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BTC Endgame

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Re: BTC Endgame

#151

Post by hanniabu »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
AffableSpatula wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. If you don't need proof of work to secure a blockchain, then why is the free market of Bitcoin consensus continuing to expend huge amounts of capital to stick with it as its sybil resistance mechanism? If it wasn't considered a value destroying move, the transition away from PoW would've happened already no?

It has, in new cryptocurrencies. Virtually all cryptocurrencies launched since 2017 are proof-of-stake: Cardano, EOS, Stellar, Polkadot, Tezos, TRON. Ethereum is in the process of a very expensive and painful transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The reason you haven't seen this in the global cryptocurrency industry is because of network effects and adoption curves. Most programmers would probably agree th…

> and along with it your advantage over [PoS chains]

You're assuming that PoW is better than PoS.

Re: BTC Endgame

#152

Post by 3np »

generalizations wrote: post #51
pvarangot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. When you say "China" do you mean like an actor that can make coordinated decisions? Or just a geographic region? I'm asking out of curiosity because yeah there's a lot of miners in China across many geographic regions but I never saw any evidence that they even talking to each other, even le…

I'd make a wild guess that when parent is talking about 'control', they mean that if a miner is located within China, the Chinese government has the ability to put a gun to that miners head and tell them what to do.

"The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away".

Neither mining pools (who practically have the actual power over transaction inclusion an ordering) nor the miners are cooperating. I'm also certain the CCP wouldn't be practically able to locate and control all of them that easily.

Re: BTC Endgame

#153

Post by wruza »

fanciestManimal wrote: post #61
WJW wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered about that and perhaps someone here can explain. After bitcoin reaches its "full" volume, mining rewards will go away and the only way miner income can stay the same is if transaction fees rise to match. Since the competition of miners basically converges to "block reward is equal to electricity cost equivalent", this would mean transaction costs increase to an insanely huge amount. Not paying the l…

It's an unsolved problem, and all solutions would require a majority of the mining pool to get on board. You could periodically increase the block size, splitting the transaction fee among more transactions. Although larger blocks make it more difficult to produce hashes, so more power would be consumed, thus increasing the transaction fees further. You could change the block reward such that there's a larger block r…

periodically increase the block size, splitting the transaction fee among more transactions. Although larger blocks make it more difficult to produce hashes

Couldn’t they simply lower the baseline difficulty along with a block size?

Edit: and wouldn’t difficulty drop automatically in this case?

Re: BTC Endgame

#154

Post by renewiltord »

inopinatus wrote: post #144
nyolfen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if 51% of hash power were located in the US, the statement would have been about the US. it is not something special about china that makes this the case, only the fact that it is a sovereign state with the means and will to control activity in its territory, just like every other functioning state. one could also make the case that china might be more likely to intervene in such a way in the economic affairs of its…

No, China is not a person with a single will. The assumption/assertion that the mining equipment may as well all be sitting under MSS guard in Beijing is horsecrap.

It does have a person that can enforce his single will pretty well, though.

In any case, you can follow it like this:

* Nations desire to control strategic resources

* Bitcoin is one such strategic resource

* To control Bitcoin, you need more than 50% of the network

* China has 65% of the network

* China can control Bitcoin

Re: BTC Endgame

#155

Post by mshumi »

BTC fork using Algorand consensus. Same bitcoin, same LEDGER, but the consensus technology is vastly superior. Why willfully ignore 10 years of advances in cryptography and distributed computing.

Re: BTC Endgame

#156

Post by Laforet »

StavrosK wrote: post #149
gruez wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So PoS is vaporware because it hasn't solved a problem where the miners can act against their economic best interests and mine a fork? Not exactly. The point of "nothing as stake" attack is that you can pull off the attack while having... "nothing a stake".

Except the trust of the currency itself, as if you're attacking a currency you have a lot of stake in, you reduce the value of your stake because you attacked it.

I'm pretty sure short selling crypto is still a thing. Loss of stake is jut another cost of business.

Re: BTC Endgame

#157

Post by wmf »

jpsalm wrote: post #29
AffableSpatula wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, author here - I think you're absolutely right that there is a risk that demand for blockspace doens't generate sufficient block reward to provide useful security guarantees. If that is the case, it could cause the price of BTC to fall which could create a negative feedback loop. This would, at best, create an end of the 21m cap and at worst trigger a collapse of the game entirely.

Yea that's what I don't understand either. Is the plan to secure a fully-mined chain just rampant value-inflation in a way that is completely detached from supply and demand? Today my 1e-1000 bitcoin is worth 10 carrots, tomorrow it is worth 20 everything else held equal? How does that even work in practice? Alternatively you need transactions to pay entirely for the security of the chain. This doesn't seem feasible…

The "official" plan is for low-value transactions to happen on the Lightning Network and high-value (e.g. >$1M) transactions paying high fees to happen on-chain.

Re: BTC Endgame

#158

Post by moralsupply »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could.

That's not correct. Most pools are in China, but the majority of the hash rate is generated in the USA.

Re: BTC Endgame

#159

Post by CMCDragonkai »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

You vastly overestimate the command and control capability of China. China and Chinese people are not a Borg.

Re: BTC Endgame

#160

Post by dang »

gge wrote: post #44
nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> Stellar kek

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We ban that sort of account.
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