This is simply not true.  All transactional systems (= monetary systems) are SUPPOSED TO DERIVE from a list of transactions, but not all of them have as atomic data, the transaction list. In fact, ONLY crypto has this.  It is what sets crypto apart from other monetary systems.  ALL other monetary systems I know off, are "state" based ; crypto is "transaction based".

Gold is state-based: you HOLD the gold or not.  You have a balance of gold.  There is no memory of the gold transactions as "fundamental atomic data".  There is the "balance state" as fundamental atomic data: how much gold do you own ?

Now, with gold, one counts on the laws of physics to certify that this balance state is DERIVED from transactions: that you cannot "double spend" gold, and that the only way to "create" gold possession, is to dig it up, make it by nuclear transformation, to get it from space or to have it made from lead through the Stone of Wisdom, all of these ways to "create gold balance" being accepted as legit.

Very similar with cash.  The fundamental data of the cash system is "who holds what cash ?".  Again, one counts on the laws of physics that the state of cash holdings is derived from transactions, and that the origin of the cash is legit (printed by the FED), done by checking the bill physically, and counting on the fact that counterfeiting is severely punished, so that not many people do so and get away with it.

With bank accounts, again, the fundamental state is the holdings of the bank accounts.  However, this time, there is no a priori guarantee that the state of bank accounts is derived from transactions or legit creation, as the contents of computer memory in bank computers has no intrinsic method of being derived from transactions.   The software that is supposed to do so, can always be modified to do otherwise, and there's no way to make sure.  THIS is why accountants are necessary, to check this.

What is checked, is whether the "state of bank accounts" is derived from a possible set of legit transactions.

With crypto, this is meaningless.  The fundamental data IS already the list of valid transactions.  The state is only derived from that, locally, and without any authority.  The only thing that has authority is the list of transactions.  So there's NO POINT IN PROVING that the balances are derived from a list of transactions, because that's what you do when you calculate the balances.


That's silly.  If you and that block explorer in cloudland differ, then there are only 3 possibilities:

1) you and that block explorer are looking at DIFFERENT BLOCK CHAINS, at different lists of transactions

2) your wallet application is buggy

3) that block explorer is buggy

If your wallet and your block explorer are working correctly, and are looking at the same block chain then of course they find the same balances.

This is as ridiculous as saying that "if I have a common list of numbers, which is shared by a cloud server, then in order to check the validity of that list, I make the sum of those numbers locally, and I ask that cloud server to make that sum.  If the numbers agree, then the list of numbers is good.

Of course not.  IF you share an identical list of numbers with a cloud server, and both of you make the sum, then of course both of you will find the same number.   If not, the lists weren't identical, or one of both summing operations was buggy.  Nothing else.


Indeed.  And that doesn't matter, in fact.  What counts, and the ONLY thing that counts, is that your valid transaction is on the block chain.  What your wallet may think, what the block explorer may think, and whatever erroneous calculations you may do doesn't matter: the right thing happened on the block chain, and everybody using correct software will be in agreement with the transaction as you intended it.  No double spending will be happening, no false creation of coins will have happened - whatever your faulty software may tell you.


As the only data that matter, are the block chain transactions, you using faulty software to misunderstand those data has nothing to do with audibility.  You seeing that web sites use faulty software doesn't matter.  In the end, the block chain is what counts and nothing else.  With balance checks you cannot check the block chain because there are no balances on the block chain, you can only DERIVE balances FROM the block chain.

However, you CAN check the validity of transactions.  That's what nodes and miners do.  If ever non-valid transactions are included in the block chain, in any case the whole thing failed and the crypto is dead.  So the only thing that matters is that the transactions are valid.  In as much as the principles of the checking are correct (whether the bitcoin way, or the cryptographic monero way), then that's all that is needed.  And if the *principles* are faulty, then the whole coin is dead in any case.

So in the end, the mathematical principles are sound, or they aren't sound.  If they aren't sound, then the whole thing is dead.  If they are sound, then you can check them, and that is the ONLY necessary and sufficient check that there is to it.


Ah, I guess you regularly check Pythagoras' theorem too ?


