bs. It was me. I was just overly balding that day

I vouch for that!

I'm not sure I have properly caught the sense of your post, LanYu, but it seems you are saying that socialist nations would embrace a decentralized currency. Somehow I don't see that happening, like... ever

Well, as you say, Bitcoins can't logically out cost the energy the network needs to validate the transaction. As such, you have an upper limit of sort, which doesn't exist on fiat money. The other thing you need to consider is that while Bitcoin adopters do expect the currency to valuate alot, you have to keep in mind that this valuation means there is less wealth circulating in the fiat system as a consequence. So even if Bitcoin is a concurrent system to fiat currencies, it isn't concurrent on the energy level.

As for scaling, I can only provide an opinion, I have no figures to contribute, but I expect it to be widely less energy intensive than the systems it is aiming to replace. Also, considering the amount of electronics drawing power for no other purpose that leisure, I think the return from the energy spent is worthwhile on its own.

I will agree with you that Bitcoin mining is highly compatible with home electric production solutions.

If you feel bad about playing a video game on a 3rd generation console or high end graphics card, then I guess you can feel guilty about mining Bitcoins. But keep 2 points in mind:

1) To run a miner is not a requirement to use Bitcoins. If the energy use deters you, you can simply stay clear of the mining.
2) The power used to mine Bitcoins is far less than let's say, mine gold, smelt it and secure it in bunkers or print paper money.

I heard it wasn't part of Judaism, but definitely part of Christianity and Islam, which is allegedly one of the historical reason Jews are associated with banking, since the Christians and Muslims had to go to the Jews for loans.

Aren't the USD deposit at Gox dealt in liberty reserve dollars? If anything that what I'd pick so if the gov cracks down on Gox my $$ will be fine

qft

First of all, Bitcoin doesn't need merchants to exist and flourish. Hell, you can't buy squat with gold yet it is a highly sought after store of value.

Second, Wikileaks is non profit and resisted quite a severe attack. I think a profitable p2p network would be much more resilient than a non profit, single entity fueling on donations.

Excuse my Wikipedia: "In economics, an externality (or transaction spillover) is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices,[1] incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit."

What you are describing is the direct consequence of AMD's business strategy, which graphics branch produces parallel computing processors and have decided before Bitcoin existed to widen their driver support to other tasks requiring parallel computing. Confusing externalities with a business plan, that only confuses the discussion. Once more, be rigorous. Unless you are going to pretend to me that miners nor gamers want faster, more power efficient hardware.

Then again this a discussion on semantics. If your point all along was "Bitcoin should be designed to have good impact on the world oustide of being a crypto currency", my answer doesn't change too much: it has no room for such a thing, nor does it users care. The existence of Bitcoin alone is cause enough.


None of these are ACTUAL examples. Just chimeras in your head. My tendency of thinking you're a troll is that you have failed so far to provide anything but speculation when asked otherwise. My insistence in asking for an actual, real life example of your claims is so that you understand the detachment your perception of this project has with the reality of its development. What incentive would one have to spend efforts in researching positive externalities for Bitcoin when building and updating the project unless these externalities have a direct consequences on the project, in which case they are not externalities anymore, are they?

You do understand that to incorporate externalities implies limiting your choice in developmental possibilities by rules that are not directly related to the goal of the project. Which begs the question:


How can externalities be voluntarily implemented if the design choices are arbitrary? Surely if the functionalities the project has to deliver are precise and legion, this will restrict the design choices, which hurts your idea that any precise piece of software is designed on lsd at 4am. This isn't a governmental project afaik.

Is Facebook a crap shoot? Yes. The problematic is far too unclear for a precise developmental line to be isolated. Is h.264 a crap shoot? Certainly not. But somehow you are thinking that there is a lot of leeway in Bitcoin's developement. So again, I'll tell you, the conditions needed to establish a decentralized, currency worthy, virtual commodity are pretty restrictive.


There is no marketing in Bitcoin's, since there is no one selling you access to it. As for self and/or public interest, what is arbitrary about that? This isn't a dc++ vs torrent turf war, it is the establishment of a currency. Again, precise guidelines, known problematics.


