Bitcoin: The Black Swan

[Sir Alpha_goy]

As Bitcoin emerged from out of nowhere it was quickly given the title of "decentralized king".

A tool against the centralized world of banking to give the power back to the many to correct the errors of the few.

Under the guise of Libertarianism, Bitcoin's aim is to become the monetary base of a new technologically enslaved society.

A digital gold of some sorts that will pave the way for a centralized free world.

Eight years later it unfortunately seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

The Bitcoin ecosystem itself resembles that of Wall St. from fake news all the way down to the constant emergence of penny stocks known as Alt Coins.

Each one promising a technological advantage over BItcoin when in reality "investors" already know that it is merely a scam to inflate the egos and pocketbooks of Bitcoin exchange owners.

Sniff around in this forum and Bitcoin news outlets and you won't have a hard time finding articles where BItcoin advocates jump for joy over the potential backing of a large corporation or huge financial institution.

Read enough of these and you may start to think that Bitcoin itself is merely and arm of the banking/corporate elite.

Perhaps a trial balloon of some sort that was crafted long ago and spun into motion with the hopes of special interests taking over the monetary system for good.

If it failed they could quickly step away and blame all the gullible investors for it's downfall.

If it succeeded they could once and for all bypass all the laws and rule of government and gain full control over their destiny.

Regardless of the outcome it is clear that Bitcoin has turned into something that isn't quite what it promised to be.

With all this in mind I have started to come to the realization that Bitcoin failing may be the Black Swan event that triggers the downfall of modern banking.

Not because of it's disruptive technology but because if it's failure to latch into the minds of the people.

If Bitcoin is in fact an arm of the most wealthy institutions in the world then the failure of it would be quite a blow to the future of such institutions.

Is there anything on the horizon if Bitcoin fails?

Some of you may want to consider the possibility.

Especially with the way things are shaping up politically in the world.

From the European Union cracking up all the way to the potential equities fallout generated by the upcoming U.S. election.

It is clear that the population of the world is not going to take kindly to any banking system that emerges that is not in their interest.

Bitcoin's quick jump to what appears to be quasi centralized does not sound good for the future of Bitcoin.

With the reported Chinese monopoly on mining and large exchanges controlling the worth of Bitcoin I can't see how this is going to play out in favor of the digital currency.

Not short term at least.
















 

[franky1]

or..

bitcoin was the golden goose that was meant to swim separately from the banker swans.. but years later we see bitcoin has not separated and is infact grown up to be a black swan.

bitcoins decentralized, no control, no banker ethos has slowly disappeared and now the goose looks more like a swan because we have a dev team trying to dictate and dominate, a team who are contracted with and by bankers

under the guise of pretending to not be by having unpaid interns as spell checkers to be able to say "yes there are a dozen banker paid guys, but look there are 90 unpaid guys too"

OP:
im not sure why you are trying to divert attention away from the 5000 nodes that a dev team want to all be running one codebase.. to talk about just the 150 nodes(in china) whos data can get orphaned if they dont meet the rules of majority.

you should aim your centralistic opinion where it really matters.
miners dont need banker funding.. miners are the ones that are self sustainable.. its the dev teams that are banker funded and literally pushing for centralization

the banker paid devs has been telling XT, classic and BU and bitcoinj to not use consensus to keep diverse codebases on bitcoin mainnet.. but to literally Fork off
yet all the implementations not under banker paid devs 'friend list' want to keep bitcoin decentralised and diverse by using bitcoins consensus and not fork off but instead consensually upgrade the network rules by diverse and decentralized independent choice.

[franky1]

or..

bitcoin was the golden goose that was meant to swim separately from the banker swans.. but years later we see bitcoin has not separated and is infact grown up to be a black swan.

For once you visited one of my threads and agreed with the premise.

