51–60 of 355 posts
Anyone who doesn't see this and argues "we should just go back to the way we were doing things before" is missing the point.
So the worry is that you need govt courts and police to enforce rules? That's not a great argument. The number of private police today is far greater than govt employed ones. Most international trade disputes are settled by private arbitration and not the govt courts. What's the real worry?
I always thought of bitcoin as a commodity, not a currency. It seems to solve the same problems and follow the same rules. E.g.: a commodity (such as gold) can not be created, but it is an important feature for a currency. Without inflation it will never be a good choice for currency anyways because it will always be a more interesting to hold on it rather than use it.
If bitcoin achieved (a big if) wide adoption, it would be like keeping all your money in an index fund whenever you're not actively spending it. Its value would follow the growing economy.
But without even the pretense of funding businesses and actually participating in the economy. Your money can grow on hot air and wishes alone! Why don't we give all people some bitcoin, so everyone can grow richer and richer without doing anything.
I think that the core value crypocurrencies and blockchains provide is a distributed system of trust. I also think that we people in developed nations have been spoiled by our trustworthy institutions, relatively speaking. I don't know too many people in US/UK/AUS/JP hesitant to put money away in the consumer banks, take out mortgages, or file disputes in the state courts. Those systems work well enough, with accepta…
The "Look at the popularity of Bitcoin in [country]" argument always turns out to be made-up rubbish. I did actually try tracking the Venezuela hype to its source. You have linked the Reason article as a reference, but if you actually read the thing, its title is "The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining: How cryptocurrency is turning socialism against itself" and the article itself is an unhinged lib…
The rate of usage growth could give more insights than just current volumes:
https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VEF
It could indeed be just a blip, but would you agree that there exist reasonable incentives for usage of DLTs in unstable economies?
He misses the point that the developers do not control bitcoin; the miners control bitcoin. The developers suggest improvements which will only be adopted if the miners support those improvements. The miner's interests are purely profit based, so they will not adopt changes which reduce their chance of profit.
> the miners control bitcoin. Incorrect. Nodes enforce consensus in bitcoin, not miners. It is thus. It has always been thus.
Nodes have no say in consensus, the miners can ignore them and decide which transactions they want to include. All a node can do about it is complain to itself.
He misses the point that the developers do not control bitcoin; the miners control bitcoin. The developers suggest improvements which will only be adopted if the miners support those improvements. The miner's interests are purely profit based, so they will not adopt changes which reduce their chance of profit.
Thank you for pointing out that the users of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) have effectively no say in the design of the system they have to trust. This will ultimately limit the very trust needed to keep it alive IMHO.
the article is spot on when it comes to Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) but misses the point of Bitcoin. Many in the community cite the lack of governance as a strength of Bitcoin. It's resilience is a virture because it becomes difficult to corrupt, unlike centralized governance of traditional payment methods.
Bitcoin has opaque governance; it does not have a lack of governance.
> It's resilience is a virture because it becomes difficult to corrupt
It is not at all difficult to corrupt. (Arguably, since it's fundamentally based on “them what have they gold, make the rules”, it's foundationally corrupt and takes nothing additional to corrupt. But, in any case, all it takes to corrupt it is will and money.)
I think that the core value crypocurrencies and blockchains provide is a distributed system of trust. I also think that we people in developed nations have been spoiled by our trustworthy institutions, relatively speaking. I don't know too many people in US/UK/AUS/JP hesitant to put money away in the consumer banks, take out mortgages, or file disputes in the state courts. Those systems work well enough, with accepta…
and a distributed system of trust means a lot of well paid jobs (accountants, lawyers)will... not be necessary
He misses the point that the developers do not control bitcoin; the miners control bitcoin. The developers suggest improvements which will only be adopted if the miners support those improvements. The miner's interests are purely profit based, so they will not adopt changes which reduce their chance of profit.
>miners control bitcoin Incorrect, I can sign or construct any type of cryptographic payment I wish. Miners trade their Proof of work to prevent double spends in exchange for coinbase (currency issuance) that the market values. If miners chose to mine on a chain that no one wants, no one will trade for their coinbase. The game theory nuance is, how do you organize an economy around changes to blockchain consensus? Th…
The longest chain is always the most valuable.
I agree with Vili Lehdonvirta's analysis about governance and wrote a similar conclusion previously.[1] Yes, the concept of "money" existed before governments and therefore doesn't require government. That said, today's modern money is very much an instrument of government power. This is why alt-coins will not overthrow fiat currencies like some enthusiasts believe because Bitcoin does not come with its own Bitcoin-p…