9 ms·

My view on the current situation of Bitcoin and the Blockchain

131 points by chejazi 11y ago

snosheibdjd 11y ago
The CEO of Coinbase is a fraud who sells Coinbase coins and not Bitcoin. Coinbase coins only are allowed to go to certain addresses as ordained by Coinbase.
- jakeva 11y ago
  By that logic the coins to which I hold the private keys are Jake coins.
- imaginenore 11y ago
  You're full of shit. You can withdraw your coins from Coinbase at any time. Why would you lie about something that's trivial to verify, about something so many people use?
- tomlongson 11y ago
  This is FUD.
- dang 11y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11227287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11227287 and marked it off-topic.
adrianmacneil 11y ago
I feel like that's giving the Bitcoin Core developers a bit too much credit. > When asked "can you scale this?" They said, "we'll do the best we can." That wasn't good enough for many, especially those who don't understand the architecture or the nature of what is going on inside of Bitcoin. The larger issue is that some of the core developers don't want to scale Bitcoin at all. They would rather have a more decentralized, less widely used Bitcoin. There is no right answer here of course, but many companies and VCs bet their future on a widely used, less decentralized version of Bitcoin (i.e. one where it's hard to run a Bitcoin server on a home internet connection, much like SMTP today). > Many people call them "Bitcoin Core" as if they are some sort of company you can fire or a random set of developers with skills that you can just train others to acquire. They called themselves Bitcoin Core, and even went so far as to create a separate website and have started branding the reference client as Bitcoin Core. > It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust, the ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable. The real issue is that Bitcoin has no "official" governance, so it's resulting in design-by-committee and stalemate on key decisions. The project needs a BDFL, but since it has none it will fail to keep pace with innovation in the space. Unlike most internet protocols, the consensus layer prevents anyone from effectively forking the project, without creating a whole separate blockchain (unless they can convince 100% of the community to follow them). Luckily, we are starting to see more innovation and competition in the blockchain space, with Ethereum being by far the most interesting newcomer IMO (and run by a competent team with a clear governance structure).
- zanny 11y ago
  > the consensus layer prevents anyone from effectively forking the project This isn't true, as soon as 51% of clients are trying to push "new" blocks not recognized by the old client old clients cannot recognize them and the chain forks. This has happened several times in the past, but we have never seen anything like Classic where it was a version increment out of the Core tree that is set to break old clients.
  - adrianmacneil 11y ago
    Right. And that would be a disaster. Imagine if io.js forked node.js, but the fork was effectively unusable until 75% of projects started using it. And as soon as that threshold was reached, everyone still using and developing node.js was stuck with unmaintainable software and forced to migrate against their wish. Personal opinions aside, what Bitcoin Classic is trying to do is follow the traditional open source project fork playbook, but it will not succeed with a consensus protocol - at best they are keeping attention focused on the issue. Blockchain development works best when there is competition _between_ blockchains, not within them.
    - zanny 11y ago
      Except that is the problem in Bitcoin. None of the money, none of the participation, none of the market are in alternate blockchains. They are in the bitcoin blockchain. That is fine, like the article says, when you have BDFL steering the project and keeping the original vision absolute, but that is not the case with bitcoin. Development is hijacked by those in a small insular group who refuse to adopt extremely popular reforms despite the userbase dramatically demanding the change. This has happened before. It happened with ffmpeg when it was forked into libav. Up until the fork happened the leadership of ffmpeg did not yield - only after the competition was real did they change their behavior and then they made the smart decision of obsoleting libav by merging back in all changes made. I'm not sure how you think Bitcoin Classic is failing. They already have a majority of hashing power pledged, and last I saw they had around a quarter of nodes running Classic or XT a week or so ago. If Classic wins, it simply demonstrates that the current project leaders of bitcoin core are not acting in the interests of a supermajority of the community as a whole according to their desires, and free software never works like that. If everyone wants change, someone will provide that change - it has happened so many times in the past they are near innumerable to list. I do not see how, if 75% of bitcoin users want 2MB blocks, it will not happen.
woah 11y ago
Reading this, it seems that the author does not understand Bitcoin, blockchains, BFT consensus, or indeed computer programming. He acts as if the people working on Bitcoin are some kind of mages with arcane knowledge that nobody else has. They are simply well-versed in a very quirky distributed database.
- asciimo 11y ago
  He founded the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative, so he must have a pretty good grasp of the domain (http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2015/04/15/announcing-mit-dci.html http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2015/04/15/announcing-mit-dci.html). He also held stakes in Blockstream, who favors small blocks (http://joi.ito.com/coi.html http://joi.ito.com/coi.html).
  - JustinAiken 11y ago
    > He also held stakes in Blockstream, Aaah, that explains it.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I'm personally bearish on Bitcoin. (It's neat tech but as a product I think it's doomed to always be on the margins.) Despite that, I'd agree with Ito here that there are a relatively small number of people who really have the background and the experience to work on the core code. Distributed systems are hard. Cryptography is hard. Financial systems are hard. Transactional databases are hard. Securing systems that handle real money is hard. Open source development itself isn't easy. The number of engineers who think they can handle all that is way, way larger than the number who actually can. As an example, just consider how many systems get breached because people build their own crypto. And look at how we're still finding critical bugs in core security libraries.
