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Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

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Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#101

Post by weavejester »

gritzko wrote: post #98
weavejester wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" So, the claim of being P2P goes to the wind first " It depends on how pedantic you are about the term "P2P". I guess you could argue that any P2P network that includes supernodes is not a true P2P network, but in practise I've never heard that objection. " If the buyer claims he got it 1 month ago (and shows a proof), then the seller needs to check a month worth of transactions, just in case it was double-spent. No…

Finding out whether an address can spend a coin is just a hashtable lookup. Trying to follow your perspective. You likely assume that every node has a dossier tracking every single coin. That dossier is summarized as a hash table. Right? there is a chain of 6 blocks verifying the transaction Does it mean a transaction needs 1 hour to settle or I'm confusing something for something? (1 block is created in 10 minutes)…

"Trying to follow your perspective. You likely assume that every node has a dossier tracking every single coin. That dossier is summarized as a hash table. Right?"

Now I've had chance to think about it, it's probably a tree rather than a hash table, but the general idea is the same. There's no way you'd do a brute force O(N) search if N is very large.

"Does it mean a transaction needs 1 hour to settle or I'm confusing something for something?"

Yes, but it depends on how important the transaction is to you. If you receive the equivalent of $10, you may consider 1 confirmation enough, but if the amount was $10,000, then you'd probably want to wait for 6 confirmations just to make sure.

The Bitcoin client tends to err on the side of caution, and considers transaction unconfirmed until they have 6 confirmations.

"Well... suppose I'm an attacker who briefly mobilized some significant CPU resources (a GPU cluster, a million zombie PCs)"

You'd need a lot of resources. The Bitcoin network currently runs at 17190 Tflops, which is about equivalent to 2.5 million desktop CPUs. If bitcoin ever becomes a major currency, this value will be much higher, and out of the range of most botnets.

"I make nodes face two chains of equal length. Once new block arrives and nodes rush to the "winner" branch, I help the other branch win, so they rush back."

What would be the point in doing that?

"BitCoin weakens it to a majority vote in terms of CPU cycles uselessly burnt."

What's the alternative? A centralized server is likely to be far more vulnerable to attacks (just ask Sony!).

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#102

Post by phildawes »

Duff wrote: post #71
chipsy wrote: post #9

All economies are built on some combination of trust, fakery, coercion and hard work. The underlying rationale of a currency backed by "real material" is that it can be trusted to last. It can be trusted more than any government. Governments can fall quickly. Bitcoin hasn't proven itself to the degree of gold. It doesn't necessarily have to, though. It just has to look _better_ than alternatives, within some useful t…

It is difficult for me to fathom an environment where bitcoin is more attractive than gold or silver. At least outside of the alternate universe of PR that bitcoin proponents seem to live in. Bitcoin claims to share the attributes of metals that make it different (ie. immutability, scarcity), but does so in a way that is impenetrable to the average person with the added flair of having do go through anonymous and sha…

Quick + cheap to transact over distances without requirement of a trusted third party

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#103

Post by v21 »

olalonde wrote: post #82
v21 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is capitalism the same as the free market?

There might be other definitions, but I was referring to free market capitalism. Edit: Why the hell am I being down voted here?

No idea why you were being downvoted. I was just curious, as people were using the terms interchangably and they aren't always used that way.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#104

Post by barrkel »

dpatru wrote: post #92
barrkel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold isn't "real material" any more than paper. It's only has its value because of supply and demand, just like fiat money. If someone finds a huge lump of gold underneath the ground, or in some other possibly accessible location, gold's value will dramatically drop. If a new industrial use for gold is found, its value might dramatically rise (assuming the industrial use returns higher value than current prices). I t…

> Gold isn't "real material" any more than paper. It's only has its value because of supply and demand, just like fiat money. If this is so, then why have plundering governments consistently sought to replace gold with paper?

Why have plundering governments plundered? The answer to your question is an implicit assumption of your question.

As to governments replacing gold with paper, that seems to be correlated with economic growth and modernity than anything else. A mercantile approach to gold would be something like that followed by the Spanish with their South American possessions, mining for gold, etc. It didn't serve them very well because they didn't understand that it's not some magical property of the gold that holds value.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#105

Post by barrkel »

jsn wrote: post #99
barrkel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants a free market. That's a market that includes slaves, child pornography, assassination contracts, etc. At the level of globally integrated economies, I think the gold standard has been pretty well proven to be disastrous. It especially doesn't deal well with trade imbalances that unwind suddenly. The trouble you see in the Euro area can be seen as a microcosm of what a gold standard is like; countries lik…

