Replacing Bitcoin with something less wasteful (split from Is deepbit.com stealing coins?)

[Flip Tulipcoin]

I hate going through 3rd parties for payments. The two things that shouldn't exist in bitcoin are the mining pools and the exchanges. Reason is because they are making bitcoin centralized. All the BTC are going through the biggest exchanges and all the computing power is gathered together in the largest mining pools. If the banks felt threatened and bitcoin became outlawed all the exchanges would be shut down and you wouldn't be able to exchange your fiat for bitcoin. If the largest mining pools were hijacked then there is the possibility that the network could be overtaken because that's where the majority of the computing power is. We need a decentralized exchange and decentralized mining. When we have those things bitcoin will be much more stable in my opinion.

The problem is that mining pools are the only interesting option for people which doesn't have a mining rig.

The whole mining thing is the most elaborate and wasteful means of trickling out a new block every ten minutes or so that the human mind could devise, so far anyway  
As you rightly point out, the exchanges thwart the concept of decentralization.

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

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[Hawkix]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

[SgtSpike]

I hate going through 3rd parties for payments. The two things that shouldn't exist in bitcoin are the mining pools and the exchanges. Reason is because they are making bitcoin centralized. All the BTC are going through the biggest exchanges and all the computing power is gathered together in the largest mining pools. If the banks felt threatened and bitcoin became outlawed all the exchanges would be shut down and you wouldn't be able to exchange your fiat for bitcoin. If the largest mining pools were hijacked then there is the possibility that the network could be overtaken because that's where the majority of the computing power is. We need a decentralized exchange and decentralized mining. When we have those things bitcoin will be much more stable in my opinion.

The problem is that mining pools are the only interesting option for people which doesn't have a mining rig.

The whole mining thing is the most elaborate and wasteful means of trickling out a new block every ten minutes or so that the human mind could devise, so far anyway 
As you rightly point out, the exchanges thwart the concept of decentralization.

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

If you don't have mining, you have no way to protect against double-spend attacks, etc.  People could change the blockchain at will.  All of that "wasteful" mining ensures that no single person can change the blockchain record.

[Flip Tulipcoin]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

Good thinking inside the Bitcoin Box there. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like cryptography.

Why not a capacity-based mining metric as used in the distributed project software BOINC? "Earnings" are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed. If capacity is really not needed in the aggregate, you could level the playing field between the cell phone processor used at 99% and the energy-wasting dedicated red hot pig breath generator running at 99% or for that matter dial in any skewing of reward you might want to achieve.

The whole weird hack of the difficulty level makes it clear whats really going on. Set it to minimum and rework the mining block creation rate meter, which could be amenable to something as simple as a consensus-based peer to peer counter.

Right now the mining hack is a lovely illustration of the fallacy of composition. The more it's done the less is the return to each participant for their investment. At the other end, where everyone recognizes pointlessly compute-intensive mining just costs everyone more individually so that no one should do it, bitcoins aren't created. It's a truly ludicrous situation.

[grue]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

Good thinking inside the Bitcoin Box there. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like cryptography.

Why not a capacity-based mining metric as used in the distributed project software BOINC? "Earnings" are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed. If capacity is really not needed in the aggregate, you could level the playing field between the cell phone processor used at 99% and the energy-wasting dedicated red hot pig breath generator running at 99% or for that matter dial in any skewing of reward you might want to achieve.

The whole weird hack of the difficulty level makes it clear whats really going on. Set it to minimum and rework the mining block creation rate meter, which could be amenable to something as simple as a consensus-based peer to peer counter.

Right now the mining hack is a lovely illustration of the fallacy of composition. The more it's done the less is the return to each participant for their investment. At the other end, where everyone recognizes pointlessly compute-intensive mining just costs everyone more individually so that no one should do it, bitcoins aren't created. It's a truly ludicrous situation.

LOLNO

a BOINC-like system would require a central authority to verify the work, defeating the whole point of decentralization.

[Flip Tulipcoin]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

Good thinking inside the Bitcoin Box there. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like cryptography.

