Bitcoin Forum

Boy...not really.  My suggestion (which I made earlier) is to try to leverage Bitcoin's success in development of an architecture which really focuses on scalabity (while retaining the 'p2p' nature as at least I classify it.)  The key would be that a common vision is shared between the solutions and there is general cooperation.

This could take the form of simple sharding of a very Bitcoin-like protocol in which the shards are manageable at an entry-level and value is transferred between shards in more of a 'backbone network'.  An individual could still do a lot of transactions as today by choosing their shards carefully, particularly if their interaction was with vendors who were 'in' a lot of shards.

A solution which I have put some thought into is to have an extremely stripped-down and lightened up varient of Bitcoin with some extensions which could realistically be expected to live in perpetuity and would serve as a trusted 'reserve currency' upon which shards of various form are built.  I started to describe some of my earlier 'thought experiments' as http://bakcoin.org (http://bakcoin.org) if anyone is interested.  The advantage of such a solution is that it could perhaps avoid the need for a 'backbone network' at all.  Maybe.

I ment that we can't take it down, and detractors are going to find a way to replicate this even if it didn't exist.


Whatever will be will be.

Reading this made me think of this....

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/2012-05-25/


I say Stratum is a better plan, but whatever.  I really wasn't asking for your ideas, only checking to see if you had any.  Now take those ideas and fork the bitcoin code.  Start your new & imporoved altcoin, and we shall see.  If you are right, everyone here, including myself, will eventually be using your altcoin and you will have been the ultimate early adopter.  I, for one, don't begrudge Satoshi his early mining gains, nor would I begrudge yours if you turn out to be correct.  But I don't thingk that you're correct, so I'll hang out here for a while longer.

I went to bakcoin.org and read your ideas.  I hope you're not an econ undergrad, but I suspect that you are.  There is nothing like a little knowledge unconnected with experience to beget such a bad idea.  But don't feel like I'm belittling your ideas, sometimes us old guys have to eat crow.  A deliberately deflationary (and punative) cryptocurrency might have a niche.  Go out and make it, and let the free market decide.

EDIT: On page #3 you refer to the 'monolithic' nature of bitcoin.  I don't think that word means what you think that it means.

EDIT2: What is your understanding of what a 'supernode' would look like in a future with bitcoin exceeding the transaction rates of Visa?  And under what conditions could the successful growth of bitcoin to that transaction level directly lead to it's failure?

Heh.  Nope.  Engineer.  No interest in economics until maybe 10 years ago when I started to have money to figure out what to do with (though thinking back a long long time ago, I guess I did take an interest in econ 101 and got the top grade...mostly because I had not studied and thought I was behind so I put some dedicated focus on it for a few days.  But it was a fairly shitty university anyway without much competition at that level.)

As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all.  A lot of the material (both presented and not yet presented) is fairly orthogonal.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?  That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

The basic idea from an engineering point of view is that one starts with a full set of baggage then loses it over time.


Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.

And why would that be helpful in your view?


Wow.  Gresham's law in inverse.  I don't know how to respond to that.  I'm not even sure that I should other than 'corrolation is not causation'.

I see the opposite as an Achilles heal of Bitcoin in some ways. A controlling factor in it's scaling and a regrettable factor dictating it's evolution.


It's arguably a mistake to label 'bakcoin' as a form of money...and certainly a mistake to think of it as one in any normal conception of the word.

Okay, you see it.  Help me see what you see.  Do you hear voices too?  Just because you see it doesn't make it real.  Explain.


And how would non-money work as a reserve currency?

this is funny. i'm enjoying this :D

More and more people complaining about a blockchain size, load ave, etc.  That's in the here and now with Bitcoin being .0001% the size that it could be called upon to be.  Or less.

Beyond that:  More people showing concern about a 'network backbone' (I included.)  Theories about 'supernodes' with datacenter class network connectivity with hundreds of cores and load balances distributing the workload to them.  And even that only handles what I would consider relatively modest Bitcoin utilization in a more global view.  Beyond that I've not heard of anyone having any ideas.


Anything cold serve as a 'reserve currency' that met the demands of those using it.  In this case I think that the most critical aspect would be that people trust it.  A good part of my design philosophy here is to reduce the reason for people _not_ to trust it and/or trust it more than other things as a basis for notation.

My document currently does not expand on the concept that all of the 'sponsored exchange currencies' may gain some significant advantages by sharing the workload or supporting bakcoin.  For instance, they can use it as a free-form notepad (of modest size) and everyone will be securing everyone else's notes.  So, there may be other advantages that gold or seashells don't really provide.

