DECENTRALIZED crypto currency (including Bitcoin) is a delusion (any solutions?)

[monsterer]

If an individual payer wants to attempt a double-spend, he doesn't have enough PoW by himself to accomplish it.

This is plain nonsense. Of course an individual payer can have a majority of PoW, that's how double spends exist in the first place.

What the fuck can't you comprehend from above?

I've given you a reference to a math proof about the inability to asses confirmation in your design. Lets see your rebuttal.

Further, I've yet to hear why any given attacker can't trivially circumvent your censorship prevention by creating a majority of 'provider' nodes.

Please try and be civil here, I am trying to help you.

[TPTB_need_war]

If an individual payer wants to attempt a double-spend, he doesn't have enough PoW by himself to accomplish it.

This is plain nonsense. Of course an individual payer can have a majority of PoW, that's how double spends exist in the first place.

You entirely fail to comprehend what has been explained to you and that is also why you fail to understand why the math you have shown is irrelevant.

You only able to see things in a small box perspective and unable to contemplate how the holistic economics renders your thinking invalid.

Please try and be civil here, I am trying to help you.

You are not being civil because you are being boastful about your myopia and instead of trying to understand, you are trying to fill the thread up with noise. I told you my PM box is available and we can hash out your myopia there, so we don't have to play 21 cat & mouse questions here. We can come back here and point out the final conclusions. Or I asked you to create another thread to discuss your myopia but you refused and continued posting your noise in this thread. You are extremely disrespectful.

I told you I want to keep this thread terse and easy to follow.

[sidhujag]

If an individual payer wants to attempt a double-spend, he doesn't have enough PoW by himself to accomplish it.

This is plain nonsense. Of course an individual payer can have a majority of PoW, that's how double spends exist in the first place.

What the fuck can't you comprehend from above?

I've given you a reference to a math proof about the inability to asses confirmation in your design. Lets see your rebuttal.

Further, I've yet to hear why any given attacker can't trivially circumvent your censorship prevention by creating a majority of 'provider' nodes.

Please try and be civil here, I am trying to help you.

Try to rephrase the answer in another form, he might get it then lol

[TPTB_need_war]

Did you not learn Bitcoin 101?

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf#page=6
http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.2009

I'll accept that you can compute a probability of a double spend succeeding in the absence of a block reward in the face of an attacker who is arbitrarily attacking. However, you must have missed this from the 2nd paper you linked about the motivation of the attacker, which adds critical detail to the analysis:

https://bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf#page=12

v=value of double spend
r=probability of double spend success
k=number of merchants attacked per block
alpha=liquidity of purchase
B=block reward

"This means that discouraging an attack requires that:"

v <= (20*(1-r)*B) / (k*(alpha + r - 1))

Set B = 0, then

v <= 0

So to discourage an attack in the absence of a block reward, the value of the double spend must be 0.

I.e. it's impossible to discourage without a block reward.

You have ignored the implications of the variable k and note the equation fails to consider capital costs. Chomp on that for a while, as I need to step outside for 3 hours. You will soon come to realize that the above equation is nonsense.

Start with a nonsense, non-holistic equation and you get only a nonsense result. And boastful, disrespect n00bs who memorized something from a white paper and think they are qualified to disrespect me.

Try to rephrase the answer in another form, he might get it then lol

Eat more humble pie.

[monsterer]

You have ignored the implications of the variable k and note the equation fails to consider capital costs. Chomp on that for a while, as I need to step outside for 3 hours. You will soon come to realize that the above equation is nonsense.

k is the number of double spends an attacker attempts to pull of at the same time. In theory it can mean there is no upper bound for when it is safe to accept a transaction in bitcoin because, under a theoretical elastic block size, the attacker can attack an infinite number of merchants at the same time. However in practice the author of the paper assumes a k of around 4/5 (can't recall exactly), because there is a limited window in which the attacker can pull of his attack. There is a way around this problem with k, but its for another discussion.

In your system, however this is completely unbounded and there is no way to place bounds on transaction acceptability because PoW is not being valued, therefore the recipient can never tell when it becomes unprofitable for an attacker to try and double spend your transaction.

The capital costs argument applies equally to all PoW coins, I don't see the relevance?

edit: am I the only one who sees the irony in you calling a critical equation 'nonsense' from a paper which you yourself cited as being 'bitcoin 101'?

