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> I don't see at all, how you could claim there's something fundamental to the technology that will lead to more consumer power... Does Bitcoin decentralize con

by Taek 7y ago

> I don't see at all, how you could claim there's something fundamental to the technology that will lead to more consumer power... Does Bitcoin decentralize control? Or does it hand that control to the tiny handful of Bitcoin miners and exchanges that handle practically all of the work? This is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin does decentralize control, and the miners and exchanges do not have power over Bitcoin. If you control your own keys and run your own full node, then you as the full node operator get to decide what rules you operate by, and therefore what network you participate in. Efforts by miners to change Bitcoin's protocol rules can be outright ignored (and have been successfully in the past - see the BTC/BCH split), and exchanges can only exert power over entities that are directly dependent on the exchanges. Blockchains are special because they give each individual user direct control over the exact ruleset of the protocols that they use. To the best of my knowledge, no other type of network is able to give this power to users.

verdverm 7y ago
What about the big 5 miners acting like a cartel? That sounds a whole lot more centralized than the existing financial system. Oh, and the wealth Gap is bigger too. Bitcoin is not really decentralized. Makes sense a16z is shilling cryptos. They made bets that aren't planning out like the hype predicted. VCs are a lagging indicator for tech. Cryptocurrency is so last decade
- Taek 7y ago
  The miners don't have power even if they act as a cartel. They can't print themselves new money, they can't redefine who owns the existing money, they can't increase the block size or force people to run new code. In Bitcoin, a single monopoly miner has very limited powers. Bitcoin is trust minimizing / decentralized despite the cartel of miners, because Bitcoin has a large number of protections against any actions the cartel could take.
  - verdverm 7y ago
    The cartel can raise fees and change the code. They own the hardware and install the software. What's to actually stop them? If the cartel decides which branch to take at a fork, the rest of the ecosystem really can't do much. Digital USD will be way more of a deal than Bitcoin. The one thing about all this I do like is that some nerds figured out how to extract money from suckers to fund basic research. No one in crypto is making revenues the are greater than their costs, except the mining cartel
    - Melting_Harps 7y ago
      > The cartel can raise fees and change the code. They own the hardware and install the software. What's to actually stop them? If the cartel decides which branch to take at a fork, the rest of the ecosystem really can't do much. See how that played out with Bitcoin vs BCash (no I won't stop calling it that). Your hypothetical threat has happened several times before that, too. With the backing of a 'cartel' headed by the former 'chief scientist' of Bitcoin no less and it still failed to hijack the Network/protcol like you think would occur. Fees are not determined by a single entity, but rather a priority based system determined by the allotted space in any given block and the desired time/fee between the next block being created from the txs in the mempool; so while it can raise the tx costs for a short while, which clog the mempool and slow low mining fee based tx, it cannot itself cause a hostile take over to take place--Jihan and Ver tried this very tactic and spammed the network, in hopes of making users migrate to the bigger block chain they created and it ended up costing them immensely in the end, causing the former to be ousted from his company and losing its dominate hashing power. A record of a valid blockchain, and thus all of its transactions, exists throughout the entire network to self-validate in a decentralized consensus system between miners, nodes, users; forking