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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#711

Post by cyphertruck »

Geee wrote: post #460
cyphertruck wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer with twenty years experience in this space and nearly as long studying the economics of it, I have yet to see a replacement for PoW that solves the problem that PoW solves. Proof of Work is trustless decentralization. Proof of stake is trusting the dudes who premined the coin and sold you a “fix for bitcoins inherent problem” to hype their ICO. If you were right, after 10 years one of those PoS currenc…

There hasn't been a secure decentralized PoS protocol. Mostly they rely on one or more trusted validators. Cardano's Ouroboros is apparently the first secure decentralized PoS, that is mathematically proven to be as secure as Bitcoin. I don't know if that's true, but that's what they say.[0] [0] Ouroboros - A Provably Secure Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf

I looked into the “mathematical proof” a couple years ago, all I could find was hand waving and sleight of hand. This convinced me it was a scam.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#712

Post by cyphertruck »

UncleMeat wrote: post #529
cyphertruck wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer with twenty years experience in this space and nearly as long studying the economics of it, I have yet to see a replacement for PoW that solves the problem that PoW solves. Proof of Work is trustless decentralization. Proof of stake is trusting the dudes who premined the coin and sold you a “fix for bitcoins inherent problem” to hype their ICO. If you were right, after 10 years one of those PoS currenc…

"This space" didn't exist 20 years ago.

Yes it did. It has been going on for ~50 years, and bitcoin is the culmination of work spanning that period.

Bitcoin was not the first cryptocurrency. It was the first good one, though.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#713

Post by hannasanarion »

jyrkesh wrote: post #687
hannasanarion wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which is why I didn't say anything about horses. Opposition to cars, like opposition to bitcoin, isn't rustic ludditism. There are modern solutions to transportation that are superior to cars, like rail, frequent busses, and bike infrastructure, but lose out in funding and hype because they're not prestigious and utopian like cars are. Likewise, Bitcoin does not solve any problem that any other transaction netwo…

But do you think we ever could have gotten to electric cars if we hadn't used gas-powered cars as a stepping stone? I'd probably agree with you if you were to say that it's taken too long, but I'd argue that the crappy fuel-burning stuff is a necessary milestone on the transition to something better. I see Bitcoin as the Model T of new currency models. Decentralization is the future of currency and contracts, even if…

The fact that cars burn gas is one of the least harmful parts of them. Electric cars are just as bad as any other car.

The real harm of cars is in how they forced cities to spread out, putting miles of asphalty moonscape between every destination, forcing people to spend thousands of dollars a year on vehicles that they shouldn't need, driving greenfill development that doesn't raise enough revenue to support itself, forcing cities to develop ever more automobile suburbs for the immediate revenue to fulfil their maintenance obligations on the old ones, going into massive debt to keep up appearances on what is effectively a ponzi scheme, not to mention the human cost of traffic violence.

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Decentralization is not an advantage for currency and contracts. The problems that decentralization "solves" were never problems in the first place.

Nobody was asking for a new way to store their money that doesn't have any identity verification besides a single digital key, which doesn't have the ability to dispute or undo transactions, and which takes multiple minutes to clear transactions.

To quote Kai Stinchcombe

> There is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best way to solve that problem, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast. ...

> Nobody went out and did a survey about whether most credit card users would be willing to give up their frequent flyer miles in return for also losing the ability to dispute a transaction.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#714

Post by usernamefk »

ryanSrich wrote: post #642
oliv__ wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Hacker News' Law - The most negative comments receive the most amount of votes on any thread related to Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency.

ever wond2red why?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#715

Post by cyphertruck »

rpowers wrote: post #710
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 really glad someone can articulate what I've bee thinking for a long time. It started when I realized that bitcoin was being used to fuel dark markets then again when I saw that anyone was able to make a coin and pre-mine thousands before sharing with others struck with FOMO.

You can easily make rpowerscoin. But it won’t be bitcoin. And its existence will have negligible impact on bitcoin.

There have been 100,000 clones of bitcoin (according to someone who claimed to have counted)but none are genuinely successful. Even forks if bitcoin fail despite spending millions on propaganda.

Think there might be a reason?

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#716

Post by usernamefk »

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…

thanks for the comment. I totally agree. sadly, we are stuck with it...

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#717

Post by Held_der_Arbeit »

fredfoobar wrote: post #373
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'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.

Horsecrap everywhere!

We tried that, we switched to automobiles.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#718

Post by fredfoobar »

hisham_hm wrote: post #650
omginternets wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. I was poised to dismiss your comment as facetiousness, and then suddenly realized that you are exactly correct. Why indeed should we prefer cars over horses for most (but of course not all) applications? Aren't we as technologists always preaching the benefits of technological conservatism, minimalism and simplicity? Our environment has obviously changed in such a way that it's now difficult to re-intr…

fredfoobar _was_ being facetious. By his comments such as [1] and [2] it's clear that he's trying to attack other things in the world that happen to be both useful and pollutant, and induce a parallel between them and bitcoin — his implicit argument being that bitcoin supposedly a net-positive beneficial thing in spite of the pollution it causes. Whenever someone counters that assumption, the mask falls off and he's…

Indeed! you sound like eminent scholar in the area of "usefulness of things", clearly your opinions are free of bias. I tip my hat to you, you have unmasked me! I feel naked.

In all seriousness though, we should at least move to electric cars.

If that is acceptable we already have electric money (bitcoin), it'll fix most of our pollution problems. We don't have to worry about how much oil is being consumed to secure the petrodollar network. I've been waiting for a better argument against bitcoin for a long time, I haven't heard any yet.

Most people who criticize bitcoin don't even understand it fully. My belief is that as people look deeper into it, they will be convinced by themselves. It has been generally true among my friends, including myself. I have gone through those phases of criticism (energy usage, funds terror, governments will ban it, it will be hacked, quantum computers will destroy it). As a software engineer, I think the system is beautiful, if you are one by profession (or not), I implore you to study it.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#719

Post by cyphertruck »

noxer wrote: post #444
cyphertruck wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer with twenty years experience in this space and nearly as long studying the economics of it, I have yet to see a replacement for PoW that solves the problem that PoW solves. Proof of Work is trustless decentralization. Proof of stake is trusting the dudes who premined the coin and sold you a “fix for bitcoins inherent problem” to hype their ICO. If you were right, after 10 years one of those PoS currenc…

Its right in the message above. FBA is the result of researching how to make a bitcoin like system without PoW. PoS however is based on the ideas of PoW, it just moves the flaws, its not a solution. FBA was "invented/discovered" before PoS coins even existed. Essentially FBA is a distributed voting solution. Instead of let the person who has solved the PoW write the Tx in a block, everyone just votes on Tx order. The…

What you described doesn't even address the reason PoW exists. So, I’m sorry but it sounds like you are repeating something you heard without understanding the issues at hand. I suggest you read “There’s nothing cheaper than proof of work” by Paul Storzc

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#720

Post by 908087 »

suifbwish wrote: post #707
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 believe it takes 72 TERAWATTS running for 10 minutes to mine one bitcoin. How is that justifiable when we are slipping deeper into an environmental crisis?

Don't worry, the bitcoin "investment advisors" on social media all bought Teslas, so it's basically a wash.
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