[TPTB_need_war]

I asked you to do preliminary discussion of your myopia in another thread or in my PM box and you obstinately refuse. And here you are going on and on and on in this thread with the same myopia. Thanks for filling up the thread with endless noise in the nonsense piecemeal analysis with Fuserleer (when he was unwilling to release the complete specification), the nonsense misunderstanding of how a DAG can't be total ordered (even after it was explained to you numerous times), and now after those two examples of how you create a lot of noise, your obstinate refusal to respect my reasonable request.

Remember I don't have to tell you a damn thing. I can wait and explain in a white paper if I so desire. And that may be to my maximum benefit. Your method of discourse is to boastfully proclaim nonsense attacking the designs of others who have stated they are not ready to release all the details for competitive reasons, and thus attempting to force us to reveal our secrets before we are ready to.

I can easily refute your myopia when I am ready to. I am outside right now and not at my regular desk, so I am thinking about whether I should let you take over the thread and enjoy your 15 minutes of fame until the white paper is released (after which you eat humble pie).

Since you are unable to respect the boundaries of others, I am contemplating it is best to stop discussions with you.

Your math and holistic economics conceptualization is still incorrect.

The capital costs argument applies equally to all PoW coins, I don't see the relevance?

You chomp on that until you realize your mistake.

[monsterer]

I can easily refute your myopia when I am ready to. I am outside right now and not at my regular desk, so I am thinking about whether I should let you take over the thread and enjoy your 15 minutes of fame until the white paper is released (after which you eat humble pie).

I look forward to the time we can discuss this fully, and I genuinely wish you all the best.

[Fuserleer]

Remember I don't have to tell you a damn thing. I can wait and explain in a white paper if I so desire. And that may be to my maximum benefit.

Whats good for the goose is good for the gander also (yes I'm lurking)

[TPTB_need_war]

I can easily refute your myopia when I am ready to. I am outside right now and not at my regular desk, so I am thinking about whether I should let you take over the thread and enjoy your 15 minutes of fame until the white paper is released (after which you eat humble pie).

I look forward to the time we can discuss this fully, and I genuinely wish you all the best.

I asked you to create your own thread or use my PM box if you wanted to discuss. If you at least honored my reasonable request, maybe I would have been more willing to reveal more to you. As it stands with your obstinance, I don't feel you are trustworthy.

I suggested to you that what ever we discussed off thread, could be brought onto the thread with a summary conclusion.

I have a problem in this forum with people who don't respect that the time of others is finite and not free. And that it is not fair to coerce me with attacks. I am only one person. I have a lot on my plate to do. I can't respond to every boastful thing at every instant. I need time to think through what I want to respond to and when (for strategic reasons and otherwise).

For the past 36 hours I have been wanting to discuss decentralized exchanges (I have a job offer for that so it is a higher priority for me at the moment), but every time I go to start that, I have to deal with you instead. Take it off thread so it is not a coercion of me in this thread which I popularized. I may not have the same priorities as you.

Then again, you are free to do what ever you want. I don't own the thread. And so am I free to do what I want too. Teamwork requires some recognition of the non-linearity of relative priorities and some attempt to organize to minimize stress and strife.

I wouldn't be so coerced if your posts weren't asserting with boastful surety that unprofitable PoW can't have the correct incentives. Meaning I wouldn't feel compelled to have to stress myself to reply to them immediately (could come back to your post later at my leisure). If you want to make the point that you think PoW requires profit to have correct incentives and state your reasons why you think that, that is not as coercive as stating absolutely that you know that no design with unprofitable PoW can have correct incentives. When you aren't even including all the factors in your analysis, such as the fact that unreimbursed capital costs are not the same in profitable and unprofitable proof-of-work. That point is deducible from the first statements I made to you:

Remember your point (seems you forget your own points, haha) was that in PoW an attacker must sustain his attack at ongoing cost. But how does the attacker finance this cost when none of his costs are being recouped. I think you fail to consider many factors including for example that mining farms near hydropower generation plants have Bitcoin costs in the range of $50 per BTC. Thus mining centralizes and hashrate centralizes because of the economic profitability of mining.

