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A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

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Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#521

Post by DINKDINK »

pjc50 wrote: post #106
eastendguy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite future use case is electronic cash with privacy . There are many LEGAL activities that people do not want to show up in a central database. For example, think of many things related to love and relationships. "tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players" <= this is like investing works in general, or? ;-)

> many LEGAL activities that people do not want to show up in a central database Unfortunately cryptocurrencies aren't just a central database they're a distributed database - all transactions are public. You can try using a tumbler service but since these are obviously money laundering havens they're not going to last long.

>all transactions are public

Not the case, see payment channels.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#522

Post by pas »

DenisM wrote: post #230
neokantian wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is also what horse-and-cart sellers said when they saw the first car. The lack of digital proof of payment is obviously not felt when you don't have it in the first place. The same for multi-signature contracts. The same for atomic swaps. None of these things are needed if they do not exist in the first place. People did not even need a roof over their heads until they built the first one.

How is a wire/ACH transfer not an immediate proof of payment?

You can't link to it. It's just a screenshot. Or do you have something else in mind?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#523

Post by tromp »

sparkie wrote: post #229
Synaesthesia wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a cryptocurrency which is egalitarian - evenly distributed among people in the world, rather than one in which a few people own the majority and profit hugely.

An early adopter will always have an advantage over somebody who gets on board later. The only way you could prevent this is by actively punishing early adopters. Good luck achieving adoption if you try this.

It suffices to not punish the late adopters (something that admittedly the vast majority of cryptocurrencies do).

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#524

Post by goodmachine »

c22 wrote: post #403
aidanlister wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. Bitcoin uses the same amount of energy that the country of Iraq [1] uses, home to 38 million people. Bitcoin has about 500k active bitcoin addresses [2], most of which contain less than $100 [3]. So what are we actually getting for all this energy usage, and couldn't we get that same result for a fraction of the energy usage? [1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption [2] https://bitinfochart…

You think bitcoin is bad? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1s8219SGDIjMnkzdFI2QjhwNm8... My gut instinct is that the vast majority of all computing cycles used by humanity are completely wasted on irrelevant tasks and inefficiencies.

Good spot. Can I add photo-realistic GANs to the list of totally fucking useless computing tasks?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#525

Post by pas »

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

The goal I think is worthwhile is bootstrapping a semi-anonymous Sybil-attack resistant identity system. Web of Trust, etc.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#526

Post by keymone »

iainmerrick wrote: post #507
keymone wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No goalposts have moved. Banking system involves politics and military in securing your finances. It is therefore many orders of magnitude more expensive than bitcoin even if you normalize by market cap of transaction volume or pick your own metric. Edit: typos

You’ve missed a few steps in your "therefore" there.

only for somebody not willing to think about how much damage corrupt (and not corrupt too) politicians and military have inflicted upon this world during short history of human civilization. financial and environmental.

if there's a chance to exclude them from the equation on security of financial system - it's a no brainer.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#529

Post by westurner »

identity_zero wrote: post #462
westurner wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what of decentralized premined chains (with no PoW, no PoS, and far less energy use) that release coins with escrow smart contracts over time such as Ripple and Stellar (and close a new ledger every few seconds)? > Algorand has a very fast consensus mechanism and can add blocks as quickly as the network can deliver them. We become a victim of our success. The blockchain will grow very rapidly. A terabyte a month…

Ripple is not decentralized. I don't know enough about Stellar to answer. Bitcoin is software and can easily implement these features but the community is divided and can't reach consensus on anything. Lightning Network as layer two solution is pretty good from what I know. Ethereum improvements are coming along very slowly and that's good. They're the only blockchain with active engagement by thousands of multiple p…

People argue this all day. There's a lot of FUD.

Ripple only runs ~7% of validator nodes; which is far less centralized control than major Bitcoin mining pools and businesses (who do the deciding in regards to the many Bitcoin hard forks); that's one form of decentralization.

Ripple clients can use their own UNL or use the Ripple-approved UNL.

Ripple is traded on a number of exchanges (though fewer than Bitcoin for certain); that's another form of decentralization.

As an open standard, ILP will further reduce vendor lock in (and increase interoperability between) networks that choose to implement it.

There are forks of Ripple (e.g. Stellar) just like there are forks of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

From https://ripple.com/insights/the-inherently-decentralized-nat... :

> In contrast, the XRP Ledger requires 80 percent of validators on the entire network, over a two-week period, to continuously support a change before it is applied. Of the approximately 150 validators today, Ripple runs only 10. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum — where one miner could have 51 percent of the hashing power — each Ripple validator only has one vote in support of an exchange or ordering a transaction.

How does your definition of 'decentralized' differ?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#530

Post by j0ba »

rmah wrote: post #246
koonsolo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as a disadvantage of using banks. They act as if you can freely access your money in your account, but actually you can't. That money is loaned out for the most part, and it's a trick that keeps the current system going. But once you have a bank run, reality will kick in on how banks really work. At least the cryptocurrency that you own is really yours today. The numbers on your bank account are yours some…

Most people I've spoken with about crypto prefer the way banks work. The idea that losing your keys means losing your money, with no recourse, terrifies them.

> no recourse

Recourses:

- Backed up dat file - Backed up wallet password - Recovery phrase

There, now you have 3 separate ways to not lose your btc!

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