Why must these Bitcoin alternatives be so hard to install? Why do I have to manually generate my own Genesis Block? Even for testing.
Final Steps
71–80 of 104 posts
Re: Final Steps
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Ethereum (or something like it) will have a greater effect on many more lives than the Apollo missions did. If successful, it will reshape society by giving every individual reduced economic transaction costs that once required the economies of scale of a megacorporation to achieve. Take the humble grocery store. The grocery store is a byproduct of economies of scale. Producers sell to grocery stores because…
Anyone can order stuff from Amazon or Alibaba or wherever and have it delivered, and build reputation, and so on - how does Ethereum improve on that?
Well, the difference is that currently you can only build reputation IN AMAZON or IN ALIBABA, we have no reliable way to objectively generate reputation in the same decentralized way that you might, for instance, have a reputation in your home town... ethereum changes that.
You could say "It doesn't matter if my reputation is dependent on Amazon's database, it still works!" and you'd have a point. This is in fact the big challenge for ethereum (and technologies like it) in that they allow small improvements in many use cases, but there's no obvious singular "deal changer", and admittedly there may never be.
Re: Final Steps
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can't have an explosive impact, because it has none of the drama of three guys strapping their nuts to a massive rocket, hurtling themselves into space, and becoming the very first to walk on the big white ball in the sky—where said ball has captured the imagination of every human that has ever lived, ever. You're not going to have every TV set in the whole world tuned into the launch day for a blockchain. If this…
If it delivers on the technology, Ethereum will eventually enable the elimination of everything in the world governed by legal and monetary contracts. That's a big IF, but if that IF is real, you are going to be dead wrong in your assertion of 'perspective'.
I never doubted the potential, as I said. I only doubted the possibility that this will have an immediate (read: "explosive") impact on par with the Apollo landings. Re-read my comment, and attempt reading comprehension this time.
Re: Final Steps
#74Why must these Bitcoin alternatives be so hard to install? Why do I have to manually generate my own Genesis Block? Even for testing.
The whole point of ethereum is to keep trust in a third party to an absolute minimum. Wait a month or two and much easier options will appear (created by startups happy to act as the trusted third party)
Re: Final Steps
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I meant that bitcoin didn't, and probably won't, for reasons attributable to the limitations of the implementation, supplant fiat currency and become a basis for deprecating the federal reserve, which I agree is a laudable goal. That expectation is not described anywhere in the system's proposal[0]. I'm not sure that was ever a real expectation except among the biggest believers. [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
The very first words of the introduction: > Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. The bitcoin whitepaper unambiguously describes a system for deprecating "financial institution…
It doesn't call for or notify of deprecation. It acknowledges that "the system works well enough for most transactions".
Bitcoin is an attempt to replicate a similar system of "cash" in a completely decentralized (in that, anyone* can participate) manner.
*With sufficient knowledge and technical resources.
Re: Final Steps
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this recurrent point: computer power is "wasted" almost everywhere. At least Bitcoin use this power to build a decentralized currency.
> computer power is "wasted" almost everywhere. At least Bitcoin use this power to build a decentralized currency. Pinning a GPU or ASIC at 100% undeniably draws more power than an everyday user idling around Facebook on their Macbook Air (~21W MAXED, so likely 7W) Whether it's worth it is the question. A back-of-the-envelope calculation gives me $12Mn USD per day as the approximate global cost of electricity given t…
> A back-of-the-envelope calculation gives me $12Mn USD per day
3600.00 BTC or $1m is paid as subsidy per day.
Are you saying that people are spending 12x that on power?
I dont think so.
Re: Final Steps
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
>$12Mn USD per what? This number is pretty meaningless without knowing what timeframe that amount of costs are incurred.
Oops, good save. Thanks! It's per day. (I think. :P) Today's average hashrate is ~397Mn GH/s, and I used 375 instead, to be conservative/fair. https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate
The spot price of BTC has been steadily rising. Someone must be getting more than $12,000,000 USD / day in value out of it.
Re: Final Steps
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The very first words of the introduction: > Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. The bitcoin whitepaper unambiguously describes a system for deprecating "financial institution…
It doesn't call for or notify of deprecation. It acknowledges that "the system works well enough for most transactions". Bitcoin is an attempt to replicate a similar system of "cash" in a completely decentralized (in that, anyone* can participate) manner. *With sufficient knowledge and technical resources.
Agree in full. Perhaps "deprecating the federal reserve" was language too strong to describe the explicit goals of the bitcoin whitepaper.
I do still assert that an organism which succeeds in a mission to 'replicate a similar system of "cash" in a completely decentralized (in that, anyone* can participate) manner' will achieve the same. And that, for reasons directly attributable to the specific implementation, bitcoin does not achieve this.
Re: Final Steps
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> How's that? Clearer? Not at all. We have been storing programs, building games etc for some 40 or 50 or 70 years now, without Ethereum. So, how does Ethereum does it better/cheaper than the existing solutions, is what people above are asking.
Right, the problem with Vinay's explanation is that it requires people to have deep understanding of blockchains already. I'd recommend to anyone who wants to understand ethereum to first perform some Bitcoin transactions, to get an intuitive feel for the appeal of blockchains. But the big difference is that programs in ethereum run on the "protocol level" not the hardware level. This means that correct execution of…
There's not really that much to understand about block chains...
It's a globally shared immutable linked list...
Umm... I'm pretty sure programs still execute on hardware...
Re: Final Steps
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi. I'm Vinay Gupta, the release coordinator for Ethereum. I'll tell you exactly what Ethereum is: a blockchain for storing code. Bitcoin stores transactions, Ethereum stores programs. Those programs have persistent state on the blockchain and are capable of moving value around the system, hence you can build games, financial instruments and so on. These things are called "smart contracts" for historical reasons - no…
>> How's that? Clearer? Not at all. We have been storing programs, building games etc for some 40 or 50 or 70 years now, without Ethereum. So, how does Ethereum does it better/cheaper than the existing solutions, is what people above are asking.
Here's what you need to know about ethereum, take any presentation from a few years ago that uses the word 'webscale' now take that presentation and replace 'webscale' with blockchain. Now you understand both how ethereum works, and why it's so awesome and will revolutionize computing.