2013-01-06 edandethan.com - Show 40 with Chris Ferreira and Charlie Shrem

[julz]

Ed and Ethan Show 40 with Chris Ferreira and Charlie Shrem

2013-01-06

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVHond-XHK4
Audio
Bitcoin discussion begins at about the 2Hr mark.

...
After we talk to Chris, we talk to Charlie Shrem, CEO of Bit Instant, a company that facilitates the exchange of bitcoins. We get a more in depth explanation of how bitcoin works and what sort of a future bitcoin may have. How could the government shut down bitcoin if it wanted to, how can the rules that govern the currency be changed and will we always have bitccoin around? This and more on bitcoin when we chat with Charlie.
...

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[giszmo]

Ed and Ethan Show 40 with Chris Ferreira and Charlie Shrem

2013-01-06

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVHond-XHK4
Audio
Bitcoin discussion begins at about the 2Hr mark.

...
After we talk to Chris, we talk to Charlie Shrem, CEO of Bit Instant, a company that facilitates the exchange of bitcoins. We get a more in depth explanation of how bitcoin works and what sort of a future bitcoin may have. How could the government shut down bitcoin if it wanted to, how can the rules that govern the currency be changed and will we always have bitccoin around? This and more on bitcoin when we chat with Charlie.
...

Link to the timestamp (added &t=2h):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVHond-XHK4&t=2h

[molecular]

listening to Charlies explanation attempts I am shocked to realized how many falsehoods or at least half-truths one has to use to avoid overcomplicating things and confusing the hell out of your listener.

EDIT: well, saying the block reward is 50 BTC is uneccesary, though.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

listening to Charlies explanation attempts I am shocked to realized how many falsehoods or at least half-truths one has to use to avoid overcomplicating things and confusing the hell out of your listener.

EDIT: well, saying the block reward is 50 BTC is uneccesary, though.

Like?

[julz]

listening to Charlies explanation attempts I am shocked to realized how many falsehoods or at least half-truths one has to use to avoid overcomplicating things and confusing the hell out of your listener.

EDIT: well, saying the block reward is 50 BTC is uneccesary, though.

Like?

Like.. was this recorded before the block reward drop or something?

At approx 2:10

Charlie: Right now the miners get paid from the 50 Bitcoins that are rewarded in every single block.. and like you said - that gets smaller.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

listening to Charlies explanation attempts I am shocked to realized how many falsehoods or at least half-truths one has to use to avoid overcomplicating things and confusing the hell out of your listener.

EDIT: well, saying the block reward is 50 BTC is uneccesary, though.

Like?

Like.. was this recorded before the block reward drop or something?

At approx 2:10

Charlie: Right now the miners get paid from the 50 Bitcoins that are rewarded in every single block.. and like you said - that gets smaller.

Im pretty sure that Ive explained we passed the halving, maybe I was going over the information.

What else?

[BCB]

Charlie,  You 've been practicing!

You started off so well. 

But you said Bitcoin was NOT a currency in the beginning the  2 minutes later you say it is a currency.

You're on the phone.  Write this shit down!

love

BCB

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Charlie,  You 've been practicing!

You started off so well. 

But you said Bitcoin was NOT a currency in the beginning the  2 minutes later you say it is a currency.

You're on the phone.  Write this shit down!

love

BCB

LOL!

Thats not what I said!

I said "To understand it, dont put labels like currency on it yet" I was trying to help people understand it without putting a label on it

Charlie

[BCB]

Dude,

You are killing me!

Gavin was Satoshi's successor (NOT predecessor!)

Also,

Bitcoin was created by a cryptographer or a group of cryptographers who took on the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamato. 

Don't just say Satoshi  disappeared.  It sounds like someone killed him!  How could they kill him when he never really existed.

After launching the bitcoin project Satoshi passed the torch on to his successor Gavin Andressen who is currently the lead developer of the bitcoin open source project.

Have you butty vorhees write this stuff down for you.  Seriously.

People listen to this shit!

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Gavin was Satoshi's successor (NOT predecessor!)

I used the wrong word, but corrected myself later.

Bitcoin was created by a cryptographer or a group of cryptographers who took on the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamato. 

Don't just say Satoshi  disappeared.  It sounds like someone killed him!  How could they kill him when he never really existed.

Thats solely your opinion, some people believe it was 1 person, some people believe it was many.

After launching the bitcoin project Satoshi passed the torch on to his successor Gavin Andressen who is currently the lead developer of the bitcoin open source project.

Thats what I said!

[BCB]

"I give up!"

++1

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

"I give up!"

++1

lol, in the end you are correct. Im put in a position where people listen, so I need to make sure 15000% everything I say is accurate.

[molecular]

listening to Charlies explanation attempts I am shocked to realized how many falsehoods or at least half-truths one has to use to avoid overcomplicating things and confusing the hell out of your listener.

EDIT: well, saying the block reward is 50 BTC is uneccesary, though.

Like?

see my youtube comment:

charlie, good job on explaining. However, you need to check some of your facts, I think, especially on the technical side:

* bitcoin makes no use of RSA. It uses ECDSA for signatures and SHA256 for proof of work
* the block reward is not BTC 50. It just halfed in early November to 25 BTC
* 600,000 miners (parts of distributed computer) seems awfully high to me. I'd guess more like 20 to 30,000

All this doesn't invalidate your points, though. Thanks for your work.

