211–220 of 224 posts
One thing he got wrong is that computer power and network speed will scale exponentially to accomodate infinitely large blockchain size. Intel's Q6600 of 2007 is still not too much slower than today's processors.
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It's not tax evasion if the hops are non taxable events, and the privacy of wallets enable anyone to deny it. This is why Bitcoin is an existential threat to government power. I personally think it's empowering and great for the individual, however if you tend towards more statist views then this would seem like anarchy.
Many of our governments are liberal democracies. It sounds less positive when you rephrase it like that; ie: "Bitcoin is a threat to liberal democracy" I don't want some drug lord to pump/dump/coerce/tax-evade their way into being the richest person on my continent, and then hire an army to take my nation over. That is easier with crypto currency than it is with fiat. The tech community dropped the ball in the '90s b…
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Who the hell moves black ops money in open public ledger like bitcoin's blockchain is. It is easier to launder money though banks than bitcoin because bank transactions are not public and hence under less scrutiny. Bitcoin was made by still unknown C++ programmer and computer science enthusiast.
1) The US owns the SWIFT network and monitors transactions globally. 2) During the Falklands War, Argentina was prevented from buying munitions since South American banks were monitored for transactions with Europe. Like any bureaucracy, once they used a bank, they never moved to a new one after a transaction.
For example US was deep into banking system of Middle East countries[1] because they couldn't get all SWIFT transactions they wanted.
If you are to blame SWIFT blame Belgium first because they essentially decide what happens with SWIFT at the first place. After 2001 world is not the same, anti-terrorist and anti-laundering laws are pervasive but I suppose for greater good.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/us/shadow-brokers-nsa-hac...
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> A pruned state can be downloaded with no more trust assumptions than that required to trust the software distribution channel where you download the Bitcoin software from to actually serve Bitcoin. Nonsense. Bitcoin software releases come with widely publicized checksums and signatures from reputable sources.
Couldn't those reputable sources also provide widely publicized checksums and signatures for a pruned blockchain state?
More importantly, Bitcoin is ideologically opposed to the idea of checkpoints, as they run counter to the Longest Chain Rule that says the true state is whatever valid chain has the most cumulative work. Even if that chain is the result of a very deep reorg that invalidates the last checkpoint.
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These days there's the Lightning Network - an off-chain "layer" that enables both fast and small, cheap transactions - perfect for "mundane payments" - and even micro-payments with Bitcoin. It's already usable and still improving. Adoption will grow as the infrastructure continues to be built out. It's still early days for Bitcoin - no one sends AT commands to their modem to get online any more.
Eh, the Lightning Network has been a thing long enough that the appropriate question is no longer "when will it be ready?" but "how much is it being used and for what?" and if the answer is "not much for anything", "why?".
The same could be said for bitcoin. The reality is bitcoin still suffers from a scaling flaw, one that appears to be unfixable. The workaround is to layer any entirely new protocol on Bitcoin, Lightning. It has been 4 years in deployment. It is couldn't be said to be successfully deployed as Lightning's creators have noticed bugs that make it unsuitable for prime time. https://medium.com/@antoine.riard/why-we-may-fail-lightning-...
I'm no expert, but they don't appear to be bugs that run as deep as bitcoin's scaling flaw, however they do require changed to both bitcoin and Lightning to fix. And implementing the fix is bogged down by the need to keep the patient alive and functional during the operation. The serious mistakes created by a "moving fast and break things" doesn't work for this style of project.
And for "why" bitcoin / Lightning isn't working splendidly after all this time, I think it's fair to say creating a functional digital currency that is secure and scales infinitely turned out to be far harder than anybody imagined, and I'd say far harder than anybody could have possibly predicted.
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…
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The idea of bitcoin as a store of value and not a currency is a revisionist interpretation that became popular with the blockstream devs around 2017-18 when it became apparent that the bitcoin network was unsuitable for handling payments at scale and had fees too high to be useful for mundane payments.
Exactly! The first sentence from the original white paper is literally: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Bitcoin was intended to be MONEY, instead it's pretty fucking useless for anything other than hoarding. I think it will remain an asset class, but history will not be kind to i…
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Exactly! The first sentence from the original white paper is literally: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Bitcoin was intended to be MONEY, instead it's pretty fucking useless for anything other than hoarding. I think it will remain an asset class, but history will not be kind to i…
Bitcoin is the first successful project which achieved digital scarcity. Scarcity is one of the most important features in assigning value to a particular object. Bitcoin's scarcity is not only proven, but also completely transparent and trackable. Its scarcity does not rely on any centralized organization, it is completely based on mathematics and cryptography. It may not have been apparent how ground-breaking or im…
But uncertainty has many types. The other digital currency tried to handle eg contract uncertainty. Bitcoin tried to solve the general one and hence it is used as an anchor. The original article pointed that out.
The gold is another possible Gov independent solution. Problem is it is too good in that. Save digging more gold or nuclear transmutation (per Newton effort?) is feasible using say solar, real scarcity is achieved. But it was opted out as it is not human manageable. Instead we have weapon based forced option of US dollars. Japan, euro now Rmb ... we are in a different regime for a reason.
The scarcity cannot be enforced like US dollars and is more like gold. Hence it is not weapon backed and it is not flexible scarcity. It might not be useful in our current environment.
You may think that is the whole point of asset not centrally controlled. But then we back to uncertainty over time which we as a human group cannot manage. How to control which to opt for a as Bitcoin is just a commodity subject to demand even if it is supply constrained.
Whilst so far another clone is not successful still it could be. If it threaten certain government it can block the cash chain. Who guarantee that.
Also, there is no issue within that is breakable by say quantum computing like cloning the whole tree say ...
The time dimension always meant there could not be one money or asset as it has to be tailored to individual human and human group.
Money is a contract with the future to handle uncertainty. Supply constrain is only one of the feature of Bitcoin. It may not be sufficient to be a good money supply. We will see or wait to the stage when mining is only for transaction and supply and demand react.
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Exactly! The first sentence from the original white paper is literally: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." Bitcoin was intended to be MONEY, instead it's pretty fucking useless for anything other than hoarding. I think it will remain an asset class, but history will not be kind to i…
> Exactly! The first sentence from the original white paper is literally: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution." It's not mutually exclusive. It can be a store of value while still meeting these goals.