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Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

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Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#251

Post by DINKDINK »

hudon wrote: post #239
DINKDINK wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chain reorgs and double spends are two different sets. IIRC the 2010 reorg didn't have any double spends >It’s impossible to count how many of those abandoned transactions were successfully replayed on the new chain To detect if transactions were double spent, you would need some sort of database. Like a data base with _really_ good integrity. Maybe with periodic and limited deltas. Increase the some of the integrity…

No, it's literally impossible. That's the whole point of a decentralized blockchain: nodes cannot (and don't want to) have total information about the network. That is, nodes don't know if re-org's are happening elsewhere in the network and don't know if they are about to get re-org'd. Every re-org is an opportunity for the actors involved in the re-org to send BTC elsewhere on the new chain and thus make transaction…

You've moved goalposts. Your original claim was:

A) >It’s impossible to count how many of those abandoned transactions were successfully replayed on the new chain

now it's

B) >nodes don't know if re-org's are happening elsewhere in the network

Claim A is false as it is indeed entirely possible:

I have a chain of height 100. It is fully synced. I am sent a series of blocks diverging at height 80. I have all the information I need to ascertain which of the transactions in the two competing chains are being replayed or have been doublespent.

Claim B is true

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#253

Post by jmalicki »

goatinaboat wrote: post #224
Method-X wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now the stock market is a scam too?

The stock market is not because good companies really do become more valuable by doing real work. It’s not zero-sum.

I don't know why this has been downvoted, it's basic economics.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#254

Post by Kuinox »

Nursie wrote: post #176
Kuinox wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These services does not require manipulating real money. To run the service, it requires a device connected to the internet, that all. You can find a lot of way to host it in a country that don't have these requirements, or to host it anonymously.

Mixers are now a target for law enforcement though, just so you know.

I know, but you can easily do a service on a decentralized service really hard to shutdown, anonymously.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#255

Post by celticninja »

buran77 wrote: post #247
celticninja wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm bartering if I use £/$/€ too then. I barter my work for tokens, I exchange the tokens for goods. Does it matter what the tokens are if I can exchange them?

It matters because currencies, securities, and commodities are regulated differently and by different institutions. It may sound to you like they should be the same but they're not. They are different financial instruments, just like bonds and stocks are different from cash. What would you think if someone called an L3 cache "a CPU RAM", or an SD card a "micro hard disk"? We're on a highly technical site so I would e…

Well I think your expectations are wrong, but think of it like this, the end user doesn't care if the work is being done by an L3 cache or a "CPU ram", they could call it a "CPU cache", and as long as it does what they expect it to do they don't care for the specifics.

In this example, bitcoin can be exchanged for goods and services, much like an approved currency,so the end user doesn't care what you call it just that it works,and in that respect bitcoin does work.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#256

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

feanaro wrote: post #217
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a bad necessary condition for considering something a currency. On the contrary! 'Money' is just IOU notes. What gives these IOU notes value is that governments use them for paying welfare and civil servant salaries, and in turn take them back when collecting taxes. > So, hypothetically, if someone founded a microstate which allowed paying taxes in Bitcoin, then it would become a currency? Yes. But with a c…

> 'Money' is just IOU notes. So then the various cryptocurrencies fit the bill because a lot of people are willing to treat them as IOU notes among themselves. > What gives these IOU notes value is that governments use them for paying welfare and civil servant salaries, and in turn take them back when collecting taxes. But if some people are willing to treat a cryptocurrency as IOU notes, then that cryptocurrency is…

> So then the various cryptocurrencies fit the bill because a lot of people are willing to treat them as IOU notes among themselves.

Yes, but the 'crypto' part is unnecessary. You can just store these IOU's in some Postgres database, and the effect would be the same.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#257

Post by feanaro »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #256
feanaro wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Money' is just IOU notes. So then the various cryptocurrencies fit the bill because a lot of people are willing to treat them as IOU notes among themselves. > What gives these IOU notes value is that governments use them for paying welfare and civil servant salaries, and in turn take them back when collecting taxes. But if some people are willing to treat a cryptocurrency as IOU notes, then that cryptocurrency is…

> So then the various cryptocurrencies fit the bill because a lot of people are willing to treat them as IOU notes among themselves. Yes, but the 'crypto' part is unnecessary. You can just store these IOU's in some Postgres database, and the effect would be the same.

Yes, "crypto" is not a necessary condition for something to be considered a currency. Neither is "¬crypto", though.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#258

Post by hudon »

DINKDINK wrote: post #251
hudon wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's literally impossible. That's the whole point of a decentralized blockchain: nodes cannot (and don't want to) have total information about the network. That is, nodes don't know if re-org's are happening elsewhere in the network and don't know if they are about to get re-org'd. Every re-org is an opportunity for the actors involved in the re-org to send BTC elsewhere on the new chain and thus make transaction…

You've moved goalposts. Your original claim was: A) >It’s impossible to count how many of those abandoned transactions were successfully replayed on the new chain now it's B) >nodes don't know if re-org's are happening elsewhere in the network Claim A is false as it is indeed entirely possible: I have a chain of height 100. It is fully synced. I am sent a series of blocks diverging at height 80. I have all the inform…

You're assuming in claim A that your node knows about all abandoned chains. Like I said, that's impossible because nodes don't have total information. I'll simplify and strengthen my claim for you: it's impossible to find all reversed transactions.

The comment I was replying to claimed that transactions can never be reversed. I'm just highlighting how this represents a poor understanding of how Bitcoin really works.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#259

Post by thesausageking »

criddell wrote: post #225
thesausageking wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $1B valuation was for their last round which was a $50m investment by Tencent, the company behind WeChat. The investment was more about a partnership between the companies than the economics. At the time, Kik's CEO said: "Today, there are only five other companies in the world that see the future like we do: Tencent, Line, Facebook, Snapchat, and Telegram. One of them owns the largest internet market in the world…

I even wonder how Tencent thought Kik was worth $50m. That seems absurd.

When Tencent invested, it had 300m users including 40% of teenagers in the US, and were growing fast.

For Tencent (which makes WeChat), it's worth it to spend 0.03% of their market cap to partner with a fast growing app in the US market.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#260

Post by miracle2k »

close04 wrote: post #167
miracle2k wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people like Bitcoin and some people use it to pay for stuff, and they want to see more people like them, so they can transact in Bitcoin more. Some critics seem to like making frankly ill conceived semantic arguments about the academic definition of a currency (or on your case, appeals to authority), but it really has no relation to whether Bitcoin is going to succeed or not succeed.

> Some people like [cigarettes] and some people use it to pay for stuff, and they want to see more people like them, so they can transact in [cigarettes] more. Therefore cigarettes are currency. Liking something is not an argument. > frankly ill conceived semantic arguments about the academic definition of a currency My argument is ill conceived because it's "just" based on the academic ( legal ) definition of curren…

Actually, I felt your argument was not based on the academic definition of a currency, but rather on "a central bank said so in a Twitter thread".

The arguments that people usually make about Bitcoin not fitting the legal definition of money are ill-conceived because they are semantic. Apparently, money is: a means of exchange, a store of wealth, a unit of account. It is clearly all of that to some people, so it undoubtedly fits the definition. But just because it fits into the academic definition of money, doesn't it can't be considered an asset. It fits the definition of an asset as well. Coincidentally, Wikipedia says about the term asset: "It covers money [...] belonging to a business or person".

Of course, now we are talking about money, not currency? What's the difference between money and currency?

These are all very interesting questions for linguists. But if you want to have an actual argument about something other than semantics, your discussion has to be grounded in why you care about one term or the other being applied.

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