It's not funny, it's a market being regulated by strictly market consumers (i.e. a free market working).

A consumer spotted something he has a potential issue with and raised this issue with the rest of the market and now the consumers are all weighing in with their own concerns and reassurances. If the issue is indeed something the consensus feels needs action to be addressed, it will get addressed and if it's not it wont, or maybe partially both and all this will happen without any force involved and without anyone ruling over anyone else.

Btw I'm not saying the market will get it right, but it sure has heck of better chance than some fallible bureaucrat somewhere leeching money stolen from people.

aw come on hazek.  we know each other better now.  i'm just havin fun watching what i don't have the time to do myself  :D

Which is the driving force for 1) development and adoption of light & blockchainless clients 2) Stratum and other similar overlay networks such as is used by blockchainless clients (BitcoinSpinner) 3) full implimentation of Satoshi's protocol, in particular the parts that support independent light clients without an overlay network.


I've brought up those concerns years ago myself, long before the bitcoin wiki existed, much less had a 'scalability' section.  You're far from the first to bring these issues up.  Don't get me wrong, the practical scalability of the network is a real issue, and just saying "the market will find a way" isn't really good enough, but there are very smart people that have and are working on those issues.


Really?  Never heard of any alternative ideas?  I've personally mentioned Stratum three times in this thread just this week.  I also mentioned BitcoinSpinner & similar clients in this thread; which despite your views actually is the market responding to your issue of scalability.  You  might not like the idea of some guy  running such a server to aid blockchainless clients because you consider it centralization, but have you ever considered running your own Stratum server?  Do I need to add a link so that you can find it?


That's true enough, taken alone.  usually such need-meeting things have a set of common characteristics that lead most people to collectively refer to such things as "money".  So deliberately creating a currency that is the reverse of good money seems like a poor design decision.


So that I am clear on this, are you trying to move the trust metric away from the unit of currency?  Bitcoin tries to eleminate the need for trusted intermediaries and onto the collective protocol & network; are you trying to create a currency that no one trusts for anything or are you trying to move the trust onto the exchanges that would be using bakcoin to start their own smaller cryptocurrencies?


I see a number of reasons that I wouldn't trust it for anything, based on just your implied design.  If I, as an end user wouldn't trust it as a medium of exchange, why would I trust an exchange that used it as a backing for their own vanity cryptocurrency?  In turn, why should the exchanges trust it, or each other?

my gaud Moonshadow; you have the patience of Job  ;)

Got busy at work and just now saw your edits.  I see your other post as well, and owe at least an analysis of these stratum and such things before responding.  To say the honest truth, I've not been all that interested in crypto-currencies for a while, but our conversation is re-sparking my interest to some extent.


I remember struggling with a word to use there.  What I meant to indicate is, among other things, that as currently implemented there is one and only one block chain for Bitcoin.  While it is conducive to significant pruning and optimization, all of the load of the entire economy must, by necessity, pass through this artifact.


As I've heard it described, a load balancer would accept transactions and distribute them to processing cores to perform the workload which would otherwise swamp one core.  IIRC, that is fairly well described in the 'scaling' article.

There is no particular rocket science behind such an architecture.  As long as the workload is not terribly sequence sensitive it's a fairly simple solution.  And the nature of the algorithms employed by most load balancers allow them to work at close to wire speed of most media.  They can even do packet analysis, filtering, and modification (over and above what their job requires) at near wire speed.  Even properly designed deep packet operations can be amazingly efficient (which goes some distance toward explaining why I fear actively hostile infrastructure providers.)

There are several big problems here from my point of view:

1) Moore's Law notwithstanding, it will be a fair bit of time before such technology is within reasonable grasp of Joe Sixpack, and longer yet before he's running such a setup in his garage.

2) If/when the transaction load swamps what can reasonable be expected on readily available media (say 10G at this point) it'll be back to the drawing board.  Probably before that since the blockchain itself would be at some risk if it were maintained exclusively in something like memcached.

There is only one truth, however that truth is presently replicated in 10K+ places.  But for the sake of argument, let's consider this...


