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Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

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Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#181

Post by Udik »

makemonies wrote: post #162
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #30

Back in 2009 when I was getting into bitcoin, it was widely described as a "stateless currency" and not just an alternative to Visa or credit cards. Having a background in economics, bitcoin looked to me like a truly revolutionary technology and if it was adopted en masse would change politics forever. The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. Whomever control…

It's 'Whoever', not 'Whomever'

And "source of its sovereignty", not "it's". It might be silly, but I really can't stand that mistake.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#182

Post by kang »

magicmu wrote: post #20

It seems like the potential fork in bitcoin is already happening to some degree with Elements and the sidechain ( https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements ) -- a super interesting project that I just found out about yesterday! I can't help but feel, to a certain degree, like forking bitcoin is re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic though. There already seem to be more viable alternative cryptocurrencies.

I have an edit to make. Even two-way pegs don't need a hard fork

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#183

Post by foota »

snowwrestler wrote: post #64
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #30

Back in 2009 when I was getting into bitcoin, it was widely described as a "stateless currency" and not just an alternative to Visa or credit cards. Having a background in economics, bitcoin looked to me like a truly revolutionary technology and if it was adopted en masse would change politics forever. The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. Whomever control…

> The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. The reverse is also true--any significant currency creates sovereignty by elevating the power of those with the greatest influence over that currency. In the case of Bitcoin, the "core" developers, in addition to the highest-volume miners, have been elevated to the sovereign position. Rather than a distributed statel…

Sounds like there should have been a structure built into the currency where model changes could be voted on by miners.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#184

Post by erikpukinskis »

pcmaffey wrote: post #87

1. I have no idea how to get Bitcoin. A quick search takes me to several exchanges that look like torrent sites for pirating shit. 2. Nor has anyone presented me a compelling reason to get bitcoin (other than the future). Off the top of my head, if a company offered me an account that would take care of my online transactions in a secure way using Bitcoin, I might be interested. Maybe I'd put a few hundred in it each…

> A quick search takes me to several exchanges that look like torrent sites for pirating shit.

Huh? Googling "buy Bitcoin" returns Localbitcoins and Coinbase, which is exactly what other HNers have recommended here.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#185

Post by pbreit »

bdhiehihhd wrote: post #156
pbreit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to volatility, bitcoin is at one end of the spectrum and every other currency at the other.

This is an ignorant view. Bitcoin is tiny, its measured in billions. How much did the Canadian currency just lose in the last view weeks? That amounts to hundreds of billions of vaporized wealth.

That is an ignorant view. Percentage matters much more than absolute when it comes to currency.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#186

Post by tim333 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #30

Back in 2009 when I was getting into bitcoin, it was widely described as a "stateless currency" and not just an alternative to Visa or credit cards. Having a background in economics, bitcoin looked to me like a truly revolutionary technology and if it was adopted en masse would change politics forever. The problem however is that a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty. Whomever control…

>a nation's currency is arguably the primary source of it's sovereignty

Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain might disagree.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#187

Post by wmf »

Anonobread wrote: post #179
wmf wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't signature verification speed been improved significantly since 2014? And what year would 32MB blocks be needed in and what processors would be available in that year?

> Hasn't signature verification speed been improved significantly since 2014 Pieter Wuille's work in libsecp256k1 promises to improve verification speeds on 64-bit CPUs by as much as 700%, and it's set to be deployed on the network as early as February. This will hopefully be enough of a boost to reasonably process 2MB blocks on a desktop PC. This desktop processing goes very underappreciated by most onlookers. Imagi…

Something seems off here. If a 7x performance increase is only enough for 2MB blocks, does that mean a PC today can only handle And I don't remember seeing anyone call for 20MB blocks. The debate looks more like 1MB vs. 2MB vs. 8MB etc.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#188

Post by josephpoon »

woah wrote: post #8
TD-Linux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opinion, of course, widely varies. Mike's piece was Mike's opinion, so of course it's not going to be very sympathetic to Core developers. The limits on transaction size have been known since the beginning of Bitcoin. VISA level transaction rates require insanely high block sizes, much larger than those proposed so far. People have come up with many, many different solutions to this problem. One thrown around a l…

The Lightning network is not based on advanced Bitcoin scripting, in the sense that Bitcoin script makes it possible or something. Bitcoin script is, rather, an impediment which has added a huge amount of complexity to Lightning. The same principle expressed without Bitcoin script can be explained in a few minutes[1] 1. http://altheamesh.com/blog/universal-payment-channels/

You are wrong. Lightning works by using smart contract logic. For Bitcoin in particular, that involves using Bitcoin scripting using real Bitcoin transactions.

That blogpost is basically describing lightning. Lightning Network has explicitly described instant cross-chain swaps privately, and publicly for many months.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#189

Post by josephpoon »

kang wrote: post #24
TD-Linux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opinion, of course, widely varies. Mike's piece was Mike's opinion, so of course it's not going to be very sympathetic to Core developers. The limits on transaction size have been known since the beginning of Bitcoin. VISA level transaction rates require insanely high block sizes, much larger than those proposed so far. People have come up with many, many different solutions to this problem. One thrown around a l…

> VISA level transaction rates require insanely high block sizes No. There are many other ways to scale bitcoin. >Lightning Network is..based around advanced Bitcoin scripting usage Rather quite the opposite. Lightning Network does not uses the bitcoin scripting.

Lightning Network for Bitcoin uses Bitcoin's scripting, as it uses real Bitcoin transactions.

Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin

#190

Post by iSnow »

bdhiehihhd wrote: post #156
pbreit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to volatility, bitcoin is at one end of the spectrum and every other currency at the other.

This is an ignorant view. Bitcoin is tiny, its measured in billions. How much did the Canadian currency just lose in the last view weeks? That amounts to hundreds of billions of vaporized wealth.

The Canadian Dollar lost about 5% over the last weeks. That's about as much as BTC wins or loses on a single lucky or bad ay.
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