|
Danny that is not an unreasonable argument, but note the sentence I added to my post just after you quoted it.
The web browser became installed by default, which is analogous to the users in masse will join Bitcoin via off chain service providers such as Paypal. But the problem is they will never mine.
Whereas, you see those billion people on Facebook all creating effectively via their profile page their own website.
You can't get around the fiat conversion tsuris any other way except through mining, transacting, or paying wages in Bitcoin. Have you considered how slow the latter will scale. And Bitcoin is not purchased for transactions, rather for speculation. The Paypal accounts in Bitcoin will skyrocket on the next bubble run for Bitcoin, not because of needing to use it as a currency.
Bitcoin has a structural asymmetry.
|
|
|
|
P.S. I see a lot of delusion in the Bitcoin user demographics (see also the first link in the OP). I think this is important to note because how can a deluded user base create a useful currency? There is far too much useless ideology crap and not enough actual, "hey this made my life easier and better" technology discussion. If you actually talk about the technology of Bitcoin, it sucks. It is way too slow, frustating, technobabble (what I need to download a client, then I need to what?), what I need to convert fiat to Bitcoin then the receipient needs to convert back to fiat again losing a lot of money on exchange volatility, etc.. The off chain service providers will introduce non-mining users to the coin, thus no hope of not converting from fiat to get Bitcoin in large scale. This is a reason why I think Bitcoin is (at least partially) an ideological façade (delusion). |
|
|
|
I must be missing something.
What's the point of an altcoin if it could be blocked by government anyway - I mean, you seemed to be saying earlier that the US government could pull the plug on the internet backbone if things got desperate enough for them?
I said it is much more likely they would just filter protocol of crypto-currency. In the logic of escalation as needed, the threat of blackout I think would first be used to induce a country to comply. See the distinction is the threat is something the national government can address by complying. Whereas, with the improvements I suggested, the government could not comply because the pools are anonymous. If the powers-that-be blacked out a country that had tried to comply but couldn't possibly comply since technologically impossible, that would backfire. You've given no incentive to comply with your lawgivers. Confiscation can be easily deterred by real world decoys. No hacker worth his salt will work for a dictator so their lackeys will be easily spoofed. Iron Gloves and Jack Boots are so 20th Century. Your criminal secret police will be exposed to the world and your trade will be tariffed, firewalled, or blockaded. Unless you can give a strong moral reason to regulate Bitcoin more than cash, you have no moral authority for your argument. Without moral authority, your people will rebel. America is already past that point and is shutting down. They don't even have the budget or manpower to shut down the criminal marijuana stores. As a young man I was able to separate my idealism from rational reality. I see many Bitcoiners have not made that shift from cartoon-land to reality. You assume the masses aren't manipulated in terms of their priorities on morality. They are concerned about for example gay marriage and political corruption. National identification and financial transparency is important to them to stop terrorists, control immigration, track down the bank fraudsters, jail the banksters who created the debt crisis we have, etc.. Also people have many pet issues, so divide-and-conquer and needing the State (the powers-that-be) to be the referee (i.e. people are naturally never able to totally agree, thus you always need a cop, judge, government to hold the power else you have chaotic fighting-- the natural tendency of man is war not peace). What you fail to comprehend is that powers-that-be have always been able to get the masses to blame the wrong cause in order to make solutions which favor the powers-that-be. And that will NEVER change. Again re-read my post upthread, that the majority is ALWAYS wrong. When I made that realization as a younger man, that golden rule formed the crux of my political philosophy for the rest of my life. This is why I am an anarchist and not a Libertarian. I never trust the collective majority to be a sane paradigm (even though members of that majority can be acting rationally in Ayn Rand's model of self-interest).
