Most of your posts to date have tempted me to put you on my ignore list... But this one link has granted you at least 100 more posts of safety. Thank you, it is some good stuff. Ha, ya. We are ultimately on the same side if/when the shit hits the fan. But that doesn't mean we cannot have a little fun in the interim  |
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I see the off-chain solutions as being every bit as ad-hoc as the transfer nodes and miners (if need be.) Every time one gets a mallet on the head, three more pop up out of a gopher-hole somewhere else in the world. That, my friend, is resilience.
To explain why I think relying on third party payment processors is what would end up making the BTC-economy look like the modern banking system, and why I think it would be very un-adhoc-like if these third party payment processors were to handle global-scale transaction volume, I'll explain how I imagine it will work: You have a merchant who wants to accept BTC payments. He can't accept them through the Bitcoin network, because transaction fees are $20, so he needs a payment processor. This isn't a removed payment processor like BitPay that simply receives BTC payments from customers and converts it to fiat for the merchant the same day. The payment processor would need to accept BTC-credit from a customer, and then hold it in an account on behalf of the merchant or sell it to a party that would be willing to buy that BTC-credit, and deposit fiat in the merchant's bank account. Accepting BTC-credit is not a simple thing. It means having to be able to trust the BTC-bank that the customer has BTC-credit with. The payment processor won't just trust any fly-by-night BTC-bank, since it hasn't proven itself trustworthy. More likely, there will be a network of trusted BTC-banks, that have trust-based relationships with each other, and use a centralized clearing house, like modern banks do, to settle their debts at the end of each day with on-chain transactions. Parties who can't join this centralized clearing house, because of their size, or regulations, or any number of reasons that people are currently locked out of the modern banking system, are effectively locked out of the BTC-economy. Merchants can't accept their credit, because the payment processor they use doesn't accept the credit of any BTC-bank that doesn't participate in the same payment clearing network as them. The competitive advantage of the parties that have large user bases, or are members of networks with a large number of members, would be too great for outside competitors to overcome, leading to a very centralized and static BTC-economy. It would be just like Visa/Mastercard, or the bank payment systems, like CHIPS. Regarding the current banking system being a "fully automated p2p solution", this is not true at all. The current banking system is based on contractual relationships that require trust and regulatory access. A fully automated p2p solution has no contracts and every thing is done through protocol. If a node in a p2p network goes down, no one loses their money, because it's a distributed p2p network where there are thousands of other nodes that store the same information. They communicate through the internet, and form a global network. Setting up a node is only a technical process, with no trust-based relationships required. As long as you have the bandwidth and hard drive space, you are equal in standing to every other node. I don't believe that things would play out as you imagine as long as the barrier to entry for being a payment processor is low (which, of course, facilitates both competition and the ability for a processor to take bigger risks as they have less to lose.) The OP has a conception of payment processors being able to demonstrate proof of stake in backing store ownership. I like this, but also things could work well with 'off chain' meaning being more completely de-coupled or trust-based. I seem to have a little more confidence in the potential for crypto-currencies to de-couple themselves from fiat than do you. In this case, the lubricity is high enough that exchanges can operate with very low overhead. I actually have no huge problem with 'trust based' relationships at some levels in a system. These tend to increase efficiency and work well for long enough durations that they are plenty useful for exchange functions. Where they bother me is when I am thinking about a need for stored value decades out. An off-chain processor who is more transparent and who devises mechanisms which preclude fraud and theft will be more competitive so I fully expect to see those who do the best job of this thrive and those who fail, perish. And I expect that end-users will be able to make informed decisions about who to rely on here. --- To me, Bitcoin is just the right size when off-chain processors can use it as a rock solid system for periodically squaring accounts, and most users can use it for a 'retirement' value store. Bitcoin could have been designed better for this role, and could have had a life history which resulted in less cruft, but my read is that it is 'good enough' in this capacity and also that the 'being first' advantage may give it the power it needs to sustain. |
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'your freedom to swing your fist stops where my nose starts.'
a) that isnt a definition b) you cant use the word you are defining in its own definition Most people who are capable of independent philosophical thought will have no trouble understanding exactly what that statement means and mapping it to almost any real life scenario. What it means is that I have no trouble with you taking any action (or in-action) you desire as long as it does not negatively effect others without their knowledge and consent. If you want more 'freedom' than that, you are being selfish to the extent that you'll likely be feeling a back-lash. I've got even less sympathy for religious or politically correct control freaks than I do Libertarians. These people have some psychological issues which materially impact the freedom of others. |
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Oh, you mean like gold?
