Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

It is true that we can't simply rely on charity for full nodes. There has to be an incentive structure.

Justus wrote about it at length and even propose a brilliant (imho) solution:

http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/2015/01/21/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-1-scarcity/
http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/2015/02/09/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-2-price-discovery/

Justus's seminal work on incentivizing full nodes will take some time to be assimilated into the mainstream of the community, but I think it will have to be. Either through some high-powered explanatory tool or by the market forcing it on everyone when rubber meets road, which will be unsettling for many.

Speaking of high-powered explanatory tools, it would be great if there were a sort of "hard money wiki/FAQ," for lack of a better term, that explains the economic points often raised in this thread for a general (Bitcoin-conversant) audience. Not just why Bitcoin is replacing gold, though that's a core part of it, but all the points about incentives and economics that are are typically misunderstood in the wider community. Things like Money as Memory, the role of investors ("who controls Bitcoin?"), why Bitcoin is more valuable as a store of value than as a digital currency, how and why to introduce market economics to fee payment, node incentivization, etc. etc. Instead of a traditional wiki format, I'm a big fan of prezi.com's platform for visual explanations. In that format it could serve as a visual background for hundreds of easy-to-produce videos where someone is simply explaining a bite-sized point while using one small aspect of the larger Prezi wiki, effectively narrating it.

Without such a visual communication medium and readily-producible videos, I think the explanatory load to actually educate the larger community about economics and such is just too much. The Nakamoto Institute is doing pretty well, but relying solely on essays is too slow in Bitcoin time for the permeation of understanding that it would be ideal to have.

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[sickpig]

Justus's seminal work on incentivizing full nodes will take some time to be assimilated into the mainstream of the community, but I think it will have to be. Either through some high-powered explanatory tool or by the market forcing it on everyone when rubber meets road, which will be unsettling for many.

Speaking of high-powered explanatory tools, it would be great if there were a sort of "hard money wiki/FAQ," for lack of a better term, that explains the economic points often raised in this thread for a general (Bitcoin-conversant) audience. Not just why Bitcoin is replacing gold, though that's a core part of it, but all the points about incentives and economics that are are typically misunderstood in the wider community. Things like Money as Memory, the role of investors ("who controls Bitcoin?"), why Bitcoin is more valuable as a store of value than as a digital currency, how and why to introduce market economics to fee payment, node incentivization, etc. etc. Instead of a traditional wiki format, I'm a big fan of prezi.com's platform for visual explanations. In that format it could serve as a visual background for hundreds of easy-to-produce videos where someone is simply explaining a bite-sized point while using one small aspect of the larger Prezi wiki, effectively narrating it.

I don't even know if core the developers and other "inner" influential community members have the right level of awareness, I've even asked Justus if he had the chance to talk with some of the aforementioned people  about is proposal, this is Justus'  answer:

Secondly, as of your knowledge, are the core devs aware of this issue? Do they agree with the given definition of the problem? And more to the point, is there a plan to develop something along the line of your proposed solution?

To the best of my knowledge, they are aware of it. None of them have commented, however.

I don't know of any immediate, specific plans to implement this.

Without such a visual communication medium and readily-producible videos, I think the explanatory load to actually educate the larger community about economics and such is just too much. The Nakamoto Institute is doing pretty well, but relying solely on essays is too slow in Bitcoin time for the permeation of understanding that it would be ideal to have.

I agree we need to accelerate the assimilation and the understanding of those concepts at least among those people that can influence bitcoin development trajectory.

[sickpig]

Speaking about recent Justus' activity I forgot to mention "Reusable payment codes":

https://github.com/justusranvier/rfc/blob/payment_code/bips/bip-pc01.mediawiki

This link contains an RFC for a new type of Bitcoin address called a "payment code"

Payment codes are SPV-friendly alternatives to DarkWallet-style stealth addresses which provide useful features such as positively identifying senders to recipients and automatically providing for transaction refunds.

Payment codes can be publicly advertised and associated with a real-life identity without causing a loss of financial privacy.

Compared to stealth addresses, payment codes require less blockchain data storage.

Payment codes require 65 bytes of OP_RETURN data per sender-recipient pair, while stealth addresses require 40 bytes per transaction.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I believe the core devs, at least from what I have seen, are not especially astute as far as the economics. They are a lot better than average, don't get me wrong, but not to the level I personally would be comfortable with. I suppose it falls on those who do understand to convey that understanding in debate.

Therefore I wouldn't expect them to take to Justus's proposal at first, as it's quite a big jump conceptually toward a free market approach, but on the other hand I think things become clearer when scarcity actually presents itself. It would be nice, of course, to have that level of clarity in place well before things reach a critical stage.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Any idea what is accounting for this very steady transaction growth? Shopping? Dark markets? Gambling? Some kind of game?

