I fail to see why you think that applications built on top of the Bitcoin network are fundamentally any less secure as a payment method than applications built on top of the legacy banking system.

(For a response to the following argument, leave Matonis or any other Bitcoin proselytizer aside for now, please. I don't enjoy arguing strawmen.)

The Bitcoin applications and their security can (and will eventually) exhibit the same amount of security (or lack thereof) as those tied in with the banking system. That part is obvious, because the Bitcoin protocol doesn't address the security of this layer in any way.

EDIT: I should say "reach at least the level of security of applications on top of the banking system", because of the possibility to built Bitcoin applications as open-source applications, which seems to have a better track record wrt security compared to closed source applications.


What is fundamentally different is the security of the underlying transfer mechanism itself. In the case of the legacy banking system, built on central authority, it allows high-level interference if conflict resolution is required. In the case of Bitcoin, no such interference is possible, because the decentralized consensus cannot be changed by any individual (or any group below ~50% of network computing power).

So, to summarize: the only additional security that comes from applications on top of the banking system are

a) better, more secure, more intuitive applications - which is not a fundamental problem, and will be solved over time, with more time and ressources being invested in creating them. Go check out electrum in the meantime, to see what an already pretty good application looks like.

b) security through central authority revisions - this part is by design, and it is not at all obvious to me that the positive effects (justified execution of central authority) outweight the negative effects (unjustified execution of central authority). We probably won't be able to answer this question without reference to some principles that we do agree or do not agree on, but I am pretty sure that any case of justified execution of central authority in finance you can bring forward, I or someone else will be able to counter with a case of abuse of such power.

No, it certainly is not. I especially don't like the implications for future GABI and COIN impact.

(I know, they're not the same type of investment vehicle, but I'm not sure either if they're different enough to make a completely different buying behavior likely at the moment).

I remain long-term bullish, but I am also starting to get myself used to the idea that we could be in for a substantially longer bear market, to the order of another year, of no substantial and lasting price increase.

> but the factors which allow suspicion to fester in the background remain

Seems to be a CN thing then... It's not as if, to the outside observer, XMR looks immaculate (de-optimized initial mining, rather unintuitive emission curve if the goal is a broad adoption).

So, splinters, brother's eyes, etc. ... I'd rather we don't go there. If there's a valid question about the competition, let's raise it (and we do so plenty enough in here). But speculative accusations serve no purpose other than to create bad blood in something that could be, in the longer term, a collaborative effort.

I answered that in the posts afterwards: because merchants have a strong incentive to convince customers to pay in BTC. So most likely: they will give rebates / other benefits to BTC paying customers to encourage a payment vector that increases their margin by ~3% (or maybe closer to 2% after the rebates).

EDIT: Up to OP to decide if the off-topicness should end here. I enjoy the tangentials, but understand also the desire to keep the discussion centered around the original post.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

^ this was a strangely satisfying (and educating, for me at least) discussion, I'm surprised. That happens rather rarely on here

If economics ("economics" here being the field that guides - some of - a state's decisions on how to optimize its economic output) is ever pursued with the same rigor as biology, I will share that feelsy peeve :D (sorry, potshot, I know.)


You're asking exactly the questions that I want to see answered as well. No disagreement here. Just that I'm happy to have them empirically answered, even if there's a risk that the outcome will be negative.



True. Which is why I consider it a completely plausible scenario that Bitcoin will never reach the "end user" in scale (like Linux in the OS market), but will be the/a backbone of our entire financial infrastructure (like Linux is for servers).

Thanks for the answers to my questions. I have nothing to add.

Whatever works.

But:

"glad to hear the devs had the same idea" sounds more like you were? are? considering changing the codebase entirely.

Alright, makes sense. That's not really the question that's on my mind though.

The abrasive style aside (I can even see some virtue in that), this...





... kind of begs for a comment from the dev team.

Hmmm... I like Klee, good guy. But I wouldn't call him an "expert Bitcoiner". Not after he left his password and/or seed, in cleartext, in his dropbox

Seriously though, no Schadenfreude here. Just pointing out, this was so far removed from best security practices, I simply have to call bullshit on the implication that if this can't keep your coins save, nothing can. It'd be a bit like saying "If not locking your door, going on vacation for 2 months, and advertising on the local newspaper that your door is unlocked and you're on vacation doesn't prevent burglary, what could possibly do?!"

Agreed. Most likely technical (failure to break through previous low, high stability for the past 3-4 days, decent buying pressure on stamp), maybe triggered today by news (ECB decision) - but if so, it's probably more of a trigger than a reason.