Not like gold. Bitcoin doesn't have value other than being good transaction system while gold does. Moreover bitcoin security is directly proportional to miners revenue and revenue is proportional to transaction volume (after subsidy ends) so you cannot store to much value in it in relation to transaction volume. Gold has about the same usefulness to people as does lead. Yet it has a vastly higher value. Why? Because people have confidence in it. It is distinctly NOT because it is good for transactions and it is very rarely used for doing so these days. And Bitcoin is actually kind of a crappy transactional currency IMO. It's got a lot of latency, some real questions about scalability, and some enormous privacy issues. I'm almost certain that we'll be seeing solutions which eclipse Bitcoin in term of ability to support exchange functions for low-value transactions. If that is the niche which Bitcoin targets I have very limited confidence that it will ultimately be competitive in that role. |
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I paid $25 to get money to Tradehill when I was buying BTC. And it took days sometimes for the transfer to go through.
Like I mentioned, I would go to my reserve like I go to my safe deposit box. Irregularly. So if I am paying less than $100/yr for something with the convenience of sub 1-hr transfers and the robustness of physical gold, that's and absolute fucking gift to me.
If bitcoin could be only useful for safe deposit it will not be used at all and have no value. Oh, you mean like gold? |
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$20/transaction would be worth every penny to me for a system I could trust. I pay more and get a lot less for bank wires.
It would also produce about $80,000 revenue for finding a block which should be sufficient to keep a _LOT_ of people in the game if they could do so with inexpensive gear that they could afford to lose. That is the kind of network I could trust (unlike Cyprus's banking system, for example.)
Where do you live? In Europe you can use SEPA transfer across borders for just 1 euro (money next day). In my country I can get transfers between banks within country for free (money same/next day) or instant for 1 euro. How $20/tx bitcoin is going to compete with that? It's fantasy. I paid $25 to get money to Tradehill when I was buying BTC. And it took days sometimes for the transfer to go through. Like I mentioned, I would go to my reserve like I go to my safe deposit box. Irregularly. So if I am paying less than $100/yr for something with the convenience of sub 1-hr transfers and the robustness of physical gold, that's and absolute fucking gift to me. |
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If I already had the backbone network, hardware, and certain proprietary technology, I think such a system would be a few $10M's to develop and maybe $10M per year to operate in conjunction with other services. Plus legal and regulatory costs which could dwarf the technical ones. Chump-change for a corporation who was positioned to leverage the solution's underlying value. Starting from scratch, much more than that of course. I'll bet that VISA has much much more into their system, but they started from a different time and have a tougher row to hoe. Probably. Wild guesses to be honest.
