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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 inc

by 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...
  - verdverm 7y ago
    So you don't like governments being able to have fiscal tools in times of crisis like now. Yes the USD is mainly digital, I have been telling people this who ask about digital money since Bitcoin made it popular. Sorry, forgot about the exchanges, you are right, they make a ton of money by allowing wash trades. The fundamental reason public block chain will never gain mass adoption is because it fails to meet society's expectations for a financial system. The FED is preferable to Bitcoin. Private block chain to public. Hyperledger may be the best platform out there. Please spare me your version of history.
    - sparkie 7y ago
      > So you don't like governments being able to have fiscal tools in times of crisis like now. Precisely. It's not just "times like now," but is all of the time. The tool has not stopped being used, even in times of prosperity. The only conclusion we can draw is that the tool is not fit for humans to handle, because they're too self-interested. The tool in question happens to benefit the early recipients of new money, who get to spend it at full value at time of printing before it gets devalued due to the increase in supply (without corresponding increase in demand, meaning it creates no new wealth). The later recipients of the new money have reduced purchasing power because they have to pay higher prices. This is the Cantillon Effect, which has been known about for centuries. What governments should do "in times of crisis like now," is have a savings account that they can dig into to alleviate the problems, just like every individual should have too. The future is never certain and if you fail to account for the unexpected, it is nobody's fault but your own. The tool in place now is an unjust tax, because it is taxation without representation - nobody in the FED is elected. As it happens, sound money is a great tool for planning for the unexpected because it allows people to save money in the long term for a rainy day without having to put that money into high risk investments, which don't provide the liquid money when it is needed in emergencies. Saving with fiat is not possible because the money is being constantly devalued (due to abuse of the tool you mentioned), and so they money isn't worth the labour one exerted to earn it once they come to spend it. Thankfully, it doesn't matter whether you prefer this or not. All that matters is whether people who want to save money decide to do so with better money, and when they do, you can't stop them. Bitcoin leaves the market to operate freely, and we'll see whether this financial system can replace the one where the government keeps trying to intervene in the market.
- deevolution 7y ago
  The dollar is already digital, but I'd rather live in a world with a predicatable money supply than not.

by Taek 7y ago

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...
- verdverm 7y ago
  So you don't like governments being able to have fiscal tools in times of crisis like now. Yes the USD is mainly digital, I have been telling people this who ask about digital money since Bitcoin made it popular. Sorry, forgot about the exchanges, you are right, they make a ton of money by allowing wash trades. The fundamental reason public block chain will never gain mass adoption is because it fails to meet society's expectations for a financial system. The FED is preferable to Bitcoin. Private block chain to public. Hyperledger may be the best platform out there. Please spare me your version of history.
  - sparkie 7y ago
    > So you don't like governments being able to have fiscal tools in times of crisis like now. Precisely. It's not just "times like now," but is all of the time. The tool has not stopped being used, even in times of prosperity. The only conclusion we can draw is that the tool is not fit for humans to handle, because they're too self-interested. The tool in question happens to benefit the early recipients of new money, who get to spend it at full value at time of printing before it gets devalued due to the increase in supply (without corresponding increase in demand, meaning it creates no new wealth). The later recipients of the new money have reduced purchasing power because they have to pay higher prices. This is the Cantillon Effect, which has been known about for centuries. What governments should do "in times of crisis like now," is have a savings account that they can dig into to alleviate the problems, just like every individual should have too. The future is never certain and if you fail to account for the unexpected, it is nobody's fault but your own. The tool in place now is an unjust tax, because it is taxation without representation - nobody in the FED is elected. As it happens, sound money is a great tool for planning for the unexpected because it allows people to save money in the long term for a rainy day without having to put that money into high risk investments, which don't provide the liquid money when it is needed in emergencies. Saving with fiat is not possible because the money is being constantly devalued (due to abuse of the tool you mentioned), and so they money isn't worth the labour one exerted to earn it once they come to spend it. Thankfully, it doesn't matter whether you prefer this or not. All that matters is whether people who want to save money decide to do so with better money, and when they do, you can't stop them. Bitcoin leaves the market to operate freely, and we'll see whether this financial system can replace the one where the government keeps trying to intervene in the market.
deevolution 7y ago
The dollar is already digital, but I'd rather live in a world with a predicatable money supply than not.