Some of you think the tide is turning and the masses all over the world are waking up to the abuses of the USA government and other manifestations of the powers-that-be. The greatest mistake anyone can make is to assume the majority will ever do the right thing. They never do. The majority is always wrong. If that were not the case, then evolution would stop functioning. Any one who plans for the future based on hope in the system and the majority, is a sheeple cow and will prosper when society does and suffer when society does. We westerners have experienced an amazingly long period of prosperity in the world and especially in the Western nations. This has been propped up by central banks which never allow any debt defaults to correct excesses and misallocations. Thus we've amassed a huge debt bubble that is going to pop with horrific implications on society-at-large. The powers-that-be are well aware of how to manipulate this "awakening". As always, they turn idealism into fury and collective outcomes which empower their designs. They infiltrated the Black Panters during the Vietnam protest era. They helped to fuel the "free sex, free drugs" destruction of the boomers and western society. They were instrumental in the Bolshevik Revolution, etc. They will unleash an economic implosion contagion, social unrest, violence, and upheaval. You will be so busy trying to survive all the crap that is hitting you in your daily life, that you won't have any time to sit down and produce anything. All your pontifications about you can do this and that, will fly out the window when you are too busy trying to avoid the daily violence and secure your food. The growing hatred of the USA and the angst that will be spread, is fuel for the fire of burning the nation-state system to the ground, after which the weary burned out fury will welcome the one world governance savior to restore order. The masses love chaos when they've been cooped up too long in a well controlled order. Let them fight for a while and grow weary then they will beg for order again and to be managed like the compliant sheeple they really are. You are safe within the herd until the herd stampedes over a cliff or stampedes over you. Because the majority are not leaders. The majority are sheeple and I think that includes you reader. |
|
|
|
|
I am surprised by both the vote and the comments. If that is true that 25% of the community (3 of 12 'yes' votes as of writing this post) is still seriously interested in such improvements (and if those are not the supporters I had already had), that is already enough to motivate me or someone else to attempt to implement such improvements. The sample size is a bit small to trust, and I don't know what the 'yes' voters are thinking, expectations, and caveats.
And then even amongst those who voted 'no', a few of the comments appear to be you voted no because you don't believe starting over again can realistically work.
The way to overcome Bitcoin's existing inertia is to create demand for the coin that is much greater than the 1 or 2 million users Bitcoin has now.
I am coding an Android application right now and my competition has 10 million downloads, and I tried the app and it sucks. Btw, figure they are converting 2 - 5% of downloads to sales, so that is $2 - $5 million per year in revenue. You see why it is difficult to be motivated to code a serious altcoin?
I had 1 million users of Cool Page back in 2001 when the internet was 1/10 the population it is now.
The major threat now for anyone who wants to compete with Bitcoin is that for example Paypal will be starting to push Bitcoin out to its millions of users.
But the problem so far remains for Bitcoin, that there isn't a compelling "must have" use for it as a currency where another currency can't be used instead. So if anyone finds a way to make a compelling use case for a crypto-currency and if that use case can't be accommodated by Bitcoin due to some technological reason (e.g. Bitcoin transactions being too slow), then Bitcoin can be defeated in terms of market size.
I think I have identified such a use case in my recent writings which are linked in the OP, but it is up to you to figure it out. I am not going to spell it out. Because what if I decide to make such an altcoin, I don't want to tell everyone my secret too soon. By thinking deeply about what I wrote, it is probably possible to figure out what use case I had in mind.
Note that use case does not target you, bitcointalk.org. It doesn't target investors. It wouldn't even be necessary to announce here, much better at Reddit.
|
|
|
|
I must be missing something.
What's the point of an altcoin if it could be blocked by government anyway - I mean, you seemed to be saying earlier that the US government could pull the plug on the internet backbone if things got desperate enough for them?
I said it is much more likely they would just filter protocol of crypto-currency. In the logic of escalation as needed, the threat of blackout I think would first be used to induce a country to comply. See the distinction is the threat is something the national government can address by complying. Whereas, with the improvements I suggested, the government could not comply because the pools are anonymous. If the powers-that-be blacked out a country that had tried to comply but couldn't possibly comply since technologically impossible, that would backfire. |
|
|
|
However, if regulated pools started supporting blacklists and threatened fungibility,
people would (I hope) recognize that this is unacceptable and simply leave those pools.
