There are many other purposes to cryptocurrencies besides microtransactions. It was an early, unscalable selling point of bitcoin. Simply put, microtransactions do not scale as at some point they will be directly in conflict with "macro" transactions. Small amounts of money can be easily and usually safely transacted off-chain.

Not technically true, the same guy who designed the first GPU miner for bitcoin designed the scrypt PoW. Make of that what you want.

Except Litecoin was not the first attempt at either of those.

edit: appears this has been covered

 

From a game theory perspective, there is very little incentive to do this other than to generically attack the chain. Quick and dirty fix suggestions would be to provide half of the tx fees to the miners or to pay the tx fees of the current tx block forward to the next so that there is a cost, or some other distributive method. This should probably be done regardless so that tx block creators do not get free transactions.

There are some logic gaps here that I'm sure anonymint will be quick to point out.

But this is exactly what the definitions are not being used for. They are being used to refer explicitly to increases or decreases in the quantity of money--notions that are completely irrelevant compared to the effects of money in circulation which has many more complex interactions and implications. These "easy" definitions are being used to pretend that the problems associated with deflation are not worth talking about because, lol, there is no deflation.


You pointed out that inflation was originally a term used to describe an increase of money in circulation. It is now used to describe a general increase in the price level. Historically, deflation as a term came about much later than inflation and always referred to a general decrease in the price level. No one of any merit has ever used it to mean specifically a decrease in the quantity of money or money in circulation. At some point, you have to give up this silly definition charade because all it does is create a microcosm of bitcoinomics that hinders any real discussion--likely the intended purpose. Intellectual dishonesty.

Just an FYI, the definition you linked to is this: "The term 'inflation' originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation", which is not the definition espoused in this thread--an "increase in the money supply". There is a significant difference, but people like you and the OP of the other thread fail to see the distinction whereas I have pointed this out on many occasions.

Pointing out the rampant intellectual dishonesty around here may make me a tool, but at least I'm not the nail.

PS - Nice how you ignored my point where deflation has never meant a decrease in quantity of money, yet it is used around here to mean such nonsense.

Except no one does this. Inflation is usually measured on a yearly rolling basis.


I love how every anti-establishment thinker is credited with these idiotic definitions. Guess what? That is not Ron Paul's definition, because he's not an idiot out to confuse people--he's out to educate them and commonly calls inflation a form of theft. Calling it an "expansion of the monetary supply" does absolutely nothing to educate the uneducated any more about what is actually going on. It perpetrates stupidity by causing confusion of terms that are well-defined and usually include the cause.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/inflation

2. (Economics) Economics a progressive increase in the general level of prices brought about by an expansion in demand or the money supply (demand-pull inflation) or by autonomous increases in costs (cost-push inflation)

Calling inflation an "expansion of the money supply" only still does nothing to explain what is really going on. So everyone who tries to use inflation in this manner, or tries to "educate" people on this definition, is making everyone stupider for it.

Deflation, on the other hand, makes no sense to be used in the sense of a reduction in the "physical" supply of currency due to it being lost. In terms of money, it has *always* been used to mean a reduction in the available amount of currency. The amount of available currency can change at any given time based on economic factors, and it will likely always overwhelm the concept of lost coins meaning deflation and further confusion of terms employed only in bitcoinomics. You will never find an Austrian that has ever used the term to mean as such.

Definitions of words should not be used to obfuscate the fact that bitcoin is intended to be higly deflationary--to use them in such a way is to commit the same intellectual crime as the establishment so reviled.

It wasn't a typo, there was a logic error there too, and this is the second time you've made this exact mistake. Curious for someone who seems to be very well versed in the subject matter.

Inflation and deflation are not measures of the supply but of prices. Inflation does not "stop" at 2140, inflation could happen at any time in the future, even in 250000 AD, because of changes in the velocity of money. Anyone who says different is using unorthodox definitions of inflation and deflation to serve no purpose other than to confuse. The supply that exists is irrelevant compared to the actual useful description of prices which is what matters to each individual.

Here we go again with the duplicitous meanings of inflation and deflation. "We are in disagreement about whether or not Japan experienced deflation because obviously deflation means a reduction in the money supply, and this won't happen with bitcoin until 2140..." Of course, nowhere in the world does deflation mean that except for on bitcointalk.org.

