Bitcoin Is Time • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#241

Post by olah_1 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #200

noxer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin is onto something What if it "was"? The "hate" people express against bitcoin especially here on HN is often towards the implementation. People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they missed the train to richness. Objectively PoW does not scale. Objectively we have DLTs (blockchains) with…

But did you really include Lightning Network in your mental calculations? If so, care to elaborate on what exactly would stop it from working? (I mean it already works now, there is nothing technical that is going to stop it from scaling)?

Exactly. Lightning was anticipated from the very first email group conversation on Bitcoin. It is not ready for primetime usage, but it is rapidly approaching that point as Lightning improves.

The "killer app" of Bitcoin is the shared CPU power / consensus, not necessarily the plain layer-1 transactions.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#242

Post by threwawasy1228 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #158

yerwhat01010 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we get in return? Fantastic question. I've been waiting 10 years for a convincing answer; still waiting.

There are millions of people who use it, trade it, store their value in it, program more software for it etc. They see the answer, they get the point. Can you please just answer this - do you suppose they all halt what they are doing and wait for an undeterminate amount of time for you to also get it, before they can go on with their businesses and lives?

I would upvote this a hundred times if I could. I don't understand where this kind of demand for further understanding even comes from we are well past the point where it could have been written off as a fad and it is obvious there is value to it. There is no reason why everyone should feel the need to "get it" or get value out of it to understand that other people do get it and do get value out of it.

It is such a weird sentiment to me because it would never occur to me to devalue the value others get out of things I don't understand. I hate bonds, I don't "get" why anyone would want to buy bonds, people have tried to explain it to me. I decided that I will never buy a bond in my life because they are just the dumbest form of investment. I can hold that sentiment whilst saying "I don't get why they buy them but clearly there is a lot of value from the vehicle and it is clearly a valid form". I don't see why I should need to understand an monetary vehicle or like an investment vehicle to understand that some people do, and those people have a valid opinion.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#243

Post by paulmd » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

gnrlst wrote: post #210

I'm ready to be downvoted to oblivion, especially by all the Bitcoin purists, but I hope my message sparks at least some curiosity. Bitcoin is getting "weaker" every year for several reasons: - emerging centralization due to economies of scale. If this trend continues the mining power will be so consolidated that a 51% attack will be likely. The Nakamoto coefficient is already at 4, and tending towards 3. - energy us…

> The lightning network is incredibly buggy and won't actually solve the problems it's promising.

it's actually worse than that - lightning only works in the context of centralized banking. It presumes there is some other entity with whom you can hold a channel open, who you do roughly equivalent amounts of deposits and withdrawals from. If that criterion is not met, then you have to keep closing channels and re-opening new ones, each of which incurs a new transaction fee just like if you did it yourself. So it is still expensive to send arbitrary transactions, it is just now relatively cheap to do "banking" with a single entity.

That entity sending money for you may still be expensive as well. If they have another entity who they do roughly equal amounts of transactions and withdrawals from then yes, they can nominally transact that for free, but they will still probably charge you for the service, and having that bank send a payment to an arbitrary user with whom they don't have balanced deposits/withdrawals incurs the normal bitcoin transaction fee. You can see where all of this is going - Lightning doesn't really solve anything, it still is only optimized for transactions between large, centralized entities.

Oh, and if you ever lose power or internet then your channel has to be closed and resolved, then reopened if you want to do further business. So you have to pay a transaction fee every time you lose internet (or there is a routing problem somewhere on the net) or power.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#244

Post by dntrkv » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

almost_usual wrote: post #179

dntrkv wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible reason is that by the time they realize it's a threat, it will be too late.

Too late to what? Forcefully distribute it as it sees fit or else put you in prison or harm your family? If you keep using it in secret it will never be mainstream. Physical force is the strongest currency on Earth. Arguing it’s not is arguing millions of people die for entertainment rather than shifts of power. If Bitcoin is the revolutionary future millions will die on that hill to make it so.

If they haven't done it by now, then they don't currently see it as a threat.

Now let's say in a few years, that inflection point happens where crypto sees an exponential rate of adoption. Every other country begins to use it, some ban it, many others adopt it. At that point, if not using crypto will put the US at a disadvantage, they have no other choice but to adopt it as well.

A semi-related example is the way many companies "disrupt" the markets e.g. Uber/Airbnb wasn't a threat to many cities, until it was. At which point, the demand for Uber/Airbnb outweighed the government's ability to do anything about it.

