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> I mean, you can call it bad, but it provely works for the thing that it intended to solve. That thing being sending censorship resistant, electronic financial

> I mean, you can call it bad, but it provely works for the thing that it intended to solve. That thing being sending censorship resistant, electronic financial transactions. But it doesn't appear to do so. 1. It cannot meet demand, so folks are recreating existing point to point financial networks and then using the chain in the event of reconciliation. These define a new topology as surely as credit card companies redefined the topology of modern digital economies. 2. It appears that it is very easy to gain a secret majority and do all sorts of nasty things, in addition to freezing out miners. P.S., if I had a magic wand that could make WikiLeaks disappear in a sweeping curtain of sulphuric fire, I'd stick a bell on the top and wave it happily until my doctor informed me my RSI was fatal.

stale2002 9y ago
OK, so it appears that you don't support tools that allow people to get around censorship. That's fine, but that is literally the point of Bitcoin. You just don't like the use case. At the end of the end, it has been working for 8 years, and it is the best tool out there to solve the problem of censorship resistant financial transactions. This is proven by the fact that even though people want to shut down payments to places like Wikileaks they are still happening So the purpose is to subvert people and groups like you, who want to stop these payments, and yet the payments and money still flows. The nasty things that you claim COULD happen, AREN'T. This is proven by the fact that groups like Wikileaks still recieve their money. My definition of "working" has nothing to with theoreticals. It has to do with the practical, historical examples. And the historical example is that these groups are still receiving their money, so by definition it did work. Or in other words, if it really doesn't work, as you claim, the how come it its working? As defined by the fact that it is literally the best existing tool out there for this usecase. (IE, visa and mastercard will block your money, and yet bitcoin still works) If you disagree, fine, go ahead and try to stop my money going to places that you don't want it to (ex, such as Wikileaks). Report it to the NSA or whoever, for supporting "russian propaganda", or whatever. Betcha won't succeed.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > K, so it appears that you don't support tools that allow people to get around censorship. That's fine, but that is literally the point of Bitcoin. You just don't like the use case. You cannot try to shame me into saying a technology that's been proven to have a major security flaw doesn't have that flaw. It's precisely because I care about this more than you that I can accept that bitter pill and you cannot. > My definition of "working" has nothing to with theoreticals Then you are a sucker, and you deserve to lose what you put in. Still, I hope you'll be okay, mmkay? > Or in other words, if it really doesn't work, as you claim, the how come it its working? Well, aside from the fact that its not working very well at all... It's prototype-level technology escalated to national limelight because of initial interest from a lot of questionable and probably illegal people. Unlike previous things like the internet, the value exchange mechanism is very direct, making it much more attractive for money laundering. > As defined by the fact that it is literally the best existing tool out there for this usecase. (IE, visa and mastercard will block your money, and yet bitcoin still works) I'm fairly sure the cost of a dozen viable stolen identities to use as money movement channels is MUCH cheaper than the transaction fees on bitcoin, so it's not like the enterprising criminal doesn't have a classical, high performance, downmarket option. Bitcoin in particular is libertarian chic and anarchist crypto-religion. Ethereum has MUCH more interesting properties, but still needs several years to bake. > If you disagree, fine, go ahead and try to stop my money going to places that you don't want it to (ex, such as Wikileaks). If you really wanna donate to a bunch of authoritarian-loving pro-rapist people with such bad opsec that a single twitter actor blew a core comms network wide open? Be my guest. Crypto-fash it up.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    > I'm fairly sure the cost of a dozen viable stolen identities to use as money movement channels is MUCH cheaper than the transaction fees on bitcoin, so it's not like the enterprising criminal doesn't have a classical, high performance, downmarket option. Ok, and in 2010 did the average person have access to such a network? I personally didn't have access to those things. Thats sounds pretty difficult, actually. But what I DID have access to was bitcoin. And it worked! And it didn't get censored like visa or mastercard was doing. Thats the usecase. Me sending money to wikileaks. I cannot think of any other plausible way for me personally to send money to wikileaks back in 2010. Stolen identities sounds like it would get me sent to jail, and it seems hard. No thanks. Bitcoin was easier. (A dollar for a transaction fee is still cheaper than cross country money transfers, actually.)
ozmbie 9y ago
>1. It cannot meet demand, so folks are recreating existing point to point financial networks and then using the chain in the event of reconciliation. These define a new topology as surely as credit card companies redefined the topology of modern digital economies. Are you talking about the Lightning Network? While it has a different topology and its own limitations, I wouldn't call it a replication of existing systems. It's an extension of the blockchain transaction concept more than anything. Users can still make trustless payments without relying on a third party. The routing nodes do not require trust due to the hash time locked contract system.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > Users can still make trustless payments without relying on a third party. You need to establish each tunnel on chain, as I read it, this requires a commit to the block. So any time you want to open a payment to a 3rd party you need a btc chain transaction. I'm happy to be wrong here, but that's how I read it, and if so then that's not really gonna fix the problem at all; it's just going to make more not-actually-decentralized services. Maybe it's an okay thing to imagine a world where there is a primary chain for major institutions and then brokers on this chain using lightning. But I gotta confess I was sorta signing up for something more revolutionary than "disrupting visa with a new visa."
  - ozmbie 9y ago
    Lightning network payments can be routed through other users/nodes. So you only need one "on chain" transaction to then be able to send those funds back and forth to any other user in the network. eg: Alice opens a channel with Bob. Charlie opens a channel with Bob. Alice can send payments to Charlie by having them routed through Bob (in a trustless way using Hashed Timelock Contracts). There are valid concerns around what the topology looks like and how efficient it is to find optimal routes through a large network. These are the problems the developers are working on though.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      "Just put your life savings on chain and we'll solve the traveling salesman problem?" Or am I misunderstanding?