  - woah 11y ago
    The thing I have issue with is not his assumption that only a few people can work on Bitcoin, but that only the Bitcoin core team understands BFT consensus and POW.
mathattack 11y ago
Is it correct to call it a $6.5 billion bounty? Once Bitcoin is hacked, the value of all the coins go to 0, no? Who would accept them knowing they could lose them so easily.
- detaro 11y ago
  What do you mean by "once Bitcoin is hacked"?
  - chejazi 11y ago
    I imagine a compromise in Bitcoin's cryptographic foundation, such as SHA256, is what is being referred to here.
    - gigq 11y ago
      SHA256 is used for mining but that would only expose new coins that are being generated. If there was a vulnerability there the community would switch to a new mining algorithm to secure new blocks. Addresses are protected by hashing a public key to the bitcoin address (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1...). If you've always sent coins to new addresses like the hierarchical deterministic wallets do then your public key is only exposed after you spend the coins, so you are not susceptible to a cracking attempt on the public key.
      - schmichael 11y ago
        > If there was a vulnerability there the community would switch to a new mining algorithm to secure new blocks. This would be extremely interesting to watch as a new algorithm would render all (or at least most) existing miners useless as they use SHA256-specific-ASICs. The economic and control fundamentals of Bitcoin completely change if you change the hash algorithm. Not to mention it takes non-zero time to choose a new hash, make the code changes, and deploy it worldwide. Even if somehow you do that in hours or days, what happens in the mean time? Bitcoin would be entirely unsafe to use and anyone using it as their primary financial store better hope they have some food stockpiled (and bills paid)! Luckily I've not heard anyone question the math behind Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm, so I think this possibility is exceedingly unlikely as the math is well understood.
api 11y ago
"They often view the people working on Bitcoin as a bunch of crazy Libertarians who came up with a cool idea but believe that a bunch of hired guns could put the same thing together given enough money." This is my favorite point. There's a lot of people out there who think "sure, yeah, hacker types can prototype creative stuff but anything they do can be done better by Serious People with Serious Degrees." The history of the original PC revolution is the history of that being proven wrong. In the 70s and 80s all the Serious People with Serious Degress from the Right Schools worked for IBM, HP, and other mainframe vendors and made 2-3 times as much as the hackers who drove them into the ground with radically cheaper and eventually better products. Due to its low capital costs, IT/CS is an inherently radically meritocratic industry. Someone with no college degree can show up an expert by actually delivering something superior... if they can, that is, and there are enough who can that it happens fairly often. If anything the pattern that I see in this industry is that the indie hackers are ahead of the curve. They're the ones who prototype the hard stuff and solve the hard problems. The Serious People take up the rear, coming in later and building out and scaling what's already been done. They're the regular army, not the special forces. Serious People run the Internet now but they didn't build it... if it had been left up to them it would be a byzantine OSI network run by telcos and we'd still be using text terminals (with limited graphics maybe) for $1/minute.
Animats 11y ago
The impressive thing about Bitcoin is that it works well despite many attempts to break it. That's so rare in computing. The basic concept was well worked out. Some of the people in the financial community just want a shared ledger between the big players that doesn't require a separate organization to run it. That's simpler than creating a shared trusted organization, like the Depository Trust Company. Those systems are consensus ledgers where known parties each have a vote. There's no proof of work, and it's not a currency system. That's unrelated to Bitcoin, but it's taken seriously because Bitcoin hasn't been broken. The "current situation of Bitcoin" mostly seems to involve a dispute over block size. At the moment, some denial of service attack is creating large numbers of tiny transactions and causing a transaction backlog. Transactions which specify a higher fee get through OK, apparently. The "core developers" think they have a voice in how Bitcoin works, but in fact, the three top mining pools in China have well over 50% of the mining power and decide what happens. Too many Bitcoin exchanges are still run by crooks. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of "Big Vern", Cryptsy's CEO, should contact the Silver Law Firm, which is suing him. And that's Bitcoin today.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
danbruc 11y ago
Bitcoin is a solution in search for a real problem that it can solve better than other solutions. That's the situation, IMHO.
- ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
  I'm mixing merchant's and end user's perspectives here - no chargebacks, low tx fees, no need to share sensitive data with anyone, easy p2p transactions, no cross border tx fees, few other things.
  - sanswork 11y ago
    No chargebacks - this is a huge negative for users Low tx fees - most users currently don't see tx fees with most payment systems. Bitcoin puts them on the user. Sensitive data - if you consider a credit card number sensitive you are doing it wrong. They are designed to be easy to replace if compromised and even then new technology is making single use numbers common. Easy - which is why sorryforyourloss is a thing. Bitcoin is confusing for most people and difficult to secure for everyone. Cross border - unless you need local currency
    - Natanael_L 11y ago
      Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators. Payment channels. No need to worry about replacing any numbers, your software does it for you. Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority of losses.
      - danbruc 11y ago
        Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators. Why then mine in the first place, you just reintroduced trusted parties? Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority of losses. If you are careful enough, everything is fine almost by definition. But a good, i.e. user friendly, system is one that lets you make mistakes without hurting you too badly. Therefore asking what to do in order to be fine is kind of the wrong question, one should better ask with what kind of stupidity you can still get away.
fsiefken 11y ago
I read: "It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust, the ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable. I fear that the communication and now emotional rift between various key groups and individuals is wide right now, but I believe it's imperative that we try to bring the community together and focus on executing on a shared technical plan that represents our best shot at broad consensus from both a technical and a practical perspective." It reads like a response on the Bitcoin situation describted in the Jan 14 Medium article by Mike Hearn on the "Resolution of the Bitcoin experiment". Problems resulting in the rift between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited. https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin... He seems to suggest Ethereum and Bitcoin alternatives cannot yet replace Bitcoin Core as it is robust and battle tested as he writes: "If you're serious about security and stability -- and you should be -- Bitcoin is almost the only choice with the largest bounty, and largest community, with the most practical modern experience deploying to a broad and active network in the real world." But is Bitcoin the only choice and are the bitcoin stability problems outlined by Mike Hearn and others an "idee fixe" or just a dispute over blocksize?
Houshalter 11y ago
The other day I was alarmed to learn that bitcoin may be killing as many as one person every day. That's based on this gwern estimate of the number of deaths caused by the folding@home project: http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping If you assume that bitcoin uses 10x more computing power than folding, and it uses most of it in China which has far worse pollution, than the estimate comes to 340 deaths per year. That's just direct deaths, who knows how much damage is caused by indirect damage and the long term impact of those wasted resources.
- toomim 11y ago
  It uses mostly hydropower, even in china.
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  Imagine how many people per year air conditioning kills? Surely you don't really buy into such an enormous logical fallacy?
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    How is it a logical fallacy? Do you see any errors with my math? Are you saying that it doesn't kill people? It is true that air conditioning kills people and contributes greatly to pollution. That's why there have been a lot of attempts to reduce its use. But bitcoin is way worse. Fortunately far fewer people use it than air conditioning. According to this article, a single bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as a 1.5 households use in a day: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable
    - CyberDildonics 11y ago
      How many people per year does your computer kill?
pash 11y ago
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote a blog post [0] today that gives a very different take on things. He criticized Bitcoin Core's development team for their poor communication with the community, for their inhospitality to new contributors, and for their repeated rejection of practical and simple solutions to Bitcoin's immediate scaling problem. He advocated adopting Bitcoin Classic's short-term fix for full transaction blocks and wrote that it is vital in the long term to foster an environment in which multiple development teams can compete to introduce new features and improvements to the protocol. There are many people in the Bitcoin ecosystem who, like Brian, feel strongly that if Bitcoin is to survive and thrive, then not only must the blocksize-limit be increased, but the exclusive power to decide the future of Bitcoin must be taken out of the hands of the Bitcoin Core team. 0. https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-roundtable-6c11a10d8cdf#.xw7emyjhh https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-...
- fsiefken 11y ago
  Yes, but there are also people - like Bram Cohen - who view Coinbase, Bitcoin Classic and others as a hostile agents attempting to take over control. Also see: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-of-insanity/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-o... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807
  - notlukejr 11y ago
    Bram Cohen has always hated Bitcoin. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hated_bitoin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hate... Which makes it strange how in 2015 he suddenly took an interest in Bitcoin and (1) supports everything Blockstream is doing (2) writes blog posts attacking long-time Bitcoin contributors like Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen. Perhaps Bram Cohen is "consulting" for Blockstream? They admit they spent over $10m+ in their first 12 months of operations in 2015 which is a high burn rate considering how few full-time employees ("founders") they had during that time.
    - 11y ago
baconizer 11y ago
I can relate to author's opinion on block chain VC hype, but not so sure about comparing Bitcoin to the Internet, at least yet...
davidw 11y ago
As someone who is a curious outsider to the whole bitcoin thing, the more I read all the bickering, the more I think "I'm going to stay away until they've got things figured out". After all, I'd be getting in to use the technology, rather than attempt speculate on its value.
guelo 11y ago
The reason I sold all my bitcoin is that the blocksize impasse started smelling like corruption to me. The interests of Chinese miners seems to have undue influence. If Bitcoin Core doesn't have the interest of the whole community then there's no trust. And without trust the whole scheme falls apart.
my5thaccount 11y ago
It's ironic that a currency designed to solve the problems of currencies controlled by human beings is now suffering the very same problems that caused all the fiat currencies before it to fail. Human beings are the problem.
- cortesoft 11y ago
  All fiat currencies before have failed? I am pretty sure ere are lots of fiat currencies that are doing just fine (like the dollar, which has never failed)
  - my5thaccount 11y ago
    Right, yes, I always forget about the dollar! The dollar will be the one to prove them all wrong!
    - cortesoft 11y ago
      How long does something have to last before it is considered a success?

