Bitcoin Is Time • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#621

Post by hisham_hm » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

kenniskrag wrote: post #586

hannasanarion wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is accidentally a good analogy. Because yes, cars have made the world materially worse, not because horses are better, but because dense urban development, public transit, walking, and cycling is better. Cars are enormously wasteful, much like bitcoin is, not only because it uses way more energy than is necessary for the task it is performing (~90% of the energy used by cars is spent to move the car, not the car…

What happens if you have the same amount of horses like cars? Aren't they wasteful and need a lot of space and at night a heated parking spot? :)

The whole "horses vs. cars" argument is based on a false dichotomy: the are not only these two options for transportation.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#622

Post by ironman1478 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

fwiwm2c wrote: post #313

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…

Stop shilling. And to have the galls to say something like Nano has the ability to take on Bitcoin just indicates that you very new to this market - and thus want to make a quick buck by shilling your random shitcoin. The thing which Bitcoin has, and that few others can match, is acceptability from a large swatch of investors and predictable security/emission schedule. And, just fyi, Nano is not made of users. Go to…

This is a bit off topic, but if you were here for the money shouldn't you just be in the stock market? It seems like the people who really try and analyze it (like in quantitative trading) do extremely well and if you don't have the time for that (who does outside of work), then mutual funds have a great return on investment and are significantly less risky and have a way lower barrier to entry. I am a bit ignorant on the economics of bitcoin (though I have built a miner and did all the merkle tree stuff), but its unclear how bitcoin is better unless you have a lot of capital already and can stomach the risk.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#623

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

nexthash wrote: post #588

nightski wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This distinction is so tiring. It's just not interesting calling something gambling as if that is supposed to be bad. Every move we make is a gamble (yes, even storing that precious cash in the bank). Money is all about opportunity cost and choosing to do nothing is just as much of a gamble as doing something like storing it in bitcoin. Sticking ones head in the sand doesn't change the fact that your only choice is t…

I think you are the one with your head firmly shoved in the sand. Bitcoin has enormous problems with legality, energy usage, lack of trust, hacking, and slow, expensive transactions that make it a really shitty alternative to fiat. Bitcoin isn't just a gamble - its sole use as of now is as a pump and dump scam. There is no earthly reason why a digital token should be worth $50k a pop. Bitcoin is a shitty bet, and I'd…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#624

Post by md2020 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

The earlier points in the piece about the distinction between information and physical matter got me thinking. I only have a bachelor's in computer science and not much cryptography knowledge, so please excuse if this question has a simple answer: What fundamentally prevents us from creating a digital analog of gold? Gold (partially) has value because it is scarce, and it's scarce because it's difficult to create--nuclear fusion takes a ton of energy, and gold is one of the heavier naturally occurring elements. As the article mentions, all physical assets can retain value because they're impossible to copy. If I give you my gold, the transfer of value is being held up by the laws of physics. You now have it, and I don't. There's no ledger keeping track of all the gold atoms in the universe, therefore it's trivial to transfer it from one part of space to another. What keeps us from having some cryptographic primitive that enforces the same thing?

Bitcoin got the part of "requiring some difficulty to create", but I feel like the killer cryptocurrency would be the one where no ledger is needed.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#625

Post by OGWhales » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

ketamine__ wrote: post #312

rawtxapp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, it's fully functional and there are many users. Only people who haven't actually tried using it says things like "it's incredibly buggy".

How many? What is the transaction volume like compared to Ethereum, Bitcoin, BSC, etc?

I found this site after reading your comment and being curious myself. no promises on it being trustworthy data: https://1ml.com/statistics

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#626

Post by octocop » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

7373737373 wrote: post #148

keiferski wrote: post #55

Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be maps, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold. Money is a Proteus more versatile than the one on the island of Pharos. —Jorge Luis Borges, “The Zahir” https://longreads.com/2016/06/14/borges…

> Richard Dawkins said in an offhand comment in The Selfish Gene that “Money is a formal token of delayed reciprocal altruism.” - https://nakamotoinstitute.org/reciprocal-altruism-in-the-the...