Of course gold has privacy and obscurity build in.  There's no way for you to check the world's gold balances.  You only know how much gold YOU own.  There is even no transaction history anywhere.  Nowhere there is a centralized ledger with the balances of gold ; let alone a ledger of all gold transactions.  The ONLY thing that you can do with the "gold system" is to look how much you own.  You don't know how much gold your neighbour has, how much Putin is holding, how much gold Bill Clinton holds, and there's no way for you to make any "balance check" to see whether the amount of "spend gold" and the amount of "received gold" are in agreement.  What you are complaining about with monero, you cannot do it with gold.  You know that the balances check because of the laws of physics.  You know that the balances check in monero, because of cryptographic properties.

That has never undermined people's trust in the value of gold.

There is no point wanting to see the locker which is derived from the list of transactions, to test it against, well, the list of transactions.
I didn't say that the balance information is not useful DERIVED information, but my balance doesn't check the validity of any transaction, given that it has been derived from said transactions.  And your argument falls on its face too, because in monero, you CAN of course check your own balance.


There is no such thing as "the block chain state".  It is derived from the valid transactions.  So nobody altered the block chain state, other than adding a valid transaction.  And if that transaction is valid, whatever you call "the block chain state" will be in agreement with said transaction, so "checking it" doesn't add anything of a check.


That "same information" is the block chain, and nothing else.  Whatever you DERIVE from there, is your local business.


I guess that in that case, you find gold, or cash also a ludicrous monetary system.   Because there's no way to have any way to know the balance of cash, or of gold, of anybody else but yourself too.  The only balance of gold, or cash, that you know of, is your own, like in monero.

However, in monero, you have at least a cryptographic check on the validity of every transaction.  With gold, you have to believe in the laws of nature.  With cash, you have to believe in the veracity of the bill (that it has been printed by a FED approved printer).  At no point, in these systems, you have to check the world's balances either.

I can tell you, that you are quite alone in your worries not to accept any monetary system where you cannot have a public audit of all holdings.  Most people eagerly accept cash or gold without such a check, which, as I have explained several times, doesn't even check anything in a crypto currency, whether it is bitcoin or monero, apart from your local ability to calculate a balance from a block chain.

Of course, what I write is my own understanding of block chain technology, not Satoshi's.  But I think I'm actually in agreement with the spirit of his paper.  If it were true that the idea was that block chain technology is there to implement whatever the majority decides, then there would not be any mention of a 51% attack, because that would not be an attack at all, but just an expression of the desire of the majority (majority in Satoshi's paper being measured by computing power).

You cannot at the same time claim that the system is to be the implementation of whatever the majority decides, and talk about "irreversible transactions", and whine about an "attack" if ever the majority as you defined it (namely, the majority of "CPU power" in Satoshi speak - he didn't realize ASICS were possible) decides to revert a transaction - which is his example of a 51% attack.  It would be just "the will of the majority" and everybody should be happy because the system "works".  (that's exactly what happened with ETH).

This, to me, is the clearest proof that "block chain technology" was not meant to be just the implementation of "consensus", defined as whatever the majority (of mining power) decides.

That said, that is what block chain CODE actually implements.  The block chain code principles allow a majority of computing power to change just anything, whatever they agree upon: doing away with past transactions, modifying entirely all the rules of coin creation and difficulty, .... but this was clearly NOT the idea.

To bring both in agreement, one has to make game-theoretic and hence sociological assumptions, namely that no majority ever will be found colluding over a deviation from immutability.  This is why I include them in my definition of "block chain tech".

I suppose that by "inside" you mean "code", the technical part, not the sociological part.
Well, it is obvious that that cannot work.  There is absolutely no "code/technical" way to establish consensus if there is no sociological/game theoretical part to the system.

You cannot just have code, without any game-theoretical assumptions, and suppose that any form of immutability will come out of that by itself.  It is sufficient that people change the software, and the block chain can be totally altered, or its interpretation can be totally altered.  If the software checking for the validity of PoW is altered, no amount of PoW will keep what so ever immutable. 

