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This is blatantly false. Bitcoin doesn't require anything at all besides the idea of a most work chain humanity produced. You just pick it and that's it. You ca

This is blatantly false. Bitcoin doesn't require anything at all besides the idea of a most work chain humanity produced. You just pick it and that's it. You cant pick wrong, there is no chain bigger. All other cryptos are a fantasy and cannot provide any comparable guarantees.

noxer 5y ago
>You cant pick wrong, there is no chain bigger. It happened multiple times that a longer change was discoed shortly after. So in reality you have to wait some blocks to reduce the risk of a longer chain to almost zero. Also the trust you missed is that you have to TRUST that at least 50% of the work is produces and controlled (pool owner) by honest humans, because if not they could collude and re-org/double-spend. which essentially means you will pick the wrong chain because they make you think its the longest while secretly mining a longer chain that will eventually repalce the once you picked. There is absolutely no way you would know before its to late so you blindly trust that from an unknown number of people the majority is honest. If you take mining pools into account you trust a hand full of people who control them. >All other cryptos are a fantasy and cannot provide any comparable guarantees. Obvious nonsense, other tech has defined finality. Not pick the longest and if a longer shows up later you switch. These systems provide MORE guarantees.
tsimionescu 5y ago
How do you, personally, know that the chain is correct? Have you ever checked the hashes? Have you ever checked the transactions? Have you ever proved that the math they use is correct? Have you ever read the code for any BTC client? You're trusting an awful lot of assumptions much more complex than 'the longest chain is right'.
bhaak 5y ago
How do you ensure that you got the correct code? Without the correct consensus rules that are encoded in the software, you can't be sure if the blockchain you are following is the right one.

noxer 5y ago

>You cant pick wrong, there is no chain bigger. It happened multiple times that a longer change was discoed shortly after. So in reality you have to wait some blocks to reduce the risk of a longer chain to almost zero. Also the trust you missed is that you have to TRUST that at least 50% of the work is produces and controlled (pool owner) by honest humans, because if not they could collude and re-org/double-spend. which essentially means you will pick the wrong chain because they make you think its the longest while secretly mining a longer chain that will eventually repalce the once you picked. There is absolutely no way you would know before its to late so you blindly trust that from an unknown number of people the majority is honest. If you take mining pools into account you trust a hand full of people who control them. >All other cryptos are a fantasy and cannot provide any comparable guarantees. Obvious nonsense, other tech has defined finality. Not pick the longest and if a longer shows up later you switch. These systems provide MORE guarantees.

tsimionescu 5y ago

How do you, personally, know that the chain is correct? Have you ever checked the hashes? Have you ever checked the transactions? Have you ever proved that the math they use is correct? Have you ever read the code for any BTC client? You're trusting an awful lot of assumptions much more complex than 'the longest chain is right'.

bhaak 5y ago

How do you ensure that you got the correct code? Without the correct consensus rules that are encoded in the software, you can't be sure if the blockchain you are following is the right one.