None of this. I am being perfectly respectful with you by explaining why you are ignorant on the matters you are discussing, by pointing how detached you are of certain realities of this project. Was I to praise you for them, then I'd be a hypocrite, wouldn't I? To summarize this discussion, you go something like "Hey, cars polute and waste energy by using oil, why haven't you guys built an engine that turns oil waste into pizzas?", then I come in, tell you that's not gonna happen for several reasons that I outline, and you call me a combustion engine jingoist. My stance is the same as someone witnessing a newcomer question a research group on energy about why they're not researching perpetual movement.


Scuse me what? If that company can make a business of selling polluting cars, so be it. The responsibility lies on the consumer, not the manufacturer. No one is forcing you to buy that car, and by buying it and using you are ruining the atmosphere, not the manufacturer. If you only buy clean cars, manufacturers will have to adapt and integrate that to their business strategy. This about as bad as saying guns kill innocents so manufacturers should only sell rubber bullets.

My point was that there is a buttload of dollars, euros, yens and god knows what else going from hand to hand everday for sole purpose of extra some wealth in the process, and yet it isn't hurting the stability of those currency at all, even though this buttload is about 90% of all the usd, eur and yen traded each and every day. So in regard of this long term, real life example, the spending and speculating pattern of Bitcoin is not different from those of government enforced currencies, which proves 2 things: That this speculation doesn't will not stop vendors from joining, and that Bitcoin is functioning properly as a currency.

As for the bubble part, that is indeed true, but keep in mind that any new business will know a bubbling growth until it reaches its actual load capacity on the market.

Also Bitcoin goal is not necessarily to attract vendors and entrench itself in an everyday use. That would be a nice consequence, but the primary goal is to be a proper store of value. Look at gold for an example.

For what it is worth, this declaration is worth nothing in a discussion where credentials cannot be verified, and as such, any contributor that is genuinly concerned about the questions discussed in a thread would never resort to that kind of sterile attempt. Then again, reading you all over this thread showed but one thing:

You reveal no understanding of cryptographics or coding in general. Else, you could at least provide one strong example of what a positive externality resulting from hashing cryptographic problem is?


What are positive externalities but a beneficial byproduct? What possible beneficial byproduct could result from the use of a piece of software but to reuse part of the data it has processed? Go ahead and name a single piece of software which resulting data can be used for a different, beneficial process than the one it is intended for. None comes to my mind. If your concept of "positive externalities" encompasses the recuperation and reuse of the power dissipated by the hardware, then your question isn't limited to the "design of the network", is it? If you are taking in account the power the consumption, then the problem extends to power efficiency, in which case you need to be more rigorous. Or wait, next you're gonna tell me this isn't about mining anymore, right?


If I had not understood this question, why would I have bothered explaining every step that results in the existence of mining is necessary for this system to be sound? My point, that you obviously missed, is that the design so far works, and that there are no superficial elements in this design. And on this regard, you provide me with another proof that you have no idea what you are talking about:


No choices in this process is arbitrary. Your pretense that developer choices are somehow arbitrary shows that you think Bitcoin is just a crapshoot. Your pretended expertize level in economics would indicate that you know the conditions needed for a commodity to be a sound currency. Your expertize in cryptography implies you know the list of steps necessary to secure a decentralized, p2p network that is continuously producing fresh data from within while blocking outside injections.

If you had those pretended skills you would know that there a predefined set of NECESSARY steps in order for such network to function, and the only remotely arbitrary development decision made would be in regards of the seeding constants and hashing algorithm. And even those are established with efficiency in mind. In what world can a voluntary, open source, p2p project afford to randomly choose its mechanics and expect to be adopted?

Once again, your point about the hardware favoring speaks volume about your understanding of Bitcoins. These kind of externalities are absurd. There is a unique nature to the calculation that has to be processed, that's the whole point of cryptography. You can't just go around changing it without hurting its ability to secure your data, nor can you choose something weaker. But hell, you're an expert in cryptography, you should know that shouldn't you?

Your pretense that externalities resulting from the very fabric of the Bitcoin system should be weighted in the design of said system shows that you think the problematic and conditions the Bitcoin project is trying to address are indeed loose and replaceable at a whim. Again, if you were truly an expert cryptographer and economist, you would know better, or you would present us with the better alternative.


If you are discussing design, you are discussing form. Why can't you wrap your mind around the fact that the different parts of Bitcoin form a whole and that changing one would require to compensate with another part or add a whole new concept to it unless one of the foundation of the system is to be compromised, which isn't an option.