Why not a capacity-based mining metric as used in the distributed project software BOINC? "Earnings" are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed. If capacity is really not needed in the aggregate, you could level the playing field between the cell phone processor used at 99% and the energy-wasting dedicated red hot pig breath generator running at 99% or for that matter dial in any skewing of reward you might want to achieve.

The whole weird hack of the difficulty level makes it clear whats really going on. Set it to minimum and rework the mining block creation rate meter, which could be amenable to something as simple as a consensus-based peer to peer counter.

Right now the mining hack is a lovely illustration of the fallacy of composition. The more it's done the less is the return to each participant for their investment. At the other end, where everyone recognizes pointlessly compute-intensive mining just costs everyone more individually so that no one should do it, bitcoins aren't created. It's a truly ludicrous situation.

LOLNO

a BOINC-like system would require a central authority to verify the work, defeating the whole point of decentralization.

Why is that? Please elaborate. Peers benchmarking each other could do the verification. Once again, you are only telling us how Bitcoin works, it seems you are having trouble thinking outside that tiny little Bitcoin Box. ROTFLMFAO, what's the weather like in 2008?

[SgtSpike]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

Good thinking inside the Bitcoin Box there. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like cryptography.

Why not a capacity-based mining metric as used in the distributed project software BOINC? "Earnings" are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed. If capacity is really not needed in the aggregate, you could level the playing field between the cell phone processor used at 99% and the energy-wasting dedicated red hot pig breath generator running at 99% or for that matter dial in any skewing of reward you might want to achieve.

The whole weird hack of the difficulty level makes it clear whats really going on. Set it to minimum and rework the mining block creation rate meter, which could be amenable to something as simple as a consensus-based peer to peer counter.

Right now the mining hack is a lovely illustration of the fallacy of composition. The more it's done the less is the return to each participant for their investment. At the other end, where everyone recognizes pointlessly compute-intensive mining just costs everyone more individually so that no one should do it, bitcoins aren't created. It's a truly ludicrous situation.

LOLNO

a BOINC-like system would require a central authority to verify the work, defeating the whole point of decentralization.

Why is that? Please elaborate. Peers benchmarking each other could do the verification. Once again, you are only telling us how Bitcoin works, it seems you are having trouble thinking outside that tiny little Bitcoin Box. ROTFLMFAO, what's the weather like in 2008?

I am having trouble figuring out how such a system would work successfully.  It seems like you are describing Bitcoin when you say "'Earnings' are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed".  And then you say that you will even the playing field between a cell phone and a power generator.  How, exactly, would that be achieved?  Give the technical details!  Most "evening the playing field" ideas are shot down pretty quickly by people who figure out how to circumvent such measures.  The best you could do is to limit the computations to something that only CPU's can calculate, not GPUs, but that's not going to save much power.

And what about security?  If it only takes a few cell phones to do the calculations, what would stop someone with malicious intentions from calculating and broadcasting their own blockchain?  By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.  If you used a similar scheme, but limited the processing power behind the protection of said blockchain, it wouldn't be long before you'd start seeing 51% double-spend attacks on it.

[Flip Tulipcoin]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

Good thinking inside the Bitcoin Box there. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like cryptography.

Why not a capacity-based mining metric as used in the distributed project software BOINC? "Earnings" are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed. If capacity is really not needed in the aggregate, you could level the playing field between the cell phone processor used at 99% and the energy-wasting dedicated red hot pig breath generator running at 99% or for that matter dial in any skewing of reward you might want to achieve.

The whole weird hack of the difficulty level makes it clear whats really going on. Set it to minimum and rework the mining block creation rate meter, which could be amenable to something as simple as a consensus-based peer to peer counter.

Right now the mining hack is a lovely illustration of the fallacy of composition. The more it's done the less is the return to each participant for their investment. At the other end, where everyone recognizes pointlessly compute-intensive mining just costs everyone more individually so that no one should do it, bitcoins aren't created. It's a truly ludicrous situation.

LOLNO

a BOINC-like system would require a central authority to verify the work, defeating the whole point of decentralization.

Why is that? Please elaborate. Peers benchmarking each other could do the verification. Once again, you are only telling us how Bitcoin works, it seems you are having trouble thinking outside that tiny little Bitcoin Box. ROTFLMFAO, what's the weather like in 2008?

