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Bitcoin's Golden Future

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Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#71

Post by kbody »

delegate wrote: post #6

Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive. Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that. Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will t…

I'll focus on one thing that's fitting and haven't been mentioned. It's about Opendime ( https://opendime.com/ ) which brands itself as a Bitcoin credit stick.

It's like a USB stick but it stores inside a Bitcoin private key that's not revealed to the user unless they visibly break a part of the stick. This basically allows you to "load" bitcoins on the stick and give to others while being relatively certain of the "transaction" while of course being offline.

I assume it's probably possible in theory that with an electronic microscope or something similar a skilled engineer will be able to read that private key, but I haven't read of any reports that it has happened yet, but it all depends on the value contained to make it worth the effort and even then we won't know.

This basically allows off-chain & off-internet transacting which is really cool and enables the use in some more cases.

Personally I know that Bitcoin is not perfect, it has strengths and weaknesses but it's good enough for a lot of use-cases at the moment and it will keep getting better. There are quite a lot of talented engineers & cryptographers actively working on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that will move things forward quite a lot. Unlike Gold, Bitcoin can be upgraded to do more thing and evolve, be it Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, unless we live on an age of having govs ban a technology it will find its place on our daily lives.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#72

Post by hamilyon2 »

delegate wrote: post #6

Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive. Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that. Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will t…

Fork wold decrease number of miners working on the main chain. Thus destroy some value, and bitcoin price may be more volatile in days of fork. But no more than that. I cannot imagine any exchange/buyer accepting transactions from anything but the longest chain, and existence of the longest chain cannot be kept secret in modern world.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#73

Post by iainmerrick »

kuprel wrote: post #39
iainmerrick wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of coins already that are technically better than Bitcoin. Is there anything that fixes the wasteful mining process? To me that seems like a serious flaw in Bitcoin.

Iota uses a "tangle" instead of a block chain

Sounds interesting!

But a quick search sent me to https://iota.org, and oh my gosh, that website is impossible to use. Uninterruptable animations and completely broken scrolling. Oh well.

EDIT to add: suddenly I'm reminded of "For the love of God, please tell me what your company does" from the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170182). Probably the incomprehensible website means Iota is aimed at big businesses, not individuals.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#74

Post by amluto »

gldalmaso wrote: post #36
delegate wrote: post #6

Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive. Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that. Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will t…

I think you have a valid point, but, ultimately aren't all or most trades digital today? Are countries exchanging actual loads of gold and/or cash around? If the answer is no, then isn't it all just data on a hard-drive? In that case damaging internet links will have the same effect all around, though information can probably still go in/out in different ways with some effort. Is there some aspect of crypto currency…

Conventional digital currencyish things (e.g. credit cards) have at least some tolerance to network partitions. Current blockchains fail rather catastrophically if partitions occur.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#76

Post by vasilipupkin »

criddell wrote: post #22
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd probably see similar delays in banking if all banks had to record all their transactions in a central database. It's simply not a scalable system.

But Bitcoin only has a few hundred thousand transactions every day. What database can't handle that small number of transactions?

Bitcoin is not, in my opinion, a system for transactions. It's essentially a store of value - that's it. If you want quick transactions, you won't do it faster with decentralized than with centralized systems. Decentralized is slower by construction

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#77

Post by lurker456 »

criddell wrote: post #22
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd probably see similar delays in banking if all banks had to record all their transactions in a central database. It's simply not a scalable system.

But Bitcoin only has a few hundred thousand transactions every day. What database can't handle that small number of transactions?

bitcoin is a byzantine fault tolerant distributed database, it's performance characteristics are different.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#78

Post by cgore »

elevensies wrote: post #64
delegate wrote: post #6

Bitcoin and other crypto require a well functioning internet infrastructure, otherwise it's just data on a hard-drive. Disconnect a country from the Internet (or filter the traffic) and you're forking the chain. Spend on both networks by buying other (unfiltered) crypto. There are states (even large ISPs) that can do that. Also, the first thing to go in case of global conflict is the global Internet. Countries will t…

This is something I've been wondering about. Maybe someone with more bitcoin expertise could answer. Is there more mining capacity inside China than outside China? If so, and the Chinese government used their well-known firewall against Bitcoin for a matter of days to weeks, would Chinese miners have the longer chain? And thus the chain? I guess what I'm wondering is if the government of China has the ability to DOS…

My guess is that the Chinese miners are often well-connected in the middle-levels of the Chinese government, the parts that actually implement such policies, and only a few less-connected miners would actually get blocked, thus increasing the profitability of the miners with government connections.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#79

Post by provost »

imaginenore wrote: post #50
Double_a_92 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to whoever accepts Bitcoin That's the difference.

Yes, in your case it's "whoever accepts the dollar". Huge difference /s

> to whoever accepts Bitcoin

Double_a_92 is pointing out a distinction -- USD is pure legal tender, that is mandated by the US government to be accepted for payments of debts. Bitcoin is not.

Re: Bitcoin's Golden Future

#80

Post by contingencies »

cgore wrote: post #78
elevensies wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've been wondering about. Maybe someone with more bitcoin expertise could answer. Is there more mining capacity inside China than outside China? If so, and the Chinese government used their well-known firewall against Bitcoin for a matter of days to weeks, would Chinese miners have the longer chain? And thus the chain? I guess what I'm wondering is if the government of China has the ability to DOS…

My guess is that the Chinese miners are often well-connected in the middle-levels of the Chinese government, the parts that actually implement such policies, and only a few less-connected miners would actually get blocked, thus increasing the profitability of the miners with government connections.

AFAIK mining doesn't actually require connectivity until you want to reveal the block. It's unlikely anyone else will discover it quickly, so you can just have someone walk across a border (or get on a flight) and plug it in to the global network from elsewhere.
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