2013-11-07 Yahoo: Bitcoin Foundation Responds To Cornell Study

[Arvicco]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-foundation-responds-doesnt-deny-132011632.html

[Barek]

What's interesting about the foundation's forthcoming response — or lack thereof — is how it will advance the debate over whether Bitcoin is a reliable non-sovereign internet currency, or merely the ultimate example of a fiat currency (that only exists because people believe in it) caught in a speculative bubble. Because if the Cornell researchers are right, and the people minting new Bitcoins can control the market for them, then Bitcoin is essentially worthless, because who would want to make transactions in a currency whose value was decided by a single entity?

Is Bitcoin really that hard to understand, or do people write this nonsense on purpose?

[fluidjax]

What's interesting about the foundation's forthcoming response — or lack thereof — is how it will advance the debate over whether Bitcoin is a reliable non-sovereign internet currency, or merely the ultimate example of a fiat currency (that only exists because people believe in it) caught in a speculative bubble. Because if the Cornell researchers are right, and the people minting new Bitcoins can control the market for them, then Bitcoin is essentially worthless, because who would want to make transactions in a currency whose value was decided by a single entity?

Is Bitcoin really that hard to understand, or do people write this nonsense on purpose?

Isn't this sarcasm?
A single entity, like a government?

[Barek]

Miners do not determine the value. It is the other way around. The value determines how many miners there are.

Mining costs money and everyone can do it. Competition will cause it to reach an equilibrium where mining is barely profitable.

The Cornell paper was about how a group of selfish cooperating miners can push away other miners. If that were to happen, the non-selfish miners would notice how their blocks would not make the chain and would react. Possibly by ignoring the selfish group, or by adding rules to the fork resolution. All the regular "consumer" would notice is slower confirmation time, because of wasted hashing effort.

The bold part makes no sense.

[420]

they didn't even put Gavin's words in a quote block

[odolvlobo]

[Gavin Andresen] doesn't specifically knock down the Cornell paper's central claim, which is that Bitcoin "miners," who create new Bitcoins by crunching code which churns out the currency according to a set formula that prevents inflation, could collapse the system by colluding until one group of collaborators owns a majority of all Bitcoins.

This demonstrates the author's lack of understanding. That is not the paper's claim.

[Gabi]