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Bitcoin for Rockstars

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Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#41

Post by downandout »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #38
downandout wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thirdly, Bitcoin has done 6 years in a row what critics have always said it cannot do The one thing that hasn't changed a great deal is accessibility to them. When buying, you are either subject to waiting periods, or have to conduct the transaction in cash in person. No one in their right mind will take credit cards or PayPal for them. I believe this is the major hurdle to adoption of crypto by the mainstream publ…

On the, that's probably the thing that changed the most. Firstly, 'conduct the transaction in cash in person'. That sounds pretty accessible to me. You have cash, you press a button on your phone which shows the nearest person selling it, you go there and buy it from them. Can it get any more simple than handing over money in return for an item, like buying a coffee? But secondly, there are various companies right no…

>You have cash, you press a button on your phone which shows the nearest person selling it, you go there and buy it from them. Can it get any more simple than handing over money in return for an item, like buying a coffee?

Can it be more simple? No. Will most people do it, with the shady reputation of Bitcoin and the people involved with it? No.

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#42

Post by cgjaro »

inoop wrote: post #16
mrb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, Bitcoin does not need to scale that much to be considered widely successful. Heck, Western Union[1] averages only 10 tps, which is only 10x what Bitcoin is doing today, so such a target is clearly within reach with a 2MB block size. Secondly, Bitcoin can actually scale by many orders of magnitudes, see the math and arguments there: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability You need solid counterarguments to thi…

From your link: > PayPal, in contrast, handles around 10 million transactions per day for an average of 115 tps.

As the OP corrected, it's Western Union that does 10 tps. But even 100 tps would be easily within reach if the block size is bumped to 20MB, which is not that crazy.

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#43

Post by robrigo »

Inthenameofmine wrote: post #39
robrigo wrote: post #21

I believe that BitShares Music project is the most tangible effort in making this kind of platform happen. http://bitsharesmusicfoundation.org/ http://peertracks.com

If anybody is interested, we're building the platform at Bitsapphire.com. If you have any questions I can answer them here on HN.

Hey itnom, cob mentioned that tracking contributors to tracks (the credit part of this article) isn't apart of the MVP you guys are building. Would you consider leveraging reputation / on chain graph DB (key graph) to handle tracking this information in a future iteration?

I think this would make the blockchain much more useful for other 3rd parties to plug into and leverage said DB.

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#44

Post by Animats »

tzs wrote: post #10
Animats wrote: post #3

Well, the music industry wanted copyright with "no formalities", and that's in the TRIPS agreement. No more need to put a copyright notice on something, or send a copy to the Library of Congress. Now the industry is whining that keeping track of who owns what is too hard. They dug their own hole. Let them deal with it. This is so typical of the music industry, which has been shooting itself in the foot since the inve…

> Well, the music industry wanted copyright with "no formalities", and that's in the TRIPS agreement. No more need to put a copyright notice on something, or send a copy to the Library of Congress. The US abolished the notice and deposit requirements via the Berne Implementation Act of 1988, almost a decade before TRIPS.

True, but then it went worldwide, and nobody kept records any more.

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#45

Post by cgjaro »

jedunnigan wrote: post #26
mrb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, Bitcoin does not need to scale that much to be considered widely successful. Heck, Western Union[1] averages only 10 tps, which is only 10x what Bitcoin is doing today, so such a target is clearly within reach with a 2MB block size. Secondly, Bitcoin can actually scale by many orders of magnitudes, see the math and arguments there: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability You need solid counterarguments to thi…

People like to quote the scalability page and claim that Bitcoin will have no problem scaling, but I don't think they really understand what Bitcoin will look like at scale. No one is saying that it _can't_ handle howevermany txs / second. But do you want it to? That is the real question. Right now the network has So what we know is that despite the relatively low requirements of running a node, we are bleeding them…

Yes we want it to scale, even if it means full nodes run only by large organizations. The benefits of decentralization would be very real and tangible even if only, say, 1000 organizations (companies, universities, etc) were able to host and operate Bitcoin nodes. This would still make Bitcoin clearly decentralized compared to a single company (like MasterCard) processing all your CC transactions. For example Mastercard decided of their own accord to block CC donations to Wikileaks [1] but one of these 1000 hypothetical organizations running full nodes would be unable to do such a thing and block specific transactions.

