I would really like to see how Jorge's ideas stand up to academic scrutiny, wouldn't you, (ex)NLC?

Not sure what your issue is here.

Apparently you're academic background is in psychology  

Thanks for the pop psychoanalysis.  I value your opinion.  Really.

?

I'm not being passive-aggressive, nor (I think) am I being particularly opinionated by suggesting that I would prefer to see Dr. Stolfi's ideas taken to the next level, rather than just encouraging him to continue to post random opinions.

He is the only poster on here that I know of that has identified himself specifically as an academic with an interest in Bitcoin, so that puts him in a unique position to educate us all with his erudite analysis of this subject.

Now that there is an official outlet for Dr. Stolfi's hard-won Bitcoin expertise, I would like to see him take advantage of it.  Wouldn't you?

Wouldn't it be vastly preferable if the good professor were to formalize his thoughts and publish them in a scientific journal, where his ideas could be subjected to all due academic rigor by his peers?

Dr. Stolfi is an academic who, according to his signature, at least, has an 'academic interest in Bitcoin' - and there now exists an academic journal created precisely for such academics.

I, for one, would much rather see Dr. Stolfi's support his ideas re: Bitcoin in a more formal atmosphere than to read yet another eight-paragraph opinion from yet another opinionated poster on this thread, wouldn't you?

I think we should all encourage Jorge to publish.  I would be interested to see if he actually has ideas with academic merit or not.

That sounds like a lot of opinion.  I'd like to see it formalized into a journal article, and see what the peer review looks like. 

This sounds like a sufficient subject for a journal article, if, indeed, you can support that thesis.

On a totally unrelated (and admittedly off-topic [if that is possible in this thread]) subject:

Dr. Stolfi, you have been following Bitcoin with "academic interest" for some time now...  Will we see an article in Ledger revealing your findings any time soon?

Yeah, and that person is YOU.

You have spent this whole discussion trying to redefine 'bank reserves' as 'bank net worth' just so you don't have to admit you made a mistake.  Reserves != net worth, never was, never will be.  Banks have plenty of reserves at the moment.  Net worth, maybe not so much.

Not sure if you are addressing me in this post, but if so - ONE MORE TIME: I AM NOT ARGUING THAT THE ECONOMY OR BANKS ARE SOUND.  I just made a statement about banks and reserves, which just happened to involve a correction to something you got wrong.  End of story.

Well, at least you are consistent:  Wrong again.

They are not letting the money sit around doing nothing - well, not exactly.  It is making money for them still because, in the same bill in which congress authorized $800B in 'fiscal stimulus', they also authorized the federal reserve to pay banks (i.e., themselves) interest on their excess reserves, with your and my tax dollars.  You and me are paying fat cat bankers billions in interest every year to hang onto their own money.  You may also notice that almost instantly after passage, the amount of excess reserves rose to ~$800B - that number sounds familiar   And when the Fed added $1.3T in monetary stimulus in QE1, and then another $600B in QE2, excess reserves (interest-bearing accounts for the banksters) went up accordingly.

If you believe in the monetarist principles the Fed operates from, there is some logic behind the policy - it allows them to now control interest rates from both the supply AND demand sides - whereas before they only could influence supply.  Nevertheless, the sheer volume of current excess reserves is becoming a potential problem even for the Fed, as there is potential for very negative political blowback since the interest is becoming a significant budget item now.

BTW - the name-calling is pretty childish.

You made a statement that was demonstrably false - that banks effectively have no reserves now - which is literally the polar opposite of the truth, as they actually have more excess reserves than ever in history.  You can theorize that their real liabilities are still greater than even this record level of reserves until you go blue in the face if you want to, but it won't change the fact that you clearly just didn't realize that banks actually have record reserve levels now.  Own your wrongness and move forward.

And AGAIN - I really don't care about the argument as to whether the the banks are solvent or not...  I just wanted to point out the anomalous level of excess reserves, and you gave me the opportunity to do that.  Thanks

M1, M2, etc., in no way represent 'liabilities of banks'.  They are measures of how much money (in US dollars) exists.  M1 is all the money that exists in the form of cash and demand accounts, i.e., all the dollars in the world that are immediately spendable.  The other Ms add other money that exists but is not immediately liquid. like bank reserves, savings accounts, CDs, etc.

Your initial claim was basically that banks have 'underperforming loans' that exceed the actual amount of money that even exists.  While I guess this is theoretically possible, it seems to me to be highly unlikely.

In any case, the intent of my initial post was not to defend the solvency of the banks, but rather to bring attention to the unnaturally huge amount of excess reserves held by banks now - especially considering that the level of excess reserves has (naturally) been vanishingly close to zero throughout the history of banking - and maybe get someone to wonder why this has changed, and maybe even wonder what the implications of this change might be.

Dude, for someone I once mistook as intelligent, you sure post a lot of crap nowadays.  Are you just staying drunk 24/7 nowadays?

You really believe the banks have $2.5T plus required reserves in 'underperforming loans'?  That number is at least as big as the total current M1.

That graph is actually a lot more interesting than you seem to realize, in multiple ways.

Uhm, the last time I looked, they had about $2.5 trillion in excess reserves (that is, above and beyond what they are legally required to hold).

Because it may also be fundamental for Bitcoin to remain decentralized.

If you think this problem is a no-brainer, it's because you don't really understand the problem.  I don't claim to know the right answer, but I do know that it is more complicated than many would have you believe.

I concur.  But they don't HAVE to be biased in their judgement, just because the possibility exists that they might be.  It's possible that the technical solution they propose is the BEST solution.  I don't know that it is, I am just providing counterpoint to the relentless negativity toward Blockstream I see on here.  They might be evil, or they might be RIGHT.  You should at least consider it.



If you look in the debug.log file of your Bitcoin Core client, you will see lots of /version/ lines - these lines are the equivalent of the user-agent sent by browsers.  There are many different implementations of the bitcoin client, in addition to the Satoshi client.  Look for yourself.

1)  I don't think see any way this can be avoided.  The top Bitcoin developers will always be in demand by the top Bitcoin-related companies, and developers are free to work for anyone they want.  I don't think it's really a problem in the long run.  If people really believe that the Bitcoin Core project is compromised by developer self-interest, someone will start a BitcoinXT-like project, and Core will no longer define what IS Bitcoin.

I would caution that you shouldn't assume out-of-hand that developers are acting purely in their own interest, like Dr. Stolfi does.  Isn't it possible that the Core devs who are also Bitstream devs have thought a lot longer and harder about this problem than most of us, and realized (like I said earlier) that there really IS no way (as of now) to have Bitcoin be both scalable AND decentralized, and set about building a project that might insure that Bitcoin will still be usable anyway?  Sure they MIGHT be acting solely (or even partly) in their own interest.  But making money out of having the foresight to anticipate this problem does not, a priori, mean that their solution is not the RIGHT solution.

2) I can't parse this.  If you think a protocol must have multiple, conflicting versions of itself, you may not understand what the word 'protocol' means.  If you mean something related to alt coins, I would point out that there are plenty of those already.

3) It's not just an issue of mining scalability - it's a matter of even being able to just run a validating node.  There is no monopoly, as Gavin and Mike have proven.  Anyone who is unhappy can fork, and if the world agrees with them, their fork will become Bitcoin.

If you're right, Bitcoin is already essentially dead.

I think Bitcoin is working as intended at the moment, but we can agree to disagree, if you don't see it that way.