rpietila Calling the Bottom

[spazzdla]

64-65, 2016 will be the bottom IMO.

[cbeast]

64-65, 2016 will be the bottom IMO.

That's a pretty wide spread there. You want to narrow it down a bit?

[nanobrain]

Oh Jorge....this sort of stuff is the equivalent of drawing a cartoon of Muhammad with coke and hookers.

That's way too low even for Jorge. He's often wrong but he can't be that dumb. You need hard work to equal such level of obnoxious stupidity.

I'm a big fan of Jorge's, he doesn't hide behind a pseudonym, he actually has credentials in the field and (most importantly) he has been proved correct more often than wrong in this forum.

My post was mocking the cultists and of course people like you, who resort to adhoms as the first line of defence when their views are challenged.

As Shroomsy would say, "welcome to ignore"

[Feri22]

64-65, 2016 will be the bottom IMO.

That's a pretty wide spread there. You want to narrow it down a bit?

LOL, this is really hilarious  

But if we will go sub 100 in the year of reward halving, then i think we really failed

[N12]

Rpietila promised me $10k coin by last Christmas.  Are we still on track?

You remember wrong.

It was 300k USD. Not even kidding.

What possible reason will there be for no more speculation or hoarding in a currency that is designed specifically for that?

The white paper does not mention that, does it?  The declared purpose of bitcoin was to be a currency for e-payments, not a get-rich-by-sittng-on-it instrument.  Given that goal, making the supply fixed probably was a mistake, as economists keep saying (after all, "Satoshi" was a computer scientist, not an economist.)

Besides perhaps the mistaken notion that the inflation of national currencies is a bad thing, the fixed money supply is something that a computer scientist would have chosen for ease of implementation.  An unbounded money supply would have been a pain to program; he could not have used a fixed block and transition layout with 64-bit long ints, he would have needed a variable-length multiword integer, in the layout and in the implementation.

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.  Take, for example, the abrupt halving of the reward every 4 years: it is a source of instability and uncertainty, the 2016 halving is already having people worried now.  Why didn't he specify a more gradual decrease, that would give the same 0.5 factor in 4 years but in small monthly steps? The only reason I can think of is that it would have required another page or two of source code, and a table of 48 steps, properly rounded, and another paragraph in the white paper...

Oh Jorge....this sort of stuff is the equivalent of drawing a cartoon of Muhammad with coke and hookers: criticising Satoshi will have the cultists calling Fatwah on you

"All hail Satoshi"

Je suis Jorge Stolfi.

[JorgeStolfi]

often wrong but he can't be that dumb. You need hard work to equal such level of obnoxious stupidity.

Indeed, my apologies.  The long int size cannot be the explanation for the 21 million BTC limit.  

21 million BTC times 10^8 satoshis per BTC is 2'100'000'000'000'000 sat, much less than 2^64.  

It is just a little less than 2^51 = 2'251'799'813'685'248.  

A double-precision float in 64-bit IEEE format can represent exactly all unsigned integers up to 2^53.
Some languages (e.g. GNU Awk) use IEEE doubles as the default (or only) numeric format.  

It is good practice to leave a couple of extra bits in the representation of a quantity, to reduce the risk of overflow during computations,
e.g. in 'x = 3*amount/4'.

If the maximum number of satoshis had been set to exactly 2^51 (or 2^51 - 1), the initial block reward would have had to be a
fractional number of BTC, even if the halving period was set to a funny number like 225179 intead of the round 210000.

In other words, 50 BTC/block and halving every 210000 blocks are two round numbers that happen to result in a total number of satoshis just under 2^51.

EDIT: The exact number of satoshis that will ever be created is claimed to be 2'099'999'997'690'000, but I haven't checked that.

[mmortal03]

Besides perhaps the mistaken notion that the inflation of national currencies is a bad thing,

Can we not have both? National currencies without a fixed supply, and Bitcoin with?

the fixed money supply is something that a computer scientist would have chosen for ease of implementation.  An unbounded money supply would have been a pain to program; he could not have used a fixed block and transition layout with 64-bit long ints, he would have needed a variable-length multiword integer, in the layout and in the implementation.

I don't buy it. I haven't read all the old correspondences, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't having a fixed money supply something that was discussed in moneypunk/cypherpunk circles?