What evil can the attacker do to recover his costs of mounting the attack? What is the incentive to do evil and how does the attacker finance the attack? And what can he accomplish with an attack? Of course a miner can short the coin, but can he recover enough profit from a short to pay for a 51% attack sustained long enough to do a double-spend that any large sector of the ecosystem cares about? If payees are following the correct probabilities (per Bitcoin 101 below), then the 51% attacker needs win at least 6 blocks to execute a double-spend of any significant value (unless he can spread out his spends in many smaller transactions). But this is the same for Bitcoin's design as well. There is no difference due to the mining being profitable or unprofitable. Miners in Bitcoin aren't incentivized to not short the coin, otherwise they wouldn't rent out mining hardware.

You are completely out-of-touch with the reality of the economics of mining. The reason Bitcoin is so vulnerable is because mining is profitable and thus finances the creation of ASICs and mining farms.

Also you make the assumption that the professional mining farms in profitable PoW of Bitcoin (i.e. Satoshi's design) don't have an incentive to do evil. I explained upthread that they will roll over when the government regulates them, because it is entirely in their interest to do so. Please don't ask me to repeat those points I made upthread since you didn't disagree with them at the time.

You are not considering factors such as whether the community will honor a longest chain that has an enormous number of double-spends relative to the chain that has to reorganized after obviously been withheld from the network for an enormous number of blocks (assuming all payees are told not to accept a payment for that number of blocks and especially in combination with an instant transactions option when they need faster confirmation).

A 51% attack (or with lower probability some < 51%) for double-spends is nonsense. No one amasses that level of capital costs just to mess around with a small level of profit. The 51% attack is only useful for censoring transactions or other malfeasance that is directed towards society-wide benefits to the State.

One can argue that the attack can benefit greatly more consummately to the capital costs by shorting the coin, but this is the case in Bitcoin too then regardless of the block reward. If the profit from shorting is large enough to pay for capital costs risk, then the block reward is too small to be relevant.

Even if you argue that mining equipment can be rented, then again the reward from double-spends is far less than the reward from shorting, so the block reward is again irrelevant.

Bottom line is it better be damn difficult for anyone to centralize a great % of the hashrate, else your coin is vulnerable to double-spend attack to short the coin, but since everyone knows the attacker's intent is to profit from shorting and he can't sustain the attack due to ongoing capital costs (unlike in PoS where the capital costs are not ongoing), then it is unlikely for the short to pay off. And I already pointed out to you that aggregating a large % of the hashrate is much more difficult in my design due to unreimbursed capital costs, because the mining is unprofitable and you are battling against the CPUs of all the payers in the system (unlike in Bitcoin where the only incentive to add hashrate is to make a profit and then you need to include in your equation the fact that marginal miners have costs of $350 and mining farms costs of $50 per BTC thus marginal miners are not going to proliferate as much as unpaid PoW share payers in my design).

If you argue that attacker can rent the mining equipment and won't do the attack because the profit from double-spends is less than from the block rewards but would do the attack if the block rewards are 0, one flaw in that reasoning is that there is no level of block reward for which k is bounded. You can argue that a higher block reward forces a higher k, but that is no guarantee. How high do you increase the block reward to make yourself convinced the incentives are sufficient? Rather if you increase the number of blocks required for confirmation, then the hashrate needed (the variable r) is adjusted so the capital costs increase. The nonsense equation you quoted is completely missing that math. So the point is that increasing the number of blocks for confirmation is another way to decrease the profitability of a double-spend and also the level of hashrate one would need to rent. That nonsense equation also doesn't factor in the cost of variance as the probability r becomes very small (as well as not counting the ongoing costs that have to be offset by the profit from the double-spends). At some level of block confirmations, and counting the ongoing cost then unprofitable block reward is equivalent in relative profit to any block reward that Bitcoin has at 6 confirmations.

Also I never said the block reward would be 0 and I even emphasized that my design can distribute new coins so the coin supply doesn't shrink towards 0 asymptotically as in the case of Iota/DAG due to lost coins/private keys. I said it would be unprofitable due to the difficulty imposed by the payers who send PoW without expecting profit.

[monsterer]

I wouldn't be so coerced if your posts weren't asserting with boastful surety that unprofitable PoW can't have the correct incentives.

I've no idea what 'boastful surety' is, but here is the intuition which motivated me, which the reader may find useful:

PoW has a value. The electricity burned by the entire bitcoin network attempting to produce one block costs 25 BTC on average, because overall, PoW mining is equilibrium centered around break even. Therefore, as the recipient of a transaction for 25 BTC, it stands to reason that I can wait for 25 BTC worth of PoW to get appended to the chain after my transaction appears in a block, because any double spend of this transaction after that point would not be profitable for the miner, since they must expend that amount of PoW to achieve the double spend.