You made no such valid points. A bunch of 'ifs' thrown in by someone uneducated to the matter do not consist in a valid point. I could just as well walk to a car manufacturer and ask him why he isn't building antigrav vehicules in order to save friction wastes and tires. He'd have the same reaction as I am having with you. Do you really think that if such encryption algorithm that emphasis general computing unit architecture (cpu) against parallel, raw power processing power processors (gpu), that the developers of Bitcoin would have made a point of choosing the GPU one for the single purpose of limiting access to a P2P open source project?


Your economic point is the result of your ignorance. What do you expect me to do, praise you for it?


Says the troll... Also a jingoist provides no rationale to his rejection. I gave you a proper counter argument. l2troll.

I see where the people that are afraid of a governmental shut down are coming from. If they can that is. Did Wikileaks go down? No, and yet it is a non profit group. What could they do to a whole economy then? Not to mention they'd have to track people down on Tor... or completely shut it down, which they still haven't done, given all the outstanding reasons for it.

The daily turn over on the forex market is 4 trillion USD. That's like a third of the outstanding federal government debt speculated upon each and every single day. And that doesn't stop you from using USD. What should be stopping you is inflation.

Ima simplify this thing so you understand the point once for all:

Is mining required? Yes (see proof of work/proof of time). After all this is a virtual currency, you need some sort of validation process, hence cryptography, which leads to hashing to verify it.

Is the difficulty increase required? Yes. Simple increase in network hashrate doesn't mean better security. If a cpu can validate a block in a few seconds at 800 gh/s, then it can inject a falsified a block that easily as well, resulting in double spending and forks from all over the network. If anything, this would be a waste of computational resources.

Is the security required? Do I even need to answer this one?

Is the fixed amount of blocks per hour needed? Yes. It makes more sense to secure the system by verifying one big block every 10 minutes than a small block every seconds. As a matter of fact, that's also a measure to save resources. It is beyond me that you could think bandwidth and computational efficiency were not considered in the building of a p2p network... Hell, under your logic, why would people have bothered researching gpu mining, if they're making a point of "wasting energy" to mine, as you portray it.

Can there be positive externalities coming from hashing? rofl... Have you ever coded, have you ever looked at a cryptographic problem? Actually you don't need to, a little common sense will suffice. What other kind of use would you put the data resulting from the process of validating a unique cryptographic problem? Gimme a break... The energy used for hashing is a requirement, period. The difficulty is not optional, the security it engenders either.

Now if you so wish, you can research fpga/asic hashing, smaller die process, supra conductors, better mining software, or hell, a way to recover the heat dissipated by the video cards. But your insistence in reusing the data processed for the hashes for some other benefit just indicates that you don't know what you are talking about.


This response is directly related to the argument ("is mining pointless"), and you even explain why yourself. Proofing the network is a necessity, that it takes resources is a fact. That the Bitcoins need to be distributed in some sensible fashion is beyond the any need for explanation, hence mining is necessary. It allows the network to exist, it secures it and provides a proper way of disseminating the Bitcoins in the network. Try to take one of these elements away and you hurt that balance, in which case I'll simply quote you:

Well f*** me sideways if this becomes case-law...

This makes no sense. Responsibility is one the users, not the tool.

Let's take it easy people, what about something more realistic like 1 BTC = 2 EUR?

There is no limit to the useful level of security in the network. As people join the network, the wealth it represents increases, so it is more prone to attacks. There is about 9 millions dollars worth of Bitcoins in circulation, about 5~10k BTC sent per hours, and 700~800 gh/s to maintain it, which means you can expect the network to be safe under these conditions considering how much money has to be spent to achieve half of that power to double spend a few grands. Now assume the network doesn't increase in size but the representative wealth is now $100,000,000 and you have a problem.

You also need to take in account that the network hashrate is directly related to the price of the BTC, as the higher the price goes, the more profit there is to make out of mining. The distribution of BTC is also a critical point. You can't just magically bestow 21 millions Bitcoins to one guy and expect people to be willing to buy them off of him. It has to be distributed under a controlled inflation system. The publicized rate of inflation ensures adopters can safely invest in the currency. And what better way to distribute the BTC but to reward the people that are spending resources to ensure the security and validity of the network?

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Optware

this would be a pain in the ass and you would need one hell of a router, but it could work