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The underlying blockchains often do not have central authority; that is, no one entity can make a rash decision for bitcoin tomorrow. I disagree, they have ple

The underlying blockchains often do not have central authority; that is, no one entity can make a rash decision for bitcoin tomorrow. I disagree, they have plenty of pinch points which allow de facto control. The small group of core developers control the laws of the currency and directly tied to that its value. They can perform hard forks and change all the rules. The users have very little influence there. Exchanges control which currencies are popular, along with huge amounts of the money in circulation, and change things like deposit/withdraw rules arbitrarily. The miners can attack the currency to rewrite history (has been done), refuse to use new rules, or switch to a new currency. Many of the fundamental tenets of bitcoin as it started out (that most users will mine, that most users will take care of their own wallets) have been proven too optimistic when in widespread use. People just don't want decentralised things given the massive tradeoffs and the rewards of centralisation for companies are too great. I think blockchains like bitcoin are a very interesting experiment, and currencies will escape state control as nation states continue to wither away, but none of the current currencies is fit to take that role, nor was the pivot of startups to 'blockchains for...x' a good idea - it's a solution in search of a problem in most cases. We are unfortunately more likely to see a corporate currency or one from a superstate take that role than a decentralised one.

yyyyip 7y ago
If you (or anyone else) think you can effectively break bitcoin then there is a billion dollar bounty available to you in the form of a highly leveraged bitfinex short position.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Short positions on highly volatile (and probably manipulated) markets are extremely vulnerable to short squeezes. There's no good way to take out a leveraged short that's guaranteed to remain in place for, say, six months.
  - hollerith 7y ago
    Good to know, but just because any particular short position is not guaranteed to remain in place for six months doesn't mean there is no good way to profit from shorting Bitcoin.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      The problem is that a leveraged short position that is closed out/margin called can lose more money than you initially invested. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
pilingual 7y ago
Much of this comment is straw men (exchanges, miners, wallets). Anyone running a node can indeed decide what software they run. That’s exactly my point. There’s no such thing as “they” performing hard forks. Developers make decisions, sometimes they disagree and fork. Miners make decisions on which fork they want to run. Users are free to run a node. Generalizing “blockchains for x” doesn’t do much good. Sure there are terrible blockchain projects as there are terrible app ideas, but there are quite a few good projects out there. I’m a fan of Keep.network for example.
- pjc50 7y ago
  .. but the meaning of the blockchain and its purchasing power (or other real-world effects) are entirely determined by the software that interprets it. We've seen this a number of times, such as the Ethereum "DAO" roll back. > Miners make decisions on which fork they want to run. Miners are surprisingly consolidated, so this mostly determines which version "wins". And the economic value of which fork wins is determined by the markets. If you keep running the "wrong" version of a fork you find out that it's worthless and only the coins on the "right" one retain value.

yyyyip 7y ago

If you (or anyone else) think you can effectively break bitcoin then there is a billion dollar bounty available to you in the form of a highly leveraged bitfinex short position.

pjc50 7y ago
Short positions on highly volatile (and probably manipulated) markets are extremely vulnerable to short squeezes. There's no good way to take out a leveraged short that's guaranteed to remain in place for, say, six months.
- hollerith 7y ago
  Good to know, but just because any particular short position is not guaranteed to remain in place for six months doesn't mean there is no good way to profit from shorting Bitcoin.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    The problem is that a leveraged short position that is closed out/margin called can lose more money than you initially invested. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

pilingual 7y ago

Much of this comment is straw men (exchanges, miners, wallets). Anyone running a node can indeed decide what software they run. That’s exactly my point. There’s no such thing as “they” performing hard forks. Developers make decisions, sometimes they disagree and fork. Miners make decisions on which fork they want to run. Users are free to run a node. Generalizing “blockchains for x” doesn’t do much good. Sure there are terrible blockchain projects as there are terrible app ideas, but there are quite a few good projects out there. I’m a fan of Keep.network for example.

pjc50 7y ago
.. but the meaning of the blockchain and its purchasing power (or other real-world effects) are entirely determined by the software that interprets it. We've seen this a number of times, such as the Ethereum "DAO" roll back. > Miners make decisions on which fork they want to run. Miners are surprisingly consolidated, so this mostly determines which version "wins". And the economic value of which fork wins is determined by the markets. If you keep running the "wrong" version of a fork you find out that it's worthless and only the coins on the "right" one retain value.