Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

epj.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 83 posts

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#61

Post by hudon »

craigc wrote: post #32
wjnqx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, stock in Morgan Stanley is not marketed as "decentralized."

Bitcoin is not marketed as anything. There is no company and there are no marketing or sales people. That is part of the beauty of it. The decentralized claim refers to a decentralized network where the miners and nodes connected to the network are decentralized and no single entity controls 51% of the network (if they did it would collapse). Ownership of coins is not the same as hashing power. Nowhere do people clai…

Hi Craig, I'm sure you know that it only takes 1 or 2 Chinese Bitcoin mining pool CEOs to get more than 51% of the network's hash rate [0]. Mining hasn't been decentralized since 2013 unless your definition of "decentralized" is just "not 1 entity" and so "2 entities" qualifies as decentralized... how is that useful?

[0] https://www.ccn.com/bitmains-mining-pools-now-control-nearly...

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

craigc wrote: post #60
rspeer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it revolutionary? Who really cares that much about not requiring a trusted intermediary, besides anarchists? Our civilized world is built on trust. It was a Bitcoin advocate who said "nothing is cheaper than proof of work", given the precondition that you don't trust anyone. Curiously, they saw that as an argument in favor of proof of work. Bitcoin detractors see that as an argument in favor of trusting someon…

Based on your reply, I am fairly convinced you have already made up your mind so it is somewhat pointless to spend my time trying to convince you otherwise, but I will say a couple things. For one, while our civilized world is built on trust and you may trust Banks, Governments, Tech companies etc, the majority of millennials do not trust Banks or Governments. Numbers outside the US are even lower. For more informati…

[deleted]

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#63

Post by rspeer »

craigc wrote: post #60
rspeer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it revolutionary? Who really cares that much about not requiring a trusted intermediary, besides anarchists? Our civilized world is built on trust. It was a Bitcoin advocate who said "nothing is cheaper than proof of work", given the precondition that you don't trust anyone. Curiously, they saw that as an argument in favor of proof of work. Bitcoin detractors see that as an argument in favor of trusting someon…

Based on your reply, I am fairly convinced you have already made up your mind so it is somewhat pointless to spend my time trying to convince you otherwise, but I will say a couple things. For one, while our civilized world is built on trust and you may trust Banks, Governments, Tech companies etc, the majority of millennials do not trust Banks or Governments. Numbers outside the US are even lower. For more informati…

I didn't ask you to list the usual excuses. You just replied with them out of habit.

I asked you why anyone but an anarchist should consider it "revolutionary" to burn crap-tons of electricity so you don't have to trust anyone.

The most you addressed that point is to tell me "actually millennials are anarchists", which is one of the sillier things I've heard about millennials recently, and that's saying something.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#64

Post by darawk »

eksemplar wrote: post #52
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That exact fact makes it not an oligarchy.

An oligarchy isn’t defined by a set of stable oligarchs. There can be a shift in power in a oligarchy and there typically will be because the oligarchs aren’t friends. If you look to ancient Athens, it wasn’t uncommon for an oligarch to be exiled. If you look to modern Russia, well, there is a reason a lot of former Russian oligarchs chose to live in London and not a Russian prison. An oligarchy is almost always a tu…

Churn at the top is the exact thing you want in a dynamic, robust economy. You don't want equality. You want movement. Sure, Russia and Athens had some churn. But it was incredibly low.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#65

Post by adrianN »

narrator wrote: post #4

Oligarchy means controlled by the few. Anyone with a Raspberry PI, decent network bandwidth, and a few terabytes hard drive can be a node and start validating and relaying transactions. Besides, Bitcoin is not proof of stake, so having a lot of bitcoin does not give someone more control of the network. So no, Bitcoin is not an oligarchy. All of these big addresses likely belong to exchanges like CoinBase, etc.

How many Petahashes do you get out of a Pi?

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#66

Post by craigc »

rspeer wrote: post #63
craigc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your reply, I am fairly convinced you have already made up your mind so it is somewhat pointless to spend my time trying to convince you otherwise, but I will say a couple things. For one, while our civilized world is built on trust and you may trust Banks, Governments, Tech companies etc, the majority of millennials do not trust Banks or Governments. Numbers outside the US are even lower. For more informati…

I didn't ask you to list the usual excuses. You just replied with them out of habit. I asked you why anyone but an anarchist should consider it "revolutionary" to burn crap-tons of electricity so you don't have to trust anyone. The most you addressed that point is to tell me "actually millennials are anarchists", which is one of the sillier things I've heard about millennials recently, and that's saying something.