Immutability comes from game-theoretical (and hence also sociological) assumptions, not from code.  If people start propagating altered versions of the block chain, different software checking validity and so on, no piece of code can ever stop that and "provide immutability".  The whole immutability comes from the fact that people will be put in such a situation where it is very unfavourable for them, or essentially impossible to organize for them to do anything else but to STICK to the immutable consensus.


But it is essential.  If the devs could intervene at their will to change those things that are supposed to be immutable, your block chains would not keep any little bit of immutability, and be totally mutable and random.  The whole point is that even the devs cannot do this.

However, they CAN change the code, as long as this code remains COMPATIBLE with those aspects that are deemed needed to keep immutability, and that itself is the whole game-theoretic premise on which the whole of immutable block chains is based.

That is:
- the devs (or just anybody) can bring out another node software that is perfectly compatible with the former v0.1, but, say, with a fancier GUI, or with faster algorithms, *perfectly* respecting the protocol on the technical side.  You could have myriads of different but compatible node software.

- the devs (but not just anybody) can bring out node software that is technically not totally compatible with the former v0.1 and hence is technically a soft or hard fork, but which RESPECTS IN ALL ASPECTS the INTEND of the former protocol, and just improves a technicality.  The reason why people will upgrade is that the intend of immutability (all the economic implications) is perfectly respected, so there is no reason NOT to upgrade (like accepting a security update to your computer system), and not upgrading can put you with an incompatible node.  In other words, game-theoretically, there's no good reason not to upgrade if people agree that the technicality is improved now.

- and that's it.  The devs, or any other "leadership" shouldn't be able to modify whatever to the intend of the immutability.  If they can, then there is no immutability at all.


Well, I consider that as a failure of the block chain purpose.  If that happens, the block chain didn't do what it was made for, namely keeping immutability of intend.  Once you can do that, anything goes.


Call it as you like: the system failed.  The "code" didn't fail, but the block chain system failed, because the game-theoretical assumptions turned out not to hold.


That is a strange statement.  I will tell you why:


I would rather think that this was a shortcoming of the technology, rather than a feature.  That is, one couldn't think of a mechanism where one could even block a colluding majority from imposing its will (in fact there is one: hard forking).

Because when you think about it, if a colluding majority is the "normal way to alter block chains", then there is nothing wrong with a "51% attack".  It wouldn't be an attack at all.  It would just be the normal majority wanting to alter history, if you keep your viewpoint.

The idea of a block chain was not to have a "majority vote over what was the distant past", although that is what comes technically out of it.  The fact itself that you call a "community where a majority decides to DESTROY their block chain" indicates that you yourself consider that even if a majority decides something, that this is NOT what consensus is about.

Imagine that a majority of bitcoin miners decides that only they will now hold bitcoins, and that all former transactions that assign coins to addresses of which they do not have the keys, are invalid ; for that they have to write a lot of "exception rules' in the code accepting modified old blocks.  Hell, in your viewpoint, such a total alteration of the past would be "consensus" because decided by the voting majority of miners ?  Of course not, this is total breaking up of immutability and - as you actually call it - the destruction of the block chain system.  Nevertheless, the CODE is running correctly, has been altered with majority consensus and "everything works by consensus as wanted by Satoshi" ?

Of course not.

A block chain system is not supposed to be a majority vote system over just anything.  The only thing the majority is supposed to vote over, is the respect of immutability.  If anything else happens, the system fails.  So the game-theoretical part is an essential part of the block chain system, because without it, there's no such thing as immutability, and hence no purpose for a block chain (the code/technical part).

That is because it is not "DDOS", but an *internal* difficulty, inherent to the way it functions ; in other words, a bad billing scheme for computation, such that expensive computation was billed way too cheaply, making it possible to launch a lot of computation for a small price, something the nodes couldn't handle.  In other words, ethereum nodes were overselling their capacity of computation, and someone took them on their word.

All this is *inherent* to the concept of ethereum.  Yes, one can mitigate, adjust, try to protect, .... but on a Turing-complete system, one can never solve this issue for good.

This is *almost* the right question...  The right question is: "do you believe that sufficient people will believe it is worth that valuation at the moment ?"

