Is it time to give Bitcoin a Use Value?

[BreathOfZen]

Ever since merchants have started accepting Bitcoins, the value of a Bitcoin has only gone down in a hyperinflationary fashion, and for the very good reason that the merchants themselves have nothing to do with their BTC other then sell it back for fiat.

The fact is that up until now there has been no actual real world Use Value for Bitcoin.  You can pay taxes with dollars, you can make jewelry with gold, and you can feed your family with options in the corn market, but there is nothing you can use a Bitcoin for to give it a foundational value. So far.

The truth however is that Bitcoin has one giant Use Value lurking in the background, but one that the developers don't like - One can use Bitcoin to inject information into the blockchain, and that information will last for all of time (or at least so long as the blockchain exists).  In a word, it would mean you can use Bitcoin to save your files to the blockchain, in an uncensorable and inerasable form. 

Blockchain as file storage - it will cause Bitcoin to go back up in value, and it will give us a solid reason to give for why Bitcoin has value in the first place.

Is it time?

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[Clegg]

Ever since merchants have started accepting Bitcoins, the value of a Bitcoin has only gone down in a hyperinflationary fashion, and for the very good reason that the merchants themselves have nothing to do with their BTC other then sell it back for fiat.

Money is still moving in and out of bitcoin so this is irrelevant.

The truth however is that Bitcoin has one giant Use Value lurking in the background, but one that the developers don't like - One can use Bitcoin to inject information into the blockchain, and that information will last for all of time (or at least so long as the blockchain exists).  In a word, it would mean you can use Bitcoin to save your files to the blockchain, in an uncensorable and inerasable form. 

Blockchain as file storage - it will cause Bitcoin to go back up in value, and it will give us a solid reason to give for why Bitcoin has value in the first place.

And hopefully the rest of the world will realize the usefulness and mulch-purpose of the blockchain at some point. All we can do is keep spreading awareness and wait patiently.

[Bitcoin_BOy$]

I'm sure that is the right time that bitcoin will be bought and this drop price will make new consumers .
And also can get some investor.

[Raeg]

The fact is that up until now there has been no actual real world Use Value for Bitcoin.  You can pay taxes with dollars, you can make jewelry with gold, and you can feed your family with options in the corn market, but there is nothing you can use a Bitcoin for to give it a foundational value. So far.

I don't think this is really true. You can spend it on many things and that number is growing daily, and I also think I read somewhere that you can actually pay your taxes in bitcoin too . But yes I agree there lies many other benefits in the blockchain that people are not exploiting yet.

[username18333]

Presently, this only requires an acceptable “null data” transaction. A singular “satoshi” (i.e., one hundred-millionth of one bitcoin) could fund this transaction.

[countryfree]

One can use Bitcoin to inject information into the blockchain, and that information will last for all of time (or at least so long as the blockchain exists).  In a word, it would mean you can use Bitcoin to save your files to the blockchain, in an uncensorable and inerasable form. 

Blockchain as file storage - it will cause Bitcoin to go back up in value, and it will give us a solid reason to give for why Bitcoin has value in the first place.

I'm currently paying for a back-up plan for my files, and I have 500 Gb available for little money. Why would I bother with the blockchain to store inconveniently a few bits?

[BreathOfZen]

Your current Backup plan is likely dependent on either a counter party to maintain their servers even during a time of severe crisis, or on you keeping your data stored on a piece of physical technology that is liable to break, get corrupted, lost, or stolen. 

Storing on the blockchain isn't cheap enough for you to use it to store your several GBs of fun pictures and family videos, but for that core 1mb or so of truly important information that you simply cannot afford to lose, it can be the most enduring and most secure option.

[username18333]

Your current Backup plan is likely dependent on either a counter party to maintain their servers even during a time of severe crisis, or on you keeping your data stored on a piece of physical technology that is liable to break, get corrupted, lost, or stolen.  

Storing on the blockchain isn't cheap enough for you to use it to store your several GBs of fun pictures and family videos, but for that core 1mb or so of truly important information that you simply cannot afford to lose, it can be the most enduring and most secure option.

Presently, this only requires an acceptable “null data” transaction. A singular “satoshi” (i.e., one hundred-millionth of one bitcoin) could fund this transaction.

Even if every “null data” transaction could only store one byte of information, the “one time” purchase of one megabyte of storage in the Bitcoin blockchain could still amount to a mere one million “satoshis” (i.e., one hundreth of one bitcoin).

