You haven't answered the question. How do you determine the value of benefit of decentralisation? If the high costs are not justified, what's the fair cost?
Average Joe may not be valuing decentralisation too high, but it's a different story for WikiLeaks (and alike), who had all their bank accounts frozen, or for individuals/businesses from Cyprus (EU member state, not some Banana Republic), who had seen their money just taken away from them, or for citizens of shithole countries with high risk of hyperinflation - you get the gist.
Other than exchanging physical goods (incl. cash), cryptocurrencies are the only way to transfer value in trustless, censorship-free, borderless manner. How do you put a value on that to say whether costs are justified or too high?

As for speed/costs - cryptos are performing pretty good. Bitcoin seems slow compared to other cryptos, but txs are irreversible and settled in average of 10 mins - this is huge advantage over the traditional means. Credit card purchases are rather expensive (especially for small merchants), buyers' could think they're free, but they're not - merchants pay the fees (and pass the costs to the buyers via increased product price, which also reflect costs of fraudulent chargebacks).

I just made a purchase on Aliexpress, my first payment attempt failed for an unknown reason, tried different card - it went through. Now I only have to wait 1 day for them to verify my payment. Wow, how fast and convenient. I'd be happy to pay even $15 fee just to use BTC if they had such option.


Private blockchains don't require high computational power (mining hashpower) at all. If it's pointless then why the hell is Swift (and others) spending presumably a fortune to explore/implement blockchain tech? They don't know any better? You want to email them and educate them on the issue?

OK. Nie pytam o szczegoly. Po prostu jesli aktualnie nie ma zadnego 'source' aktywnego na Polskiej sekcji to mozna by kogos zachecic zeby aplikowal.

You don't necessarily need a dam for hydro-plants, and it doesn't have to be super expensive. If rumours about Bitmain's profits are true, then Jihan could easily afford to build his own, small hydro-plant. Check this one, it was built as a community project: http://www.stockport-hydro.co.uk/

There's also geothermal energy (available only in some regions), which is probably the best and cheapest energy source in cold-climate countries.

Power Plants are not your average business. They can't increase their capacities in a snap. If demand suddenly goes too high - there will be a power shortage. They need to operate in a stable environment.

Power plants also have strategic meaning, so the local authorities are likely to intervene if something goes wrong.

Zgaduje ze jestes 'merit source' na Polskiej sekcji, jesli nie - to nie wiesz czy ktos jest?

Jesli bitcore ma ten sam format adresow/kluczy co bitcoin, to gielda bedzie mogla odzyskac bitcoiny. Ale moga byc niezbyt chetni zeby to zrobic (szczegolnie jesli kwota jest mala), bo beda musieli to zrobic manualnie i potrzebny bedzie pracownik z dostepem do prywatnych kluczy, zeby go przeniesc z BTX do BTC, potem manualnie poprawic twoj stan konta na gieldzie.

Napisz do nich maila i grzecznie popros o pomoc.

Dla pewnosci wrzuc tez adres BTX na https://blockchain.info/ i sprawdz czy pokazuje jakis balans BTC.

Agree.


What does this even mean? How do you determine the value of decentralisation and what's its fair cost? Why do people (miners?) bear those costs then?


Wrong. You only need tokens for decentralised, trustless, anyone-can-participate blockchains. You can have 'private', tokenless blockchains run by authorised nodes.


Blockchain-based cryptos are more overhyped than entire blockchain tech? Isn't it like saying "my legs weight more than my entire body"?

Only one of these examples is actually somehow related to new regulation proposals. Other 4 are just executing existing laws to bitcoin-related activities.

US City Mulls 18-Month Moratorium on Bitcoin Mining

Local authorities are (rightfully) concerned over excessive power use of Bitcoin mining and it's their job to assess the risk and prevent negative consequences.


Moratorium could sound like an overkill, but that's still better than having your mining farm invaded by pitchfork mob.

Same here, I'm still on the fence on which is better PoW or PoS. ETH seems to managed to mitigate Nothing at stake risk, but the solution requires use of smart contract so can't be used for Bitcoin.

I'm guessing that if change of PoW is ever going to happen, it will be a PoW/PoS hybrid. You get the best of 2 worlds. If announced in advance (say 2-3 years) then good actors (miners, manufacturers) don't get penalised, as they have enough time to plan their strategies etc. It's not a brilliant solution, as it doesn't solve the power consumption issue, only reduces incentive by 50%, but would make the network more robust and more resistant to government regulations (i.e. ban on mining).

Go on, don't be shy, give a quick summary of what you liked in this article.

All I see is another case of author building a strawman arguments: "Future of Bitcoin depends on global implementation of blockchain tech" + "blockchain tech is superior in every way to traditional systems" and then fighting them. Easy win.

I like how he's praising centralised services such as SWIFT without mentioning they got successfully attacked at least twice in 2015-2016 losing ~$160 millions (iirc). What's even more funny, SWIFT is actively exploring blockchain technology to improve their services.

From the article:


From Swift own website:


Yeah, journalism at its finest.

