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What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

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Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#21

Post by haakon »

jnordwick wrote: post #14
hendzen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Alex Morcos (one of the Bitcoin Core developers), is a founder of Hudson River Trading - a HFT firm responsible for 5% of US equities volume [0]. So... I'd say Bitcoin Core has some economic expertise available if they need it. [0] - https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/10/15/inside-hudson-riv...

I didn't know that. But i also work in HFT (have heard of Hudson River plenty of times) and I'm not sure that really gives any extra expertise. I say BTC lack economic understanding not from some theoretical view but from some of the almost religious decisions that comes from the project (fixed issue, low tx volume, etc). It is almost like they don't want people to use it for anything important. But i will search out…

The fixed, pre-determined inflation rate has been part of Bitcoin since its launch, and is widely regarded as one of the most fundamental, immutable rules of Bitcoin, much like "software freedom" is to Debian. It is not something that is widely cited by the Bitcoin community as a problem, and I'm unaware of any efforts to change it. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin Core.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#22

Post by haakon »

qznc wrote: post #13
fpgaminer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in Bitcoin You forgot the most important counterargument. That they _did_ move extremely fast on scalability. They released a masterpiece of engineering, SegWit, which doubles the blocksize, improves efficiency, enables future efficiency gains, and a laundry list of other improvements ... all while being a softfork. And, IIRC, that was all devel…

SegWit is in use by LiteCoin for a year already and the first proposal for Bitcoin was at least two years ago.

SegWit activated on Litecoin on May 10 this year.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#23

Post by the-dude »

qznc wrote: post #13
fpgaminer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in Bitcoin You forgot the most important counterargument. That they _did_ move extremely fast on scalability. They released a masterpiece of engineering, SegWit, which doubles the blocksize, improves efficiency, enables future efficiency gains, and a laundry list of other improvements ... all while being a softfork. And, IIRC, that was all devel…

SegWit is in use by LiteCoin for a year already and the first proposal for Bitcoin was at least two years ago.

Compared to changes of traditional currencies, two years is incredibly fast.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#24

Post by beaner »

twblalock wrote: post #19
woah wrote: post #10

The whole point of open source software is that you can fork a project away from the original developers.

But the point of a currency is to be a stable and widely accepted medium of exchange. Forking undermines both of those goals. If the US dollar forked, or an EU country left the Euro, it would widely be considered a disaster and a failure of politics and governance. Why should bitcoin be held to a different standard?

Just seems like part of an evolutionary process. Very rarely is software released where version 1.0 is perfect. Maybe if government currencies allowed for these things, they would also be better by now.

This is part of the reason why bitcoin remains highly speculative. People point this out like it's a bad thing - the only people who have it are just investors, speculating. But this is part of the process that bootstraps bitcoin's value, so that when it does become more practical to use, actual value is being transferred.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

twblalock wrote: post #19
woah wrote: post #10

The whole point of open source software is that you can fork a project away from the original developers.

But the point of a currency is to be a stable and widely accepted medium of exchange. Forking undermines both of those goals. If the US dollar forked, or an EU country left the Euro, it would widely be considered a disaster and a failure of politics and governance. Why should bitcoin be held to a different standard?

[deleted]

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#26

Post by hendzen »

haakon wrote: post #21
jnordwick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that. But i also work in HFT (have heard of Hudson River plenty of times) and I'm not sure that really gives any extra expertise. I say BTC lack economic understanding not from some theoretical view but from some of the almost religious decisions that comes from the project (fixed issue, low tx volume, etc). It is almost like they don't want people to use it for anything important. But i will search out…

The fixed, pre-determined inflation rate has been part of Bitcoin since its launch, and is widely regarded as one of the most fundamental, immutable rules of Bitcoin, much like "software freedom" is to Debian. It is not something that is widely cited by the Bitcoin community as a problem, and I'm unaware of any efforts to change it. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin Core.

The fixed supply doesn't really make sense if you want BTC to function as a unit of exchange (rather than a commodity). I won't go in to the reasons why since they have been elaborated on by many other people.

However, the fixed supply does incentivize holders (ahem hodlers) to increase the value of the coin - whether that is by starting companies that use BTC, spamming HN with BTC/Reddit related posts, etc. It's an interesting way of arranging a bunch of people in a sort of distributed boiler room.

