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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#821

Post by Uptrenda »

I'm so sick of these profound-sounding blog posts that take 1 million words to say precisely jack shit. Yes, the key innovation around Bitcoin was to order events. You can call this 'time' if you want. This is literally the most obvious thing you can say about the system. It's so obvious in fact that it's in the introduction section to the Bitcoin whitepaper. Here is the entire blog post written much shorter and more precisely by Satoshi:

'In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions.'

Not trying to be elitist but if you find this topic new then you probably also find Bitcoin's technical workings new. Since it's now more than a decade old I don't find this a very topical inclusion for a 'news' site.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#822

Post by BLKNSLVR »

99_00 wrote: post #668
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you describe quite well the fundamental reasons bitcoin was created.

Everything created by people was created for a reason. Having a reason for existing doesn't mean anything.

I disagree 100%. Having a reason for existing is, literally, it's meaning.

Something may become meaningless over time if the landscape changes to undermine the reasons for existence, but that underscores the point that 'reason for existence' is another way of saying 'it means something'.

Bitcoin's reason for existence was the bank bailouts of 2008. It has found supplemental reason in the current economic climate of quantitative easing. That means everything.

"Having a reason for existing doesn't mean anything" is an absurd statement.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#823

Post by qyi »

Uptrenda wrote: post #821

I'm so sick of these profound-sounding blog posts that take 1 million words to say precisely jack shit. Yes, the key innovation around Bitcoin was to order events. You can call this 'time' if you want. This is literally the most obvious thing you can say about the system. It's so obvious in fact that it's in the introduction section to the Bitcoin whitepaper. Here is the entire blog post written much shorter and more…

It was easier for me. With JS disabled it's just a blank page.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#824

Post by yurielt »

hannasanarion wrote: post #652
yurielt wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Implying electronic banking can do anything about inflation Don’t be so dishonest

Want a deflationary monetary policy? Vote for it. Technology isn't going to solve the problem for you. Also, deflationary monetary policy is insane and nobody should want it. Economies grow from continuous re-investment and commerce, not from people stashing away their money and watching its value increase for no reason. edit: also, the fact that bitcoin is deflationary is entirely incidental, that was just Nakamoto'…

What mainstream candidate in the last two elections had a deflationary monetary policy? ROn Paul was the last candidate with something relatively close to that. That being said the idea that I want a deflationary policy on cash is ridiculous, but I want a deflationary policy on my semiliquid investments. BItcoin does that. >It would have been just as easy to make bitcoin highly inflationary. Yeah but then nobody would have liked it. There is definitively nothing wrong with two different kinds of cash existing in a system, one purely liquid one semiliquid. Again please do not be dishonest. There are very specific reasons that make bitcoing attractive. Acting as if electronic banking deals with what bitcoin is intended to solve, is an extremely dishonest way of framing things.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#825

Post by Vecr »

sova wrote: post #802
arbawk wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the Bitcoin Standard or Layered Money to get a sense of what money is and how your notions are quite far from the truth, although delivered with feverish confidence. BTC is infinitely divisible, and so can be used as currency. Can you give an example where its capped supply would cause an issue? Bitcoin is backed by proof of work. Money backed by entities are liabilities, which is a bug and not a feat…

I do not disagree that BTC is a great store of value, I disagree that it is a "currency." Which is usually what the term "money" denotes. BTC in particular has long transaction verification times that are growing longer. >Can you give an example where its capped supply would cause an issue? To be useful as a day-to-day currency there needs to be a balance between inflation and value. Currency works best when people a…

That's correct right now, but it would not be too controversial to divide up sats into something smaller, as no one's quantity related to the total limit would change. Lightning supports smaller units that get rounded out at settlement.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#826

Post by arbawk »

sova wrote: post #802
arbawk wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the Bitcoin Standard or Layered Money to get a sense of what money is and how your notions are quite far from the truth, although delivered with feverish confidence. BTC is infinitely divisible, and so can be used as currency. Can you give an example where its capped supply would cause an issue? Bitcoin is backed by proof of work. Money backed by entities are liabilities, which is a bug and not a feat…

I do not disagree that BTC is a great store of value, I disagree that it is a "currency." Which is usually what the term "money" denotes. BTC in particular has long transaction verification times that are growing longer. >Can you give an example where its capped supply would cause an issue? To be useful as a day-to-day currency there needs to be a balance between inflation and value. Currency works best when people a…

Money is defined as (1) a store of value, (2) a medium of exchange, and (3) a unit of account.