I am having trouble figuring out how such a system would work successfully.  It seems like you are describing Bitcoin when you say "'Earnings' are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed".  And then you say that you will even the playing field between a cell phone and a power generator.  How, exactly, would that be achieved?  Give the technical details!  Most "evening the playing field" ideas are shot down pretty quickly by people who figure out how to circumvent such measures.  The best you could do is to limit the computations to something that only CPU's can calculate, not GPUs, but that's not going to save much power.

And what about security?  If it only takes a few cell phones to do the calculations, what would stop someone with malicious intentions from calculating and broadcasting their own blockchain?  By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.  If you used a similar scheme, but limited the processing power behind the protection of said blockchain, it wouldn't be long before you'd start seeing 51% double-spend attacks on it.

By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.

No shit? To borrow a phrase from the mayor of Chicago, that's fucking retarded. Are you suggesting that this preposterous business of spinning wheels at ever increasing rates is necessary to maintain the security of the blockchain? If so, failure is inevitable. So many flaws, thanks for pointing this one out.

Give the technical details.
The means of benchmarking GPUs, FPGAs, or whatever are too obvious to waste space on, in fact the more heterogeneous the platforms, the better for having them cross-check each other. Besides, existence proofs are always compelling, witness the BOINC project does this for CPUs and GPUs as well and it is not centralized other than as a matter of recordkeeping convenience. Of course, the BOINC project generates work of tangible value, whereas bitcoin asks for unbounded resources just to barely keep itself going, so there's a shared interest in central recording in BOINC.

It's been said before, but Nakamoto was very prudent not to burn his real identity on a 1.0 prototype. He's obviously much more clever than the folks who have internalized his work as gospel, a silly thing to do with a wholly synthetic mathematical game.

[SgtSpike]

By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.

No shit? To borrow a phrase from the mayor of Chicago, that's fucking retarded. Are you suggesting that this preposterous business of spinning wheels at ever increasing rates is necessary to maintain the security of the blockchain? If so, failure is inevitable. So many flaws, thanks for pointing this one out.

Ok, bright and enlightened one, what is your solution?  I see nothing wrong with accepting the longest blockchain as the correct one.  I can think of no other way to successfully implement a decentralized account ledger.  You seem to be so ready to criticize Bitcoin's methods without offering up any solutions of your own.  Once you can solve all the problems that Bitcoin solves, people might start taking you seriously.

Give the technical details.
The means of benchmarking GPUs, FPGAs, or whatever are too obvious to waste space on, in fact the more heterogeneous the platforms, the better for having them cross-check each other. Besides, existence proofs are always compelling, witness the BOINC project does this for CPUs and GPUs as well and it is not centralized other than as a matter of recordkeeping convenience. Of course, the BOINC project generates work of tangible value, whereas bitcoin asks for unbounded resources just to barely keep itself going, so there's a shared interest in central recording in BOINC.

It's been said before, but Nakamoto was very prudent not to burn his real identity on a 1.0 prototype. He's obviously much more clever than the folks who have internalized his work as gospel, a silly thing to do with a wholly synthetic mathematical game.

What kind of jargon are you spouting off about here?  Way to completely generalize when I say "give details".   

Again, if you have a better system than Bitcoin, by all means, spill out the DETAILS.  Just saying "it'll use BOINC" isn't enough.  How would you create a public ledger that is unchangeable, yet decentralized?

[Flip Tulipcoin]

By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.

No shit? To borrow a phrase from the mayor of Chicago, that's fucking retarded. Are you suggesting that this preposterous business of spinning wheels at ever increasing rates is necessary to maintain the security of the blockchain? If so, failure is inevitable. So many flaws, thanks for pointing this one out.

Ok, bright and enlightened one, what is your solution?  I see nothing wrong with accepting the longest blockchain as the correct one.  I can think of no other way to successfully implement a decentralized account ledger.  You seem to be so ready to criticize Bitcoin's methods without offering up any solutions of your own.  Once you can solve all the problems that Bitcoin solves, people might start taking you seriously.

