The Ethereum Paradox

[r0ach]

The truth is in the middle.

The truth is what I said earlier, no altcoin has done anything whatsoever to improve upon Bitcoin except for ring signatures and zk-snarks for anonymity.  Everything else is either fundamentally broken or just a flat out scam.

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[freshman777]

The truth is in the middle.

The truth is what I said earlier, no altcoin has done anything whatsoever to improve upon Bitcoin except for ring signatures and zk-snarks for anonymity.  Everything else is either fundamentally broken or just a flat out scam.

Even if this were true, it does not matter. Humans will not settle on one form of money unless it has existed almost universally as money for millennia like gold and is not a human invention.

[sockpuppet1]

The truth is in the middle.
r0ach with his superbull Bitcoin to the moon as the only coin rhetoric is one extreme POV.
Anonymint with his "all your coins are crap, only mine will work" is another extreme POV.

Please stop painting me as a Bitcoin permabear. I merely claimed it might not have hit the bottom yet for the decline from $1000, but I never claimed it wouldn't go higher again.

And I am not 100% sure my vaporware design (with no ETA on when I might ever implement it) will solve the centralization problem, but at least it has a chance whereas the other designs don't have a chance if they also scale up. Monero's block size auto adjustment with penalty will do nothing to stop centralization if Monero is scaled up enough that it is becomes profitable to design ASICs for it. It is more difficult to design an ASIC for Monero's memory hard proof-of-work function, thus Monero can scale up more before it becomes profitable enough to design an ASIC for it. There is no way to solve the problem of centralization using a profitable PoW design. Period. Full stop. Whether an unprofitable PoW is viable and whether it would actually fix the centralization problem, is something that can't be properly peer reviewed because there is no white paper. And I don't want to go off on that diversion right now.

My criticisms against the other coins, was just to be sure that everyone admits they are just in love with gambling and not actually making any technical solutions to anything. As long as we all admit we are just gamblers, then I STFU and let us play Lotto and try to steal from each other in the zero sum game of greater fool theory of speculation. White the Chinese mining cartel is extracting $1 million a day from us via printing-coins-out-of-thin-air and soon also by sky high transaction fees. We steal from each other with speculation volatility while the oligarchs in China steal from us. Eventually all our wealth has been siphoned from us, they (TPTB) win. Which is what "Satoshi" designed Bitcoin to do to us. Period.

Satoshi isn't some man. Bitcoin was created by a secret group funded by the banksters. How can't that be obvious by now given what profitable proof-of-work does to all of us over time.

One probable outcome in the middle - in 2020 Bitcoin will be valuable, a bunch of other cryptocoins will have half the market share, various degrees of centralization. Gold and silver will be valuable, cryptocoins will not surpass gold and silver as a store of value but will surpass them as cross border value transfer vehicles. Fiat will be less valuable than today, in various degrees depending on the country. Fiat will not disappear as long as there are bodies of people who assume governmental powers and can declare pieces of paper money. Forget one world currency and government, human nature is power struggle. A couple big secessions will happen. Taxes will be raised, inflation will be higher. A lot of this can't happen if there is a nuclear conflict, then all bets are off.

I never thought the value of Bitcoin would crash to 0. I rather think you will be forced to pay your taxes when you transact in Bitcoin by signing an output over to the appropriate authority, which will be enforced at the block chain protocol level by the Chinese mining cartel. I don't know when those capital controls will come, but my guess is after 2018, maybe later. And I think these taxes will become very high as the governments around the world are bankrupt, people love socialism, and they will need to steal the money from those who still have any.

Yes chaos such as a fragmented Internet would change many things.

[ProfessionalGoogler]

r0ach gets roasted over and over. 

[smooth]

There is one cattle farmer in China who said he is investing in a mining farm large enough to mine 30% of all BTC

FTFY

If someone who is well known to be mining say 10% of Bitcoins says he's going to expand and mine 30%, that might be pretty credible, but when someone is supposedly mining 1% and claims his new mine is going to mine 30%, be skeptical. Is he soliciting investors by any chance, selling cloud mining contracts, etc.?

