Posts about Bitcoin Cash
I analyzed the price of the top 50 coins of January 1st 2023 till now, excluding stablecoins, because they are stable (in theory). So how did the top 50 fare this year?
For reference, the total market cap has increased by 53%. So anything under 53% would mean that a cryptocurrency underperformed relative to the total market.
Overall, 21/50 cryptocurrencies are in the red, while 29/50 are in the green. Here's the overall results
https://i.redd.it/oghmucqudkbb1.pngBest performers: Bitcoin Cash (+181% ), Solana (+120% ), Bitcoin (+84%), OKB (+57%) and Ethereum (+56%)
Worst performers: Apecoin (-51%), Huobi Token (-47%), Terra Classic (-45%), Toncoin (-42%), Trust Wallet Token (-41%) and Algorand (-40%).
Some other notes:
Most of the sub's (prior) favorite alts are among those that lost value: Polygon, Cosmos, Algorand, and Cronos.
Some of the sub's most hated alts are among those that gained a lot of value, like XRP and Solana.
Only a few cryptocurrencies performed better than the increase of the total market cap (+53%). This is obviously due to Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and Ethereum are amazing!
Link: https://gitlab.com/0353F40E/ebaa
This is implementation-ready now, and I'm hoping to soon solicit some statements in support of the CHIP and for activation in 2024!
I got some feedback on the title and so renamed it to something more friendly! Also, John Moriarty helped me by rewriting the Summary, Motivations and Benefits sections so they're much easier to read now compared to my old walls of text. Gonna c&p the summary here:
SummaryNeeding to coordinate manual increases to Bitcoin Cash's blocksize limit incurs a meta cost on all network participants.
The need to regularly come to agreement makes the network vulnerable to social attacks.
To reduce Bitcoin Cash's social attack surface and save on meta costs for all network participants, we propose an algorithm for automatically adjusting the blocksize limit after each block, based on the exponentially weighted moving average size of previous blocks.
This algorithm will have minimal to no impact on the game theory and incentives that Bitcoin Cash has today. The algorithm will preserve the current 32 MB limit as the floor "stand-by" value, and any increase by the algorithm can be thoght of as a bonus on top of that, sustained by actual transaction load.
This algorithm's purpose is to change the default response in the case of mined blocks increasing in size. The current default is "do nothing until something is decided", and the new default will be "adjust according to this algorithm" (until something else is decided, if need be).
If there is ever a need to adjust the floor value, algorithm's parameters, or remove the algorithm, that can be done with the same amount of work that would have been required to change the blocksize limit.
To get an intuitive feel for how it works, check out these simulated scenarios plots:
Another interesting plot is back-testing against combined block sizes of BTC + LTC + ETH + BCH, showing us it would not get in the way of organic growth:
In response to last round of discussion I have made some fine-tuning:
Better highlighted that we keep the current 32 MB as a minimum "stand-by" capacity, so algo will be providing more on top of it as a bonus sustained by use - once our network gains adoption traction.
Revised the main function's max. rate (response to 100% full blocks 100% of the time) from 4x/year to 2x/year to better address "what if too fast" concern. With 2x/year it means we would stay under the original fixed-scheduled BIP-101 even under more extreme sustained load, and not risk bringing the network to a place where limit could go beyond what's technologically feasible.
Made implementation simpler by rearranging some math so could replace multiplication with addition in some places
Fine-tuned secondary "elastic buffer" constants to better respond to moderate bursts while still being safe from "what if too fast" PoV
Added consideration of the fixed-scheduled moving floor proposed by /u/jtoomim and /u/jessquit, but have NOT implemented it because it would be scope creep and the CHIP as it is would solve what it aims to address: remove the risk of future deadlock.
The risks section discusses the big concerns:
What if too fast: https://gitlab.com/0353F40E/ebaa/-/tree/main#algorithm-too-fast
Spam attack: https://gitlab.com/0353F40E/ebaa/-/tree/main#spam-attack
What if too slow: https://gitlab.com/0353F40E/ebaa/-/tree/main#algorithm-too-slow
*disclaimer I don't own any BCH (unfortunately).
A new cryptocurrency exchange backed by giants of the traditional financial market announced, on Tuesday (20), the start of its operations with the trading of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC).
EDX Markets, as it is called, was already operating discreetly for a few days, as reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), but announced the launch only on Tuesday. The institutional exchange is controlled by Wall Street giants Citadel Securities, Fidelity and Schwab Starts Operations.
The company's plan is to offer centralized exchange services to institutions and therefore will not serve retail or individual investors.
With the selected list of cryptocurrencies by EDX Markets, the major financial market institutions send a message about which crypto assets they are willing to trade, positively impacting investors' perception of each one of them, which may have caused the price increase.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is up 112% from $90.77 → $192.80 in a 13 days period.
https://i.redd.it/w78xw085ns7b1.pngBitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency, the result of the division of the Bitcoin network in 2017, which resulted in two different currencies, with their own networks. BTC and BCH.
The division occurred, among several reasons, over the decision to increase the maximum capacity of transaction blocks, limited to 4 megabytes in Bitcoin (BTC).
