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As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

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Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#91

Post by tree_of_item »

hudon wrote: post #50
stale2002 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People vastly overestimate the profitability of attacking a crypto network. There are tons and tons of much smaller coins, that can be attacked for very cheap, and yet attacks are still very rare. IMO, this is because double spends just aren't a very good idea. If you tried to steal money from an exchange, everyone would know it was you doing the attack, and then they wouldn't accept your money in the future, or mayb…

Haha, then “PoW is for security” is a myth. If you are correct (which is arguable), then you don’t need PoW, you just need an elected federation of validators. And validators won’t attack because of the counter-incentives you describe. So either PoW has a security hole related to dormant ASICs or it’s useless. Either way it’s not a good look.

I don't think your reasoning here is sound. PoW is the elected federation of validators, it's just that they're elected in a very flexible way.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#92

Post by jMyles »

hudon wrote: post #85
jMyles wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assert that the diffusion of responsibility is a key feature of decentralized technology precisely because it renders us unable to "nip it in the bud".

Not really. When the MPAA wanted action taken on torrented movies, they didn’t just throw their hands up in the air and go “whelp, it’s decentralized!“, they went after the authors of the protocol, the ISPs, hell even domain name registrars (that listed torrent websites). You can still torrent films, but you could get prosecuted or fined. Furthermore, some content is completely censored from torrent sites. All that t…

I think that in very high-level terms, you're quite correct. You say, for example, 'it’s not clear to me that “decentralized technology” can prevent the very human process of holding others accountable' - I mean, yeah. That's a good starting point.

On the other hand, your comment betrays some of the underlying revelation here: indeed, the MPAA has gone after the centralized components of peer-to-peer file sharing, as you point out. Yet, the bit torrent protocol remains as strong as ever (which, to be fair, isn't terribly strong in the first place).

The internet has learnt and will continue to learn from this, and the next generation of censorship resistance will decentralize some of the points of failure you have listed (which we centralized in the bit torrent iteration).

As for your last point: regulators understanding how the tech works is not meaningful if regulators are no longer the ones making decisions about the world. That will be a wonderful shift if our goals include peace and justice, which governments have consistently and correctly seen as threats to their existence.

At the end of the day, my point is really this: even in the most wild-eyed crypto-anarchist fantasy, everything is fine. There's no need for the doom and gloom that we're routinely seeing on HN in threads like this.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#93

Post by perfmode »

InGodsName wrote: post #47
minimaxir wrote: post #6

At what price will the Bitcoin death spiral occur? (i.e. when it costs more to produce/handle Bitcoin than the revenue generated, so best move is to just exit the crypto industry).

Bitcoin will rise again. Bitcoin removes the need to trust a bookie/agent to move money offshore. Whenever flow of money is possible between a safe haven and a corrupt/socialist big country with high tax rate/more population burden. Money flows to the safe heaven. Bitcoin is one such way to move money from african nations/india/china to safe haven like Switzerland, Singapore, UK etc... I am talking about illict gains…

The religiosity of this post is fitting.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#94

Post by ivalm »

CydeWeys wrote: post #30
minimaxir wrote: post #6

At what price will the Bitcoin death spiral occur? (i.e. when it costs more to produce/handle Bitcoin than the revenue generated, so best move is to just exit the crypto industry).

As others have pointed out, the difficulty adjusts both up and down depending on the total work being done by the network, so no death cycle is possible. Additionally, even when there are rapid drops in value (and thus mining), people still want to transact Bitcoin, so transaction fees go up and become a significant percentage of the overall value of a new block, thus compensating miners for the reduced value of the…

If transaction fees go up too much this discourages the use of bitcoin as a currency....

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#95

Post by hudon »

dlubarov wrote: post #86
hudon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short it.

Or double spend. E.g. you could send coins to an exchange, cash out, then mine off an old block to get your coins back.

Very true. I still believe this happened in Bitcoin in 2013... When Pieter Wuille and Luke DashJr decided to abandon the v0.8 fork and told the miners to hop on v0.7, they could have easily sold v0.8 coins...

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#96

Post by jklepatch »

What puzzled me is how comes blockchain startups did not sell their crypto for fiat just after their ICOs.

I recommended this to several of my blockchain customers but none of them listened. I dont know if that was motivated by greed or something else.

According to Game theory there is no benefit in not selling the crypto for fiat: if you raise lets say 10million during an ico (typical amount raised 6m ago), there isnt much you can do with 20M (i.e you keep the crypto and it doubles) that you cant do with “just” 10M.

However, if the crypto crashes, and become 5M, you are going to have a hard time explaining to stake holders that 5M just disappeared...

At worst you keep 10pct in crypto if really you want to keep some upside to crypto but thats it

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#97

Post by duxup »

barnabee wrote: post #57
duxup wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought mining coins took power as time went on. Thus what it took to do the job in the past isn't what it would take today and thus past mining really wouldn't be comparable.

The difficulty (amount/cost of power required) goes up over time when the price goes up because more miners join the network as it becomes more profitable, which means that on average new coins are produced more often. The network targets a certain rate of production and it does this by increasing the difficulty. If the price drops and miners leave this will happen in reverse and coins will not be produced fast enoug…

Forgive me as I don't quite grok bitcoin.

Does the math to calculate a coin change based on... price?

For some reason I assumed the mathematical difficulty just naturally increased as part of what in my mind is "the mathematical problem" vs. number of coins.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#98

Post by twblalock »

jMyles wrote: post #66

The discussion of blockchain tech on HN is puzzling to me. On the matter of value: I suspect that if we find ourselves able to send a message back in time two years (when BTC was less than $1,000 USD) and report that the price is now over $3,700, that we'll find this message to be met with an understanding that this is, at least, a validation of the use of blockchain tech as a store of value. I suspect that if we des…

There will always be people who say a breakthrough is just around the corner. How many years should the rest of us wait wait before we decide that blockchain tech was a dead end? It's already been around for a while and I can't think of any successful use cases outside of cryptocurrency.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#99

Post by pjc50 »

jMyles wrote: post #66

The discussion of blockchain tech on HN is puzzling to me. On the matter of value: I suspect that if we find ourselves able to send a message back in time two years (when BTC was less than $1,000 USD) and report that the price is now over $3,700, that we'll find this message to be met with an understanding that this is, at least, a validation of the use of blockchain tech as a store of value. I suspect that if we des…

You can ask for childlike curiosity, or you can ask people to invest money.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#100

Post by jMyles »

twblalock wrote: post #98
jMyles wrote: post #66

The discussion of blockchain tech on HN is puzzling to me. On the matter of value: I suspect that if we find ourselves able to send a message back in time two years (when BTC was less than $1,000 USD) and report that the price is now over $3,700, that we'll find this message to be met with an understanding that this is, at least, a validation of the use of blockchain tech as a store of value. I suspect that if we des…

There will always be people who say a breakthrough is just around the corner. How many years should the rest of us wait wait before we decide that blockchain tech was a dead end? It's already been around for a while and I can't think of any successful use cases outside of cryptocurrency.

Are you insinuating that there have been no breakthroughs in the past 2 years? How do you respond to the ones I have listed in the comment to which you're replying?
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