Agreed but irrelevant. If not him, then the next guy, because it is quite profitable for the corrupt to charge electricity to the collective and take profits from raping our BTC for themselves. It is just a matter of organizing the various power players such as those who authorize discounts on electricity for factories. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, is precisely how everything is organized in China. The Chinese are masters of top-down organization.

No one here can argue that flies won't eat honey. The opportunity exists, and so it will be availed of.

Bitcoin becoming relevant as an alternative to fiat means its value will go up 1000x or more. Even 5 halvings from now that would be a minimum of a 30x  larger mining industry. If people are thinking about reset/moon event sooner than 20 years, mining would need to be even bigger than that. Electricity in China and corrupt access to it are both limited, and both compete with other uses (including corrupt ones). So such growth would very likely would not be concentrated in China and we really have no idea what it will look like, though all kinds of likely and unlikely theories could be thrown out.

[Spoetnik]

When something has no fundamentals and is being prosthelytized by shady people nobody has ever heard of that don't even understand how the coin works saying it's going to "beat Bitcoin", then yea, I consider those scammers because it's not possible for it to happen.

Maybe stop name calling and get a clue.

Your incessant shit posting pictures and 1 word comments are tiring.
And so is your never ending Ethereum spam topics you make.

I would consider you to be the absolute rock bottom of intelligence on this entire fucking forum.
I would sooner have a debate about an Altcoin here with a box of Korn Flakes.
It would be a smarter conversation i am sure..

[sockpuppet1]

There is one cattle farmer in China who said he is investing in a mining farm large enough to mine 30% of all BTC

FTFY

If someone who is well known to be mining say 10% of Bitcoins says he's going to expand and mine 30%, that might be pretty credible, but when someone is supposedly mining 1% and claims his new mine is going to mine 30%, be skeptical. Is he soliciting investors by any chance, selling cloud mining contracts, etc.?

Agreed but irrelevant. If not him, then the next guy, because it is quite profitable for the corrupt to charge electricity to the collective and take profits from raping our BTC for themselves. It is just a matter of organizing the various power players such as those who authorize discounts on electricity for factories. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, is precisely how everything is organized in China. The Chinese are masters of top-down organization.

No one here can argue that flies won't eat honey. The opportunity exists, and so it will be availed of.

Bitcoin becoming relevant as an alternative to fiat means its value will go up 1000x or more. Even 5 halvings from now that would be a minimum of a 30x  larger mining industry. If people are thinking about reset/moon event sooner than 20 years, mining would need to be even bigger than that. Electricity in China and corrupt access to it are both limited, and both compete with other uses (including corrupt ones). So such growth would very likely would not be concentrated in China and we really have no idea what it will look like, though all kinds of likely and unlikely theories could be thrown out.

Very insightful attempt at a retort, I am impressed. Thanks. But the huge increases in scaling will come offchain with Lightning Networks and thus no mining. The Chinese mining cartel has been consulting with the core developers (i.e. Blockstream) about this issue.

The difficulty is set by the level of block reward and transaction fees times the Bitcoin price. If you are implying the price of Bitcoin will increase 1000X, then I have bridge to nowhere to sell you.

TPTB are managing their Bitcoin baby very well. And we are gullible fools.

[smooth]

There is one cattle farmer in China who said he is investing in a mining farm large enough to mine 30% of all BTC

FTFY

If someone who is well known to be mining say 10% of Bitcoins says he's going to expand and mine 30%, that might be pretty credible, but when someone is supposedly mining 1% and claims his new mine is going to mine 30%, be skeptical. Is he soliciting investors by any chance, selling cloud mining contracts, etc.?

Agreed but irrelevant. If not him, then the next guy, because it is quite profitable for the corrupt to charge electricity to the collective and take profits from raping our BTC for themselves. It is just a matter of organizing the various power players such as those who authorize discounts on electricity for factories. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, is precisely how everything is organized in China. The Chinese are masters of top-down organization.