Not, in fact, correct.  The 'light' clients that I have been referring to are also mentioned in Satoshi's white paper.  Presently the network sends the entire block as a whole digital artifact, but that isn't necessary.  The protocol permits a block header, merkle tree, and transactions to be transmitted as indepedent digital artifacts.  This small change in the network implimentation of the protocol would go a long way towards reducing redundency and reducing bandwidth.  It would also permit a light client to request only the headers, merkle tree & only the transactions that contain addresses that concern itself.  Furthermore, full nodes on the edge of the network (think middle Africa) can receive the blocks in a digital stream instead of participating in the full netowrk.  There are several different modals permitted by the protocol than jsut what is presently dominate.  The network is the way it is right now because that core backbone netowrk is required, but it doesn't need to remain the only way to get the blocks.


That was also a deliberately extreme example of a workable solution.  The more likley result would be a high end rack mount server with a gigibit service & a cryptographic hardware co-porocessing unit to off-load the burdens of transaction verifications.  This only applies to nodes that would be taking the full traffic of the bitcoin netowrk in a future that puts bitcoin as larger than the economy of the US, which woudl be comparable to drinking from a firehose.  This kind of node verifies everything that passes through it's control before being forwarded to it's many peers.  It's not necessary for every node to verify the validity of a transaction before forwarding it, by default a lightweight client couldn't verify anything.  All nodes do that now because all full clients are supernodes.  Again, there is nothing that says you can't continue to do so till the end of time, but it's not necessary for anyone besides miners or the truly paranoid.

Well, my 4 year old android cell phone has more processing power than the most powerful Cray available 30 years ago.  That said, why does Joe Sick Pack need to run a full client(supernode) himself?  Why can't he hire a service to act in his behalf?  Or if he doesn't want to trust some corporation to track his balances (such as BitcoinSpinner) what stops him from joining or starting a co-op to do that for him?  Why is it full client or bust?


Why?  Why would that be 'back to the drawing board'?  I don't think that we will ever get there because of the incentives involved with transaction fees, but what if we did?  Full time pruning of teh blockchain puts a high end limit to just how large the blockchain can become without each and every new transaction resulting in the pruning of some previous transaction.  So far, it's impossible for any transaction on the main network with less than a single Satoshi, and likewise impossible for the transaction fee to be less than a single Satoshi.  Overlay netowrks are destined to take much of this traffic burden off the main netowrk in an effort to avoid transaction fees and bundle mutiple transactions into a single send-to-many transaction to settle up at the end of the business day.

Sounds to me like this "bakcoin" thing IS bitcoin in its current common use, with fiat currency playing the role of your exchange currencies.

?? How?

Certain of your points are well taken and I'm honestly not trying to discount them, but I think it worthwhile to cut to the chase real quick.  I'll try to get back to some of them.

I can envision a plausible and very high capacity solution where peers (of a high-caliber variety) offset the load by juggling the processing of block and reduction of them to Merkle trees, and also back-fill necessary transaction details on an as-needed basis.  After observing the BIP16/17 struggles, I'm not holding my breath for such a solution to materialize as a proven thing, nor am I looking forward to making the transition...but I'm drifting back toward being a bit more of a troll than I wish to be at this time...

To answer your bolded question:  "Because we can."

I felt a high degree of confidence in Bitcoin when I owned and controlled the entire block-chain and it was sitting on my desk.  Beyond the perception that this is what was mainly advertised, I naturally prefer the simplest solution possible to meet an objective.  All of my engineering experience indicates that this is the most reliable way to achieve the results that I want.  And my wants of a crypto-currency is mostly that I can use it reliably and not get cheated.

I cannot say that I find a 'one-world' crypto-currency to be much more palatable than a 'one-world' fiat currency, and that is even more the case if utilization is moderated by transaction fees to some extent.  Beyond that, I see no really compelling win and a lot of dis-advantages in terms of complexity and flexibility by pushing the envelop in order to achieve one.  The one argument for it that I see as highly compelling is the 'strength in numbers' argument.  My idea of coupling a dynamic collection of crypto-currencies only just tightly enough to enjoy the strength part but not tightly enough to encumber one another's being otherwise reflects this.

...big snip...

Snip - planning to get back to these points later...for better or worse depending on my mood...


It is a misnomer to think of 'bakcoin' as money or currency at all.  If anything, it is simply a notational instrument that helps gauge the popularity of crypto-currency solutions.


The bold part is as close as one can come to encapsulating the very core goal of the project.

The 'exchanges' part are not really a factor, and not of much interest to me personally.  The free market will work things out in this respect.  Hopefully most people who are particularly interested in exchanges would not find bakcoin very appealing and would mainly ignore it.