In a system with no block reward, I can't see how you can possibly make any judgement about when it is safe to accept a transaction, because there is no direct valuation of the PoW.

[TPTB_need_war]

If you're willing to target recent x86 exclusively, then you can increase resistance by employing the AES-NI instruction.

That is not one but rather a group of instructions. Perhaps you just typoed the missing 's'. One of those instructions was of particular focus of mine.

I wasn't sure if it was one or multiple, but was too lazy to figure out which:-(
Thanks for correcting...

Hmmmm . . . just reading that iPhones have had AES hardware since the iPhone 5S . . . although I'm reading that the AES chip sits between the flash and the main CPU - perhaps meaning it can only be used to encrypt/deprypt data going to/from the flash. If not, perhaps iPhones could be used for efficient mining . . memorycoin, cryptonight, maybe HODLCoin soon enough

Understand that I am working on a new concept for unprofitable PoW mining, in which it is not critical that that the PoW hashrate for phones be at par with anything; they will still add to the total systemic hashrate which makes my design more secure.

Note that it would be problematic if phones are 100X slower or less efficient on the PoW than desktops.

[TPTB_need_war]

PoW has a value. The electricity burned by the entire bitcoin network attempting to produce one block costs 25 BTC on average, because overall, PoW mining is equilibrium centered around break even. Therefore, as the recipient of a transaction for 25 BTC, it stands to reason that I can wait for 25 BTC worth of PoW to get appended to the chain after my transaction appears in a block, because any double spend of this transaction after that point would not be profitable for the miner, since they must expend that amount of PoW to achieve the double spend.

I get frustrated because this post of yours ignores what I wrote in the prior post.

There is no such equilibrium because not all miners have the same costs for the same difficulty.

Also you can't assume they didn't double-spend more than one transaction.

Those are just really obvious errors. I shouldn't even need to make this post. You should have thought of that before making the post and thus realized not to make the post.

(I been awake too long and my forehead wants to fall on the keyboard, and even in this dilapidated mental state I can easily see those errors)

[monsterer]

PoW has a value. The electricity burned by the entire bitcoin network attempting to produce one block costs 25 BTC on average, because overall, PoW mining is equilibrium centered around break even. Therefore, as the recipient of a transaction for 25 BTC, it stands to reason that I can wait for 25 BTC worth of PoW to get appended to the chain after my transaction appears in a block, because any double spend of this transaction after that point would not be profitable for the miner, since they must expend that amount of PoW to achieve the double spend.

I get frustrated because this post of yours ignores what I wrote in the prior post.

There is no such equilibrium because not all miners have the same costs for the same difficulty.

Also you can't assume they didn't double-spend more than one transaction.

Those are just really obvious errors. I shouldn't even need to make this post. You should have thought of that before making the post and thus realized not to make the post.

(I been awake too long and my forehead wants to fall on the keyboard, and even in this dilapidated mental state I can easily see those errors)

Get some sleep, and come back to this later

[TPTB_need_war]

Get some sleep, and come back to this later

No need. I already pointed out that you continue spamming the thread with obvious errors.

[TPTB_need_war]

Surely time itself is a straight line

Impossible because there is no global clock. Time is relative to the observer, thus the word linear is an entirely inapplicable concept to a metric which only has partial orders.

For example, they reflect the fact that observers moving at different velocities may measure different distances, elapsed times, and even different orderings of events

[monsterer]

I get frustrated because this post of yours ignores what I wrote in the prior post.

There is no such equilibrium because not all miners have the same costs for the same difficulty.

Also you can't assume they didn't double-spend more than one transaction.

Those are just really obvious errors. I shouldn't even need to make this post. You should have thought of that before making the post and thus realized not to make the post.

(I been awake too long and my forehead wants to fall on the keyboard, and even in this dilapidated mental state I can easily see those errors)

You've missed the 'on average' part. Obviously it costs the network 25 BTC on average to produce a block. And, I left k out of the intuition because its easier to get the overall picture without it.

[TPTB_need_war]

Unfortunately I've had to put monsterer on ignore. I really thought he was going to be of great assistance and I am shocked at this result. My original judgement was that he was very smart and mathematical, and I had great respect for him.