That would be true for you guys, but the problem is Bitcoin is being pushed now to the masses on Paypal, etc.. Once the powers-that-be (e.g. Peter Thiel) have a critical mass of sheeple on Bitcoin, they can move forward with the regulation. I've been able to clearly see their plan way before they started to implement it. I tried to warn but nobody listens to me. I hear what you're saying, but I just can't see it playing out like that. "They" will have to have one hell of a propaganda machine to give the masses Bitcoin while keeping them ignorant of the virtues of decentralized networks, decentralized money, and everything that goes along with it. Keeping the wool pulled over the eyes of the sheeple will be unsustainable. But we can agree to disagree on that if you think otherwise. By the way, what do you think of this article: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/93767945708/bitcoin-is-not-compatible-with-the-stateThe author is a better writer than me. His conceptual point is spot on, but a fantasy because the reality is the government can control Bitcoin, so the conceptual point is invalid. Implement the improvements I suggested, maybe his conceptual point could come closer to reality. |
|
|
|
Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?
No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.
So that means no urgency correct? So the improvements are not critical correct? Because I don't see those improvements coming in Bitcoin any time soon. I think the only way they would come is if an altcoin became popular and Bitcoin was forced to make the changes. I understand many Bitcoin holders hate the concept of altcoin because they think it dilutes the money supply. This is nonsense, as I explained in the first link in the OP. Any way, I want your opinions and thanks for sharing your opinion. I suspect you will confirm my conclusion and vote predominately "no". |
|
|
|
|
James, I never said the shares are not below the required difficulty for shares. I said they are not required to not be much further below the required difficulty, thus a share can be low enough to be block solution. You simply don't understand proof-of-work. Sorry this thread is not a Bitcoin 101 class. I really need to stop. Good luck.
|
|
|
|
It took so long to get back to this. The SecretSeed does not depend on the contents of the block[1]. Thus I don't see how it is incompatible with any modifications to the contents of the block. [1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.4980.pdf#page=29I missed the fundamental issue here: For the block to be valid: Instead of requiring that the block hash is less than
2 256 /(2 32 D), it is required that the block hash is less than 2 256 /2 32 and that SecretHash
is less than 2 256 /D. The Secret, which the hasher knows nothing about has the high-difficulty hash. The block contents, which is what we are trying to protect with PoW has the low-difficulty hash. You apparently don't understand how mining shares work? The hasher sends the share no matter how much below the required share difficulty, thus if low enough it is a block solution. The Secret only obfuscates (from the hasher's view) how far below the target difficulty the share is, but it doesn't change the fact that all the difficulty remains on the miners who are sending shares. The secret doesn't partition the probability space. The proposal not only lets the mining pool ignore any hasher suggestions via getblocktemplate,
Incorrect, the miner's submitted share can be a hash of the blockhash and a nonce. So the miner can still set his preferred formation of the block. As I said before, the secret is orthogonal to the blockhash. BTW, I was aware of what the Sybil attack was. As far as I know, there is no general way for P2P software to avoid it.
There is a general way to avoid it: reputation. |
|
|
|
Would that be current debt that's built upon a fraud by any chance?  Yes it is. You still can't erase it without hurting innocent people. |
|
|
|
What is clear to me from this discussion is that people invest in Bitcoin to satiate some incorrect perspective (delusion) they have on idealism, morality, money, economy, political economy, and economic reality. This is to be expected. Bitcoin was always (sales) pitched as a delusion starting with Satoshi: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdfThe steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation.
...
Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free. You start with that one delusion about a fixed supply of gold money being inflation-free, then of course the followers will also be delusional. Either Satoshi never studied the 1800s and how fixed supplies of gold were loaned out in fractional amounts by private banks. Or he was deceiving. Surely he would realize the same would happen to Bitcoin. The supply of Bitcoin can't be limited to 21 million coins, it will also be set by the market for debt denominated in Bitcoin. This was not likely the work of an amateur with no agenda. So it is not surprising that we have the n00bs here in this thread doing their best Dunning-Kruger effort. Conclusion: no altcoin will ever beat Bitcoin, because it can't surpass the original delusion. The only way to displace Bitcoin is to create an actual currency that is widely used by people who need to, not targeted to delusional speculators. In short, I am wasting my time here. Period. |
|
|
|
It may not be a relevant question to you, but it's fundamental to most people... After all, it is the very foundation upon which the financial system is built.
You can not build on top of fraud - it's like saying it's okay for the banks computers to register 2+2=5 and have that verified as correct by the accountants. It's too daft to laugh at.