Trust in just about anything has a significant 'monkey see, monkey do' component.  That's why Au which is actually quite useless is highly sought after.  (Parenthetically, I contend that the very simple nature of a chunk of gold has more than a little to do with it's reliability and thus the trust that it can muster.  This gets back to my 'simpler is better' philosophy.)

Trust can evaporate very quickly if people get burnt by trusting something, or see other monkeys getting burnt.  Indeed, my trust in many of the efforts to centralize control of masses of BTC value is quite low due to a fairly impressive legacy of fail here.  Similarly, I have more than a small amount of suspicion of those who make a profit by snatching fractions of BTC as they pass through time and space.  That renders the Bitcoin solution close to par with existing fiat solutions at a functional level and from the standpoint of the user (me.)

Yes, I considered jumping on-board and gearing up to run transfer nodes in a datacenter for fun and profit.  I still might, but the reality is that it is not my thing and I believe I would feel better about applying any effort I might put into crypto-currencies in a different direction.

So, if the exchanges are issuing their own cryptocurrencies backed with bakcoin, how does that make them any different than a central bank?


While gold has been largely useless for any other reason than money or to make pretty things for women for most of the 6000 years it's been in use, this is no longer true.  It's not used in industry not because it doesn't have real uses for it's unique physical characteristics, but because it's monetary value prices it outside of those uses.  It's actually more abundent in our modern world than silver, because silver has significant industrial uses that largely cannot be substituted for less than the market value of the silver.  If the monetary value of gold were to ever crash completely, gold would hit the open market for a great many products.


Those were all failures of centralization, not of bitcoin.  Those would tend to limit the trend towards centralization, begetting more paranoid users like yourself who seek other solutions.  This is a feature, not a bug.


You're going to have to explain that one.  Because user can choose to offer a transaction fee means that bitcoin is no differant than fiat systems?  Really?  You do know that you don't actually have to pay those fees, right?


To each his own.  Honestly I hope you do get your altcoin going, because I truely believe that every one of us are here for a purpose; and if you can't be an example you might as well be a warning.

Prove it.

Huh?  Exchanges have nothing to do with issuing crypto-currencies any more than they currently do for Bitcoin.  That's the job of designers and communities which interact with the designers (voluntarily in my idealized conception of things.) 


That kind of makes my point.


Don't hold your breath.  I've a very short attention span and would need to significantly develop certain skills which I lack.

Really my main goal with 'bakcoin.org' is to help break out a few folks who might have fallen into the old tunnel vision trap and get them to consider the possibility of a wider perspective.  I'd be content to achieve simply that, but would be generally proud of doing something more so who knows what the future holds.

Not necessary.  Among the things that Bitcoin has done for the world, and for which I have the utmost respect, is exactly this.

Wouldn't that then make the designers the new central bankers?



Sure seems that you've already spent a great deal of time just on the website.


Based upon what I've seen thus far, i would have to say that I'm of the opinion that you have failed in this endeavor.

You're going to have to prove that you can do it without supernodes, because bitcoin certainly hasn't displayed that capacity.  Again, full nodes are supernodes; so I want to know how you can create a cryptocurrency to compete with bitcoin without full nodes and without further centrallization.  I say it's not possible, and want you to prove your statement that you can.

'close to par on a functional level' -ne (not equal) 'no different than'.

I can see a fairly high probability that you can 'choose' not to pay the transfer fee and get very poor service, if any, as a result.  Eventually.  Such a situation would be nearly inevitable if the barrier to entry for running transfer nodes is high, the cost is non-trivial, and it becomes practical only in select geo-political environments.

So the argument would effectively apply to Mexico.  Nothing particularly wrong there because one can 'choose' to pay off the street cop.  Or you can 'choose' not to and go through the justice system...if you are lucky.  Just the free market at work.

As long as my i386 router can be a full peer in the p2p network, I don't give a damn what it is called.

Bitcoin in it's present form supports a surprising number of enthusisest in our community just fine and still has significant room to grow in it's present 'undeveloped' form.  If the flexibility existed to do some non-trivial tweaks to the protocol that could likely add significantly to it's life expectancy.

My solution to the problem is simply to break the economies into parts which fit what the users might find comfortable, and I contend that these can be of sufficient size to meet most of an individuals needs.

While it is kinda cool to have my Skittles purchase live alongside someone's goat cheese sale in Mongolia, there is no compelling advantage, and almost no plausible advantage, to me as a user.  If it means pushing the monetary solution into what I and at least some others consider to be risky contortions, the choice for me is a clear one.  Given that choices exist of course.  I did document an expectation that a large contingent of Bitcoin community would resist with vigor and for a variety of reasons.