I'm not talking about a Ponzi scheme.  You should differentiate "greater fool theory" with a Ponzi.  A Ponzi is a scam, because there is an entity ENGAGING in providing great returns on the basis of a system which must fail for sure.  The scam resides in the impossible engagement.  It is of the same nature as selling you the moon.  If I engage into selling you the moon, I'm a scammer if you accept the contract, and I do not deliver the moon.  No matter how crazy my engagement is, as *I* make it, *I* am responsible for providing it and if I know from the start that I'm not capable (because of mathematics) to do so, I'm just an outright scammer.

A Ponzi is a scam, because there is a contractual engagement into delivering high returns whereas my method for OBTAINING these returns is based on a pyramid scheme which has to fail.  So the Ponzi scammer is taking engagements he knows he cannot keep.

However, "greater fool theory" is not an engagement, but a *behaviour* in the belief that you will find a fool that will buy that asset at a higher price than you did (acting as the "greater fool" for the person selling to you).

The pyramid construction is the same, but in the case of "greater fool" you are participating willingly, and you (should) know that at the end of the line, the last fool will lose, but you are gambling on the fact that it is not yet you, while in the case of a Ponzi, someone has made false engagements based upon revenue supposed to come from such a pyramid.

What is sure, is that each time, such a system crumbles.  But in the case of a Ponzi, the losses result in an engagement not kept, while in normal "greater fool theory", you've just been gambling that you're not the "last fool", which can, or cannot, work out.

TL;DR: a Ponzi is a scam, "greater fool theory" is a bet.

Of course leadership is centralization.  It is not compulsory centralization, but it is centralization nevertheless.  In the same way that a de facto monopoly is a monopoly, even if it is not imposed with state violence but "happens in the market".

Only a leaderless system can pretend at decentralization.

Because if a crypto coin is essentially just a trading token between "greater fool" betters on exchanges, *you do not even need a block chain*.  Only an IOU on a web site to trade it.

And maybe zcash is on something here: after all, what is more anonymous than a non-existent coin

One only trades its ghost as IOU on a web site.

This is the natural successor of an ICO.  You offer the IOU, and you trade it.  No coin, no block chain, no software, no mining, no hassle.  Brilliant, no ?

It seems as if I'm hitting some kind of religious sensibility here

Social security is not a ponzi scheme, because you're not "investing" in social security to get out more when you hand it over to a greater fool.

The reason why I say that "investing" in bitcoin (and any other crypto) is a zero-sum game, is simply because it OBVIOUSLY is, and that should be obvious if you look at the value flows: there is no value creation !  There is no production of any good or service.

That is not something negative: hell, it was DESIGNED to be a zero sum game, because that is what a monetary system ideally is !  A monetary asset is something, that ideally, is just a transport/store of value, not a generator of value.  If it is a store, then at best, it is zero-sum.  In reality, it will be lossy (in fact, bitcoin IS lossy: all the mining and all the fees on exchanges are losses to the bitcoin value storage).

So, you can use bitcoin to store value for a while, between two transactions: one where you deliver value (as goods and services), and obtain the store, and one where you hand over the store, and obtain value (as goods and services).  Yes, you can also deliver other stores of value and obtain again other stores of value if you find that practical.  
Bitcoin is lossy, but not so much: the mining fee, the inflation, and the exchange fees eat something, but this is competitive with other stores of value like fiat or so.

But, as we said, there's no value creation in a monetary system, apart from its very existence, which has the created value of all those things that you can do with it that you couldn't do without it.  In other words, yes, bitcoin and other crypto HAS a created value as such by its usage, like a truck has value because it can transport stuff, if that transport *improves* production quality of goods and services, but not if you are just riding around with an empty truck.

As such, a monetary system derives its utility from its usage, and hence, its value from its usage (I'm talking about the system an sich, not about the value stored in the system).  This justifies the fact that the system is somewhat lossy, and "burns value".