A good read on the subject here:

http://www.ofnumbers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Slicing-data.pdf

Very nice collection of data. Unfortunately, Swanson doesn't understand the store of value function of Bitcoin, much like Vitalik Buterin fails to, which really precludes all coherent understand of what Bitcoin is and does. As cypher keeps saying, most people will lose money in this space. Misunderstandings like theirs are a big reason why. We will keep seeing wild goose chases in the form of altcoins that end at zero.

[iCEBREAKER]

It is true that we can't simply rely on charity for full nodes. There has to be an incentive structure.

Justus wrote about it at length and even propose a brilliant (imho) solution:

http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/2015/01/21/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-1-scarcity/
http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/2015/02/09/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-2-price-discovery/

Justus' market-based self-adjusting incentive mechanisms are very well though out.

It's a great idea...for an alt coin.  I will buy the shit out of JustusCoin, especially if it uses the Cryptonote/Monero codebase for privacy.

As for bolting JustusNodes onto BTC, it ain't gonna happen.  Such a massive change to the existing social contract is correctly perceived as an attack and will be defended against from the high ground of antifragility.

If BTC forks/splits in the manner of a firm awarding existing shareholders new shares in a spin-off venture, I will be making quite a lot of popcorn in anticipation of the fireworks to follow.   

[Peter R]

...
Speaking of high-powered explanatory tools, it would be great if there were a sort of "hard money wiki/FAQ," for lack of a better term, that explains the economic points often raised in this thread for a general (Bitcoin-conversant) audience. Not just why Bitcoin is replacing gold, though that's a core part of it, but all the points about incentives and economics that are are typically misunderstood in the wider community. Things like Money as Memory, the role of investors ("who controls Bitcoin?"), why Bitcoin is more valuable as a store of value than as a digital currency, how and why to introduce market economics to fee payment, node incentivization, etc. etc. Instead of a traditional wiki format, I'm a big fan of prezi.com's platform for visual explanations. In that format it could serve as a visual background for hundreds of easy-to-produce videos where someone is simply explaining a bite-sized point while using one small aspect of the larger Prezi wiki, effectively narrating it.

Without such a visual communication medium and readily-producible videos, I think the explanatory load to actually educate the larger community about economics and such is just too much. The Nakamoto Institute is doing pretty well, but relying solely on essays is too slow in Bitcoin time for the permeation of understanding that it would be ideal to have.

Nice idea, ZB!

I think a Prezi or animated video just on the evolution of money, from the "money as memory" perspective, would be a helpful start.  The video could begin using Wences Casares' example of the tribal people giving away buffalo meat in exchange for a future favour (ledger stored in the tribal memory), to the need for an analog ledger (based on gold) when human trade patterns became more complex, to paper money more recently, and finally to bitcoin implementing Kocherlakota's money-as-memory function almost exactly. 

I'd contribute a coin or two, and perhaps help with the script, if someone wanted to drive this forward. 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I think a Prezi or animated video just on the evolution of money, from the "money as memory" perspective, would be a helpful start.  The video could begin using Wences Casares' example of the tribal people giving away buffalo meat in exchange for a future favour (ledger stored in the tribal memory), to the need for an analog ledger (based on gold) when human trade patterns became more complex, to paper money more recently, and finally to bitcoin implementing Kocherlakota's money-as-memory function almost exactly.  

I'd contribute a coin or two, and perhaps help with the script, if someone wanted to drive this forward.

That would be excellent, probably the best first area of coverage for this, though I do like Xapo's video quite a bit on that point, almost as is.

One thing I think a prezi can be really great for - though I've never seen it used this way - is for answering or anticipating objections. In running text (or video) you have to address each objection sequentially. Everyone who doesn't have those particular objections has to skip around through visual scanning and skimming. Ultimately you either present something that answers every little thing a newbie might wonder and puts off people with more familiarity, or you skip details and leave much of the audience in the dark or with a distorted view.

Especially with regard to economics, you have people who understand basically nothing, people who understand the micro aspects that the mainstream gets right (and usually believe mainstream macro), people who are pretty up on Austrian-style economics, right on up to people for whom almost every economic point needs to only be hinted at for them to get it. That's can be a daunting problem for a presentation to a broad audience.

With a wiki structure you can address this to a degree, but there's that "trivial inconvenience" of clicking through to a new page that isn't really so trivial. With a visual wiki structure like in Prezi you can make it a simply matter of zooming in with the scroll wheel on any point that you need more clarification on or have objections to. And if you have an objection to the answer, you can zoom in more and get that concern addressed as well. Zoom back out to return to the original context, and even zoom out further at any time to see where the thing you are looking at fits into the big picture. And if you're already convinced of the point in question, you never even have to know that additional content exists.