[ABISprotocol]

Let's have a frank discussion about the technical realities of crypto-currency.

Apologies in advance to all those who have worked so hard on trying to advance crypto currency. I am not doing this to spite you. I don't want to waste more time. If we can convince ourselves we have a solution worth working on, then let's do it. Otherwise let's be honest with ourselves.


Edit: for those who want to jump straight to understanding how Iota's DAG works, click here and also here.

Upthread in my discussion with monsterer, I mentioned that I thought I could solve the problems Satoshi's Proof-of-Work by crediting all block solutions instead of the just the first one that arrives. When I went quiet on Jan 3, it was because I realized my design was faulty because there would still be an ambiguity around when the block solutions to be credited were propagated. I was trying to rush out a first iteration when while programming, I realized the detail that wasn't clear to me before.

I went off on several days of just thinking all day. I contemplated all the possible designs (including Iota's DAG, Lightning Networks, DPOS, Proof-of-Stake, Masternodes, Raiblocks/Blocklattice, etc), and I can't think of any design that uses a block chain or a DAG (or any other form of determining the longest chain of truth) which doesn't either centralize (factoring in society's ability to regulate the consistent partition) or diverge into inconsistent truths. Due to the CAP theorem it is fundamentally impossible for there to exist any block chain or consistent DAG design that won't centralize (even without regulation once you require scaling). Worse yet, it is impossible to attain any sort of end-to-end principled, decentralized scaling of transaction processing, because consistency is lost without centralization (even Proof-of-Work centralizes economically due to the Power Law distribution of capital).

The CAP theorem is fundamental. There will be no way to solve it. You all can spend the next 1000 years fooling yourself will all sorts of designs, but they will also end up either inconsistent or centralized or unable to scale. PERIOD. PERIOD.

I realized that Bitcoin and everything else so far is destined for failure. We are only mining each other here. We are not producing any fundamental breakthrough on the problem of decentralized electronic money. I do not like to work on things that I feel are misdirected and destined for failure in the end. I don't want to get rich by fooling other people (or fooling myself). All of you including the core Bitcoin developers are fooling themselves. I've been through all the designs. It is fundamental. There won't be any solution in any of the directions being pursued by any of the current and upcoming crypto projects. It is all delusional bullshit.

I felt rather hopeless about this, and so spent a few days thinking about other potential directions for my life, work, etc..

After all that, I decided the only way to get a breakthrough on electronic money is to admit the CAP theorem and decide which of the three, Consistency, Access, Partitioning to forsake in a design. Bitcoin can't tolerate any Partitioning, thus Access is and will be centrally controlled. Iota allows Partitioning and thus forsakes Consistency (watch it blow up).

Specifically Iota forsakes Consistency in a very chaotic way, where there can be multiple Partitions of truths and so no one will know which truth is valid. Or they will have to centralize to force a consistent truth.

[...]

Edit: the idea I proposed as a solution is also flawed.

I will be starting a new unmoderated thread to discuss in detail all the flaws in crypto currency.

So this can be explained well so that everyone can understand what they are investing in.

I'm confused.

One second you're stating you have the holy grails, the next you are starting a thread to point out there aren't any? :|

As you wrote, temporary chargebacks (inconsistent channels a.k.a. partitions) can be allowed and resolved with a proof-of-work scheme. Any other schemes you are contemplating won't work and I will tear them apart once you detail them.

They can not be resolved in a DAG scheme (e.g. Iota) without some centralized control.

Proof-of-work is centralized at 51% control. This encourages the nation-states to organize into cooperation on regulation of the internet in order to regain control over money. Governments and society will not give up this control and will instead decide to cooperate so the system described below can control to move us towards the 666 system which is rapidly taking form. Bitcoin is designed to drive us towards a world governance.

Centralized control is loss of permissionless principle. It means the government takes control (because the Power law distribution of capital always drives a collusion amongst government and big capital in a winner take all paradigm).

There is no POW required to secure a CL (channeled ledger), nor is it a block chain, or a DAG. Neither are there any charge backs in a CL design because the state of truth never gets to a point where you have to revert to them to resolve inconsistencies...which also means the risk of any centralization required to resolve said issues is next to nil, the network can always resolve itself.  

If block chains or DAGs or Ripple style ledgers could do what a CL allows, well, I wouldn't of wasted 3 years reinventing the wheel and tearing it apart myself and starting over.