The value of a monetary asset system, however, should not be confused with its market cap.  They have not much in common.  In fact, the value of the system itself is difficult to estimate.  A good analogy is the value of a truck as an capital good, as compared to the value of the contents it transports.  The value of the truck as a capital good is the amount of value that using the truck allows to create: the fact that you can transport things with the truck, instead of with a train, allows for a more efficient creation of goods and services.  THAT is the value of the truck: the competitive edge it brings you.  But that has nothing to do with the value of the stuff it transports.  Whether it transports detritus (negative value) or very expensive furniture (high value) has nothing to do with the competitive edge the use of the truck brings you.
The "market cap" is what a monetary system *transports* in a certain way.  That is not an estimate of the value of the system itself (the competitive edge it brings you over other solutions to the same problem of storage of value like fiat, gold, ...).  If bitcoin *transports* 10 billion, it doesn't mean that it is *worth* 10 billion, not more than if a truck transports 5 tons of gold, the truck itself would be worth 5 tons of gold.

So you can store value in a monetary system for the short term (between earning it, say, as a salary, and spending it, say, to buy food), or you can store value in a monetary system for the long term (between "putting something aside my whole life" and "profiting from it when I'm old" or "leaving something for the kids").  But the hypothesis is always that the value "in" is of the order of the "value out".

Most monetary systems, apart from gold, come into existence, and then die off.  There's no reason to assume that this will not happen with any crypto too.  In the beginning, when the system "takes value" (loads the truck) there is some seigniorage taken by "early adopters", which is compensated by the losses suffered by the "late users" (when the truck is discharged) - exactly because it is a zero-sum game.  However, if that monetary system exists for a very long time, these two "side effects" are negligible ; early adopters will have obtained gains at the expense of the future generation that will suffer the losses when the system dies, but that is, if the monetary system is really used, a small effect compared to its USAGE as an intermediate store of value during the whole period when it was in steady state.

I mean by that, that the period where the value of the monetary system is stable, and hence "value in" equals "value out" grossly as a store of value, will last hopefully much longer than the "rise" and the "fall" periods ; it is during this period that the monetary system really works as a store of value.

There's no value to be made during that period, and that's the aim: it is a store, nothing more.  You can hence not "invest" in it.

You can gamble on the rise, and if you do so, you are just profiting from those that will lose out on the fall.  And yes, it can work.  But that is a temporary phenomenon (during the rising phase), and, at the expense of others (during the falling phase).  This is not a durable "investment" at all.

So essentially, the phases in a monetary system's existence are:
1) a phase of "greater fools" when you can find greater fools, and you make benefit
2) a (hopefully long) phase of "same fools": value in is about value out, and the thing is a store of value
3) hyperinflation and the end of it, value lost.

The benefits made in 1) are financed by the losses suffered in 3).  This is why this thing is zero-sum.

As it should be.

Again, compare this to the typical life of a company.   A company issues stock, and with that money, it makes production capital and creates goods and/or services.    At the end of its life, it goes broke, and the stock becomes toilet paper.

However, in as much as at every moment in time, the stock is correctly evaluated (in practice impossible but let us assume that...) the stock price always reflects the diminished cash flow of all future dividends minus a risk aversion fee.  The initial stock holder is hence just rewarded for the value he permitted to create (that didn't exist before).  It doesn't come out of the pocket of a looser.  The successive stock holders will get something, in as much as the initial stock holder compensated for his risk and didn't take everything.  When the stock is dead, in principle, nobody lost any money if all estimates were right, because they have been compensated with dividends which are a NET INFLUX of value because there is VALUE CREATION.    This is "investing": allowing for value creation, and taking the reward for that.

The FUNDAMENTAL difference between stock and a monetary asset is that stock returns dividend, and its value estimation is based upon the estimation of the dividend ; while a monetary asset is based upon an infinitely recursive belief system (which is necessarily wrong because no monetary system lasts forever).   Stock value estimation can integrate the finiteness in time of its existence ; a monetary asset derives its value from the denial of that finiteness in time.  A monetary asset only has value in as much as one believes in its eternity (which is obviously going to be false).