stale2002 9y ago

OK, so it appears that you don't support tools that allow people to get around censorship. That's fine, but that is literally the point of Bitcoin. You just don't like the use case. At the end of the end, it has been working for 8 years, and it is the best tool out there to solve the problem of censorship resistant financial transactions. This is proven by the fact that even though people want to shut down payments to places like Wikileaks they are still happening So the purpose is to subvert people and groups like you, who want to stop these payments, and yet the payments and money still flows. The nasty things that you claim COULD happen, AREN'T. This is proven by the fact that groups like Wikileaks still recieve their money. My definition of "working" has nothing to with theoreticals. It has to do with the practical, historical examples. And the historical example is that these groups are still receiving their money, so by definition it did work. Or in other words, if it really doesn't work, as you claim, the how come it its working? As defined by the fact that it is literally the best existing tool out there for this usecase. (IE, visa and mastercard will block your money, and yet bitcoin still works) If you disagree, fine, go ahead and try to stop my money going to places that you don't want it to (ex, such as Wikileaks). Report it to the NSA or whoever, for supporting "russian propaganda", or whatever. Betcha won't succeed.

KirinDave 9y ago
> K, so it appears that you don't support tools that allow people to get around censorship. That's fine, but that is literally the point of Bitcoin. You just don't like the use case. You cannot try to shame me into saying a technology that's been proven to have a major security flaw doesn't have that flaw. It's precisely because I care about this more than you that I can accept that bitter pill and you cannot. > My definition of "working" has nothing to with theoreticals Then you are a sucker, and you deserve to lose what you put in. Still, I hope you'll be okay, mmkay? > Or in other words, if it really doesn't work, as you claim, the how come it its working? Well, aside from the fact that its not working very well at all... It's prototype-level technology escalated to national limelight because of initial interest from a lot of questionable and probably illegal people. Unlike previous things like the internet, the value exchange mechanism is very direct, making it much more attractive for money laundering. > As defined by the fact that it is literally the best existing tool out there for this usecase. (IE, visa and mastercard will block your money, and yet bitcoin still works) I'm fairly sure the cost of a dozen viable stolen identities to use as money movement channels is MUCH cheaper than the transaction fees on bitcoin, so it's not like the enterprising criminal doesn't have a classical, high performance, downmarket option. Bitcoin in particular is libertarian chic and anarchist crypto-religion. Ethereum has MUCH more interesting properties, but still needs several years to bake. > If you disagree, fine, go ahead and try to stop my money going to places that you don't want it to (ex, such as Wikileaks). If you really wanna donate to a bunch of authoritarian-loving pro-rapist people with such bad opsec that a single twitter actor blew a core comms network wide open? Be my guest. Crypto-fash it up.
- stale2002 9y ago
  > I'm fairly sure the cost of a dozen viable stolen identities to use as money movement channels is MUCH cheaper than the transaction fees on bitcoin, so it's not like the enterprising criminal doesn't have a classical, high performance, downmarket option. Ok, and in 2010 did the average person have access to such a network? I personally didn't have access to those things. Thats sounds pretty difficult, actually. But what I DID have access to was bitcoin. And it worked! And it didn't get censored like visa or mastercard was doing. Thats the usecase. Me sending money to wikileaks. I cannot think of any other plausible way for me personally to send money to wikileaks back in 2010. Stolen identities sounds like it would get me sent to jail, and it seems hard. No thanks. Bitcoin was easier. (A dollar for a transaction fee is still cheaper than cross country money transfers, actually.)

ozmbie 9y ago

>1. It cannot meet demand, so folks are recreating existing point to point financial networks and then using the chain in the event of reconciliation. These define a new topology as surely as credit card companies redefined the topology of modern digital economies. Are you talking about the Lightning Network? While it has a different topology and its own limitations, I wouldn't call it a replication of existing systems. It's an extension of the blockchain transaction concept more than anything. Users can still make trustless payments without relying on a third party. The routing nodes do not require trust due to the hash time locked contract system.

KirinDave 9y ago
> Users can still make trustless payments without relying on a third party. You need to establish each tunnel on chain, as I read it, this requires a commit to the block. So any time you want to open a payment to a 3rd party you need a btc chain transaction. I'm happy to be wrong here, but that's how I read it, and if so then that's not really gonna fix the problem at all; it's just going to make more not-actually-decentralized services. Maybe it's an okay thing to imagine a world where there is a primary chain for major institutions and then brokers on this chain using lightning. But I gotta confess I was sorta signing up for something more revolutionary than "disrupting visa with a new visa."
- ozmbie 9y ago
  Lightning network payments can be routed through other users/nodes. So you only need one "on chain" transaction to then be able to send those funds back and forth to any other user in the network. eg: Alice opens a channel with Bob. Charlie opens a channel with Bob. Alice can send payments to Charlie by having them routed through Bob (in a trustless way using Hashed Timelock Contracts). There are valid concerns around what the topology looks like and how efficient it is to find optimal routes through a large network. These are the problems the developers are working on though.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    "Just put your life savings on chain and we'll solve the traveling salesman problem?" Or am I misunderstanding?