I'm interested in following how you arrived at these numbers. E.g. what are your monthly CPU, RAM, and bandwidth costs to process, say VISA levels of traffic. We can worry about legal costs after we figure out the technical ones. Edit: I just noticed the last sentence where you admitted your numbers to be wild guesses. Why are you making such bold claims based on admitted wild guesses? This is a pretty important issue, after all. Fast-tracked, one might get the system going in a year. 15 primary engineers,$300k/year = $4-5M 30 secondary engineers, pm, marketing, etc = $7-8M Dev/test infrastructure, $3M Throw in a 2x safety factor and we're getting close. For ongoing operations one will need not only their own backbone (if they have one) but an expanded presence near the edge (particularly if there is competition.) So that factors in. Probably it would not be possible to do without support for a monetary system, so $10M might actually be a low-ball. And I've left out legal in both efforts (and lobbying) which will add significantly. |
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It leaves a solution where my 'savings' are widely distributed all over the world on a system which is trustable because it is tight enough to be operated by a myriad of small players and enthusiasts. (That would be Bitcoin.) Your savings would be locked in a p2p network that can't be withdrawn from without a $20 transaction fee. They would be safe from governments but not from competition that threatens to take over BTC's role as currency used for trade because of a myriad of reasons: lower transaction fees, status as 'coin of the realm' of a country in the case of fiat currencies, more merchants accepting the currency, etc. $20/transaction would be worth every penny to me for a system I could trust. I pay more and get a lot less for bank wires. It would also produce about $80,000 revenue for finding a block which should be sufficient to keep a _LOT_ of people in the game if they could do so with inexpensive gear that they could afford to lose. That is the kind of network I could trust (unlike Cyprus's banking system, for example.) I would distribute out my spending money to various off-chain solutions which seemed the most promising to me. Some might be attacked successfully and buried, and I might mis-judge some and they might rip me off. Even if all of them failed, I would still have the bulk of my value in BTC. I would probably only make several Bitcoin transactions per year. This is just my opinion, but I think the vast majority of people would prefer a fully automated p2p network that's made up of thousands of nodes operated by enterprises, than a fully automated p2p network with hundreds of thousands of nodes operated by hobbyists, but with the disadvantage that you need to trust third party payment processors for any kind of real world use of currency. I guess we'll see. Right now I can and do trust a de-centralized bunch of commoners with GPU's poking out of milk crates with more value than I trust to Wells Fargo. And for specific and distinct reasons. The ad-hoc nature of the Bitcoin network does not bother me in the least. Quite the opposite. I consider it a great strength (in conjunction with the redundant nature of the design of the system of course.) BTW, we do have a 'fully automated p2p solution'. It's called the modern banking system. The peers are the banks. The clients are the plastic wielding public. I fail to see much difference in a system you seem to envision where your vaunted 'enterprises' are the peers and the SPV users are the clients. You think any 'enterprise' is going to stand up to the regulators or walk away from their investment? Dream on. If we're going to use proprietary networks (and they have to be networks to avoid expensive on-chain transactions) to transfer bitcoin credit, instead of bitcoin itself around, we can just use banks, or some successor to e-gold or something.
A bitcoin economy where you are reliant on using bitcoin-credit controlled by third parties is very similar to modern banking, and would probably have almost all of the same shortcomings.
Not hardly. I see the off-chain solutions as being every bit as ad-hoc as the transfer nodes and miners (if need be.) Every time one gets a mallet on the head, three more pop up out of a gopher-hole somewhere else in the world. That, my friend, is resilience. This contrasts sharply with the vision of Bitcoin as a monolithic one-world currency solution which only large and well connected entities can profitably operate. In that case a failure means the loss of all of my value*. Your vision requires large payment processors that are connected, in the classical banking sense of having trust-based credit relationships amongst each other, to form a proprietary network that allows you to actually use bitcoin in every day trade. You simply could not be more wrong about this. Bitcoin as a global scale network allowing millions of on-chain transactions per day, or as you put it, a 'monolithic one-world currency solution', was in fact the goal Satoshi Nakamoto set out for it: http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.htmlAt first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node.
The bandwidth might not be as prohibitive as you think. A typical transaction would be about 400 bytes (ECC is nicely compact). Each transaction has to be broadcast twice, so lets say 1KB per transaction. Visa processed 37 billion transactions in FY2008, or an average of 100 million transactions per day. That many transactions would take 100GB of bandwidth, or the size of 12 DVD or 2 HD quality movies, or about $18 worth of bandwidth at current prices.
If the network were to get that big, it would take several years, and by then, sending 2 HD movies over the Internet would probably not seem like a big deal. Limiting Bitcoin to 7 tps in my opinion virtually guarantees it will never have significant impact, because I believe people will opt for government-regulated networks, or alternative blockchains, if Bitcoin, as a p2p network loses its transaction fee advantage. The 1 MB cap was put in place as a temporary measure, until a better way to control transaction spam was found. Trying to make the limit permanent is trying to change the vision of Bitcoin as originally conceived. Well, he/they also have some half-baked privacy and internal auction stuff floating around in the code. It's not like the guy was Jesus or something. Ultimately the user's will decide although the actual developers will have a big influence in assisting those decisions. |
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I just did a quick calc and if 1/2 the people in the world did 1 transaction per day with a single solution, I get around 50,000 operations per second.