If fraud is the mechanism by which the seed money is produced then that fraud is present thereafter - it can't just be ignored.
I never advocated ignoring it. I am saying you can't unwind the existing debt with a magic wand and not hurt a lot of innocent people. You could try to abolish the Fed. That is not the same as erasing the current debt as you originally stated. |
|
|
|
That's why we start creating legal platforms that skirt bitcoin getting labeled as property and taxed by the IRS. If it remains currency, by this I mean an exchange of asset for currency it's impossible to regulate. Though, once it's ruled as property, the IRS gets involved. You should check out my paper on this in some prior posts for what I'm saying.
It's attractive to me to move bitcoin to a basic set of legal systems based on simple promissory notes
The IRS routinely rules that such shell games don't constitute a legal change and they continue to tax as property. I don't know why you think the powers-that-be would give you any chance in their kangaroo courts. You are talking about challenging the powers-that-be on the status of money, which is their source of power. They will spare no effort. to start to give Payers and Payee's the vehicle to conduct business and access to the court system. No one wants to conduct business if they don't have any access to court for large items. There is just too much fraud and bad people running rampant in this world to act otherwise. People are naturally suspicious as they should be. Once you get burned a few times or know someone else that has you tend to be more careful.
Why do you assert that people can't do legally binding contracts with Bitcoin? Can only legal tender be used in contracts? Sorry I don't have time to read your essays, because for one thing I am not that interested in the premise which I don't believe is viable. This would then create a circumstance where people could view bitcoin as a true store of wealth. They could see the ever increasing price point and know the mechanics of the system creating increased users with a limited number of coins and see this as an opportunity to buy coins and sink wealth into bitcoin for the hope of a later larger ticket purchase of property. Right now no one is going to buy 500 dollars of bitcoin to then buy a flat screen tv at a later time. But it is not out of the question for someone to put say 20,000 dollars in bitcoin in the hopes at a later date to use it to purchase property or maybe renovate a business. This to me wouldn't be speculation per se as people are not playing bitcoin like the stock market. But instead using it as a store of wealth to later conduct business in the coin and to insulate themselves from unstable national fiat money systems.
The dollar has been much more stable than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a speculation. If you want to challenge fiat in terms of share of GDP, you need Bitcoin to be adopted for use as a currency, not as a speculation. Speculative use does not drive the velocity of money, which is what makes the GDP in the Quantity Theory of Money. |
|
|
|
Please help my understanding by explaining this scenario.
There's just me and you left after the apocalypse - I'm the bank and you're Mr Testicles.
We both agree that I (the bank) can create money from nothing and lend it to you at 10% interest per week for doing fook all.
The bank grants Mr Testicles a loan of £100 for one week - so a total repayable of £110.
The question is - where does Mr Testicles find the £10 in interest?
This question is not relevant to the explanation I provided to you before. I understand the inherent corruption of the fractional reserve system. That is not my point. My point is that the (government and corporate bond debt) lenders are in large part now the public. If you default, you default on the public, not on the banksters. The Fed also bought up a lot of debt recently and put it on its balance sheet. But if you selectively default on that portion only, you will cause all the USA debt to collapse in value due to the loss of confidence and stampede. |
|
|
|
In the Pool analysis paper (section 6.2.3), they don't go into specific math. They don't have to: the operation of hash functions are well-known to computer scientists. I already replied on this. They do go into the specific math about SecretSeed is < 2^256/D. No, it is the SecretHash that is required to be < 2^256/D Correct. Obvious typo. Did you have any point? I already refuted your original point.You claim to be knowledgeable in computer science, but appear to miss how hash functions work. This suggests to me that your Computer Science background may be made-up to better fit-in with the community.
WTF? A typo means I don't understand how hash functions work? Nice try at political spin mofo. Do you even know what the wide pipe construction of a hash function means? Little test for you. Answer quickly to prove you didn't have to go look it up. Your distrust of I2P seems to boil down to op-sec. That is, you don't trust I2P even if it works as advertised, because to err is human. No I gave specific issues. You can't relabel those issues as op-sec and be credible. You: - Complained you could not find the documentation
- Pointed out that Sybils may not honour the requested delay (duh)
- said "Also I don't trust I2P because it is operating at a very low-level in the network protocol stack, so I don't know how to characterize all potential de-anonymization correlations that can occur higher up the protocol stack."