As for the miners, if they don't need banker funding then why do they need compensated by transaction fees denominated in their home fiat currency?

miners dont "need" transaction fees for a few decades, because the block reward and deflationary nature takes care of miners FOR DECADES.
now reward(income):fee(bonus) ... decades fee(income):reward(bonus) ... century fee(income)

but it's the same swans trying to push fee's now, with the false intent of solving an issues thats not a problem fordecades, but is now just a stupid ploy to cause a barrier for use now.
already the 0.0001 fee is MORE THAN an hours wages for half a dozen countries so its already a barrier for entry for those developing countries. yet not actually a requirement to pay miners.

there are many ways to avoid spam without having to resort to raising the cost of use. but the swans control the main decisions.

as for the fee's, in a few decades those fee's are paid and received in bitcoin. meaning the miners are not asking for fiat. so even in a few decades the miners are not in need of fiat banker investment because they are getting paid in bitcoins.. by a different mechanism .. but still its bitcoin, thus still self-sustainable.(well as long as the swans dont screw the mining mechanism anymore)

im not sure why your saying fee's are denominated in their home fiat currency.. bitcoin is not a fiat(yuan or a dollar)..

miners are not the problem, especially when china is a 1 billion person population. if you think that 1 billion people are more colluding than say 400 people. then you have things backwards.
im more worried by the 400 people (12-100 one dev team being paid by 95 bank group with their few project leaders per bank.. all under contract)


what i do see happening though is the swan flock programming and managing hyperledger, to make hyperledger the center and then lock bitcoins up to get users to play with hyperledger(fiat 2.0) where then and only then will miners receive hyperledger(fiat2.0) coins for merge mining when the block reward fizzles out. and no one will be making bitcoin transactions due to the expense forced on bitcoin by the nonsense fee war the swans are pushing now.

[Kprawn]

Bitcoin is what you think it should be, not what you think other should think it should be. Yes, there were some Libertarian views at the start, but it

was replaced by greed and capitalism, when there were a sudden rise in the price. Their are still some people that might think that Bitcoin will replace

the banking system, but that will not happen.... The banks cashed in on the opportunity to steal the concept and the idea and quickly adapted the

code to suit them... Greed got the better of most of us. 

[Wind_FURY]

To the OP. That is a stretch sir. You have to remember that we already are enslaved one way or another with or without Bitcoin. Also fiat currencies are a more preferable tool for them to maintain the status quo because they control the supply and are also regulated by them.

[Wind_FURY]

Then Bitcoin may have back fired on "them". The darknet market prefers to use Bitcoin and it is growing. The regulations "they" have imposed is what subsidised Bitcoin if you get what I mean. Drugs, stolen goods, fake goods, and all other unregulated, illegal items could now be bought online using Bitcoin. Bitcoin is making those illegal markets online possible and easier to participate in.

[calkob]

i enjoyed the story it had me on the edge of my seat for abit    even if it was designed by the elites to get control, i think they have made a massive mistake opening a Pandora's box revealing altcoins that they cant track or trace and a million people learning about decentralisation and cryptography 

[BillyBobZorton]

i enjoyed the story it had me on the edge of my seat for abit    even if it was designed by the elites to get control, i think they have made a massive mistake opening a Pandora's box revealing altcoins that they cant track or trace and a million people learning about decentralisation and cryptography  

LOL altcoins ensure perpetual motion.

Without them Bitcoin cannot survive.

What was the first altcoin?

Litecoin?

Which went up in tandem with Bitcoin in 2013 giving future altcoin believers so much hope that they too one day can build an altcoin that could dance with Bitcoin.

How does the stock market survive?

Stocks.

How does Bitcoin survive?

Altcoins.

You should stay on the edge of your seat.

You may need to run soon.

That is yet to be seen. Theoretically, bitcoin would survive a post-altcoin environment once we have sidechains. Sidechains could act as altcoins, people that want to create experimental stuff can just create a sidechain and an alternative token pegged to the bitcoin blockchain. It's the same as an altcoin but backed by the bitcoin blockchain.

But I doubt altcoins will ever go away. People love to speculate. Going to Poloniex and having some fun it's too good to disappear.

[yayayo]

Thread opener is posting utter nonsense without even trying to offer a reasonable explanation for his claims and predictions. Bitcoin is the black swan in regard to ending the fiat banking scam, which is an extremely positive thing.

Under the guise of Libertarianism, Bitcoin's aim is to become the monetary base of a new technologically enslaved society.

Bitcoin has no aim. It's a technology that people have chosen to use. Technology is a slave of the people, who develop and modify it and not vice versa. Bitcoin is enabling more individual freedom. That's a fact.