Someone at the conference (I heard, but did not see) mentioned that the number of cell phones vs. the number of bank accounts is about 5/1. So, if Bitcoin became popular, and the movement toward more capable phones proceeds, it would likely result in a pretty large deluge of traffic.
I became concerned about scalability when reading the document on the main Bitcoin.org wiki. Later (recently) I heard Dan Kaminsky refer to it as "the funniest document in the history of software engineering." Which I consider one of the funniest comments in the history of software engineering. And one of the saddest.
Now, I don't doubt that large corporations (who I can now name but will refrain from doing so anyway) can process that kind of data and much more. And the intelligence information they could obtain in doing so would vastly exceed the cost of operating the system. But it's not the Bitcoin which attracted me several years ago. It is, in fact, the exact opposite.
It seems like you got a bit distracted while explaining your estimate of the operating cost... If I already had the backbone network, hardware, and certain proprietary technology, I think such a system would be a few $10M's to develop and maybe $10M per year to operate in conjunction with other services. Plus legal and regulatory costs which could dwarf the technical ones. Chump-change for a corporation who was positioned to leverage the solution's underlying value. Starting from scratch, much more than that of course. I'll bet that VISA has much much more into their system, but they started from a different time and have a tougher row to hoe. Probably. Wild guesses to be honest. |
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This contrasts sharply with the vision of Bitcoin as a monolithic one-world currency solution which only large and well connected entities can profitably operate.
I keep hearing this statement, but never any numbers with it to back it up. Would you mind sharing how you estimated this operating cost? I just did a quick calc and if 1/2 the people in the world did 1 transaction per day with a single solution, I get around 50,000 operations per second. Someone at the conference (I heard, but did not see) mentioned that the number of cell phones vs. the number of bank accounts is about 5/1. So, if Bitcoin became popular, and the movement toward more capable phones proceeds, it would likely result in a pretty large deluge of traffic. I became concerned about scalability when reading the document on the main Bitcoin.org wiki. Later (recently) I heard Dan Kaminsky refer to it as "the funniest document in the history of software engineering." Which I consider one of the funniest comments in the history of software engineering. And one of the saddest. Now, I don't doubt that large corporations (who I can now name but will refrain from doing so anyway) can process that kind of data and much more. And the intelligence information they could obtain in doing so would vastly exceed the cost of operating the system. But it's not the Bitcoin which attracted me several years ago. It is, in fact, the exact opposite. |
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Like I've said before, a healthy and active solution of off-chain activity would provide the necessary user numbers to give the protection you (supposedly) seek. Any regulatory attacks are going to be a broad enough brushes to impact all such economic activity. You seemed to have no answer for that. What "healthy and active solution of off-chain activity"? All off-chain activity occurs on centralized third party payment processors that you have to trust your coins with. ... Wrong. It leaves a solution where my 'savings' are widely distributed all over the world on a system which is trustable because it is tight enough to be operated by a myriad of small players and enthusiasts. (That would be Bitcoin.) I would distribute out my spending money to various off-chain solutions which seemed the most promising to me. Some might be attacked successfully and buried, and I might mis-judge some and they might rip me off. Even if all of them failed, I would still have the bulk of my value in BTC. I would probably only make several Bitcoin transactions per year. This contrasts sharply with the vision of Bitcoin as a monolithic one-world currency solution which only large and well connected entities can profitably operate. In that case a failure means the loss of all of my value*. (*) Actually, my value is still in the block-chain and that, huge though it may be, would very possibly form the basis for value follow-on solutions, but the interim period would be protracted, stressful, and fraught with questions. I'd rather not have to see it. |
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Thx for the reminder JD. I sent a few more.
I was going to donate around .3 to someone, but I cannot for the life of me remember who.
I made a slight contribution to Jon Matonis while I was at it. Not enough to warrant a dick sucking though...at least not enough to get a solid.
Ah...right. Armory! I don't actually use it, but they gave me a shirt at the 2013 conference.
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Atlas lives! Now that's proper trolling! You're not going to be laughing when Obomba signs an executive order to come after bitcoin directly... To do that he'll have to have greater control over the ISPs... If not federal control. It's a little unclear what, if anything, you are saying. But whatever it is, I don't imagine that sharks with lasers are going to help you much. |
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Can WiFi Mesh Networking gaps be bridged with wireless or even land phone lines? Resurrection of modems?
