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Determining fully decentralized consensus between arbitrary participants (or at least one of the best approximations of that). In Bitcoin that consensus is limi

Determining fully decentralized consensus between arbitrary participants (or at least one of the best approximations of that). In Bitcoin that consensus is limited to transactions, in Ethereum with smart contracts it can be used for much more (though that might require additional layers of incentivation to work properly, depending on the use case).

grey-area 6y ago
Nobody actually wants fully decentralised irreversible consensus between arbitrary participants on a public ledger because it is slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. People have tried and failed for years to find a compelling use for it. It’s a very interesting experiment in social engineering but I find it difficult to find a concrete example of bitcoin being useful. Making some people very rich at the cost of others is not sufficient justification. If anything fewer people are actually using bitcoin now for real transactions not involving speculation on prices than in 2015 say.
- blhack 6y ago
  >Nobody actually wants fully decentralised irreversible consensus between arbitrary participants on a public ledger because it is slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. Are you sure? In fact it seems like quite a few people want that, as evidenced by the entire crypto space.
  - viro 6y ago
    yes, most people are invested in crypto because they wanna get rich with that 355% increase FULL STOP. No one with a brain uses it as currency. For the same reason that inflation is ALWAYS better than deflation. you lose money using bitcoin to buy something.
    - noch 6y ago
      > yes, most people are invested in crypto because they wanna get rich with that 355% increase FULL STOP. Wanting to get rich is an excellent incentive for anyone. Most other incentives (e.g. altruism) quickly become perverse as they devolve into status-seeking or coercion through force or in subsidisation and centralised planning. In fact, without that desire to get rich (acquire resources), it's hard to imagine businesses being incentivised to provide value to the largest number of people in the most efficient way possible. The profit motive is the best incentive humans have encountered because, in a society that respects individual freedom and property rights, the profit motive forces us to innovate to provide others with value in order to receive value from them.
      - allturtles 6y ago
        But if acquiring currency and holding it causes you to get rich, that's a serious defect. That means it won't get spent which means the economy grinds to a halt and depression ensues. This is not a feature we want for a currency.
        grey-area 6y ago
        Haven't you heard? It's not a currency any more so it doesn't need to be actually used. It's now an asset like no other, with zero use value but infinite exchange value.
        noch 6y ago
        > if acquiring currency and holding it causes you to get rich, that's a serious defect. That means it won't get spent which means the economy grinds to a halt and depression ensues. I like you was severely brainwashed to believe that inflation and debasement of a currency is great! My father's friend worked at the IMF and would dismiss my notions of deflation as childish. I studied Finance and Mathematics and never once was your view of money seriously questioned. But it's a lie. In fact, if you think from first principles, you realise that saving, not spending, is the key to economic growth and individual prosperity.[0] Think about what you were saying: you're effectively claiming that money should be worthless, in which case, why bother trying to earn it? You want to work for and to be paid something valuable not something worthless which you want to throw away as soon as you get it. You want your money to be good enough to save. Saving allows us to defer present consumption for future benefits. The idea that people will never spend their bitcoin is absurd. Humans have needs that they can't get away from. They also have desires to indulge. They will buy stuff and at the same time they will be incentivised to be prudent if they adopt a Bitcoin Standard. We should want our communities to be prudent. [0]: https://mises.org/wire/saving-not-spending-engine-economic-growth https://mises.org/wire/saving-not-spending-engine-economic-g...
  - grey-area 6y ago
    On the contrary, the current crypto space resembles a classic speculative bubble right now, it's a perfect example of mania, and spurious justifications like this of a new paradigm which explains the crazy valuations are also classic signs of that. Hardly anyone is using these currencies to actually perform transactions or store value because they are awful in so many ways for that (volatility, treated and taxed like an asset, unpredictable fees, slow settlement, no fraud protection etc). All the transactions, all the new accounts flooding into exchanges are there for one reason - to strike it rich in the new gold rush. Coins intended to be a valueless joke are worth SIX BILLION DOLLARS and nobody is actually using them as a currency or a consensus mechanism or anything useful - this is pure speculation on finding a greater fool later on when you want to sell, if you're even thinking about later on, because perhaps this will never end and it's different this time. People are buying and selling cryptocurrencies as they did beanie babies or tulips... https://theweek.com/articles/461977/great-beanie-baby-bubble https://theweek.com/articles/461977/great-beanie-baby-bubble
- esotericn 6y ago
  Hi, I do, and that's why I use it. You don't need to :)
  - grey-area 6y ago
    I'm pleased somebody does use it for the intended purpose :)
- godelzilla 6y ago
  >slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. I strongly recommend researching cryptographic protocols besides bitcoin.
lottin 6y ago
> Determining fully decentralized consensus But this only solves a problem specific to bitcoin that no one else has, because no one else keeps a centralised database with every transaction, so I'm not sure it counts as an advantage.
betterunix2 6y ago
"fully decentralized consensus" Can someone define this term? Do we ignore P2P bootstrapping issues? Do we ignore the roll of IANA, RIRs, and other authorities that manage IP address and ASN assignments? Or perhaps more to the point, why would it not work to have a consortium of banks set up and operate a distributed public ledger (thus avoiding the energy-intensive "mining" process)?
- DennisP 6y ago
  You don't even need a consortium to avoid the energy-intensive mining. Ethereum's beacon chain has been running a low-energy consensus process for months with no problems so far, and $5 billion in ETH participating, on about 100K nodes. They haven't migrated the legacy chain to it yet but that's coming in a year or so.
- ric2b 6y ago
  > Do we ignore the roll of IANA, RIRs, and other authorities that manage IP address and ASN assignments? Yes, because Bitcoin doesn't have those issues. It follows the chain with the largest amount of PoW, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

grey-area 6y ago

Nobody actually wants fully decentralised irreversible consensus between arbitrary participants on a public ledger because it is slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. People have tried and failed for years to find a compelling use for it. It’s a very interesting experiment in social engineering but I find it difficult to find a concrete example of bitcoin being useful. Making some people very rich at the cost of others is not sufficient justification. If anything fewer people are actually using bitcoin now for real transactions not involving speculation on prices than in 2015 say.

