Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sabotaging Bitcoin

blog.dshr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 224 posts

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#81

Post by nativeit »

fragmede wrote: post #22
Zaskoda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste. Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible. Because that's what everyone else is doing. With Bitcoin, you now exactly what your costs are and what your yields are. There's a clear threshold,…

> gas that's normally burned off at the well site Funny thing about that. Civilized governments put a stop to that, by fining flare-offs to make it economical to not do that.

Did they require the methane be captured? I thought flare-offs were done because the methane gas is something like 1000x worse than the CO2.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#82

Post by nativeit »

bujkopl wrote: post #45

This article is FUD. No one is spending $30B+ for an attack that gasp extends the required confirmations to a few hours until a re-org can be achieved and accounts settled. In fact, wiping out the derivative markets would be seen as a net-postive by most individual hodlers.

You forgot to do your own research and read the article.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#83

Post by TylerE »

patrickthebold wrote: post #78
TylerE wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is obviously false on it's face. If it were only worth pennies an ounce, numerous industries wouldn't be paying what they do for it. The fact that many industries value it at several thousand dollars an ounce is self-evident from their continued use of it.

This is interesting to think about: For gold I'd say the demand is coming from both industries and from people who want it as a store of value. If it was only used as an industrial chemical, then surely the price would drop because there would be less demand. Some bitcoin advocates will talk about how useful it is as a currency, and I wonder how much bitcoin is actually used for purposes other then to hope you can se…

If the price dropped, it would be even more in demand and reach equilibrium. Gold has several unique mechanical properties, being the most corrosion resistant metal and one of the most electrically conductive, as well as being able to be flattened into extremely thin sheets and drawn into extremely fine wire.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#84

Post by rationalist »

OutOfHere wrote: post #19

The answer to this problem is in the original Bitcoin whitepaper itself. It gives the formula for the required number of confirmations. The Monero PoW community has had to deal with such nonsense, as have other smaller PoW coins. With ε=1e-3, the expected number of 6 confirmations works only so long as the largest pool size does not exceed 12%. For a pool size of 30%, at least 24 confirmations should be required in B…

Bitcoin has a block/confirmation approximately every 10 minutes, and Monero every 2 minutes.

So 240 minutes for Bitcoin, and 98 minutes for Monero.

So even though Monero is more strict, it is still "faster".

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#85

Post by jksmith »

UltraSane wrote: post #74
beenBoutIT wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the near future every nation state will be vying for the largest stake of the BTC mining pie and the BTC race will be bigger than the Space Race and the Nuclear Arms Race combined and adjusted for inflation.

Why? BTC is not just worthless, it has negative value due to how much electricity it takes to securely mine new blocks.

Did you read the paper? There exists a technology that has purely enforceable property rights. What is that actually worth? I don't know.

Yeah yeah, I've read the arguments about liquidity issues, shutting down the rails, making it illegal to trade, etc. but that's beside the point and depends on a thousand future variables to play out. So I don't know if btc will make it or not, but I do know property rights mean everything to humans. They literally determine whether not one is a slave (I am my own property). So just the ability to have a technology enables pure property rights to a world where nobody really has enforceable property rights over anything seems pretty interesting to me.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#86

Post by nradov »

jksmith wrote: post #85
UltraSane wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? BTC is not just worthless, it has negative value due to how much electricity it takes to securely mine new blocks.

Did you read the paper? There exists a technology that has purely enforceable property rights. What is that actually worth? I don't know. Yeah yeah, I've read the arguments about liquidity issues, shutting down the rails, making it illegal to trade, etc. but that's beside the point and depends on a thousand future variables to play out. So I don't know if btc will make it or not, but I do know property rights mean ev…

Property rights are enforced with guns.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#87

Post by childintime »

UltraSane wrote: post #77
beenBoutIT wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting point is that any nation state or corporation can focus resources on either AI or BTC, but not both at the same time. BTC is a sure bet in the long run while AI is potentially capable of delivering a faster ROI with no hard guarantees. As BTC FOMO hits every country on Earth it's likely that AI will take a 100+ year backseat to massive state sponsored BTC operations. It's not hard to imagine a situatio…

"BTC is a sure bet in the long run " 7 transactions per second is NOT a sure bet.

And don't discount the negative sentiment around bitcoin as the nest of types that deserve to be completely wrecked financially, because they add no value to society, as in a Ponzi scheme. It seems inevitable to me this scheme is going to end some day and nobody is going to give a damn. It'll be the "Good Riddance Coin", filled with negative sentiment.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#88

Post by ycombinatrix »

cheschire wrote: post #47
ycombinatrix wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is the same thing. Everyone agrees that mining the next block is valuable.

Unless they didn’t. There’s nothing inherently valuable about crypto beyond what value people assign to it in their minds.

Okay, fine. Everyone involved** agrees that mining the next block is valuable.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#89

Post by ravenstine »

UltraSane wrote: post #74
beenBoutIT wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the near future every nation state will be vying for the largest stake of the BTC mining pie and the BTC race will be bigger than the Space Race and the Nuclear Arms Race combined and adjusted for inflation.

Why? BTC is not just worthless, it has negative value due to how much electricity it takes to securely mine new blocks.

That's like saying cars have negative value because of how much oil it takes to run them.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#90

Post by standeven »

ravenstine wrote: post #89
UltraSane wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? BTC is not just worthless, it has negative value due to how much electricity it takes to securely mine new blocks.

That's like saying cars have negative value because of how much oil it takes to run them.

But cars are useful.
Post reply on HN