The number of full nodes decreased in large part because in the early history of Bitcoin in late 2010 or early 2011 your only option to have a secure wallet or to mine reliably was to run a full node locally. But nowadays there are many alternative lightweight clients using the SPV protocol, and a lot of reliable mining pools (it was in mid-2011 that pools started mining more coins than solo miners running full nodes). So of course many users stopped running full nodes.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/wikileaks_latest/

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#46

Post by jedunnigan »

cgjaro wrote: post #45
jedunnigan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to quote the scalability page and claim that Bitcoin will have no problem scaling, but I don't think they really understand what Bitcoin will look like at scale. No one is saying that it _can't_ handle howevermany txs / second. But do you want it to? That is the real question. Right now the network has So what we know is that despite the relatively low requirements of running a node, we are bleeding them…

Yes we want it to scale, even if it means full nodes run only by large organizations. The benefits of decentralization would be very real and tangible even if only, say, 1000 organizations (companies, universities, etc) were able to host and operate Bitcoin nodes. This would still make Bitcoin clearly decentralized compared to a single company (like MasterCard) processing all your CC transactions. For example Masterc…

I wasn't commenting on what is better or worse. I was simply stating that there is a tangible effect on the decentralization of the network when you have a limited number of nodes. For example, maintaining privacy becomes much harder as these nodes become major "pipelines" for fresh first hop transactions. The list goes on, but in reality it depends on how many there are, a number we can't predict. FWIW, I think your number is generous.

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#47

Post by moe »

inoop wrote: post #37
moe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the Bitcoin room is that it simply cannot scale up to high TPS rates. What is it about Bitcoin that makes seemingly everyone, no matter how unqualified, re-iterate the same naive knee-jerk trite at no end, at every opportunity? Can we please stop repeating the same old debates on every article with Bitcoin in the title?

Respectfully, what makes you say I'm not qualified?

The fact that you attack a strawman, oblivious of all prior discussion on the subject.

The protocol is not set in stone. Scalability is a work in progress.

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/10/a-scalability-roadmap/

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#48

Post by IkmoIkmo »

downandout wrote: post #41
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the, that's probably the thing that changed the most. Firstly, 'conduct the transaction in cash in person'. That sounds pretty accessible to me. You have cash, you press a button on your phone which shows the nearest person selling it, you go there and buy it from them. Can it get any more simple than handing over money in return for an item, like buying a coffee? But secondly, there are various companies right no…

>You have cash, you press a button on your phone which shows the nearest person selling it, you go there and buy it from them. Can it get any more simple than handing over money in return for an item, like buying a coffee? Can it be more simple? No. Will most people do it, with the shady reputation of Bitcoin and the people involved with it? No.

That's a different question from accessibility which I was answering.

As for will people do it? The popular ways to do this (localbitcoins, mycelium) have actually showed record amount of transactions lately, so more people do it than ever.

Does that mean everyone does? No, but that has more to do with the fact it's a nascent thing rather than a shady reputation or a lack of accessibility.

Re: Bitcoin for Rockstars

#49

Post by downandout »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #48
downandout wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have cash, you press a button on your phone which shows the nearest person selling it, you go there and buy it from them. Can it get any more simple than handing over money in return for an item, like buying a coffee? Can it be more simple? No. Will most people do it, with the shady reputation of Bitcoin and the people involved with it? No.

That's a different question from accessibility which I was answering. As for will people do it? The popular ways to do this (localbitcoins, mycelium) have actually showed record amount of transactions lately, so more people do it than ever. Does that mean everyone does? No, but that has more to do with the fact it's a nascent thing rather than a shady reputation or a lack of accessibility.

If the methods to obtain them quickly either cannot or will not be used by most people (as is the case here), then they are inaccessible to most people.
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