A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#301

Post by ttoinou » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #134

sametmax wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9 years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney, to foster the project. My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks,…

> My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. ... All great things start like that. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan https://www.brainyquote.com/qu…

He didn't say he was a genius. He seemed to imply he's the one laughing at people with all his well-earned money now :)

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#302

Post by sbenitoj » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #276

sbenitoj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely — I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money.

> I would gladly trade all my gains for a world where governments have no control over the creation and regulation of money. In that world, there would also be nothing to stop anyone else from just taking your money by force and without any consequences. The loudest voices against government regulation of finance usually belong to those with the least understanding of it. Most of the regulation is just there to prote…

Why do governments have to simultaneously be in the business of (1) securing people’s property and (2) creating money and regulating the monetary supply?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#303

Post by cjbprime » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

yqx wrote: post #297

SkyMarshal wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most* Bitcoin mining is done with renewables. Mostly hydro. Hydro power is often remote from cities and other main electricity consumers, and too weak to transfer over long distances. So they’re a natural place to set up Google data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations on-site, which is pretty much what’s happened with Bitcoin. *Don’t have a citation but there may be some research on this being published soon…

Independent of whether this is true (and I'm sceptical), Bitcoin mining requires computation (and lots of it). Computation requires power. Even if that power is renewable and would be difficult to use for things other than computation, there is still a huge demand for computation. Hence it's still a choice to spend that power on Bitcoin mining rather than other computation tasks such as simulations for scientific res…

You're asserting that there's a huge demand for remote offline computation by scientists, but no such market exists as far as I can tell. Cryptocurrencies might end up creating such a market eventually, since they're researching solutions to the problems of verifiable and secure decentralized computation (e.g. Golem) and incentive for file storage (e.g. Filecoin).

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#304

Post by sbenitoj » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #290

sbenitoj wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, any supply of money will do, no need to permanently increase the amount in circulation — this is why the market settled on gold (which has an inherently low inflation rate due to the difficulties of mining) and impossible to pass off counterfeit gold at scald.

You need inflation for proper incentives. It's like a tax on the entire network to keep it supported. Without proper incentives, the game theory collapses. The difference here is that inflation is predetermined and set instead of printing money on demand like we do in the traditional financial system.

“You need inflation for proper incentives. It's like a tax on the entire network to keep it supported. Without proper incentives, the game theory collapses.”

What, specifically, do you think the consequences of a stable money supply are?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#305

Post by trophycase » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #153

ses1984 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anarchist in me wants to believe that cryptocurrency will diminish the power of the state but I don't actually have enough faith in humanity that we will come up with something better than crypto-oligarchy.

When new technology or some other fundamental change makes enforcement of the rule of law harder, We The People will grant enforcers more privileges to make sure that they are still able to do their job. It's a job We want done. The road to police state is paved with anarchist intentions.

Sort of. Baudrillard seems to argue from a anti-fragility standpoint and asserts that acts of terrorism have the opposite effect as intended and only seeks to strengthen the hold of the incumbent system even more (see PATRIOT act, new TSA screenings). I agree that technology generally amplifies the power of those that already have power, but I wouldn't go as far as you. I think that banking on any one thing is not the way to go, you need to abandon anything that becomes coopted and always seek destabilization in whatever form it appears.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#306

Post by buboard » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #217

skohan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story of cryptocurrency over the past couple years has been a really interesting case-study in the application of Libertarian principals. It's interesting how something which was built on the idea of decentralization by design has given way to a clear power structure, where those who have the sway to control the fate of the technology have largely used it to pursue their own personal enrichment over the health an…

Sorry to be "that guy", but libertarianism != laissez faire, it's a principle about governance of people. The gold standard is just as libertarian as cryptocurrencies, and that doesn't require governance to function, and governance through a private centralized bank that everyone opts into is also libertarian. Governance certainly helps in making things more convenient, but it's not required or necessarily desired. F…

your definition of libertarianism is off by a century

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#307

Post by ur-whale » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

malloreon wrote: post #16

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

>This is a long way of asking: do you want cryptocurrency to succeed if you knew that you could not profit from it doing so?

You seem to be assuming that anyone interested in crypto is in it for the money.

I assure you, that's not the case. To me, getting the money supply out of the clutches of governments is the most important aspect of crypto-currencies.

To answer your question: Which crypto wins and how much it'll be worth are the last of my concern, as I will profit, along with all of society, from getting the govt to surrender management of something they're basically terrible at.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#308

Post by GrumpyNl » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #82

malloreon wrote: post #16

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

How do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9 years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney, to foster the project. My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks,…

BTC will always be banana money.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#309

Post by SkyMarshal » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

yqx wrote: post #297

SkyMarshal wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most* Bitcoin mining is done with renewables. Mostly hydro. Hydro power is often remote from cities and other main electricity consumers, and too weak to transfer over long distances. So they’re a natural place to set up Google data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations on-site, which is pretty much what’s happened with Bitcoin. *Don’t have a citation but there may be some research on this being published soon…

Independent of whether this is true (and I'm sceptical), Bitcoin mining requires computation (and lots of it). Computation requires power. Even if that power is renewable and would be difficult to use for things other than computation, there is still a huge demand for computation. Hence it's still a choice to spend that power on Bitcoin mining rather than other computation tasks such as simulations for scientific res…

Yes that’s a thing. The problem for cryptocurrency is there’s no free lunch, and to gain significant security of a public ledger you have to spend some resources to do so. Bitcoin spends electricity, Chia.Network is working to spend unused disk space instead which is an interesting approach. Others like Algorand, Dfinity, Ethereum 2.0 etc are working to hopefully prove that rule can be overcome with less resource-hungry sources of cryptographic randomness. Hopefully they’ll succeed, but overcoming that rule would be a significant technical accomplishment, and not a given.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#310

Post by ttoinou » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

good-idea wrote: post #242

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when discussing crypto. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake, security, storage size - these are problems for the network and those that want to see it become a real part of our economy. (I am one of those) But the amount of energy being used to mine bitcoin is a real problem - it's not just a technical challenge (like the problems abov…

I'm shocked and disheartened by how infrequently environmental concerns are brought up when comparing crypto and our current banking system.

We all want a faster, more efficient, cheaper cryptocurrency, and those features are linked to its ecological efficiency.