The fact that banks, governments and institutions are looking into Bitcoin has nothing to do with Bitcoin being part of their "master plan" to enslave the world. They are merely seeing the great disruption that Bitcoin will bring to the world of money and are afraid of loosing their power.

ya.ya.yo!

[Wind_FURY]

Then Bitcoin may have back fired on "them". The darknet market prefers to use Bitcoin and it is growing. The regulations "they" have imposed is what subsidised Bitcoin if you get what I mean. Drugs, stolen goods, fake goods, and all other unregulated, illegal items could now be bought online using Bitcoin. Bitcoin is making those illegal markets online possible and easier to participate in.

LOL

Maybe our definitions of "they" are different?



The "they" I know doesn't care about regulations.

Then "they" have already won, Bitcoin or no Bitcoin. It makes the argument wider and beyond the scope of Bitcoin because "they" control everything. There is nothing we can do but to accept our lives as it is and that there is no way out of this. For all we know "this" has been going on for centuries.

[davis196]

As Bitcoin emerged from out of nowhere it was quickly given the title of "decentralized king".

A tool against the centralized world of banking to give the power back to the many to correct the errors of the few.

Under the guise of Libertarianism, Bitcoin's aim is to become the monetary base of a new technologically enslaved society.

A digital gold of some sorts that will pave the way for a centralized free world.

Eight years later it unfortunately seems to have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

The Bitcoin ecosystem itself resembles that of Wall St. from fake news all the way down to the constant emergence of penny stocks known as Alt Coins.

Each one promising a technological advantage over BItcoin when in reality "investors" already know that it is merely a scam to inflate the egos and pocketbooks of Bitcoin exchange owners.

Sniff around in this forum and Bitcoin news outlets and you won't have a hard time finding articles where BItcoin advocates jump for joy over the potential backing of a large corporation or huge financial institution.

Read enough of these and you may start to think that Bitcoin itself is merely and arm of the banking/corporate elite.

Perhaps a trial balloon of some sort that was crafted long ago and spun into motion with the hopes of special interests taking over the monetary system for good.

If it failed they could quickly step away and blame all the gullible investors for it's downfall.

If it succeeded they could once and for all bypass all the laws and rule of government and gain full control over their destiny.

Regardless of the outcome it is clear that Bitcoin has turned into something that isn't quite what it promised to be.

With all this in mind I have started to come to the realization that Bitcoin failing may be the Black Swan event that triggers the downfall of modern banking.

Not because of it's disruptive technology but because if it's failure to latch into the minds of the people.

If Bitcoin is in fact an arm of the most wealthy institutions in the world then the failure of it would be quite a blow to the future of such institutions.

Is there anything on the horizon if Bitcoin fails?

Some of you may want to consider the possibility.

Especially with the way things are shaping up politically in the world.

From the European Union cracking up all the way to the potential equities fallout generated by the upcoming U.S. election.

It is clear that the population of the world is not going to take kindly to any banking system that emerges that is not in their interest.

Bitcoin's quick jump to what appears to be quasi centralized does not sound good for the future of Bitcoin.

With the reported Chinese monopoly on mining and large exchanges controlling the worth of Bitcoin I can't see how this is going to play out in favor of the digital currency.

Not short term at least.
















 

I don`t know what is the point of such threads.

If you don`t support bitcoin just leave this forum.It`s easy.

Bitcoin has it`s flaws but we will resolve the issues,becasue we support bitcoin.

[franky1]

i agree the ethos of bitcoin has changed, but i have to disagree with one point

-A decentralized virtual token that just so happens to have its mining operation basically centralized by a handful of Chinese miners.

here is why

bitcoins tech is distributed. even with the "china hash power" debate, people need to realise the tech and security behind the label of "chinese miner"

remember an asic miner is basically just a SHA calculator. it has no hard drive and does not hold the blockchain. it is the host pool that holds the blockchain, organises the transaction data and creates a hash. which is then sent out to the asics to simply to calculate a second hash(PoW) and send that second hash back to the host pool.

the two parts. pool vs asic do not need to be in the same physical location. nothing stops an asic farm hopping from a pool managed in china or iceland or georgia. its a split second activity to pool hop.

the asics can communicate with many different servers. if one goes offline another is instantly available and pool hopping is actually routine. so its not an issue.

in short. there are a few nodes sitting in different countries (with the actual bitcoin blockchain data). so if someone wanted to corrupt a node in china. asic miners will hop to the one in iceland, georgia, america or other country that has not been corrupted.

also it doesnt matter what skin colour a person managing a host pool. some chinese pools may have a website wrote in chinese but the tech support staff maintaining the nodes(plural) are working in an office in san fransisco or iceland and the nodes they maintain are in many countries.

i really hate all the distraction/racist posts about china and trying to falsely combine several different pools who each have several different servers in several countries, to some how be considered (wrongly) as one entity. simply because "its china".

this wrongful/misunderstood distraction is actually moving peoples awareness away from where the weaknesses actually are. which ofcourse is the nodes.
if the nodes are in majority running the same code, then diversity/independence is a threat no matter what country or no matter how many nodes there are..
EG if 95 of 100 nodes or 4750 of 5000 nodes has a bug.  it has no difference, they are all affected equally
you can have a million nodes, but if 950,000 are running the exact same software.. its no better then just having 20 nodes with 19 running the same software

saying there is a 51% threat due to geography, rather than understanding the technology/infrastructure is a big massive piece of FUD compared to 95% of nodes running one piece of the exact same software.

software needs to be diverse too.
there is nothing wrong with a 100% agreement of certain rules. but having just one base of code making that decision, isnt actually an agreement. its control

my concern is not about the "china" debate.. but more so who is controlling the code/rules of bitcoin on the actual nodes that are destributed

[thejaytiesto]

If Bitcoin's origin is even remotely tied to the ones in charge of the current system make sure you take a good look at it.

If it was only a last ditch effort to keep people away from real money you may want to reassess your positions.

Time will only tell just how authentic Bitcoin is and what it's motives are but I do believe that the economy is about to receive another shock test.

Where you sit does matter.

I would be worried if Bitcoin was closed source, but Bitcoin is open source, everyone can see what's behind the curtain, and behind the curtain looks good so far. Core devs keep making a good job and they are pro privacy as seen by the proposals of Gmaxwell and Peter Wiulle

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bip-the-end-to-end-encryption-bitcoin-never-had-but-soon-will-1465401187

Things like this are starting to gain traction fast after we got rid of Hearn and Gavin, what a coincidence.

Things are looking great and Bitcoin serves a real alternative towards government controlled money.

[franky1]

again have to disagree with:

When all your hardware is centralized in one location (regardless of where that location is) when it is compromised, destroyed, or stolen such hardware will be rendered useless and will add zero value to the system.

Spread out the mining operation.

it is spread out!, it is not in one location. please research..

as for the other parts of your message. i agree..
bitcoin should not be reliant on FIAT. alot of economists have suggested that bitcoin should be measured against "cost of living" directly
EG
1btc= Cost of living index 500 today..  (loaf of bread= 1.65)
1btc= Cost of living index 502 two months time due to deflation.(loaf of bread= 1.65) yay more bread per btc
1btc= Cost of living index 499 due to speculative price crash.(loaf of bread= 1.65) nooo less bread per btc

where fiat (of any country) has no mention..   but the price of bread can easily be linked


meaning buying goods and services, getting paid a wage is straight forward, easily accountable and even non-mathematicians know that X bitcoin pays for X hours labour/goods.. where the headache becomes calculating the fiat as a third layer away, not first layer from the 'valuation' .

meaning in very laymans terms..
bitcoin -> labour/goods -> fiat
not
bitcoin -> fiat -> labour/goods

but as many know.. stupid speculators only care about fiat because once they have profited they dump bitcoin. all they want is fiat profits(hoards) not bitcoin hoards.

if we can change to a cost of living exchange rate we get rid of the fiat lovers and start seeing bitcoin as having independant value directly linked to cost of goods/living.

[justdimin]

Then Bitcoin may have back fired on "them". The darknet market prefers to use Bitcoin and it is growing. The regulations "they" have imposed is what subsidised Bitcoin if you get what I mean. Drugs, stolen goods, fake goods, and all other unregulated, illegal items could now be bought online using Bitcoin. Bitcoin is making those illegal markets online possible and easier to participate in.

