Haha...I really needed someone to say this. I am not from the US but out here, we always see the best AND the worst of America out in the open. There are movies about how sick and violent some people were. How racist and white supremacists can some be. How Blacks and other minorities can be targeted or how they can sometimes be just hard MoFos dealing drugs, lol..

Then there is that beautiful side of it. The one where a small, immigrant family can make big. Where people will get together and recognize the sacrifices and contributions, will help a little child and do their best to alleviate pains of others. All of those things have come from that country. And LMAO about "Fuck Trump". I mean Jimmy Kimmel actually had Stormy Daniels talk about how small of a dick the president had. I think if a Chinese as much as mentioned Xi Jinping and Dick in the same sentence, he'd be rounded off to some unknown prison.

So when these people come over here and tell the people living under actual free governance about, "Ohh but your rivers are unclean", its really just laughable. I mean that is not even the point. These people just don't understand what "Spirit of freedom" even means.

Bitcoin is pretty easy to use. I mean at least as easy as it comes in the crypto world. The usage issue is being solved with the Lightning Network pretty well I'd say. There is almost >2k BTC on LN now. So, the usage is definitely growing and it is more a matter of regulatory convenience now rather than technical convenience.

Same for the Fiat ramps. It is mostly about what regulation will allow which will determine how "adoption" grows. There is another way of looking at it though. Even without much regulation, Bitcoin has done well. People who take the time and effort, eventually find ways. Maybe it is better than bitcoin is for self-starters, rather than for those who need to have their hands held all the time to decide whats good for them financially. Most of those people should probably then just stick to Mutual Funds and shit.

When talking about centralization/ decentralization, i think it is always about who can control the chain. In PoS, all you need to control/ re-org the chain is stake. In PoW, even if you need a lot of resources for mining, you do not invest those resources into "stake", you invest it into hardware which provides you an income. It does not give you a "say" in the network.

My line of thinking is that having the ability to mine more coins does not make you have control over the chain. In PoS, there will always be a central party, a corporation, a foundation deciding on a variety of parameters to set which determine how the chain proceeds. Those decisions can easily be influenced by those who have the most money to invest into buying "shares".

If you see what has happened with MEV (Bots essentially bribing miners for transaction bundles that sandwich other people's transactions), it seems to me that even PoW is not suitable for something like smart-contracts on-chain involving huge transactions. It is not a purely decentralized version that is sold to investors and people around the world. Its an esoteric world where bots are making 100s of ETH at the expense of users. Nobody talks about it and nobody cares. Imagine if a bank infrastructure provider was guzzling away millions of dollars in transaction fee, would it be considered trustworthy?

I think the problem of MEV will only exaggerate with PoS. If you think its otherwise, then I'll be glad to discuss. You see, I have been looking for a good Pro-ETH user on the Altcoin section for sometime to discuss this stuff. Yet, there are mostly just farmers and spammers here. Good to have you.

I agree that from the "fee distribution" point of view, this sounds better. Yet, how is this different from mining where you can have the same earning by directing your hashpower to a pool and getting the BTC depending on your portion of the hashrate??

Your language and comprehension coupled with your over-confidence makes it nearly impossible to have a debate but we try to be as open to ideas on this forum as possible. It seems that you have also gone on to cry about discrimination in Meta, so I'd like to convince you that none of this is about discriminating against you as an individual but about the philosophy you are trying to propagate. You will never convince the free people of the world, much less bitcoiners, that an optimal method of scoial governance needs an over-arching central authority "managing" the best for everyone else.

Your reply to my point about idiomatic usage of "All people are free to vote and express" in context of democracies just shows that your brain is unable to even comprehend democracy. Like i said earlier, lets leave it at that. You have already shown your true colors with expressions like "Stupid people with their stupid votes" etc., so there really is no need to elaborate on that. I will still address your typical CCP tactic of trying to target democracies for their internal problems. You clearly are up to date with your handbook of "talking points" with various nationalities. If its India, talk about Ganges and population and toilets. If its USA, talk about racism and BLM riots and Iraq.

I didn't address your country specific questions because that is really whataboutery (go search what that means), when we were  talking about the preference people have for free societies like democracies rather than controlled, curtailed, image management dependent societies like China or the erstwhile communist countries.