That said, once the mining subsidy completely ends (assuming BTC is still actively used then) its possible we will see some calls to increase the supply. Otherwise the transaction fees will need to become huge (or the price will need to rise 1-2 orders of magnitude) to support current levels of mining activity.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#27

Post by hendzen »

petertodd wrote: post #17
apeace wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the past two years, the Bitcoin community has been embroiled in a debate about how to scale the network to handle more transactions. The debate has at times become less technical, rhetoric about "centralization" and the values of the community has become introduced, etc. Recently the debates have come to a head, and some have referred to it as a "Civil War"[0]. For technical background, I recommend these two post…

Both of Hearn's articles contain a number of factually incorrect points. For example, his article on forks states that: > In a soft fork, a protocol change is carefully constructed to essentially trick old nodes into believing that something is valid when it actually might not be. The soft-fork protocols used for upgrades are specifically designed to ensure nodes are not tricked into believing something is valid when…

Peter,

You just cherry picked one (minor) point from each article, and then used an argument against those points to claim that both articles are incorrect in full. I think that is a dishonest form of argument.

Furthermore, it's worth disclosing your own personal dislike of Mike Hearn - you guys have spent a huge amount of time attacking one another... so I'm inclined to discount any of your statements on him.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#28

Post by twblalock »

jnordwick wrote: post #7

Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future? Most of the arguments against the core team revolve around the economics and future of the coin, but the tech team seems to think that somehow their coding experience gives them insight into that. Bi…

> Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future?

I guess I'll give the blunt answer: many proponents of cryptocurrency have views on economics, politics, society, law, and contracts that are ignorant of the way those things really work. Many really do believe that currencies, transactions, and contracts can be implemented entirely by computer programs and that governments and courts should have no jurisdiction over such things.

If you don't believe me, go to some of the active crypto forums and get involved in political discussions. You'll see an astounding mix of techno-utopianism, extreme libertarianism, and baseless conspiracy theories about fiat money and governments in general.

The blockchain is an interesting technical achievement, and so are smart contracts, but they are not a replacement for laws and governments. Unfortunately, a lot of people think they are. Some people even insist that bitcoin doesn't have governance, but that's clearly not the case because the current controversy about the core developers is exactly about governance.

I bring this up because these kinds of beliefs are the reason people in the bitcoin community think the programmers who implement bitcoin are capable of solving the economic problems -- they reject the idea that there are any economic or social problems facing bitcoin that can't be solved with the underlying technology. They don't accept that these are social problems with social solutions.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#29

Post by icebraining »

twblalock wrote: post #18
wmf wrote: post #15

This "fire Core" situation reminds me of Uber. You can be killing it 24/7 and still get fired if you cause enough non-technical damage.

Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, so there are many non-technical aspects of it that need to be properly handled. If the people working on the code take it upon themselves to make the non-technical decisions too, they need to be held responsible for the outcome. This really gets at the heart of my dislike for cryptocurrency -- most proponents believe it's supposed to be decentralized and free from the control of…

It's not, though; the developers can write the code, but they can't force people to upgrade.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#30

Post by petertodd »

hendzen wrote: post #27
petertodd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of Hearn's articles contain a number of factually incorrect points. For example, his article on forks states that: > In a soft fork, a protocol change is carefully constructed to essentially trick old nodes into believing that something is valid when it actually might not be. The soft-fork protocols used for upgrades are specifically designed to ensure nodes are not tricked into believing something is valid when…

Peter, You just cherry picked one (minor) point from each article, and then used an argument against those points to claim that both articles are incorrect in full . I think that is a dishonest form of argument. Furthermore, it's worth disclosing your own personal dislike of Mike Hearn - you guys have spent a huge amount of time attacking one another... so I'm inclined to discount any of your statements on him.

We seem to have a fundamentally different outlook on this. First of all, I'm busy - I'm not going to do a point-by-point takedown of the article if I can avoid it. Secondly, if you can show an author clearly lied about anything - and I think I have clearly shown that - it immediately calls into question the value of the rest of the work. That saves time and effort for the reader, in much the same way that showing a single step in a math proof is wrong is an efficient way of rebutting an entire work.

Secondly, in claiming I have a personal dislike of Hearn, you're actually making a clear ad-hominem attack. My personal feelings are irrelevant to whether or not Hearn's arguments are correct.

In any case, Hearn is quite a nice guy in person, and fun to hang out with; I used to often chat with him on IRC. It quite frankly saddens me that I'm in a field where I'm not able to do what I'd much rather do - be friends with him - because of professional ethics. This is far from the only time when this has happened - repeatedly I've had to end friendships in the Bitcoin space because friends of mine got involved in scams and other dishonest behavior; in another context where the public wasn't being harmed I could be much more forgiving, but here I can't be.

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