The truth of each channel still has to be a consensus. It doesn't change the fundamental issues of how to prove consensus about double-spends within the partition. Even there are chosen nodes who are signatories for determining the truth of the channel, this then not permissionless because the government can attack those specific nodes.

Detail your design and I will rip it to shreds.

Not intending to be unfriendly, but I am tired of bullshit (especially bullshitting myself because I don't want to waste any programming effort). I have done all these designs in my head.

If there is a design that can improve upon Bitcoin, then I want to work on programming it. If not, then I want to not waste effort. It would be better for me to make some fast transaction addon for Bitcoin than to waste effort on designs that won't improve upon what is.

You state that the CAP theorem is fundamental to all of what you are describing.  The CAP theorem is essentially this:

a statement that it is impossible for a distributed computer system to simultaneously provide all three of the following guarantees:

    Consistency (all nodes see the same data at the same time)
    Availability (a guarantee that every request receives a response about whether it succeeded or failed)
    Partition tolerance (the system continues to operate despite arbitrary partitioning due to network failures)

Let's start with an assumption that I agree with the CAP theorem, and further assume that this notion is actually correct.

In that case, let's say all nodes don't see the same data at the same time.  Seems reasonable, after all, how could they?
Availability - for the sake of argument, let's say every request receives a response about whether it succeeded or failed, or if it doesn't the first time, it is programmed to repeat the same request until it receives a reply, which it will receive within a reasonable period of time.
Partition tolerance - Let's say for the sake of argument the system continues to operate despite arbitrary partitioning. One example perhaps being a network failure leading to event like the 2013 Bitcoin fork - analyzed here by Arvind Narayanan, who interestingly poses arguments in favor of a certain degree of centralization within bitcoin development: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/randomwalker/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/

So under these conditions as described above, which I suggest are roughly representative of the actual condition of bitcoin (as an example) at most times, then it would seem to me that despite the presence of the CAP theorem, the system continues.  Why?  Because the system is dynamic, not static.  Possibly for systems that are very fragile or inflexible then I think that changes in these C-A-P conditions could cause them problems, of varying degrees of seriousness.  But even for highly centralized systems (e.g. corporation-states), which are highly resistant to change, they are curiously persistent.  This may be because of people's desire to perpetuate an institutional memory and cultural history of organizational (and national or tribal) ideology.  Belonging to a large group - identity which conveys a larger sense of belonging - has been, for good or for ill, branded into the human psyche.  War, government failures, economic disasters, mass murder - nothing seems to stop the bulk of people in society from falling into the trap of the state, again and again.  But I digress.  What about those decentralized systems?  Does the issue of the CAP theorem necessarily mean that they can't work?

Not necessarily.  If a system is dynamic enough, and is managed well by its community (however that needs to happen with a distributed system in order for some degree of balance to be attained between a "centralized" development structure and a "decentralized" system, as no system is ever 100% "decentralized," then a well-cared for decentralized, distributed system can be continuously propagated (or re-propagated, much like a plant's seeds are used to regrow the fields).  

Interesting discussion though!

[monsterer]

For anyone else who hasn't put their fingers in their ears, it should be obvious that there does exist an equilibrium in bitcoin mining, centered around the 25 BTC cost per block, because if there weren't one of two things would happen:

1. Cost of production exceeds 25 BTC, all miners go out of business since their costs exceed their profits
2. Cost of production is less than 25 BTC, the block interval shrinks to 0, and bitcoin inflates wildly out of control

You might argue that difficulty adjusts to compensate, but that can only happen if there can be an equilibrium.  TPTB_need_war is confusing the fact that some miners are more profitable than others with the fact the overall the network is break even, since some miners are unprofitable.

[ABISprotocol]

For anyone else who hasn't put their fingers in their ears, it should be obvious that there does exist an equilibrium in bitcoin mining, centered around the 25 BTC cost per block, because if there weren't one of two things would happen:

1. Cost of production exceeds 25 BTC, all miners go out of business since their costs exceed their profits
2. Cost of production is less than 25 BTC, the block interval shrinks to 0, and bitcoin inflates wildly out of control

You might argue that difficulty adjusts to compensate, but that can only happen if there can be an equilibrium.  TPTB_need_war is confusing the fact that some miners are more profitable than others with the fact the overall the network is break even, since some miners are unprofitable.

You should include a discussion of the halving, to be fair.  It is coming up in a few months... I think.