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1. SPV is not sufficient for security because it requires whitelisted nodes. If your client connects to a malicious node, you are shit out of luck. 2. There is

by hudon 9y ago

1. SPV is not sufficient for security because it requires whitelisted nodes. If your client connects to a malicious node, you are shit out of luck. 2. There is no non-blockchain alternative to online censorship resistant cash. So if the price to use it is high, you will either pay the fee for censorship resistance or use your credit card (which is faster, cheaper, gives you rewards or cash back, provides consumer protection, etc., but is not censorship resistant). Altcoins basically act as market forces which allow us to discover what the world is willing to pay for censorship resistant digital cash, and you see this when markets which actually need censorship resistance (eg. Silk Road, AlphaBay, etc.) talk about considering Monero or something else when Bitcoin's fees get too high.

buttershakes 9y ago
1. You just need to connect to enough nodes that their is a statistical probability that you aren't being censored. 2. There are already alternatives which have better censorship resistance than Bitcoin, limiting the block size does little to fix those issues. I also don't think the market actually values censorship resistance in their digital cash as much as you think.
- hudon 9y ago
  > I also don't think the market actually values censorship resistance in their digital cash Alphabay processed $600,000 to $800,000 per day [1]. This is economic activity for tangible goods. In the list of other top uses of the blockchain might be ICOs, which are a way to leverage censorship resistance to raise money without permission from the SEC. On the high end, these accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars within minutes. Please show me a use case for a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that even comes close to these numbers and that does not need censorship resistance. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/alphabay-takedown-dark-web-chaos/ https://www.wired.com/story/alphabay-takedown-dark-web-chaos...
  - buttershakes 9y ago
    I'm not sure why you think $800,000 per day is a lot. Compare that to daily volume for usage of the currency itself across all applications. https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...
    - hudon 9y ago
      It is a lot. Again, please show me an example application of the blockchain that comes close to that number but that does not need censorship resistance. The estimate of daily volume provided by blockchain.info obscures our discussion, especially if you consider that the daily volume for BTC/USD pair is around $1B. There could be $1B-worth of outputs in a day all dedicated to providing liquidity to exchanges, but entering/exiting the network is not an application of the network itself.
      - buttershakes 9y ago
        Well i consider trading a very valid use case, as well as simple peer to peer payment for all goods and services. How much transactional volume is Bitpay doing? 800,0000 isn't a big number, and certainly it will only represent a small portion of the payment volume if Bitcoin went anywhere near main stream. It's also pretty evident that Bitcoin may be censorship resistant but it isn't anonymous or fully fungible, makes it a pretty terrible currency for dark market usage going forward.
        hudon 9y ago
        If you can show me that bitpay processes around the same amount as dark markets, I will re-assess my position... As for anonymity and fungibility: I believe tumbling services are good enough today, which is why buying on a dark market works. However, it is not perfect and this is why projects like Monero, ZCash, MimbleWimble, TumbleBit and Xim are important.
        buttershakes 9y ago
        https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-bitcoin-btc-payment-volumes/ https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-b... This isn't the most accurate thing, but looks to me like several millions USD worth of volume just in Bitpay. That doesn't account for all of the other payment processors, or the peer to peer payments, or the exchange trading, etc. I'm not saying dark markets aren't an early driver of Bitcoin, but it's not where the majority of the action is now at all.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    The standard financial example for blockchains is financial clearing, and the amount of money processed in these transactions is truly staggering. CHIPS alone processes $1,000,000 every minute.
    - hudon 9y ago
      Does CHIPS use a blockchain?
      - princeb 9y ago
        is this a rhetorical question meant to show that blockchain is not the appropriate tool for financial clearing?
        hudon 9y ago
        Yep, and the history of R3 Corda is evidence of how "bitcoin as a clearing house between banks" is a pipe dream. Bitcoin is almost 10 years old. We have enough data now to be able to build strong cases for what it's actually useful for. It is no longer sufficient to talk about what Bitcoin will do without talking about why it has not done so yet.
    - buttershakes 9y ago
      The metrics aren't very comparable though because of the way they work, mostly just mainframe apps I imagine. Blockchains are going to require a lot of engineering to get there.

by hudon 9y ago

buttershakes 9y ago

1. You just need to connect to enough nodes that their is a statistical probability that you aren't being censored. 2. There are already alternatives which have better censorship resistance than Bitcoin, limiting the block size does little to fix those issues. I also don't think the market actually values censorship resistance in their digital cash as much as you think.

hudon 9y ago
> I also don't think the market actually values censorship resistance in their digital cash Alphabay processed $600,000 to $800,000 per day [1]. This is economic activity for tangible goods. In the list of other top uses of the blockchain might be ICOs, which are a way to leverage censorship resistance to raise money without permission from the SEC. On the high end, these accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars within minutes. Please show me a use case for a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that even comes close to these numbers and that does not need censorship resistance. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/alphabay-takedown-dark-web-chaos/ https://www.wired.com/story/alphabay-takedown-dark-web-chaos...
- buttershakes 9y ago
  I'm not sure why you think $800,000 per day is a lot. Compare that to daily volume for usage of the currency itself across all applications. https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...
  - hudon 9y ago
    It is a lot. Again, please show me an example application of the blockchain that comes close to that number but that does not need censorship resistance. The estimate of daily volume provided by blockchain.info obscures our discussion, especially if you consider that the daily volume for BTC/USD pair is around $1B. There could be $1B-worth of outputs in a day all dedicated to providing liquidity to exchanges, but entering/exiting the network is not an application of the network itself.
    - buttershakes 9y ago
      Well i consider trading a very valid use case, as well as simple peer to peer payment for all goods and services. How much transactional volume is Bitpay doing? 800,0000 isn't a big number, and certainly it will only represent a small portion of the payment volume if Bitcoin went anywhere near main stream. It's also pretty evident that Bitcoin may be censorship resistant but it isn't anonymous or fully fungible, makes it a pretty terrible currency for dark market usage going forward.
      - hudon 9y ago
        If you can show me that bitpay processes around the same amount as dark markets, I will re-assess my position... As for anonymity and fungibility: I believe tumbling services are good enough today, which is why buying on a dark market works. However, it is not perfect and this is why projects like Monero, ZCash, MimbleWimble, TumbleBit and Xim are important.
        buttershakes 9y ago
        https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-bitcoin-btc-payment-volumes/ https://qz.com/931810/cheapair-and-bitpay-data-show-rising-b... This isn't the most accurate thing, but looks to me like several millions USD worth of volume just in Bitpay. That doesn't account for all of the other payment processors, or the peer to peer payments, or the exchange trading, etc. I'm not saying dark markets aren't an early driver of Bitcoin, but it's not where the majority of the action is now at all.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  The standard financial example for blockchains is financial clearing, and the amount of money processed in these transactions is truly staggering. CHIPS alone processes $1,000,000 every minute.
  - hudon 9y ago
    Does CHIPS use a blockchain?
    - princeb 9y ago
      is this a rhetorical question meant to show that blockchain is not the appropriate tool for financial clearing?
      - hudon 9y ago
        Yep, and the history of R3 Corda is evidence of how "bitcoin as a clearing house between banks" is a pipe dream. Bitcoin is almost 10 years old. We have enough data now to be able to build strong cases for what it's actually useful for. It is no longer sufficient to talk about what Bitcoin will do without talking about why it has not done so yet.
  - buttershakes 9y ago
    The metrics aren't very comparable though because of the way they work, mostly just mainframe apps I imagine. Blockchains are going to require a lot of engineering to get there.