Give the technical details.
The means of benchmarking GPUs, FPGAs, or whatever are too obvious to waste space on, in fact the more heterogeneous the platforms, the better for having them cross-check each other. Besides, existence proofs are always compelling, witness the BOINC project does this for CPUs and GPUs as well and it is not centralized other than as a matter of recordkeeping convenience. Of course, the BOINC project generates work of tangible value, whereas bitcoin asks for unbounded resources just to barely keep itself going, so there's a shared interest in central recording in BOINC.

It's been said before, but Nakamoto was very prudent not to burn his real identity on a 1.0 prototype. He's obviously much more clever than the folks who have internalized his work as gospel, a silly thing to do with a wholly synthetic mathematical game.

What kind of jargon are you spouting off about here?  Way to completely generalize when I say "give details".   

Again, if you have a better system than Bitcoin, by all means, spill out the DETAILS.  Just saying "it'll use BOINC" isn't enough.  How would you create a public ledger that is unchangeable, yet decentralized?

Too funny! Ok, sonny, I won't trot out the string of degrees I have in mathematics, economics, and law. I won't cite my 30 years of experience in the financial services industry with 20 of that on Wall Street. I won't even discuss my role as one of the earliest implementors of the RSA cryptosystem in that industry. All that was a long time ago, I would pay people to do that stuff for me now had I not done so well as to be out of it completely. None of that is relevant in a world born yesterday.

In any case, the only practical value I see in bitcoin is as a transactional system.

I am sufficiently experienced to recognize that in the worst case a black box behavioral emulation of bitcoin as a transactional system could be built, perhaps out of as little as hamster wheels and rubber bands, perhaps more. Decentralized distributed data models are very common, there are many solutions to maintaining coherency in them. So on and so on. Yawn, been there, done that.

A really good way to not get sucked into the paradigms of a given tool set is to start with requirements. Rather than retype the work of others, I would suggest you take at look, FOR EXAMPLE ( just like BOINC is an EXAMPLE, you dingbat ) at this refined set of proposed requirements posted elsewhere on this forum:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54222.msg647423#msg647423

You shouldn't be surprised that the adults in the room are not taking bitcoin as seriously as it takes itself, many of them have seen a lot more than you have. Did I mention I knew some of the implementors of Flooz? 

[SgtSpike]

By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.

No shit? To borrow a phrase from the mayor of Chicago, that's fucking retarded. Are you suggesting that this preposterous business of spinning wheels at ever increasing rates is necessary to maintain the security of the blockchain? If so, failure is inevitable. So many flaws, thanks for pointing this one out.

Ok, bright and enlightened one, what is your solution?  I see nothing wrong with accepting the longest blockchain as the correct one.  I can think of no other way to successfully implement a decentralized account ledger.  You seem to be so ready to criticize Bitcoin's methods without offering up any solutions of your own.  Once you can solve all the problems that Bitcoin solves, people might start taking you seriously.

Give the technical details.
The means of benchmarking GPUs, FPGAs, or whatever are too obvious to waste space on, in fact the more heterogeneous the platforms, the better for having them cross-check each other. Besides, existence proofs are always compelling, witness the BOINC project does this for CPUs and GPUs as well and it is not centralized other than as a matter of recordkeeping convenience. Of course, the BOINC project generates work of tangible value, whereas bitcoin asks for unbounded resources just to barely keep itself going, so there's a shared interest in central recording in BOINC.

It's been said before, but Nakamoto was very prudent not to burn his real identity on a 1.0 prototype. He's obviously much more clever than the folks who have internalized his work as gospel, a silly thing to do with a wholly synthetic mathematical game.

What kind of jargon are you spouting off about here?  Way to completely generalize when I say "give details".   

Again, if you have a better system than Bitcoin, by all means, spill out the DETAILS.  Just saying "it'll use BOINC" isn't enough.  How would you create a public ledger that is unchangeable, yet decentralized?

Too funny! Ok, sonny, I won't trot out the string of degrees I have in mathematics, economics, and law. I won't cite my 30 years of experience in the financial services industry with 20 of that on Wall Street. I won't even discuss my role as one of the earliest implementors of the RSA cryptosystem in that industry. All that was a long time ago, I would pay people to do that stuff for me now had I not done so well as to be out of it completely. None of that is relevant in a world born yesterday.

