You can ignore the solution, but ignoring PoW failures are what is going to bite everyone in the end.
What solution? Ditching it for PoS? Lol. Again someone else claims PoS has problems, funny no one can name them.  That's because they've been rehashed endlessly and most are a Google search away. But sure, for the sake of the topic (and despite you being someone who is adamantly against Bitcoin), I'll enumerate a few: The nothing at stake problem:However, this algorithm has one important flaw: there is "nothing at stake". In the event of a fork, whether the fork is accidental or a malicious attempt to rewrite history and reverse a transaction, the optimal strategy for any miner is to mine on every chain, so that the miner gets their reward no matter which fork wins. Thus, assuming a large number of economically interested miners, an attacker may be able to send a transaction in exchange for some digital good (usually another cryptocurrency), receive the good, then start a fork of the blockchain from one block behind the transaction and send the money to themselves instead, and even with 1% of the total stake the attacker's fork would win because everyone else is mining on both. Vulnerability to long range attacks:While PoS clients do penalize things like double-voting in the short-term, they can’t stop the individuals who were around for the beginning of the chain to revert all of the blockchain history and start a new, seemingly valid chain. In effect, every version of a blockchain that exists or has ever existed could be revived and run as its own chain, if the underlying protocol allows for it.
In Proof of Stake chains, in the early stages there will be a relatively small group of miners with coins staked. As more and more users join the chain and obtain the underlying asset, the pool of miners, i.e., the users who have staked coins, becomes larger. However, after the fact, the original, small group of miners can get together and decide to go back and ‘revive’ that early version of the chain, and since in the ensuing stages they would be the only ones who could mine blocks, they would soon hold a large share of the assets on that chain. And since there isn’t a limit on the growth-rate of Proof of Stake chains, only how long it takes each chosen miner to mine the next block, these chains can suddenly become extremely long.
The rich get richer at no expense - Whereas rich whales under PoW will actually need to spend and risk their money for the opportunity to earn more money, PoS allows whales to get richer faster passively, making it more prone to centralization Adopting PoS will inevitably split the userbase - because it's not a fix as much as it's an alternative, some people will choose to stay on the PoW chain, making Bitcoin weaker in the end. As for your so-called problems: Energy Waste will continue to worsen
Energy will keep on being consumed, but with the developments in renewables, it's going to be much less of an issue going forward. Transaction fees will increase or the network will collapse
No signs of collapse at all, and fees will get better as more improvements are made. Government approval will be required for the miners to host massive electrical draining warehouses
No basis in reality yet. Bitcoin Mining Control will continue Centralized to the Top Mining Pool Operators
No different from whales centralizing PoS. As I've said earlier, trading problems for other problems is not a solution. PoS has its merits, but if something as large as Bitcoin is going to change something as crucial as its consensus algorithm, it'll have to be for much bigger gains. |
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-snip-
No the energy spent on bitcoin mining is not securing the coin. The Top 4 Mining Pool Operators are Securing Bitcoin, as they control more than 51% for years no matter what the individual miners waste on electricity. Their "waste" of electricity still collectively help secure the network. They obviously don't see it as a waste (or a problem, even) either, otherwise they'd just be turning their miners off. Bitcoin is broken, which is always apparent when transactions increase and the fees skyrocket.
Which the way users handle now is to just stop using it , until fees decrease, that is in no way a reliable service for global finance.
Bitcoin is a work in progress, and the "reliable service for global finance" is planned to be provided by layer two solutions. It sucks that those solutions aren't ready for prime time yet, but I could understand not wanting to take unnecessary risks with bandaid solutions -- I don't even want to place proof of stake under that umbrella, because again, it has its own set of problems, and implementing it will be yet another catalyst in splitting the community. |
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YES , Bitcoin energy waste is an indicator of it's failure to improve.
The energy is being spent on securing one of the most secure networks in the world, so it's not necessarily being wasted. I think we can all agree that we should always be pushing for improvements, but who's to say that proof of stake is an actual improvement? It certainly has its merits, but also comes with just as many, if not more problems. Switching problems with other problems isn't a solution. I do agree that we should look into replacing proof of work, but only when we have something that is clearly better. In the meantime, if it's not broken, then don't fix it; proof of work is in place to protect the network, and it has done that perfectly well thus far. |
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Yup, economics support this. Generally speaking, inflation spurs spending while deflation discourages it. This is also why fiat is inflationary by design.
This might be a tough pill to swallow to some people, especially those who believe that Bitcoin will one day destroy banks and replace fiat, but at the end of the day most people are only really going to use it where it's most convienient; cross-border payments, online transfers, etc. It doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing though, because anyone can still use it for what they want to use it for.
