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Bitcoin Is Time

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Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#971

Post by dang »

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…

Attacking another user like this will get you banned here. Accusations of shillage are not ok unless you have specific evidence and in that case you should be sending it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate. Internet cheap shots about astroturfing and shillage are explicitly against the site guidelines because they're so common, so toxic, and typically so completely wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#972

Post by andreygrehov »

kortilla wrote: post #237
andreygrehov wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is essentially a proxy for another currency. Yes, but this is only temporarily. It's like refactoring systems. You create a new system and a proxy and then have the old system communicate with the new one via the proxy (or vice versa). Eventually, the old system becomes obsolete, so you kill it and get rid of the proxy.

But there is no evidence Bitcoin will ever make that transition. Gold has been around forever and we still don’t transact with it.

Yes, but I foresee Bitcoin being used similar to how gold used to be used before.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#973

Post by spiralx »

Vecr wrote: post #825
sova wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dividing up a pie into smaller and smaller slices doesn't increase the amount of pie. It just lets people who haven't already taken a slice fight over ever smaller scraps.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#974

Post by noxer »

cyphertruck wrote: post #719
noxer wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Enlighten us please? Suggesting to read a book of which the title already suggests some completely irrelevant content about "cost" or PoW surely does not convince me or anyone. I dont care about the energy/cost or the fact that bitcoins may speed up the destruction of this planet by a incredible tiny tiny fraction that has zero effect on my life. I couldn't care less, and it wasn't part of my argument at all.

People can have an argument about that, its fine but mine wasn't so you cant debunk it by telling me to read a book that seems 100% irrelevant.

PoW was simply used to solve the double spending problem in a decentral way. Which is exactly what FBA solutions do without it. Solving the double spending in a decentral way is the key "invention" of bitcoin NOT PoW. PoW existed way way before, it was just used to create the solution to the problem it was not invested/discovered for bitcoin nor was it the key element.

People came up with different solutions solving the same double spending problem in a decentral way but without using PoW. Some solutions are objectively better regardless of energy consumption and other secondary properties. They are objectively better because they scale to high throughput, allow short block times, have a proper and path forward to improve these properties over time with very limited "risk" of causing forks for every proposed change.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#975

Post by croon »

ThomPete wrote: post #914
leereeves wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is far too volatile to be a good store of value. There are much more stable ways to protect savings against inflation.

And yet bitcoin have delivered just that since it's inception.

So have winning lottery tickets.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#976

Post by noxer »

cyphertruck wrote: post #724
noxer wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how there was no "environment" argument in the whole message but someone came alone an made sure to devaluate it anyway. The argument was that PoW can not not scale. Its an obvious objectively verifiable fact and its completely irrelevant what kind of environmental side effects bitoin has or will have in the future. For all we know it could run on fusion reactors and biodegradable ASICS only and it still would…

I don’t understand the recent preference for taking assertions and declaring them “obviously objectively verifiable fact”.... but that is a good indicator they are false. Bitcoin can and has scaled. And that is a fact, from Segwit and Taproot to Lightning the capacity and cost have improved dramatically.

Last time I checked block time was 10 min just like 10 years ago. (obviously objectively verifiable fact) Last time I checked max TPS was like 7 or something so it has like what doubled in the last years? (obviously objectively verifiable fact) LN is forever beta (obviously objectively verifiable fact) and does not even address bitcoins scalability problem. It just off loads Tx to reduce on-chain Tx. (obviously objectively verifiable fact) That does not make bitcoin any better. (obviously objectively verifiable fact) Just like Wrapped Bitcoin does not make bitcoin any better but it did reduce load on the chain so thanks to WBTC the chain inst as much fu**ed as in 2017 yet. (obviously objectively verifiable fact)

Compared to FBA solutions with block times in the single digit seconds and TPS way over 1000 These improvements are as irrelevant as its gets. There is no proposed way to make bitcoin scale to any level that would make it useful on a global scale. And the fun part is, even a proposal that could do this would not go trough. It would just lead to another fork.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#977

Post by spiralx »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #63
joosters wrote: post #8

Time is money. Bitcoin is wasted time. And wasted money. And wasted energy.