Now, whether this is the turning point is another thing, entirely. Daily close above $500, and we can start talking about that possibility.

Excellent point. This might not capture 100% of the "hoarding" / deferred spending problem economists like Krugman like to throw at fixed supply models, but it probably accounts for a substantial part of it. If you can spend an appropriately small fraction of something extremely valuable you are at the very least more likely to do so than someone who fears overspending, because of insufficient (and possibly intransparent) divisibility.

Maybe I didn't phrase that all too clear: I lumped together those two issues (tx fees post-emission, deflationary currency) to make the point that several contentious issues will only arise in reality well into the future, potentially giving us time to adapt / get used to them.

re: deflationary currency. Don't be mistaken, I'm not brushing aside the complexities of the issue. I do however claim that, current economical orthodoxy considers central bank guided inflationary currencies the de facto optimum. Agreed with that statement? Not that they're optimal, but that the vast majority of economists seem to consider fixed supply currencies broken beyond repair.

My point is not that a deflationary currency is necessarily better (sorry PMers), but that it will be an interesting experiment in about 100 years from now to see if modern economical development is really impossible with a deflationary currency (if Bitcoin does indeed become a major factor in global finance in the future).

re: Linux. Wasn't the point who is using it. We were talking price. (and I'm sure you know this, but while consumers barely use Linux, the Internet infrastructure relies heavily on it.)

+1



-1


(Sorry for the sort of low content post, but sometimes, that's all the information that needs to be transmitted, imo.)


Back on topic:

Thanks, tacotime, smooth, fluffypony for keeping us update in realtime. This is precisely the emergency response I was hoping for.

Two questions:

1) Can you already rule out that the same (or similar) attack can be mounted again?

2) Can you already rule out conclusively that no lasting damage was done (as in: according to the pre-attack ownership situation)? Any chance that some subtle damage was done that'll be discovered only later?

Right. I'm highly skeptical towards statements made today that claim that tx fees will always be negligible.

I will however also note the following: together with the "OMG, a deflationary currency can NEVER work!" argument, the 'tx fees after emission is over' concern is placed pretty far into the future (~2140 to be precise).

You can call my reference to this short-sighted, but I think it is just another example of Satoshi's economic brilliance: some of the less palatable elements from a perspective of current economical orthodoxy are coming into existence only far enough into the future that the orthodoxy has a chance to change by then.

A bit more technical, a bit less flippant: ultimately, tx fees after emission is done will gravitate towards: total cost of running network * share of current transaction of total transactions on network, plus a small premium to make it worth miners time and effort. I don't see this as ever being more costly than current commercial payment providers, similarly to how there is no cheaper operating system than, say, Linux.

Some companies allow this (at least in Europe), some prefer other payment providers, probably because of conflict resolution / protection from charge backs. Don't underestimate how much merchants are willing to pay to be protected from the hassle of having to deal with (fraudulent or justified, doesn't matter) reversal of payments. Visa has charge back as well of course, but in my experience, they're rather thorough and don't automatically side with the payer against the payee.

Bitcoin transfers turn it around, the merchant is now firmly favored: no costs, no way to reverse the transaction. Which means that, a) the merchant hopes to get some "easy" revenue from old coin holders / early adopters, at little cost and risk (your hypothesis, as far as I know), or b) the merchant eventually will have to offer additional benefits to customers paying in Bitcoin to compensate for the loss of customer protection that customers enjoy using traditional payment methods.

What's the dev's position on crowdfunding / public contributions / etc.? I think I remember some statement by fluffypony that he's not a big fan of bounties, as they encourage sloppy coding practices, but maybe I'm mistaken. Plus bounty =/= donations, I guess.

Is there a collective address that doesn't go to one dev alone, but is the publicly know default "Monero development donation" address? I'd be willing to contribute to that.


EDIT: Nevermind, found "Donations for general development" on page 1. Sorry for the lazyness

Who's in control of that address? How are the proceeds split up?

No. No fucking way. Let's stop those insinuations right here!

There is no evidence that BBR has anything to do this, and you're doing XMR a huge disservice by implying this.

In addition, you completely lose the right to complain about anti-Monero FUD if you spread FUD yourself.

If you have any hard evidence, present it. If you don't, stop spreading FUD. It's really that simple.

Completely agreement. You would have most likely created your own bottom to sell at. (Again, unless a fix takes longer than we expect, and price reflect that uncertainty and forms new lows when trading resumes. Not that I expect it, but it's a possibility.)