Decred be forked (Score:1)
... into yet another currency. Nah, that won't happen, the Decred founders will say.
But it can and will, if Decred ever amounts to anything. See, the best thing Bitcoin has going for it is that it was the first to make it work.
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See, the best thing Bitcoin has going for it is that it was the first to make it work.
How is that an advantage in any sense but "we did it before it was popular"?
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See, the best thing Bitcoin has going for it is that it was the first to make it work.
How is that an advantage in any sense but "we did it before it was popular"?
Because anything that has a small number of properties (stability, scarcity, fungibility, and so on) can be used as a currency. Now that we have the technology, anyone who wants to can create a new currency that has the perfect combination of such properties to be used as a currency. So that means that currencies will have to compete based on the areas in which they differ. One of the major such factors is expected future demand, and one of the best predictors of future demand is current demand. This means
Forking is normal (Score:4, Insightful)
That's how open-source projects handle differences in philosophy, transparency, coding direction, etc.
Reserving billions of dollars worth of digital coin for yourself isn't.
let's see if they do a better job than Bitcoin in this regard.
*or dogecoin or the various other derivatives*
E
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This isn't a fork. It's a pre-mined altcoin which is not made by Bitcoin Coin developers. It claims to be written by the makers of btcsuite, which has nothing to do with Core. That's if you trust this rather anonymous landing page.
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If you think something is going to be worth a lot more in the future than today, you buy it. It's called investing. If you can't/won't do it in your own name, start a trust, get an accomplice and so on - it's not illegal because you're not under stock market rules, no such thing as insider knowledge or insider trading. I think I read that the first Bitcoin transaction was something like 25000 BTC for a pizza. That was the market value at the time, if you knew it was going to be worth $1000/BTC maybe you wou
Re:Forking is normal (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of having a fake crypto-currency with just the crypto we need something backed by some sort of assets so it can actually be a currency. A promise of value from some recluse with a fake name is only of worth to people who will trust just about anything. There's no point pretending it's like the stuff in the fictional "cryptonomicon" without the gold, some asset or some actual productive entity behind it. A "fiat" currency depends on someone that can be trusted, who has a lot of assets AND a major income stream giving a promise. Thus not something that works for Zimbabwe and not something that works for a recluse with a fake name on the internet.
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Well, no. The Albanian schemes were around $1.2 billion, while Bitcoin is $6.7B. You are right though that the Albanian economy as a whole is bigger than Bitcoin now. Still $50 million is traded daily in Bitcoin.
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I'm discussing money moving and not the high hopes for hoarded tokens based on the very little that is actually moving. If there was an attempt tomorrow to exchange all of those tokens for something else only a few at the start of the day would match the high value of the bitcoins currently being passed among enthusiasts.
Do you dispute that?
If so, why?
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If there was an attempt tomorrow to exchange all of those tokens for something else only a few at the start of the day would match the high value of the bitcoins currently being passed among enthusiasts.
Doesn't that apply to all currencies?
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It's not stable now. 3 months ago, 1 BTC = 240 USD. Today, 1 BTC = 420 USD.
A good that nearly doubles in value in three months is not a usable currency. Heck, the exchange rate has decreased by 10% in the last 10 days. Somali shillings are more stable than Bitcoin.
BTC vs. USD (Score:2)
Indeed. However, USD has gained value and remained strong over the past two years (witness the withering prices of oil and gold), which shows BTC has increased even more in the past three months than its price in USD indicates. You can compare the gold prices of each to get another perspective: BTC [pricedingold.com] vs. USD [pricedingold.com].
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If there was an attempt tomorrow to exchange all of those tokens for something else only a few at the start of the day would match the high value of the bitcoins currently being passed among enthusiasts.
Perhaps the same could be said of fiat currencies.
Tiny tiny market (Score:2)
Still $50 million is traded daily in Bitcoin.
While it's hard to pin down the size of the secondary market in baseball cards, the daily "trading volume" in baseball cards is similar in size if not bigger [thinkadvisor.com] most likely. (Sales of new cards are around $200 million/year and the secondary market is considerably larger) I know $50 million sounds like a lot but it really isn't even if the $50 million figure you cite is true.
Re: Forking is normal (Score:1)
The funny thing about that number? It likely includes tumblers and thus total transitive transactions would be much lower.
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Still $50 million is traded daily in Bitcoin.
This is were the real issue with BTC is, IMHO. For a currency to work, certain percentage of it must be used as "currency", not as some long term investment (stock/bond/asset). It won't take off unless it becomes a "common currency" that everyone carries around.
