1. I think the issue is too big to be ignored and there is generally cross party support for privacy.

2. The Blockstream devs behind CT are more than competent enough to make it happen, their biggest hurdle was the potential need for a hard fork event.

3. Enabling privacy as an adjunct make things easier.  

The relatively small political hurdles, the reduced technical hurdles and the substantial potential benefits would suggest this could happen this year or next.

Interesting. Thanks.

Although that makes complete privacy just an edge case?  That might sound oxymoronish, as long as general users can't access transaction details, they will probably believe bitcoin is private.

For example people know their Internet habbits are being logged, but generally they don't care, whereas those that do care will use a vpn, Tor, etc.

They would still be able to. I think you misunderstood how CT in Bitcoin works. It only hides amounts, nothing else.

I just picked up this transaction from the blockchain -> https://blockchain.info/nl/tx/4f242d2f85b5f13f68ea8bf9eba19626be161b479c5065ddc2b2f202b012d141

Now imagine CT implemented, it merely won't show 0.011234 BTC, 3.258909 BTC and the total 3.270143. All other information will still be there.

It helps add some privacy without making fundamental changes in how Bitcoin operates. As fluffypony mentioned, Greg Maxwell's own words on the topic make clear that it isn't intended as a complete solution, just an improvement.

It definitely appeals to larger users of Bitcoin who may not want their large transactions to stick out. In its original purpose (Blockstream's Liquid side chain), it allows transfers between exchanges without anyone being able to determine the amount and use that for a trading advantage.

Agree about "less" attractive. Disagree that all that is remaining is "edge cases".


Okay I don't necessarily disagree if stated that way.

A broader comment:

There is a certain "academic approach" in Bitcoin from people like Adam Back (an actual academic in a sense) and Greg Maxwell that you have to appreciate. It involves developing small advancements (or small wins if you prefer that phrase) that are extremely well supported with research and mathematics, and is often focused on advancing knowledge in ways that won't even ever be deployed on a large scale.

That is very different from a more commercial approach that often tries to deliver a "solution" to "customers", but often delivers stuff that isn't very well supported or sound, and almost inevitably becomes obsolete and ultimately outcompeted or leapfrogged by some other commercial product.

Monero, by the way, has a somewhat intermediate approach (that is my observation and opinion, not a statement of policy).

Not familiar with that. If it happens again please save the information and report it.


That will change after the hard fork expected in late March.

Misbehaving or unreachable nodes. Your node will stop trying to connect to them or stop accepting connections from them for 24 hours, then will allow retrying (after which they might get banned again if the problem persists)

Just to check - how did you shut it down previously? Cleanly, by typing "exit", or was it a disruptive shutdown? lmdb is pretty robust, but not impervious to corruption, so I wonder if it's not a corrupt blockchain.

I think your best strategy is to just delete it and resync from scratch (and avoid running two at the the same time).