No one here can argue that flies won't eat honey. The opportunity exists, and so it will be availed of.

Bitcoin becoming relevant as an alternative to fiat means its value will go up 1000x or more. Even 5 halvings from now that would be a minimum of a 30x  larger mining industry. If people are thinking about reset/moon event sooner than 20 years, mining would need to be even bigger than that. Electricity in China and corrupt access to it are both limited, and both compete with other uses (including corrupt ones). So such growth would very likely would not be concentrated in China and we really have no idea what it will look like, though all kinds of likely and unlikely theories could be thrown out.

Very insightful attempt at a retort, I am impressed. Thanks. But the scaling will come offchain with Lightning Networks and thus no mining. The Chinese mining cartel has been consulting with the core developers (i.e. Blockstream) about this issue.

If you are implying the price of Bitcoin will increase 1000X, then I have bridge to nowhere to sell you.

I'm not predicting such a price increase, though r0ach might be. It won't be globally relevant without some sort of increase in that neighborhood though. Yes, you will be able to complete your dark market drug purchases more quickly using Lightning network.

[r0ach]

I believe smooth's 1000x halving estimate is a little high.  I was looking at a probabalistic model of $1000, $1600, or $3200 peaks, although Realsolid claims $5000.

[smooth]

I believe smooth's 1000x halving estimate is a little high.  I was looking at a probabalistic model of $1000, $1600, or $3200 peaks, although Realsolid claims $5000.

That wasn't my halving estimate, it was at best a 5-halving estimate, but not even that, more of a hypothetical.

Even at $3000, mining might expand enough to marginalize China. That is a numbers question and we don't have the numbers.

[freshman777]

Satoshi isn't some man. Bitcoin was created by a secret group funded by the banksters. How can't that be obvious by now given what profitable proof-of-work does to all of us over time.

And again it has to do with odds. I like to wear my tinfoil hat as anyone else but the most probable conclusion is Satoshi was one man and he was simply mistaken. Bitcoin is flawed not by design but by mistake. Not saying any cryptocoin is guaranteed to have no flaws, we will know it when they get big. Another POV, Satoshi knew Bitcoin is flawed and tends to centralization, and he launched it anyway in hopes for others to catch on and improve, as a first step. You needn't wear a tinfoil hat every day, some puzzles have more obvious than conspiracy explanations.

I agree we're all gamblers at this point, I don't think it's possible to make cryptocoins something else but a zero-sum game. It's not perfect but it beats fiat. What is not a zero-sum game?

[sockpuppet1]

Even at $3000, mining might expand enough to marginalize China. That is a numbers question and we don't have the numbers.

Smooth I suspect you've been busy doing other s/w work lately bcz you've been quiet and also because you don't totally have your mind immersed in this right now.

At 12.5 coins per block, 75 BTC per hour, and at $3000 that would be $225,000 per hour.  At 4 cents per KWH, that is 5.6 million kilowatts. Google tells that "China's power consumption in 2015 rose 0.5 percent from a year earlier to 5.550 trillion kilowatts".

That means in your scenario, Bitcoin would only be consuming one millionth of the electrical generation capacity of China. Sorry the increase in the value of Bitcoin can't overwhelm China's ability to subsidize the electricity.

[sockpuppet1]

but the most probable conclusion is Satoshi was one man and he was simply mistaken

One man can't accomplish what "Satoshi" did with such precision. It was a large group of experts. No doubt about it.

You guys who have no experience in doing something like this, love to have your James Bond fantasies. But you are completely out-of-touch with the reality of actually doing what "Satoshi" accomplished.

[r0ach]

Another POV, Satoshi knew Bitcoin is flawed and tends to centralization, and he launched it anyway in hopes for others to catch on and improve, as a first step.

Even if you thought this was true, Eth has enormously higher verification costs than Bitcoin, so it would centralize more and faster.

