Can you give me an example of a successful widescale fully decentralized software project?
* Web browsers that all use a standardized name resolution and data transfer protocol to transmit hyperlinked documents* Email
Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
61–70 of 229 posts
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read Debt by Graeber so you can stop believing in the myth of barter. Then think again.
i don,t think it is a myth, i do it all the time, living almost entirely without currency. digital technology only makes barter more easy and accessible. converting every trade into numbers and back is an outmoded method, which i think will become less used with time.
That is basically what the book is telling. You are probably not tit-for-tat bartering, but taking on debts and returning things you owe in some more vague approach. History went through multiple cycles where currency went in disuse in favor of just tracking and settling debts.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#63I cannot recommend enough for everyone who has a minimal sensibility towards the climate impact to read this thread: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350869944888664064 . Since we are inevitable heading over to a climate catastrophe it's really the time to advocate against bitcoin.
This is like crusading against people using their clothes dryer, driving when they don't absolutely need to, turning on A/C when they could just put on a sweater, not to mention all the industrial and commercial energy expenditures producing bullshit we don't need. From where you sit, look around your room and contemplate the incredible energy expended to get these items where they are.
If your concern is about avoidable energy waste, you'd need to have a bizarrely weird misunderstanding of the scales here to pick Bitcoin as your hill to die on.
It's like when people complain about how much water you waste by leaving the tap on while you brush your teeth while my dad has the water rights to waste 10,000,000L/year of creek water because he owns a single cow. People have such little understanding of the relative scale of everything, so they laser-focus on whatever inconsequential, concrete morsel that sounds good to them.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#64I don’t understand Bitcoin. If I make bread and you grow potatoes, we can barter, but it’s much easier to use some intermediary to track the value that we exchanged. The intermediary facilitates this with tokens (coins, notes, cards.) Bitcoin seems perverse. It puts all the value in the tokens themselves and at the same time I can’t even use it to buy bread or potatoes. About the only thing I hear that you can buy wi…
You can put a lot money into Van Gogh's painting, and you won't buy bread with it. Bitcoin is just easier to transfer than a painting, and you can buy a fraction of it. I don't see Bitcoin as a currency at all, but it does display certain properties of instruments to store value.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read Debt by Graeber so you can stop believing in the myth of barter. Then think again.
Thank you for the reference, and I look forward to understanding what you mean by myth . Barter is literally my life. I teach other people’s children about life and Computer Science in order to buy potatoes. The children’s parents make medicine and build houses to pay for their children’s education. Is your point that barter is about goods, whereas most people provide services (time, labour?) Or perhaps you mean that…
With barter is meant (in the context of Graeber's book) trading tit for tat, without having a currency to go between. E.g. a farmer buying a book and paying with apples.
The book says that this barter method is almost never used, and instead people tend to keep track of favors and things they owe in a more vague way. And every now and then, these debts are settled in a communal fashion. But barter is not used.
So the farmer just asks for the book and gets it. And when autumn comes, and the bookstore owner feels like having an apple, he just goes to the farmer and asks for some. But the two transactions are not really linked.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#66I don’t understand Bitcoin. If I make bread and you grow potatoes, we can barter, but it’s much easier to use some intermediary to track the value that we exchanged. The intermediary facilitates this with tokens (coins, notes, cards.) Bitcoin seems perverse. It puts all the value in the tokens themselves and at the same time I can’t even use it to buy bread or potatoes. About the only thing I hear that you can buy wi…
It sounds like the reason is that you don’t understand money, which is generally regarded as having 3 core functions. Acting as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Bitcoin does all of those things. Your issue seems to be that it’s not widely accepted enough as a medium of exchange to properly facilitate that function? The problem with that view is that it is widely accepted enough to drive some level of demand. With that demand being generated by (probably a relatively small number of) people who use it for retail payments, speculators, and black market participants.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#67I cannot recommend enough for everyone who has a minimal sensibility towards the climate impact to read this thread: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350869944888664064 . Since we are inevitable heading over to a climate catastrophe it's really the time to advocate against bitcoin.
Nevermind traditional banks with their towering office buildings full of air conditioning/appliances, employees commuting to work, remote branches, sophisticated vaults and online infrastructure.
I can never take the bitcoin climate change hysteria seriously. I wonder why the people who write these articles aren't calling out traditional banks? hmm.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#68I cannot recommend enough for everyone who has a minimal sensibility towards the climate impact to read this thread: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1350869944888664064 . Since we are inevitable heading over to a climate catastrophe it's really the time to advocate against bitcoin.
This reply to that thread addresses the better comparison of power usage I've seen (https://twitter.com/ipvkyte/status/1350922562935681024):
(in response to a single BTC transaction consuming 621 kwh)
A Tesla gets 4.1 miles per KWh. So one transaction costs 2,546 miles. Seattle to Boston is 3k miles.
Paying for a burger with bitcoin has the same environmental cost as driving that burger to you from the other coast.
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably the same way most people rationalize consuming the flesh of slaughtered animals, despite the massive negative environmental impact that has, and the better alternatives that are available.
This is a simple untruth. Vegetarianism is possible in specific ecological conditions (e.g. the Ganges Delta) and in those conditions it wins, economically, because as you note it is notionally ideal. In a non-tropic or desert environment, vegetarianism is a wasteful use of resources that typically involves transport of goods from remote locations in the service of performative consumption.
Vegetarianism outside such regions might be more wasteful, but it is still mich less wasteful and has a much smaller environmental impact than an omnivore diet
Re: Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read Debt by Graeber so you can stop believing in the myth of barter. Then think again.
Thank you for the reference, and I look forward to understanding what you mean by myth . Barter is literally my life. I teach other people’s children about life and Computer Science in order to buy potatoes. The children’s parents make medicine and build houses to pay for their children’s education. Is your point that barter is about goods, whereas most people provide services (time, labour?) Or perhaps you mean that…
I'm not sure it's relevant, although the book is fantastic.
The first few chapters show that historically money predates barter, not the other way around. And that money was born as "I owe you" notes issued by the government.
I know of only one comment [1] Graeber made about bitcoin, and it's too late to ask him now.
[1]: https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/990857460176089088