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Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

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Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#91

Post by wereHamster »

mrb wrote: post #72
tananaev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On-chain scaling is not sustainable. If you want to handle as many transaction as for example Visa, you would need 1 GB blocks every 10 minutes, which would make the whole blockchain heavily centralized because regular users won't be able to host full nodes to validate payments. About "adopting" and increasing block size. I think most developers agree that we would need to increase it at some point, but I believe cor…

Actually there is a great way to scale on-chain: UTXO Set Commitment allows nodes to simply discard unnecessary blockchain data (in a way not too dissimilar to classic "pruning"). The data set maintained by nodes would basically grow linearly with the UTXO Set instead of the number of txns. Eg. right now it would cut 150GB down to 3GB. Sadly it seems under-researched.

utxo set is one issue with large number of transactions. The far bigger is the big block size you would need for visa-level transaction numbers (1GB / 10min was mentioned).

And it's not only an issue for end-users (can't run a bitcoin client on your phone, you'd burn through your data within a couple days), but also for miners. They'd be far more likely to mine on top of an old block, leading to stale blocks.

There was a talk a while ago how the bitcoin developers improved the propagation of new blocks within the network and it basically eliminated stale blocks (at least for a while).

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#92

Post by 0wing »

sgspace wrote: post #76
0wing wrote: post #12

Bitcoin and blockchain systems are nearly all designed to exploit new users and extract capital from greater fools who are too late to the game and didn't read or understand the rules and fine print. Satoshi's Bitcoin and many of the crypto-currencies that have followed create and distribute the supply that effectively creates a decentralized pyramid-ponzi scheme. Semantically, a more accurate term is needed; Bitcoin…

Wow thats a lot of words to say "I didn't buy Bitcoin when it was cheap".

There's no reason for new users to become bag holders.

Sellers and "HODLers" rely on psychological manipulation and ignorance of new users to sell bitcoins produced by the software for low effort.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#93

Post by dsacco »

bobwaycott wrote: post #50
EpicEng wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more like gold But without that nifty property of intrinsic value.

There is no intrinsic value in gold. Or any other thing. The only value things have are the exchange and use values humans imbue them with.

> There is no intrinsic value in gold. Or any other thing. The only value things have are the exchange and use values humans imbue them with.

Your definition of “intrinsic value” does not match that of standard economic terminology.

Gold has intrinsic value beyond speculation because it can be used for industrial supplies and because it’s a well-liked jewelry item. Extrinsic value contributed by speculation can drive this price away from those anchors, but the anchors exist.

Your definition seems vaguely philosophical, but in any case your argument, as posed, is incoherent. Either you’re using the same definition as what others are, in which case your argument is simply incorrect, or you’re using an alternate definition, and your argument ceases to be relevant.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#94

Post by tylersmith »

adamnemecek wrote: post #49
jklein11 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on this? In what way is it any more of a portal than government issued fiat? Is it because the infrastructure is more robust because it has been around the block longer? Is there some other technical detail that makes it exceptionally good at being a portal?

It's a portal to crypto I meant. You buy bitcoin to buy other currencies.

So it's a worthless middle man?

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#95

Post by blhack »

0wing wrote: post #74
erentz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you and the other person mentioning lightning have been downvoted. I’ve noticed increasingly it’s not possible to have reasonable discussion about bitcoin on hacker news. It seems the folks from /r/btc have found this place.

Please explain how the Lightning Network developers solve an unsolved NP-Hard problem in computer science regarding routing? [1] The Lightning Network design is exactly what the first sentence of Satoshi's Bitcoin whitepaper seeks to avoid - payment processor middlemen. "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a f…

It's kidnof getting creepy to me how much people seem to be treating bitcoin like a religion, especially bcash proponents.

Satoshi Nakamoto is not a god.

The white paper is not a gospel.

This is a technology project. It's okay to rethink the possible ways of solving the problem 8 years into it.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#96

Post by 0wing »

blhack wrote: post #95
0wing wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how the Lightning Network developers solve an unsolved NP-Hard problem in computer science regarding routing? [1] The Lightning Network design is exactly what the first sentence of Satoshi's Bitcoin whitepaper seeks to avoid - payment processor middlemen. "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a f…

It's kidnof getting creepy to me how much people seem to be treating bitcoin like a religion, especially bcash proponents. Satoshi Nakamoto is not a god. The white paper is not a gospel. This is a technology project. It's okay to rethink the possible ways of solving the problem 8 years into it.

This is why there's thousands of new crypto-currency designs improving on the flaws of Satoshi's implementation.

Not only is it easy to start fresh, but it's measurably more fair for new users to avoid BTC/ETH and other early cryptocoins which use manipulative ponzi/pyramid like work:coin production:time algorithms which exploit "late" users.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#97

Post by dsacco »

wallace_f wrote: post #69
bobwaycott wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no intrinsic value in gold. Or any other thing. The only value things have are the exchange and use values humans imbue them with.

But that's consistent with what people mean when they say 'gold has intrinsic value.' All they are saying is it 'has some value that is not one of the three functions of money.' Does anyone know what the above logical fallacy would be named? I see this kind of argumentation a lot: where one refutes an argument which has not been made.

It’s an abuse of definitional scope. The commenter is not arguing against a point that has not been made (that would be a strawman); instead, they’re arguing against the applicability of terminology in an argument that was made, but by using an incorrect or alternate definition for the terminology.

In this specific instance, the commenter is using a non-standard definition of “intrinsic value” to argue that gold has no such value. I like to call this “Wittgensteinian chaos” - you see it happen whenever two or more parties fail to explicitly define terms before arguing. It’s usually accidental, not deceptive. In particular, this is likely to happen with technical terminology that does not look enough like jargon to prompt people to look it up, because it also has a coherent, non-technical meaning.

Now circle back to “intrinsic value” - if you aren’t immediately aware that this is a specific economic term[1], you might think to yourself, “oh I get what he’s trying to say”, and proceed to try and refute it. I think economics is particularly prone to this in internet debates.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#98

Post by throws990 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #14

Bitcoin is not remotely usable as a currency now. The fees are incredible, the confirmation times ridiculous. We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. immediately. Asking the current 1 mb blocksize version of Bitcoin to be a currency is like Goldman Sachs writing a report saying they want to run their website on Intel 486 processors. They mention Zimbabwe moving to it as an alte…

My Bitcoin Cash transaction for USD$280 was confirmed in 47 seconds with 0.1 USD in transaction fees (10 US cents)

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#99

Post by FLUX-YOU »

tylersmith wrote: post #94
adamnemecek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a portal to crypto I meant. You buy bitcoin to buy other currencies.

So it's a worthless middle man?

It's a store of value or something. But I dunno, maybe they've dropped that narrative.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#100

Post by hellabites »

MarkSweep wrote: post #75
bobwaycott wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no intrinsic value in gold. Or any other thing. The only value things have are the exchange and use values humans imbue them with.

I think intrinsic means in this context "valuable for something other than bartering with". Gold has intrinsic value in electronics. It is used for electrical connectors due to its corrosion resistance and conductivity. Tiny golden wires are used in packaging integrated circuits (connecting the ICs to the pins of the chip). Bitcoins have no such intrinsic value. They can only be bartered for something else. Even fiat…

Gold had intrinsic value before electronics, but for basically the same reason: it's immutable.

The bitcoin blockchain is also immutable.

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