8 ms·

We should reject PoW algorithms as generally destructive. When I say destructive, I mean they cause more global harm than they purport to alleviate. PoW should

by lvs 6y ago

We should reject PoW algorithms as generally destructive. When I say destructive, I mean they cause more global harm than they purport to alleviate. PoW should have been set aside as soon as it was generally understood that the network's energy consumption might be unbounded.

sparkie 6y ago
> We should reject Who is "we"? You can't "set aside" something which a free market has chosen to accept. If you're upset about PoW, invent a superior replacement which the market would prefer over PoW. However, I suspect you cannot. I'm doubtful that such thing can exist. Bitcoin is now an essential commodity because there is no replacement for it when it comes to saving money or evading warrantless (illegal) surveillance. The central banks and governments around the world caused this, and they aren't capable of reversing it.
- david_draco 6y ago
  > Who is "we"? Presumably society. > You can't "set aside" something which a free market has chosen to accept. We have set aside CFCs even though they were accepted by the free market. They were harmful to the environment, creating the ozone hole. Similarly, PoW mining has an enormous and well-documented ecological cost. > If you're upset about PoW, invent a superior replacement which the market would prefer over PoW. > However, I suspect you cannot. I'm doubtful that such thing can exist. PoS exist. > Bitcoin is now an essential commodity because there is no replacement for it when it comes to saving money or evading warrantless (illegal) surveillance. All transactions and account balances in Bitcoin are public. From meta data and corresponding networks one can figure out where and who the people are (NSA does this too). It is not very private at all. > The central banks and governments around the world caused this, and they aren't capable of reversing it. I doubt that it is a essential commodity and suspect you are overestimating the economic importance of Bitcoin.
  - sparkie 6y ago
    > Presumably society. Which society? > We have set aside CFCs even though they were accepted by the free market. They were harmful to the environment, creating the ozone hole. Some regulations can be enforced. It's going to be a different story attempting to regulate something which can be hidden trivially with encryption, has no physical presence, and can be stored in ones head to prevent seizure. > All transactions and account balances in Bitcoin are public. From meta data and corresponding networks one can figure out where and who the people are (NSA does this too). It is not very private at all. This is true for plain use of Bitcoin, but there are ways of evading chain analysis, and you can also swap out your Bitcoin for Monero for spending. > I doubt that it is a essential commodity and suspect you are overestimating the economic importance of Bitcoin. It may not be essential to you, but there are plenty who consider it so, and these will only grow as people further distrust their governments and central banks.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      > It's going to be a different story attempting to regulate something which can be hidden trivially with encryption Regulate on/off ramps. Watch it wither on the vine. Job done.
      - sparkie 6y ago
        How does regulation work for illegal drugs, prostitution, or other black markets, which can overall amount to double-digit percentages of economies? Bitcoin only needs the black market to be a huge success. If it can avoid any surveillance ramps, that is ideal. It doesn't need to be everywhere. IMO, the surveillance on/off ramps are going to have a hard problem ahead of them, of their own making. Black markets are only going to accept "cleaned" bitcoins because they won't put themselves at risk of being surveilled. The "cleaned" bitcoins will not be usable on AML exchanges. The "unclean" bitcoin can be cleaned through CoinJoins and such, at the risk of whoever obtained them in their unclean state, but once cleaned, they'll be back on the black markets. Trading fiat currencies for Bitcoin will happen mainly in person, with cash, to avoid the surveillance. You will be able to tell, to an extent, whether bitcoin are clean or unclean through their transaction history - a clean coin will be one which originates as the output of a CoinJoin. All transactions on the black markets will be a CoinJoin of some kind. For most purposes, this won't matter because the majority of trade will be conducted over the Lightning Network, which has sender anonymity, and will very likely get receiver anonymity in the near future. Node operators can use Tor to avoid being surveilled - and the transport protocol used is fully end-to-end encrypted and authenticated. Since the majority of trade will be happening on the black markets, exchanges which built their castles in KYC land will eventually fail. Nobody will care for "unclean" bitcoin if they are too heavily regulated. There will probably be a premium on clean bitcoin due to the risk involved in anybody who decides to wash unclean bitcoin. Savers will not care if they have to resort to black markets to protect their wealth from theft or seizure. As long as they can find some local black market vendors who'll trade them for some other goods or fiat cash. For governments to attempt to stamp out the black markets, the solution involved will be much worse than anything you could imagine being caused by Bitcoin - complete totalitarianism is the only way it could be enforced, and your open internet will be finished long before then. Careful what you wish for.
