The fact that your question demonstrates your total lack of any understanding of the nuances involved only supports what I'm saying.  It's down to the hardware manufacturers to make the ASICs as energy efficient as they can.  Miners need to take that into consideration when they make their purchases.  In terms of the algorithm, it's not as simple as merely "making it more energy efficient", it's about finding consensus to change it.  Changes to the algorithm invariably require a hardfork and also tend to have consequences for the overall security of the network.  People need to agree before it can be replaced with a new one.  Devs can't just go around making whatever changes they like.  It doesn't work that way.  At least try to have a rudimentary comprehension of how this stuff works before you go running your mouth off, please.

I'm curious to know when they says "banks", do they mean literally just the banks or also the intermediaries like Automated Clearing Houses and all the Visa/MasterCard/AmEx/etc infrastructure?  Perhaps the real figure is even worse for fiat and the environmental scales actually tip further in our favour.



It's worth considering that Zin-Zang's presence in this thread is purely to promote the "energy efficient" shitecoin in his sig.  He might think he's doing a good job of promoting it, but since it's tied to his name and all he does is spout a load of mindless drivel all over the boards, he's probably doing more harm than good to the reputation of his preferred alt.  Judging by his posts, I'm happy to assume he's a total moron and I would strongly recommend against investing in any project he's actively promoting.

I've always maintained a healthy distance from cloud mining.  Too many risks, too little reward.  And that's just for the genuine, reputable companies, never mind all the scams out there.  For the few fortunate people who did manage to make some money from it, many of them are now reporting that they aren't earning anymore.  Tread carefully before you hand over any money.

Are people really waiting for an ETF?  Or does everyone just think people are waiting for an ETF because the media won't STFU about it?  I frankly couldn't give a shit anymore.  It's almost getting difficult to find headlines about Bitcoin that aren't related to the price or what regulators might or might not be doing.  If I want to find interesting and useful news about Bitcoin, I now have to search with "-price -ETF -market".  Otherwise it's just the same tired old crap over and over.  Increasingly, this looks like manipulation.

All this commotion is based on the assumption that easier access to institutional investors will increase the price, but it's literally just an assumption.  Maybe we need to stop buying the hype for something that could transpire only for us to find that absolutely nothing changes.

Threads like this tend to get buried in the regular Bitcoin Discussion forum.  You might wish to move it to Development & Technical Discussion instead.

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So this is the BIP that would allow for a standardised currency exchange rates to use in wallets and other apps?  I remember back when MultiBit was still a thing and some of the third-party conversion services you could choose from in the settings suddenly stopped working.  I can't say I've noticed this particular issue since I stopped using MultiBit, but I suppose it's something that could happen in future with any current wallet, so the idea makes good sense.

This sums it up.  Even if Satoshi was still around, they'd have no special powers to get stuff done.  Developers can propose changes by writing whatever code they like, but that code doesn't mean anything until the users choose to run it.  The more people who start using Bitcoin, the more difficult it will be to get everyone to accept any big changes.  If the users like the proposed changes, they'll be implemented when they're ready.  If, however, it's a contentious change where some don't agree, it might not happen.  That's why so much effort is now being poured into building layers on top of Bitcoin, rather than messing with the foundations.  You can build whatever you like on top and no one can prevent you from doing that.  As an example, there are at least three different Lightning developer teams all working on whatever it is they want to focus on.

It's important to remember that Bitcoin still attracts a sizable proportion of dev talent in the crypto community.  People all over the world are putting their time, effort and skill into making it better than it already is.  Most altcoins can't compete with this.

When you see completely random posts like that, do a quick search engine check.  If the text has been plagiarised from somewhere, report the post.  That paragraph was stolen from here, so I've already reported it.



It's good to see people taking an interest in being self-sufficient, rather than relying on established payment processors.  Kudos.

Any coin can have cheap fees on-chain if there isn't sufficient demand for their usage.    

Litecoin's total blockchain size is 18.61 GB
Bitcoin's total blockchain size is 210.86 GB

If Litecoin was forced to handle the volume of traffic Bitcoin handles, there are two possible outcomes.  Either their fees wouldn't be so cheap, or their total blockchain size would be substantially larger than Bitcoin's currently is because of their shorter blocktime.  It's called supply and demand.  Maybe you should gain a better understanding of simple concepts like this before you go making inane comparisons that don't actually mean anything.



This is a positive, not a negative.  Wait for Atomic Swaps.  Litecoin might actually see more on-chain demand then.  That could be where people choose to make their micropayments.  These are the possibilities we're creating.



It doesn't need to be "faster and cheaper than all alts".  This is what you don't understand.  Bitcoin has a greater mining difficulty and total hashrate than any other network on the face of the planet.  It is therefore the most secure.  It seems that many users place a great deal of value in the security of Bitcoin and they're clearly willing to pay for it.  If you feel your transaction doesn't need as much security, you can do it off-chain, or use coins on another LN-compatible chain and then Atomic Swap back to BTC later when you need to deal with more significant sums of money.



A level so insignificant that no one cares about them.  

Go and play with your SHITECOIN if you think it's so much better, leave us in peace.

I'm still conflicted on this one.  One the one hand, it's clearly an attempt by Maduro to cling to power.  He's a despot.  I sincerely doubt he cares in the slightest about all the people in his country affected by his total mismanagement of the economy.  I don't think this initiative will do anything to help the average Venezuelan.

