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Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

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Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#101

Post by npoc »

hggh wrote: post #100
npoc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The increased block size increases the amount of storage required to run a full node (and also the bandwidth required to sync nodes). Even at just 100 tx/sec, you need 14x the storage of a bitcoin node (so around 10TB vs 700GB for bitcoin). That puts it out of reach for many people to run and so making it more centralised. To compete with a payment rails like Visa and Mastercard, you'd need to increase that to 10000+…

If you mean a full non-mining nodes (which only a few people really need, merchants, exchanges, ...), read points 7 and 8 of the whitepaper. For full mining nodes, you need expensive specialized hardware anyway. Non-mining nodes are just observers that do nothing good to the network. Is like going to war with popcorn as a weapon. Mining nodes are the only ones than can include transactions to a block. https://www.bit…

Yes full non-mining nodes. I understand about pruned nodes, but that is a bonus for both networks - it means people can run a node on their mobile phone for example. The nodes have the real power in the network - they're are the people’s vote on what bitcoin really is. You can mine what you like but if my node says it's not bitcoin, it's not bitcoin. And there's many more who think like me. This has already been proven in the block-size wars - both the consensus on block-size and proof of the power of nodes vs miners.

The HW to run bitcoin is extremely cheap - less than $100. All you need is an old laptop or Raspberry Pi with a 700GB of storage, and a ham radio/dial-up internet connection to another node.

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#102

Post by hggh »

npoc wrote: post #101
hggh wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean a full non-mining nodes (which only a few people really need, merchants, exchanges, ...), read points 7 and 8 of the whitepaper. For full mining nodes, you need expensive specialized hardware anyway. Non-mining nodes are just observers that do nothing good to the network. Is like going to war with popcorn as a weapon. Mining nodes are the only ones than can include transactions to a block. https://www.bit…

Yes full non-mining nodes. I understand about pruned nodes, but that is a bonus for both networks - it means people can run a node on their mobile phone for example. The nodes have the real power in the network - they're are the people’s vote on what bitcoin really is. You can mine what you like but if my node says it's not bitcoin, it's not bitcoin. And there's many more who think like me. This has already been prov…

So you're telling me that you can have a say in the blockchain with no proof-of-work whatsoever on your part

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#103

Post by hggh »

scotty79 wrote: post #99
hggh wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the miners are clearly smarter than the users

Why? They decided the same. Both miners and users favor the fork where the 1MB block limit is kept. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold are used and mined very little.

Miners mine whatever is most profitable for them, regardless of how good or bad is that cryptocurrency, and they switch between BTC, BCH or any other SHA256 (not Bitcoin Gold, which uses a different hash function) even many times in a given day.

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#104

Post by npoc »

hggh wrote: post #102
npoc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes full non-mining nodes. I understand about pruned nodes, but that is a bonus for both networks - it means people can run a node on their mobile phone for example. The nodes have the real power in the network - they're are the people’s vote on what bitcoin really is. You can mine what you like but if my node says it's not bitcoin, it's not bitcoin. And there's many more who think like me. This has already been prov…

So you're telling me that you can have a say in the blockchain with no proof-of-work whatsoever on your part

Yes. It's network effect. Even if all of the miners simultaneously decided to go big block or some other controversial change that most people don't want, the majority of the population's nodes would then not accept the mined blocks. They'd see the rate of new blocks drop to 0, and people would instantly start mining on their PCs to get the block reward. Some of the miners would start to change their mind and start mining with ASICs for the easy block-reward and eventually the hash-rate would build back up again, with the previous miners or without them.

The non-mining nodes in fact can completely destroy the ASIC miners by upgrading to a new POW algorithm. Hopefully it will never come to that, but ultimately the people, with their non-mining nodes have the power, not the miners. The only way miners can successfully change bitcoin is if the vast majority of people agree with the change.

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#105

Post by hggh »

npoc wrote: post #104
hggh wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're telling me that you can have a say in the blockchain with no proof-of-work whatsoever on your part

Yes. It's network effect. Even if all of the miners simultaneously decided to go big block or some other controversial change that most people don't want, the majority of the population's nodes would then not accept the mined blocks. They'd see the rate of new blocks drop to 0, and people would instantly start mining on their PCs to get the block reward. Some of the miners would start to change their mind and start m…

Why “non-mining full nodes” are a terrible idea:

https://medium.com/@olivierjanss/why-non-mining-full-nodes-a...