The second greatest problem with BTC, is that there is no proper institution that can hold the value of your coins, without the need to hold onto those specific coins. No, the laundering ./ anonymizing services do not count. I'm talking insured banki
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It didn't "work", it hasn't even had as much penetration as some offline pyramid schemes
Apples and oranges, they wanted an investment and were scammed. As an investment, Bitcoin might still end up being a scam. But if you just want to sell something for BTC and buy something else, it works quite well. It's easily traded to USD or some other "real" currency, you don't have to get bids on eBay and you won't get stuck with it. You do run a bit of currency risk but if you make many small transactions you'll lose some and win some, it's a quite okay facilitator of trade. If it's seen limited use it
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The tax people, DEA etc are starting to get interested now and those blockchains provide
Risk (Score:2)
As an investment, Bitcoin might still end up being a scam.
No need for the qualifier. Even if we accept that Bitcoin itself isn't a scam, Bitcoin routinely is used for scams and even when it is used honestly it's generally a terrible investment positively dripping with risk.
You do run a bit of currency risk but if you make many small transactions you'll lose some and win some, it's a quite okay facilitator of trade.
"A bit of currency risk"? Presumably you mean exchange rate risk [investopedia.com] and it is WAY more than "a bit" (no pun intended). Bitcoin is terribly volatile compared with traditional currencies so anyone who plans to hold it for any length of time is taking a LOT of exchange rate risk. If you hold it in
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Why would you hold it in an exchange? It's just numbers in a file.
drugs (Score:2)
A "fiat" currency depends on someone that can be trusted, who has a lot of assets AND a major income stream giving a promise.
Well, it was my understanding that anyone could have used bitcoin to buy drugs on Silk Road, and supposedly you still can still do so on various successor sites. It seems to me a big reliable drug dealing organization meets all your qualifications.
OK, granted, this only works for certain values of "trust," but still... You'd essentially have a currency pegged to a known commodity, one with as much if not more intrinsic value than any precious metal.
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At least my credit card works just fine
All currencies are based on trust (that others will accept it). State backed currencies and financial institutions are trusted because the state has real power, it can force anyone in its jurisdiction to accept its currency, and only its currency. Ignoring speculators, "ordinary people" are unlikely to exchange state backed currency for something like BC, they are well aware the state can shut them down on a political whim.
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It's also why Linux hasn't become a realistic contender of Windows on the PC desktop. There's many projects, but no single standardized high-quality system.
That's a feature.
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It's also why Linux hasn't become a realistic contender of Windows on the PC desktop.
Chromebooks are a contender, and a variant of Linux. Android is as well. As well as all the other embedded applications that are becoming more mainstream.
By "on the desktop" you're self limiting how you look at Linux. The traditional desktop is withering. The need for Windows PCs is pretty much limited to Office workers, and specialty apps, and even those are changing towards back end databases and web front ends running on Linux servers.
My guess, Linux is running on half the things you do everyday, if not
Created on "PC" (Score:2)
Doesn't necessarily mean Windows. Most developers I know (ballpark figure from ass: 90%), including myself, code on Linux or OS/X. The only thing that would make me code on Windows is taking a C# project.
By using Linux, I can run our full application stack on my dev box without deploying it to a server. Sure, I could use a VM on Windows to do the same thing, and one developer in my company does, but that creates occasional headaches.
If the developer desktop market were at all big enough to be important to M
Divide And Conquer (Score:1)
What's the conversion rate to Dogecoins? (Score:2)
Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
this. and also, the linked article is just a press release disguised as a story, quoting only the subject of the article without any independant analysis or rebuttal of any kind
Nothing new for modern journalism (Score:2)
... the linked article is just a press release disguised as a story, quoting only the subject of the article without any independant analysis or rebuttal of any kind
And this is nothing new for modern journalism, its a very common practice.
Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I know the only bitcoin core developer working on an altcoin is gavin andresen.
BitcoinXT is not an altcoin; it's an attempt to increase the bitcoin blocksize. It does not change any bitcoin rules unless 75% of the hashing power is running it. BitcoinXT has not been widely adopted yet, but Coinbase just started running it in production, so it will be interesting to see if others follow their lead. But calling it an altcoin will only add to, rather than avoid, confusion. In fact, some moderators are actively censoring discussion of BitcoinXT on the most popular bitcoin reddit board, and they are trying to justify this censorship by calling BitcoinXT an altcoin. So, calling BitcoinXT an "altcoin" is a very contentious issue right now.
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By increasing the block size you fork the block chain and people can choose to stick with the original or go with the new, forked chain.
Alternate block chain = alternate crypto currency, regardless of how many people join in.
Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is it okay to use the exact same terminology to discuss such radically different situations?