it would require an adoption of not just miners magically adopting a new protocol/chain with the fork (Bitmain had a majority of the hashing power on BTC's network) but also the nodes that validate the txs and issue new coins. The culmination of all of these events gave Nash's Game Theory an empirically proven usecase when those nodes refused to follow the majority hashing power, several big businesses/exchanges and formally reputable members of the community and instead remained with Bitcoin Core's original chain. > Digital USD will be way more of a deal than Bitcoin. This is exactly the only kind of mindset I would expect to ever be able to draw these type of erroneous conclusions... never mind the fact the USD is actually already technically digital. Physical cash accounts for such a small percentage of actual tx volume and total currency in circulation [1] most of it exists in ledgers as 1-0s on servers and databases. A printing press is a mere relic of 19th/20th century's perception of what currency is and bares little to no relevance in the Modern World. And that is actually not a good thing, but I'll spare you the History lesson. Its like you're truly incapable of understanding the paradigm shift that is occurring before your eyes, and instead you avert your eyes away to what you think you understand and make unsubstantiated claims that clearly reveal you don't have the slightest understanding of the topic at hand given such a statement(s). > The one thing about all this I do like is that some nerds figured out how to extract money from suckers to fund basic research. No one in crypto is making revenues the are greater than their costs, except the mining cartel Exchanges. Binance makes WAY more in fees than any single miner on the network ever since Bitmain failed in their coup. Again, stop and actually learn about the ecosystem you are trying, and failing miserably, to criticize. I'd be way more understanding if you simply said you don't comprehend it, but to make these easily refutable arguments about the USD and its superiority, or any fiat currency in existence to date, doesn't instill any confidence in you even having the slightest grasp of what you are talking about. I try my best not to be seen as hostile, as no one can understand everything, but this narrative is quicly repeated and accepted as truth around here that its startling to see (mainly) professional tech people make these simply mistakes and no one tries to correct the misinformation at all. 1: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exists-in-the-entire-world-in-one-chart-2015-12-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exi...
hudon 7y ago
You’re forgetting the most crucial and definitely centralized aspect of Bitcoin: the developers. Their influence over the protocol’s modifications outweighs a large sum of random individuals’.
- deevolution 7y ago
  Even development is not really centralized because anyone can create a fork. But that doesn't mean your fork will have any value - users have to decide that it's valuable. Bitcoin is an ecosystem.
- sparkie 7y ago
  It doesn't. There are enough "bitcoin maximalists" that developers attempting to modify the bitcoin protocol in ways which aren't widely accepted would be metaphorically hanging themselves. We've seen plenty of them have their reputations tarnished, including some of the most prominent early developers who took over the software maintenance after Satoshi. The developers who are still around and respected are those who work within the protocol rules which are already laid out. That is, the bitcoin protocol can be modified through soft-forks which add further constraints to the set of rules accepted by some bitcoin clients, in backward-compatible ways with existing clients. The developers who have attempted to go the way of hard-forking themselves away from the rules by attempting to relax them simply get cut off from the larger network and they operate in their own niche (eg, BCH). Bitcoin is its network, not its developers, miners, exchanges or anyone else who thinks they have leverage.