It feels as though you've flipflopped on the arguments.. What exactly is your point again?

No more an no less than Satoshi, Gavin, and co are with Bitcoin.


Couple of afternoons + a few minutes to register the domain.

Most of the work was done in the shower.


Time will tell.  Actually it probably won't.  What I allude to is probably not the kind of thing which will have an obvious outward facing marker.

As I've already mentioned, such flexibility not only exists, it was part of the original protocol from the beginning, those 'tweeks' are just not part of the running code at this time.


That sounds fine, but you don't offer a how.


What stops any major vendor from using bitcoin as a backing for a store currency?  After all, that's exactly what gift cards & store credit are, store currencies that are fixed to & backed by the US $.  WalMart could do this with bitcoin tomorow, permitting bitcoin users to submit bitcoins into a website for store credit onto a gift card thus bundling as many transactions that the user desires to use that card for into the single bitcoin transaction that placed the credit onto the card.  This solves teh problem with regard to scalibility, locality, transaction fees & clearing delays with bitcoin proper; at the expense of a 'local' centralization in the sense that one must trust walmart to ack honorableley with as much value as one is willing to trust them with, yet this method doesn't require some new & untested (much less undeveloped) proposal.


For a varity of valid reasons, I should add.  Not simply FUD.

Bullshit.  Neither Gavin nor Satoshi have it in their power to create bitcoins at will against the consent of the current community, which neither could ever hope to garner.  While any version of linden dollars or WoW gold, whether officially backed with something else or not, can be created in mass by whomever has direct root access to the server that manages that currency.


Whatever that means, I most certainly do not want further details.


I don't even know what that means.

In this respect (among many others) Satoshi/Gavin/et-al have set a very workable example for the relationship between the 'designers' and the 'user community'.  For this reason it is most likely that it would serve as the model for other such efforts.  Or at least efforts which are likely to go anywhere.

Not sure where you got the idea that there is anything particularly different in my conception of the various exchange currencies (or even 'bakcoin', for that matter) compared to Bitcoin.

It's not a question of example.  They literally cannot do what a central banker could do.


I didn't, but you're views one how a bakcoin supported cryptocurrency should work is inmaterial, what matters in that regard is the views & moral fortitude of the developers of said backed currency.  So it's reasonable for me to assume the lowest common denominator.

And if you intended to have multiple altcoins that were very similar to bitcoin, why not use bitcoin?  If it;s too big to be a peer, why would being a peer in a smaller pond be more secure than being an end user in the bitocoin ocean?

I think that this one is officially beaten to death.  I cannot form a meaningful response to such a deep misunderstanding of what I'm trying to say here.


I think you are gravely ignorant of what gives opens-source it's strength.  Satoshi could be an Illuminati shape-shifter and Gavin an evil rat bastard and it would make no difference to Bitcoin in the here and now.  The code is available for peer review and analysis, and Bitcoin is interesting enough that it's undergone it's fair share.

Beyond that, a well designed crypto-currency (and a lot of other things) will be pretty hardened against exploitation by 'insiders' by the definition of a good design if nothing else.  Bitcoin is this way, and has set a high bar which will almost have to be followed by similar cryto-currencies which may come after.  If they are going to be successful anyway.  SolidCoin seemed, in the cursory glance I had at it, to have deviated significantly and was quite unsuccessful (by my definition which basically comes down to whether users found it useful or not.)


'very similar' leave a lot of wiggle-room which is or great interest to users.  Some of these which come to mind include:

 - mining style (mem vs. ops meaning can most users compete with pro miners.)
 - cycle frequency (10 min?  60min? etc.)
 - voting rights (if voting is implemented.)
 - transaction fees.
 - true user-level p2p or no.
 - convertibility (if convertibility to backing store is a design feature...and there exists a backing store.)

etc, etc, etc.  Most or all of these things have trade-offs.  Having multiple experiments along different lines is very conducive to evolution toward design balances which work for the end-user.

Were I to have choices, I believe that I (and most users) would have the ability to:

 - seperate the wheat from the chaff in terms determining if something is a scamcoin or not.

 - choose several, if not many, different crypto-currencies for different uses depending on the needs I happened to have.

edit: fix quotes

Granted.  I still have no idea what you've been trying to say.