- htfu 6y ago
  > Who is "we"? Us, those not yet in your choir, I presume. The market can set aside things (un)perfectly well if they turn out not to be adequately useful or worth it, in whatever sense of those words. Driving opinion by means of internet comments can be a perfectly valid, if rather useless, part of such consensus forming. Whatever your ideology surely you can agree on the basic fact that most active use of BTC is still of a rather transient nature. In and out. This means participants generally (outside of passive saving-speculating) have little inherent need for high prices and the astronomical energy use that goes along. Coiners of course want practically useful solutions, just not quite as much as they want to get richer.
  - sparkie 6y ago
    > Us, those not yet in your choir, I presume. Glad you purport to speak on everyone's behalf. The misuse of the pronoun "we" is so prevalent that it affects the way people understand the world. "We" is a collective pronoun, but the collective it refers to must have a boundary. In this case, the boundary must be, at maximum, the people reading this thread. At minimum, you are using the plural pronoun when you should be using the singular, because "We" just means "I". > Whatever your ideology surely you can agree on the basic fact that most active use of BTC is still of a rather transient nature. In and out. This means participants generally (outside of passive saving-speculating) have little inherent need for high prices and the astronomical energy use that goes along. Saving isn't transient. It's a long term goal. The speculating that goes along with it is just a natural market phenomenon. People want to earn by betting on short term future demand. > Coiners of course want practically useful solutions, just not quite as much as they want to get richer. I'm not all that fussed about getting richer. I'd rather not get poorer though, which is the effect which will be achieved by storing my earnings in dollars, because there is a deliberate and permanent policy of dollar devaluation outside of my control. Saving is a practical solution, and the only one that Bitcoin needs. People will develop other practical solutions for spending and trading bitcoin because they themselves want to increase their bitcoin holdings, and they want to incentivize others to spend their Bitcoin so that they have the opportunity to obtain more.
- lvs 6y ago
  Ah yes, the tired old free-marketeer. You're the reason we need regulations over self-destructive things. Society gets to make that call sometimes. Or, if you really think not, would you instead be interested in buying some of this oil that will cure not only your aging but also your wife problems? I extract it from a snake, and I think you'll see the benefits of it immediately. (p.s. The oil also makes you immune to covid and meetings!)
  - sparkie 6y ago
    > Ah yes, the tired old free-marketeer. You're the reason we need regulations over self-destructive things. Society gets to make that call sometimes. Fortunately, Bitcoin fixes this. "Society" has no ability to seize bitcoin or censor its transactions. Soon enough, it won't be able to even detect them. The mob does not always make the right decisions, especially when they have nothing at stake. Public servants usually have nothing at stake and it is very easy to be wrong when spending other people's money as opposed to your own. > Or, if you really think not, would you instead be interested in buying some of this oil that will cure not only your aging but also your wife problems? I extract it from a snake, and I think you'll see the benefits of it immediately. (p.s. The oil also makes you immune to covid and meetings!) I'm all for people being able to sell these non-products, and for people to buy these non-products if they wish for them. While they might not have any meaningful real effect, they can often have a placebo effect which can be beneficial to the purchaser. People are, and should be free to make their own judgements with their money. You can't shelter everyone all the time. If some are no longer able to make sound judgements, they should have support from relatvies with their finances rather than the government. The current governments around the world are a great example of snake oil salesmen. They've managed to sell everyone an iatrogenic "lockdown" which is harmful their health, with claims that it is for their benefit, with no evidence. Who regulates the government? Who is going to hold these policymakers to account for the excess preventable deaths they've caused which are a result of the lockdowns, as opposed to the mostly unpreventable deaths which were a cause of nature (if we assume the virus is of natural origin)? There is a cure for Statism at least. It is called Bitcoin.
    - Nursie 6y ago
gingeropolous 6y ago
https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3 https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3
- lvs 6y ago
  This is a totally absurd argument.