[Seketsuna]

I dont agree that merchants cause the price to go down. I think its the Mt.Gox closing down that killed the price coz in my opinion Gox also caused the price to go $1k.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.  When you store or backup some data how many copies do you need.   The correct answer is one.   The only reason we use redundancy in some form is because failure is a possibility.  0 surviving copies is worthless and 1 copy is maximum value.   Since we can't know how, when, or why a copy will be destroyed the cheapest form of insurance is to maintain more copies.   The problem is that each additional copy provides a smaller incremental gain however the cost of that additional copy increasingly linearly.   The blockchain isn't partially redundant it is perfectly redundant for security reasons.   If there are 100,000 nodes you don't gain incrementally much more by having 100,000 copies of your data than you do by having say 100 copies but the true cost is 1000x more. That is a bad tradeoff for bulk storage.

[iamback]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.

Also it doesn't allow for decentralized competition, innovation, and diversity of offerings. Thus it is antifragile a.k.a. the antithesis of resiliency with incremental failure, i.e. fragile.

The utility of the block chain is for decentralized consensus. You don't need consensus about which files you want to store in the cloud.

[BreathOfZen]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.  When you store or backup some data how many copies do you need.   The correct answer is one.   The only reason we use redundancy in some form is because failure is a possibility.  0 surviving copies is worthless and 1 copy is maximum value.   Since we can't know how, when, or why a copy will be destroyed the cheapest form of insurance is to maintain more copies.   The problem is that each additional copy provides a smaller incremental gain however the cost of that additional copy increasingly linearly.   The blockchain isn't partially redundant it is perfectly redundant for security reasons.   If there are 100,000 nodes you don't gain incrementally much more by having 100,000 copies of your data than you do by having say 100 copies but the true cost is 1000x more. That is a bad tradeoff for bulk storage.

The advantage is that due to the incentive structure, if you want to mine Bitcoins you will have to store all data in the blockchain. This means that while any other web service or data storage company may go belly up and shut down servers when they stop getting an inflow of customers, for Bitcoin as long as mining is profitable your data will always be stored on a large number of nodes which have good economic self interest in preserving it. It is really the only service that can offer that sort of economic guarantee.

The number of nodes (100, 100,000, etc) isn't what matters, but rather that Bitcoin nodes are actually getting paid to store data.

[BreathOfZen]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.

Also it doesn't allow for decentralized competition, innovation, and diversity of offerings. Thus it is antifragile a.k.a. the antithesis of resiliency with incremental failure, i.e. fragile.

The utility of the block chain is for decentralized consensus. You don't need consensus about which files you want to store in the cloud.

It actually allows for an incredible amount of competition.  You can store your data on Bitcoin, but you can also store it on Litecoin, Doge, etc. etc...  If Bitcoin wants to shut out data storage, Doge can always pick up the slack and become coin #1 among the file storage community. Coins will finally have a sound platform for excelling against each other in the economic arena.

[iamback]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.

Also it doesn't allow for decentralized competition, innovation, and diversity of offerings. Thus it is antifragile a.k.a. the antithesis of resiliency with incremental failure, i.e. fragile.

The utility of the block chain is for decentralized consensus. You don't need consensus about which files you want to store in the cloud.

It actually allows for an incredible amount of competition.  You can store your data on Bitcoin, but you can also store it on Litecoin, Doge, etc. etc...  If Bitcoin wants to shut out data storage, Doge can always pick up the slack and become coin #1 among the file storage community. Coins will finally have a sound platform for excelling against each other in the economic arena.

Sorry but that is incorrect. To launch an altcoin and reach the level of mining that the network is secure is not a feat that happens very often. Your average entrepreneur can't launch that.

As I said, the level of diversified competition will be greatly inhibited.

[username18333]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.  When you store or backup some data how many copies do you need.   The correct answer is one.   The only reason we use redundancy in some form is because failure is a possibility.  0 surviving copies is worthless and 1 copy is maximum value.   Since we can't know how, when, or why a copy will be destroyed the cheapest form of insurance is to maintain more copies.   The problem is that each additional copy provides a smaller incremental gain however the cost of that additional copy increasingly linearly.   The blockchain isn't partially redundant it is perfectly redundant for security reasons.   If there are 100,000 nodes you don't gain incrementally much more by having 100,000 copies of your data than you do by having say 100 copies but the true cost is 1000x more. That is a bad tradeoff for bulk storage.

The advantage is that due to the incentive structure, if you want to mine Bitcoins you will have to store all data in the blockchain. This means that while any other web service or data storage company may go belly up and shut down servers when they stop getting an inflow of customers, for Bitcoin as long as mining is profitable your data will always be stored on a large number of nodes which have good economic self interest in preserving it. It is really the only service that can offer that sort of economic guarantee.

The number of nodes (100, 100,000, etc) isn't what matters, but rather that Bitcoin nodes are actually getting paid to store data.

A miner of bitcoins, or any derivative thereof that has not been made to do otherwise, can willfully exclude the “null data” type of transaction from the blocks he or she mines and still have the blocks accepted.

