Bitcoin....who's gotten into it?

[stalefish3169]

Lol. Just smoothbrain bullshit to go from “proof of work is the best thing ever” to “it’s really efficient”. You’d have to be stupid or a cultist, but I repeat myself, to not see.

the biggest obstacle to crypto going mainstream is that the crypto community of scammers, pimps, and morons that hit the crypto lotto, want to keep all of its flaws.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credi...-how-it-works/

"But while on the customer’s end the transaction is quick and simple, the back-end communication between the merchant and other parties is intricate and complicated."

Hmmmm...seems like intricate and complicated is the opposite of efficient.

[mcphee]

A Toyota Prius is intricate and complicated. One of the most efficient vehicles of the last 20 years.

[Mustonen]

POW is the primary innovation in crypto. It is the most secure consensus algorithm in crypto, by far.

POW provides immense security.

"Proof of work is not only useful but absolutely essential. Trustless digital money can’t work without it. You always need an anchor to the physical realm. Without this anchor, a truthful history that is self-evident is impossible. Energy is the only anchor we have."

Proof of work = trust physics to determine what happened.

Proof of stake = trust humans to determine what happened.

-Gigi, author of 21 Lessons

“Security” keeps getting bandied about like counterfeit currency is the greatest crisis facing global digital monetary systems.

It isn’t.

And “security” in this context doesn’t fucking mean anything else.

[frorider]

In his defence, sorta, Stalefish’s quote didn’t say Security was a an advantage over current non Crypto options. He just is saying that within the insecure world of crypto, BTC is inherently more secure.

[Mustonen]

I suppose.

[Mustonen]

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credi...-how-it-works/

"But while on the customer’s end the transaction is quick and simple, the back-end communication between the merchant and other parties is intricate and complicated."

Hmmmm...seems like intricate and complicated is the opposite of efficient.

But those aren’t actually antonyms at all. Amazing!

[schuss]

Depends on your timeframe. Admittedly, a lot will have to go right for BTC to keep increasing in value over the coming years. Unfortunately, that could mean chaos in a lot of other aspects, including but not limited to, a severe decline of the American World Order.



POW is the primary innovation in crypto. It is the most secure consensus algorithm in crypto, by far.



POW provides immense security.

"Proof of work is not only useful but absolutely essential. Trustless digital money can’t work without it. You always need an anchor to the physical realm. Without this anchor, a truthful history that is self-evident is impossible. Energy is the only anchor we have."

Proof of work = trust physics to determine what happened.

Proof of stake = trust humans to determine what happened.

-Gigi, author of 21 Lessons





BTC is incredibly efficient and reliable. It's had 100% uptime since March 2013. Conversely, Fedwire, the US Federal Reserve’s interbank settlement system, cannot say the same.

Let's go through this pile of trash to tease some things out, shall we?

"BTC is incredibly efficient and reliable. It's had 100% uptime since March 2013. Conversely, Fedwire, the US Federal Reserve’s interbank settlement system, cannot say the same." - as a decentralized system - you're correct that nodes are always up - is there enough for large scale processing? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is NOT efficient though, as transactions take around 500,000x the energy a typical visa/mc/financial transaction takes.

"Proof of work is not only useful but absolutely essential. Trustless digital money can’t work without it. You always need an anchor to the physical realm. Without this anchor, a truthful history that is self-evident is impossible. Energy is the only anchor we have." - I mean, technically NFT's and other vehicles disprove this, as does Chia with proof of space/time.
I'd also say trustless digital money doesn't work, period, as there is a crazy incentive to scam people with essentially no recourse. The natural reaction is to have transaction brokers and other mechanisms to proxy out the efficiency issues and trust stuff as direct BTC transactions are fucking impossibly complex and painful compared to others in terms of key swapping and other details. So now we have proxies that have all the issues of normal infrastructure and act as pseudo-central authorities (think coinbase and lightning, or whatever broker here) - at this point why not just traditional authenticated APIs? That's basically the solution they're all pushing, so you're back to centralization, just with an extra bonus of no FDIC or similar and the potential for the operation to go tits up and you're out your BTC with no recourse.
Great job everyone, really stellar work completely ignoring every lesson of economic history.
I'd also say proof of work is also not novel or new, as it's been used a lot for leaderboards on stuff like protein folding, Seti@home, prime finding etc. The main innovation is they've made a completely useless thing that sucks up more electricity than sweden for the equivalent of lottery tickets. On top of that, at some point a state or major actor will make some cryptographic breakthroughs that let them subvert parts of the ledger or more easily break the encryption (as all encryption will be broken given a long enough timescale) that has the potential to make it wholly unsecure in 5-10 years. Really stupendous.

[::: :::]

rube goldberg

[bennymac]

I'm flattered you're obsessed with me. But I don't think you want to go there.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

Well you already won the shill off…

[J. Barron DeJong]

https://twitter.com/sethgreen/status...EA3buv0XccBxDQ

[frorider]

…

[stalefish3169]

Let's go through this pile of trash to tease some things out, shall we?

"BTC is incredibly efficient and reliable. It's had 100% uptime since March 2013. Conversely, Fedwire, the US Federal Reserve’s interbank settlement system, cannot say the same." - as a decentralized system - you're correct that nodes are always up - is there enough for large scale processing? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It is NOT efficient though, as transactions take around 500,000x the energy a typical visa/mc/financial transaction takes.