Yes, if the terminology is insufficient to make a distinction. And terminology will change when such a distinction is 1) needed and 2) accepted by common (relative) understanding. IMHO, calling a mutation of BTC to BTC(XT) is not really a altcoin difference. If the change in coin is permanent (non-reversible) the conversion is essentially an Alt-Coin.
And sometimes, the terminology becomes muddled, like the "hackers" and "crackers" became synonymous in spite of the understanding in the geek crowd. Now, the t
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BitcoinXT would have its own block chain past the fork, and thus effectively have it's own network.
Bitcoin vs. BitcoinXT (Score:2)
The Bitcoin block chain will be taken over by BitcoinXT once its clients detect the 75% hashing power mark and one larger block gets added to the chain. Any existing Bitcoin clients will be unable to read the larger block and no longer participate in the network because you can't add blocks mid-chain.
However, the ethereal coins themselves are unchanged. Anyone still running the old client can at any time install a BitcoinXT client and continue using their wallet. You won't have to exchange one coin for anot
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Then, you have the better informed but far less di
Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
some people say 'altcoin' when they mean anything that isn't bitcoin-with-the-annointed-blockchain.
You are correct that some people are advancing this definition, but I do not consider it to be an honest definition; instead, I consider it to be an attempt to conflate two clearly distinct concepts: A competing bitcoin client that would fork the blockchain and an altcoin. The only reason some people are attempting to conflate these concepts is so that they can pretend that censoring discussion of BitcoinXT on a bitcoin message board is not really censorship, but simply the removal of off-topic, altcoin discussion.
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That argument is propaganda. BitcoinXT is not an alt coin.
I'm not running BitcoinXT, and not supporting it, but the people who asserted that it is an alt coin are intellectually dishonest and you should consider their ulterior motives for making such an emotional response (censorship, intellectualy dishonest statements, DDoS attacks, etc) to a math problem.
Anyone curious should read the dispassionate and logical argument for BitcoinXT on the BitcoinXT website. Then look at the negative responses everywhere
Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Informative)
This is exactly the kind of manipulative nonsense that has been infuriating developers and driving them away from Bitcoin.
"phantomcircuit" is Patrick Strateman, an employee of a company called Blockstream. Blockstream employs many of the developers who work on Bitcoin Core, which is the de-facto standard node implementation, descended from the original code written by Satoshi. When Satoshi left, he handed the project on to a guy named Gavin Andresen.
Gavin later handed on the project again to another guy, and under that guys non-existent leadership (he rarely if ever even posts to his own developer mailing list) the project started making decisions that upset many people, most notably, they decided that the block chain should retain a hard-coded limit on block sizes that was originally put in as a temporary hack, with the result that the block chain is currently full - Bitcoin cannot process any more transactions/second than it presently does and payments have started to break as a result [slashdot.org].
So Gavin and myself created a fork of Core called XT to give people and miners the option that Bitcoin Core had decided to refuse them. It is exactly the same software as Core, but with extra patches that cause it to cast a vote for raising the limit. If 75% of blocks vote for the increase, then blocks can get bigger after that point.
Unfortunately, Blockstream and Bitcoin Core developers do not believe the user community should have a choice. So they decided to claim that Bitcoin XT is "not bitcoin" or put another way, any source fork that they disagree with "isn't bitcoin", even if it uses the same block chain, sends the same coins, speaks the same protocol and from the users perspective is indistinguishable from Core. They have decided that more or less any bullshit is acceptable in order to bring about what they want - a project that is theoretically open source, but which cannot actually be forked. These tactics include DDoS attacks on any computer that runs XT [reddit.com] and extensive censorship of community forums and websites [reddit.com].
The comment I'm replying to is a classic example of this kind of BS in action. Strateman says he wants to "avoid confusion" and then immediately claims Gavin isn't working on Bitcoin anymore, even though in fact Gavin has only ever worked on Bitcoin and has never worked on an alt coin.
When the Decred guys talk about "governance issues", that's a polite way of saying that people like phantomcircuit and his employers have gone crazy and can't be trusted anymore.
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Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers (Score:5, Informative)
But Gavin has never worked on any alt coin at all. That's my point.
The definition of "alt coin" is literally an alternative coin made by creating a separate block chain. Alt coins have their own transactions, their own network, their own value and their own currency symbol. They may be based on the same code as Bitcoin or might have a different codebase, but they are not the same currency.
Redefining widely used terms is a classic propaganda technique (hence "newspeak" in 1984) and Blockstream/Bitcoin Core guys have become devils for it. Other than trying to define a patchset on top of Bitcoin Core as an "alt coin" because they disagree with it, they've also attempted to redefine the meaning of "SPV wallet" to claim no such things exist, despite the fact that the term has been used for years and the top mobile wallets on both Android and iOS describe themselves as being SPV wallets.
