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What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

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Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#51

Post by joosters »

formalsystem wrote: post #24

It's important to remember that the main thing Bitcoin needs to maintain is it's monetary policy and you can find it at any time right here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/validatio... Anyone can query at any time the total amount of Bitcoin that have been issued without relying on anyone. After downloading the Bitcoin client just run gettxoutsetinfo You can try to guess how many dollars have been…

You can try to guess how many dollars have been printed or how many bars of gold exist.

No-one in their day-to-day usage of dollars (or gold) directly cares how many currency units exist. What they care about - and what is very easy to know, is what the purchasing power of their currency is.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#52

Post by H8crilA »

pavlov wrote: post #48
kneel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETFs are still subject to whatever country's tax laws. Imagine putting your retirement into various funds only to have a Brexit type situation destroy your hard earned money. Bitcoin is borderless, permissionless storage of value. Game theory built in (anyone powerful enough to attack the network is better incentivized to participate in it.)

I’m trying to imagine the average Briton putting their savings in Bitcoin. Maybe they buy £50 worth on some local exchange every month. Will the money be there in 30 years? Seems more likely that they’re going to be wiped out before then by either a fraudulent/bankrupt exchange (if they never moved the funds to a Bitcoin address) or by losing the private key (if they did). This technology is absolutely not where a Su…

That's mostly because 0.5% of their net worth is something completely insignificant. Graham talks about this problem in "The Intelligent Investor", about how active management of assets is actually not suitable for most people, either because they have too little capital to make any difference or too little time to get good at it. On the other hand, a billionaire not committing 0.5% (or more) of their net worth to Bitcoin is passing on a potentially very lucrative put option on the global financial system.

Also, there are "safer" / "more classic" way to buy such puts, gold bullion works wonders in times of severe disruption, and I don't think it's unreasonable to commit 5-10% of your capital to gold, almost regardless of personal situation and net worth levels. Of course you never know when the next "Executive Order 6102" happens, but there's kind of no good solution for that :(

(all of the above are personal opinions, feel free to disagree as much as you like)

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#53

Post by joosters »

d4c wrote: post #12
egypturnash wrote: post #6

Has anyone actually found a use for cryptocurrency and/or the blockchain yet that is not "burn a shit-ton of power on arguing over units of cryptocurrency are worth anything"?

Decentralized finance, which includes lending, asset management, automated market making and fund-raising via tokens. See https://defipulse.com/ for recent growth.

Defi is just the last incarnation of the blockchain-related 'get rich quick' scams, like the ICOs before it. It's proponents think that somehow it generates amazing returns out of nothing. In reality, insiders and cheats are profiting from the gullible. (again, just like ICOs)

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#54

Post by mmsmatt »

H8crilA wrote: post #31
pavlov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “if you view it as a savings technology then it's the best one that's ever been created” IMO this crown belongs to ETFs. Putting all your eggs in the Bitcoin basket would be an extremely risky strategy. A portfolio of ETFs is a much better place for most people’s savings.

ETFs are simply mutual funds married with high frequency trading. Read about Authorized Participants if you're confused as to what HFT has to do with ETFs. Overall it's a decent improvement over the very old idea of open-ended funds, given the recent digitalisation of trading and super fast market making with tiny spreads. PS. I like ETFs, I think they're achieving exactly what are they supposed to achieve.

Also, read the prospectus of any ETF you already own, and you’ll get the gist of APs, enough to understand why your fees are so low.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#55

Post by joosters »

emptysongglass wrote: post #19
egypturnash wrote: post #6

Has anyone actually found a use for cryptocurrency and/or the blockchain yet that is not "burn a shit-ton of power on arguing over units of cryptocurrency are worth anything"?

There's tons of uses: you can fractionally hold real estate, Estonia uses a blockchain to ensure only citizens can grant access to their data siloes to government entities and that that data remains untampered, you can track lineage of art pieces (who owned when), there are healthcare applications, and encrypted messengers like Jami and Status leveraging. You're a few years late on the let's-hate-blockchain trend. Ti…

Real estate (and 'real' anything) on the blockchain is fatally flawed. What happens when the blockchain forks? Which fork holds the real estate, and which fork holds nothing? Or do the blockchain proponents think that the real estate will magically fork into two just like their money?

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#56

Post by ojnabieoot »

formalsystem wrote: post #24

It's important to remember that the main thing Bitcoin needs to maintain is it's monetary policy and you can find it at any time right here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/validatio... Anyone can query at any time the total amount of Bitcoin that have been issued without relying on anyone. After downloading the Bitcoin client just run gettxoutsetinfo You can try to guess how many dollars have been…

> but if you view it as a savings technology then it's the best one that's ever been created.

I am sorry but this is just silly and reckless. Although bitcoin is somewhat less noisy than it used to be, it is still a volatile and extremely high-risk investment. Whatever merit bitcoin might have on the long-term economic fundamentals, right now bitcoin is mostly a speculative instrument, or an investment on computing technology.

You do not want to put your savings into something where the price has repeatedly dropped > 60% in a single week. It can be part of a larger strategy: I could see x treasury bonds, (1 - x) bitcoin as a sensible high-risk tactic. But putting all your savings in bitcoin is dangerous.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#57

Post by petertodd »

aazaa wrote: post #47

The title of the article doesn't match the content. The tile suggests the article will talk about the white paper specifically. It instead talks about what Bitcoin got right/wrong in general. The white paper says nothing about specific hash functions, signature schemes, scripting systems (not even mentioned at all), currency units, and many other things that ended up being important to Bitcoin. And one of the things…

Re: "longest chain", the first release of Bitcoin actually used longest chain rather than most work! This was secretly changed by Satoshi very early on, presumably when Satoshi realized that "longest chain" is broken and "most work" is the correct protocol. This would have been a hard-fork if not for the fact that at the time hashpower was so low that difficulty was still at the minimum limit of one, so the two versions did the same thing in practice.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#58

Post by vaccinator »

egypturnash wrote: post #6

Has anyone actually found a use for cryptocurrency and/or the blockchain yet that is not "burn a shit-ton of power on arguing over units of cryptocurrency are worth anything"?

you don't have to burn a shit ton of power, you can "pre-mine" your "currency" (many did)

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#59

Post by jiggytom »

egypturnash wrote: post #6

Has anyone actually found a use for cryptocurrency and/or the blockchain yet that is not "burn a shit-ton of power on arguing over units of cryptocurrency are worth anything"?

There's also odysee.com and lbry.tv, both powered by a Bitcoin like network and P2P tech that enables a YouTube alternative.

Works today, lots of great content, earn crypto while using too.

Re: What Bitcoin’s White Paper Got Right, Wrong and What We Still Don’t Know (2018)

#60

Post by UncleDiaz12 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34
unnouinceput wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dailyhodl.com/2020/09/28/big-bitcoin-holder-transfer... Quote from article: "The anonymous whale sent 15,987 Bitcoin worth $166 million, paying a fee of $23.46" Tell me, what bank in the world would charge only $23.46 for transferring $166 M?

> what bank in the world would charge only $23.46 for transferring $166 M? I have never paid for a wire. I’ve also overseen multibillion-dollar wires for which there were zero transfer fees. If you send and receive wires, get a bank account that doesn’t charge for them. (This is almost every account at e.g. Fidelity or First Republic.) Consumer accounts usually optimise for a different basket of needs than large inst…

Are you serious?

I have sent multiple international wires over the years and money always goes missing either from the sending/receiving fees, or the intermediary bank in New York takes a small cut.

Maybe if you have an account with billions of $$$ then you get a special deal, but us normies have to pay.

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