Somewhat related talk with Scam-from-Beyond below:

I'm saying that Bitcoin operates out of a Nash equilibrium.

I don't think you understand the issue.  A related subject is, it is clear no cryptocurrency solves Byzantine generals, otherwise number of confirmations wouldn't be entirely subjective.  You would be able to say, at a specific number of confirmations, I now have objective proof, but it's not possible.  All that matters for the end user is likelihood of transaction reversal past a certain point, and that there's no permanent monopoly on transaction validators.

Unless you believe it's possible to permanently monopolize mining (from pool turnover rate, looks highly unlikely so far), you will get your "good enough" number of subjective confirmations eventually (since there is no upper limit) that most humans agree is not going to be reversed.  No other system will be able to improve on that metric either.  Closed entropy systems tend to monopolize transaction validators by default, and IOTA is just a train wreck in general.  Talking abut Nash equilibrium over the course of 1 confirmation is pointless since Bitcoin (and every other cryptocurrency) is technically unable to objectively solve such a problem with proof in a decentralized manner.

[sockpuppet1]

I think you are wrong about this, but only to the extent that current huge subsidies in various forms (I'm including likely corruption) in China become less significant, and also probably assuming ASIC commoditization.*

Eventually you get to a point where even though the waste heat is worth less than the electricity that goes in (as your comments correctly state), using it still adds to you efficiency and not using it will be uncompetitive.

* You and I both view ASIC commoditization is significantly less likely in the foreseeable future than r0ach believes. I may differ from you in that I don't completely rule it out longer term.

The cost of electricity for the corrupt in China can be essentially free (although it may be more at the level of 2 cents per KWH now from what I heard, so that the power players protect their political reputation in case it gets DOXXed). But there needs to be coins paid for mining, so that it is worthwhile to even do that corruption in the first place. Thus unprofitable mining with a tail reward could still be vulnerable, but in my design not so because the tail reward is so small compared to the PoW difficulty supplied by the signers of transactions, that the cartel can't find it worthwhile to do the corruption. I said my design will turn ASIC mining farms into door stops. Do you think it is wise for me to create such a CC and be assassinated? This is not a game we are playing here. This is real life and pissed off oligarchs have their ways of making people disappear.

On the ASIC commodization (besides that I already pointed out the fact that it wouldn't totally level the time-to-market access and does nothing to account for free electricity charged to the collective), it appears the opposite might occur:

If you don't know what AsicBoost is, in their own words: AsicBoost is a patent-pending method to lower your total cost per Bitcoin mined by approximately 20%.
The key word here is patent. Such a technology has the potential to dominate mining but patents go against bitcoin's FOSS design. The idea to make AsicBoost's technology impossible to be used on bitcoin has already been brought up and embraced by certain Core developers. The reason I'm calling this a dilemma is because making AsicBoost irrelevant as Peter Todd suggests, would be something inherently illiberal and against free market principles.

What are your thoughts on this?

That Core Dev Central Planner slope sure is a slippery one.

First, centrally planned blocksize production scarcity to incentivize the use of layer 2 and altcoins. Now, doing favors for the chinese mining cartel to protect them from more efficient competition. Then, deleting Satoshi's coins to keep the public "safe"...

[smooth]

Even at $3000, mining might expand enough to marginalize China. That is a numbers question and we don't have the numbers.

Smooth I suspect you've been busy doing other s/w work lately bcz you've been quiet and also because you don't totally have your mind immersed in this right now.

At 12.5 coins per block, 75 BTC per hour, and at $3000 that would be $225,000 per hour.  At 4 cents per KWH, that is 5.6 million kilowatts. Google tells that "China's power consumption in 2015 rose 0.5 percent from a year earlier to 5.550 trillion kilowatts".

That means in your scenario, Bitcoin would only be consuming one millionth of the electrical generation capacity of China. Sorry the increase in the value of Bitcoin can't overwhelm China's ability to subsidize the electricity.