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Which I totally don't understand. Mind you, this discussion is the first I'm hearing of BitcoinXT, and I don't use any cryptocurrencies. I'm a developer that finds cryptography and currencies interesting. From what I've read it's just a new client that allows larger blocks for more transactions per second using the exact same coins. Is that not the case?
What is the problem here? I am totally baffled why anyone holding coins would care. The only people affected are developers writing clients and servers. But
Title is Misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not an exodus of core developers from the Bitcoin project. This is a small group of developers, some of whom have contributed to Bitcoin, who are creating a new cryptocurrency to address some of the governance problems cryptocurrency projects have faced. "Decred" stands for "decentralized credits" and will employ both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake in a novel way to secure the blockchain while avoiding centralization pressures.
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Am I the only one who thinks the name has a subtle reminder of words like discredit? "de" is a bad prefix for "decentralized", IMO.
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Am I the only one who thinks the name has a subtle reminder of words like discredit? "de" is a bad prefix for "decentralized", IMO.
It's a bad name, yes, but it's not like they had the desire to jump TLDs, nor had the million dollars necessary to buy d3c3ntr8l1zed.org or decreed.org or decrud.org.
Until they become multi-millionaires of their own, decred.org [decred.org] will have to do.
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Thank you for the information. Your comment is what the summary should have contained.
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In Proof-Of-Work the blockchain is updated by those doing work to solve computationally hard problems, the more work you do the more likely you are to be the one updating the blockchain; and in Proof-Of-Stake the blockchain is updated by those who own coins, the more coins you own the more likely you are to be the one updating the blockchain.
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if only there were a p2p micropayment system (Score:5, Funny)
This is in part due to a lack of mechanisms and pathways for funding development work directly from the community
Someone should come up with a system to send other people money, even in small amounts.
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The problem is that banks still charge high fees to wire money to other countries because they have to pay for the couriers that are transporting the money on horseback. Maybe some day they will be able to do it electronically somehow so they don't need to charge those fees anymore...
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I'm not claiming the current system is simple, but consider me trying to send the equivalent of $100 to Hans in Germany.
I buy BTC, causing one currency change and a BTC transaction. I then transfer it to Hans, another BTC transaction. Hans then converts it to Euros, another currency change and BTC transaction. BTC transactions require serious computer power to be verified, and hence are more expensive than simple ledger transactions.
If I do a bank transfer, that's one currency conversion and some re
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I was a very tiny part of doing that in 2000 when manufacturing jobs were scarce and such stuff looked promising - as were many others including Charles Stross who has something about that sort of thing on his blog which is far better than I could write. The short story is a lot of end users like travel companies loved the idea but banks hated it. Roadblock. It's still sometimes faster by DAYS to withdraw cash and carr
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Money transfers (Score:2)
Even with in the US, whether through malice or apathy, transferring money between accounts with different banks can take an absurd amount of time
How are you doing the transfer? Check? ACH? Wire Transfer? The faster you want the money moved the more it will cost. I can wire money to basically any account around the globe nearly instantly via Wire Transfer. If you send a check there is back end transaction processing (including security) to that method of money transfer - far more than most people appreciate. If you are a small customer writing a check and dealing with banks from different states then they might put a 7+ day hold on money trans
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This is actually more true than some people may think. I have physically carried large sums of money to another institution and made the deposit there, in a new account, only to transfer it to one of their account holders in order to speed up the transaction. That was not even going from across any land boundaries. That was simply going across town. It was quicker for me to ask my credit union to ensure that they got enough cash brought in on the truck to cover my withdrawal, wait until the following day, a
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YES! They could call it SystemD, and maybe it will be so successful that it could be the first program anyone runs as soon as they start up their computers!
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the first program anyone runs as soon as they start up their computers!
The BIOS?
"funding development directly from the community" (Score:1)
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So long as their is nonzero, usually nontrivial, work involved in keeping a currency(or an exchange service layered on top of a currency, like credit/debit/paypal/etc.) up and running, the people doing that work(as well as any opportunists available) will try to get their cut, whether in seigniorage, taxes,
Who left? (Score:2)
"Core developers in the Bitcoin project have left .."
Can someone tell me the single most prominent such developer?
No core developers (Score:2)
I'm sorry, if the names of the peoples involved aren't on the list of bitcoin/bitcoin contributors with at least 3 commits [github.com], then they're probably not anywhere near core developers of Bitcoin. That doesn't make them not Bitcoin developers, but in that same capacity, I'm just as a much of "Bitcoin developer". Hell, at least I've got a commit in Bitcoin Core.
This appears to be a press release from a company that got some of the btcd implementors to join it. btcd is an implementation of bitcoin in Golang.