My opinion is Mixed.

I recognize that the state has the authority to administer the death penalty. I have no problem with this, “in principal”. However, it is poorly administered and does not perform it’s function well if at all.

It is also vastly expensive as presently conducted.

I recognize that there are seriously bad people who will remain a danger to society for all their lives. Incarcerating them in inhuman conditions (like the “Supermax” prison) for life seems far more inhumane than execution.

At the same time, I recognize that many of these really bad people are insane, and that this mitigates to some degree their level of responsibility. Unfortunately, we have no reliable way to treat such people at this time.

The death penalty is inequitably administered. Everyone knows this. If you are poor and/or a minority, you are vastly more likely to be given “death” than if you are wealthy/white.

That’s unacceptable.

Additionally, programs like “the innocence project” have proved that many people presently on death row were in fact innocent and had been improperly convicted, either by incompetent representation, faulty evidence, jury bias, or prosecutorial malfeasance. (withholding exculpatory evidence, not putting contrary witnesses on the stand…)

That’s horrifying.

Our state just executed a fellow who had been on death row for 30 years. 30 years… Waiting to be executed.

Finally, the stated purpose of the death penalty is deterrence. That the prospect of being exeted will deter people from committing serious crimes. It doesn’t. Death-penalty crimes are committed either in a state of rage, or under the influence of psychosis, or due to long-standing pschological or psychiatric conditions.

There has not been any evidence shown (to my knowledge) that the death penalty provides any such deterrance. Instead, what it provides is vengeance. “Closure” as we so euphemistically say these days.

No, it will need to change or regulators will make it illegal to mine / transact Bitcoin, here are a few problems with Bitcoin…



The BIG Problem With Bitcoin

Many people believe that Bitcoin is the future currency of our world, others argue that it is a store of value. Whilst both could be true, there are fundamental issues with Bitcoin that need to be changed in order for it to scale to mass adoption.

In this article I will be listing the top 3 issues that Bitcoin faces in terms of scalability.

1. Energy consumption

A study from Digiconomist found that each transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain uses 236 KWh worth of electricity, this amount is enough to power 8 U.S households for an entire day.

Now to put things into perspective, there are over 300,000 transactions per day. At this rate, Bitcoin uses more electricity per year than the whole of Nigeria and this is only increasing.

Read more here: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index - Digiconomist

Proof of work is vastly uneconomic and damages the environment at an alarming rate.

2. Scalability issues

Energy consumption will hinder the scalability issues of Bitcoin, however the other issue that arises with POW mining is that with the increase in cost associated with mining BTC it is less economical to mine Bitcoin. This would limit the distributed nodes (miners) globally and allow a larger percentage of control to the dominant mining pools / farms.

This would lead to a more centralised blockchain, where they can change the rules of BTC as they please.

The supply of Bitcoin is finite, capped at 21 million. Eventually (currently predicted for 2140) Bitcoin's supply will run out. Once this happens, miners will no longer receive rewards for completing blocks but instead will be given fees. The fees will be drastically high in relative terms, and people will stop using the blockchain.

Also, if miners decide that this is uneconomical for them to process the transactions and use their computing power elsewhere the speed of transactions for Bitcoin will drastically slow down, rendering one of the fundamental values of a Bitcoin (speed) useless.

3. The unknown future

Bitcoin is not a superior blockchain, there are hundreds of projects that are faster, cheaper and more valuable than Bitcoin. Bitcoin has market dominance because it is one of the first and most topical cryptocurrency (did you know that the price of BTC has a direct correlation to the amount of google searches). Here are a few things that could really end Bitcoin’s dominant era:

I) Blue chip company coming into the markets

This is more so for all cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin in particular. It’s not a matter of if but a matter of when a blue-chip company such as Facebook, Amazon or Google decides to implement their own cryptocurrency, they will dominate the market.

The consumer's trust is already with these big companies, and they have the power and capital to influence the entire market.

Another possibility is a potential ‘world coin’ which global governments will all agree on using, this may seem unrealistic but it is definitely not impossible and many benefits would arise from having such a currency.

II) Quantum computing

Bitcoin is said to be Quantum resistant, on the whitepaper it mentions that:

‘To compensate for increasing hardware speed and varying interest in running nodes over time, the proof-of-work difficulty is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour. If they're generated too fast, the difficulty increases.’

This may seem quantum resistant but it is important to understand that the difficulty is changed every 10 minutes and this is more than enough time for QC to mine all of Bitcoin’s remaining coins.