Even if Bkcoin were open source, what makes you assume the currencies that use it for backing would be?  What mechanism would exist to ensure that such currencies were up to your standards?  From what I can tell, nothing.  What would happen if some scammer managed to get the necessary Bakcoin to start a currency, bootstrapped a small economy, and then raped it.  What prevents said scammer from absconding with the Bakcoin as well as parsiticly destroy his little fiefdom?  Really, I'm not seing what you're seeing; and since I'm far from ignorant about such matters despite your beliefs, I can hazard a guess that no one but you can see what yor're seeing.


Again, what says that such currencies would be well designed, even if they are both open source & designed by the well intended?

And there wre many predictable reasons why Solidcoin failed so badly.  Not the least of which was a lack of transparency.


Okay, but how would such features be implementd?  And if you don't know how, how would Bakcoin contribute to their success in quantifiable way?  Seriously, I'm not trolling; I really want to know how you think that this could work.  You're website is sparse on the details and thus far so have you been.

tvbcof has an exasperating style of writing that is filled with assumptions and accusations that are backed by inexplicable and obfuscatory reasoning.  believe me, i know.

Firstly, open-source is a no-brainer given for a lot of things, and this one in particular.

Various things:

 - 1)  It would provide services which were hardened by the sum total of the crypto-currencies using the solution.  Thus it does not become as much of a concern to have a 'just add water' userbase which can withstand vigorous 51% style attacks.

 - 2)  The reasons for 'investing' in a proposed crypto-currency solution would tend to be less about making the investors rich and thus more about other merits that the solution might promise.  I would anticipate that holders of BKC would have a genuine interest in the science of economies more than simply a desire to enrich themselves (because, as I've documented, BKC is not very good at doing that.)  Thus users can use BKC investor interest as a gauge of the value of the exchange crypto-currency.  As I've documented, 'popularity' of an exchange crypto-currency is what keeps BKC investors from losing their shirts so they have a natural alliance with the users in some ways.


I've documented that the entire ownerbase of BKC would have the ability to vote about certain things, and one of them was whether to allow a slot for a newly proposed exchange crypto-currency.  Some obvious scamcoin would be unlikely to make the cut.

I stress that it is a group decision of the BKC holders and not the developers.  Just like Bitcoin, there is no 'my standards' so that is a mute question.  This particular thing may not be a majority rules vote.  It is, in fact, a threat to BKC holders to allow a promising new EC-C in.  If that became a problem it might be more of a veto-power mechanism to make this particular decision.


Sad day.  Lessons would probably be learned about how to recognize and mitigate against such a thing in the future.


It would probably be somewhat rare that the entire BKC backing for an EC-C would be from one owner, and users might want to use that as a warning sign of a potential scam.


That well could be.  I am guessing that some people are picking up on some of it though.  In fact, I'd be surprise if nobody had already thought of more and better ways to address some of the issues just based on my descriptions here.


If they are well designed and implemented, and those who are qualified to evaluate them say they are, then 'that'.  If they are not, then an analysis will reveal that as well...which is good.  Welcome to open-source my friend.


And I'm doing my best to answer clearly and concisely your specific questions.  Both for you, and for others who may have some general interest or even better, be inspired to dream up other ways of addressing various things about crypto-currency ecosystems.

Hey CD, how'd ya like the golden bull horn up the ass today?  Looked painful.  And I guess you'll be nursing that one all weekend.  I suggest that you cover or get used to it happening again and again...and it does not seem like I'm the only one trying to help you out here.

Actually, perhaps it would help to understand one another's thought patterns and thus make explaining things a bit easier to switch things around for a change:
-----
Would you be adverse to the existence of any other crypto-currency solution besides Bitcoin?

If so, what would make it palatable?

If not, why not?

Please can the Bakcoin bullshit be split off and moved to a new thread inside "Alternative Cryptocurrencies", thanks.

I had always planned to do that if/when the material was ready...and if the forum was still a worthwhile venue for presentation at that time.  As it happened, I was challenged about whether I had thought about any solutions to the things about Bitcoin that I consider weaknesses.  And the conversation evolved from there.

Just out of curiosity...  Threads drift off-topic to a vastly larger degree than this one has (and it's arguable that this one actually has.)  Lots of people just ignore conversations which don't really interest them.  This one seems to have really gotten under your skin.  Why do you suppose that is?

What about bitcoin itself is unsatisfactory to this end?  Why do you assume that those whom would develop a currency off of bakcoin would view open source as a "no brainer"?  What if Micro$oft or Apple decided to do it, or Facebook?  What logic would lead you to conclude that an open source solution would be in their best interests?



