151–160 of 232 posts
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Wrong; there is a large backlog of transactions paying over 50 sat per byte [1], which is over $10 in fees for most transactions. [1] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h
Why is it $10? According to https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/fee-calculator/ Fee rate: 51 satoshis/vbyte SegWit transaction with 1 input, 2 outputs: ~172 vbytes In total: ~8772 satoshis == ~4.48 USD
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> and I think it's probably racist I know that you think you're being performatively stupid, but in a system where the benefits are captured almost entirely by a few techbros, and the pollution from the coal power plants powering it is felt mostly by ethnic minority rural poor (1) ... yes? I suggest that the burden of poof is on the other side: attempt to make a coherent case why this technology is somehow egalitaria…
This is a smug take. Who do you think gets the benefit of the freshly printed fiat? In the central bank cantiollionaire system, there are three classes of citizens: 1) jamie dimons, warren buffets and the like who get access to practically 0 cost lending rates 2) the ~60% of citizens with assets (e.g. stonks, real estate) that get pumped along with the money printer 3) everyone else What do you think happens to "thir…
No, This is a very smug take from the "must be good because I got mine" BTC crowd. "Smug" practically defines them.
Anyway congrats on some smug "whatabout fiat"
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It's difficult for the Bitcoin community to find consensus on changes to the consensus rules. We couldn't change a constant from 1MB to 2MB. I think changing PoW entirely is extremely unlikely to happen. It's much easier for the people who believe in PoS to sell their Bitcoin and buy Ethereum instead.
Or any of the other PoS coins. If you want to invest (which is a word I hesitate to use in the context of any cryptocurrency) in a PoS coin there are more mature ones. It would be interesting if someone would research why this hasn't already happened? It's not like that alternative hasn't been available for a long time now.
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I read this comment with interest, thanks for sharing. Makes good sense to me. If I may ask, do you think the distribution of bitcoin will be somewhat equitable as we approach 2140? And do you you think it will actually become a medium of exchange as originally hoped? Or will it remain a store of wealth only (as things currently seem to indicate)? And if it indeed remains only a store of wealth, will said wealth be d…
The wealth distribution of bitcoin is even worse than the wealth distribution of society as a whole. Further, I suspect that this would be the typical state for any finite/limited asset. IMO, things like bitcoin (and gold) as a primary wealth store are how you create stratified societies with entrenched elites and banking orgs with more money/power than nation states. Not that bitcoin could ever happen dominate, but…
I can see using Bitcoin as a primary wealth store, similar to gold. I agree, it would have most the same social features, which seems problematic since none of that is really in line with Bitcoin's original political vision, but I'm not sure Bitcoin's original political vision is anything more than a piece of nostalgia cherished by people sitting on the periphery of the contemporary Bitcoin economy, anyway, so maybe that's no big deal.
The bigger problem I see with Bitcoin relative to something like gold is that it has some troubling practicalities. It's theoretically much easier to steal vast sums of Bitcoin in one go (because 1,000,000 BTC wouldn't be quite as subject to conservation of momentum as a tonne of gold bars would be), and it's definitely much easier for vast sums of Bitcoin to accidentally poof off into a crypotgraphic pocket universe where nobody can reach it anymore.
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The wealth distribution of bitcoin is even worse than the wealth distribution of society as a whole. Further, I suspect that this would be the typical state for any finite/limited asset. IMO, things like bitcoin (and gold) as a primary wealth store are how you create stratified societies with entrenched elites and banking orgs with more money/power than nation states. Not that bitcoin could ever happen dominate, but…
Can you give an example of an egalitarian currency or store of value?
Rather than having 50% distributed in just the first 4 years, and only crumbs in later decades.
Gold is much more like the former.
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I don’t think individual transactions are meaningfully tied to an energy cost.
Why can’t you estimate the power consumption of the whole network and divide it by the number of transactions per second?
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It's impossible to predict the future. If everyone holds bitcoin as a store of value then the value should drop as it's not being used for anything one would think. I believe the best outcome is that people start using bitcoin for every day purchases and the hope is that by 2140 the price is relatively stable. Most likely there will be many large holders as there are with real money. However, someone could maybe do a…
Or maybe there's a foreseen flaw in bitcoin. It's based on public-key cryptography which can be broken by quantum computers. Those don't exist yet (at least not in any form relevant to cryptography in practise), but I think they will by 2140.
But I think there's a non-negligible chance that the theory of quantum mechanics will break down as we move to superpositions of 2^1024 classical states that must be faithfully represented with physical elements.
Why can't Bitcoin simply transition to proof of stake after mining dries up? Once there are few or no bitcoins left to mine then PoW is a lot of ceremony for very little security gain at that point (and perhaps opens up risks that this paper points out).
There is no such thing as “Proof of stake” to replace proof of work. Proof if work is a solution where you do not have to trust anyone, as the block is won by the person who finds the right math result, essentially a lottery. Proof if stake is either really proof of work that is less secure and obscured, or more often dimply giving the creators of the coin the power and your trust.... which reverses the entire point…
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Very unlikely it will be turned off, the miners could still keep mining other coins while mining bitcoin blocks even if there is no BTC reward. See "merged mining" https://blog.bitmex.com/the-growth-of-bitcoin-merge-mining/ .
This is a good point that the authors don't touch on. There are many coins secured by sha256 and I'm sure many more will come along before BTC finishes it's release schedule. Switching to any one of them is likely to provide more revenue than just attacking the network for a little extra transaction fee money. This is one of those times it's really useful to make a distinction between bitcoin the currency and bitcoin…