131 points by chejazi 11y ago

The CEO of Coinbase is a fraud who sells Coinbase coins and not Bitcoin. Coinbase coins only are allowed to go to certain addresses as ordained by Coinbase.

jakeva 11y ago
By that logic the coins to which I hold the private keys are Jake coins.
imaginenore 11y ago
You're full of shit. You can withdraw your coins from Coinbase at any time. Why would you lie about something that's trivial to verify, about something so many people use?
tomlongson 11y ago
This is FUD.
dang 11y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11227287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11227287 and marked it off-topic.

adrianmacneil 11y ago

I feel like that's giving the Bitcoin Core developers a bit too much credit. > When asked "can you scale this?" They said, "we'll do the best we can." That wasn't good enough for many, especially those who don't understand the architecture or the nature of what is going on inside of Bitcoin. The larger issue is that some of the core developers don't want to scale Bitcoin at all. They would rather have a more decentralized, less widely used Bitcoin. There is no right answer here of course, but many companies and VCs bet their future on a widely used, less decentralized version of Bitcoin (i.e. one where it's hard to run a Bitcoin server on a home internet connection, much like SMTP today). > Many people call them "Bitcoin Core" as if they are some sort of company you can fire or a random set of developers with skills that you can just train others to acquire. They called themselves Bitcoin Core, and even went so far as to create a separate website and have started branding the reference client as Bitcoin Core. > It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust, the ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable. The real issue is that Bitcoin has no "official" governance, so it's resulting in design-by-committee and stalemate on key decisions. The project needs a BDFL, but since it has none it will fail to keep pace with innovation in the space. Unlike most internet protocols, the consensus layer prevents anyone from effectively forking the project, without creating a whole separate blockchain (unless they can convince 100% of the community to follow them). Luckily, we are starting to see more innovation and competition in the blockchain space, with Ethereum being by far the most interesting newcomer IMO (and run by a competent team with a clear governance structure).

