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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#461

Post by _Nat_ »

tl;dr- The article's a bit confused, so to clarify: Bitcoin's entropy starts maximized, and then miners reduce it. According to the second-law-of-thermodynamics, the net-entropy of the universe tends to increase, so Bitcoin's entropy-reduction is just increasing entropy elsewhere (hence its huge electric consumption). Bitcoin's doing this because its security is based on having a high-entropy barrier against attackers (like a good password), except instead of a legitimate party being whoever has the password (and thus can beat attackers), it's based on whoever can attack the entropy the best (through 51%+ control of mining).

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Some of the entropy stuff seems a bit confused.

As time goes on, Bitcoin's blockchain's entropy is decreasing, not increasing. The [genesis-block](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block) is like a [nucleation-seed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_crystal), and the blockchain's growing from that genesis-block like ice crystallizing from a nucleation-seed as the surrounding water freezes.

The second-law-of-thermodynamics asserts that entropy tends to increase in the overall system, in a cumulative sense, but not necessarily throughout the entire system. Bitcoin's blockchain's removed entropy tends to imply an increase of entropy in the surrounding environment (leading to the environmental concerns with its energy-consumption).

If Bitcoin's mining-difficulty were reduced and the miner-pool shrunk a lot, then Bitcoin's blockchain would have less entropy removed, but the environment would have less entropy added to it as Bitcoin's power-consumption would be less.

This is by-design. For example, if you want a secure password, then you want it to have [high entropy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_strength#Entropy_as_a...), because then it's harder for an attacker to guess your password. Bitcoin's the same way, except that it doesn't start knowing the password -- instead, Bitcoin asserts that whoever controls the most entropy-removing-power (mining power) is the correct authority. So that's why [Bitcoin sets a high-enough difficulty](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty): it needs a high-enough difficulty to prevent someone from easily [faking a longer blockchain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-spending#51%_attack).

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#462

Post by m00dy »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #390
dgs_sgd wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think all the institutional investors who have bought billions worth of bitcoin in the last several months see it as a pump-n-dump?

They make money from you when you use their services. If FinancialCo thinks you'll buy Bitcoin, they'll offer it to you for a fee. They'd sell investments in inflatable dinosaurs if they could make enough money from fees for doing so.

They use Bitcoin as a hedge against US dollar. It looks like stimulus packages are the new normal.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#463

Post by caycep »

I probably need to read this more closely after work, but have to ask - have there been thermodynamic esp w/r to information theory/shannon entropy, information encoding properties of bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#464

Post by mortehu »

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.

Counterexample: when I recently read about its energy consumption (per byte stored), I sold my bitcoins in disgust, at roughly today's prices. I've held almost continuously since 2011, although I trimmed my position a few times.

If I come across something that works without PoW, is safe against quantum computers and somehow eliminates the threat of forks (seems impossible), I'll invest in that.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#465

Post by keymone »

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…

Nano is a scam. Nano fanboys don’t even get the concept of latency on the internet, forget anything more complex like recovery from network partitions. There are reasons behind most of the things that you consider drawbacks in bitcoin, shitcoin proponents don’t understand those reasons and simply copy bitcoin with some parameter changed, completely oblivious to the fact that it makes their shitcoin worthless.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#466

Post by keymone »

yholio wrote: post #249
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?

Valid observation. The difference is that bitcoin isn’t a premine.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#467

Post by danShumway »

tony101 wrote: post #430
ForHackernews wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the difference is cars are useful. What can I do with a bitcoin except hope to sell it for more USD later?

Transfer funds across borders without dealing with multi-business-day bank delays or capital controls in countries like China. Accept donations or other online transactions without relying on Visa/Mastercard.

> Accept donations or other online transactions without relying on Visa/Mastercard.

And then you can either try and meet someone in an alley somewhere, or go to a gatekeeper exchange just like Visa/Mastercard to try and convert those transactions back to money that can actually be exchanged for food and shelter!

I mean, let's be serious here. In theory, blockchain could allow us to build a good online payment system -- and that is a problem worth solving.

But in practice, Bitcoin in particular is completely awful as an online payment system, and I don't understand how people can reasonably claim otherwise. If the goal of Bitcoin was actually to make online payments easier, we would be using a different coin other than Bitcoin. The community would have moved on to any of the far better alternatives.

The fact that Bitcoin is still the predominant coin proves that the technology and the convenience of online payment processing is not the end goal for most people getting into cryptocurrency.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#468

Post by fredfoobar »

foepys wrote: post #425
fredfoobar wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying the same damn thing about automobiles man, horses already have self driving even! and they don't pollute like cars. Look at the mess we're in now! who's laughing?? Cars pollute and need roads, we had to build so many roads and gas stations. We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil.

Horses literally put shit on the streets. Imagine replacing each car with a horse and think about the amount of poop. Horses are also dangerous. A friend of mine lost almost all of their teeth because their horse kicked them in the face when they cleaned its hooves.

Get with the times sir: https://www.workinghorsetack.com/catch-it-manure-bag-horse-d...

Horses need to be operated safely, just like cars, you need to learn how to ride them. Besides, if you can't ride a horse, sit in the carriage.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#469

Post by olalonde »

boredpandas777 wrote: post #348

Let me fix that title. Happy to be downvoted into negative territory. I only have 11 points. Go ahead. "Bitcoin Is A Waste of Time (and Resources)" What Bitcoin has done is that it taught people they can come together in a sustained flash mob (like an on-the-fly hedge fund operation) and manipulate the price of speculative assets by creating artificial short-term pump-n-dump type demand. Bitcoin has trained our colle…

Why are no-coiners so obsessed with price? You dismiss a breakthrough technology, and probably skipped on reading a quite interesting article, because you don't like Bitcoin's price graph and the fact it attracts speculators?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#470

Post by fredfoobar »

Igelau wrote: post #449
fredfoobar wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying the same damn thing about automobiles man, horses already have self driving even! and they don't pollute like cars. Look at the mess we're in now! who's laughing?? Cars pollute and need roads, we had to build so many roads and gas stations. We even had to go to war to make sure we have enough oil.

Now that you mention it, if my car was a living creature, I'd probably give a damn about taking care of it...

Exactly! Horses are very lovable creatures, they will take care of you back if you take care of them.
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