by lvs 6y ago

sparkie 6y ago

> We should reject Who is "we"? You can't "set aside" something which a free market has chosen to accept. If you're upset about PoW, invent a superior replacement which the market would prefer over PoW. However, I suspect you cannot. I'm doubtful that such thing can exist. Bitcoin is now an essential commodity because there is no replacement for it when it comes to saving money or evading warrantless (illegal) surveillance. The central banks and governments around the world caused this, and they aren't capable of reversing it.

david_draco 6y ago
> Who is "we"? Presumably society. > You can't "set aside" something which a free market has chosen to accept. We have set aside CFCs even though they were accepted by the free market. They were harmful to the environment, creating the ozone hole. Similarly, PoW mining has an enormous and well-documented ecological cost. > If you're upset about PoW, invent a superior replacement which the market would prefer over PoW. > However, I suspect you cannot. I'm doubtful that such thing can exist. PoS exist. > Bitcoin is now an essential commodity because there is no replacement for it when it comes to saving money or evading warrantless (illegal) surveillance. All transactions and account balances in Bitcoin are public. From meta data and corresponding networks one can figure out where and who the people are (NSA does this too). It is not very private at all. > The central banks and governments around the world caused this, and they aren't capable of reversing it. I doubt that it is a essential commodity and suspect you are overestimating the economic importance of Bitcoin.
- sparkie 6y ago
  > Presumably society. Which society? > We have set aside CFCs even though they were accepted by the free market. They were harmful to the environment, creating the ozone hole. Some regulations can be enforced. It's going to be a different story attempting to regulate something which can be hidden trivially with encryption, has no physical presence, and can be stored in ones head to prevent seizure. > All transactions and account balances in Bitcoin are public. From meta data and corresponding networks one can figure out where and who the people are (NSA does this too). It is not very private at all. This is true for plain use of Bitcoin, but there are ways of evading chain analysis, and you can also swap out your Bitcoin for Monero for spending. > I doubt that it is a essential commodity and suspect you are overestimating the economic importance of Bitcoin. It may not be essential to you, but there are plenty who consider it so, and these will only grow as people further distrust their governments and central banks.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    > It's going to be a different story attempting to regulate something which can be hidden trivially with encryption Regulate on/off ramps. Watch it wither on the vine. Job done.
    - sparkie 6y ago
      How does regulation work for illegal drugs, prostitution, or other black markets, which can overall amount to double-digit percentages of economies? Bitcoin only needs the black market to be a huge success. If it can avoid any surveillance ramps, that is ideal. It doesn't need to be everywhere. IMO, the surveillance on/off ramps are going to have a hard problem ahead of them, of their own making. Black markets are only going to accept "cleaned" bitcoins because they won't put themselves at risk of being surveilled. The "cleaned" bitcoins will not be usable on AML exchanges. The "unclean" bitcoin can be cleaned through CoinJoins and such, at the risk of whoever obtained them in their unclean state, but once cleaned, they'll be back on the black markets. Trading fiat currencies for Bitcoin will happen mainly in person, with cash, to avoid the surveillance. You will be able to tell, to an extent, whether bitcoin are clean or unclean through their transaction history - a clean coin will be one which originates as the output of a CoinJoin. All transactions on the black markets will be a CoinJoin of some kind. For most purposes, this won't matter because the majority of trade will be conducted over the Lightning Network, which has sender anonymity, and will very likely get receiver anonymity in the near future. Node operators can use Tor to avoid being surveilled - and the transport protocol used is fully end-to-end encrypted and authenticated. Since the majority of trade will be happening on the black markets, exchanges which built their castles in KYC land will eventually fail. Nobody will care for "unclean" bitcoin if they are too heavily regulated. There will probably be a premium on clean bitcoin due to the risk involved in anybody who decides to wash unclean bitcoin. Savers will not care if they have to resort to black markets to protect their wealth from theft or seizure. As long as they can find some local black market vendors who'll trade them for some other goods or fiat cash. For governments to attempt to stamp out the black markets, the solution involved will be much worse than anything you could imagine being caused by Bitcoin - complete totalitarianism is the only way it could be enforced, and your open internet will be finished long before then. Careful what you wish for.