zanny 11y ago
> the consensus layer prevents anyone from effectively forking the project This isn't true, as soon as 51% of clients are trying to push "new" blocks not recognized by the old client old clients cannot recognize them and the chain forks. This has happened several times in the past, but we have never seen anything like Classic where it was a version increment out of the Core tree that is set to break old clients.
- adrianmacneil 11y ago
  Right. And that would be a disaster. Imagine if io.js forked node.js, but the fork was effectively unusable until 75% of projects started using it. And as soon as that threshold was reached, everyone still using and developing node.js was stuck with unmaintainable software and forced to migrate against their wish. Personal opinions aside, what Bitcoin Classic is trying to do is follow the traditional open source project fork playbook, but it will not succeed with a consensus protocol - at best they are keeping attention focused on the issue. Blockchain development works best when there is competition _between_ blockchains, not within them.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Except that is the problem in Bitcoin. None of the money, none of the participation, none of the market are in alternate blockchains. They are in the bitcoin blockchain. That is fine, like the article says, when you have BDFL steering the project and keeping the original vision absolute, but that is not the case with bitcoin. Development is hijacked by those in a small insular group who refuse to adopt extremely popular reforms despite the userbase dramatically demanding the change. This has happened before. It happened with ffmpeg when it was forked into libav. Up until the fork happened the leadership of ffmpeg did not yield - only after the competition was real did they change their behavior and then they made the smart decision of obsoleting libav by merging back in all changes made. I'm not sure how you think Bitcoin Classic is failing. They already have a majority of hashing power pledged, and last I saw they had around a quarter of nodes running Classic or XT a week or so ago. If Classic wins, it simply demonstrates that the current project leaders of bitcoin core are not acting in the interests of a supermajority of the community as a whole according to their desires, and free software never works like that. If everyone wants change, someone will provide that change - it has happened so many times in the past they are near innumerable to list. I do not see how, if 75% of bitcoin users want 2MB blocks, it will not happen.

woah 11y ago

Reading this, it seems that the author does not understand Bitcoin, blockchains, BFT consensus, or indeed computer programming. He acts as if the people working on Bitcoin are some kind of mages with arcane knowledge that nobody else has. They are simply well-versed in a very quirky distributed database.

asciimo 11y ago
He founded the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative, so he must have a pretty good grasp of the domain (http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2015/04/15/announcing-mit-dci.html http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2015/04/15/announcing-mit-dci.html). He also held stakes in Blockstream, who favors small blocks (http://joi.ito.com/coi.html http://joi.ito.com/coi.html).
- JustinAiken 11y ago
  > He also held stakes in Blockstream, Aaah, that explains it.
wpietri 11y ago
I'm personally bearish on Bitcoin. (It's neat tech but as a product I think it's doomed to always be on the margins.) Despite that, I'd agree with Ito here that there are a relatively small number of people who really have the background and the experience to work on the core code. Distributed systems are hard. Cryptography is hard. Financial systems are hard. Transactional databases are hard. Securing systems that handle real money is hard. Open source development itself isn't easy. The number of engineers who think they can handle all that is way, way larger than the number who actually can. As an example, just consider how many systems get breached because people build their own crypto. And look at how we're still finding critical bugs in core security libraries.
- woah 11y ago
  The thing I have issue with is not his assumption that only a few people can work on Bitcoin, but that only the Bitcoin core team understands BFT consensus and POW.

mathattack 11y ago

Is it correct to call it a $6.5 billion bounty? Once Bitcoin is hacked, the value of all the coins go to 0, no? Who would accept them knowing they could lose them so easily.

detaro 11y ago
What do you mean by "once Bitcoin is hacked"?
- chejazi 11y ago
  I imagine a compromise in Bitcoin's cryptographic foundation, such as SHA256, is what is being referred to here.
  - gigq 11y ago
    SHA256 is used for mining but that would only expose new coins that are being generated. If there was a vulnerability there the community would switch to a new mining algorithm to secure new blocks. Addresses are protected by hashing a public key to the bitcoin address (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1...). If you've always sent coins to new addresses like the hierarchical deterministic wallets do then your public key is only exposed after you spend the coins, so you are not susceptible to a cracking attempt on the public key.
    - schmichael 11y ago
      > If there was a vulnerability there the community would switch to a new mining algorithm to secure new blocks. This would be extremely interesting to watch as a new algorithm would render all (or at least most) existing miners useless as they use SHA256-specific-ASICs. The economic and control fundamentals of Bitcoin completely change if you change the hash algorithm. Not to mention it takes non-zero time to choose a new hash, make the code changes, and deploy it worldwide. Even if somehow you do that in hours or days, what happens in the mean time? Bitcoin would be entirely unsafe to use and anyone using it as their primary financial store better hope they have some food stockpiled (and bills paid)! Luckily I've not heard anyone question the math behind Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm, so I think this possibility is exceedingly unlikely as the math is well understood.