It's actually quite easy to set up and add to such a prezi, since they can be freely forked. Just click "Save a copy" and start adding your own changes. Perhaps Github could be used to track the versions if it gets that complex, but initially with only a few people working on it that shouldn't be a big deal.

Speaking from experience of using prezis in debates, I've found I can often slap together a decent one in as little as 20 minutes. Usually no more than an hour or two. And almost every time I've done this the payoff in the debate has been incredible. It's a very high-leverage tool for the time it takes, and I find myself referring back to them over the years, modifying them as needed, etc. You do have to have your thoughts quite well organized to do it effectively, though.

As far as turning it into video(s), I think that could be a natural outgrowth of creating such a visual wiki. Once enough detail is there, making videos of the unpolished kind becomes almost trivial. As for polished ones, I can't really speak from experience but I imagine it would be quite a help. I lean toward thinking that with the amount of content that needs to be covered it may be too much to make a bunch of polished videos. Prezi looks polished and interesting enough on-screen that simply narrating over it can look pretty nice. It's not super-flashy but it gets the job done as far as explanatory power and succinctness while helping the viewer keep track of context.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Paul Sztorc rips into Ethereum and Proof-of-Stake. He continues in more posts below. Pretty vicious

[lebing]

If the idea is to convey conceptual ideas to the devs, then I agree that a wiki is the best way to do so. If its to a broader audience then a prezi can be a very powerful tool for doing so, but usually only within the context of some speech or as mentioned above, debate. Videos are best for reaching the widest audience possible but much of the nuance will be more difficult to convey.

[cypherdoc]

Paul Sztorc rips into Ethereum and Proof-of-Stake. He continues in more posts below. Pretty vicious

Paul Sztorc has no business talking while attempting to leach off Bitcoin by pre-selling his altcoin via SC's.

[Erdogan]

An economic Wiki? So we have to go through all discussions once more, and now with a Wikimaster to worry about?

[marcus_of_augustus]

Bitcoin is a meta-layer for settlement systems, let's keep the politically-driven social sciences, like "economics", out of it

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

An economic Wiki? So we have to go through all discussions once more, and now with a Wikimaster to worry about?

I didn't have anything like that in mind. I was simply thinking it would be useful if someone or maybe a few people would build some kind of wiki like described above and then some people might copy and expand it if it was agreeable. A wiki in terms of format, not in terms of Wikipedia-style politics (perhaps I am using the wrong term; more like "a FAQ for recurring topics in thread insofar as there is a general loose consensus"). In practice it's probably something mostly one person would probably start, and if they made the foundation solid enough and agreeable enough there would probably be some people copying/adding to it.

[justusranvier]

As for bolting JustusNodes onto BTC, it ain't gonna happen.  Such a massive change to the existing social contract is correctly perceived as an attack and will be defended against from the high ground of antifragility.

That's an unwarranted amount of drama and also inaccurate.

The P2P network design is not part of Bitcoin the protocol.

Most likely what would happen is that nodes would support both paying and non-paying connections, and devote more bandwidth to the peers that were willing to pay.

Users would figure out that if they allocated a small budget to their SPV clients, their connections to the network would be more reliable so those who could afford it would do so.

That's all it would take to get started.

[justusranvier]

Bitcoin is a meta-layer for settlement systems, let's keep the politically-driven social sciences, like "economics", out of it

That sounds like VC doublespeak.

Bitcoin is money.

It's what let markets resistant to politically-driven social sciences.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Paul Sztorc rips into Ethereum and Proof-of-Stake. He continues in more posts below. Pretty vicious

Paul Sztorc has no business talking while attempting to leach off Bitcoin by pre-selling his altcoin via SC's.

I don't know what he's doing with Truthcoin (he's a total Bitcoin "maximalist" as far as I know, a famous hater of altcoins so that would be unexpected, but I don't keep up on his project), but it doesn't change the validity of his arguments in this case.

I can overlook Sztorc's quirks as long as he continues to nail enough of the important points. Beggars can't be choosers.

[cypherdoc]

hmmm.  i wonder if Gavin is putting his foot down:

https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcoin-git/commit/5f46da29fd02fd2a8a787286fd6a56f680073770

[marcus_of_augustus]

Bitcoin is a meta-layer for settlement systems, let's keep the politically-driven social sciences, like "economics", out of it.

That sounds like VC doublespeak.

Far from it. Though I expect each can approach it on their chosen level and interpret it through familiar lens filters, however limiting and distorted that may prove to be.

[cypherdoc]

hmmm.  i wonder if Gavin is putting his foot down:

https://github.com/gavinandresen/bitcoin-git/commit/5f46da29fd02fd2a8a787286fd6a56f680073770

eh, looks like he's serious.  i, for one, support him:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/34riua/hard_fork_allow_20mb_blocks_after_1_march_2016/cqxfpni