Well clearly you just glazed over what I said which was also what I expected.

I personally find the idea of having complete control over your own money, being able to program it, and being able to send it to anyone in the world fairly quickly and cheaply without any intermediary revolutionary. It doesn’t hurt that it is impossible to counterfeit, and your money can be stored completely in your brain.

If you don’t find those ideas revolutionary that is fine, but I think 10 or 20 years from now you may be surprised.

Outside of any of the technical feats, there is also the fact that Bitcoin is the best form of money in terms of the properties of money. Limited/fixed supply, divisible to 8 decimal places, can’t be counterfeited, easy to transact with, etc. I don’t see how anything else can even compare.

I am also curious why you think burning crap-tons of electricity to run the current financial system where you have to trust everyone is any better?

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#67

Post by qplex »

hapnin wrote: post #56
eksemplar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you basing this on, your gut feeling? If I look at where I can actually use bitcoins, or crypto currencies in general, the list is dwindling. A few years ago I could buy coffee with crypto, I can’t today. A few years ago I could buy certificates (if I could also pass them) and other Microsoft products with crypto, I can’t today. A few years ago I could rent an vacation home with crypto, I can’t today. Hell t…

I'm basing it on eight years of experience in Bitcoin. "Bitcoin for coffee" and the like is a waste of the tech, imo. Buying network services such as you described is a better use as intercountry payments with debit cards isn't always feasible. Bitcoin's use is better as a transnational currency when traditional payment channels are cumbersome. To be frank, Bitcoin still has some work to do in the payment channel dep…

>Saving is always a good idea.

Not really.

Bitcoin has lost over -50% of its value in the last 6 months.

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#68

Post by mindfulplay »

craigc wrote: post #66
rspeer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't ask you to list the usual excuses. You just replied with them out of habit. I asked you why anyone but an anarchist should consider it "revolutionary" to burn crap-tons of electricity so you don't have to trust anyone. The most you addressed that point is to tell me "actually millennials are anarchists", which is one of the sillier things I've heard about millennials recently, and that's saying something.

Well clearly you just glazed over what I said which was also what I expected. I personally find the idea of having complete control over your own money, being able to program it, and being able to send it to anyone in the world fairly quickly and cheaply without any intermediary revolutionary. It doesn’t hurt that it is impossible to counterfeit, and your money can be stored completely in your brain. If you don’t fin…

This is the same reasoning that Bitcoin folks regurgitate with a lot of rhyme but no reason. It's like people have memorized this cult reasoning over and over again and think they have some intelligent reasoning on how this whole crapcoin fiesta makes any sense.

The irony of this whole argument is that people are holding BTC in the hopes that the price against USD will get higher over time.

If that doesn't sound stupid, I don't know what does....

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#69

Post by imrehg »

eksemplar wrote: post #51
hapnin wrote: post #31

Of course only small communities have a majority of btc. Too many people - geeks included - spent too many years believing the fud being broadcast about Bitcoin while others were collecting btc. I've seen the blistering scorn from some here on HN over the years. When I first ran across Bitcoin in 2010, I thought it was a scam but was intrigued by the tech. After studying it for about a month, I realised it wasn't a s…

What are you basing this on, your gut feeling? If I look at where I can actually use bitcoins, or crypto currencies in general, the list is dwindling. A few years ago I could buy coffee with crypto, I can’t today. A few years ago I could buy certificates (if I could also pass them) and other Microsoft products with crypto, I can’t today. A few years ago I could rent an vacation home with crypto, I can’t today. Hell t…

I think Gandi does still accepts bitcoin just fine for their services https://wiki.gandi.net/en/billing/means/bitcoin I was renewing a domain this week,and Bitcoin was listed on the checkout page, and I'm pretty sure it would be for all domain services (such as certificates).

Re: Is the Bitcoin network an oligarchy?

#70

Post by garmaine »

geomark wrote: post #43
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That exact fact makes it not an oligarchy.

It's still a small group in control, so still an oligarchy. But the fact that there is a constant rotation of oligarchs makes it a little different, like maybe you could be the next oligarch.

Churn at the top doesn't mean there's upward mobility.
Post reply on HN