It's not the best example since some cities have done things about it and Uber/Airbnb, being a company, is easier to target.

With crypto, its decentralized nature makes it much more difficult to control and attempting to ban it will raise issues around free speech.

That's not to say countries won't try and succeed in getting it banned, though in the case of the US, I don't think it's as cut and dry.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#245

Post by olalonde » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

dandanua wrote: post #102

Bitcoin network is constantly readjusting mining complexity, so that every new block will be mined in approximately 10 minutes. Then, they substitute the notion of time with the sequence of Bitcoin blocks. Yeah, well done! Bitcoin proponents are becoming more and more insane.

> Bitcoin proponents are becoming more and more insane.

Don't give them too much credit. The notion of time in distributed systems has been defined "insanely" since at least 1978[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_timestamp

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#246

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #220

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't think that either BitCoin or CryptoCurrency in general _can_ be reformed. The whole mess is a complete write-off.

On a somewhat related note, I just wonder for my personal interest, why do you write it that way? "BitCoin". You are just signalling everyone that you haven't done any deep research, you have not read any meaningful amount of articles or books or studied it in depth... It is spelled "bitcoin". "BitCoin" is how a housewife would spell it (no disrespect or negativity towards housewives, it is simply an example of a per…

> "BitCoin" is how a housewife would spell it (no disrespect

Did you understand me? Then the spelling was good enough. Please don't attempt to derail with gender role trolling.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#247

Post by afc » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

hodder wrote: post #44

This is the most nonsense article Ive read in a long time. The leap after leap of bias is amazing.

I agree. I believe strongly in Bitcoin, but I think this article was just a bunch of pompous poetry without any substance. "The difficulty adjustment makes sure that the ticks of Bitcoin’s internal metronome are somewhat constant. It is the conductor of the Bitcoin orchestra. It is what keeps the music alive." Blah blah blah blah! So much fluff to say so little...

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#248

Post by solosoyokaze » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #209

noxer wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin is onto something What if it "was"? The "hate" people express against bitcoin especially here on HN is often towards the implementation. People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they missed the train to richness. Objectively PoW does not scale. Objectively we have DLTs (blockchains) with…

>People clearly see the flaw in PoW if they are not emotionally attached to it because they have no money at stake. You should not misinterpret that as hate because they missed the train to richness. The vitriol that Bitcoin evokes from HN commenters can really only be explained by jealousy, the environmental concern is just a cover for covetousness.

This is true, because the vitriol was there prior to anyone complaining about Bitcoin's power usage (i.e. when it was too small to matter).

I remember when I first heard of Bitcoin. I quite frankly found it technically intimidating. It was a totally new concept. I didn't get it. I took my own discomfort as a sort of signal that it was really important; something totally new. So I studied it. I had to put time and effort to read the books, play with the code... Eventually I got it and found it to be one of the most elegant pieces of technology and sociology of my lifetime.

I think a lot of geeks never made that first push past the intimidation. As the value has gone up, the sour grapes have as well. This is a group of people that should have been first on the wagon, but instead many of us found out the hard way we weren't on the cutting edge as much as we liked to think. Myself included, I have some Bitcoin but I'm not a BTC millionaire, like I would have been had I pushed harder through my intimidation faster.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#249

Post by yholio » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

gnrlst wrote: post #210

I'm ready to be downvoted to oblivion, especially by all the Bitcoin purists, but I hope my message sparks at least some curiosity. Bitcoin is getting "weaker" every year for several reasons: - emerging centralization due to economies of scale. If this trend continues the mining power will be so consolidated that a 51% attack will be likely. The Nakamoto coefficient is already at 4, and tending towards 3. - energy us…

So it's a 100% premine that already pushes on 1 billion market capitalization. How is that any different from the Bitcoin bubble?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#250

Post by shawnz » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #240

shawnz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also remember if you have wealth in bitcoin you would mine at a loss merely to secure your own bitcoin. You could also send null transactions which do nothing but pay a transaction fee

If you're freely giving away money (either in the form of null transactions or putting money into mining) just to secure value that you're holding, you've clearly mispriced the asset you're trying to secure!

If you put money in a savings account with interest below inflation, just to secure the value that you're holding, did you misprice the value? Or for example if you buy gold and then pay someone to watch it for you, does that mean you mispriced it?