[BreathOfZen]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.  When you store or backup some data how many copies do you need.   The correct answer is one.   The only reason we use redundancy in some form is because failure is a possibility.  0 surviving copies is worthless and 1 copy is maximum value.   Since we can't know how, when, or why a copy will be destroyed the cheapest form of insurance is to maintain more copies.   The problem is that each additional copy provides a smaller incremental gain however the cost of that additional copy increasingly linearly.   The blockchain isn't partially redundant it is perfectly redundant for security reasons.   If there are 100,000 nodes you don't gain incrementally much more by having 100,000 copies of your data than you do by having say 100 copies but the true cost is 1000x more. That is a bad tradeoff for bulk storage.

The advantage is that due to the incentive structure, if you want to mine Bitcoins you will have to store all data in the blockchain. This means that while any other web service or data storage company may go belly up and shut down servers when they stop getting an inflow of customers, for Bitcoin as long as mining is profitable your data will always be stored on a large number of nodes which have good economic self interest in preserving it. It is really the only service that can offer that sort of economic guarantee.

The number of nodes (100, 100,000, etc) isn't what matters, but rather that Bitcoin nodes are actually getting paid to store data.

A miner of bitcoins, or any derivative thereof that has been made to do otherwise, can willfully exclude the "null data" type of transaction from the blocks he or she mines and still have the blocks accepted.

I personally don't use null codes when encoding data into the blockchain.  They may be the right way to go eventually with enough development support, but as you bring up for now it is actually best if one doesn't depend on any unusual transaction behaviors like null codes to encode data.

[username18333]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.  When you store or backup some data how many copies do you need.   The correct answer is one.   The only reason we use redundancy in some form is because failure is a possibility.  0 surviving copies is worthless and 1 copy is maximum value.   Since we can't know how, when, or why a copy will be destroyed the cheapest form of insurance is to maintain more copies.   The problem is that each additional copy provides a smaller incremental gain however the cost of that additional copy increasingly linearly.   The blockchain isn't partially redundant it is perfectly redundant for security reasons.   If there are 100,000 nodes you don't gain incrementally much more by having 100,000 copies of your data than you do by having say 100 copies but the true cost is 1000x more. That is a bad tradeoff for bulk storage.

The advantage is that due to the incentive structure, if you want to mine Bitcoins you will have to store all data in the blockchain. This means that while any other web service or data storage company may go belly up and shut down servers when they stop getting an inflow of customers, for Bitcoin as long as mining is profitable your data will always be stored on a large number of nodes which have good economic self interest in preserving it. It is really the only service that can offer that sort of economic guarantee.

The number of nodes (100, 100,000, etc) isn't what matters, but rather that Bitcoin nodes are actually getting paid to store data.

A miner of bitcoins, or any derivative thereof that has not been made to do otherwise, can willfully exclude the "null data" type of transaction from the blocks he or she mines and still have the blocks accepted.

I personally don't use null codes when encoding data into the blockchain.  They may be the right way to go eventually with enough development support, but as you bring up for now it is actually best if one doesn't depend on any unusual transaction behaviors like null codes to encode data.

Code:

OP_RETURN OP_[bytes of data] [data]

It doesn't matter how you do it, if it's unique enough, it can be filtered out.

[BreathOfZen]

Blockchain as file storage is a fundamentally bad concept because it is incredibly expensive and the ledger provides a poor compromise between redundancy and cost.  When you store or backup some data how many copies do you need.   The correct answer is one.   The only reason we use redundancy in some form is because failure is a possibility.  0 surviving copies is worthless and 1 copy is maximum value.   Since we can't know how, when, or why a copy will be destroyed the cheapest form of insurance is to maintain more copies.   The problem is that each additional copy provides a smaller incremental gain however the cost of that additional copy increasingly linearly.   The blockchain isn't partially redundant it is perfectly redundant for security reasons.   If there are 100,000 nodes you don't gain incrementally much more by having 100,000 copies of your data than you do by having say 100 copies but the true cost is 1000x more. That is a bad tradeoff for bulk storage.

The advantage is that due to the incentive structure, if you want to mine Bitcoins you will have to store all data in the blockchain. This means that while any other web service or data storage company may go belly up and shut down servers when they stop getting an inflow of customers, for Bitcoin as long as mining is profitable your data will always be stored on a large number of nodes which have good economic self interest in preserving it. It is really the only service that can offer that sort of economic guarantee.

The number of nodes (100, 100,000, etc) isn't what matters, but rather that Bitcoin nodes are actually getting paid to store data.

A miner of bitcoins, or any derivative thereof that has not been made to do otherwise, can willfully exclude the "null data" type of transaction from the blocks he or she mines and still have the blocks accepted.