Your summaries prove you didn't understand what I wrote. I said there is no specification. I didn't say "documentation". If you knew anything about computer science, you would understand that a technical specification is not the same as documentation. I never said Sybils wouldn't honor a delay. I said I2P and Tor have no mechanism to prevent Sybil attacks. You apparently don't even know what a Sybil attack is. A Sybil attack is where the adversary populates a large percentage of the nodes, thus is able to de-anonymize the network. And the Sybil attack point is the most important one. On the last point, I decided it was complete bull-crap and tried to discern what you actually meant.
It is not job of a low-level protocol to deal with application-level details. Obviously I2P applications should avoid making it easy to "contaminate" your multiple identities.
It wasn't bull crap, because you actually did understand what it meant. And yes, I2P leaves too much variability in higher levels of the network stack and thus it will be very difficult for a n00b user to be sure he isn't leaking his identity, by virus or bug or poorly programmed app choice, etc.. The underlying point is that I2P is too complex. If knew anything about computer science you would understand that it is essential to minimize complexity when perfection is required. You don't get a second chance to restore your anonymity after it has been breached. Also the underlying point is I would prefer something more "batteries included, plug and play" so n00bs can click and go. No hassles. No technobabble. Just click and go. I am starting to suspect the OP's goal is to spread FUD. ... However he comes across as a government (or bank) agent with a goal of disrupting any organized resistance.
On what basis? I speak facts. Where is the FUD? You appear to directly conflate tor vulnerabilities with I2P vulnerabilities, even though they are different mixnets with sightly different designs. This suggests you want to subtly encourage people not use such mixnets: because they are not anonymous anyway. Now, nobody is perfect. Both those points can be explained away simply by saying you missed something. However, you have an arrogant attitude; explicitly claiming that you are smarter than everyone else. So the real problem is your butthurt ego. I knew that. That is not FUD. Fuck off noise machine. You are wasting my time with your low S/N content. You haven't made a decent point yet. |
|
|
|
I really don't think the rest of the world will follow America into fascism. Been there. Done that.
I think I mostly agree with that. But don't expect the filipinos to not apply the USA fascism to you. They could throw you under the bus when America says jump, they might say "how high". The Philippines will likely (they have been thus far) follow USA edicts because they are so dependent. And I would not agree if you asserted that there won't be war in SE Asia. And I would not agree if you asserted that economic hardship won't return to the Philippines, kidnappings, and that you might not be forced to leave for your safety or comfort. Also don't rule out ISIS coming to the Philippines especially as the economy goes to shit. I'm not going to follow you down that rabbit hole. Most of my neighbors are Muslim. I strongly disagree with your sentiment. I feel safer here than in many places in the US. You haven't lost an eye in the Philippines yet. I doubt you lived here during the Asian Crisis in 1999? The people were angry. People get angry when they don't have enough money to eat what they like. Many are still nice, but danger increases. Also you weren't here when while minding your own business the boys would constantly cat call from behind your back, "Hey joe, fuck you". And the new one is, "Hi Daddy" and the females have joined now (a sign of decline in the filipino culture). The Philippines does not enjoy Most Favored Nation status with the US and does not participate in the visa waiver program. The US doesn't have much to offer anyone anymore and maybe that's why the dollar has been tanking here the last ten years.
The USA is protecting the Philippines against China with a Mutual Defense Treaty. There are more filipinos in the USA than in any other country. Their remittances are very important to the country at 53% of the total remittances. http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/12/02/25432/ (The Coming Dollar Highs)  The dollar is coming stronger and you observe how strong it will be in the coming years. It will skyrocket, because the entire world is short the dollar, i.e. there are massive dollar loans. Even the Philippine corporations have been borrowing dollars in bond offerings. As the global economy collapses, exports and remittances will collapse. The Philippines is primarily a consumer economy, something like 70% which is very unbalanced. They have a disproportionate share of the largest malls in the world for such a poor country. Credit has been growing most recently at 20% (accelerating) but GDP at only 6 - 7% (not accelerating). http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2013/11/21/heres-why-the-philippines-economic-miracle-is-really-a-bubble-in-disguise/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2013/11/28/heres-what-the-philippine-bubble-deniers-are-getting-wrong/In short, you've been in the Philippines during the credit bubble. Everyone is feeling richer. Were you here during the Asian Crisis bust as I was? Isn't amazing how people get fooled by credit booms and extrapolate that to the future. The Philippines has their own corrupt system and nobody is going to change it because it works for them and keeps the peace.