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Doesn't it seem to be a strange explanation?
Plenty of people see it the same way, but they came to a different conclusion: exit scam lol. Meanwhile, I don't think we can really conclude that EU based exchanges aren't viable just from this incident. There seem to be plenty of them that are doing okay. It's also possible that new exchanges in general are finding it hard to find clients because people are wary of scams. |
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-snip-
You do not have to adhere to KYC requirements when you host a Bitcoin node or if you want to make a transaction on the Blockchain, so why would this become a requirement for running a Lightning Network hub? It's purely theoretical, but since exchanges are required to comply with KYC regulations, it's possible that extends to hubs they run. I'm not sure if it's practical or even possible to enforce (I would love it if someone could set the record straight), but I often see it being brought up. All I was basically saying is that even if this were the case, I'm sure there will always be non-KYC hubs. People are very negative about the Lightning Network, but I think side chains have a place in the Bitcoin development and on-chain scaling will never match it's performance. Let's prevent a situation where we want to throw out the baby with the bath water.  That isn't really in question, at least not in this thread. |
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Any Government Agency could run their own hub and perform a sting , all under the guise to getting money launders.
Funnily enough, government agents allegedly do the same thing with Tor exit nodes. It's still considered better privacy-wise than basic browsing though, so I'd think of LN vs. on-chain transactions in the same vein. LN by itself might not be good enough, but it should be if combined with proper precautions. Plus as time goes on, don't be surprised when those LN hubs that take your initial funds require your ID , just like a bank.  I don't deny the possibility, but I do hope there will be enough options that using these won't be necessary. I'm sure people won't support them if there are non-KYC options. |
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I beg to differ, I have used blockchain online wallet as well as coinbase to store Bitcoin and Ethereum but I have not faced any sort of issue till now, I believe it's upto us about how we secure of keys and password because also most of the online wallets have 2FA nowadays to avoid any sort of hacking or unauthorized usage. this is just my experience but as you suggested some user might have faced issue but if we get to know the specific issue then it will be helpful in this case.
I'm glad you haven't faced any issues thus far, but the problem with blockchain.com and Coinbase isn't about the user experience they provide, it's that they're custodial. Case in point, look at how blockchain.com's wallet works: We’ve Got Your Back(up)
Your encrypted wallet is automatically backed up to our servers. To safely store your wallet, we add another layer of security by encrypting your wallet a second time. Securely storing your wallet on our servers ensures that you can access your wallet from any (and all) of your different devices. They keep a copy of your wallet for you in their servers, and you have no idea how secure it really is, and nor can you verify that they're doing what they claim to be doing -- you basically have to trust them completely. Coinbase is even worse in that it keeps your coins for you completely, and they have a history of closing accounts without prior warning. It's also worth noting that most of these services won't even help you if you lose your coins, even in cases where they're the ones who caused the loss in the first place. That being said, non-custodial wallets are objectively better because they grant you complete control over your own coins, and you don't have to worry about the custodial service being attacked. All you're really doing by involving third parties in keeping your coins is increasing attack vectors and potentially compromising your anonymity. |
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I'd like to point out that privacy does not equal anonymity.
Bitcoin works in such a way that your transactions are public, but your identity is anonymous. Surveillance groups can watch over your transactions as much as they want, but they won't know they're yours unless you reveal your identity (KYC, wallet links, etc.).
If you want to avoid surveillance, then don't divulge your identity. There are services such as CoinJoin and mixers to help you on that end, so it's very doable even if you can't avoid KYC exchanges. As such, Bitcoin doesn't necessarily empower surveillance.
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I've always found hardware wallets such as the Trezor and Ledger great for beginners to use, and they're pretty reasonably secure most of the time as well. Some people I know have said that the interface of the applications that communicate with the wallets are a bit confusing, but there's plenty of documentation for them and there's plenty of features for more experienced users while it's also still easy to use for beginners.
As much as I agree, beginners may just be testing the waters and only hold a few bucks worth of coins. Unless they're sure they want to grow their holdings in the future, it may not be practical to buy a hardware wallet immediately. The relatively lengthy setup compared to other wallets may also turn them off (i.e. first impression of Bitcoin UX will be less than positive). My personal suggestion is Electrum. Very straightforward to set up, safe enough for small amounts, and perfect for getting a feel on how Bitcoin must be used. To clarify, hardware wallets are better, but they're probably only worth the price once your coins have grown to a certain amount. |
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Well, this certainly sounds bullish
Hopefully we will see other countries following but.. China coin for now will do. Feels like the last months of 2019 will be quite interesting..Fingers crossed!