Interesting.  How, exactly, would this vote occur?  How would this prevent an unwanted currency from foundation; via some yet undefined algo or would there need to be a human authority to make such a decision?  If the latter, who watches the watchers?


Who holds the veto power?


I get the feeling that you really haven't thought these issues through.


Oh, I've thought of better ways to do what you appear to want to do, but I can conceive of none that have any particular advantage over bitcoin as it exists.


Who is qualified to make that determination?

Do you really not see what I'm doing here?

Because I ignore the entire "alternative cryptocurrencies" board for a good reason, too much spam and discussion that doesn't interest me, and this topic fits right in. Unfortunately, the current board software doesn't give me the option to ignore a single thread.

No.  There was a logical procession of events that led this conversation here.  Splitting it would make no sense to the follow-up reader.  I think this side-topic is about dead anyway.

No, but I am skeptical of such attempts.  I've seen quite a few come and go, and only those that aim to fill a different niche than Bitcoin itself remain, such as Namecoin.


Satoshi built this protocol pretty much all by himself; Gavin & the other current developers are great people, but they didn't have the vision to do this.  It would go a long way towards "making things more palatable" if 1) you stopped trolling about bitcoin until you have a real solution or 2) developed that real solution.  Keep in mind that this forum tolerates discussions about alt-coins in the right places, but if you are just going to enter in our house as a guest and then crap on the kitchen table then you are going to get some push-back.

In fact, I spent a lot of energy trying to figure out how Bitcoin could serve this function.  That was my natural first instinct.  Eventually I concluded that Bitcoin has some bloat problems that are not practical to address (for _this_ purpose) and also that designing aspects of a purpose-oriented backing store were such a big win that that made the most sense.


They are certainly welcome to try.  I suspect they would not be trusted enough to be successful.  Certainly they would not be by me.


I envision that the development/management team would be responsible for including 'ballot questions'.  People who control BKC value would 'vote' in a similar way to performing any other type of transaction.  Just like the real world, lotsa people probably would not care about lotsa things enough to bother to vote at all.

As for who watches the watchers, it's just like any other open-source project.  If the development team is to corrupt or out-of-sync with the users, some other group will be successful in creating a fork.  So, the users watch the watchers.  Or are the watchers I guess.


That's an implementation detail.  In this context, if the userbase itself became so 'corrupt' that they were interfering with the goals of the project, a decision to allow or not allow a seemingly legitimate new exchange crypto-currency a slot might be made on the basis of enough users using enough of their limited supply of vetos.  I mention this just as an illustration of how a degree of flexibility and design can be used to address various kinds of unexpected issues.


I sense that you are significantly challenged and are actually having to stretch a little bit to remain comfortably inside your intellectual shell.  But you are laudably and bravely putting in some effort and challenging me to dredge back and defend some of my thoughts on these matters.  And I find that enjoyable.

As am I.  I consider a deep level of skepticism to be a good thing.  Particularly wrt cryto-currencies.


As far as I'm concerned, I've not been unfair in my critiques and concerns about Bitcoin.  I have been harsh and smart-ass with them from time to time.  This is in part because I rather enjoy some push-back, and because I feel that it helps make points that stick.  If Bitcoin and it's community is to weak to deal with such a thing, then there is less hope than I imagined.

I do find it somewhat amusing that the very people who crow endlessly about 'free markets' seem to react to any non-Bitcoin crypto-currency as a snail reacts to salt.

perhaps it might help this discussion knowing that tvbcof is a self described socialist and actually likes Ben Bernanke and his policies.  he is depending on Ben to further the value of his gold holdings.

and no, the gold spike didn't hurt me as i had a large GDXJ position in place as a hedge.

...and to induce large populations to transition into Bitcoin.

Of course ;^)

Perhaps it might help this discussion knowing that the only thing standing between our poor friend cyperdoc and indigence is 'time'.  Sadly he'll probably be dragging a lot of his subscribers down with him.

MS:

I'm about ready to wrap this up, and I'm sure a lot of others are as well.  You are completely correct that 'bakcoin' is nowhere near ready for presentation and I was not initially planning to do so.  I have very much appreciated your critiques and questions and would be happy to discuss such things further with anyone who has an interest.

Just one more thing, however, since it is quite key:


There are a zillion - handful of issues that I've not thought through.  To my amazement, most of the things you have asked about specifically are among the 'handful', including the above.