The filipinos will probably rise up against the corruption during the next downturn, because they've been abroad and there more college graduates now. Expect revolutionary unrest if the bust is deep and long enough. Most of America is like the Jerry Springer Show. Run tell dat, homeboy. I felt the need to carry weapons back in America. Here I have no such worries.
Depends where you are and who you associate with. White upper, middle class communities especially in the northern states are not like that. The kids are disciplined, the families work hard. Ditto Canada. Same in the Philippines. I saw intentionally, tortured, burned bodies last week in Mindanao. Depends where you are. And you think the teens in the Philippines aren't doing some of the same crap? Get out more. Take a walk to where the teens hangout. Save your doom and gloom for talk radio.
Denial of reality is a positive trait? I'm not worried about a one world currency and I'm certainly not worried about global regulation of Bitcoin.
Either that means you don't care if it happens. Or it means you don't believe it will happen. The probability of a global monetary reset with a global monetary unit is 100% certainty approximately before 2033. The probability of Bitcoin being regulated is also very high, unless some technological change occurs to break the current trajectory. |
|
|
|
There's no doubt about it, all countries have been and are being shafted by the banks.
I am big believer in personal responsibility. The people borrowed and accepted government spending. The people are complicit. Where 99% of people are asleep is that there is no debt, because the banks never lent us anything anyway - because they don't have anything lend - and it's all about book-keeping entries and the ability to maintain a lie.
It is not that simplistic. The debt now represents actual investments and labor as the debt money has gone through the economy. You can't just unwind that without picking winners and losers thus stealing from some and redistributing to others. The notion that debt can be canceled is a fallacy. It always has to be paid down by someone. Then I'm afraid you have failed to see that governments are merely the 'shop window' of the banks, otherwise you would realise that there is no reason in the whole wide world why a government would allegedly 'borrow' money at interest from a private company, when it has the ability to create its own for free. I was a goldbug before so I am aware of all these arguments. You can't say anything I didn't know about years ago. My point is not about how the debt was born, but about what it is now in the economy. Personal responsibility is just common sense and common sense should tell you that if your government is just a bank in disguise, then it will charge 'its people' for the 'loans' it has arranged on their behalf. Please don't perpetuate the lie that "The people borrowed and accepted government spending." and "The people are complicit.", as they have no say in the matter, regardless of who's managing the shop today.
You can not have debt based on a fraud.
Yes you can, and you do. And it can't be unwound with a magic wand. The debt is now largely held by the retirement plans ($17 trillion). You going to screw the old people to retire the debt? Getting rid of the Fed for the future is an orthogonal issue from what the existing debt is now. |
|
|
|
Oblivious shares mean that the block contents are not disclosed to the hasher. The hasher may be working on a malicious branch of the chain without even knowing about it. They may even be crushing start-up alt-coins, or embeding prayers in the block-chain. I believe oblivious shares can be implemented using a public hash of the block data. The secret can be independent of the compilation of the contents of the block. As I understand it, the secret can be an arbitrary length: that is the whole point of a hash function. With oblivious shares, block manipulations possible with getblocktemplate are impossible: since a hashed header implies a read-only block. Wait I will dig up the math to be sure. I will go eat first outside, reply when I return. In the Pool analysis paper (section 6.2.3), they don't go into specific math. They don't have to: the operation of hash functions are well-known to computer scientists. I already replied on this. They do go into the specific math about SecretSeed is < 2^256/D. Your distrust of I2P seems to boil down to op-sec. That is, you don't trust I2P even if it works as advertised, because to err is human. No I gave specific issues. You can't relabel those issues as op-sec and be credible. I am starting to suspect the OP's goal is to spread FUD. ... However he comes across as a government (or bank) agent with a goal of disrupting any organized resistance.
On what basis? I speak facts. Where is the FUD? |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
