The entire multi-billion BTC ecosystem is built on software that still hasn't reached "Version 1.0"? Bitcoin Core 0.21? A development beta? LOL.
If only other software was rated this accurately. What would the Cyberpunk game release be? 0.01?
BTC Endgame
121–130 of 278 posts
Re: BTC Endgame
#122The entire multi-billion BTC ecosystem is built on software that still hasn't reached "Version 1.0"? Bitcoin Core 0.21? A development beta? LOL.
Get in now while it's still early!
Re: BTC Endgame
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not so sure. If you don't need proof of work to secure a blockchain, then why is the free market of Bitcoin consensus continuing to expend huge amounts of capital to stick with it as its sybil resistance mechanism? If it wasn't considered a value destroying move, the transition away from PoW would've happened already no?
> If it wasn't considered a value destroying move, the transition away from PoW would've happened already no? I think there's a conflict of interest issue here that would prevent such a move even if it would be worth it - the miners clearly have an incentive to keep the current PoW mechanism, as without it they're left holding a bunch of expensive useless tech. And without the miners willing to go along with a move f…
Miners don't control the price. If a PoS coin became valued, they'd be leaving free money on the table to ignore it. And if Bitcoin became devalued, the mining rate would drop to match (otherwise they'd be spending in excess of the reward on electricity)
Re: BTC Endgame
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> PoS is still vaporware Why is that? Aren't Cardano and Polkadot PoS as they claim or doesn't it work?
No PoS algorithm has yet managed to solve the Nothing-at-stake problem, nor are they any more resistant to the abovementioned kind of hostile takeover by the nation state player compared to PoW. I can't speak for every PoS coin out there but Cardano/Ouroborous explicitly assumes partial synchrony which is arguably never a good idea for a supposedly permissionless blockchain.
So PoS is vaporware because it hasn't solved a problem where the miners can act against their economic best interests and mine a fork?
How does "there's a theoretical issue, and also it shares a problem with PoW" follow from "PoS is vaporware"?
Re: BTC Endgame
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wondered about that and perhaps someone here can explain. After bitcoin reaches its "full" volume, mining rewards will go away and the only way miner income can stay the same is if transaction fees rise to match. Since the competition of miners basically converges to "block reward is equal to electricity cost equivalent", this would mean transaction costs increase to an insanely huge amount. Not paying the l…
BCH addresses this by increasing the number of transactions per block. This decreases the fee per transaction.
No, that doesn't address the question at all.
Re: BTC Endgame
#126You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…
I think I agree with you and think there's a parallel to other conventional currencies.
Controlling the hash is similar to controlling a central bank - you've got the power to trash your currency, but that's coupled with you probably having the most to lose if you do so.
You could maybe do something stupid short-term - Say you own a controlling amount of hash, but a fraction of the currency. You could seize the currency, but by doing do you devalue it all. Who in their right mind would buy a seized bitcoin from you for any price, knowing you could seize it right back?
Currency equivalent would be the Fed suddenly stating a dollar was worth half-as-much as it was before (compared to some external thing) and compensating all US citizens by doubling their dollar earnings. As a dollar earner/spender you'd notionally be unaffected.
Dollar debt the US owed would be halved - Yay!
However the effect on non-US dollar holders would be cataclysmic - "You made half my money vanish, you might do it again, I don't want to ever hold US dollars again" and bricks of your currency is being used by children worldwide to build forts.
The entire selling point of BTC is that it's outside of conventional government control. If proved otherwise, it's without value.
More realistically, "Chinese Miners" aren't the government. They're miners, who happen to be in China, due to cheap power costs. At the first whiff of any meddling, their ASICs going to be on a plane and plugged into the Hoover Damn or Iceland's geothermals.
Re: BTC Endgame
#127> via a wargame Oh, I know, I know! "The only winning move is not to play"
:)
Re: BTC Endgame
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would a hyperinflation on the US dollar cause civilization to stop? In any case, crypto trading since 2017 has been nothing but people buying and selling imaginary ticker symbols on unregulated exchanges. For example, XVG and ETC has been subject to successful 51% attacks more than once and every time the price was hardly affected. And each time the "solution" to deep chain reorg involved the exchanges freezing a…
> How would a hyperinflation on the US dollar cause civilization to stop? The dollar is the value used to denominate world debt via the IMF. It's also (partially related to this fact) the "mattress currency" of a lot of nations... Nations hoard US dollars to back-stop their own economies, since if their currency starts to tank, they can use dollars to pay their international debts. A worthless US dollar would have wi…
But then the IMF actually uses a basket of currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights
(which has some similarity to the original libra proposal from FB)
Re: BTC Endgame
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't you do worse things if you have >50% hash power? It seems like DoS is pretty mild all things considered.
It depends how rationally the market responds, I guess. A reorg attack and a DoS are equivalent in my mind - anyone who's capable of pulling off a lengthy DoS is also capable of performing a reorg attack, whether they actually do or not is kind of irrelevant.
there is a type of reorg attack I proposed that's now been dubbed a "purge attack", that has the effect of destabalising the network by creating a window for all affected users to double spend their previously "finalised" transactions: https://medium.com/deribitofficial/destabilizing-bitcoin-con...
Re: BTC Endgame
#130> via a wargame Oh, I know, I know! "The only winning move is not to play"
I recently watched that on YouTube. Sadly, it's private now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNLQ-O-Qx3Y&ab_channel=YouTu...
The movie still holds up today, which I didn't expect. It gets pretty dumb at times, but no dumber than a Michael Bay flick.