On the other hand, I like the fact they're giving the finger to "Team America: World Police".  US foreign policy has pretty much become a blight on humanity at this point.  They are categorically not making the world a safer place.  More countries need to defy their increasingly absurd will.  If state-backed cryptocurrencies become the new norm for doing this, I'm okay with that.

"School of Management" seems like the key phrase for me.  Their goal is to develop leadership skills and decentralised crypto doesn't have leaders.  It's a no-brainer for their business model to want more centralisation.

It basically says as much on their website:

They're of literally zero use to Bitcoin.  We don't need managers.

We had a topic about this just the other week.  The best part is, you can put the decimal place wherever you want.  Whatever makes most sense for you.

As with all new technologies, there will be people trying to cash in on the hype.  But once it becomes more established (or I should probably say if it becomes more established, as there are no guarantees), I can easily see it being part of everyday life.   Ideally people won't even realise they're using them, because the software will be user-friendly enough to do all the "heavy lifting". 

If Lightning Network adoption eventually takes off in the way we hope it will, that's basically underpinned by smart contracts.  So that's probably the prime example at the moment.  Perhaps there will be some other practical use-cases that other developers come up with in the meantime.  It's still early days, though.  "Wait-and-see" territory.   

No one can give that assurance.  And even if we could make promises about that sort of thing, it's not our job to influence their decisions about their own wealth.  There's no point in telling newbies comforting things when we have absolutely no idea what's coming next.  Treat this as a learning experience.  Volatility happens.  If you can't handle that, consider your motives for getting involved in the first place.  There are no guarantees of "profit".  If you want a more comfortable ride, make sure that, whatever happens with the markets, you're happy with the coins you hold because they have utility that fiat can't give you, or because you know that, on some level, the "traditional" economy is fundamentally broken and needs to change.  Speculation is gambling.  Sometimes you are going to lose.  

Personal responsibility is paramount.  Don't let strangers on the internet guide your actions with reassurances of good times ahead, make up your own damn mind.  

Just keep in mind that none of the latest trends with people fawning over the prospects of institutional investors or regulations takes away from what is encapsulated in the code.  People can demand whatever dumb stuff they want but, provided that none of that idiocy makes it into the protocol, there's no problem.  Not everyone has to understand the real importance of Bitcoin for it to continue working.  We still have an immutable, transparent, open and permissionless network with which to hold and transfer wealth.  Nothing has changed, with the possible exception that we aren't making the purpose clear enough to the newcomers.

Perhaps the only failing is on our part.  If the louder voice is currently the one saying all the wrong things about Bitcoin and that's what people are hearing, maybe we need to raise our voices and make sure the right message is getting across?  

It's whatever gets people to read these days.  If, for example, they sift through the comments of their previous articles about crypto and see a noticeable deal of skepticism about it, their next article on the subject is more likely to pander to that demographic.  They're no longer reporting the news, they're merely feeding back and reinforcing the ignorance of their readers.

Populism > Journalism.

It's shameful, but that's just how things are now.  The stuff they write doesn't have to be accurate or true, it just has to resonate with the readership.  So they just write any old shit and they can always print a retraction later if someone threatens legal action because of it.  As absurd as it is, this is the new normal.

The general ethos of Bitcoin is not to ban things at protocol level.  So even if we could ban futures trading, that doesn't mean we should.  Even if it were possible to for us ban it, I'd still be arguing against doing that, despite not being a fan of it. 

But, as everyone else has already pointed out, it can't be banned anyway.  If regulators give the go-ahead, then they can do it.  It's out of our hands.  The casino is open for business.

For the average person, just tell them that if they aren't heavily involved with with things like stocks and shares, they don't even need to pay attention to ETFs.  It's just a bunch of IOU contracts for derivatives traders and hedge fund managers to gamble with.  Most of the people I know will never go near an ETF in their lifetime and they have very few interests in common with the big institutional investors.  It's like a different world, almost.  Let the "fat cats" have their plaything.  Ordinary people can obtain more tangible benefits by holding real bitcoins.  

You can "evolve" in that direction if you want, but count me out.  That's de-evolving in my book.  Go play with Ripple if you want some company in charge.  It's antithetical to our goal, so we don't have or want that and I don't think you're going to find much support for it here.

I found it best to completely avoid any of the established captcha providers.  Back when I used to run a phpBB, I had a little-known visual captcha called KittenAuth.  It basically gave you 9 pictures in a 3x3 grid and the default setting was to select only the kittens.  But you could change the pictures to something more thematically appropriate for your site.  I found that far more effective than any other captcha I've ever encountered.  Only human beings got through after that.

The safest bet is to make a totally proprietary one.  The more obscure, the better.  But not text or numbers.  Use pictures.



That works too.  Would certainly make it easier to spot bought accounts.

I did say it was a small one, heh.  I know that there are plenty of more urgent things to consider and don't want to detract from any of that. 



But you also need to know what rank the user was when the system was introduced.  That might be simple enough to do now in some cases (keeping in mind that some have already ranked up, so it's not always obvious), but in future, it's not going to be easy at all.  Again, using the OP as an example, when hilariousetc does rank up to Legendary, some people might assume they started with 1000 and only earned 80 merits.  It's not representative of their phenomenal efforts here.