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This conversation has become convoluted. The tragedy of the commons argument addresses a drop in hashrate. This in turn leads to a threat that someone will easily take over control of the blockchain. You can't argue that it is a good thing because it would not be worthwhile to double spend due to the mining requirements when you already said the hashrate is low. You can't have it both ways. If a monopoly takes over the blockchain who would eve know if double spends are made by the cartel? Seems to me this scenario is much like the current bankster system.
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Let me rephrase that. I would like to see a scheme that regulates a 51% attacker to insure that it does not double-spend. It seems extremely improbable to me that the monopolist could profit from double-spending. That is regulation enough in my view. Somehow, I almost think you are serious. Nah. |
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It seems extremely improbable to me that the monopolist could profit from exploiting the ledger. That is regulation enough in my view.
Let me rephrase that. I would like to see a scheme that regulates a 51% attacker to insure that it does not double-spend. |
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Ignore the security/public good issue for a moment and focus on the issue of whether or not a monopoly is likely to emerge.
Accumulating 51% of hashing power is profitable. With currency generation, a 51% mining monopoly produces almost doubles the number bitcoin per unit of hashing power. With txn fees, a 51% mining monopoly will more than double the number of fees per unit of hashing power (there are both price and quantity effects rather than just qty effects).
How will assurance contracts make monopoly less attractive?
What does bitcoin/hashrate have to do anything? Electricity costs will not be the big issue that people claim it will. It will be engineered away. Unless you are saying that everyone should join one pool with trust abounding, then yes someday that could happen, but not in my lifetime. Assurance contracts are a clever scheme that will target critical hashrate levels, but it's not a cure-all. Societies depend on engineering solution for social issues. The efficiency of monopolies can only benefit the greater good if they are highly regulated by the society they serve. I would like to see a scheme that regulates a 51% attack to insure that it does not exploit the ledger. |
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I believe Bitcoin already has everything required to handle this situation by having players who benefit from high network speeds automatically create and broadcast network assurance contracts: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67255.msg785122#msg785122I think this correctly solves the problem by allowing co-operation amongst competing players to fund network security in such a way that one player doesn't end up carrying the rest. I don't forsee a mining monopoly or a failure due to game theory any time in the forseeable future. Agreed. While this scheme helps protect the network integrity, I'm not sure this addresses the "Tragedy of the Commons " fallacy. They claim a conspiracy will form and that people will choose the side of the conspiracy because it human nature to exploit any public works to the point of failure. They will argue that people will not use network assurance contracts enough to counter a monopolistic attack because it is "someone else's problem to worry about." Game theory helps us find problems to address, but the real world isn't the zero-sum game that some folks want to believe it is. They are simply naive. |
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yeah, but what about all that electricity we waste?  not much once we all switch to FPGA boards... and power them with solar energy... While Electricity Cost < Block Value, miners will keep adding more and more mining power, be it FPGA or whatever, until Electricity Cost = Block Value. Basically, miners will keep adding mining power as long as it's profitable. So the only thing FPGA boards will do is increase the difficulty, not save on power wasted. Much of that solar power just gets wasted on coeds getting suntanned anyway. Might as well use it for something useful like a computer in the basement making computer money.  |
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 Basically it says they will attack us in any possible way to defend THEIR interests And so it behooves us to make OUR interests THEIR interests as well.  |
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I found this video the other day. He's such a looser! Yet here he ended up.  |
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JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs probably wouldn't be very good at running a network that actually requires honest hardworking engineers. Lawyers and scam artists wouldn't be very good at defending against DoS attacks.
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A possible scenario to a future 51% attack. http://rt.com/news/pentagon-report-hackers-retaliation-481/"When warranted, we will respond to hostile attacks in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country," the report said as cited by Reuters. "We reserve the right to use all necessary means – diplomatic, informational, military and economic – to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests." |
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Contains Radium Bitcoin to cure all economic ills.Are we on the verge of discovering the equivalent of nuclear power for finance or is this just a hack that will fizzle?  
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Here I was waiting for the Oliver Stone investigative movie about Bitcoin.
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Because the private keys can be in many places at once, they don't have a location until someone "spends" one. It's like quantum money.
This is a very interesting sentence. Thanks. OK now Werner Heisenberg is haunting this forum Maybe so, and his name is Satoshi Nakamoto. Like Heisenberg, he also deserves a Nobel nomination. |
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We are in the early development stage of Bitcoin. This talk of law enforcement is premature. While there should be tools to track transactions, Bitcoin security should be the priority to prevent theft. Other than providing a ledger, Bitcoin doesn't cause crimes. I don't see why there should be any reason to refuse bitcoin transactions because of tainted addresses. Restitution of stolen money rarely happens anyway and because Bitcoin is so secure, it will hardly be worth worrying about.
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Waahahaha what's going on with the french
He does sound like Pepe Le Pew. French accents make everyone sound sexah. |
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You are CPU mining? That is hardly worth the effort, let alone the risk. If you have no qualms about acting criminally, then why not sell some of those memory sticks and buy a few GPUs? They will be more energy efficient than all those CPUs.
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I noticed the example in the video is a microtransaction valued around 25 cents. This is a significant distinction from other payment options.
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What about the jobs lost moving the money around? What about the companies that loose money because they no longer sell armored trucks? I don't really think you gain as much as you say. There no doubt would be some gain, but most of the "gain" is really just moved from somewhere else. You only need to move money around as fast as product is made. anything faster is just convenience for the most part (there is some marginal benefit, but i am not seeing anything as big as you describe.).
That labor capital would now be free to do something productive. It's like asking what about the hundreds of farming, or factory assembly jobs that were lost because of tractors and robots? Bitcoin will essentially free up people that used to dig up and fill in holes, and allow them to do something much more productive. This is true. Where would people find the time for casinos and drug dealers if they were slaving away at jobs? Let's not even talk about the seedier occupations. Doing accounting for growing businesses and entrepreneurs, security for people and places that actually need it, software development for ideas that manage other things besides currency tracking. You make it sound as if bankers are all just blue collar workers who can only either do bank related jobs, or have to resort to desperate seedy jobs. Where are all the farmers, factory workers, and more recently phone support people who's jobs got outsourced, now? Dealing drugs and gambling? Do you honestly believe that when something disruptive comes around and destroys a certain type of job, that everyone who held that job becomes useless and permanently unemployed? Run tell dat |
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What about the jobs lost moving the money around? What about the companies that loose money because they no longer sell armored trucks? I don't really think you gain as much as you say. There no doubt would be some gain, but most of the "gain" is really just moved from somewhere else. You only need to move money around as fast as product is made. anything faster is just convenience for the most part (there is some marginal benefit, but i am not seeing anything as big as you describe.).
That labor capital would now be free to do something productive. It's like asking what about the hundreds of farming, or factory assembly jobs that were lost because of tractors and robots? Bitcoin will essentially free up people that used to dig up and fill in holes, and allow them to do something much more productive. This is true. Where would people find the time for casinos and drug dealers if they were slaving away at jobs? Let's not even talk about the seedier occupations. |
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