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Can anyone provide a TLDR? All I can see in the conclusion is: "We expect to develop a prototype of a blockchain-based system with the raffle protocol in the near future.". So their alternative to reaching consensus is a raffle protocol? And in raffle protocol section I read "among a set of eligible agents" and "relying on a trusted “global clock” service". Seems quite centralized if you ask me.
(Related to footnote on page 19.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you believe that? The last couple of halvings appeared to have little effect on the global hashrate, and so had little effect on the energy consumption. The vast majority of Bitcoin mining is done by professionals. I doubt many people buy thousands of dollars worth of hardware to mine simply for fun. Miners are looking to profit. People will mine the coin up until the point at which it becomes unprofitable. Th…
> Miners are looking to profit. This is true in a sense, but a majority of the mining is done by Chinese pools which do sell at a loss to the electricity costs even there. The losses are acceptable because it is used as a way to get currency out of the country.
Bitcoin is certainly one way to get money out of China, but there has never been a shortage of ways to do that:
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03...
1. Proof of blockchain storage: This provides no security on its own but has been suggested many times to prevent SPV mining.
2. Alternate proofs of work: the idea is to have "cheaper" proofs of work. One of the proofs of work is a "super-agent", which would basically make a federated system, not a distributed one. There are also arguments that cheaper proof of work will just mean proportionally more work is done: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/
3. Proof-of-stake: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf
See for examples the append-only logs used in Certificate Transparency (https://www.certificate-transparency.org), and a more generalized hosted form provided by Continusec (https://www.continusec.com) that builds on the same principles. (disclaimer: founder of Continusec)
On page 4 the paper states "if we outline a scenario in which Bitcoin reaches the same value of the current global fiat money supply, supposing that the energy consumption of global Bitcoin would grow linearly with its value" This supposition is highly unrealistic, since the scenario will likely play out over many decades, during which there will be many block reward halvings (once every 4 years), which will severely…
Why do you believe that? The last couple of halvings appeared to have little effect on the global hashrate, and so had little effect on the energy consumption. The vast majority of Bitcoin mining is done by professionals. I doubt many people buy thousands of dollars worth of hardware to mine simply for fun. Miners are looking to profit. People will mine the coin up until the point at which it becomes unprofitable. Th…
Consider the extreme case: Tomorrow, the block reward changes such that only one bitcoin is mined a day @ $600/coin. The hashrate would definitely drop in that case, even though the price stayed the same!
> The last couple of halvings appeared to have little effect on the global hashrate, and so had little effect on the energy consumption.
True, but the system was not at equilibrium--the cost to mine a bitcoin had not yet approached the value gained from selling one, so after the halving most miners were profitable, and the hashrate stayed the same.
This is regarding first 2 chapters where it compares it with fiat saying it could become 802.4% more costly, right comparison is with gold indeed like in https://www.bitcoin.fr/public/divers/docs/Estimation_de_la_d...
Expect a tldr of chapter 5, will check here back tomorrow if there is any.
Actually I'm happy they are working on an actual prototype.
Blows my mind how many banks are throwing money at this when they dont understand the least of the underlining technology just because they want their hands on a potential rival fiat digital currency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you believe that? The last couple of halvings appeared to have little effect on the global hashrate, and so had little effect on the energy consumption. The vast majority of Bitcoin mining is done by professionals. I doubt many people buy thousands of dollars worth of hardware to mine simply for fun. Miners are looking to profit. People will mine the coin up until the point at which it becomes unprofitable. Th…
Bitcoins energy consumption is related to the USD value of bitcoins mined every day, not the value of each individual bitcoin. Consider the extreme case: Tomorrow, the block reward changes such that only one bitcoin is mined a day @ $600/coin. The hashrate would definitely drop in that case, even though the price stayed the same! > The last couple of halvings appeared to have little effect on the global hashrate, and…
The more valuable bitcoins are, the more incentive there is to secure the system such that they retain their value and security.