I'm assuming you meant bullish for Bitcoin, but...why? This has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all, and since it's a direct competitor to the CCP's pet project, its release could be the trigger for a full crypto ban in China. Given how speculators overvalue market developments in China, things could be very bearish very quickly. That being said, I've always been curious why countries want to create new digital currencies when fiat could basically act the same way. This could end up being good for crypto in the long run as states set up infrastructure (and people's mindsets) needed for the propagation of digital payments. We'll see what happens with China I suppose. |
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Either you gain a bunch of power or you lower the network total hash power. Question is, what does it cost to bribe key employees at BTC.com, antpool and viaBTC?
Even if you manage to lower the hashrate, which IMO is probably impossible to do via bribery, what then? You still have to spend a lot of money on the hashrate, and the tools you bought for the attack effectively turn into bricks afterwards. Previous 51% attacks on alts were only possible because the tools they used could be repurposed for something else. That won't be the case after a successful attack on Bitcoin. It simply isn't worth doing at the end of the day, no matter what route the attacker takes. |
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But the whole everything is made in China stuff drives me nuts sometimes (not today)
Speaking from central Europe, I think that 90% of our clothes are made in India and Bangladesh. Went to a Nike store a week ago and everything there was made in India, I took the time this morning and checked, my Gillette blades are made in Poland, the foam is actually from the Uk, my shampoo in Germany and the balsam in Poland, I got a fridge from Poland, the heating is part dutch part finish (the radiators) , the stove is Turkish, a lot of the small stuff like mixer, expresso are in Hungary, Turkey and Germany....actually I have no appliance in all the home that is made in China.
Yep, China doesn't actually provide the cheapest option for manufacturing anymore: Rising labor costs have been driving factory emigration from China since long before Washington’s tariffs were a factor. Minimum hourly wages in the major factory hubs of Guangdong province rose from Rmb4.12 in 2008 to Rmb14.4 ($2.00) last year. Manufacturers, particularly low value-added ones like textile factories, have sought even cheaper labor in Southeast Asian countries, like Vietnam and Malaysia. A quick Google search would show articles being written about it from years ago. A lot of stuff are still made in China, but the world's dependence on them for manufacturing is gradually diminishing. The notion of everything being made in China still has some degree of truth to it now, but is mostly outdated. And exaggerations like this drives people to think that China has bumped the price...
I don't believe they orchestrated it, but the market has always been moved by narratives. Support from China (regardless of the authenticity being in question), which is perceived to be a huge thing by a lot of people could build hype and raise prices. No one can really say what drove it, but I'd say it's highly likely that Xi's statement was a factor. |
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In the off chance that this is legit, your best chance to recover the coins are probably by using this service: https://walletrecoveryservices.com/Bitcointalk thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=240779.0As for everyone else, don't send this person money under any circumstance unless you 100% believe her story and are solely doing it for charity. If she is really in the circumstance she says she's in, she'll try to get help from an actual professional with a good track record. if Dave from above link can't do it, there's probably zero chance of recovering the coins. |
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If gold loses 85% of its value in 12 months, then it will be no longer considered as a store of value.
I'm not sure if you have followed gold's performance throughout the last years, but it had a terrible crash from $1.9k back to $1k, where today the price of gold is hovering around the $1.5k mark. Yes... I have charts with me which track the gold prices for the last 150 years. And since gold is a long term asset, we should not be looking at these short-term variations. If you check the charts of gold over the last 150 years, it is clear that that particular asset have been successful in maintaining its purchasing power over the years. It is true that the prices fell from $1,800 per oz to $1,200 per oz. But before that, gold was priced somewhere around $600 per oz, and the current price is close to $1,500 per oz (which is just 20% lower than the ATH level). Shouldn't we also be looking at Bitcoin as a long term asset though? I'm not arguing that it looks unfit to be a store of value, because it fluctuates a lot more than you'd want it to. It's bound to be more stable as the market grows though, and we're actually seeing improvements on that end in recent months, outside some wild swings here and there. Most people who refer to Bitcoin as a store of value are in it for the long game, and aren't really fazed by the short fluctuations. It serves a very niche portion of the population at the moment, but it does work for that niche. Things are only going to be better. |
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I wonder if this is true. Articles I've found also use this Twitter account as their source. It's really hard to tell what China would and wouldn't do at this point. It would also be interesting how people would react to censorship if it (potentially) favors them lol. Only when China allows local exchanges to operate again, I'll believe in their technocratic blockchain crap.