That said, in as much as a monetary system is used as a store of value on storage times *much shorter* than the life time of the system itself (say that bitcoin will "live" for 40 years, then a few years of storage is "short"), it is useful and the service provided by that storage can overcome the potential losses when the system comes to an end.  But for that, the system has to be used as a store of value for real.  So, saying: I have access to a certain value right now because I sell some land, which I want to store and use 10 years from now, when my kids go to college, is a right way to use a monetary asset, if you believe that the monetary system will not collapse within 10 years (if it does, you have been financing the gains of early adopters with the value of your land).

And now we come to the bad effects of *dominant* speculation.  Speculation an sich is good: it is the "oil" that fluidizes the market, that brings extra information to price.  Ideally, speculation should be almost impossible if the market is efficient, but speculation is necessary to make the market efficient.

As long as speculation has only a marginal effect on the overall price of an asset (essentially, is only of the size of the volatility), speculation plays its role as lubricant.   
The problem however, with a price of an asset made ESSENTIALLY out of speculation, is that this price is totally unstable.  A monetary asset normally has a price given by Fisher's formula: the price is set by the DEMAND for the asset to use it as store of value (the amount of value, and the average storage time ; the inverse of the average speed of circulation).  The usage of that store of value is normally determined by its competitive edge over other stores of value, and hence you can compare that price to the price of any other market-determined good or service: its price is set by its usage and the competitive edge it brings.  This price is quite robust as long as the usage pattern is robust ; as long as there are good reasons to use this store of value over another.  However, this is not the case with a speculation-dominated price.  That price is entirely dependent on belief, which can change from one day to another.

And the problem with most crypto market caps is that they *essentially* consist of speculation, and only marginally of the price set by the demand for its use (given by Fisher's formula).  This makes that these assets are totally unreliable, *especially* as store of value.  So this domination of speculation kills the usage of it.

But my conclusion remains that one cannot "invest" in a monetary asset.  One can USE a monetary asset to transport value from today to later.  Early adopters will gain, at the expense of late users, but this phenomenon is not an "investment".  An "investment" is an action where you use value today not to consume directly, but to do things that create new value in the future.  That is not possible in a system that only TRANSPORTS value.  If you get more out, that means that someone has lost it on the other end.  Which is not the case with an investment.

The point is that, when one compares crypto currencies, one has tendency to look at the market cap.  Bitcoin is champion there for the moment, and probably still for quite some time.  However, that market cap is essentially a measure of the greater fool theory gambling, and as such, meaningless. 

I have nothing against speculation an sich.   However, speculation in a zero-sum game is quite ridiculous (that said, if you're good at it, you can become rich, I won't deny that), because the gains of some, are the losses of others.  All people participating in such a game are just trying to rip one another off.

This is totally different with investing and speculating on the stock market.  The stock market is not a zero-sum game, because there is influx of dividend and there is economic growth (increase of production capital value).  If I hold stock of a small company in which I invested, say, $1000,-, and if that stock grows, it means that my $1000,- have been used very well by that small company to acquire production capital in such a way that it produces a lot of value, and generates economic growth.   When I sell that stock for $5000,- to someone else, I'm not ripping off anybody, because that stock is now really worth $5000,- with the dividends that go with it.  Of course there's a part of speculation, in that when I sell my stock, I hope to sell it to someone that will OVER estimate the value of that stock.  But even if I sell it at the "right price" if I did a good investment, I make benefit, in the sense that I *get some of the produced value and the economic growth*.

In other words, on the stock market, everybody, or most people, can get benefit.

Not so in the zero-sum game of trading tokens.   The $10,- you spend on a bitcoin in 2011 didn't bring any growth, capital investment, or what so ever.  The fact of selling that for $600,- today is not the fact of getting a reward of an investment in production capital.  It is only "greater fool" stuff, which works, as long as there is "more adoption" (more greater fools).

The last layer of adopters will have paid for all the benefit of everybody in bitcoin.  Like with black tulips.  And that last layer will have run out of 'greater fools'.

Now, there's nothing "morally wrong" with participating in a mutual rip-off scam, but at least you should know that it is that and nothing more.

But the big problem with all that, is that the market cap is WAY TOO HIGH.  This attracts a lot of troubles, like regulators intervening, institutions getting interested in bitcoin and all that. 

