"And all of the transaction were free", Wait? Since when are transactions free and instant? Is that part of this upgrade? The only costs are with the "bank transaction"?
Parent talks about the „Lightning Network“ — a Layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin. Beware: I am still a crypto noob but I am still going to try to explain how I understood the system so far. Edited: Minor terminology and typos. Roughly speaking the Lightning Network works similar to a „current account“ that businesses have between each other but does not require the actors to trust each other. The parties initiate…
Perhaps a simplification to this would be a poker night, where at the beginning of the evening everyone puts in some real money and in return get poker chips. At the end of the night people can exchange whatever chips they have left for real money.
We don't consider dollars less valuable if they're paid via American Express, even though it's less accepted than Visa. As long as there's a critical mass of users somewhere, the "who accepts what" problem reduces to a software problem that most people will ignore.
As long as there's a critical mass of users somewhere All that mass lives in EU, US and China, and nowhere else, that’s where the argument breaks down. You can buy a nice rc toy with bitcoin, but some day you may need a place to live in and they will ask you where you got the money from. And you’ll say, ah, that’s from that illegal btc exchange.
Do you think that there will be some kind of fiscal big bang in the future where all legitimate money stops being fungible? A point after which holding a dollar means holding something that can be traced back to that moment and shown to be held by one of the good guys? Because that's what it would take, and I just don't think the governments can pull it off. To say that one group of people's money/saleable property matters and the other group's doesn't--it smells too much like the creation of an aristocracy to get the masses to put up with it.
As long as you're willing to pay taxes on it as income when you bring it back into whatever system banned it, or whatever system replaced that one, you're going to be able to do it.
I don't think the energy criticisms are that warranted. In my mind, it speaks more to a criticism of how poor our current energy infrastructure is. I don't think for example in 30 years it'll be a big problem when energy becomes more abundant and building nuclear reactors are easier. And this is coming from someone who believes Bitcoin is little more than a Ponzi scheme and most of the innovation in fintech is happen…
It does seem strange, because while I'm not too familiar with the PoW pro/cons arguments (I heard PoW was more secure than any other method, for now, but haven't verified that independently), it rubs me the wrong way to classify certain uses of electricity as "illegitimate". Some people prefer taking the plane over the train, should they be vilified? Some people like "driving around" to chill, not because they have a true transportation need. The offices near me are all lit up throughout the night. I wouldn't be surprised if when aggregated on a world level, there was a relatively significant percentage of energy just plain wasted. When AR/VR come out, hoping to replace zero-carbon-emitting IRL social interactions with heavy GPU/server-using gadgets, will people condemn that? I don't like the idea of piecemeal "bean counter" approach to new technology that happens to use energy; if there's zero point to PoW, they have a point, but if there are any security or decentralization benefits at all, it just seems like a non-problem. Treat it as a systemic problem, transition energy-use objects to electricity-use objects (like EVs), build more nuclear reactors, generate more clean-electricity, and have it not be an issue.
The problem is that you never know if you’re on a fork, or if there’s going to be a reorg.
So you then follow that chain and try transact on it. If your counterparty is satisfied then cool, carry on separately in your own bubble. As you continue to transact with the rest of the world you'll realize you were both on a fork as you eventually encounter a chain with a much greater block height and you figure out that's where the current consensus lies. You will still have your your UTXOs on the main chain sinc…
It seems like you don’t know about double spending attacks and how many times 51% attacks actually happened.
Does Taproot do anything to reduce the absurd power consumption? If not then it just feels as useful as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic to me.
Bitcoin's power consumption is not absurd -- proof of work is a method of converting power to security. It uses far less energy than the legacy banking system, which is enforced by trillions of dollars of military expenditures and banking employees burning fossil fuels instead of a comparatively tiny amount of electricity. When we finally phase out the legacy banking system completely for cryptocurrency, it will repr…
> It uses far less energy than the legacy banking system
False equivalence. It supports several orders of magnitude fewer transactions and throughput.
>When we finally phase out the legacy banking system completely for cryptocurrency
This will never happen.
>it will represent a drastic reduction in finance-related energy consumption worldwide
Assuming this hypothetical, prove it. Explain mathematically how proof of work supporting global finance levels of transactions would result in a net reduction in energy consumption.
There are a multitude of other crypto coins, that have been around for a long while, that similarly provide lots of privacy, and yet they aren't illegal. People have been yelling about this all being made illegal for literally a decade, and it hasn't happened yet.
Why would any of this be made illegal? It's a jurisdictional enforcement issue, that isn't targeted at the asset - it's targeted at the individual who thinks they're going to make large financial transactions and not meet the KYC requirements - which will come up when you have to declare how you attained a whole lot of assets or cash to the IRS. Of course, you could not do all those things...but it would be just as i…
> Why would any of this be made illegal?
Of course crypto privacy features are not going to be made illegal. That was my entire argument. Crypto has been around for a decade, and lots of privacy coins exist, and are not illegal.
Therefore, other crypto features that make KYC more difficult are also not going to be made illegal.
I don't think the energy criticisms are that warranted. In my mind, it speaks more to a criticism of how poor our current energy infrastructure is. I don't think for example in 30 years it'll be a big problem when energy becomes more abundant and building nuclear reactors are easier. And this is coming from someone who believes Bitcoin is little more than a Ponzi scheme and most of the innovation in fintech is happen…
It does seem strange, because while I'm not too familiar with the PoW pro/cons arguments (I heard PoW was more secure than any other method, for now, but haven't verified that independently), it rubs me the wrong way to classify certain uses of electricity as "illegitimate". Some people prefer taking the plane over the train, should they be vilified? Some people like "driving around" to chill, not because they have a…
The "Bitcoin is destroying the world ecosystem and is awful" crowd is way too hysterical for me to take them seriously. They write about Bitcoin like it is a serious evil and injustice in the world. It honestly feels like they're just folks who regret not investing in Bitcoin.
I don't think the energy criticisms are that warranted. In my mind, it speaks more to a criticism of how poor our current energy infrastructure is. I don't think for example in 30 years it'll be a big problem when energy becomes more abundant and building nuclear reactors are easier. And this is coming from someone who believes Bitcoin is little more than a Ponzi scheme and most of the innovation in fintech is happen…
Your comment doesn't really explain why the criticism isn't warranted. What does this have to do with how poor the current energy infrastructure is?
I think they're warranted. I don't believe they're that warranted because I believe energy abundance will become more efficient over time. I don't believe it's a permanent problem, although obviously if the Bitcoin people can figure out a way to make it less power-hungry while still being secure, that's a win for everybody.
So just to be clear. It's a criticism that I agree with, but I don't think it's as debilitating as a problem as most people believe.
Then it's going to be weaponized to launder money and be made illegal eventually.
>and be made illegal eventually Allocation of resources to try and ban cryptocurrency (or encryption in general) is probably one of the dumbest things ever conceived, probably even more so than the drug war.
It's entirely easy to make crypto legally useless for legal transactions. The fellow making you coffee won't take crypto if he can only use it to buy drugs. This doesn't mean it will happen but conflating encryption and crypto is poorly considered because we have a long history of regulating commerce.