The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money • Hacker News Board

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#81

Post by EGreg » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 4:51 AM UTC

neffy wrote: post #30

hanniabu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the other comment here about Holochain I feel like this whole comment was just meant to be an incognito way to shill Holochain.

Quite possibly, but they are also quite correct - you cannot scale a full mesh network to anything remotely resembling the capacity required, it has to be some kind of sharded, p2p topology. At which point, and the irony here is quite profound I agree, you are starting to look at something that looks a lot like the existing banking system.

Yeah we need to have massively parallel systems, but that doesn’t necessarily mean what they have for banking and centralized databases... there are a lot of innovations that have happened since the introduction of Bitcoin. I could show you the actual whitepaper and link you to the pages describing the major design breakthroughs in simple terms but I won’t because that would apparently be shilling my project (Intercoin, not Holochain). Just take my word for it ... there is a lot that is far beyond blockchain.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#82

Post by Empact » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

6nf wrote: post #57

johndevor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning network solves this as do many other things (liquid sidechains)

No it does not. LN is terrible for all kinds of reasons and nobody uses it.

Based on what I last heard from merchants that accept it (e.g. Bitrefill), it's about tied with Ethereum for second in payment volume, after Bitcoin.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#83

Post by lawn » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

ArchD wrote: post #60

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #36

I still hope that they listen to reason and increase bitcoin’s ability to scale. We are all held hostage by a tiny cabal of developers that think they know what is best and want bitcoin to have a perversely small block size and pitiful 7 transactions per second top speed.

Big blocks are probably easier to censor and harder to use for people who only have low-spec equipment/networks. Vulnerability to censorship vs limited on-chain scaling -- pick your poison. Censorship-resistance and on-chain scaling are both good things, but one picks a priority. You or someone else can always go BCH if you like big blocks and the BTC devs are not going to stop you.

> Big blocks are probably easier to censor

Only if they get extremely big, and the clients cannot handle them.

> to use for people who only have low-spec equipment/networks.

These people should use light wallets or SPV wallets, which is what we already use on mobile phones.

> Vulnerability to censorship vs limited on-chain scaling -- pick your poison.

Only Siths deal with absolutes. This is a false choice.

Small blocks, and large fees, also have a centralizing effect on the network as small miners gets priced out as the transaction fees removes a larger fraction of their income.

And miner decentralization is the most important type of centralization there is, because that's what provides censorship resistance and network security.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#84

Post by zallarak » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:01 AM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #36

I still hope that they listen to reason and increase bitcoin’s ability to scale. We are all held hostage by a tiny cabal of developers that think they know what is best and want bitcoin to have a perversely small block size and pitiful 7 transactions per second top speed.

Clarifications (this comment perpetuates some common misconceptions):

- A single bitcoin "transaction" can actually have thousands of inputs and thousands of outputs. So energy "per transaction" or "transactions per second" is not analogous to a typical monetary transaction.

- Bitcoin does not compete with literal credit card transactions (although some use it like that today). I'd compare Bitcoin on-chain transactions with how nation-states settle their central-bank ledgers with gold. Gold is the best comparison to Bitcoin because trading in hard gold is "final". Credit card transactions happen on a higher level in the financial stack. As does cash. As do bank transfers. All of these bubble down into interbank transfers that eventually settle on the base layer of central banks. So compared to shipping and securing gold, Bitcoin is quite cheap!

* Pasted and modified from an earlier comment I made on HN.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#85

Post by 6nf » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

Empact wrote: post #82

6nf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not. LN is terrible for all kinds of reasons and nobody uses it.

Based on what I last heard from merchants that accept it (e.g. Bitrefill), it's about tied with Ethereum for second in payment volume, after Bitcoin.

Thats bullshit. ETH has loads of transaction volume, second only to Bitcoin. Lightning network transaction volume is almost zero right now.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#86

Post by AlexCoventry » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

wbazant wrote: post #70

Exchanges trade both in Bitcoin and BitcoinCash, and I've just learned from the paper that they form a tree with a common origin. Does it mean that if I owned Bitcoin before the Bitcoin-BitcoinCash split, I can now spend it on both chains?

Yep. The split was also a taxable event (income) according to the IRS.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#87

Post by cletus » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #36

I still hope that they listen to reason and increase bitcoin’s ability to scale. We are all held hostage by a tiny cabal of developers that think they know what is best and want bitcoin to have a perversely small block size and pitiful 7 transactions per second top speed.

So having a “currency” (its not really; is an asset) being controlled by an unaccountable “Tony cabal of developers” instead of a central bank is better how exactly?

I’ve never understood this argument.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#88

Post by ac29 » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

sunshinerag wrote: post #78

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #36

I still hope that they listen to reason and increase bitcoin’s ability to scale. We are all held hostage by a tiny cabal of developers that think they know what is best and want bitcoin to have a perversely small block size and pitiful 7 transactions per second top speed.

Lightning protocol addresses that. You can make millions of transactions per second [1]. Quite a lot of crypto sites are already supporting it and wallet support is increasing too [2]. [1] - https://lightning.network [2] - https://blog.bitrefill.com/top-11-lightning-network-wallets-...

Why is an additional layer of complexity an improvement? Why not make bitcoin blocks 10x larger and 10x more frequent?

The argument that "only large entities will be able to keep up with that" doesn't really hold - thats the status quo already.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#89

Post by mathiasrw » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #36

I still hope that they listen to reason and increase bitcoin’s ability to scale. We are all held hostage by a tiny cabal of developers that think they know what is best and want bitcoin to have a perversely small block size and pitiful 7 transactions per second top speed.

Never forget: The original protocol did not have the restrictions you are feeling.

Letting volume be the main driver for payments to the network instead of fees (as it is today) scales much better. By that, I am stating that the hostage situation (as you describe it) has been introduced commit per commit.

Well, in the end, its a battle of opinion because smaller blocks give other features to the chain, so it will be interesting to follow how the dynamics between volume, miners, businesses and users unfolds when the original protocol is reintroduced on the BSV chain the 4th of February.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#90

Post by lawn » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

httpz wrote: post #11

jwilliams wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same hardware. Miners get both a reward for mining (the fixed set of coins) as well as collecting fees. After they’re all mined, it’ll just be the fees.

But after all the blocks are mined, how does the blockchain even work?

In addition to the other answers, there are some cryptocurrencies where the block reward never goes to zero. Look up how it works in Monero for example.