In any case, the only practical value I see in bitcoin is as a transactional system.

I am sufficiently experienced to recognize that in the worst case a black box behavioral emulation of bitcoin as a transactional system could be built, perhaps out of as little as hamster wheels and rubber bands, perhaps more. Decentralized distributed data models are very common, there are many solutions to maintaining coherency in them. So on and so on. Yawn, been there, done that.

A really good way to not get sucked into the paradigms of a given tool set is to start with requirements. Rather than retype the work of others, I would suggest you take at look, FOR EXAMPLE ( just like BOINC is an EXAMPLE, you dingbat ) at this refined set of proposed requirements posted elsewhere on this forum:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54222.msg647423#msg647423

You shouldn't be surprised that the adults in the room are not taking bitcoin as seriously as it takes itself, many of them have seen a lot more than you have. Did I mention I knew some of the implementors of Flooz? 

Ok, so you have credentials and experience.  I applaud you.

Now with all of those degrees and years of experience, why have you STILL not come up with an answer to the question I continually present to you?  You criticize Bitcoin for its wastefulness of resources, but what sort of security would you put in place of raw hashing power?

Again:  How would you create a public ledger that is unchangeable, yet decentralized?

[Gabi]

Besides, existence proofs are always compelling, witness the BOINC project does this for CPUs and GPUs as well and it is not centralized other than as a matter of recordkeeping convenience.

Makes no sense, BOINC is very centralized, it must rely on a central system to feed it with Work Unit to crunch.

[Flip Tulipcoin]

By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.

Again:  How would you create a public ledger that is unchangeable, yet decentralized?

Why, a blockchain based on cryptography, Mr. Bitcoin, of course. There's no other answer, nor could there possibly ever be one.

Now that I've given the correct answer to your straw question, you tell me why having the required computing power needed to maintain that blockchain must be an artificially rigged game that is completely open-ended with respect to required capacity?

Keep it short, I'll be interviewing someone else shortly. Thanks for your time, I sometimes find it amusing to be patronized by inferior people.

[Flip Tulipcoin]

Besides, existence proofs are always compelling, witness the BOINC project does this for CPUs and GPUs as well and it is not centralized other than as a matter of recordkeeping convenience.

Makes no sense, BOINC is very centralized, it must rely on a central system to feed it with Work Unit to crunch.

That's only because BOINC does interesting and useful computing work from many fields, hence it's actually connected to reality and not a self contained game simulation featuring performance of the same simple operation over and over like the computing done in bitcoin. Spin those wheels, little hamster, spin! 

[Maged]

Flip Tulipcoin, I understand exactly what you're suggesting. Thus, here's a much more specific question: how would you combat the potential for a sybil attack, without the assumption that every client must be connected to the network at all times?

[SgtSpike]

By default, the Bitcoin client accepts whichever chain is the longest as the "correct" blockchain.

Again:  How would you create a public ledger that is unchangeable, yet decentralized?

Why, a blockchain based on cryptography, Mr. Bitcoin, of course. There's no other answer, nor could there possibly ever be one.

Now that I've given the correct answer to your straw question, you tell me why having the required computing power needed to maintain that blockchain must be an artificially rigged game that is completely open-ended with respect to required capacity?

Keep it short, I'll be interviewing someone else shortly. Thanks for your time, I sometimes find it amusing to be patronized by inferior people.

1)  Who maintains the blockchain based on cryptography?  If it is decentralized, what criteria would clients use to determine whether the blockchain is legitimate or not?  Obviously, anyone could create their own blockchain, then broadcast it in an attempt to "rewrite" history.  If the amount of computational power it takes to write a blockchain is artificially limited, then it can easily be overwritten by anyone with computing power greater than the artificial limit.
2)  The computing power is necessary to prevent someone from having an equal or greater amount of computing power.
3)  Inferior people?  If you really are as old as you say you are, learn some respect.  It makes you look pretty childish when you throw out insults like that.

[DeathAndTaxes]

So, there's two requirements for Bitcoin 2.0, or the replacement for Bitcoin 1.0
1. Eliminate wasteful mining driven by computing capacity.
2. Decentralize the currency exchange function.

#1 is easy, #2 not so...