Still, because you insist, you should know that you have heard about above issues because the leadership has actually tried to address them and they are making considerable progress. I said in my very first post that Democracies aren't perfect and there are times when we ourselves jostle with the fact that decision-making can be so cumbersome and implementation can often be so far away from actual plans. Just look at the ongoing twists and turns in the US Senate about the crypto bill. A lot depends on the leadership at various levels and people get to choose depending on their performance. Sure the process can be slow.

This does not mean that China, with its system of suppression and controlled governance is the only country in the world that has progressed. Higher growth and happiness has been seen by several democracies historically. Just because China did well in the last decade is no proof that the system of suppressing free speech and controlling people isn't reprehensible.

People who live in democracies will never like a system in which they are assigned points for their behavior and businessmen are incarcerated for so much as even attempting to criticize the supreme leader or party. That thought is just alien and repugnant to the free mind.

I repeat again, nobody hates the fact that the Chinese people are better off than they were a few decades ago. We just have a certain dislike for propagandists from the Middle Kingdom who have been lately trying pretty hard to convince the rest of the world that they aren't wolves in sheep's clothing.

Agree and it is clear that bitcoin has all of these properties.

This has been the feature of currencies in the modern nation states. This is also in fact the only underlying "merit" for these currencies. They existed because the governments have the ability to exercise power. In the words of Must himself, "Government is just a corporation with a monopoly on violence".

This is the beauty of Bitcoin. Where the currencies issued by governments and influenced by the rich and powerful need violence to be able to render the first 4 services, Bitcoin needs no figurehead, no central authority, and most incredibly, no violence to accomplish the same.

Anybody who cares about the individual and society will be quick to realize that this is a superpower of bitcoin and bitcoin itself. None of the other so-called energy efficient, corporate coins can even come close to it.

This should well be a post unto itself Kimberl. I don't think its even connected to what the OP wrote or anybody else commented. It is a worthwhile line of exploration though. Would you be kind enough to make a separate, detailed post on this? I'd be happy to merit it. PM me if you do otherwise it may get lost.

And there seems to be quite a few economically and philosophically inclined posters coming up in the last few weeks. A happy development. Lets all keep it up. Always good to learn from the different people.

I would merit this post generously if it wasn't from a day old account. Just a precaution I take to have some defense against merit farmers, LOL.

You are right and I have been saying the same thing for long. This proliferation of useless projects with anonymous developers and creation of Liquidity pools to ascribe value has been ridiculous. The problem is that there are enough poor-ass, ethic-free developers who are willing to build websites following the same formula and there are enough suckers willing to bet their time and money on something that is basically just a waste of time, yet people engage in the hope that they can be the one to exit in a bullrun.

The general crypto population is though, waking up to the fact that anonymous devs on these derived projects isn't the way to go. Anybody who bets on an anonymous dev on BSC/MATIC is a sure-shot idiot looking to scam others and deserves to be rugged. These projects are not fundamental protocols and they don't need anonymity. I hope more newbies start realizing this and stop wasting each others money in enriching the corrupt developers.

Regarding my comment about the newness of this post, please stick around and interact OP. I'd love to hear more on this viewpoint as well as the research you have claimed to have done on CMC coins. Like, what are the worst examples you found? If you stick around and share for long enough, make sure to PM me about it. I will merit you in time. We need more posters like you.

This premise does not apply to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is NOT an organisation. It is open source software that has enabled a unique and novel philosophy about money. It has revolutionized the way masses look at money and has made people aware of the fact that "ascribing value" is no longer the perogative of only the very rich and the very powerful.

These are questions everyone exploring bitcoin goes through as you uncover the layers of drama on reddit and elsewhere from the blocksize wars. The issue has been settled and there is zero doubt that bitcoin's insistence on decentralization and zero control from any central figure is the reason that it is the darling of small and instituitonal investors the world over.

All of these other cryptos you hear about exist because bitcoin is the justification for their existence. If the main crypto in this world was something owned by a foundation/ corporation or with a figurehead like Ver/Vitalik or a scammer like Richard Hart/ CSW; none of these people would trust it. The fact that Bitcoin has no masters allows everyone to feel secure in its design.

This is the only question worth pondering. With L2 transactions established on Lightning Network and huge onchain settlements, the fees generated should be enough for the miners in the long term.