by Taek 7y ago

verdverm 7y ago

What about the big 5 miners acting like a cartel? That sounds a whole lot more centralized than the existing financial system. Oh, and the wealth Gap is bigger too. Bitcoin is not really decentralized. Makes sense a16z is shilling cryptos. They made bets that aren't planning out like the hype predicted. VCs are a lagging indicator for tech. Cryptocurrency is so last decade

Taek 7y ago
The miners don't have power even if they act as a cartel. They can't print themselves new money, they can't redefine who owns the existing money, they can't increase the block size or force people to run new code. In Bitcoin, a single monopoly miner has very limited powers. Bitcoin is trust minimizing / decentralized despite the cartel of miners, because Bitcoin has a large number of protections against any actions the cartel could take.
- verdverm 7y ago
  The cartel can raise fees and change the code. They own the hardware and install the software. What's to actually stop them? If the cartel decides which branch to take at a fork, the rest of the ecosystem really can't do much. Digital USD will be way more of a deal than Bitcoin. The one thing about all this I do like is that some nerds figured out how to extract money from suckers to fund basic research. No one in crypto is making revenues the are greater than their costs, except the mining cartel
  - Melting_Harps 7y ago
    > The cartel can raise fees and change the code. They own the hardware and install the software. What's to actually stop them? If the cartel decides which branch to take at a fork, the rest of the ecosystem really can't do much. See how that played out with Bitcoin vs BCash (no I won't stop calling it that). Your hypothetical threat has happened several times before that, too. With the backing of a 'cartel' headed by the former 'chief scientist' of Bitcoin no less and it still failed to hijack the Network/protcol like you think would occur. Fees are not determined by a single entity, but rather a priority based system determined by the allotted space in any given block and the desired time/fee between the next block being created from the txs in the mempool; so while it can raise the tx costs for a short while, which clog the mempool and slow low mining fee based tx, it cannot itself cause a hostile take over to take place--Jihan and Ver tried this very tactic and spammed the network, in hopes of making users migrate to the bigger block chain they created and it ended up costing them immensely in the end, causing the former to be ousted from his company and losing its dominate hashing power. A record of a valid blockchain, and thus all of its transactions, exists throughout the entire network to self-validate in a decentralized consensus system between miners, nodes, users; forking it would require an adoption of not just miners magically adopting a new protocol/chain with the fork (Bitmain had a majority of the hashing power on BTC's network) but also the nodes that validate the txs and issue new coins. The culmination of all of these events gave Nash's Game Theory an empirically proven usecase when those nodes refused to follow the majority hashing power, several big businesses/exchanges and formally reputable members of the community and instead remained with Bitcoin Core's original chain. > Digital USD will be way more of a deal than Bitcoin. This is exactly the only kind of mindset I would expect to ever be able to draw these type of erroneous conclusions... never mind the fact the USD is actually already technically digital. Physical cash accounts for such a small percentage of actual tx volume and total currency in circulation [1] most of it exists in ledgers as 1-0s on servers and databases. A printing press is a mere relic of 19th/20th century's perception of what currency is and bares little to no relevance in the Modern World. And that is actually not a good thing, but I'll spare you the History lesson. Its like you're truly incapable of understanding the paradigm shift that is occurring before your eyes, and instead you avert your eyes away to what you think you understand and make unsubstantiated claims that clearly reveal you don't have the slightest understanding of the topic at hand given such a statement(s). > The one thing about all this I do like is that some nerds figured out how to extract money from suckers to fund basic research. No one in crypto is making revenues the are greater than their costs, except the mining cartel Exchanges. Binance makes WAY more in fees than any single miner on the network ever since Bitmain failed in their coup. Again, stop and actually learn about the ecosystem you are trying, and failing miserably, to criticize. I'd be way more understanding if you simply said you don't comprehend it, but to make these easily refutable arguments about the USD and its superiority, or any fiat currency in existence to date, doesn't instill any confidence in you even having the slightest grasp of what you are talking about. I try my best not to be seen as hostile, as no one can understand everything, but this narrative is quicly repeated and accepted as truth around here that its startling to see (mainly) professional tech people make these simply mistakes and no one tries to correct the misinformation at all. 1: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exists-in-the-entire-world-in-one-chart-2015-12-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-exi...

hudon 7y ago

You’re forgetting the most crucial and definitely centralized aspect of Bitcoin: the developers. Their influence over the protocol’s modifications outweighs a large sum of random individuals’.

deevolution 7y ago
Even development is not really centralized because anyone can create a fork. But that doesn't mean your fork will have any value - users have to decide that it's valuable. Bitcoin is an ecosystem.
sparkie 7y ago
It doesn't. There are enough "bitcoin maximalists" that developers attempting to modify the bitcoin protocol in ways which aren't widely accepted would be metaphorically hanging themselves. We've seen plenty of them have their reputations tarnished, including some of the most prominent early developers who took over the software maintenance after Satoshi. The developers who are still around and respected are those who work within the protocol rules which are already laid out. That is, the bitcoin protocol can be modified through soft-forks which add further constraints to the set of rules accepted by some bitcoin clients, in backward-compatible ways with existing clients. The developers who have attempted to go the way of hard-forking themselves away from the rules by attempting to relax them simply get cut off from the larger network and they operate in their own niche (eg, BCH). Bitcoin is its network, not its developers, miners, exchanges or anyone else who thinks they have leverage.