Oh, RLY? #1 is not easy. There must be proof of work to ensure the validity of blockchain.

Good thinking inside the Bitcoin Box there. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like cryptography.

Why not a capacity-based mining metric as used in the distributed project software BOINC? "Earnings" are based on your percentage of commitment of a benchmarked resource as well as total capacity contributed. If capacity is really not needed in the aggregate, you could level the playing field between the cell phone processor used at 99% and the energy-wasting dedicated red hot pig breath generator running at 99% or for that matter dial in any skewing of reward you might want to achieve.

The whole weird hack of the difficulty level makes it clear whats really going on. Set it to minimum and rework the mining block creation rate meter, which could be amenable to something as simple as a consensus-based peer to peer counter.

Who sets the capacity limit? Who make a cellphone and quad 6990 rig "level".  How do they do that?  

Now rethink this theory uses decentralized network.

Right now the mining hack is a lovely illustration of the fallacy of composition. The more it's done the less is the return to each participant for their investment. At the other end, where everyone recognizes pointlessly compute-intensive mining just costs everyone more individually so that no one should do it, bitcoins aren't created. It's a truly ludicrous situation.

Now you are just talking in circles.  Neither extreme has to exist.  Enough people mine so the network is strong enough.  If more people mine profitability declines and some people drop out restoring equilibrium.  If less people mine then profitability goes up and thus more people mine restoring equilibrium.  As economic activity of the network rises scarcity drives up the price of BTC in fiat terms increasing the revenue to the miners thus encouraging more mining and stronger network.

[bithobo]

When medicine advances enough, maybe we'll finally make a currency that fuels itself on our Oxytocin production

[grue]

In any case, the only practical value I see in bitcoin is as a transactional system.

WELL NO SHIT? bitcoin is all about transactions

I am sufficiently experienced to recognize that in the worst case a black box behavioral emulation of bitcoin as a transactional system could be built, perhaps out of as little as hamster wheels and rubber bands, perhaps more. Decentralized distributed data models are very common, there are many solutions to maintaining coherency in them. So on and so on. Yawn, been there, done that.

so it's ok to think centralized, but it's not ok to think decentralized? weren't you the one asking people to think outside the ox?  

A really good way to not get sucked into the paradigms of a given tool set is to start with requirements. Rather than retype the work of others, I would suggest you take at look, FOR EXAMPLE ( just like BOINC is an EXAMPLE, you dingbat ) at this refined set of proposed requirements posted elsewhere on this forum:

bionic "credits" are more for show than anything else. even then, it relies on a central server to keep tally.

Too funny! Ok, sonny, I won't trot out the string of degrees I have in mathematics, economics, and law. I won't cite my 30 years of experience in the financial services industry with 20 of that on Wall Street. I won't even discuss my role as one of the earliest implementors of the RSA cryptosystem in that industry. All that was a long time ago, I would pay people to do that stuff for me now had I not done so well as to be out of it completely. None of that is relevant in a world born yesterday.

I would like to see references to that.

inb4 you ragequit because you think it's not worth your precious time. when really, you're just afraid of losing.

[Flip Tulipcoin]

Flip Tulipcoin, I understand exactly what you're suggesting. Thus, here's a much more specific question: how would you combat the potential for a sybil attack, without the assumption that every client must be connected to the network at all times?

How close a sibling are we talking about? Would a sibling attacker have, say, private keys known only to it's sibling? I don't mean to be circular, but how a node's "identity" is defined would be some persistent property of the node when disconnected from the network and verifiable by other nodes during the time the first node is connected. Other nodes must a recollection of the identity, such as a public key, to validate a signature exchange. Consensus of all participants validating each other on an ongoing basis with changing keys would probably be a part of it, as it would make flooding the network with confederates who would validate an attacker ineffective.

Handling failure of consensus is an implementation issue I would have to break down to use cases. If there's an overarching simple answer, I'm not seeing it.

The property of identity itself need only persist between connections, not forever. Although I dislike the SecureID system for various reasons, their implementation of object authentication requires that an object's identity be "freshened" by occasional connection to the network, it is not a static property. Now if only their token database wasn't centralized maybe they wouldn't have gotten hacked so easily this past year.