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.

 
This is disingenuous. Many ideas aren't meant to be more than an experiment, until they work.

Take, for example, the abrupt halving of the reward every 4 years: it is a source of instability and uncertainty, the 2016 halving is already having people worried now.  Why didn't he specify a more gradual decrease, that would give the same 0.5 factor in 4 years but in small monthly steps? The only reason I can think of is that it would have required another page or two of source code, and a table of 48 steps, properly rounded, and another paragraph in the white paper...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2in8fv/why_did_satoshi_implement_drastic_halving/

[JorgeStolfi]

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.

 
This is disingenuous. Many ideas aren't meant to be more than an experiment, until they work.

But bitcoin is not an idea, it is a specific implementation of an idea (albeit with some flexibility).  

"A heavier-than-air vehicle with internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings can be made to fly" -- that was an idea.

The Wright Brothers' Flyer One was an implementation of that idea.

That idea was indeed the basis of modern air transport and warfare.  

The Wrights Brothers' implementation was just a technical experiment, that aimed to show that the idea could work.  

Many more experiments, lots of incremental improvements, and a couple of revolutionary inventions were still needed before that idea could become a commercial product.

[Wandererfromthenorth]

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.

Very interesting. Thanks for the analysis. That is precisely my thinking too (that "it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment").

[bitcoin_bagholder]

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.

 
This is disingenuous. Many ideas aren't meant to be more than an experiment, until they work.

But bitcoin is not an idea, it is a specific implementation of an idea (albeit with some flexibility).  

"A heavier-than-air vehicle with internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings can be made to fly" -- that was an idea.

The Wright Brothers' Flyer One was an implementation of that idea.

That idea was indeed the basis of modern air transport and warfare.  

The Wrights Brothers' implementation was just a technical experiment, that aimed to show that the idea could work.  

Many more experiments, lots of incremental improvements, and a couple of revolutionary inventions were still needed before that idea could become a commercial product.

However bitcoin isn't the first cryptocurrency experiment.

[cbeast]

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.

 
This is disingenuous. Many ideas aren't meant to be more than an experiment, until they work.

But bitcoin is not an idea, it is a specific implementation of an idea (albeit with some flexibility).  

"A heavier-than-air vehicle with internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings can be made to fly" -- that was an idea.

The Wright Brothers' Flyer One was an implementation of that idea.

That idea was indeed the basis of modern air transport and warfare.  

The Wrights Brothers' implementation was just a technical experiment, that aimed to show that the idea could work.  

Many more experiments, lots of incremental improvements, and a couple of revolutionary inventions were still needed before that idea could become a commercial product.

However bitcoin isn't the first cryptocurrency experiment.

internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings

And each of these hasn't changed much in the last hundred years.

[JorgeStolfi]

However bitcoin isn't the first cryptocurrency experiment.

But the Flyer One wasn't the first heavier-than-air experiment either.

It may have been only the first to fly for a non-trivial amount of time.  

Just like bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency protocol that could actually run in a self-sustained way.

internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings

And each of these hasn't changed much in the last hundred years.

Even the simplest crop duster has many essential improvements over the Flyer One, and would not be viable without them.  

I can't think of one real application that the Flyer One could have been good enough for.

[cbeast]

However bitcoin isn't the first cryptocurrency experiment.

But the Flyer One wasn't the first heavier-than-air experiment either.

It may have been only the first to fly for a non-trivial amount of time.  

Just like bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency protocol that could actually run in a self-sustained way.

internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings

And each of these hasn't changed much in the last hundred years.

Even the simplest crop duster has many essential improvements over the Flyer One, and would not be viable without them.  

I can't think of one real application that the Flyer One could have been good enough for.

You can push an analogy only so far. Bitcoin has been making incremental improvements for 6 years. It now has armor plating, fly-by-wire, and a Rolls-Royce turboprop. All it needs is a decentralized market for navigation and it will fly through any kind of turbulence.

[nanobrain]

Rpietila promised me $10k coin by last Christmas.  Are we still on track?

You remember wrong.

It was 300k USD. Not even kidding.

What possible reason will there be for no more speculation or hoarding in a currency that is designed specifically for that?