Bitcoin Cash supporters increased the block limit, under the premise of allowing greater scalability, transaction capacity per second and lower network fees for using the blockchain created by Satoshi Nakamoto.
While opponents kept the block sizes as per the initial schedule, under the premise that the increase could harm the ability of 'node' operators to be able to store all transaction history in a network that would become too cumbersome.
In October 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto had already commented on the possibility of increasing the size of the blocks, in case the demand for the network increased in the future.
https://i.redd.it/horvllfuns7b1.png
The CHIP is fairly mature now and ready for implementation, and I hope we can all agree to deploy it in 2024. Over the last year I had many conversation about it across multiple channels, and in response to those the CHIP has evolved from the first idea to what is now a robust function which behaves well under all scenarios.
The other piece of the puzzle is the fast-sync CHIP, which I hope will move ahead too, but I'm not the one driving that one so not sure about when we could have it. By embedding a hash of UTXO snapshots, it would solve the problem of initial blockchain download (IBD) for new nodes - who could then skip downloading the entire history, and just download headers + some last 10,000 blocks + UTXO snapshot, and pick up from there - trustlessly.
The main motivation for the CHIP is social - not technical, it changes the "meta game" so that "doing nothing" means the network can still continue to grow in response to utilization, while "doing something" would be required to prevent the network from growing. The "meta cost" would have to be paid to hamper growth, instead of having to be paid to allow growth to continue, making the network more resistant to social capture.
Having an algorithm in place will be one less coordination problem, and it will signal commitment to dealing with scaling challenges as they arise. To organically get to higher network throughput, we imagine two things need to happen in unison:
Implement an algorithm to reduce coordination load;
Individual projects proactively try to reach processing capability substantially beyond what is currently used on the network, stay ahead of the algorithm, and advertise their scaling work.
Having an algorithm would also be a beneficial social and market signal, even though it cannot magically do all the lifting work that is required to bring the actual adoption and prepare the network infrastructure for sustainable throughput at increased transaction numbers. It would solidify and commit to the philosophy we all share, that we WILL move the limit when needed and not let it become inadequate ever again, like an amendment to our blockchain's "bill of rights", codifying it so it would make it harder to take away later: freedom to transact.
It's a continuation of past efforts to come up with a satisfactory algorithm:
Stephen Pair & Chris Kleeschulte's (BitPay) median proposal (2016)
imaginary_username's dual-median proposal (2020)
this one (2023), 3rd time's the charm? :)
To see how it would look like in action, check out back-testing against historical BCH, BTC, and Ethereum blocksizes or some simulated scenarios. Note: the proposed algo is labeled "ewma-varm-01" in those plots.
The main rationale for the median-based approach has been resistance to being disproportionately influenced by minority hash-rate:
By having a maximum block size that adjusts based on the median block size of the past blocks, the degree to which a single miner can influence the decision over what the maximum block size is directly proportional to their own mining hash rate on the network. The only way a single miner can make a unilateral decision on block size would be if they had greater than 50% of the mining power.
This is indeed a desirable property, which this proposal preserves while improving on other aspects:
the algorithm's response is smoothly adjusting to hash-rate's self-limits and actual network's TX load,
it's stable at the extremes and it would take more than 50% hash-rate to continuously move the limit up i.e. 50% mining at flat, and 50% mining at max. will find an equilibrium,
it doesn't have the median window lag, response is instantaneous (n+1 block's limit will already be responding to size of block n),
it's based on a robust control function (EWMA) used in other industries, too, which was the other good candidate for our DAA
Why do anything now when we're nowhere close to 32 MB? Why not 256 MB now if we already tested it? Why not remove the limit and let the market handle it? This has all been considered, see the evaluation of alternatives section for arguments: https://gitlab.com/0353F40E/ebaa/-/blob/main/README.md#evaluation-of-alternatives
I saw this tweeted earlier decided to test it myself to see what answer I would get from Siri.
Asked Siri - What's the price of Bitcoin? on my phone* and received the price of Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash Maxis are loving the attention and claiming that "even Siri knows that BCH is the real Bitcoin"
Bitcoin Maxis are upset
To be fair I did ask the same question on my Apple watch and received the correct answer.
If you have an Iphone maybe you can try it yourself and see what answer you receive.
Could this be a simple mistake on Apples part or is Tim Cook a secret BCH Maxi?
* test was performed on a Iphone 12 that is running iOS Version 16.5.1
The Celsius Bankruptcy Team just tweeted that last week they accidently started converting their Alts to Bitcoin Cash instead of Bitcoin.
https://i.redd.it/6ylgxl5i2f9b1.pngWith Bitcoin Cash up over 52% in the last seven days the Celsius Estate isn't planning on taking the profit from the mistake. Instead they are going to hold onto BCH thinking they will actually be able to pay everyone back once people start learning about "Decentralized and Low Fee Bitcoin Cash"
https://i.redd.it/29kxfqfo0f9b1.pngJack Dorsey the biggest Bitcoin Maxi was quick to respond saying,
If this is Real and not a hack, I understand why you went bankrupt.
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So... I guess this explains why BCH is up so much over the last week. I fear the Celsius Estate is going to have to relearn what Liquidity means when they actually go to sell their recently acquired BCH.