[odolvlobo]

lol, in the end you are correct. Im put in a position where people listen, so I need to make sure 15000% everything I say is accurate.

I think you did a great job. It is very difficult to explain bitcoin in layman's terms. Thank god they didn't interview Amir Taaki.

[molecular]

lol, in the end you are correct. Im put in a position where people listen, so I need to make sure 15000% everything I say is accurate.

I think you did a great job. It is very difficult to explain bitcoin in layman's terms. Thank god they didn't interview Amir Taaki.

Amir tends to slip towards talking about free software and freedom in general. This is also not a bad approach because this is one of the main reasons for bitcoin.

[FreeMoney]

It's definitely hard to talk well about Bitcoin, very good job imo. I'd never heard these guys, they sound a lot like FTL.

The network does not adjust to reduced mining power in 10 minutes, in fact it can take much longer than 2 weeks.

There is no reason to wait for more than 6 confirmations even for an enormous transaction. Your partner is absolutely not going to have ~45% mining power and count on luck to go faster than the network for 6 blocks. He can either rollback 30 as easily as 6 or he can't roll back 6. It's a much smaller 'lie' to say that 6 is solid than it is to say there are no fees.

The no fee claim bothers me but I know from previous conversations that you are fairly set on it.

If you had gotten into discussing mining like they wanted to you might have been in a sticky spot when they asked about mining incentive after the reward drops to zero, which it does btw, you seemed to imply that you thought it would get ever smaller without going to zero though I think you only said that it would not reach 21M, which is true (caused by reward going to zero, not getting infinitely smaller).

[notme]

It's definitely hard to talk well about Bitcoin, very good job imo. I'd never heard these guys, they sound a lot like FTL.

The network does not adjust to reduced mining power in 10 minutes, in fact it can take much longer than 2 weeks.

There is no reason to wait for more than 6 confirmations even for an enormous transaction. Your partner is absolutely not going to have ~45% mining power and count on luck to go faster than the network for 6 blocks. He can either rollback 30 as easily as 6 or he can't roll back 6. It's a much smaller 'lie' to say that 6 is solid than it is to say there are no fees.

The no fee claim bothers me but I know from previous conversations that you are fairly set on it.

If you had gotten into discussing mining like they wanted to you might have been in a sticky spot when they asked about mining incentive after the reward drops to zero, which it does btw, you seemed to imply that you thought it would get ever smaller without going to zero though I think you only said that it would not reach 21M, which is true (caused by reward going to zero, not getting infinitely smaller).

You pretty much hit all my complaints, although even if he was right about it getting infinitely smaller (which would be possible if we kept extending the number of decimals) it still not reach 21M.  The sum of 1/2^n with n from 1 to infinity converges to 1.  The bitcoin creation can be thought of as 21,000,000/2^n coins each four year period, so it will still never exceed 21M if we extend the divisibility infinitely.

[julz]

You pretty much hit all my complaints, although even if he was right about it getting infinitely smaller (which would be possible if we kept extending the number of decimals) it still not reach 21M.  The sum of 1/2^n with n from 1 to infinity converges to 1.  The bitcoin creation can be thought of as 21,000,000/2^n coins each four year period, so it will still never exceed 21M if we extend the divisibility infinitely.

My recollection of high school maths tells me that it might be described as 'asymptotically' approaching 21 M.
Is the word asymptote really too geeky for general use?

[FreeMoney]

It's definitely hard to talk well about Bitcoin, very good job imo. I'd never heard these guys, they sound a lot like FTL.

The network does not adjust to reduced mining power in 10 minutes, in fact it can take much longer than 2 weeks.

There is no reason to wait for more than 6 confirmations even for an enormous transaction. Your partner is absolutely not going to have ~45% mining power and count on luck to go faster than the network for 6 blocks. He can either rollback 30 as easily as 6 or he can't roll back 6. It's a much smaller 'lie' to say that 6 is solid than it is to say there are no fees.

The no fee claim bothers me but I know from previous conversations that you are fairly set on it.

If you had gotten into discussing mining like they wanted to you might have been in a sticky spot when they asked about mining incentive after the reward drops to zero, which it does btw, you seemed to imply that you thought it would get ever smaller without going to zero though I think you only said that it would not reach 21M, which is true (caused by reward going to zero, not getting infinitely smaller).

You pretty much hit all my complaints, although even if he was right about it getting infinitely smaller (which would be possible if we kept extending the number of decimals) it still not reach 21M.  The sum of 1/2^n with n from 1 to infinity converges to 1.  The bitcoin creation can be thought of as 21,000,000/2^n coins each four year period, so it will still never exceed 21M if we extend the divisibility infinitely.

Right, if it halved forever it would fail to reach it because of asymptotes blah blah. But in reality it fails to reach it because of adding.

[giszmo]

Guys don't be so hard on Charlie. Charlie did a really really great job and should not stress about details. I'm sure he has best intentions to find a good balance between relaxed talking and accurate information.

You are seriously discussing now if we will assymptotically reach 21,000,000Ƀ or if we will stop at 20,999,999.9999999Ƀ.
Saying "No Fees" vs. "Very small fees" also is a political decision that some favor the one over the other for their agenda. It's not like he wouldn't know these details. If you feel like he doesn't know the difference between successor and predecessor (seriously?) mention it, else please relax a bit about a great interview.