There's way too much for me to know it all about Bitcoin but say I want to learn more about building a blockchain, is there a spec for just that from the Bitcoin spec, or is the spec all inclusive? I have to admit I never read the original paper(s) I just mined BTC back in 2009 when I (somehow) heard about it, and have left it alone since. Funnily enough I was ignoring it all, till I realized my mining pool had all my BTC so I transfered it out (nothing significant enough, but just enough to allow me to peek curiosity again). I'm curious if anyone has designed their own Blockchain based tech that is focused on that aspect that has several industries interested in Blockchain technology. Minus any Bitcoin specifics that is.
Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
131–140 of 179 posts
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#132A balanced view is that all the articles hold some substance. But the technology is more at threat through its own community than any external force. One question that I don't really understand is how can the total supply of BTC serve its own growth. If the market cap reaches the same value as gold for example - how long before one Satoshi becomes too large a divisible unit to be useful? Can you divide Satoshi?
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Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#133And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…
You can't predict the future, when ARPANET was developed they didn't have the internet in mind as it is today, but it was a new technology which evolved and will keep to evolve.
I think it will be the same with Bitcoin, it might be dead if it will stay in the form that it is today but my guess is that it won't be the case.
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#134I wish it went down to $80 again so I can invest. really missed the boat.
You can still buy $80 worth of BTC and you'd have the same chances you had 3 years ago.
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#135One of the early obituaries on that list mentions that the finite supply of bitcoins, combined with lost crypto keys and hoarding will eventually lead to a situation where there aren't enough coins for it to be a viable currency. Clearly, in that situation you can subdivide coins as far as required, so it isn't a risk to bitcoin as such. However, I have often wondered if there is any estimate of the "effective supply…
I bet a lot of people lose their private key, but I bet that if there's anything in your wallet you'll be careful. So, there are probably a lot of private keys that get lost, but not a lot of bitcoins.
Pragmatically, that is probably true, and bitcoin won't last for millenia either (e.g. if sha-256 has a weakness, or quantum computers render ecdsa useless).
Nevertherless, there is >0 probability of multiple harddrive failure, or much greater probability of incompetence, so there must be some rate of loss of bitcoins over time, and i'd be interested to know what that is.
I think it is interesting because once the speculation dies down, the market will set the fiat price of bitcoins according to the actual supply and demand, so this attrition has a real affect. For example, imagine if the coins believed to belong to Satoshi (1 million coins out of the current 16.5 million) were to move. The mere knowledge that they can be moved would increase the effective supply by 6-7% overnight, the effect could be dramatic.
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#136I wish it went down to $80 again so I can invest. really missed the boat.
These line of thinking is toxic. What have you done in the meantime? Will you be back in 4 years when bitcoin is in the 6 figures region moaning how you should have bought at 4000?
That exact same reasoning was used to buy overpriced tulip bulbs. So I don't see how your line of thinking isn't at least as toxic as his.
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#137Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you go into more detail about what you mean here?
Leverage, banks hold the ability to lend a certain sum of money to multiple parties, thereby 'creating' more money. The amount of money lent vs the amount of parties is the leverage ratio. It's usually managed well, but can get out of hand pretty quickly. Edit: Forgot to mention reserve amounts. They are crucial.
Banks don't create money. People treat IOU's after depositing money in banks as money, but they are IOU's not money.
The difference may seem meaningless most of the time, but occasionally it becomes extremely important.
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#139One of the early obituaries on that list mentions that the finite supply of bitcoins, combined with lost crypto keys and hoarding will eventually lead to a situation where there aren't enough coins for it to be a viable currency. Clearly, in that situation you can subdivide coins as far as required, so it isn't a risk to bitcoin as such. However, I have often wondered if there is any estimate of the "effective supply…
I bet a lot of people lose their private key, but I bet that if there's anything in your wallet you'll be careful. So, there are probably a lot of private keys that get lost, but not a lot of bitcoins.
Well, if you lost the private key at the beginning, when they weren't worth much, you wouldn't have been that careful. So I'd wager that there is a fair amount of lost coins around.
Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far
#140I am mostly commenting on a big amount of comments deeming Bitcoin a failure or similar.
The Bitcoin of ~a month ago is not the same as today, that's a big power, to have upgradable decentralized money. Certainly Bitcoin is not perfect, but the good thing is that there are a lot of talented engineers working on the issues and new features, the majority of them even before Bitcoin really was worth much. But having it being valuable at the moment also acts a huge security/bug bounty and an incentive for more people work on it and make it better.
= All about the price
Even if the price crashes horribly, unless there's a unrecoverable catastrophe, it will keep on going because there's an ecosystem around it and clear price-independent advantages. Using Bitwage to be paid in Bitcoins and avoid crazy cross-border/currency fees of banks will be still an advantage no matter the price of bitcoin. Same goes for prepaid/debit cards backed with bitcoin. Doing commerce painlessly without crazy procedures with Africa & Latin America or wherever. Being immune to capital controls and asset seizures.
= Hype
I hate the hype everywhere, but it's not the tech's fault so many cluessless & irrelevant gold-diggers try to ride the wave, just with a lot of things you can just ignore. If you follow the devs, they are pragmatic and don't try to pump-up things like most altcoins do, that's something I greatly respect.
Anyway, there's a long way to go, but just because there are flaws at the moment, it doesn't mean it's dead, it's a live technology. Being pragmatic is key, Bitcoin is not some Utopian perfect invention, but it's good enough for a lot of things at the moment and I see it getting better every year.
Bitcoin offers true permissionless commerce and ownership of wealth and it now might not make any difference in a lot of democratic countries until it begins to do.