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You need opportunity cost in order to secure the network. Without that, there is no incentive to keep the network secure. There is no cheaper solution to solve
by VMG 9y ago
You need opportunity cost in order to secure the network. Without that, there is no incentive to keep the network secure. There is no cheaper solution to solve this problem, therefore there is no waste.
- alex_young 9y agoAre claiming that the Bitcoin solution is the ideal solution to distributed trust? I don't know that that is not the case, but it seems unlikely that the first working solution was the best one doesn't it?
- Klathmon 9y agoI doubt it's the "ideal" solution, but I do feel it's the "best" we currently have. You also need to remember that bitcoin is upgradable. If in the future we find better ways of doing distributed trust, and we can prove it, that doesn't mean that bitcoin is done and gone. If the vast majority of the users of bitcoin believe a change to whatever other "distributed trust" system that is better, the network can be upgraded to take advantage of it.
- smogcutter 9y ago"Bitcoin is inherently wasteful, therefore it's not wasteful." What?
- spookthesunset 9y agoWelcome to Bitcoin advocate logic. Clearly using more energy than a moderate sized european country in order to process 3 or 4 transactions per second isn't wasteful. Right? I mean in absolute numbers, says the bitcoin advocate, the fiat banking system has to use more, right?.... ....nevermind the fact they do something that is not driven by pure speculation and do it at thousands of times larger scales. Bitcoin -- the perfect intersection of people who don't understand finance, economics, computer science, scaling, politics, socio-economics, or math. PS: People only quote Bitcoin's energy use and often times they leave out things like air conditioning. Nobody seems to sum up the total energy required to power the entirety of the crypto "space" including Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.
- wefwefwf2131234 9y agoAdam Smith warned of the division of labor creating blind, ignorant humans, in a conviction driven, not reason driven, society. Society is coasting on fumes of a generations long confirmation bias.
- ratacat 9y agoYes our financial system isn't based on speculation. Good one
- borplk 9y agoMaybe people are defining waste differently (equating "high cost" with waste). What you may call waste is in a way the cost of the operation of the network (and its properties and guarantees and so on). Waste suggests that there is an easy, equivalent, much more efficient solution around the corner but no one cares and wastes resources instead when they could have been doing the same thing with fewer resources.
- VMG 9y agoWaste is something that is unnecessary. Competing for PoW solution is critical. There is no waste. If you know a different way of solving the consensus problem, tell us.
- perl4ever 9y agoIs there a simple way to explain why trusting the developers of the software to manage the network is meaningfully different than trusting the Fed to manage the dollar? I mean, I understand (I think) that Bitcoin doesn't require a given node to trust another node. But what if there is a change to the software that trickles down to all the nodes without them realizing the consequences until it is too late? Either a bug or intentional subversion.