In the end, it's contradictory to promote blockchain while refraining projects from raising funds from investors.
Well, China is a world of contradictions...
They do allow OTC exchanges, which is something I suppose. And the only (or at least largest) reason they banned regular exchanges is to curb capital outflows, or so they say. I do wonder why Xi himself would publicly come out in support of blockchain tech, but we can only assume they have something big in the works. I don't think it will be good for Bitcoin. |
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China’s state-controlled television station, CCTV.com, recently hosted a segment breaking down Bitcoin, according to a prominent trader that closely follows the region’s cryptocurrency scene. China's state controlled television explaining the basics of "first ever blockchain technology" #bitcoin $btc, and how a distributed ledger works Imagine 1.3 billion people got to know bitcoin because state made an effort to explain how it works. I don't think this was a direct contributor in the rise. Only OTC exchanges are allowed in China, and they don't have a direct effect on Bitcoin prices -- that means Chinese residents lining up to buy Bitcoin won't affect the market that much and that quickly. It might have influenced people from other countries to buy though, which is what seemed to happen with Xi's statement. China has something to do with Bitcoin's price increase. No one denies that. But, to be clear, the recent Bitcoin price increase is not solely about China. China was not everything to what happened. I don't like hearing statements saying China is the one that caused the pump, China is the reason why Bitcoin's price increased, China caused the massive dump, China is the one that controls the fate of Bitcoin because the largest mining farm is in China, etc. What do all these imply, that China is lording over Bitcoin? Or Bitcoin is in China's hands? I don't share this.
It might be a hard pill to swallow, but China undoubtedly has massive influence over Bitcoin. A vast majority of hashrate is behind their firewall, and we all know their government exerts a sizable degree of control over Chinese businesses (including most miners). Bitcoin can survive without China for sure, but it's going to be a massive stepback. |
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Lol it's nice to know that McAfee is above mathematics these days. Only in the very, very long run will this even be a possibility, due to fiat depreciation. But even that would require a hyperinflationary scenario to come to fruition. He is clearly doing this for the media props.
Few people probably know this because they tend to stop digging after the eating a dick part of his story, but fiat devaluation actually plays a huge part in his prediction: The "experts" who doubt my 12/2020 Bitcoin price prediction forget that as crypto grows, huge devaluations of Fiat will occur. No one who understands crypto doubts that the U.S. dollar will have zero value in 10 years. Why then not accept a 500% devaluation in 2 and a half years? If we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he actually believes what he says, he either has too little trust on fiat, too much trust on crypto, or both. Either way, it's good for his "business" (shilling, launching his own DeX, his presidential bid) that people talk about him. |
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Since this already got bumped anyway, I'll take the chance to maybe inform some people that Samourai isn't without controversies: I have seen far too much outright dishonest and extremely incompetent behaviour from Samourai to ever trust it myself.
Samourai has very poor privacy while bragging about having good privacy: It sends your addresses all back to their server. Their "trusted node" mode doesn't change this, it just exposes your Bitcoin node to attacks completely needlessly. (Needlessly because they only use it to relay transactions, which they could do via the public P2P ports of any node, and because since they've already sent your addresses back to their server sending your transactions via something else doesn't increase your privacy.)
If you want strong privacy then as a start you need to run a full node (and use either Bitcoin Core wallet, or run your own electrum server), preferably via tor.
I don't doubt that they want and intend to eventually have good privacy but it seems that they're just unable to stop lying about it, even after previously being caught. That's from Greg Maxwell, a Bitcoin Core dev. I haven't seen any developments since, so maybe things have changed since then. It must also be noted that this doesn't necessarily make Samourai untrustworthy -- as always, don't trust, verify. |
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But look at the stable coins They are stable and have same aspects as Bitcoin has, so Can anyone explain to me who or why Will need Bitcoin?
People who value decentralization. The only similar aspects of Bitcoin and stable coins are that they're digital, and not much else. Stable coins are only stable because there's a centralized party keeping it that way. I would also argue that it's much more likely for you to lose your money on stable coins than Bitcoin, considering they have a central point of failure. Even the biggest stable coin, Tether, has lost its peg a couple of times, and is currently under fire from regulators. They're much more vulnerable to outside interference, and are therefore much likelier to die a premature death than actual decentralized cryptos. There's a reason why stablecoins are only ever used for trading cryptos, and that's because that's all they're practical for. If you absolutely want to keep your money stable in terms of fiat pairs, use fiat. If you want money that's discrete from the traditional economic system, use Bitcoin. |
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