There isn't. There definitely are people whose opinions are considered important because of their history of contribution and understanding of Bitcoin. Someone like Jameson Lopp, Greg Maxwell, Square's Jack, Even a young kid like Jack Mallers or someone as new on the scene as El Salvador president Nayeb Buklele. They are able to galvanize support for their decisions and thoughts regarding Bitcoin.

The beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that no matter how strong you are, there is a limit to what influence you can have. Just look at Elon Musk and his diminishing influence on Bitcoin.

I think quite a few people in the Indian forum are now merit sources with increased merit. Just that there aren't enough people to send them to.

If anybody sees posts and newbies worth meriting (with a posting history of course), you can recommend them on this thread for newbies.

Hello. If you are new and would like to have a few tips about how the forum works in general and how to "make it" here, I recommend this topic I started for newbies to introduce and interact.

Staying in the radar and not have your good posts be overlooked is important. Welcome.

That hobbyist miner is investing into actual hardware to run a software. Simple as that. The market ascribes value to the mined coins but it is not a fee for having a stake. I generally try to compare it to the dividend and stock analogy. When a hobbyist miner buys a S19, is he buying stock into a central body called bitcoin network? Doesn't seem so. He is just running a software.

When a Sunday staker (LOL, you have to tell me what the Sunday means, though) buys a little ETH to delegate to a pool, is he buying into a "share of the network"? Yes. Is he expecting a constant stream of income aka dividend simply for holding that "share/stock"? Yes.

The two seem very different to me. You could argue that the miner is also expecting a return but that is really just the way software works and market ascribes it value. Its more like running a business  (on which i guess they already pay the taxes depending on jurisdiction), than holding a stock.

He is clearly demarcating between Bitcoin and the whole concept of DeFi platforms. IMO, DeFi working on non-custodial, smart-contract basis would still be in a different category than DeFi on PoS chains.

The former would probably just have to end up complying with the investor protection requirements that, whether we like it or not, people at SEC ire sworn to uphold. Its the PoS DeFi that seems trickier. This is because a PoS chain is really just a bunch of rich rent-seekers bringing infrastructure together to provide a service. They are not much different from your normal brick and mortar banks. This would mean that they'll have to comply with every requirement that banks do, or face legal action.

Again. Talking of Financial innovations, he did separate out Bitcoin as being Nakamoto's innovation. This "financial innovation" is really just about the history of "financial engineering" leading upto the collapse and then the framing of Dodd-Frank act (and countless acts earlier to keep up with wall street). He is clearly hinting towards SEC framing laws for DeFi platforms. I wonder what that will mean to the current governance of these platforms. When you have to comply with laws, and you don't, what does that mean in terms of liability for the stakeholders??

These are difficult questions that nobody in the DeFi universe wants to face. Guess we won't have to wait much longer to see what happens. I am guessing that we'll see a few example cases to be taken up by the SEC and then the industry will go from there. Surprisingly, much of this talk of regualtion seems to be leading to a bullrun right as we write, LOL. Gotta love crypto.

The SEC has been clarifying that if you solicit funds from investors and if buyers bought into funds hoping to profit from deployment of some technology then that is a security. This will definitely make Ethereum a security.

The move to PoS means that those with the greatest amounts will have the "shares/ stock/ equity" of Ethereum locked up for a fixed income, similar to dividends. With PoS, the transformation of Ethereum into a corporation will be complete. Ethereum can no longer claim to be a software stack to build smart contracts on. It will be defined by a set of rich stakers providing infrastructure for a business and profiting from the rent they receive on the usage of that infrastructure.

This just begs the question that while Vitalik and co. always knew that what they were promising (smart contracts) is only possible in a centralized system like this, why'd they galvanize the community with the promise of decentralization. Like, all of this community was shown a vision of a decentralized, permissionless compute-on-the-blockchain system. Vitalik is too smart to not realize that this was not possible. Ultimately, things have moved to a centralized system where you have rich rent seekers being paid for an apparent service that was supposed to be owned by everybody.

Was this intentional or not is something that the people at SEC will be scratching their heads to understand.

Your interpretation of those two sentences above as "contradictory" is just indicative of your communist background. You are finding it hard to understand the idiomatic usage of "All voices are allowed space", when talking about Freedom of expression in the context of Democracy as opposed to the controlled flow of information and Party high-handedness in such matters in your communist utopia.