As you say, some speculation is unavoidable, and even good for the fluidity of markets.  But when an asset is essentially driven by speculation, it gets denatured and its true purpose gets drowned by the speculative activity around it.

I would by large have preferred bitcoin to have been at $10, of which $9 is demand for real usage, rather than $600, with probably something like $10 from demand for usage.   Thats $590 of trouble and regulation for nothing, harming its real usage.

I have to say that I have no idea about the "real usage" of bitcoin versus the "real usage" of ethereum.  Both are tiny.  I guess you're right that bitcoin is somewhat more used (I use it, not much, but it is essentially my only "activity" in crypto, to buy stuff), simply because I have NO IDEA where ethereum is used "for real" that is not gambling, betting or another form of lottery.

Yes.  However, there is no such thing as the "block chain state" SEPARATE from the "list of valid transactions".  The imaginary block chain state is a derived quantity from that list of transactions.


This is an excellent example to illustrate your mistake.

In the donut system you propose, there are indeed, TWO INDEPENDENT elements: there are the failsafe emissions of receipts, and there are the true donuts in the locker.  As such, one could test the validity of the receipts, or the validity of the locker, by comparing the sum of receipts, with the counting of actual donuts in the locker.  That would be a true double check.

But this is NOT what we have in bitcoin, nor any other crypto.  There is no locker.  We can DERIVE an *imaginary* locker by counting the failsafe receipts.   Now, if we are going to compare this DERIVED quantity with, eh, the number of receipts, then OF COURSE we will find agreement.  But that is not a check ; or at most, it is a check on our way of counting receipts.  

Now, as with bitcoin, or with monero, there is only the block chain containing the "receipts", then there's no point in wanting to "see the locker" that is simply the sum of receipts, to test against, well, the sum of receipts.

This is what you are complaining about that this can be done by everybody in bitcoin, and only by persons holding the secret key in monero.  But as you see, there's no point in doing so: it doesn't help anything.

Because nor in bitcoin, nor in monero, there is a donut locker.  There is no independent bitcoin state, as there is no independent monero state.  There's only a list of valid transactions, from which one can derive such a hypothetical state.  But to use that state to verify the validity of the transactions, is of course ridiculous.  So whether you can derive that state for everybody or not, doesn't add any "security".


Again, that is a good example.  With a digest hash, you have the sender that calculates the hash, and sends you the document and the hash.  On the receiving side, you redo the calculation of the hash, and if it doesn't fit, then or the document was altered, or the hash was altered, or the sender made a mistake.  But you have TWO INDEPENDENT information sources: the document, and the hash.

However, the bitcoin/monero equivalent here, is that you only have the document.  You can calculate a hash from it.  And now you can take that document again, and re-calculate that hash.  You check the first calculation of the hash against the second one.  If it fits, you tell that there is more confidence in the document.  It will always come out of course, unless you made a mistake in calculating a hash.  That is about the equivalence of wanting to test balances from a list of transactions: the test tells you whether the balances are obtained from a list of transactions.  Of course they are: that's how you obtained them in the first place.

You don't have two independent sources of information.  You DERIVE two identical quantities (donut count, document hash....) from the one and single piece of data you have in any case: the single source of information which is the list of transactions.  If you check these, the only thing that that proves, is that you did your calculations in a correct way, NOT that your list has an integrity.


The point is that those "audits" are mathematically always satisfied, unless you make a mistake in your "audit", because you are NOT confronting two independent sources of information.  Now, an "audit' that always comes out as correct, is not an audit of anything, except of your capacity to do the correct calculations, nothing more.

Look at it this way:

you have a transaction in bitcoin that is {B is diminished by 2, A is augmented by 2}

Well, whatever is the state of bitcoin before that transaction, the state afterwards will be in agreement with your requirements if this transaction is correctly applied in that state calculation.  But that doesn't give you ANY extra check or information.

If in monero you have a transaction that is {one of B, X, or Y is diminished by 2, and A is augmented by 2}, then you cannot calculate the state afterwards, or you can only calculate 3 possible states afterwards ; but they are ALL correct.  The checking of any of these 3 possible states will give you satisfaction on your test.  And again, it doesn't check anything that you didn't know already.