It takes 1/10th the time to initiate a funds transfer via crypto (eg. Bitcoin) as it does to effect the same wire transfer or ACH using most banks's treasury management systems. This, and the fees can be less depending on the token used; but are considerably less if the transfer is cross-currency. The transit time is about the same if BTC is used, less if one were to use XLM (Stellar) for example.

Money transfers take less than 10 seconds where I am, don't project your countries antiquated banking systems onto the rest of the world.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#978

Post by noxer »

olah_1 wrote: post #689
noxer wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No clue where you got that from but satoshi expressed in his emails that he was under the impression that bitcoin would scale on its own in the early days. Just like he tough that millions of people would us their desktop to mine and therefore decentralization would only ever increase over time.

> No clue where you got that from "Most transactions cancel out at the account level. The binks demand bitcoins of each other only because they don't want to hold account money for too long. So a relatively small amount of bitcoins infrequently transacted can support a somewhat larger amount of account money frequently transacted." https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/th... > satoshi expressed in…

This is simply not possible on bitcoin unless you have wallets holding money from many people. At which point you no longer own your wallet.

There is no way Tx of average humans would significantly cancel out within the time of a block. Thats why LN just makes the time to settlement "infinite" and that's why it partially increases centralization again to cancel out more Tx. If that was the goal it could have been implemented in layer 1.

Anyway all that aside, lets just assume LN would work as perfectly as the devs hope it will do one day. Its sill way worse than existing FBA solutions that can handle most of this on layer 1 directly and already have fully working second layer (payment channels) implemented. Even if bitcoin and LN could eventually provide a similar good solution, whats the point if it already exists and why would anyone assume the existing solutions stop evolving while bitcoin and LN slowly catches up? If we assume LN has reached all its goals in 10 years it also means the goals are outdated by 10 years.

We can arguing about what LN may be capable of doing one day but its never gonna be a valid argument against solution that deliver today.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#979

Post by noxer »

cyphertruck wrote: post #727
noxer wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No clue where you got that from but satoshi expressed in his emails that he was under the impression that bitcoin would scale on its own in the early days. Just like he tough that millions of people would us their desktop to mine and therefore decentralization would only ever increase over time.

Lightning network is just a brand name for the cryptography that was needed to make Satoshi’s payment channels work. So, while Satoshi’s opinion isnt really relevant to bitcoin’s future, since you brought it up, Satoshi clearly didn't think layer one was the inly way yo go.

That right, its not relevant. He was wrong on many tings and right on many others. Still what LN may or may not be able to deliver is also not relevant as an argument against existing solutions that deliver today.

Re: Bitcoin Is Time

#980

Post by noxer »

cyphertruck wrote: post #730
noxer wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LN fundamentally changes nothing. Its still uses bitcoin Tx it just combines many Tx and does the on-chain settlement at a later point thus reducing the number of on-chain Tx increases speed and reduces fees. But if we reduce Tx on the chain we dont solve scalability we just bump into the limits a little later. LN on a global scale would still need orders or magnitude more on-chain Tx then possible. And if LN would a…

“ LN fundamentally changes nothing. Its still uses bitcoin Tx it just combines many Tx and does the on-chain settlement at a later point thus reducing the number of on-chain Tx increases speed and reduces fees.” That’s changing everything.

Ever other system could (and does) use this as well to boost throughput by reducing speed. Or like LN does by looking up funds in advance to increase speed again. Its always gonna be way less efficient than having order of magnitude faster layer 1. and only offload micro Tx to the second layer.

Also increases cost because you add additional parties in the system who wants to get paid for providing the service and liquidity. It simply can not provide a better service in the end.

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