The other issued that QC represents is that there is a possibility of QC calculating people’s private keys for their BTC wallet. I do not know the technical details of how this is done, but from what I have read this is possible.

III) Bitcoin bubble

My last point for this section is that Bitcoin is not being bought as a store of value or a currency by most people, for most people Bitcoin is a speculative investment hoping to make a fortune on something they really don’t know much about.

Once the bubble reaches its peak, and people start panic selling, Bitcoin will inevitably crash with that. After all, Bitcoin’s price is determined by demand vs supply.

In the light of a fair argument, I would like to point out that Bitcoin can change to tackle these issues and substantially increase its long-term survival. Bitcoin has a massive passionate community behind it and this reason why Bitcoin has grown to where it is today.

Thanks for reading,

Lightning Network

This terms explains everything in a clever way, so I’ll simply reiterate for the laziest who don’t feel like clicking a link:

You and I sign a contract.

As long as we both respect it, no one else needs to know we have this contract. But if I try to screw you, you want to be sure there’s someone who can force me to desist.

That’s Lightning Network: the contract is a smart contract, the enforcer is the blockchain. As long as no one breaks the law, millions of smart contracts can be stipulated simultaneously off chain, thus reducing greatly the amount of congestion on chain, but as soon as there’s a contentious, the smart contract can be broadcasted on the network (classic BTC transaction) and the power of blockchain will fix the issue. As simple as that. It’s just the translation of common practices into crypto-space.

11.Plagiarizing or copy pasting content from various sources is NOT allowed. Rephrasing such content is also not allowed.

Hello guys i am new here and i don't have any merit to give to someone? how does this work where to get merits.

Your Infographic helps a lot. Proud ako na meron tayong kababayan na katulad mo na madami ng nai contribute dito sa bitcointalk community. Isa ako sa sumusubaybay sa iyo, brad. Madami kasi akong mga natututunan sa iyo. At bilib ako sa lakas ng loob mo sa lahat ng bagay. Makakatulong itong Infographic na ito para maiwasan ang pagdaragdag ng mga hindi kapaki pakinabang na thread at maiwasan ang pagkakaroon ng mga panibagong spam posts/threads.

Nawa'y mabasa ito ng marami sa atin lalo na ng mga newbies dahil madalas silang mag post ng "thank you for sharing" at bump. Lagi sana nating tatandaan na sa pagbabasa mahahasa ang ating kaalaman.

Even you wrote a good post or article people are afraid to give you merit to loss there time. There’s many people they only give merit to legendary people all though there’s posts not much good.
For this reason I think there should have a option to get some merit when someone is giving merit.
I mean by giving he also earn some.

I'm hoping that this system will increase post quality by:
 - Forcing people to post high-quality stuff in order to rank up. If you just post garbage, you will never get even 1 merit point, and you will therefore never be able to put links in your signature, etc.
 - Highlighting good posts with the "Merited by" line.

Please, understand the significance of HOLD, spelled properly.

You can check the iconic post here: I AM HODLING

I'm a newbie and honestly, bitcoin is new to me.. I just heard this few months ago from a friend who invested his own money. But from other friend told me that he earned bitcoin here in bitcointalk without investing money from his own pocket. Maybe some of you here can advise me what to do to earn bitcoin?

1. HODL
Hold On for Dear Life. A crypto trader who buys a coin and does not see himself selling in the foreseeable future is called a hodler of the coin.

Does anyone know why people get banned so quickly on the Bitcoin Discussion forum? it seems like its very every easy to get banned and I'm not sure what the rules are so it would be great if someone could explain this before I post on there.

Here is the transaction for 10 000 BTC:
https://blockchain.info/tx/a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d

Well trading has never been an easy venture ever since anyways. The market volatility could go either way in a snap of a finger and even the most experienced trader can't predict how a coin will move a hundred percent.

I think it's the time to collect more positive news that can reinforce the market again, recently few days before BTC collapse constantly because media introduce the negative news about bitcoin.

Does anyone know how do i get sMerits? i had them and i gave them to some forumers. i've heard they are refundable, and in a month you'll get the same number of sMerit. but i don't. so was i wrong? and were given only once??

If someone sends you 1 merit, the 0.5 sMerit is not wasted; it is just not shown until you get another merit point.

More good news again. I think this is what can make the price of Bitcoin back to 9k. I hope, there will be no more bad news about BTC so BTC price will continue to rise.