api 11y ago

"They often view the people working on Bitcoin as a bunch of crazy Libertarians who came up with a cool idea but believe that a bunch of hired guns could put the same thing together given enough money." This is my favorite point. There's a lot of people out there who think "sure, yeah, hacker types can prototype creative stuff but anything they do can be done better by Serious People with Serious Degrees." The history of the original PC revolution is the history of that being proven wrong. In the 70s and 80s all the Serious People with Serious Degress from the Right Schools worked for IBM, HP, and other mainframe vendors and made 2-3 times as much as the hackers who drove them into the ground with radically cheaper and eventually better products. Due to its low capital costs, IT/CS is an inherently radically meritocratic industry. Someone with no college degree can show up an expert by actually delivering something superior... if they can, that is, and there are enough who can that it happens fairly often. If anything the pattern that I see in this industry is that the indie hackers are ahead of the curve. They're the ones who prototype the hard stuff and solve the hard problems. The Serious People take up the rear, coming in later and building out and scaling what's already been done. They're the regular army, not the special forces. Serious People run the Internet now but they didn't build it... if it had been left up to them it would be a byzantine OSI network run by telcos and we'd still be using text terminals (with limited graphics maybe) for $1/minute.

Animats 11y ago

The impressive thing about Bitcoin is that it works well despite many attempts to break it. That's so rare in computing. The basic concept was well worked out. Some of the people in the financial community just want a shared ledger between the big players that doesn't require a separate organization to run it. That's simpler than creating a shared trusted organization, like the Depository Trust Company. Those systems are consensus ledgers where known parties each have a vote. There's no proof of work, and it's not a currency system. That's unrelated to Bitcoin, but it's taken seriously because Bitcoin hasn't been broken. The "current situation of Bitcoin" mostly seems to involve a dispute over block size. At the moment, some denial of service attack is creating large numbers of tiny transactions and causing a transaction backlog. Transactions which specify a higher fee get through OK, apparently. The "core developers" think they have a voice in how Bitcoin works, but in fact, the three top mining pools in China have well over 50% of the mining power and decide what happens. Too many Bitcoin exchanges are still run by crooks. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of "Big Vern", Cryptsy's CEO, should contact the Silver Law Firm, which is suing him. And that's Bitcoin today.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

danbruc 11y ago

Bitcoin is a solution in search for a real problem that it can solve better than other solutions. That's the situation, IMHO.

ChemicalWarfare 11y ago
I'm mixing merchant's and end user's perspectives here - no chargebacks, low tx fees, no need to share sensitive data with anyone, easy p2p transactions, no cross border tx fees, few other things.
- sanswork 11y ago
  No chargebacks - this is a huge negative for users Low tx fees - most users currently don't see tx fees with most payment systems. Bitcoin puts them on the user. Sensitive data - if you consider a credit card number sensitive you are doing it wrong. They are designed to be easy to replace if compromised and even then new technology is making single use numbers common. Easy - which is why sorryforyourloss is a thing. Bitcoin is confusing for most people and difficult to secure for everyone. Cross border - unless you need local currency
  - Natanael_L 11y ago
    Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators. Payment channels. No need to worry about replacing any numbers, your software does it for you. Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority of losses.
    - danbruc 11y ago
      Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators. Why then mine in the first place, you just reintroduced trusted parties? Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority of losses. If you are careful enough, everything is fine almost by definition. But a good, i.e. user friendly, system is one that lets you make mistakes without hurting you too badly. Therefore asking what to do in order to be fine is kind of the wrong question, one should better ask with what kind of stupidity you can still get away.

fsiefken 11y ago

I read: "It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust, the ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable. I fear that the communication and now emotional rift between various key groups and individuals is wide right now, but I believe it's imperative that we try to bring the community together and focus on executing on a shared technical plan that represents our best shot at broad consensus from both a technical and a practical perspective." It reads like a response on the Bitcoin situation describted in the Jan 14 Medium article by Mike Hearn on the "Resolution of the Bitcoin experiment". Problems resulting in the rift between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited. https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin... He seems to suggest Ethereum and Bitcoin alternatives cannot yet replace Bitcoin Core as it is robust and battle tested as he writes: "If you're serious about security and stability -- and you should be -- Bitcoin is almost the only choice with the largest bounty, and largest community, with the most practical modern experience deploying to a broad and active network in the real world." But is Bitcoin the only choice and are the bitcoin stability problems outlined by Mike Hearn and others an "idee fixe" or just a dispute over blocksize?