blhack 6y ago
>Nobody actually wants fully decentralised irreversible consensus between arbitrary participants on a public ledger because it is slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. Are you sure? In fact it seems like quite a few people want that, as evidenced by the entire crypto space.
- viro 6y ago
  yes, most people are invested in crypto because they wanna get rich with that 355% increase FULL STOP. No one with a brain uses it as currency. For the same reason that inflation is ALWAYS better than deflation. you lose money using bitcoin to buy something.
  - noch 6y ago
    > yes, most people are invested in crypto because they wanna get rich with that 355% increase FULL STOP. Wanting to get rich is an excellent incentive for anyone. Most other incentives (e.g. altruism) quickly become perverse as they devolve into status-seeking or coercion through force or in subsidisation and centralised planning. In fact, without that desire to get rich (acquire resources), it's hard to imagine businesses being incentivised to provide value to the largest number of people in the most efficient way possible. The profit motive is the best incentive humans have encountered because, in a society that respects individual freedom and property rights, the profit motive forces us to innovate to provide others with value in order to receive value from them.
    - allturtles 6y ago
      But if acquiring currency and holding it causes you to get rich, that's a serious defect. That means it won't get spent which means the economy grinds to a halt and depression ensues. This is not a feature we want for a currency.
      - grey-area 6y ago
        Haven't you heard? It's not a currency any more so it doesn't need to be actually used. It's now an asset like no other, with zero use value but infinite exchange value.
      - noch 6y ago
        > if acquiring currency and holding it causes you to get rich, that's a serious defect. That means it won't get spent which means the economy grinds to a halt and depression ensues. I like you was severely brainwashed to believe that inflation and debasement of a currency is great! My father's friend worked at the IMF and would dismiss my notions of deflation as childish. I studied Finance and Mathematics and never once was your view of money seriously questioned. But it's a lie. In fact, if you think from first principles, you realise that saving, not spending, is the key to economic growth and individual prosperity.[0] Think about what you were saying: you're effectively claiming that money should be worthless, in which case, why bother trying to earn it? You want to work for and to be paid something valuable not something worthless which you want to throw away as soon as you get it. You want your money to be good enough to save. Saving allows us to defer present consumption for future benefits. The idea that people will never spend their bitcoin is absurd. Humans have needs that they can't get away from. They also have desires to indulge. They will buy stuff and at the same time they will be incentivised to be prudent if they adopt a Bitcoin Standard. We should want our communities to be prudent. [0]: https://mises.org/wire/saving-not-spending-engine-economic-growth https://mises.org/wire/saving-not-spending-engine-economic-g...
- grey-area 6y ago
  On the contrary, the current crypto space resembles a classic speculative bubble right now, it's a perfect example of mania, and spurious justifications like this of a new paradigm which explains the crazy valuations are also classic signs of that. Hardly anyone is using these currencies to actually perform transactions or store value because they are awful in so many ways for that (volatility, treated and taxed like an asset, unpredictable fees, slow settlement, no fraud protection etc). All the transactions, all the new accounts flooding into exchanges are there for one reason - to strike it rich in the new gold rush. Coins intended to be a valueless joke are worth SIX BILLION DOLLARS and nobody is actually using them as a currency or a consensus mechanism or anything useful - this is pure speculation on finding a greater fool later on when you want to sell, if you're even thinking about later on, because perhaps this will never end and it's different this time. People are buying and selling cryptocurrencies as they did beanie babies or tulips... https://theweek.com/articles/461977/great-beanie-baby-bubble https://theweek.com/articles/461977/great-beanie-baby-bubble
esotericn 6y ago
Hi, I do, and that's why I use it. You don't need to :)
- grey-area 6y ago
  I'm pleased somebody does use it for the intended purpose :)
godelzilla 6y ago
>slow, costly and doesn’t solve real-word problems of identity verification, trust, reversible transactions, private transactions etc etc. I strongly recommend researching cryptographic protocols besides bitcoin.

lottin 6y ago

> Determining fully decentralized consensus But this only solves a problem specific to bitcoin that no one else has, because no one else keeps a centralised database with every transaction, so I'm not sure it counts as an advantage.

betterunix2 6y ago

"fully decentralized consensus" Can someone define this term? Do we ignore P2P bootstrapping issues? Do we ignore the roll of IANA, RIRs, and other authorities that manage IP address and ASN assignments? Or perhaps more to the point, why would it not work to have a consortium of banks set up and operate a distributed public ledger (thus avoiding the energy-intensive "mining" process)?

DennisP 6y ago
You don't even need a consortium to avoid the energy-intensive mining. Ethereum's beacon chain has been running a low-energy consensus process for months with no problems so far, and $5 billion in ETH participating, on about 100K nodes. They haven't migrated the legacy chain to it yet but that's coming in a year or so.
ric2b 6y ago
> Do we ignore the roll of IANA, RIRs, and other authorities that manage IP address and ASN assignments? Yes, because Bitcoin doesn't have those issues. It follows the chain with the largest amount of PoW, it doesn't matter where it comes from.