My answers seem nonchalant.  This is no accident and is utterly key conceptually.

People get ripped off using USD, Bitcoin, and I have every expectation that they would using a 'bakcoin' based crypto-currency.  I'm not trying to fight that battle since it is not winnable.  I would only hope that 'bakcoin' (or such solution) could provide some help against abuse of many different forms.

The key aspect here would be that 'bakcoin' itself remains very simple and thus flexible and robust.

It's up to the various exchange currencies live or die on their own merits, but their trajectory and details are of no consequence to the other exchange crypto-currencies (aside form healthy competition to attract users.)

This contrasts with our mainstream dept-based fiat monetary systems which are what I call 'monolithic' insofar as they are prone to catastrophic failure of one necessary aspect of their function is destroyed.  I have a legitimate and honest concern that Bitcoin could end up with a similar weakness.  My concern may or may not be valid, and even if it is, the weakness may or may not be realized.  Only time will tell.

How do you propose to enforce your vision?


Network effects be damned, eh?
And implementation details are what I'm trying to get from you.  

I sense that you didn't understand that question either, but pretty good dodge there.

You are easily amazed.


I guess bitcoin doesn't quite 'feel' right to you, so you 'sense' that you can come up with something better, but simply don't know how.

Concerning that "don't know how" part, have you ever stopped to consider the possibility that what you are considering actually isn't possible, even if you can imagine it is?


Legitimate, perhaps.  But you've been harping about what you vaguely perceive as flaws in bitcoin, but can't articulate those concerns, including the one that started this thread.  Yet you are just as vague about solutions.  Don't tell me that an airship is better travel than a cruise ship, when you've never been on an airship and only walked on a cruise ship while docked.  Either give me details and credible reasons (i.e. ones that I can't shoot down in the first round, at least) or stop wasting my time.

Yet another veiled accusation and more FUD.  Grow up.

Very well, we'll continue on than.  Regrettably for my employer, you've been robbing him somewhat lately, but that's completely my fault and I can make up for it over time.  I'm busy only for a few more weeks then I'll have as much time to direct to whatever interests me.

I actually think I've been doing a much better job than I thought myself capable of of explaining the nuts and bolts of 'bakcoin', and tangentially certain things about open-source and Bitcoin generally that you seem ignorant about.  I sense that your failure to pick up on some of them is more a reflection of your own closed-mindeness and dogma than any native inabilities, but the net effect is the same.  It's also a bit difficult to know exactly what you consider a 'win' or 'shoot down'.  In your mind there seem to be many...which is non-impressive to me, but I'm sure thrills the hell out of a lot of the pom-pom waver types.

But I will persevere if you insist...just for the general betterment of the human condition.

Poor cypherdoc.  Just cannot stay away from the sharp end of the golden bull or various other things in the environment.  I suggest you don't go hiking where there are poisonous snakes...your nature is not conducive to survival in such conditions.

At this point, this thread is a waste of time.  I wish I could stop getting it to show up in my 'Show new replies to your posts." link.

It's so nice to see so many other valuable contributions like yours showing up and adding to the value :^)

Themos would probably consider a well constructed patch to the software he is running.

Never mind.  I just noticed that you seem to use posts as free advertising for whatever you think might make you some bucks or whatever.  That explains your rather pointless spam.  If I cared enough I would validate my hypothesis to see if you ever really post anything of value...but I don't.

Maybe I'll submit a patch to clean up the mess from freeloading captains-of-industry-in-waiting like yourself.

One (possibly last) thing I'll say for a while is this:

I never expected (in my thought experiment) that 'bakcoin' would form a dominant body of value for any alternate crypto-currencies.  That would be formed by their own merit mainly.  Such things would include:

 - the strength of the developent community and user base.
 - the design and implementation
 - other forms of more tangible backing (USD, BTC, Gold, whatever.)
 - the market segment they occupy
 - and on and on

Further, a good design would either neglect the modest 'support niceties' that Bakcoin might be able to supply (like a secured scratchpad) or at least design such that it is a dispensable item eventually.  This would allow them to migrate away from any reliance on 'bakcoin' in the future.

For these reasons, there would be a reasonable expectation that an alternate crypto-currency could retain some or all of it's value even if Bakcoin itself crashed and burnt.  Of course Bakcoin would try very hard not to do so.

Ideally 'bakcoin' would serve as a set of 'training wheels' for the most part.  It's main goal is to incubate new and better crypto-currency solutions which are providing a variety of options to end users.