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#106

Post by scotty79 »

hggh wrote: post #103
scotty79 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They decided the same. Both miners and users favor the fork where the 1MB block limit is kept. Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold are used and mined very little.

Miners mine whatever is most profitable for them, regardless of how good or bad is that cryptocurrency, and they switch between BTC, BCH or any other SHA256 (not Bitcoin Gold, which uses a different hash function) even many times in a given day.

Yes. And users use what's most profitable for them. Compare usage volumes of btc, bch and btg.

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#107

Post by hggh »

scotty79 wrote: post #106
hggh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners mine whatever is most profitable for them, regardless of how good or bad is that cryptocurrency, and they switch between BTC, BCH or any other SHA256 (not Bitcoin Gold, which uses a different hash function) even many times in a given day.

Yes. And users use what's most profitable for them. Compare usage volumes of btc, bch and btg.

Network effect

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#108

Post by npoc »

hggh wrote: post #105
npoc wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's network effect. Even if all of the miners simultaneously decided to go big block or some other controversial change that most people don't want, the majority of the population's nodes would then not accept the mined blocks. They'd see the rate of new blocks drop to 0, and people would instantly start mining on their PCs to get the block reward. Some of the miners would start to change their mind and start m…

Why “non-mining full nodes” are a terrible idea: https://medium.com/@olivierjanss/why-non-mining-full-nodes-a...

The comments to that article (especially the one from dooglus) make a decent rebuttal to the idea that full nodes are a "terrible idea".

If you're convinced a block chain can scale to 50k transactions / sec and also remain decentralised and offer enough privacy, then keep at it, but I'm afraid I'm unconvinced.

Even if it were theoretically possible, the solution would likely be so complex, or based on a long chain of "hopefully unlikely" events that I wouldn't have enough confidence in it to store large amounts of value.

The slowness and simplicity of the Bitcoin network is what gives it robustness, and if I'm storing large amounts of money, that's what I want even if it means I can't buy a cup of coffee on the same network.

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#109

Post by hggh »

npoc wrote: post #108
hggh wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why “non-mining full nodes” are a terrible idea: https://medium.com/@olivierjanss/why-non-mining-full-nodes-a...

The comments to that article (especially the one from dooglus) make a decent rebuttal to the idea that full nodes are a "terrible idea". If you're convinced a block chain can scale to 50k transactions / sec and also remain decentralised and offer enough privacy, then keep at it, but I'm afraid I'm unconvinced. Even if it were theoretically possible, the solution would likely be so complex, or based on a long chain of…

There's also a rebuttal to that comment: https://medium.com/@olivierjanss/first-of-all-i-want-to-appl...

> The slowness and simplicity of the Bitcoin network is what gives it robustness, and if I'm storing large amounts of money, that's what I want even if it means I can't buy a cup of coffee on the same network.

Then why not just use gold? It is slow, simple, and you can't use it to buy coffee.

Re: Early Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver Charged with Tax Fraud

#110

Post by npoc »

hggh wrote: post #109
npoc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments to that article (especially the one from dooglus) make a decent rebuttal to the idea that full nodes are a "terrible idea". If you're convinced a block chain can scale to 50k transactions / sec and also remain decentralised and offer enough privacy, then keep at it, but I'm afraid I'm unconvinced. Even if it were theoretically possible, the solution would likely be so complex, or based on a long chain of…

There's also a rebuttal to that comment: https://medium.com/@olivierjanss/first-of-all-i-want-to-appl... > The slowness and simplicity of the Bitcoin network is what gives it robustness, and if I'm storing large amounts of money, that's what I want even if it means I can't buy a cup of coffee on the same network. Then why not just use gold? It is slow, simple, and you can't use it to buy coffee.

Because it's not as liquid, it's not as easily verified, the supply doubles every 40 years, it's not as easily protected (compared to multi-sig bitcoin), I can't send it around the world in 10 minutes, and I can't take it across borders in my head. It doesn't form the basis for the entire world's future reserve asset and monetary unit, and the market is mature/saturated whereas bitcoin is completely misunderstood by almost everyone and so is wildly undervalued.

Bitcoin is demonetising gold.

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