Same problem in cash game, but the other way around. Muck hand options were selected (table settings) but no auto-muck happened.


So just to make it clear - 'refer a friend' link (from user profile) won't earn any commission to referrer, you have to apply for affiliate partnership?

Those countries include Canada and Iceland, who turned out to be not very keen on miners. Local authorities have to take the risk of energy shortage into consideration.


I'm aware that Cobra's proposal wasn't related to energy waste issues, but there's no reason we couldn't solve 2 problems with one solution.

As for Jihan - sure, his future profits are heavily dependent on success of Bitcoin, but that's not enough to stop caring about decentralisation. There's always a risk he could get co-opted by MSS (Chinese counterpart of CIA).


How secure was the PoW when gHash pool exceeded 50% of hashpower at one point?
How less secure would PoS/PoW hybrid be?


It could in a way, ie. if countries with the cheapest energy allow mining but introduce cap on its energy usage. That would enforce geographical decentralisation. But the implications of miners having to ask for special permissions (licenses) to mine (which would likely include home-miners) don't sound very great.


Well, that would solve the problem. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if BTC mining consumes 99% of global energy, as long as it's not damaging to environment and as long as other industries/individuals don't have to compete for scarce electricity.


I think you're talking about alternative to SHA256 here, not about PoW alternative. CPU/GPU mining is still Proof of Work.

Afaik, miners still operate on a rather high profit margin, so increase in hash power (and energy usage) is expected. Samsung is entering the mining game, that tells you a lot.

And if the price of BTC keeps going up - so will the energy consumption.

With China announcing their intention to cap electricity usage of BTC miners last year, many saw that as a great news as large mining farms declared their interest in moving to other countries (namely Bitmain exploring their chances in Canada).

But now, when Canadians (and others) are starting to frown upon taking on miners, how big of a problem can this become?

Related links:
Quebec: ‘We’re Not Interested’ In Bitcoin Mining Without ‘Added Value’
Even With Energy Surplus, Canada Unable to Meet Electricity Demands of Bitcoin Miners
Iceland May Implement Bitcoin Mining Tax Due to Energy Consumption

Is it time we have a serious discussion about energy consumption issues and possibility of changing PoW algo? Already proposed by Cøbra (Co-owner of bitcoin.org & bitcointalk.org), but for a different reasons.

Well, not only MS accepts Bitcoin, but Gates himself made few rather positive comments about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the past. That's not necessarily a hypocrisy on his part though. It's not like you have to be 100% for or against something. He could just be noticing both good and bad aspects of cryptos.

But again, the "cryptos causing deaths in fairy direct way" comment was simply idiotic.

Noticed a small bug. I'm playing freeroll right now (currently a chip leader, not to brag), in the table settings I unticked both: 'muck losing hands' and 'muck winning hands', but my hands are being mucked anyway - there's no show option anywhere.

Yeah, I've seen that BBC article. This "fairly direct" quote of Gates seemed like a brainfart. If cryptos are to blame for people buying drugs with them - then so is Windows os for allowing them to install wallets, use internet etc.

But to be fair, I tried to find this exact quote on reddit and failed (apparently he wrote it during AMA session). It might have been removed, or BBC misquoted it somehow.

That's only fair if campaign has 'no alt accounts' rule. If there's no such rule (as with 777coin campaign), I see no grounds for red-tagging. There's no harm in asking.

Uphold did their job and withdrawal was successful. Transaction got confirmed long time ago.

I'm not familiar with "airtm" and don't know whether they are legit, but (assuming all the info you provided is correct) they have received your deposit - therefore you should contact them with your tx id and ask why it hasn't been credited to your account yet.


Don't panic about exchange moving funds between different wallets. Sending to deposit address means that exchange (airtm) should credit your account with the same amount of btc, but it's perfectly normal that the funds are moved (either to cold storage or as withdrawals to other users).

You're spot on. If you read the linked article, the first paragraph goes:


So here he is, a guy that was watching Bitcoin when it was in ~$200 range (or lower), patiently waiting for its imminent death - instead witnessing the price continuously going up, bubbles were popping but new ATHs followed, all while Bitcoin and the very idea of cryptocurrency were more and more legitimised and started to break into the mainstream.

You cannot expect the guy not to develop a massive butt-hurt in such scenario. Especially when he's posing as some sort of money-making expert, who just dismissed potentially the most disruptive concept and, almost certainly, the biggest money-making opportunity of his life.
When his entire identity and reputation gets called into question - he will be doubling down on "Bitcoin is a scam" even if BTC replaced fiat one day (never going to happen btw).

He even went as far as to re-define the definition of "investing" to justify missing the train. Classic coping mechanism.

---

From the article:


No it isn't? Primary justification would be decentralisation + network effect. What he did was to build a straw man argument and now he's fighting it bravely. The CancerPill - Bitcoin comparison is simply missed. If it was true - why not creating your own copy of Bitcoin and selling it at say 80-90% of current BTC price? Lets see how far that can take him.

All this somehow remind me of this good ol' meme: