John Nash created bitcoin

[dinofelis]

Satoshi was so genius that he designed the AsicBoost into the design.

I think that this is where you go off the deep end.  Asic boost is nothing particular, and doesn't mean much, it is just a slightly smarter scheme to calculate hashes.   The whole thing about asic boost is that one of the Core devs patented it ; this could not have been foreseen by Satoshi that in 2016, a core guy would take a patent on it, and not someone else would find it and make it public domain, or that an asic producer would have patented it.  

There's nothing particular about asic boost, and has nothing to do with "double hashing".  It has to do with the typical structure of block-cypher-like hash functions that have a "data" and a "hash" input like a block cypher has a "key schedule" and a "data" part, and the Merkle-Damgard extension attack.  The "double hash" (which IS part of the PoW scheme) doesn't alter this.  The "asic-boost" scheme is applicable to any such Merkle-Damgard scheme with a block-cypher-like structure, where one can save one "key schedule" in the loop if one needs to do PoW.

I can say that with great confidence because double-hashing defeats attacks such as AsicBoost, and Satoshi did double-hashing as a precaution every where it could be required in his design except for the proof-of-work.

This is not right.  First of all, bitcoin uses double hashing in PoW.  In fact, Satoshi used double hashing everywhere, not really knowing, visibly, what it was meant for (to avoid an extension attack of the Merkle Damgard construction of the *final hash*).  He used it where it didn't have any meaning also.  Second, asicboost has nothing to do with double hashing.  In fact, its efficiency is seriously reduced by the double hashing: if it were single hashing, its improvement wouldn't have been 20% but near 50%.

==>  I propose that you now say that Satoshi was a genius BECAUSE he applied double hashing in PoW, so that Asicboost couldn't suddenly rise the hashing capacity to 50% and cause a 51% attack.

So:
a) Satoshi doesn't introduce double hashing in PoW: he's a genius (turns out not to be the case)
b) Satoshi does introduce double hashing in PoW: he's a genius (this is how bitcoin does it)

Mmm.  Satoshi is a genius, even if he writes 1 + 1 = 3, I suppose.

He managed to think far ahead on the game theory and realized he would need a poison pill to ensure that no one could modify his evil design.

Mmm.  It is about time you wake up of your delusion here.  You're an extremely smart guy.  But I've seen other smart people go off the deep end because they locked themselves up in such kind of delusion.  In fact, Nash himself is such an example.  Goedel also.  Take a step back and think twice, whether what you are claiming has any rational sense and isn't a self-referential argument, and you may see why this is not an on-purpose design:

- asic boost's "poison pill" only comes about because it happened to be a Core guy that put a patent on it (if ever it is upheld in court).  If it would have been someone else, or if it were open domain, the "poison pill" wouldn't have its effect.  The double hash structure limits the ASIC boost efficiency boost !  And this was "discovered" in 2016, 7 years after Satoshi designed his thing.  No way he could have foreseen at what point, by whom, it would have been discovered, and whether or not a patent would have been put onto it.  

So therefor he created a design that he knew the Chinese ASIC manufacturers would figure out how to make covert AsicBoost and that if it was patented outside of China, then this would be the poison pill against any changes to the protocol (as I have recently explained at @gmaxwell's Redditard discussion).

Mmm.  Satoshi knew in 2009 that a core guy was going to invent a thing that interested Chinese manufacturers in 2016.

@dinofelis STFU on your nonsense about Satoshi wasn't genius. I've strongly refuted all of your nonsense technical claims. Stop your lying nonsense.

I haven't seen any rational argument.  I have seen a lot of handwaving, a lot of empty arguments filled with rethoric but not much tangible arguments, and then, claims that previously such "rebuttals" were definitive on the question, where they didn't settle anything.

Like the argument that Shor's algorithm is already a known way to kill ECC, and then, when it turns out that this goes against your defence of Satoshi-genius, namely that the problem was not that Satoshi was brilliant enough to "protect" ECC while it was going to get attacked by quantum computers, rather that a quantum-computer broken ECC was of no use to be protected by a hash function, it would kill the possibility of using a transaction, suddenly you argued that quantum computers would only be useful to attack "long term" but not "short term", as if that made any sense: a totally broken crypto (as per Shor's algorithm) is totally broken, as well in the short term as in the long term.

After pointing out the futility of this rebuttal, you maintain nevertheless that you "refuted this" and that I refused to comprehend your argument.

You're a very smart guy, but you're totally locked up in your need that Satoshi was an evil genius, because you need to be the super hero / James Bond that needs to save the world from the Spectrum of Satoshi.  As such, you fall into the trap of many people suffering from such type of delusion, namely taking everything, and its opposite, as a proof of their necessary hypothesis, and lose all sense of critical thinking.  This is also what happens to people locked up in religious or other sectarian ideologies. This is a pity it happens to you.  Your critical thinking is totally blurred by your need of having a sufficiently evil and genial adversary.  

[dinofelis]

You could just remove the reward, any one can mine new block out of the mem pool, if two blocks or tx are in common, a determinstic algorithm could be used to select between the two.

I agree with you.  The error in most crypto is the reward, which gives rise to strategies that do not necessarily induce the desired properties.  I also think that the only viable kind of crypto currency is where the validation/consensus decision is taken on a voluntary basis, the "reward" being that the system in which you are invested, keeps running correctly.

However, you still need a kind of deterministic decision *that is hard to game* (because you can do "proof of work" like calculations to get the deterministic solution in your advantage).  This is why a kind of PoS signature scheme is necessary in my opinion.

@dinofelis, how many times do I have to repeat to you that voting is not free.

This is not about voting.  PoS is not about voting, it is about acknowledging your set of received transactions, according to an agreed-upon (protocol) deterministic rule.  The problem with PoS, namely "nothing at stake" only comes because of the reward.  If there is no reward in PoS, there's no incentive to stake on multiple chains: you don't care.  You stick to a rule, an arbitrary but deterministic rule, to stake on one chain, and not on another, because by not staking on the other chain, you don't lose a reward.  As such, there is a normal solution to the "nothing at stake" problem: you apply the rules, because if you're not part of the cheaters that gain something by re-organizing the chain, you can only WIN by wanting the system to come to a consensus, no matter which one ; there's total indifference to what consensus and to whether you stake or not, if there's no reward.  Your only stake is that there's a consensus that is reached, or the system in which you are a stake holder, crashes down.

In PoS, it is not difficult to define a rule that you only stake on one of the possible chains (deterministic rule).  If you follow that rule, no "nothing at stake" problem occurs ; the only thing is that there's no incentive for you to follow that rule if there's a block reward !  This is why Casper tries to punish those that do not follow the rule ; but then this can be gamed too and you get a hopelessly complicated game-theoretical bungle.  If there's nothing at stake (in both senses) with staking, your only stake is that the system works well.  If the random deterministic choice of who can stake, is random enough, then it is also essentially impossible to BRIBE you into staking, because in order to find out WHOM to bribe, you'd need to spend a lot of "proof of work" and chances are you'll find one necessary staker who doesn't accept the bribe.

Of course, with sufficiently corrupt players, you can game the system ; and that's OK.  The system shouldn't be too secure, and the real risk that the system will one day break down, protects it from too much hot air speculation.  Only its real usage as a currency would determine most of the market cap, as it should, and no-one would dream to use it for a very long term hodling idiocy.

[jonald_fyookball]

do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, i wonder?

dinofelis = iamnotback = trainscarwreck

[Dorky]

do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, i wonder?

dinofelis = iamnotback = trainscarwreck = jonald_fyookball

Laugh out not-so-loud...

[jonald_fyookball]

do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, i wonder?

dinofelis = iamnotback = trainscarwreck = jonald_fyookball

Laugh out not-so-loud...

well you can tell the difference because

a) i don't talk about John Nash, ideal money, or "economic theories"
b) i don't say silly negative things like bitcoin is doomed or its too late
c) i don't promote the idea that bitcoin can't scale , shouldn't scale,  won't change, shouldn't change, or won't get consensus
d) i don't troll or have a big head

All I ever talk about is Satoshi's original vision and simple straightforward on chain scaling with bigger blocks.
Everything else is noise and a distraction.

  

[dinofelis]

do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, i wonder?

dinofelis = iamnotback = trainscarwreck

That's because of Satoshi's evil genius, that rendered me/us totally schizophrenic.  Just like Nash, BTW 

[dinofelis]

a) i don't talk about John Nash

The relationship between Nash and bitcoin is not so strange: Nash was a mathematician who got a Nobel prize for economics, was interested in constructing an "ideal money", has essentially founded the field of mathematical game theory, was seriously interested in cryptography, and was considered paranoid for the down-to-earth and obvious observation that the government is the enemy of the people.  What well-known scholar could be closer do several aspects of bitcoin than Nash ?

So it is a very sensible hypothesis that Nash had something to do with bitcoin.  

Where @iamnotback and I differ fundamentally in opinion is:

- to me, bitcoin's design is "too little, too late" in a sense, and I tried to indicate many technical details where bitcoin's design is somewhat silly.  As such, I do consider that who-ever was Satoshi, was a smart guy that knew about the previous attempts of electronic money, and did an invention that merits our attention, the block chain with proof-of-work consensus resolution.  But bitcoin's design didn't live up to the desires set out by its inventor.  It simply didn't work the way he intended it to work, and technically/mathematically/cryptographically Satoshi didn't always understand exactly what he was doing, and was clumsy.  It turns out that bitcoin's clunky design results in quite horrible game-theoretical aspects, leading in the best case to an imploding speculative bubble, but in the worst case, in a financial dictatorship by a few maffioso who will own most of the world, it will be an ecological disaster and will be the end of any form of financial freedom and independence.  In other words, a kind of Frankenstein monster of finance.  Personally, I don't give bitcoin much chance to go beyond a certain niche of sleazy business.

- @iamnotback is absolutely convinced that Satoshi is Nash, an ultimate evil genius at the service of an Evil Elite, and sees all the bad design of bitcoin as on purpose, and is absolutely convinced that bitcoin will be this (planned) Frankenstein monster by the "elite", the Rothschilds or by some other dark force, and every disfunctional aspect is seen by @iamnotback as a sign of the subtly evil design meant to be that way.

Nevertheless, I think that both of us agree fundamentally that bitcoin is not what most bitcoin maximalists think it is.  I think it is because of its clunky design and the limited capacity of Satoshi, @iamnotback thinks that all of this was planned in advance by a mightily brilliant genius that fucked all those believers hard in the ass.  

But in the end, the intention doesn't even matter: bitcoin is NOT what it was said it would be by Satoshi, so much must be clear now.

In other words, the main difference in opinion between @iamnotback and me is that I think that bitcoin was simply badly designed, and that all the bad things we see are simply due to "stupidity" (everything is relative).  @iamnotback thinks that instead of stupidity, it is evil genius.

This is also why @iamnotback thinks that bitcoin will become world-dominant (an evil genius will do something that will work out his evil plan) ; and why I am not convinced that bitcoin is up to a big future (because a stupidly design will not go very far).

I think that @iamnotback suffers from cognitive dissonance, because he is working on "killing bitcoin" and of course, the more bitcoin was the successful work of a brilliant evil genius, the more he is Batman beating the evil genius.  @iamnotback thinks that I'm suffering from cognitive dissonance, because I would be too frightened in my currently comfortable position to see the full evil impact of bitcoin on the world.

I think my position is superior over his on this last point, exactly because he's working on his bitcoin killer: if he's right, he will kill bitcoin and I don't have to be afraid, and if he's wrong, I don't have to be frightened, because I'm right, so in the end, there's no reason for me to be scared, and hence to be suffering from cognitive dissonance after all

b) i don't say silly negative things like bitcoin is doomed or its too late

Bitcoin is not doomed, bitcoin is simply not what you think it is.  It is NOT a payment instrument that brings freedom to people ; it is a niche application only for very rich people (at best - my view) or is going to be the ultimate enslavement of people by finance (@iamnotback view).  And it will not change.  You are stuck for ever with 1 MB blocks.

c) i don't promote the idea that bitcoin can't scale , shouldn't scale,  won't change, shouldn't change, or won't get consensus

Well, all empirical evidence indicates that it can't change, because it is designed that way.  Where @iamnotback and I differ in opinion, is whether this was on purpose.  I consider this as yet another mistake by Satoshi in the creation of his Frankenstein monster, he considers this as perfectly designed that way on purpose.

Yes, he indicated that in an initial phase, there would be a P2P network with (useful idiots running) full nodes, but when the network would grow bigger, the block chain would grow with 100 GB a day, only sustainable by a few big data centers, the miners.  He even considered that these big miners wouldn't even distribute the block chain any more, keeping their privilege to themselves.

All I ever talk about is Satoshi's original vision and simple straightforward on chain scaling with bigger blocks.
Everything else is noise and a distraction.

You are right.  Satoshi's vision was an oligarchy of a few miners, that run the only few full nodes in the world, and everybody connecting DIRECTLY to them with their light wallets.

In perfect contradiction with:

1) his introduction of 1 MB blocks (meaning, he wasn't serious, changed his mind, or didn't understand the implications of what he did)

2) all the bullshit about decentralisation and the importance of a large P2P network of full nodes that don't mine, as propagated by the Core people.

[xmasdobo]

I am like so Lolz when I read the below and remember how I (as @AnonyMint) was telling everyone that Tor was compromised back in 2013 and everyone thought I was a kook.

no tor user has ever been compromised given that he was using an isolated OS (tails) up to date, and with all scripts off.

But you aren't sure.

i am sure that you are wrong. we will see this as 2030 arrives and bitcoin is not 6 figures, not 500000 not 100000. because it doesnt make sense that bitcoin surpasses gold marketcap in 10 years.

Your nonsense has been refuted already upthread.

The devs have no control whatsoever dufus.


¹ Read more about this here.

there will be constant vendettas with sides fighting creating confusion and collapsing price
there will be strong interest in a lot of people to fight this billionaire cartel that you talk about because they will have millions trapped in the blockchain

[Dorky]

Bitcoin is where it is today not because it was relentlessly being promoted globally by a group of independent people with shared passion in bitcoin.

Humans in general has a sort of burn rate in whatever they do, i.e. they do not have the strong determination to carry out their plan locally, much less globally as we see from the forces behind bitcoin.

Humans in general have no interest nor passion in promoting the works of other people, i.e. they rather steal other people's idea, modify it into a different version, and claim their own brand.

Humans in general are weary of unsubstantiated promises by other people, i.e. no matter how good is an invention or innovation, most are unwilling to have full faith put into it especially when its future is still vague.

In bitcoin, we see the total opposite of the behaviors above, i.e. we see people relentlessly promoting bitcoin/blockchain globally, we see people giving praises to a guy name satoshi, we see people developing miners, investing millions, running exchanges to facilitate this invention called bitcoin.

Does it ever pop up in your mind, that all these are so unlike normal human behavior and have a feeling of strong suspicion to it?

How come it never come to your mind that the forces behind bitcoin may very well be the rothschilds and their agents?

Come to think of this, bitcoin is not the only great invention in our lifetime that has the power to totally disrupt the status quo.

Inventions like "free energy" existed too and have full power to disrupt the status quo but they all die out eventually because nobody (that is 3rd-party) promotes it and the media never talk about it in good light.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has businesses opening up to develop miners to mine it, has exchanges opening up to facilitate its price-making, has education institutions giving grants to study it, has companies injecting millions into mining farms, has huge corporations adopting it as a form of payment, has governments recognizing it as legal currency, has politicians promoting it, etc etc, and yet all these never cross your mind that there could be something unknown behind it?

Yeah, bitcoin is great. And it's probably the one and only invention that you know of that can disrupt the status quo because every other equally great and disruptive inventions are not as widely promoted.

The kind of promoting I see behind bitcoin is very well organized, relentless, and organized, completely unlike the kind of force that you would see from a group people operating independently on his own.

And every day I keep seeing people talking about satoshi being a genius and bitcoin being a wonderful invention, I can't stop but think to myself, "Are these people really that stupid? Are these people just think based on what they are shown and told? Aren't they intelligent enough to question that there is something different with the force behind bitcoin? Can't they actually think outside of the box, independently?"

It's like humans have a very naive sense of how wonderful is the world, how bright and hopeful is the future, how promising will the future be with bitcoin, that everyone is good and honest, that there is no bad evil guys on earth, that everyone is good hearted and is out there to help and save.

And I would go like, "What???". It's like the current generations of humans on earth were descended from heaven where everyone is good and never bad/evil.

And if they were told there could be dishonest force behind every get-rich-quick scheme, that there could be sinister force behind bitcoin, etc, they will say I am crazy.

Simply wow.

But then if they were shown another great and disruptive invention that could save the world, these same people wouldn't lay an eye on the invention even for 10 seconds, much less spread good words around it.

And so I am led to believe people admire bitcoin is not because it is a great disruptive invention, but because everyone else is doing it so they are just following along with the herds.

And all the talks about how genius is satoshi and how disruptive and breakthrough is bitcoin, are all mere excuses.

Bitcoin, if it was really an independent invention, would die out within the first year of its existence.

Who is the persistent force behind bitcoin that elevate bitcoin from being a worthless piece of digital token to where it is today?

I can bet if I were to develop a much more powerful version of bitcoin and release it into the wild and just let the world work it out for me, it would die within a year.

But why is bitcoin different?

I am going to expect lots of dumb answers.

[traincarswreck]

In the early 60's(ish) when Nash fled the US to europe, allegedly delusional, this is the time he came up with Ideal Money.  He said he was wanting to exchange his USD for the Swiss France, a money of superior quality.  The Navy tracked him down and brought him back in chains (his words).

I suspect he was also mailing letters while outside of the US.

[IadixDev]

You could just remove the reward, any one can mine new block out of the mem pool, if two blocks or tx are in common, a determinstic algorithm could be used to select between the two.

I agree with you.  The error in most crypto is the reward, which gives rise to strategies that do not necessarily induce the desired properties.  I also think that the only viable kind of crypto currency is where the validation/consensus decision is taken on a voluntary basis, the "reward" being that the system in which you are invested, keeps running correctly.

However, you still need a kind of deterministic decision *that is hard to game* (because you can do "proof of work" like calculations to get the deterministic solution in your advantage).  This is why a kind of PoS signature scheme is necessary in my opinion.

@dinofelis, how many times do I have to repeat to you that voting is not free.

This is not about voting.  PoS is not about voting, it is about acknowledging your set of received transactions, according to an agreed-upon (protocol) deterministic rule.  The problem with PoS, namely "nothing at stake" only comes because of the reward.  If there is no reward in PoS, there's no incentive to stake on multiple chains: you don't care.  You stick to a rule, an arbitrary but deterministic rule, to stake on one chain, and not on another, because by not staking on the other chain, you don't lose a reward.  As such, there is a normal solution to the "nothing at stake" problem: you apply the rules, because if you're not part of the cheaters that gain something by re-organizing the chain, you can only WIN by wanting the system to come to a consensus, no matter which one ; there's total indifference to what consensus and to whether you stake or not, if there's no reward.  Your only stake is that there's a consensus that is reached, or the system in which you are a stake holder, crashes down.

In PoS, it is not difficult to define a rule that you only stake on one of the possible chains (deterministic rule).  If you follow that rule, no "nothing at stake" problem occurs ; the only thing is that there's no incentive for you to follow that rule if there's a block reward !  This is why Casper tries to punish those that do not follow the rule ; but then this can be gamed too and you get a hopelessly complicated game-theoretical bungle.  If there's nothing at stake (in both senses) with staking, your only stake is that the system works well.  If the random deterministic choice of who can stake, is random enough, then it is also essentially impossible to BRIBE you into staking, because in order to find out WHOM to bribe, you'd need to spend a lot of "proof of work" and chances are you'll find one necessary staker who doesn't accept the bribe.

Of course, with sufficiently corrupt players, you can game the system ; and that's OK.  The system shouldn't be too secure, and the real risk that the system will one day break down, protects it from too much hot air speculation.  Only its real usage as a currency would determine most of the market cap, as it should, and no-one would dream to use it for a very long term hodling idiocy.

Exactly my thinking

Maybe you see now why I think the pow is not only about byzantine consensus on double spent and there is something else in the equation that is more important than mere consensus on the double spent

hence thinking there is still a kind of more or less secret plan on game theories and speculation  aimed at trader and miners to make in sort the coin can reach and sustain high market cap and high mining difficulty, basically based on almost nithing, in relatively short time, and still nobody can really decide anything   

[IadixDev]

Bitcoin is where it is today not because it was relentlessly being promoted globally by a group of independent people with shared passion in bitcoin.

Humans in general has a sort of burn rate in whatever they do, i.e. they do not have the strong determination to carry out their plan locally, much less globally as we see from the forces behind bitcoin.

Humans in general have no interest nor passion in promoting the works of other people, i.e. they rather steal other people's idea, modify it into a different version, and claim their own brand.

Humans in general are weary of unsubstantiated promises by other people, i.e. no matter how good is an invention or innovation, most are unwilling to have full faith put into it especially when its future is still vague.

In bitcoin, we see the total opposite of the behaviors above, i.e. we see people relentlessly promoting bitcoin/blockchain globally, we see people giving praises to a guy name satoshi, we see people developing miners, investing millions, running exchanges to facilitate this invention called bitcoin.

Does it ever pop up in your mind, that all these are so unlike normal human behavior and have a feeling of strong suspicion to it?

How come it never come to your mind that the forces behind bitcoin may very well be the rothschilds and their agents?

Come to think of this, bitcoin is not the only great invention in our lifetime that has the power to totally disrupt the status quo.

Inventions like "free energy" existed too and have full power to disrupt the status quo but they all die out eventually because nobody (that is 3rd-party) promotes it and the media never talk about it in good light.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has businesses opening up to develop miners to mine it, has exchanges opening up to facilitate its price-making, has education institutions giving grants to study it, has companies injecting millions into mining farms, has huge corporations adopting it as a form of payment, has governments recognizing it as legal currency, has politicians promoting it, etc etc, and yet all these never cross your mind that there could be something unknown behind it?

Yeah, bitcoin is great. And it's probably the one and only invention that you know of that can disrupt the status quo because every other equally great and disruptive inventions are not as widely promoted.

The kind of promoting I see behind bitcoin is very well organized, relentless, and organized, completely unlike the kind of force that you would see from a group people operating independently on his own.

And every day I keep seeing people talking about satoshi being a genius and bitcoin being a wonderful invention, I can't stop but think to myself, "Are these people really that stupid? Are these people just think based on what they are shown and told? Aren't they intelligent enough to question that there is something different with the force behind bitcoin? Can't they actually think outside of the box, independently?"

It's like humans have a very naive sense of how wonderful is the world, how bright and hopeful is the future, how promising will the future be with bitcoin, that everyone is good and honest, that there is no bad evil guys on earth, that everyone is good hearted and is out there to help and save.

And I would go like, "What???". It's like the current generations of humans on earth were descended from heaven where everyone is good and never bad/evil.

And if they were told there could be dishonest force behind every get-rich-quick scheme, that there could be sinister force behind bitcoin, etc, they will say I am crazy.

Simply wow.

But then if they were shown another great and disruptive invention that could save the world, these same people wouldn't lay an eye on the invention even for 10 seconds, much less spread good words around it.

And so I am led to believe people admire bitcoin is not because it is a great disruptive invention, but because everyone else is doing it so they are just following along with the herds.

And all the talks about how genius is satoshi and how disruptive and breakthrough is bitcoin, are all mere excuses.

Bitcoin, if it was really an independent invention, would die out within the first year of its existence.

Who is the persistent force behind bitcoin that elevate bitcoin from being a worthless piece of digital token to where it is today?

I can bet if I were to develop a much more powerful version of bitcoin and release it into the wild and just let the world work it out for me, it would die within a year.

But why is bitcoin different?

I am going to expect lots of dumb answers.

In the same time this state of things is not new and it's not impossible to think someone could see one step ahead of this and integrate this behavior in game theory model bound to something else.

[IadixDev]

The only way I can see that the fees won't rise egregiously on BTC on chain (with $trillionaire/$billionaire whales free riding on the rest of us) is if something can compete with Bitcoin such that the whales feel they are losing control of the blockchain (and eventually global) economy, and/or if fungible money can be removed as important from civilization.

You want people to point out your error.

However, I think whales will end up demanding a kickback from miners for their transaction fees, so that miners can jack up fees on non-whales. Whales can make this demand because they can refuse to send their transactions to miners which won't deal. Yet non-whales can't make a credible threat, because miners who generally offered lower fees would end up losing hashrate relative to those miners who didn't defect from the fee market. Thus I think you will probably see miners colluding to extract the maximum fees that gouge non-whales.

If the whole thesis of a fee that gets too high for average joe to use bitcoin is based on whales colluding, then here are my arguments.

1. That scenario of whales ($billionaires, elites, etc) colluding will NEVER happen.
2. Humans (whales, $billionaires, $millionaires, elites, etc) are never rational. Forget about game theory. It works only on simplistic binary situation. Humans are scientifically documented to be far more irrational than rational in decision-making.
3. The whales ($billionaires, power brokers, shadow elites, etc) would be owning over 50% of all bitcoin ever mined. If miners give way to their "colludion" (pardon my English it's not my fault that English is a stupid language) by making the non-whales pay up, that is economical nonsense.
       1st, the miners are the gatekeepers. If the whales refuse to pay the fees, they can get the hell out from using bitcoin.
       2nd, if all non-whales are pushed into alts, leaving only the whales, then the whales will pay the fee. "Colludion" makes no difference.

The pareto effect of 80:20.
-> 20% whales own 80% of bitcoin.
    (whales pay 80% of total fee)
    (non-whales pay 20% of total fee)
-> The whales collude not to pay fee and push out non-whales.
-> If miners comply, they will force the 20% non-whales to make up for the 80% difference. This is economically impractical. The miners are not advantaged by complying.
-> If miners don't comply, they will still earn the fee as usual. The whales have no choice but to continue using bitcoin and pay their share of the fee. The miners are not disadvantaged by not complying.

Your reasoning/logic based on game theory is flawed/incomplete.

Note: Businesses make their profit from servicing the rich (those who can afford the price), not from the poor (those who cannot afford the price). This is valid throughout all economic activities.


A dialogue...
Whale: I am not going to send you transaction if you charge me fee.
Miner A: Where will you send your transaction?
Whale: To miner B.
Miner B: So you want me to NOT charge you any fee?
Whale: Yes.
Miner B: And if I refuse?
Whale: I will take my business to miner C.
Miner C: What now?
Whale: Okay, I pay my fee to you.
Miner A & Miner B: Get lost!
Whale: Well, at least I still pay.
Miner A & Miner B: Bluffer!

The next whale (whale #2) shows up...
Whale 2: Hi! I am here to make a deal.
Miner A: Fuck off and die if it's about free transaction.
Whale 2: Urmmmm...... no. I pay.
Miner A: Good.

With game theory it's not mainly about rationality, but how likely someone who want to get some reward from the game would act given this or that informations.

It works mostly for economic scenario, when there are interest engaged , and the only given is that the person want to make profits or "win the game" when all other actors are also willing to do the same.

It's a model to tell how likely a person is going to make this or that decision given this or that infos, and how the reward balance out the risk to decide on a strategy.

The higher the stake, the better it works, because it's very un likely someone would engage big stake without at least thinking twice to the potential benefits/loss.

Game theory are all about reaction to risk and unknown, it's not that much about rationality, but how a person can percieve his own interest, and the higher the stake, the better game theory will apply.

In this dialog btw you show very well the two interwinded games for whales & miners

To put in math term it would end with two equations

one that define the speculative value of the coin, what make the coin attractive to trader according to any strategy they choose, and what influence trader choice and what make the coin looking profitable for a trader/investor

and the other related to mining profitability, and what risk a miner is willing to engage for the reward

One third interest is user who wants to rely on the system to make a tx but he has zero power.

and putting then those two equation in relation you would see they share a certain number of variable with their own matrixes of probability that would push some of the lowest probability variable ( less likely behavior) to some constant in favor of the more important criteria on the variables they share, to maximizes the likelylness of the following of the protocol for mutual interest of the big speculative forces engaged.


Well just quick shot to lay put the idea on the big lines lol

And im pretty sure it's not even that hard core to model with game theories. But it also incorporate other constant like inflation rate and maybe other factors that are not purely speculative value and mining reward/risk.

[alkan]

This is why Casper tries to punish those that do not follow the rule ; but then this can be gamed too and you get a hopelessly complicated game-theoretical bungle.

How can the punishment mechanism be gamed? Can you describe an attack scenario against it?

If there's nothing at stake (in both senses) with staking, your only stake is that the system works well.  If the random deterministic choice of who can stake, is random enough, then it is also essentially impossible to BRIBE you into staking, because in order to find out WHOM to bribe, you'd need to spend a lot of "proof of work" and chances are you'll find one necessary staker who doesn't accept the bribe.

I'm not sure if I understand your reasoning. Anyone could be bribed to do whatever action (i.e. only build upon certain blocks, censor some kind of transactions/blocks etc.) and without block rewards the bribees would lose nothing (except maybe suffering from a loss of value of their stake due to the attack as such)

[IadixDev]

This is why Casper tries to punish those that do not follow the rule ; but then this can be gamed too and you get a hopelessly complicated game-theoretical bungle.

How can the punishment mechanism be gamed? Can you describe an attack scenario against it?

If there's nothing at stake (in both senses) with staking, your only stake is that the system works well.  If the random deterministic choice of who can stake, is random enough, then it is also essentially impossible to BRIBE you into staking, because in order to find out WHOM to bribe, you'd need to spend a lot of "proof of work" and chances are you'll find one necessary staker who doesn't accept the bribe.

I'm not sure if I understand your reasoning. Anyone could be bribed to do whatever action (i.e. only build upon certain blocks, censor some kind of transactions/blocks etc.) and without block rewards the bribees would lose nothing (except maybe suffering from a loss of value of their stake due to the attack as such)

As long as all tx in the blocks are the same it doesnt matter, if tx are plain invalid, it doesnt need the whole pow consencus for a node to detect it, same for spam, nodes just need to know they are on the same chain of valid tx, and only rules out the double spent, and they can already know if a tx is valid or not given a certain chain without requiring POW consensus.

[IadixDev]

do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, i wonder?

dinofelis = iamnotback = trainscarwreck

That's because of Satoshi's evil genius, that rendered me/us totally schizophrenic.  Just like Nash, BTW  

Nobody will say im someone else because of my infalsifiable grammar  

Did you ever wondered if you could be everyone else you talk to on the internet like fight club 

[iamnotback]

do you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk, i wonder?

dinofelis = iamnotback = trainscarwreck = jonald_fyookball

Laugh out not-so-loud...

Two technological idiots wouldn't be able to distinguish a differential equation from a geometric series. They'd just say "its all greek".

In other words, who cares what you can't distinguish.

well you can tell the difference because

a) i don't talk about John Nash, ideal money, or "economic theories"
b) i don't say silly negative things like bitcoin is doomed or its too late
c) i don't promote the idea that bitcoin can't scale , shouldn't scale,  won't change, shouldn't change, or won't get consensus
d) i don't troll or have a big head

All I ever talk about is Satoshi's original vision and simple straightforward on chain scaling with bigger blocks.
Everything else is noise and a distraction.

And that is why I can't distinguish you from any other idiot shill troll who has the entirely incorrect conceptualization of everything technological, game theory, and economics modeled.

You don't (none of you do!) even put your real photo on your avatar, and I do.

Finally, a lot of people confuse arrogance with ego. A-listers (and I am including myself, again, this time) are, as a rule, colossally arrogant. That is, they have utter confidence in their ability to meet challenges that would humble or break most people. Do not be fooled by the self-deprecating manner that many A-listers cultivate; it is a mask adopted for social purposes, mostly to avoid freaking out the normal monkeys. But this arrogance is not the same as egotism; in fact, in many ways it is the opposite. It is possible to be arrogant about one’s abilities compared to the statistically average human being and the range of challenges one is likely to encounter, but deeply and genuinely humble when dealing with peers or contemplating the vastness of one’s own ignorance and incapability relative to what one could imagine being. In fact, this combination of attitudes is completely typical of the A-listers I have known.

[iamnotback]

- @iamnotback is absolutely convinced that Satoshi is Nash

You continue to lie. You're a habitual liar. How many times have I written I don't think Satoshi was Nash, but I think "Nash may have been UNWITTINGLY involved".

I hope you know the definition of the word UNWITTINGLY.

[Dorky]

With game theory it's not mainly about rationality, but how likely someone who want to get some reward from the game would act given this or that informations.

It works mostly for economic scenario, when there are interest engaged , and the only given is that the person want to make profits or "win the game" when all other actors are also willing to do the same.

It's a model to tell how likely a person is going to make this or that decision given this or that infos, and how the reward balance out the risk to decide on a strategy.

The higher the stake, the better it works, because it's very un likely someone would engage big stake without at least thinking twice to the potential benefits/loss.

Game theory are all about reaction to risk and unknown, it's not that much about rationality, but how a person can percieve his own interest, and the higher the stake, the better game theory will apply.

You can't exclude rationality from game theory analysis.

A person is expected to be perfectly rational in game theory but that's never the case in real life.

A lot of information can be given (and available) to a person but it is not necessary that he will always choose the most objective one.

In most cases he will choose the one that is most gratifying to his sensual satisfaction and desire, never mind if his decision will screw him up hard later.

Additionally, a person make decision not on the potential risk/reward because that would involve too much thinking for him, but on the most immediate risk/reward that he can receive within a short period of time, never mind if a delayed risk/reward will be much better unless he is 100% assured of it.

In terms of getting 100% assurance, nobody in real life really has it.

Everyone will have to make a decision based on lack of information.

Game theory is just too simplistic, and it works only in simplistic situations.

We can make as many fanciful equations to be associated with it but its just to make it appear fanciful as if it is relevant, because if equations are really relevant then we are just not including enough factors into the equations, and the factors involved are far more than we may realize we know.

Thus if we are not including enough factors into the equation to make the right analysis, can we claim that game theory analysis is valid?

It's like trying to compute what is e using the formula of mc instead of mc^2.


Let's say you're in a "massive stake" situation.
You are given 2 options to choose from:
Option A: Be given $1 trillion dollar worth of assets of your own choosing (in cash, or in gold, or in bitcoin, or in stocks, or in bonds, or in real estate, or a mixture of any of them) right away.
Option B: Your wife is killed right away.
Dilemma: If you choose one of them, the other one will be lost, i.e. if you choose Option B, you will lose Option A, and vice versa.
Which option will you choose?
Game theory does not factor in how materialistic you are, does not factor in how affectionate you are to your wife, does not factor in how merciful you are, does not factor in your current economic situation, etc etc etc.
But if game theory was to factor in all these factors of influence, the game theory would be much more complicated than it now is.
Most probably even you would not be interested to dabble in it by then.

Edit:
Sorry for any confusion. The options are supposed to say if you choose option A (i.e. be filthy rich), you will lose your wife. And if you choose option B (i.e. spare your wife), you will lose $1 trillion worth of wealth.

[OROBTC]

...

Tversky and Kahneman (two famous Israeli psychologists) have proven over and over again that humans very often do NOT behave rationally, for a variety of reasons.  Even in experiments where the mathematical parameters are pretty clear.  Even psychologists have fallen for the irrational choices in those experiments.

Lack of information is whole 'nother topic, yep responses can become even less rational (or at least less predictable) then.