Thanks for the link, really interesting stuff.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#627

Post by i_haz_rabies » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

fredfoobar wrote: post #495

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 people are understanding that horses are better, can I turn your attention to concrete? The manufacture of cement produces about 0.9 pounds of CO2 for every pound of cement. Since cement is only a fraction of the constituents in concrete, manufacturing a cubic yard of concrete (about 3900 lbs) is responsible for emitting about 400 lbs of CO2. We should stop making things out of concrete, it's destroying our…

Spreading out would use up so much land that we would effectively destroy the biosphere in the process.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#628

Post by yazaddaruvala » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

almost_usual wrote: post #167

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not beyond the reach of governments to ban unwanted trade Yeah, right, it worked so well for alcohol... It DOES (/s) work so well for drugs in the US right now... And hey imagine whether it's easier or harder to ban something that doesn't take any physical space in your suitcase and can be transacted with only internet connection.

You’re saying Bitcoin will never be mainstream if it’s not accepted by a militarized government.

Basically we are talking about the world's reserve currency becoming a denationalized currency. To be "mainstream" the denationalized currency will need to be defended by the militaries of the Euro-zone, US, India, China, and Russia (likely one after the other in this order).

Only the US is incentivized to have USD be the world's reserve currency. Meanwhile, 7 BB people around the world prefer a denationalized reserve currency, countries will prefer to interact with each other with a less trackable currency (e.g. Iran and the current sanctions), and based on the usage of tax loopholes by every multi-national company (e.g. FB, Apple, Google) every business will prefer transacting in less trackable currency (especially with crypto-coin tumblers). This demand for a denationalized reserve currency will be supplied by some crypto-coin (maybe BTC, maybe something else). FWIW, I don't think having a "less trackable currency" is a "good thing", I'm just saying there are large organizations that benefit from it financially and therefore it will exist.

Frankly once the S&P companies purchase enough BTC (e.g. TSLA, Square, etc), a BTC 51% attack will need to be defended against by the US military to ensure national stability. If BTC (or any crypto-coin) can hit "too big to fail" in the US, the rest of the world's militaries will all build a defense strategy around BTC mining. As as consequence, cheaper energy will also be an investment into national security.

There are still more problems with BTC specifically, like "slow transactions" but as may here have said, we can either use a geographically sharded blockchain (e.g. BTC-California, BTC-USD, BTC-CAD, BTC-RUP), where each shard allows fast transactions, and slow reconciliation, or we will just leverage credit for fast transactions like we do today, with slow reconciliation between banks like we have today. I don't see "centralization" as a problem, because having bank accounts and credit are very useful as an individual (as individuals will likely only transact with credit cards like we do today).

Will BTC become "too big to fail" in the US? Unclear. Another crypto might get there first. However, there is no scenario where the world's reserve currency continues to be tied to a single nation.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#629

Post by wmf » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

tarsinge wrote: post #296

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. Not an expert but I found that a readable summary of different layer 2 scaling strategies and why Ethereum developers prefer Rollups instead of Channels (like Lightning): https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html

Talking about different layer 2 scaling strategies implicitly ignores much simpler layer 1 scaling, e.g. Avalanche.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#630

Post by crazydoggers » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

oliv__ wrote: post #401

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…

I'm genuinely amazed at how you're able to take such an in-depth, thoughtfully written article, and reduce it into a mere "bitcoin is a waste of time, people are gamblers".

I’ve come to realize, that prejudice is amplified online. Prejudice is, at its root, poorly examined opinions based on insufficient evidence.

Prejudice gets amplified because it often seems insightful, and online, barraged by information all day, people click, read these blurbs and one liners, then pass them on.

Prejudice is also emotionally satisfying because typically people believe what is already inline with their beliefs. So taking the time to research and understand topics is not as pleasurable as passing along prejudice.

It’s all around us online, from simple celebrity gossip, to political analysis, on and on.

We’ve somehow as a society got to get our heads around the fact that this form of communication online is brand new to the human experience, and we have to understand it’s impacting us in new ways.

I fear all the ways Prejudice is pushing us apart, and away from fact, understanding, and compassion.