Houshalter 11y ago

The other day I was alarmed to learn that bitcoin may be killing as many as one person every day. That's based on this gwern estimate of the number of deaths caused by the folding@home project: http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping If you assume that bitcoin uses 10x more computing power than folding, and it uses most of it in China which has far worse pollution, than the estimate comes to 340 deaths per year. That's just direct deaths, who knows how much damage is caused by indirect damage and the long term impact of those wasted resources.

toomim 11y ago
It uses mostly hydropower, even in china.
CyberDildonics 11y ago
Imagine how many people per year air conditioning kills? Surely you don't really buy into such an enormous logical fallacy?
- Houshalter 11y ago
  How is it a logical fallacy? Do you see any errors with my math? Are you saying that it doesn't kill people? It is true that air conditioning kills people and contributes greatly to pollution. That's why there have been a lot of attempts to reduce its use. But bitcoin is way worse. Fortunately far fewer people use it than air conditioning. According to this article, a single bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as a 1.5 households use in a day: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    How many people per year does your computer kill?

pash 11y ago

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote a blog post [0] today that gives a very different take on things. He criticized Bitcoin Core's development team for their poor communication with the community, for their inhospitality to new contributors, and for their repeated rejection of practical and simple solutions to Bitcoin's immediate scaling problem. He advocated adopting Bitcoin Classic's short-term fix for full transaction blocks and wrote that it is vital in the long term to foster an environment in which multiple development teams can compete to introduce new features and improvements to the protocol. There are many people in the Bitcoin ecosystem who, like Brian, feel strongly that if Bitcoin is to survive and thrive, then not only must the blocksize-limit be increased, but the exclusive power to decide the future of Bitcoin must be taken out of the hands of the Bitcoin Core team. 0. https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-roundtable-6c11a10d8cdf#.xw7emyjhh https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-...

fsiefken 11y ago
Yes, but there are also people - like Bram Cohen - who view Coinbase, Bitcoin Classic and others as a hostile agents attempting to take over control. Also see: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-of-insanity/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-o... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807
- notlukejr 11y ago
  Bram Cohen has always hated Bitcoin. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hated_bitoin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hate... Which makes it strange how in 2015 he suddenly took an interest in Bitcoin and (1) supports everything Blockstream is doing (2) writes blog posts attacking long-time Bitcoin contributors like Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen. Perhaps Bram Cohen is "consulting" for Blockstream? They admit they spent over $10m+ in their first 12 months of operations in 2015 which is a high burn rate considering how few full-time employees ("founders") they had during that time.
  - 11y ago

baconizer 11y ago

I can relate to author's opinion on block chain VC hype, but not so sure about comparing Bitcoin to the Internet, at least yet...

davidw 11y ago

As someone who is a curious outsider to the whole bitcoin thing, the more I read all the bickering, the more I think "I'm going to stay away until they've got things figured out". After all, I'd be getting in to use the technology, rather than attempt speculate on its value.

guelo 11y ago

The reason I sold all my bitcoin is that the blocksize impasse started smelling like corruption to me. The interests of Chinese miners seems to have undue influence. If Bitcoin Core doesn't have the interest of the whole community then there's no trust. And without trust the whole scheme falls apart.

my5thaccount 11y ago

It's ironic that a currency designed to solve the problems of currencies controlled by human beings is now suffering the very same problems that caused all the fiat currencies before it to fail. Human beings are the problem.

cortesoft 11y ago
All fiat currencies before have failed? I am pretty sure ere are lots of fiat currencies that are doing just fine (like the dollar, which has never failed)
- my5thaccount 11y ago
  Right, yes, I always forget about the dollar! The dollar will be the one to prove them all wrong!
  - cortesoft 11y ago
    How long does something have to last before it is considered a success?