Bitcoin is still in its infancy phase tackling problem (1). (2) Will come once enough people value it to accept it as money, which hasn't happened yet. (3) is further still.

You claim we should buy goods and services because otherwise our hard-spent time will disappear.

I claim this is not the natural order of things, only what inflationists want you to believe to justify what is a unilateral tax and re-distribution of wealth (similar to the dilution that occurs in fund-raising). In a free market, we should buy these things because we need them and want them enough to exchange our hard-earned money for them, not because of the fear that our previous work/stored energy is slipping away.

The things you wouldn't buy would be things you wouldn't need. Perhaps we can return to a state where we don't spend money we don't have on status symbols and asset-hoarding. That, plus funding wars, are among the results of putting money supply in government hands. Bitcoin actually provides a way out of this mess.

> BTC is not "infinitely divisible."

If it were to become significantly more valuable, sub-Satoshi denominations will be added.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#827

Post by bugzz »

SCUSKU wrote: post #768
hossbeast wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem you're going to run into with this argument is that people like cars, like to drive them, and want to own them.

That may be the case for some car fanatics, but by and large the average person simply wants easy and flexible transportation. If public transportation were better, lots of people would opt to take the local train/bus/ride share because it would be a fraction of the cost, with ideally only slightly more friction as a passenger.

For commuting to work, sure. But if you are going to get groceries for your family or buy anything large (furniture, TV, lumber, etc), it's very nice to use car.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#828

Post by fireeyed »

hannasanarion wrote: post #544
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.

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…

> because dense urban development, public transit, walking, and cycling is better

Why is dense urban development better ? I could cite 100 studies why it’s not better not to mention all the people who hate living in “dense” living conditions

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#829

Post by teeblo »

UncleMeat wrote: post #517
ta1234567890 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just described the stock market. The only difference is that before, there were only a handful of people with the power and tools to manipulate it (ie. Wall Street), whereas now, due to the power of the Internet and social networks, masses of people are able to coordinate to achieve similar effects. In a way, what has been happening lately, is the democratization of the power to game the system. Which doesn’t mea…

The stock market is a place to purchase productive assets. That share I own represents actual work done by human beings to produce goods and services. That BTC I own represents an immutable thing that itself does nothing.

> That BTC I own represents an immutable thing that itself does nothing.

Part of BTC's value is probably the hope (speculation) that it will one day be used as an alternative payment system / store of value / whatever, and that will cause it to maintain value. As of right now, a share of AMZN itself does virtually nothing either. Its value lies in the hope (speculation) that one day Amazon will pay us money for holding it.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#830

Post by dgreensp »

It's way more interesting to look at the nuance and downsides of how Bitcoin works than to merely marvel, awe-struck at the concept of a distributed ledger.

It's been a few years since I was reading in-depth about Bitcoin, and I don't have references, but off the top of my head:

* It's bad for the environment, "wasting" so much electricity on more and more literal busywork... or is it? Apparently it depends where your electricity is coming from (it had better be cheap if you want to make money mining!) and whether you are actually causing additional electricity to be generated or just consuming surplus, or so I've heard.

* Control and power over Bitcoin is not all that distributed in practice. Mining a block would take prohibitively long for an individual, so there are mining pools where participants share in the spoils. Mining pools and exchanges have a lot of power. Just as the infrastructure of the Internet is run by big telecommunications companies whose routers talk to each other, there are various major players that make Bitcoin run, and there are occasionally decisions affecting the future and fate of Bitcoin, and Bitcoin politics, like disputes over protocols.

* In theory, Bitcoin is hard to fraudulently "take over" because you'd have to have more computing power than the rest of the miners combined, but if you control mining pools, or are China or something, I believe you could do it (and no one would necessarily know?).

* The rise of Bitcoin as a currency (not just a ledger/clock) whose value seems to just go up and up raises a lot of questions (IMO) about whether this is a good property of a distributed ledger system.

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