That rhetoric and whataboutery adds nothing to the debate of Freedom vs Communist Control. Like I said in my previous post, the free people of the world can see through the Chinese agenda of trying to portray their "system" as superior. The world has been through this charade multiple times. Stop jailing your businessmen for "picking quarrels" and maybe we'll talk.

I haven't "corrected" myself. Its just idiomatic usage that I wouldn't expect a CCP puppet to understand. You are forgiven for your ignorance. Lets move on.

I don't know what you mean by "extreme liberalism in your mouth". From my understanding of the playbook of CCP handles like yours, I guess you are trying to strengthen your argument by quoting the constant Conservative vs Liberalism debate of western democracies as some sort of weakness.

No it isn't. Those in power everywhere have always looked for ways to exploit cheap labor enabled by the masses. Capitalism looks for reducing costs and optimizing profitability doesn't mean that the Chinese haven't exploited labor.

Duh..Stop comparing intellect dude. Say what you want to say. You aren't convincing anyone on the forum that you aren't a CCP handle or that China's system of control and monitoring is somehow a glowing example for the rest of the world to emulate.

The twitter campaign for calling Senators worked for setting the record straight in terms of miners. As far as PoS is considered, people have already started saying stuff like "Alternate technologies" should not be viewed this way.

Nobody in their right mind would consider that a PoW miner is the same as a PoS validator. A PoS validator is simply one of the biggest shareholders of the network. A miner on the other hand is basically investing his own hard earned money and time into running an open source software. He is performing work in return of remuneration form the blockchain. A PoS validator on the other hand is just a rich guy willing to buy up enough stake.

Hope the senators can understand this very basic difference. The lobbying from the PoS group is hard though. Already Coinbase has come out in support of PoS. I don't think there is anything that the deep pockets of centralized wannabe validators cannot accomplish when it comes to getting legislation passed/ modified in the USA.

IMO, This is probably the biggest test of erudition and integrity of the Senate and US legislative system as a whole. If they end up judging PoS and PoW in the same way on the basis of some stupid arguments about energy, that would be proof enough that those Congressmen and Senators are really just working based on lobbies. Well, we already know that but one can hope.

Your title has nothing to do with your message. Though if you are looking for suggestions then definitely go buy AAVE and COMP. I don;t have any but everyone in DeFi is convinced that those two are the most fundamental coins in all of DeFi ecosystem. That should mean something.

Is Ziliqa still around? I thought they were dead like all the others from those days.

Also, you have some ENJ. I was around when they launched at the forum. I think i took part in the signature campaign but never built up too much. They were the first to come up with the dedicated idea of NFT. Though its a different token standard. ERC-1155 vs ERC-721. They did good but I hadn't bought any myself so did not much matter to me. I do have a bunch of their NFTs in my old phone. Wonder if those will ever amount to anything, lol. Haven't really checked in a while so I don't know. Some of the games on their platform were far more advanced than any of this shit they are making with Axies and all.

Vitalik isn't going anywhere I guess. He has made his billions with his pre-mine, all the forks and all the airdrops. He has a bigger stake in Ethereum than anyone else. So the question isn't that what will happen to Ethereum if Vitalik goes, the question is, what will happen to Vitalik if Ethereum goes, lol.

Vitalik raised money by selling Ethereum to people for at a rate of 1 BTC= 2000 ETH. That makes it a security and someone will have to own up to it. So Ethereum will basically become just another blockchain corporation with Vitalik being personally responsible for its ownership. Of course, this is not some horror outcome for Vitalik. Although, it definitely is as far as can be from being a decentralized blockchain.

Dear CCP representative, Welcome to Democracy 101.

No, Democracy doesn't mean that "everyone decides the direction together". Representative Democracy means that everyone gets to choose their representative. It is also not just about the election procedure but also about having a free press and giving people the right to criticize those who govern them. I understand the concept is alien to you.

"Stupid people who cast their stupid votes". So typical of the CCP apologists. Equal rights to everyone means that everyone's vote counts. You may find it stupid because you have been accustomed to a communist system of hierarchy where speaking truth to power to akin to suicide.