"Proof of work is not only useful but absolutely essential. Trustless digital money can’t work without it. You always need an anchor to the physical realm. Without this anchor, a truthful history that is self-evident is impossible. Energy is the only anchor we have." - I mean, technically NFT's and other vehicles disprove this, as does Chia with proof of space/time.
I'd also say trustless digital money doesn't work, period, as there is a crazy incentive to scam people with essentially no recourse. The natural reaction is to have transaction brokers and other mechanisms to proxy out the efficiency issues and trust stuff as direct BTC transactions are fucking impossibly complex and painful compared to others in terms of key swapping and other details. So now we have proxies that have all the issues of normal infrastructure and act as pseudo-central authorities (think coinbase and lightning, or whatever broker here) - at this point why not just traditional authenticated APIs? That's basically the solution they're all pushing, so you're back to centralization, just with an extra bonus of no FDIC or similar and the potential for the operation to go tits up and you're out your BTC with no recourse.
Great job everyone, really stellar work completely ignoring every lesson of economic history.
I'd also say proof of work is also not novel or new, as it's been used a lot for leaderboards on stuff like protein folding, Seti@home, prime finding etc. The main innovation is they've made a completely useless thing that sucks up more electricity than sweden for the equivalent of lottery tickets. On top of that, at some point a state or major actor will make some cryptographic breakthroughs that let them subvert parts of the ledger or more easily break the encryption (as all encryption will be broken given a long enough timescale) that has the potential to make it wholly unsecure in 5-10 years. Really stupendous.

The 500,000x number is completely made up. Secondly, if you want to calculate the true cost to secure USD, you need to include the military...which is the largest polluter in the world.

[J. Barron DeJong]

The 500,000x number is completely made up. Secondly, if you want to calculate the true cost to secure USD, you need to include the military...which is the largest polluter in the world.

Is your assumption that we wouldn’t need police or military to enforce property rights in a Bitcoin economy? Cause that seems incorrect.

Willing to read something making that argument if you have it.

[simple]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/...m_source=share

Mmm tacos

[schuss]

The 500,000x number is completely made up. Secondly, if you want to calculate the true cost to secure USD, you need to include the military...which is the largest polluter in the world.

No it isn't. Here's one source on electricity required - do you need more?
https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas...y-consumption/

Also including military - bwahahaha, so you're admitting that you're talking out your ass.

[stalefish3169]

No it isn't. Here's one source on electricity required - do you need more?
https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas...y-consumption/

Also including military - bwahahaha, so you're admitting that you're talking out your ass.

That's a bullshit source. Keep in mind that almost every critique of POW is also an add for something else. There are always tradeoffs between security, decentralization, and transaction volume.

The military is a fundamental part of USD hegemony. We've literally gone to war over countries giving up USD.

[dunfree]

That's a bullshit source. Keep in mind that almost every critique of POW is also an add for something else. There are always tradeoffs between security, decentralization, and transaction volume.

The military is a fundamental part of USD hegemony. We've literally gone to war over countries giving up USD.

We’ve gone to war over countries de-dollarizing? Lol.

[stalefish3169]

We’ve gone to war over countries de-dollarizing? Lol.

Everyone has to do their own research. But many people suggest it was one of the real reasons behind "liberating" Iraq.

https://www.amazon.com/Petrodollar-W.../dp/0865715149

Qaddafi fucked around and found out as well.

https://apjjf.org/2011/9/18/Peter-Da...2/article.html

[shera]

This is intense:
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/s...78787855736832

[J. Barron DeJong]

Everyone has to do their own research. But many people suggest it was one of the real reasons behind "liberating" Iraq.

https://www.amazon.com/Petrodollar-W.../dp/0865715149

Qaddafi fucked around and found out as well.

https://apjjf.org/2011/9/18/Peter-Da...2/article.html

So NATO countries, including UK, France, Canada, Spain, etc. fought in Libya to preserve the US dollar as the global reserve currency?

[schuss]

That's a bullshit source. Keep in mind that almost every critique of POW is also an add for something else. There are always tradeoffs between security, decentralization, and transaction volume.

The military is a fundamental part of USD hegemony. We've literally gone to war over countries giving up USD.

So what is the true kwh per transaction? I was talking strictly transaction costs, as businesses seek to minimize those. Methinks thou doth protest too much.

[schuss]

Also, looks like it's more now! Over 2k hours
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-ene...ion#validation
Or there's a thing from coindesk
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.coi...outputType=amp

I can find more.

[dunfree]

Everyone has to do their own research. But many people suggest it was one of the real reasons behind "liberating" Iraq.

https://www.amazon.com/Petrodollar-W.../dp/0865715149

Qaddafi fucked around and found out as well.

https://apjjf.org/2011/9/18/Peter-Da...2/article.html

so we’re back to research being conspiracy mongers? You like the last guy and think there’s a deep state too?

here’s a chart on why they call it the petrodollar. Sellers of oil wanna get paid, and they get paid in something. People liked dollars, still do.

[Mustonen]

Everyone has to do their own research.

What? Why?! What do you suppose this means? This from the guy who talks about doing research on twitter?

No. This is how stupid never dies. I would rather people who are educated and thoughtful and have time to devote to certain areas of study do that research and report back. That is how real progress happens.

[schuss]

Also, as someone that does product research on behalf of others: most people are shit at research.