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Jorge Stolfi explains Bitcoin versus Bitcoin Cash versus Segwit2x

20 points by davidgerard 9y ago

cixx 9y ago
Anyone who is up to date with what is going on with bitcoin can see this is a gross oversimplification. But I guess that is to be expected from Jorge Stolfi who is ideologically opposed to bitcoin and has been on a crusade to try and stop it or change it into some neutered version of it.
- davidgerard 9y ago
  > gross oversimplification Feel free to go into detail about what's wrong with the analogy, rather than skipping straight to ad hominem: > ideologically opposed to bitcoin This is otherwise known as "knowing what he's talking about", which he does to a sufficient degree that the SEC reached out and asked him for an expanded comment on the Winklevoss ETF application last year - it's 27 pages that makes a pretty good critical book on Bitcoin in itself: https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-20.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx20163... He knows the area and the details, and you can't credibly claim he doesn't.
  - cixx 9y ago
    > Feel free to go into detail about what's wrong with the analogy Like I said, it's an oversimplification beyond recognition of the actual situation. It's the equivalent of a 30 second sound bite covering a major contentious issue that has been going on for years and this "explanation" doesn't contribute to the understanding of what is going on and hence doesn't deserve a detailed response. All I'm saying is he has an agenda and people should keep that in mind when reading this.
    - foepys 9y ago
      I'm interested what agenda you are speaking of. To my knowledge, Jorge Stolfi is not affiliated with any financial institution. He is a professor of computer science, not economics or any similar field that you could tie to banks.
      - cixx 9y ago
        > He is a professor of computer science, not economics or any similar field that you could tie to banks. Makes you wonder why he wrote a 27 page document full of economic arguments to the SEC and boasted about it the notorious anti-bitcoin subreddit /r/buttcoin. > I'm interested what agenda you are speaking of. Stolfi has been a long time critic of bitcoin because he determined it could not scale because it is an inefficient system. I can understand that argument because it is true from a computer science perspective; bitcoin is a broadcast network where every node has to process all transactions made. No issue there. But given that fact, doesn't it seem strange then that he is actively participating (in a positive way) in conversation with the people (bitcoin cash supporters) who want to make the bitcoin system more inefficient (broadcast more "redundant" data) by his own definition? Further, he has been a vocal critic of technologies that have to potential to fix his main concern with scaling bitcoin, namely the lightning network (which is practically not possible with bitcoin cash). Not to mention his use of derogatory terms like "Blockstream/Core" for the open source project that has massively increased the performance and capabilities (and thus scaling) of bitcoin, and calling privacy improvements to the system "money laundering" techniques. Another particular thing with Stofli is in how many ways he thinks bitcoin is illegal (which has nothing to do with his scaling argument) as you can listen to in this interview: https://soundcloud.com/bitcoinuncensored/buttcoin-vs-bitcoin-with-jorge-stolfi-of-rbuttcoin-king-of-the-butters https://soundcloud.com/bitcoinuncensored/buttcoin-vs-bitcoin... I could go on and on with these examples. If you are interested you could take a look at his comment history on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/jstolfi https://www.reddit.com/user/jstolfi (all my examples and more are in there). His actions are very inconsistent with his arguments and I don't think he can be trusted for that reason. Gregory Maxwell, one of the most respected and accomplished bitcoin developers, had this to say about him: "Sometimes you encounter a person whos opposition means that you're doing something right. Jorge Stolfi is one of those people."
    - davidgerard 9y ago
      > he has an agenda You still haven't stated what it is, let alone substantiated your ad hominem. Please do so. (Particularly if you're going to refuse to say what's wrong with his actual words while you try to attack his character - together, this gives the strong impression you've got nothing.)
arzt 9y ago
You'd hope the chain with the most utility wins out.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  They'll all continue. Who wants one bubble when you can have three? The last fork resulted in people doubling their coin holdings. Another fork means another doubling and people will buy/sell on that chain, too. Once again, the current market participants will by extracting wealth from new market participants.
  - wereHamster 9y ago
    Except that Bitcoin Cash is pretty much worthless (~300USD) compared to BTC (5500USD). I wish my money had doubled, it's closer to a 5-6% increase instead.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      To be pedantic, I said doubling their coin, not doubling their USD equivalent. And who's gonna complain about 5-6% in free gains? And that's assuming speculation doesn't continue to inflate the price of those alternative coins.
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    Full-history forks (or "dividend forks", to give the hot new euphemism) are all the rage. I'm actually surprised in retrospect that it took until 2017 for someone to think of this trick, particularly given ETH vs ETC a whole year before ... https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/10/06/bitcoin-gold-a-new-bitcoin-full-history-fork-on-the-gpu-bitcoin-core-claims-bitcoin-and-btc-names/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/10/06/bitcoin-gold...
- davidgerard 9y ago
  The overwhelming use case for cryptos is speculation. Drugs and ransomware are a distant second and third. (Not sure which is winning at the moment - lotta darknet markets are down right now, and users are increasingly just not paying ransomware. Of course, solid data on any of this is hard to come by, even as I try to follow it closely ...) So the question would be "which is most useful for speculation?" You'd need to think about exchanges, exchangeability (to other cryptos or to actualmoney), liquidity, how manipulable the price is (which could be an advantage or disadvantage for these purposes) ...
wheelerwj 9y ago
why is an explanation from r/buttcoin on HN?
- davidgerard 9y ago
  'cos it's concise, clear and from a computer science professor who follows and knows the area, one would think