Actually it is closer to a hundredth. 5.6 gigawatts power draw run for a year is 40 50 TWh and China's total is around 5550 TWh/year.

Either way, that's a silly analysis because we both know that most of the electricity being produced in China is actually being used for important things like actual factories and cities. Only a relatively small portion is redirected to cheap Bitcoin mining. We have no idea of the scalability of that latter portion.

[freshman777]

Eth has enormously higher verification costs than Bitcoin, so it would centralize more and faster.

It will undoubtedly centralize, not sure about more and faster. I'll throw a hundred buck at it anyway in the summer when the price declines. It's hard for me to believe in one digital currency rule them all dream, it goes against rationality. What I suppose has good odds of happening is a bunch of cryptocoins in circulation, Bitcoin leading the way for some years if the Chinese don't play it rough.

[r0ach]

Either way, that's a silly analysis because we both know that most of the electricity being produced in China is actually being used for important things like actual factories and cities. Only a relatively small portion is redirected to cheap Bitcoin mining. We have no idea of the scalability of that latter portion.

Yes, I was about to mention that part lol.  China does not have an infinite amount of dams to steal power from.  Unless the Anonymint vision is that the lights mysteriously turn off in the Guang Dong province and the entire power supply is re-routed to the chicom party leader's Antminers they have stashed in their closets.

[sockpuppet1]

Even at $3000, mining might expand enough to marginalize China. That is a numbers question and we don't have the numbers.

Smooth I suspect you've been busy doing other s/w work lately bcz you've been quiet and also because you don't totally have your mind immersed in this right now.

At 12.5 coins per block, 75 BTC per hour, and at $3000 that would be $225,000 per hour.  At 4 cents per KWH, that is 5.6 million kilowatts. Google tells that "China's power consumption in 2015 rose 0.5 percent from a year earlier to 5.550 trillion kilowatts".

That means in your scenario, Bitcoin would only be consuming one millionth of the electrical generation capacity of China. Sorry the increase in the value of Bitcoin can't overwhelm China's ability to subsidize the electricity.

Actually it is closer to a hundredth. 5.6 gigawatts power draw run for a year is 40 TWh and China's total is around 5550 TWh/year.

Ah I misread the Google quote as "kilowatt hour" and rather it is referring to annual consumption. Still 1/100th is still a small fraction.

Either way, that's a silly analysis because we both know that most of the electricity being produced in China is actually being used for important things like actual factories and cities. Only a relatively small portion is redirected to cheap Bitcoin mining. We have no idea of the scalability of that latter portion.

Ahem. You mean 0 profit margin factories with a Minsky Moment collapse imminent. China will massively reset and realign their economy away from the over reliance on zero-profit (State subsidized) manufacturing. Full employment is no longer the egregious problem that China had to worry about in the past. China  is very much diversifying now into producing high valued services and high valued, lower volume manufacturing. An example is the new ARM-based CPUs being produced out of China.

China will have abundant power to charge to its collective and use to control anything that is important for China's Communist Party to control. And Rockefeller has been over there consulting with them. The banksters are doing very well on their plan for the new totalitarian world order.

[YarkoL]

On the ASIC commodization (besides that I already pointed out the fact that it wouldn't totally level the time-to-market access and does nothing to account for free electricity charged to the collective), it appears the opposite might occur:

It will be interesting to see how this AsicBoost affair
will turn out. If Core has its way, then the signal is not
of course that patents are no-no, but, keep your
innovations hush-hush.

If Core devs start to make changes that pull the rug
under Chinese miners (they've now mentioned switch to SHA-3
couple of times), the latter can begin to support an alternative
such as Classic (or just whip up homegrown clone). If executed
skillfully, with Chinese goverment support, China may own
up Bitcoin totally before all the altcoin folks get to conf their
gpus to keccak.

It can get messy when you've got multiple centers of power locked in a
precarious balance, instead of true decentralization (if such a thing
is possible)