I personally don't use null codes when encoding data into the blockchain.  They may be the right way to go eventually with enough development support, but as you bring up for now it is actually best if one doesn't depend on any unusual transaction behaviors like null codes to encode data.

Code:

OP_RETURN OP_[bytes of data] [data]

It doesn't matter how you do it, if it's unique enough, it can be filtered out.

Note that the transaction below contains the entire Bill of Rights encoded into the blockchain using only the normal methods of transaction formation.  How would you filter it out?

http://bit-comm.appspot.com/packet/d71e39e493a1eaa4eb7c39e5a34ceb002649315321b3cc6e9ea25fcc765de1c3?expanded=true

[username18333]

. . .

A miner of bitcoins, or any derivative thereof that has not been made to do otherwise, can willfully exclude the "null data" type of transaction from the blocks he or she mines and still have the blocks accepted.

I personally don't use null codes when encoding data into the blockchain.  They may be the right way to go eventually with enough development support, but as you bring up for now it is actually best if one doesn't depend on any unusual transaction behaviors like null codes to encode data.

Code:

OP_RETURN OP_[bytes of data] [data]

It doesn't matter how you do it, if it's unique enough, it can be filtered out.

Note that the transaction below contains the entire Bill of Rights encoded into the blockchain using only the normal methods of transaction formation.  How would you filter it out?

http://bit-comm.appspot.com/packet/d71e39e493a1eaa4eb7c39e5a34ceb002649315321b3cc6e9ea25fcc765de1c3?expanded=true

. . .

This software features Bitcoin hard-fork requests such as the exclusive use of both pay-to-script-hash within all (non-data) transaction outputs and the exclusive use of fixed-width, 64-bit unsigned integers in storing block times. Writcoin™, the protocol wherefor this software is a client, utilizes a Proof-of-Work based on transaction tree Merkle roots and short (here, ten second) block times called Proof-of-Wait™, requires coinbase transactions to not have any inputs and to only have one, unspendable output, permits coinbase transactions to originate outside blocks, and permits deficit spending (that is to say, it permits transactions’ total output value to exceed its total input value). Great Empire Coin™ (GEC™) is the state money that is exchanged through Writcoin. G.E. coins are the state money of Great Empire of Earth, are divisible into cents and mills, and have denominations of mega-, terra-, and exacoins.

. . .

(Red colorization added.)

"[E]xclusive use of . . . pay-to-script-hash [P2SH] within all . . . transaction outputs" should do it.

[BreathOfZen]

. . .

A miner of bitcoins, or any derivative thereof that has not been made to do otherwise, can willfully exclude the "null data" type of transaction from the blocks he or she mines and still have the blocks accepted.

I personally don't use null codes when encoding data into the blockchain.  They may be the right way to go eventually with enough development support, but as you bring up for now it is actually best if one doesn't depend on any unusual transaction behaviors like null codes to encode data.

Code:

OP_RETURN OP_[bytes of data] [data]

It doesn't matter how you do it, if it's unique enough, it can be filtered out.

Note that the transaction below contains the entire Bill of Rights encoded into the blockchain using only the normal methods of transaction formation.  How would you filter it out?

http://bit-comm.appspot.com/packet/d71e39e493a1eaa4eb7c39e5a34ceb002649315321b3cc6e9ea25fcc765de1c3?expanded=true

. . .

This software features Bitcoin hard-fork requests such as the exclusive use of both pay-to-script-hash within all (non-data) transaction outputs and the exclusive use of fixed-width, 64-bit unsigned integers in storing block times. Writcoin™, the protocol wherefor this software is a client, utilizes a Proof-of-Work based on transaction tree Merkle roots and short (here, ten second) block times called Proof-of-Wait™, requires coinbase transactions to not have any inputs and to only have one, unspendable output, permits coinbase transactions to originate outside blocks, and permits deficit spending (that is to say, it permits transactions’ total output value to exceed its total input value). Great Empire Coin™ (GEC™) is the state money that is exchanged through Writcoin. G.E. coins are the state money of Great Empire of Earth, are divisible into cents and mills, and have denominations of mega-, terra-, and exacoins.

. . .

(Red colorization added.)

"[E]xclusive use of . . . pay-to-script-hash [P2SH] within all . . . transaction outputs" should do it.

Not being a core Bitcoin developer, I don't know what that actually means.  Questions that arise from it though:
1. What is a Great Empire Coin, Writcoin, and what do they have to do with Bitcoin?
2. Is the gist of your contention that the core Dev team wants to in some way take control of what we can and cannot spend our Bitcoins on, and vigilantly control our Bitcoin spending based on some "father knows best" algorithm?