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Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

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Re: Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

#231
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being you don’t need to ask existing Bitcoin miners for permission to begin mining Bitcoin yourself. Conversely, staking is inherently impossible without first obtaining “stake” — and how can you obtain stake without the approval of existing stakers?

You don't need permission, but you do need money to buy mining hardware. Might as well buy a stake for that money instead. Same thing, isn't it?

> Same thing, isn't it?

US dollar payments aren’t subject to the approval of stakers, and existing PoW miners have no on-chain mechanism to prevent new market entrants from competing against them for hashrate.

So, “no”.

To begin staking, you first need stake. But merely transfering a PoS coin from an exchange to your own wallet for subsequent staking is inherently impossible without the approval of existing stakers. Even this isn’t enough: existing stakers must also approve of your initial staking transactions.

Which is not how PoW mining works.

Re: Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 debilitatin…

Proof of work is inherently going to trend towards more power use. I’m not sure why you don’t think it’s as “debilitating as a problem as most people believe.”

Re: Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance. I don't think KYC/AML are a force for good. Its just more box ticking laws that serve to give a false sense of security while poor people are being excluded from the banking system and normal people have their all their data stolen from centralized databases. Real dangerous criminals don't give a damn about KYC/AML laws and operate freely within the banking framework. The European Central Bank chairwom…

> The European Central Bank chairwoman is a felon convicted for massive government payouts. Why do people feel the need to deliberately mislead by leaving out all the important details? I had no idea what you were talking about, so I looked it up, it's the second item under https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Lagarde#Controvers... . Regardless of your opinions on that particular court case, or the fact that the…

You should look up the past of the germanys next chancellor

Re: Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the right way to look at it though. Bitcoin is not an alternative payment system. People keep getting confused on this point, partly because of how bitcoin was marketed in the early days (there obviously is no marketing team, just passionate people telling their stories about what they thought it was). Bitcoin is the bedrock of an alternative monetary system. Visas and AmExes will be built on top of it, j…

If only it were in fact an alternative. If only you could look at a BTC-rich person and conclude from their wallet balance that they've made meaningful contributions to society and are therefore deserving of whatever they're trying to pay you for in BTC. That would be cool. But that's no more likely to be true than for a USD-rich person. Whatever ill-gotten USD gains have occurred in the past are easily transferrable…

That’s entirely too pessimistic to assume most rich people gained their riches through ill-gotten means.

Re: Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

#236
post #219
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even more forget why we put those systems into place to begin with. Just because the response is a bad one doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist. FWIW, even if TSA is bad at stopping terrorists, I AM glad that all of these people punching flight attendants are, with certainty c. 1, not packing heat.

> FWIW, even if TSA is bad at stopping terrorists, I AM glad that all of these people punching flight attendants are Seriously, how often does this happen? I've flown a fair amount in my life (in Europe though) and I've never seen any commotion on a plane. I've read about some incidents, but I've read about a lot of fucked up stuff that I'm not concerned about in my life. It's along the lines with everything these da…

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/unruly-passengers-faa/ind...

If only 1% of those people were armed, that would still be very very scary!

Re: Taproot, Bitcoin’s long-anticipated upgrade, has activated

#237
post #166
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one of Ethereum's lead researchers talking about the attacks in that paper. The fixes are simple and not expected to delay the merge. https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/11/02/finalized-no-31/

Written for public consumption that post conveys a great deal of certainty while eliding over doubts: "Change fork choice rule to mitigate balancing and reorging attacks" https://ethresear.ch/t/change-fork-choice-rule-to-mitigate-b... And more fundamentally at the heart of the matter https://ethresear.ch/t/comment-on-three-attacks-on-proof-of-... > Moreover, there is a general argument that the attacker will always b…

On the "fundamental" link, see this reply that appeared after you commented:

"The reason that Ethereum’s consensus can run in n time rather than n^2 is BLS signature aggregation. The attacks in the paper however aren’t attacks on signature aggregation. So I don’t think your argument is valid."

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