Do you have anything better?


No, you just presume for the sake of whatever sake. To conflate, obscure, and whatever else rather than actually talk about economics. Because if you were to do that, bitcoin looks pretty stupid.

Assuming the sky is blue, no shit. Inflation and deflation aren't spontaneous, they are results of changes in the money supply and/or the velocity of money. Money supply increases due to Keynesian economics employed by governments is not equal to some bad word known as "inflation", it is a cause of inflation--a cause that has very intended side effects which we all know and love [/sarcasm]. Conflating Keynesian economics with money supply increases is mostly a red herring, as there is nothing that says there can't be a decentralized currency employing some method of money supply increases which would, no doubt, act magnificently different from government/bank manipulation of the money supply.

It is therefore not an honest line of argument to compare bitcoin to government money. An inflationary, decentralized cryptocurrency can be just as Austrian as bitcoin, and then all of your pro-deflation arguments based on a lack of meddling hold little water. Deflation does not equal Austrian and inflation does not equal Keynesian--these are gross oversimplifications.

Yet another fundamental misunderstanding of the bitcoin protocol brought to you by anonymint. Perhaps you should grasp the concept in its entirety before producing theoretical attacks? Don't you think that that is a minimum requirement? Why do you have to say things like "it is my understanding"? Why don't you actually understand it before acting like you know everything?

Jesus you are clueless.

Actually, as long as the format remains the same which the silly alt that attempted this did (I don't remember what it was called, maybe bitcoin2?), any transactions you make that are valid on either chain will propagate to both. Otherwise the alt would specifically have to create a new addressing/tx format incompatible with bitcoin1 and simply carry over the original tx out set.

You have done a well enough job discrediting yourself. Sorry if you can't handle it when someone who actually knows what they're talking about addresses your points.


Where did I claim that? I quoted myself so you can see that I didn't.


What I did claim is that it would require a big suspension of disbelief to think that this will be the norm. Of course, it's a requirement for your nonsensical attack.


Not only is it an altcoin, it's already been done. Guess what? It went nowhere.


And this is completely tertiary to your attack, and is a standard attack against bitcoin as I pointed out.


It is a matter of consensus. Which I pointed out in the prior post, and defeated you again, by saying:


What the fuck do amazon customers care if their transactions confirm quicker? Amazon is in control of everything anyway, under your scenario.

There is no choice to be made. The chain is either valid or it is not. A longer chain with invalid blocks (extra coins or modified difficulty or whatever else) does not enter into consideration.

This requires a huge suspension of disbelief, something I am not fond of doing unless I am watching a movie or reading a book. Bitcoin and its ilk, quite unlike EFT, are push transactions, not pull. I'm sure somewhere in the decapages of rants you have on this subject you've touched on this, but I and everyone else following this argument should find it excessively unlikely that the masses will be so willing to give up the newfound power of being their own bank to Amazon or whomever for the sake of "1-click purchases", when the reality is URIs can make it pretty darn close to that as it is.

If this is the basis for your argument, it's pathetic.


I proposed a potential solution over a year and a half ago. Bells, whistles, and/or stagnation of the bitcoin protocol tend to be of higher priority than protecting the block chain.


Again, it's an altcoin. Even SPV nodes would reject this as the difficulty between blocks would drop accordingly and would no longer even be valid for those receiving only the headers. Trying to hamfist a change like this on the bitcoin population should be no less difficult than changing the bitcoin protocol itself, therefore there is little advantage to one major cartel over everyone not part of the cartel.


Yes, bitcoin is easy to attack, that is nothing new. The cartel attack is unnecessary bloviation.

Why would non-mining nodes not honor the real chain? For them not to, they would have to download and accept Amazon.com's version of bitcoin. Highly improbable. While SPV nodes could be fooled, I believe there are people working on allowing full nodes to provide proof to SPV nodes of invalid blocks.


If they have >50%, they can delay transactions indefinitely. Create a competitor and attack bitcoin. Why create this gigantic fabrication to make some ridiculous attack sound viable?


This is quite wrong. The difficulty will adjust on both networks as appropriate.


This is called a competitor. Yes, it is possible that competitors will exist in the future--they do now. Hardly a flaw.