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Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

theguardian.com

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Re: Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

#21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what you mean when you say that Bitcoin can scale by using 3rd party payment providers? Try thinking about it. It would work the same way PayPal works with USD. Bitcoin payments simply don't need to happen on the blockchain. Similarly, I can buy gold in my brokerage account without any actual gold moving between warehouses. > Of course proof of stake can be decentralized! I think what you mean is that…

Oh sheesh. No one said anything about Bitcoin miners voting. I was simply pointing out that centralization of mining power (which has already happened in Bitcoin) has essentially the same security impact as centralization of wealth in proof of stake consensus mechanisms. > It would work the same way PayPal works with USD. Bitcoin payments simply don't need to happen on the blockchain. Similarly, I can buy gold in my…

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Re: Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide more details/references to your statement on altcoins that have better scalability and decentralization.

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> The Algorand cryptocurrency achieves thousands of transactions per second

And is it possible to sync to the current Algorand state by downloading and verifying the complete transaction history, like I can with Bitcoin? And if so, how big is that download?

Bitcoin limits the tx rate on purpose so that the Initial Block Download remains feasible on average hardware, and no trust is needed beyond the integrity of the client software.

Re: Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

#23
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

> The Algorand cryptocurrency achieves thousands of transactions per second And is it possible to sync to the current Algorand state by downloading and verifying the complete transaction history, like I can with Bitcoin? And if so, how big is that download? Bitcoin limits the tx rate on purpose so that the Initial Block Download remains feasible on average hardware, and no trust is needed beyond the integrity of the…

Bitcoin’s throughput is limited as a function of network security and network delay. It has nothing to do with making it easier for clients to sync with the current state. You can improve Bitcoin’s transaction rate in two ways:

1.) decrease mining difficulty, i.e., the amount of hashing required to produce a valid proof-of-work on average. This impacts the security of the network.

2.) increase the block size so you can fit more transactions into a single block. This negatively impacts network latency (and therefore scalability, as it increases the burden of propagating messages across the network).

To your question on Algorand: yes, new consensus participants can quickly and easily sync with the current state of the blockchain through fast catch-up [1], without any meaningful security degradation [2].

[1] https://youtu.be/BOnond-J3Zo

[2] https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/269.pdf

Re: Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

#24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Algorand cryptocurrency achieves thousands of transactions per second And is it possible to sync to the current Algorand state by downloading and verifying the complete transaction history, like I can with Bitcoin? And if so, how big is that download? Bitcoin limits the tx rate on purpose so that the Initial Block Download remains feasible on average hardware, and no trust is needed beyond the integrity of the…

Bitcoin’s throughput is limited as a function of network security and network delay. It has nothing to do with making it easier for clients to sync with the current state. You can improve Bitcoin’s transaction rate in two ways: 1.) decrease mining difficulty, i.e., the amount of hashing required to produce a valid proof-of-work on average. This impacts the security of the network. 2.) increase the block size so you c…

So there's no way to trustlessly verify Algorand history; you have to trust a checkpoint, or trust some signatory quorum in some alternative design that's not even implemented yet.

Re: Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

#25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are wrong, there is plenty of logic that would lead one to believe this. However, every major crypto is down 40% or so while the US is reporting its highest inflation prints since the 70s. By your logic, these currencies should be at all time highs, instead, they seem more correlated with the NASDAQ recently and actually negatively correlated with inflation.

Think about what happened to crypto and other inflation hedges in march 2020. They got ahnilated worse than equities in the initial risk off and then out performed ever since. I think that's where we are now. If there is a market sell off, crypto is along for the ride initially. the question will be what it looks like from there.

I don’t think this deserves to be downvoted. Crypto is an asset class. During uncertainty and sell offs almost all assets sell off in tandem due to either deleveraging or flight to safety (of cash), and crypto isn’t special here.

Over long horizons, the argument that crypto is a hedge against inflation or weakened purchasing power of fiat currency makes sense. But during acute corrections that matters very little, especially since very few people are actually paying for real world goods using crypto.

Re: Lira crisis fuels Bitcoin boom in Turkey

#26
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin’s throughput is limited as a function of network security and network delay. It has nothing to do with making it easier for clients to sync with the current state. You can improve Bitcoin’s transaction rate in two ways: 1.) decrease mining difficulty, i.e., the amount of hashing required to produce a valid proof-of-work on average. This impacts the security of the network. 2.) increase the block size so you c…

So there's no way to trustlessly verify Algorand history; you have to trust a checkpoint, or trust some signatory quorum in some alternative design that's not even implemented yet.

You can trustlessly verify the entire Algorand history by verifying it yourself (same as Bitcoin). However, almost all blockchains (including Bitcoin) will suffer from this problem of longer and longer sync times, and so some bootstrapping solution is necessary.
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