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What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

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Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#91

Post by thomasrognon »

tromp wrote: post #84
DennisP wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their latency is high but they are massively parallel. There's no practical limit on global throughput. To get low latency on dollars/gold you have to go with centralized digital representations, but Bitcoin has to do the same to get more than 7 tx/sec. I might still be a fan if that were the only option, but with other blockchains eliminating this restriction I have a hard time seeing the long-term value proposition…

Others don't so much eliminate this restriction as they shift the problem to creating so much transaction history that it becomes impractical to run a node that fully verifies said history. In other words, they're significantly less decentralized.

Which is a bigger driver of decentralization? Running a node or adoption? I would think a universally adopted blockchain in the multi-TB would turn out more decentralized than a narrowly adopted multi-GB blockchain. # of potential business/research/government nodes >> hobby nodes.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#92

Post by seibelj »

kylebenzle wrote: post #35
slickrick216 wrote: post #21

The fact that every time a blockchain/crypto thread hits HN and many of the responses are talking about time stamps is in itself a bit of a meme. Seems very reminisce of people in ages gone by talking about what was the point for any advances from trains to telegram to the internet. The answer for what to use it for is to make things trust less and decentralized if you can’t see the advantage or limitless possibiliti…

HN hates Bitcoin. I have never seen such a smart group of idiots in my life.

For such a group of “hackers” they have an extreme aversion to hacking on their own alternative financial system. The ethos of the community has been co-opted by conformism.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#93

Post by seibelj »

dudus wrote: post #14
thebean11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferring money across borders, gambling, buying drugs are the main three that come to mind. edit: missed financial speculation

I was going to say drugs, ransom, money laundering and other illegal activities are the main use cases for crypto

They also all happened before crypto. But no one spoke about the evils of fiat currency then.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#94

Post by DennisP »

tromp wrote: post #84
DennisP wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their latency is high but they are massively parallel. There's no practical limit on global throughput. To get low latency on dollars/gold you have to go with centralized digital representations, but Bitcoin has to do the same to get more than 7 tx/sec. I might still be a fan if that were the only option, but with other blockchains eliminating this restriction I have a hard time seeing the long-term value proposition…

Others don't so much eliminate this restriction as they shift the problem to creating so much transaction history that it becomes impractical to run a node that fully verifies said history. In other words, they're significantly less decentralized.

That could be a serious issue if you're just relying on your nodes having beefy hardware.

It's a lesser issue if you can support a large number validating nodes using cheap hardware, they are frequently and randomly assigned to verify different portions of the history, and they always act as secure light clients of the other portions.

In fact, it might even compare favorably to the handful of major mining operations that mostly run Bitcoin, on expensive ASICs.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#95

Post by disown »

formalsystem wrote: post #24

It's important to remember that the main thing Bitcoin needs to maintain is it's monetary policy and you can find it at any time right here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/validatio... Anyone can query at any time the total amount of Bitcoin that have been issued without relying on anyone. After downloading the Bitcoin client just run gettxoutsetinfo You can try to guess how many dollars have been…

> I never understood how "But Can I buy Starbucks with Bitcoin" became a meme

That's disingenuous. It became a "meme" because for many years, bitcoin evangelists touted bitcoin as a currency replacement. You can buy pizza with bitcoins! Remember? It has and still is being sold as a virtual currency - after all you can't have cryptocurrency without currency.

> I don't expect to be able to buy Starbucks with Apple stock.

But you can actually buy goods with bitcoins...

You fall into the same trap as all evangelists, self-contradiction. I like bitcoins, I like cryptocurrencies, think the future is bright for blockchain tech. I just don't like bullshit.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#97

Post by hn3333 »

formalsystem wrote: post #24

It's important to remember that the main thing Bitcoin needs to maintain is it's monetary policy and you can find it at any time right here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/validatio... Anyone can query at any time the total amount of Bitcoin that have been issued without relying on anyone. After downloading the Bitcoin client just run gettxoutsetinfo You can try to guess how many dollars have been…

Let's be realistic. The application for bitcoins is buying drugs in the darknet, extortion and money laundering. Not more, not less.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#98

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

I believe BitCoin is one of the very few successful crypto protocols that, instead of being developed in the open, pretty much came out fully formed. In addition, it was developed first as a Windows program. This makes the conspiracy part of me, suspect that BitCoin may in fact have been developed by the NSA to enable moving black ops money around more easily. It was released to the public so there would be enough background noise that these transactions would not stand out.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#99

Post by dane-pgp »

tromp wrote: post #84
DennisP wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their latency is high but they are massively parallel. There's no practical limit on global throughput. To get low latency on dollars/gold you have to go with centralized digital representations, but Bitcoin has to do the same to get more than 7 tx/sec. I might still be a fan if that were the only option, but with other blockchains eliminating this restriction I have a hard time seeing the long-term value proposition…

Others don't so much eliminate this restriction as they shift the problem to creating so much transaction history that it becomes impractical to run a node that fully verifies said history. In other words, they're significantly less decentralized.

Out of interest, what would you say is a reasonable minimum amount of disk space for a user to have to devote to their bitcoin node, such that the number of nodes does not cause significant extra centralisation (over and above the centralisation of mining pools and development teams)?

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#100

Post by dnautics »

AstralStorm wrote: post #68
Geee wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly why Bitcoin is interesting. It is currently being accepted as having it's own value, just like gold. It's an experiment that seems to be working. Cash or collectibles don't have the same monetary properties as bitcoin or gold. Most importantly, they can be created from thin air.

Bitcoin does not have value of its own. What can you do with a Bitcoin as printed code or eWallet without functioning Bitcoin economy? It is fiat tied to used value not means to gain value. On the other hand, you can manufacture useful things from metals, including precious metals. Heck, even old school non-precious metal coins have some of that value.

that's not why gold is valuable, historically. Historically gold is valuable because it's rivalrous, fungible, and most importantly, easily verifiable.

You can assess approximate purity of the metal with very low-level technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(assaying_tool)). Transactions thus have a lowered barrier of trust. Before gold and money, you could only transact in debt to labor (see debt: 5000 years) or socialized obligations, and to be sure the person would conduct that labor, you had to trust them, or trust society to honor the obligation.

More interestingly in particular, once gold came into being, two people could reliable transact over a very long social distances, (without necessarily knowing each other's reputation). You just had to trust an intermediary party to transport the gold. Nonetheless, that opened markets up considerably.

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