Even all are true that bitcoin is still very important to our lives. Bitcoin is not meant purposely to aid those illegal trading but to provide privacy and free to all transaction we perfom, it depends on individual how and for what they used bitcoin for.

[U2]

1btc= Cost of living index 500 today..  (loaf of bread= 1.65)

-snip-

if we can change to a cost of living exchange rate we get rid of the fiat lovers and start seeing bitcoin as having independant value directly linked to cost of goods/living.

Woah. You have cheap bread where you live. I'm jealous. I pay over double that.

Well ya, fiat is decreasing in value about hmm what 3% a year on average? That's insane if you look at the numbers over hundreds of years. By the end you'll just have a worthless inflated crappy currency that's worth basically nothing!

Bitcoin is exactly opposite because of the way it was built. If people would stop focusing on the fiat value you would see over the long term that bitcoin can buy you more than the same value of currency you had ten or twenty years ago.

ie: put $1000 in the bank and $1000 in bitcoin. In 10 or 20 years bitcoin will have retained it's value (once it's a more stable currency of course) whereas the fiat can now buy you 50-70% of what the bitcoin can!

-snip-

I think your keyboard is broken. Every time you type a period it hits enter. You may want to get that checked out.

[franky1]

Nodes are spread out that I can agree with based on: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/nodes-active/

Please prove to me where all the mining hardware resides.

Because all I ever read is how mining farms are mainly located in China by a handful of miners.

Perhaps I shall leave the burden of proof on you.

lets take antpool. yes just antpool as an example
you can spot they have several servers/locations by looking at the blockreward receiving address

some funds go to
1DTh7XPb42PgCFnuMHSitMPWxCfNNFej8n
other funds go to
1ERSHV5douNTHuCnJj7uSJDtPvEKX2NZvZ
others go to
15hZo812Lx266Dot6T52krxpnhrNiaqHya
1CjaWfbSbARo8CDJLDKGm4VrVBaVFn3kzW
1JVMpaWzLB1pnkwoQNqK4Z4EimQj5bCKj7

and there is a reason why antpool actively uses more than one address.. yes i mean actively, meaning they dont just throw away an address after use. but use separate addresses for separate locations

i separated them because the ones that solve a block using
1ERSHV5douNTHuCnJj7uSJDtPvEKX2NZvZ
are usually blocks not filled right up to 999kb.. and are basically SPV mining/empty block mining.. (starting a hash attempt before validating the last block and only then throwing in new data once the last block is validated)
this activity is particularly done by smaller farms that skip a few steps to gain a slight advantage of % solutions without as much hashpower by saving time

so its easy to spot that all the hash power is not going to a single combined attempt. but several attempts in different locations

now then lets address the geography
haobtc.. although asian are in tibet aswell as other locations
BW.. runs a mining farm in mongolia aswell as other locations
BTCC..  runs servers in different countries and users in many more countries
bitfury.. Finland, Iceland, and the Republic of Georgia.

but let me guess your now going to stop using the term 'china'  and instead cry "the west dont have 49%" the east own "51%" or even claim that its no longer china. but "asia own 51%"
expanding the geographical borders of your mind but still trying to claim some racist collusions that farms thousands of miles away from each other are actually owned by one person and influenced by one government.

or are you going to realise that
being dotted about in many geographical locations,
having servers in several more locations
and offices in more locations again. is actually more distributed than your mindset of it all being located in one place as a single threat.

but hey. if the smaller amount of hashpower that you think is in china gets cut off.. guess what.. the non china farms get a bigger slice of the pie
chines government cannot corrupt the servers due to the split second it takes to pool hop all that a government can do is cut the power/internet cables.. that is it.

so realise mining pool (host//servers) are distributed to avoid corruption
and all that can be done is taking a smaller % of hash power that you think down. which is not an attack on the network as the other pools will exist

[U2]

-snip-

In your opinion can Bitcoin ever lose value lets say over the course of 200 years?

Or is it destined to become the most precious asset the universe has ever seen?

It's kind of like a penny stock right now so nobody knows that. Bitcoin will not be the bitcoin we know and love today if it's still around in 200 years. I'm invested and I hope for its success but to think nothing better will come in 200 years is naive IMO.

At the same time bitcoin will have to adapt along the way so who knows, maybe it will survive because of that.