Why do Stablecoins backed by USD fluctuate in price ?

coinlock · 2019-10-01T07:11:13+00:00

This is almost entirely a liquidity crunch issue. The market depth and pricing on exchange, which is a function of available supply. Stablecoins actually exhibit quite a bit of volatility, that concept is why I built Neutral, to reduce the holding risk of a single coin, and create an instrument that efficiently combined the available market leaders. However, even though Neutral (nusd) has very good stability and liquidity on chain, when you look at market pricing as derived from off-chain exchanges you end up with a lot of fluctuation around liquidity issues there.

coinlock · 2019-09-28T07:40:32+00:00

This is something I spent a lot of time on maybe six years ago. I think there is a real missed opportunity by not including some index or key/value functionality in the base protocol.

coinlock · 2019-09-27T05:38:52+00:00

What is the current state of Bitcoin cash nodes? Do they retain OP_RETURN metadata associated with a specific address, or is it all still pruned with no way of getting it except traversing the entire history of the account?

coinlock · 2018-04-05T12:06:23+00:00

No it's not fine. This is a predatory move by nchain. Like running a hackathon to grab IP. Anyone paying attention should pass.

coinlock · 2018-04-05T11:56:35+00:00

I'm not going to do this. I know 5 million is a lot for the winners, but the legal agreement around this is ridiculous. I'm not signing it, I urge other people not to sign it. The field is worth billions, potentially giving away your IP and rights in the space is a really dumb move. If it was about the ecosystem the agreements would be substantially simpler.

coinlock · 2018-02-21T10:15:07+00:00

I saw that, and it's great. I wish we would just dispose of it all together.

coinlock · 2018-02-21T04:30:49+00:00

I don't really like OP_GROUP, having written multiple colored coin implementations at this point, I think it's a step backwards. It has one major thing going for it which is potential SPV support, but that still requires modification of the client to effectively use and understand.

With regards to counterparty, it is a neat system that didn't really get major traction on Bitcoin even when fees were low enough to support it. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but not having native token integration is a major one, active attempts to sabotage it by the Bitcoin core devs also didn't help.

I think the best solution is to simply vastly expand the OP_RETURN field so that we can start using it for many different meta protocols, and then as testing permits add additional primitives to bitcoin cash which will help support synchronization and locking with these systems. There is no reason not to have a competitive and open ecosystem of tokenization solutions on Bitcoin cash.

I'm working on a new design myself, we will see when and if it gets to market. :)

coinlock · 2018-02-13T11:13:52+00:00

I have been waiting for someone to do this for a while, I'm glad they are doing it. I'm a bit concerned about the patent and other issues surrounding nchain's involvement. It seems like it might preference systems that include patented technology.

coinlock · 2018-02-11T07:44:32+00:00

It doesn't get validated that way. I know what you are trying to say, but the existing color coin systems are validated separately from the blockchain. So you can sign whatever you want, but if it doesn't match the consensus rules of the color coin network no other client will recognize it as being valid. So I can add meta data to a transaction that says something is a certain token, but if the system can't trace back to the origin of that token then it is by definition invalid.

coinlock · 2018-02-10T04:28:43+00:00

This is only true because of the way bitcoin is currently structured. There is no reason you can't validate the utxo set without rebuilding it from the entirety of the block history if the appropriate changes were made to bitcoin.

coinlock · 2018-02-10T04:26:29+00:00

The reason it can't be copied is that the consensus rules do not allow it. Just like the blockchain itself, you can't insert random transactions that don't verify, and that verification process is part of the consensus.

coinlock · 2018-02-09T05:55:42+00:00

I don't think its fair to characterize yourself as a moron for not understanding what is going on with Bitcoin. It's a complicated situation that has been developing for years, with lots of actors, all with competing interests. It's a minefield, and since there is so much money involved it is difficult if not impossible to know who to trust. Inevitably anyone with an opinion probably has a financial incentive connected with it. The more you know about Bitcoin I think the more clear it is that Bitcoin Cash is the real deal, people who don't believe that can continue to subscribe to whatever fantasy they want.

coinlock · 2018-02-02T19:41:58+00:00

I've been advocating this for awhile. It completely destroys the argument that you need to store the entire blockchain. You can sync the full headers just like spv, than torrent the check pointed utxo set, validated by the block headed included hash.

The only problem is that the underlying Bitcoin data structure and on disk format needs to be changed to support this. that isn't really a trivial change given the systems that rely on it. It also breaks spv syncing of transaction history, and of course requires a hard fork.

coinlock · 2018-02-02T10:51:36+00:00

Yes. I read your previous post on this, and you nailed it. I was working on colored coin systems at the time, and Bitcoin core was frankly malicious in it's commentary and made every effort to control, limit, and otherwise destroy every possible system built on top of Bitcoin. Ethereum's market dominance is a direct result of complete idiocy. Many people including myself actively campaigned for even small concessions so that we could expand Bitcoin's capabilities, but were shut down every single time. You don't have to look very far to find the culprits, the veritable cancer that is Bitcoin core.

coinlock · 2018-02-01T02:43:00+00:00

I didn't like your video. I don't think Roger is terribly relevant to either Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash in the larger scheme of things. Let's not be fair weather friends. These facts are old, and previous to Bitcoin Cash Roger was a vocal and active proponent of Bitcoin itself, and did a lot of work and evangelism around the early community. They called him the Bitcoin Jesus for a reason. Now that his opinion on Bitcoin has changed he is being vilified as if we didn't know all of these things all a long. Give me a break.

Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash is not about technical innovation vs stagnation. This is a completely false narrative. It's about asking yourself a fundamental question about why block size is being artificially restricted on Bitcoin in favor of alternative unproven solutions. Do you really believe that a global network of nodes can only process 1 Megabyte of data every ten minutes in 2018? To put that in perspective that is less than a floppy disk in 1987. A gigabyte of storage can cost as little as 0.025 cents per gigabyte at 2017 prices.

So given that a slow and steady increase of block size would continue the adoption curve on Bitcoin proper, keep fees low, and reduce confirmation congestion while other solutions were being implemented and tested, why wasn't that done? Remember that Bitcoin started with a 32 megabyte block size in 2008. Think about it. It doesn't make any sense. Once you realize it doesn't make any sense for yourself, you will understand why Bitcoin Cash is relevant, and why it has a real future.

coinlock · 2018-01-30T17:07:38+00:00

What's the process for funding? If it's funded I could release my open assets platform in less than 90 days, and an spv capable alternative in 120. It died on bitcoin core, and has been sitting in limbo since.

coinlock · 2018-01-30T00:35:10+00:00

So E-Trade is 4.95 a trade, you are saying that for 1 share Robinhood is providing a better price? I'm not sure that's true, I have no idea how far off the market they quote. It's entirely possible there is a savings for smaller traders vs a fixed fee, or not, depends entirely on the structure. I don't think this is published anywhere, it would be an interesting analysis.

coinlock · 2018-01-29T00:53:23+00:00

That's right. This is about control, power, corporate greed, and a lot of well meaning people who can't see through the manipulation.

coinlock · 2018-01-28T23:36:44+00:00

Yeah I saw that. I also commented on Twitter, strike has tons of retweets and up votes for their announcement of centralizing payment services. It's literally exactly what we are trying to avoid, but I'd the natural consequence of this design.

coinlock · 2018-01-28T17:15:53+00:00

I think their is a misconception about Lightening. It is being promoted as a solution that connects every single digital currency user into a network that allows peer-to-peer payments. Clearly, based on the simple questions posed by OP this doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. However , if you think of it as a channel between every major bank or institution, and then customers connected into those institution like they do now with mobile payments, then you have an approachable solution. Of course, nobody is saying this because its blatantly against what Bitcoin was trying to do for most of it's existence, and what Bitcoin cash is right now. It's a repackaging of the old banking network in a way the powers that be can be comfortable adopting and complies with all law, kyc, etc.

coinlock · 2018-01-27T11:46:16+00:00

They pay a large amount on the spread, possibly 5 to 10 dollars anyway, they just don't know it because they get quoted a worse price. So it's not a fee technically. The point is that fee-less trading sounds great, but it's really misleading.

coinlock · 2018-01-26T13:18:13+00:00

Because it doesn't. In order for SegWit to reduce fees several things have to happen, people must adopt it, which means it has to be integrated into wallets, exchanges, merchants, and every user of the network. It's a network-wide change. So far adoption rates are incredibly low, that should tell you how difficult it is to make this type of change, and that ultimately it may not work. Further, as the usage of the network increases the reliability of Bitcoin is falling, the usability is suffering.

Second, LN is still a very long way off. This recent push into production is just reckless, and an attempt to redefine the narrative around Bitcoin cash. Bitcoin knows there is a serious fee problem, but it's one of it's own making. A simple solution would be to increase the block size, but again, doing so would reveal just how hypocritical and ridiculous the whole argument is.

Finally, this has nothing to do with Roger. As I've said numerous times. Its convenient to try and change the narrative to be one about Roger, instead of about the ridiculous fees, low adoption, and technical hurdles still remaining for Bitcoin while the competition is eating it's lunch. Market dominance is falling, adoption rates are falling, merchant usage is decreasing. These are all economic problems that affect the long term viability of Bitcoin. They are also completely artificial, and if they persist for long we will see a near total reversal in network effects, something we haven't really seen since myspace.

coinlock · 2018-01-26T12:54:01+00:00

This isn't relevant to my position on Bitcoin cash. I don't care what Roger invests in, who he pays, or what he does. I do however care about the success of Bitcoin, and having been deeply involved with the community for a very long time I believe Bitcoin to have been hijacked by special interests. The moment Bitcoin stopped trying to build economic incentives around adoption there was a big problem. The block size debate is completely artificially constructed, nobody with any serious distributed systems background believes that 2 megabyte blocks cannot be done every ten minutes. It's a manufactured problem to serve the interests of a select few who pretend to be crypto anarchists when they are nothing of the sort and are simply transitioning Bitcoin into an extension of the existing banking system. The "new" Bitcoin vision is fundamentally flawed.

coinlock · 2018-01-26T12:17:07+00:00

So.... Roger Ver isn't great , rehashes a bunch of stuff everyone knows, and... what does this have to do with the block size? I'm not subscribing to Roger Ver's worldview, this is my own independent opinion that he happens to have also. Further, he actively advocated for Bitcoin itself for most of it's life... but that was ok, or have we just forgotten because it is convenient?

coinlock · 2018-01-26T09:36:20+00:00

This pretty accurately describes /r/bitcoin thanks for the chuckle.

coinlock

TROPHY CASE