htfu 6y ago
> Who is "we"? Us, those not yet in your choir, I presume. The market can set aside things (un)perfectly well if they turn out not to be adequately useful or worth it, in whatever sense of those words. Driving opinion by means of internet comments can be a perfectly valid, if rather useless, part of such consensus forming. Whatever your ideology surely you can agree on the basic fact that most active use of BTC is still of a rather transient nature. In and out. This means participants generally (outside of passive saving-speculating) have little inherent need for high prices and the astronomical energy use that goes along. Coiners of course want practically useful solutions, just not quite as much as they want to get richer.
- sparkie 6y ago
  > Us, those not yet in your choir, I presume. Glad you purport to speak on everyone's behalf. The misuse of the pronoun "we" is so prevalent that it affects the way people understand the world. "We" is a collective pronoun, but the collective it refers to must have a boundary. In this case, the boundary must be, at maximum, the people reading this thread. At minimum, you are using the plural pronoun when you should be using the singular, because "We" just means "I". > Whatever your ideology surely you can agree on the basic fact that most active use of BTC is still of a rather transient nature. In and out. This means participants generally (outside of passive saving-speculating) have little inherent need for high prices and the astronomical energy use that goes along. Saving isn't transient. It's a long term goal. The speculating that goes along with it is just a natural market phenomenon. People want to earn by betting on short term future demand. > Coiners of course want practically useful solutions, just not quite as much as they want to get richer. I'm not all that fussed about getting richer. I'd rather not get poorer though, which is the effect which will be achieved by storing my earnings in dollars, because there is a deliberate and permanent policy of dollar devaluation outside of my control. Saving is a practical solution, and the only one that Bitcoin needs. People will develop other practical solutions for spending and trading bitcoin because they themselves want to increase their bitcoin holdings, and they want to incentivize others to spend their Bitcoin so that they have the opportunity to obtain more.
lvs 6y ago
Ah yes, the tired old free-marketeer. You're the reason we need regulations over self-destructive things. Society gets to make that call sometimes. Or, if you really think not, would you instead be interested in buying some of this oil that will cure not only your aging but also your wife problems? I extract it from a snake, and I think you'll see the benefits of it immediately. (p.s. The oil also makes you immune to covid and meetings!)
- sparkie 6y ago
  > Ah yes, the tired old free-marketeer. You're the reason we need regulations over self-destructive things. Society gets to make that call sometimes. Fortunately, Bitcoin fixes this. "Society" has no ability to seize bitcoin or censor its transactions. Soon enough, it won't be able to even detect them. The mob does not always make the right decisions, especially when they have nothing at stake. Public servants usually have nothing at stake and it is very easy to be wrong when spending other people's money as opposed to your own. > Or, if you really think not, would you instead be interested in buying some of this oil that will cure not only your aging but also your wife problems? I extract it from a snake, and I think you'll see the benefits of it immediately. (p.s. The oil also makes you immune to covid and meetings!) I'm all for people being able to sell these non-products, and for people to buy these non-products if they wish for them. While they might not have any meaningful real effect, they can often have a placebo effect which can be beneficial to the purchaser. People are, and should be free to make their own judgements with their money. You can't shelter everyone all the time. If some are no longer able to make sound judgements, they should have support from relatvies with their finances rather than the government. The current governments around the world are a great example of snake oil salesmen. They've managed to sell everyone an iatrogenic "lockdown" which is harmful their health, with claims that it is for their benefit, with no evidence. Who regulates the government? Who is going to hold these policymakers to account for the excess preventable deaths they've caused which are a result of the lockdowns, as opposed to the mostly unpreventable deaths which were a cause of nature (if we assume the virus is of natural origin)? There is a cure for Statism at least. It is called Bitcoin.
  - Nursie 6y ago

gingeropolous 6y ago

https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3 https://medium.com/@danhedl/pow-is-efficient-aa3d442754d3

lvs 6y ago
This is a totally absurd argument.