To a degree. It depends on the situation. If we're just trying to start a fully seperate mesh network in today's world, then yes, certainly landline wires can connect across the vast spaces. Cell towers too, of course. (And ham radio, and satellite, and CB, and tin cans with a string, etc.) The problem comes however when the guvmints decide that it's illegal to use the internetz without one of their approved ISPs being your on-ramp. Under that scenario, which isn't really that far fetched at all, some alphabet agency will be watching for exactly this and even encrypted packets will look out of place enough for them to stop/block/make arrests. So to really get the dead zones alive, it looks like either sending up our own satellites, or perhaps laying secret cables between towns is the only way to keep the free web up and running. I think the satellite route is probably best for that need. There are millions of satellites in orbit now put up by hundreds of different nations. Surely we could put up some undetected ones among that space junk debris field with a bit of backing.Atlas lives! |
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i have some - but i too lack the ammeter.
i think a few of those i shipped out should arrive tomorrow though.
I have some long ago recollection that current (DC) can be deduced by introducing a resistor and measuring the voltage drop across it. Maybe I'll try...or would if I were one of the lucky ones receiving my device tomorrow <sniffle> (kidding.) |
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Like it or not, humans are social beasts so there is also an obligation to be responsible within the context of a social structure. Wow. I'm really unsure if you're trolling now... Nah. I stopped when it seemed that someone wanted to try to have a rational conversation. I find it impossible to believe that to define freedom there is someone on this planet who has to bring "obligation" into it.
You're either trolling hard or you don't understand... well, ....anything.
So take the null hypothesis then. It explains why you guys are, and will continue to be, outcasts. Until you mature a little bit anyway which most of you will eventually do. My computer doesn't do flash. But I've been pointed to countless snoozer documents and video which you guys seem to feel provides some sort of biblical enlightenment but which I find to be the same tired old tripe. I don't figure I'm missing much here. |
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Right definitely you make some good points but i think you are making the mistake of assuming that what ever the definition of freedom is that freedom is a good thing. The truth is that freedom is very often a bad thing. So for example you can talk about an axe murderers freedom to axe murder. This freedom would be very bad indeed and should not be allowed.
this isnt a problem with the definition of freedom, we shouldnt be searching for a definition that covers all of the good forms of freedom and leaves out all of the bad forms, we should just accept that freedom is sometimes very bad indeed.
I don't think I am making that mistake. It is plain to me that if there were only 'good freedom', the term itself would be useless and we would have no freedom at all. Plus it would be a very boring world. The definition I like best is 'your freedom to swing your fist stops where my nose starts.' What drives me nuts about Libertarians is that some of them/you seem incapable of understanding 'risk' and why it is wrong to put someone else at risk against their will/knowledge even in the cases where nothing bad comes of it. There was a protracted conversation about drunk driving some time back. I was frankly aghast as what some of the Libertarians here seemed to actually believe in their heart of hearts about what is appropriate behavior in a world filled with other people besides themselves. |
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I'd love to see you attempt to define freedom.
ooh im not tvbcof but i wanna give it a try, it sounds like a fund challenge. freedom: the ability to act without interference which would prevent or make more difficult the realization of ones goals. tell me what do you think? I like it well enough, but it does seem slightly on the self-centered side. Like it or not, humans are social beasts so there is also an obligation to be responsible within the context of a social structure. If one a rare individual who is pretty self sufficient in most of their needs (e.g., Ted Kaczynski) then you should be free to life that lifestyle. Without maiming innocent civilians of course. If not, you have to act in a manner that allows society to exist in the form that most fellow humans find tolerable. |
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I find Bitcoin great for making charitable donations.
BOOM! There's a good criteria to add. "Ease of donations". It's a biggie to me. In fact, I only found out about Bitcoin when there was an embargo against Wikileaks donations. I feel strongly that transparency is a healthy thing in the struggle against corruption, and was mighty pissed off that PayPal, Visa, etc were not allowing me to support Wikileaks with what they claim (falsely) to be 'my' own money. |
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