LOL. So you went into my post history to come up with a retort quoting "caste system". If there was any doubt in my mind that the forum is being specifically targeted by Chinese handlers, this removes that doubt. I have seen the likes of you a lot on Twitter. You guys crawl out of your Weibo holes to global twitter whenever there is an image management issue for the CCP.

Wonder though, what are your masters finding so interesting about the forum as to direct attention here.

Why do you guys think that people judge China based on their history?? The rest of the world knows that the Chinese control the flow of information inside their country. They judge people based on their posting habits. Prominent businessmen are jailed and go missing on the pretext of "picking quarrels" if they dare criticize.

Amid all this, people in the free world also notice that the Chinese economy has gone full steam ahead (which is appreciable) but on an unfair advantage of exploiting cheap labor and stealing/ copying others IP. Huawei cannibalizing Canada's Nortel is a prime example. All of this happened because the West was too busy getting cheap manufacturing. Now, the Chinese are trying to portray themselves as some sort of governance example to follow. They are trying to present a picture of success. The ideological funding for communist thought in Australian institutions has been well established.

The people see all this and call out the bullshit by criticizing the Chinese on their slave society. This doesn't mean that we envy the people having a good life. Its good that fellow humans are not dying in famines anymore and enjoying prosperity. Yet, don't expect the rest of the world to suddenly start worshipping communist crap like the CCP or your supreme leader.

BSV is an outright scam supported by an ego-maniac enabled by a sole supporter Calvin. Both of them are the exact anti-thesis of the kind of people that Bitcoiners are.

Bitcoiners are about the cypherpunk ethos. You will see them tackle intricate code and esoteric hobbies with ease but they won't boast to normies and use technical jargon or their achievements to bewilder their audience. A true Bitcoiner/ Cypherpunk will most of the times go out of his way to explain things and make it easy for everyone to understand stuff. (ELI5). As a creed of men and women, they value praiseworthiness more than purely praise. So, when you see someone like CSW and watch him boasting about his achievements, its an obvious red flag that such a person cannot do any good.

BSV is supported by a bunch of exchanges and Calvin who has been defending the scammer all along. Most people who now remain within this ecosystem are either nutjobs are people who have too much to lose by accepting that its been a scam all along.

Its just common sense that if a network can have 14-blocks deep re-orgs after claiming to be based out of patented research and what not, it is simply not worth your time or attention. To anybody still in BSV, my advice would be GTFO till it continues to be propped up and you can get your money.

Although the translation from another language is imperfect, the original article does a very good analysis of the situation. This could very well be a subject in itself. The fact that the article is by a Russian publication means that they must know what they are talking about. Some very good points here. It starts with speculating about the future of Chinese model to which we already have a reply from a Chinese well-wisher or probably just one of those CCP handles.

My dear Chinese puppet, when people in the rest of the world talk about "thinking and living as a free person", it is not about getting education or some other facility from a government. It is simply about having the freedom to express yourself as a human being. All humans are different. Nobody is perfect. In a free society, all of those voices are allowed space and expression and collectively, they decide on a path forward. Its definitely not perfect but that does not mean that one body making decisions for everybody while nobody is allowed to criticise the said hallowed body is not the way of free people.

You definitely find it hard to understand as is evident from another one of your stupid arguments.

Just this acceptance that material prosperity can somehow make up for freedom of choice and expression is the problem with your whole argument.

Moving on from this obvious CCP sockpuppet, the article makes some very interesting points.






These points very effectively explain the recent actions of CCP against a host of its own entrepreneurs. More importantly, i think it also provides an interesting explanation to the CCPs insistence of use of a CBDC while acting against Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the very essence of power to people and open-ness. You can never fully suppress or control it. The CCP, shrewd as always, understands that the world is moving to digital currencies and is probably just pre-empting for this scenario of ending up as compartmentalized.

These Entropy and Thermodynamics based statements about Bitcoin may be of some interest to those who like philosophy and such esoteric explanations. Yet, I don't find such explanations very useful or persuasive when talking about the usefulness or value of Bitcoin.

That expense of energy provides security but does not contribute to value in a direct, thermodynamic process way but in an indirect, game-theoretic way. It arises out of the game theory of miners and stakeholders agreeing on the value of the only truly decentralized ledger that we have. Whether that game theory arises out of the thermodynamics or purely human nature is probably debatable. Maybe the right answer is that its a combination of the two.