"Free market" is defined as environment of voluntary transactions. Slavery is not voluntary, so it has nothing to do with free market. The same applies to assassinations (unless the victim voluntary agrees to be assassinated). As for your argument wrt gold, it's inconclusive to say the least. Specifically, PIIGS has failed not because they can't expand their money supply at will now , but because they could (and very…

Why do you think slavery isn't voluntary? Why can't you sell yourself? Do you not own yourself? Why can't you enter into a contract to sell yourself for a particular period of time, or to a binding set of responsibilities, etc.? Many (I've read some accounts that say most) slaves in history were willing slaves, in that they faced destitution and starvation outside slavery. Part of the implied contract of becoming a slave would be that your owner would look after you. And he would have every incentive to, of course - he doesn't want his investment damaged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery etc.

I'm not familiar with the situation in all PIIGS, mostly just Ireland (I'm Irish). The money came from British, German, French banks, over the course of a decade. ECB was the source of emergency financing when the bubble collapsed; i.e. you have your order of events backwards.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#106

Post by barrkel »

Symmetry wrote: post #90
barrkel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants a free market. That's a market that includes slaves, child pornography, assassination contracts, etc. At the level of globally integrated economies, I think the gold standard has been pretty well proven to be disastrous. It especially doesn't deal well with trade imbalances that unwind suddenly. The trouble you see in the Euro area can be seen as a microcosm of what a gold standard is like; countries lik…

I think most people's definition of "free market" is that people can sell or not sell their property or services for whatever price they wish - not that any good or service is legal to own or produce. People sometimes, but not always, lump the right not to have your property or labour taken from you under the term "free market" and sometimes just lump not having it taken from you except for monetary taxes (as opposed…

You keep coming in with this notion of what's legal. That's my very point exactly; what's legal and not is external to the free market itself. It is imposed from without, constraining it, and is not intrinsic to it. Whether contracts for assassination, or prostitution, or raw milk, or cigars from Cuba, etc. are legally traded is a matter of degree, not some self-evident binary choice. All constrain free trade.

People arguing for free trade are generally arguing for a particularly scoped subset of "free" trade, but they take as a relatively unexamined assumption that free trade is inherently good. Usually, there is some trade in particular that they would like to pursue, and they fight laws that inhibit it using free trade as a rallying cry, as if it were a self-evident justification. My point is that free trade by itself is not intrinsically desirable, and that we do in fact want all sorts of limits on what people are free to trade in.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#107

Post by jsn »

barrkel wrote: post #105
jsn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free market" is defined as environment of voluntary transactions. Slavery is not voluntary, so it has nothing to do with free market. The same applies to assassinations (unless the victim voluntary agrees to be assassinated). As for your argument wrt gold, it's inconclusive to say the least. Specifically, PIIGS has failed not because they can't expand their money supply at will now , but because they could (and very…

Why do you think slavery isn't voluntary? Why can't you sell yourself? Do you not own yourself? Why can't you enter into a contract to sell yourself for a particular period of time, or to a binding set of responsibilities, etc.? Many (I've read some accounts that say most) slaves in history were willing slaves, in that they faced destitution and starvation outside slavery. Part of the implied contract of becoming a s…

For as long as they are willing to stay slaves, I see nothing wrong with trading them. Outside of that situation, though, the right to body is unalienable (according to many rights theories).

The money came from British (banks, sponsored by artificially expanded money supply of BoE), German, French banks (sponsored by artificially expanded money supply of ECB), etc. I've got my order exactly correct. Then, when the crisis hit, more money come from ECB. It's a little surprise that the problem caused by excess money is not exactly fixed (in PIIGS) by more excess money.

Seriously, it's ABCT 101.

Re: Bitcoin money ≠ the Gold Standard.

#108

Post by barrkel »

jsn wrote: post #107
barrkel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think slavery isn't voluntary? Why can't you sell yourself? Do you not own yourself? Why can't you enter into a contract to sell yourself for a particular period of time, or to a binding set of responsibilities, etc.? Many (I've read some accounts that say most) slaves in history were willing slaves, in that they faced destitution and starvation outside slavery. Part of the implied contract of becoming a s…

For as long as they are willing to stay slaves, I see nothing wrong with trading them. Outside of that situation, though, the right to body is unalienable (according to many rights theories). The money came from British (banks, sponsored by artificially expanded money supply of BoE), German, French banks (sponsored by artificially expanded money supply of ECB), etc. I've got my order exactly correct. Then , when the…

See, I do see something wrong with trading in slaves; but not because it's contrary to free markets.

Re your selective fitting of crisis to monetary theory, I'm not going to comment; there are too many factors at work to be reductive about it.

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