That's exactly my point.  And "being after profits" in crypto is nothing else but "greater fool theory". That's not what crypto was invented for in the first place.   Nobody (or almost nobody) is "investing in dollar" with the "aim of making profits". True, some people are playing on forex but that is not *the bulk of the dollar transactions* nor is it the bulk of the demand for dollar, nor is it the main source of market cap of dollar.

Our ethereum fans are in "for profit", not to run dapps.   Even most bitcoin fans are in "for profit" (in the long term).  All these people count on greater fools to make them rich.  It can even work for some.  Greater fool theory works up to a point.... until one runs out of fools.

The point is that "buying cheap, and selling expensive" doesn't need any crypto.  You can do that on a web site.  And that's what is happening.  The web site is called bittrex, or poloniex, or coinbase, or kraken or ....

and the development of crypto software ?  Most of the people "investing" never use it.  They stay with their web site tokens.

 

Amen.

It is all just a power game.

I have to say, I like Melanchon.  He's crazy, but he's often right.

Yes.

Well, no, they are not pointless: they bring in more sheeple as greater fools.  But that's it.


This is not only valid for ETC.  It is valid for all crypto gambling tokens, bitcoin included.  The only "industry" are exchanges, managing the IOU of those tokens.  The "block chain and software" of crypto is only smoke and mirrors to have your tokens on exchanges bought by greater fools.

Look at yourself: you're not buying ethereum to use it.  You're buying it to sell it to a greater fool, and you're doing that on an exchange.  You are not using ethereum dapps in real life.  Whether there are dapps or not, doesn't change the way you handle ETH.  You only buy IOU on an exchange, to sell them to bigger fools wanting those exchange IOU.  You don't buy them to use DAPPs.  So whatever these people do on those devcons, it has nothing to do with what you (and most people) do with ethereum, apart from the propaganda to talk newcomers into being greater fools.

This is a bit like using i-phones under table legs to stabilize the table.  If that's the main use of i-phones, then any Apple conference on the newest applications and security features of iOS doesn't matter, does it ?  The only thing that counts is whether the i-phone will hold your table leg without breaking.

You're not using zilch of what is talked on those conferences.  Almost nobody is.  It doesn't matter.  It is only talk in the air, serving to attract greater fools.  I'm even sure it works.

  

I should follow spartak's advice, but as I have state money to burn, I can spend my time here.
My point was of course to question the utility of "devcon 2" except as a propaganda stunt.  Because what happens on the chain devcon 2 is related to, has nothing to do with what is said at devcon 2.  Actually, most of it doesn't even happen on the chain, but on exchanges.  So whether there's a working block chain or not that comes out of devcon 2 doesn't really matter, does it ?

Amen.  Price is made by the trading of exchange IOU that have the same name as the crypto currency.  Most exchanges have graphical interfaces, so most of the trading is already done using graphical interfaces.  Very few people influencing the market price use real block chain interaction.  Block chains essentially serve as ways to transact coins between exchanges and to convert them into web IOU there.

Yes, there are a few people using crypto for real, like on DNM, but that doesn't have much influence on market cap.

What real world application (so no speculation, betting, gambling....) replacing normal contracts came out of devcon 2 ?  When can I rent a flat or a car using a DAPP on ethereum making up a big part of its transaction volume ?

But you're still calling ETC a "criminal coin" while I told you that all "crypto investors" are scammers trying to rip off other scammers in a zero-sum casino.  So there's nothing special about the ETC hacker: he was just a smarter scammer than all the others that "invest" in ripping off their peers.  So what's so criminal about that ?

Indeed.

Crypto is just one big casino.  It has almost no true usage.  It's just a crowd of gamblers, betting on horses.  Nobody's riding them to enjoy the ride, or to go somewhere.

The ETH shills here are also entirely in this "greater fool theory" business, just wanting to buy tokens to sell them at higher prices to greater fools:
"but for now alot of people shorted hoping for a lower entry point based on latest attacks. Most likely they'll enter at a loss given the launch of augur which is imminent"

This has nothing to do with using ethereum as gas on a smart contract.