The white paper does not mention that, does it?  The declared purpose of bitcoin was to be a currency for e-payments, not a get-rich-by-sittng-on-it instrument.  Given that goal, making the supply fixed probably was a mistake, as economists keep saying (after all, "Satoshi" was a computer scientist, not an economist.)

Besides perhaps the mistaken notion that the inflation of national currencies is a bad thing, the fixed money supply is something that a computer scientist would have chosen for ease of implementation.  An unbounded money supply would have been a pain to program; he could not have used a fixed block and transition layout with 64-bit long ints, he would have needed a variable-length multiword integer, in the layout and in the implementation.

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.  Take, for example, the abrupt halving of the reward every 4 years: it is a source of instability and uncertainty, the 2016 halving is already having people worried now.  Why didn't he specify a more gradual decrease, that would give the same 0.5 factor in 4 years but in small monthly steps? The only reason I can think of is that it would have required another page or two of source code, and a table of 48 steps, properly rounded, and another paragraph in the white paper...

Oh Jorge....this sort of stuff is the equivalent of drawing a cartoon of Muhammad with coke and hookers: criticising Satoshi will have the cultists calling Fatwah on you

"All hail Satoshi"

Je suis Jorge Stolfi.

Brilliant Blitz, you've still got it

I'm having that one!! 
       |
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       V

[mmortal03]

That is only one of many details in the protocol that suggest that it was never meant to be more than a computer experiment.

 
This is disingenuous. Many ideas aren't meant to be more than an experiment, until they work.

But bitcoin is not an idea, it is a specific implementation of an idea (albeit with some flexibility).  

"A heavier-than-air vehicle with internal combustion engine, propellers, and fixed wings can be made to fly" -- that was an idea.

The Wright Brothers' Flyer One was an implementation of that idea.

That idea was indeed the basis of modern air transport and warfare.  

The Wrights Brothers' implementation was just a technical experiment, that aimed to show that the idea could work.  

Many more experiments, lots of incremental improvements, and a couple of revolutionary inventions were still needed before that idea could become a commercial product.

Two things:

1.) It's like you're arbitrarily defining some kind of universal limitation on the success of Bitcoin because of, or due to the lack of, perfection in some quality that doesn't require perfection to function. (see the perfectionist fallacy: http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/ct/ch06/glossary.htm )

2.) This also reminds me of the intentional fallacy: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/289889/intentional-fallacy

[JorgeStolfi]

It's like you're arbitrarily defining some kind of universal limitation on the success of Bitcoin because of, or due to the lack of, perfection in some quality that doesn't require perfection to function. (see the perfectionist fallacy: http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/ct/ch06/glossary.htm )

No, nothing that abstract.  I belive that bitcoin cannot be more than a great technical experiment, because:

* The protocol has one fatal flaw: it inevitably leads to centralization of mining in a few large corporations, who then have nearly unlimited power over the system, and must be trusted not to abuse of their power.  It is a fatal flaw because it negates the very goal of the protocol ("decentralized trustless"), and no one knows how to fix it.  It seems that another genial invention will be needed to fix that flaw.

* The protocol has many defects that make it unsuitable or uncompetitive for the applications that have been (retroactively) proposed for it.  For example, the bounded supply led to expectations of astronomical value increases,  which induced extreme hoarding of the coin, which made its speculative price rise to 100x its utilitarian value, which caused mining to become 100x more expensive than it should be, which meant 15$ cost per transaction, ... Also, I do not consider the "pay to script" feature worth the complexity that it adds to the blockchain.  The cost structure is such that it invites spamming of the blockchain with bogus transactions and messages that have nothing to do with its payment function.   The distributed organization limits its response time.  The block reward should decrease gradually, instead of being abruptly cut by half every 4 years.  The transaction fees should perhaps be required from the start.   The organization of the ledger as a linear chain means very long 'sync' times for low-end clients. And many more.  These flaws are not fatal, because they do not invalidate the goal stated in the white paper, and could be fixed in a new iteration.  But they cannot all be fixed now in the current blockchain.

* Finally, it is not clear to me that the world really needs a payment system like bitcoin.  Its expected virtues, of liberating people from oppressive regimes and from excessive bank fees, have yet to be demonstrated (or have already been debunked).  On the other hand, bitcoin has been eagerly adopted by criminals and scammers, precisely for those features  that were supposed to be virtues.  Perhaps the invention of crypto-currencies was not so much like the invention of electricty or the internet, but more like the invention of firearms, or of crack cocaine.

