Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin Is Time

dergigi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 1001 posts

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#301

Post by capableweb »

afc wrote: post #247
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...

I feel like your expectations are a bit off. What did you expect from a blogpost titled "Bitcoin Is Time"? A serious whitepaper on how Bitcoin actually is what we consider time? Of course it's gonna be fluffy poetry, it's right there in the title!

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#302

Post by luhn »

cyphertruck wrote: post #235
vishnugupta wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This[1] is an insightful article from an economist who has experienced the real world economics from very close quarters. I don't have any opinion about Bitcoin one way or another, though through these fascinating arguments I gain new insight about the money and its relationship with geopolitics, human civilisation and other aspects. [1] https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-da...

That article is from 2013 and so we must grade it on a curve. He makes several wrong assumptions about how bitcoin works because he’s thinking it is based on trust, and he is an inflationist. I have yet to have an economist explain to me why deflation us bad- computers getting cheaper is good, fixed income people being able to afford things us good. Inflation mainly allows government to hand out money yo wall street…

If you don't like the Fed throwing money at rich people, you should probably be rooting for inflation. The historically low inflation of the past decade has them handing out money like candy.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#303

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

benlivengood wrote: post #281
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…

There's also the other Bitcoin, BCH, which suffers from basically none of the problems you listed. If a 51% attack was actually lucrative then shouldn't at least some miners attempt it given that BTC hash-power is about 100X that of BCH?

It suffers from all the same problems. The only advantage it has is that they chose a slightly larger arbitrary constant. It still does not and can not scale. One order of magnitude makes little difference when we're dealing with something that is four orders of magnitude slower and four orders of magnitude more power-hungry than the competition.

100 maximum transactions per second is still orders of magnitude too low to be useful on a daily basis outside of niche uses (read: drugs). Ten minutes confirmation time is still orders of magnitude worse than credit cards or cash.

Obviously, what we need is the REAL Bitcoin from the confirmed legitimate Satoshi Nakamoto: Bitcoin SV.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#304

Post by Taek »

olah_1 wrote: post #107
phyro wrote: post #9

Thank you for sharing this! I wrote a much shorter article on why I believe Grin is the closest to "time is money" here https://phyro.github.io/what-is-grin/grin_emission.html Bitcoin can be thought of as a clock, but the unit that is being transfered can't be thought as time because for it to be mappable to time, you need a linear function and Bitcoin's emission is exponential because of the halvings.

Thanks for linking the Grin article! Now you've sent me on a rabbit hole reading about different emission strategies and ideas. (I follow Beam development, so I love to read about both projects). Doesn't the consistent emission of Grin depend upon the number of users and transactions also rising at the same consistent rate? Can we really count on that like we can count on the ticking of time?

I don't think Grin does this but you can adjust the emission schedule based on the clock time (Sia does) so that the number of total coins produced on a given date is within a very tight bound of its expected amount, regardless of how much the hashrate has changed.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#305

Post by domatic1 »

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…

- 51% attack is unlikely, pools have mining power but every miner on the pool has to agree to the attack so it is still decentralized.

- energy usage of gold is worse, that's not a good argument. What is the energy use of air conditioners?

- transactions are slow yes but bitcoin is now used as a store of value

- I'm sorry but nano doesn't have the network effect Bitcoin has and never will.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#306

Post by monkeydust »

Sparkyte wrote: post #260
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…

There is also no meaningful contribution for the work. Imagine if there was a blockchain crypto attached to folding@home it would work that has value.

Isn't that Gridcoin (GRC)

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#307

Post by olah_1 »

phyro wrote: post #224
olah_1 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for linking the Grin article! Now you've sent me on a rabbit hole reading about different emission strategies and ideas. (I follow Beam development, so I love to read about both projects). Doesn't the consistent emission of Grin depend upon the number of users and transactions also rising at the same consistent rate? Can we really count on that like we can count on the ticking of time?

Glad to hear that. In Grin, each block creates 60 coins. The time to mine a block is set to be 1 minute on average, so it will average out as 60 coins each minute and hence 1 coin per second. This won't be _exact_ of course due to the variance in block times so you definitely can't count on that - just like you can't count on Bitcoin getting exactly 24*6 blocks each day. But these systems are defined such that if the…

That does seem like a cool feature. It just requires a bit of a mindset change.

Compared with gold, yes you can estimate when new gold is unearthed, but at the same time, there is a theoretical limit to the total amount of gold in the ground, right?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#308

Post by lxgr »

domatic1 wrote: post #305
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…

- 51% attack is unlikely, pools have mining power but every miner on the pool has to agree to the attack so it is still decentralized. - energy usage of gold is worse, that's not a good argument. What is the energy use of air conditioners? - transactions are slow yes but bitcoin is now used as a store of value - I'm sorry but nano doesn't have the network effect Bitcoin has and never will.

> every miner on the pool has to agree to the attack so it is still decentralized

Do you think most miners are continuously auditing the blocks they are solving?

Yes, long-term they'd switch away from a dishonest/non-value-aligned pool, but the damage might already be done at that point.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#309

Post by neatze »

doomroot wrote: post #108
user-the-name wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing baseless in saying that using 0.1% of the entire world's energy in order to do 3 transactions per second is beyond ludicrous, and an environmental disaster of massive proportions.

Here me out. What if it was the only way to defund the US military? Would you be interested then? Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines? Why is there not a daily hackernews thread complaining about the energy consumption of the US military? Because it’s a necessary to ensure you can buy and sell things when you want to.

> Why do we waste so much energy building killing machines?

In analogy, it is same reasons why we lock our doors and don't leave keys in parked car.

Do you seriously assume that some nations and some organization, do not, actively seek, how to take things that do not belong to them ?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#310

Post by chipotle_coyote »

cyphertruck wrote: post #235
vishnugupta wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This[1] is an insightful article from an economist who has experienced the real world economics from very close quarters. I don't have any opinion about Bitcoin one way or another, though through these fascinating arguments I gain new insight about the money and its relationship with geopolitics, human civilisation and other aspects. [1] https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-da...

That article is from 2013 and so we must grade it on a curve. He makes several wrong assumptions about how bitcoin works because he’s thinking it is based on trust, and he is an inflationist. I have yet to have an economist explain to me why deflation us bad- computers getting cheaper is good, fixed income people being able to afford things us good. Inflation mainly allows government to hand out money yo wall street…

> I have yet to have an economist explain to me why deflation us bad

At risk of being the "Let Me Google That For You" Guy, it's not too hard to find articles where economists give cases against deflation, e.g.:

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/5-reasons-to-worry-about-...

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/978/economics/definition-...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/why-is-deflation-bad

The basic argument is that in small amounts, both inflation and deflation can be fine, but either one can become a problem. The issues with too much inflation are fairly obvious; the issues with too much deflation is that downward price pressure falls on everything. If deflation is so reliable that prices are going to be meaningfully lower if I can put off a big purchase for as long as possible, I'm going to do that. If enough people follow my lead, that hurts sellers. Wages go down -- more than likely through layoffs rather than pay cuts. And anyone who's already in debt -- and this doesn't just include your Uncle Bob who routinely puts too much on his credit card, it includes companies using lines of credit -- can end up in real trouble.

> computers getting cheaper is good

Sure, but -- even though I've seen this example trotted out before as a pro-deflation argument -- the prices of manufactured goods steadily fall due to continual improvements in manufacturing processes, economies of scale, and general technological progress. This has been particularly noticeable in computers over the last three decades, but Moore's Law isn't a supporting argument for the benefits of monetary deflation.

Post reply on HN