20 points by davidgerard 9y ago

cixx 9y ago

Anyone who is up to date with what is going on with bitcoin can see this is a gross oversimplification. But I guess that is to be expected from Jorge Stolfi who is ideologically opposed to bitcoin and has been on a crusade to try and stop it or change it into some neutered version of it.

davidgerard 9y ago
> gross oversimplification Feel free to go into detail about what's wrong with the analogy, rather than skipping straight to ad hominem: > ideologically opposed to bitcoin This is otherwise known as "knowing what he's talking about", which he does to a sufficient degree that the SEC reached out and asked him for an expanded comment on the Winklevoss ETF application last year - it's 27 pages that makes a pretty good critical book on Bitcoin in itself: https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630-20.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx20163... He knows the area and the details, and you can't credibly claim he doesn't.
- cixx 9y ago
  > Feel free to go into detail about what's wrong with the analogy Like I said, it's an oversimplification beyond recognition of the actual situation. It's the equivalent of a 30 second sound bite covering a major contentious issue that has been going on for years and this "explanation" doesn't contribute to the understanding of what is going on and hence doesn't deserve a detailed response. All I'm saying is he has an agenda and people should keep that in mind when reading this.
  - foepys 9y ago
    I'm interested what agenda you are speaking of. To my knowledge, Jorge Stolfi is not affiliated with any financial institution. He is a professor of computer science, not economics or any similar field that you could tie to banks.
    - cixx 9y ago
      > He is a professor of computer science, not economics or any similar field that you could tie to banks. Makes you wonder why he wrote a 27 page document full of economic arguments to the SEC and boasted about it the notorious anti-bitcoin subreddit /r/buttcoin. > I'm interested what agenda you are speaking of. Stolfi has been a long time critic of bitcoin because he determined it could not scale because it is an inefficient system. I can understand that argument because it is true from a computer science perspective; bitcoin is a broadcast network where every node has to process all transactions made. No issue there. But given that fact, doesn't it seem strange then that he is actively participating (in a positive way) in conversation with the people (bitcoin cash supporters) who want to make the bitcoin system more inefficient (broadcast more "redundant" data) by his own definition? Further, he has been a vocal critic of technologies that have to potential to fix his main concern with scaling bitcoin, namely the lightning network (which is practically not possible with bitcoin cash). Not to mention his use of derogatory terms like "Blockstream/Core" for the open source project that has massively increased the performance and capabilities (and thus scaling) of bitcoin, and calling privacy improvements to the system "money laundering" techniques. Another particular thing with Stofli is in how many ways he thinks bitcoin is illegal (which has nothing to do with his scaling argument) as you can listen to in this interview: https://soundcloud.com/bitcoinuncensored/buttcoin-vs-bitcoin-with-jorge-stolfi-of-rbuttcoin-king-of-the-butters https://soundcloud.com/bitcoinuncensored/buttcoin-vs-bitcoin... I could go on and on with these examples. If you are interested you could take a look at his comment history on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/jstolfi https://www.reddit.com/user/jstolfi (all my examples and more are in there). His actions are very inconsistent with his arguments and I don't think he can be trusted for that reason. Gregory Maxwell, one of the most respected and accomplished bitcoin developers, had this to say about him: "Sometimes you encounter a person whos opposition means that you're doing something right. Jorge Stolfi is one of those people."
  - davidgerard 9y ago
    > he has an agenda You still haven't stated what it is, let alone substantiated your ad hominem. Please do so. (Particularly if you're going to refuse to say what's wrong with his actual words while you try to attack his character - together, this gives the strong impression you've got nothing.)

arzt 9y ago

You'd hope the chain with the most utility wins out.

zzalpha 9y ago
They'll all continue. Who wants one bubble when you can have three? The last fork resulted in people doubling their coin holdings. Another fork means another doubling and people will buy/sell on that chain, too. Once again, the current market participants will by extracting wealth from new market participants.
- wereHamster 9y ago
  Except that Bitcoin Cash is pretty much worthless (~300USD) compared to BTC (5500USD). I wish my money had doubled, it's closer to a 5-6% increase instead.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    To be pedantic, I said doubling their coin, not doubling their USD equivalent. And who's gonna complain about 5-6% in free gains? And that's assuming speculation doesn't continue to inflate the price of those alternative coins.
- davidgerard 9y ago
  Full-history forks (or "dividend forks", to give the hot new euphemism) are all the rage. I'm actually surprised in retrospect that it took until 2017 for someone to think of this trick, particularly given ETH vs ETC a whole year before ... https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/10/06/bitcoin-gold-a-new-bitcoin-full-history-fork-on-the-gpu-bitcoin-core-claims-bitcoin-and-btc-names/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/10/06/bitcoin-gold...
davidgerard 9y ago
The overwhelming use case for cryptos is speculation. Drugs and ransomware are a distant second and third. (Not sure which is winning at the moment - lotta darknet markets are down right now, and users are increasingly just not paying ransomware. Of course, solid data on any of this is hard to come by, even as I try to follow it closely ...) So the question would be "which is most useful for speculation?" You'd need to think about exchanges, exchangeability (to other cryptos or to actualmoney), liquidity, how manipulable the price is (which could be an advantage or disadvantage for these purposes) ...

wheelerwj 9y ago

why is an explanation from r/buttcoin on HN?

davidgerard 9y ago
'cos it's concise, clear and from a computer science professor who follows and knows the area, one would think