[cbeast]

It's like you're arbitrarily defining some kind of universal limitation on the success of Bitcoin because of, or due to the lack of, perfection in some quality that doesn't require perfection to function. (see the perfectionist fallacy: http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/ct/ch06/glossary.htm )

No, nothing that abstract.  I belive that bitcoin cannot be more than a great technical experiment, because:

You are such a dualist.

[windpath]

...

* The protocol has many defects that make it unsuitable or uncompetitive for the applications that have been (retroactively) proposed for it.  For example, the bounded supply led to expectations of astronomical value increases,  which induced extreme hoarding of the coin, which made its speculative price rise to 100x its utilitarian value, which caused mining to become 100x more expensive than it should be, which meant 15$ cost per transaction, ... Also, I do not consider the "pay to script" feature worth the complexity that it adds to the blockchain.  The cost structure is such that it invites spamming of the blockchain with bogus transactions and messages that have nothing to do with its payment function.   The distributed organization limits its response time.  The block reward should decrease gradually, instead of being abruptly cut by half every 4 years.  The transaction fees should perhaps be required from the start.   The organization of the ledger as a linear chain means very long 'sync' times for low-end clients. And many more.  These flaws are not fatal, because they do not invalidate the goal stated in the white paper, and could be fixed in a new iteration.  But they cannot all be fixed now in the current blockchain.
...

There was nothing retroactive above the proposals for escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc. I'll just quote the rest:

The design supports a tremendous variety of possible transaction types that I designed years ago.  Escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc.  If Bitcoin catches on in a big way, these are things we'll want to explore in the future, but they all had to be designed at the beginning to make sure they would be possible later.

[JorgeStolfi]

There was nothing retroactive above the proposals for escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc.

Ok, sorry, by "applications" I meant replacing cash, bank transfers, credit cards, Paypal, Western Union, contracts, land registries, ...  Not to mention vaporizing governments, evading taxes, liberating illegal trade and online gambling, financing dissidents, ...

[mmortal03]

* The protocol has one fatal flaw: it inevitably leads to centralization of mining in a few large corporations, who then have nearly unlimited power over the system, and must be trusted not to abuse of their power.  It is a fatal flaw because it negates the very goal of the protocol ("decentralized trustless"), and no one knows how to fix it.  It seems that another genial invention will be needed to fix that flaw.

Except, it's not even fatal. Sure, it's an ideal feature, but it may even still be solved, or even play out differently than you predict, and, at the very least, Bitcoin provides incentive to people to solve it.

The protocol has many defects that make it unsuitable or uncompetitive for the applications that have been (retroactively) proposed for it.  For example, the bounded supply led to expectations of astronomical value increases,  which induced extreme hoarding of the coin, which made its speculative price rise to 100x its utilitarian value, which caused mining to become 100x more expensive than it should be, which meant 15$ cost per transaction, ... Also, I do not consider the "pay to script" feature worth the complexity that it adds to the blockchain.  The cost structure is such that it invites spamming of the blockchain with bogus transactions and messages that have nothing to do with its payment function.   The distributed organization limits its response time.

This stuff is covered elsewhere. I don't have the time to go point by point on these.

The block reward should decrease gradually, instead of being abruptly cut by half every 4 years.  The transaction fees should perhaps be required from the start.   The organization of the ledger as a linear chain means very long 'sync' times for low-end clients. And many more.  These flaws are not fatal, because they do not invalidate the goal stated in the white paper, and could be fixed in a new iteration.  But they cannot all be fixed now in the current blockchain.

Did you read the differing opinions at the Reddit link I posted?

*Finally, it is not clear to me that the world really needs a payment system like bitcoin.  Its expected virtues, of liberating people from oppressive regimes and from excessive bank fees, have yet to be demonstrated (or have already been debunked).

 

Links? Evidence?

On the other hand, bitcoin has been eagerly adopted by criminals and scammers, precisely for those features  that were supposed to be virtues.  Perhaps the invention of crypto-currencies was not so much like the invention of electricty or the internet, but more like the invention of firearms, or of crack cocaine.

Please do elaborate.