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For all the hate Bitcoin gets because it’s obviously in a bubble market, can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement that an anonymou

For all the hate Bitcoin gets because it’s obviously in a bubble market, can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement that an anonymous individual and a small group of researchers were able to build a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value with only 2 service incidents in 14 years? All without any meaningful service costs and no hacking of the network, despite huge incentives.

vanusa 5y ago
All without any meaningful service costs No we can't, because there's no way you can dismiss the climate costs (and the impact on energy prices and chip supply) as not meaningful. It is this blue-sky pollyanna-ism among crypto advocates which generates much of the "hate" against it, btw.
- camjohnson26 5y ago
  Those are externalities, not service costs. Hal Finney didn’t have to pay a dollar to keep the network running, the users pay all the costs, and the users are miners or accounts. Nuclear bombs can be cheap and bad at the same time, the 2 things aren’t mutually exclusive. If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement because it had externalities, then that’s short sighted.
  - vanusa 5y ago
    Those are externalities, not service costs. In strict accounting terms, yes. But in practical terms -- the cost offloading that is inherent to BTC is so blatant and direct that it barely qualifies as an "externality" (and only in an abstract, technical sense). The gist of the GP comment was, in essence: "Isn't BTC nifty because it can do all these things, and it costs basically nothing to run." When in fact the exact opposite it true. And in fact there are still countless people running around trying to downplay its true cost. If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement I will accept that the bomb was "an engineering achievement". But I'm not going to get out my pom-poms try to lead the room in a cheer to the effect of: "The Bomb was an astounding engineering achievement that keeps the world safe for democracy, and at minimal service cost".
    - camjohnson26 5y ago
      I never said Bitcoin was good or bad, I said it was an engineering achievement. Crypto discussions are so toxic.
      - vanusa 5y ago
        An "astounding" achievement, you called it. We get the achievement part. But the astounding part, no.
planb 5y ago
Bitcoin is not a central service. That's like saying "email never had service failure"... Still, from a technical perspective it sure is (was) an astounding achievement to create the first widely deployed blockchain.
beaconstudios 5y ago
There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.
- cft 5y ago
  >Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory. Do you have a source for this fact? It might survive the 50 year old fiat dollar experiment. Until 50 years ago, there has not been a currency that wasn't backed up by something that was beyond the government
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    A source for this fact? It's an opinion.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - root_axis 5y ago
    Bitcoin subsists on the massive electrical and internet infrastructure that is only possible through government.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Because no private enterprise could provide power or internet. Sure, some of the internet technology was invented with government grants, but lets not pretend these inventions were only inevitable due to US government. If US government were gone today the internet, electricity, and bitcoin will still be here but the usefulness of the dollar will massively decrease.
      - Guvante 5y ago
slg 5y ago
> were able to build a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value But that is only possible because the value of bitcoin has skyrocketed. The last data I saw had it at only a few transactions per second which isn't that impressive. >All without any meaningful service costs There are service costs, they are just paid in Bitcoin. There is also obviously the electricity spent to keep the whole thing running that exceeds the amount needed to actually process the transactions.
- kebman 5y ago
  > But that is only possible because the value of bitcoin has skyrocketed. Even if the price of Bitcoin hadn't skyrocketed, it would still be capable of transacting billions of dollars of value. You'd just have to buy more Bitcoin in order to send the value. When you do, however, the price of Bitcoin also increase, because it's a scarce asset. That is why it has skyrocketed. And because it's safe. And because it's decentralized. And because it's censorship and regulation resistant. And because it's even scam resistant, due to all transactions being public. On top of that the transactions per second are irrelevant, as everyday purchases can be handled by side chains that are finally settled on the main chain. This means Bitcoin is still being developed as we speak, and so it's not outdated in any way shape or form. In fact it's getting better day by day.
oldsecondhand 5y ago
> only 2 service incidents in 14 years Only 2 service incidents if you don't count all the scams and lost wallets.
- dspillett 5y ago
  If you count those, that is no different than blaming traditional banks because your gran was conned out of some money by Bodgit & Scarper Roofing and Driveway Contractors Ltd.
Darmody 5y ago
Using more energy than many many countries with populations of millions isn't meaningful?
- krzyk 5y ago
  Bitcoin mining can be easily checked for energy usage and that's the problem. But do you know how much energy is used for printing money? Or for agriculture (take into account production of equipment and fertilizer), car production, getting oil from ground into cars? Or by all ACs in the world (which are just a nice-to-have, just like bitcoin)?
  - 1270018080 5y ago
    No need to whataboutism this issue. Bitcoin uses over .5% of the world's electricity just to prop up a pyramid scheme and illicit markets. It's an abject disaster.
    - krzyk 5y ago
      This is your opinion, others find bitcoin useful, 0.5% is a small price for convenience. They pay price for electricity just like users of ACs.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Food is required to survive, AC to live in many parts of the world. Money printing gets cheaper the more digital centralized fiat becomes.
    - krzyk 5y ago
      AC is not required to live, it is just convenience. Heating is required (you would freeze to death), but not AC. Food doesn't need to have so many fertilizers or bug-killers, it makes food poisonous.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement As the first cryptocurrency, it's certainly an incredible innovation and idea. However, it's already outdated technology. Bitcoin failed to become everything it was idealized to be. It's not anonymous. It's not private. It's not fungible. It's not decentralized. It's not unregulated. It's not even a currency since transactions are not cheap and fast which makes them unusable. The best thing this coin can do for the wider cryptocurrency space is disappear and let better projects take the lead. Yet it's the most popular coin and the only one the average person knows about. This is sad and to me it's proof of the complete irrationality of this market.
- krzyk 5y ago
  > not unregulated What do you mean? > transactions are not cheap and fast What do you mean by that? Becauee my transactions were cheap and quick
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > What do you mean? When it was created, it was idealized as the digital equivalent to cash. Totally private and anonymous so you can do whatever you want without some bank or government monitoring you or taking issue. It was supposed to be your money, not your social credit at the bank that the authorities allow you to use for approved purposes. Bitcoin totally failed to become all that. The ledger is public and perfectly traceable so it's even worse than money at the bank. People have even identified the wallets of whales so that they can track their movements and see if they're about to dump on the market. Coins are not fungible which means exchanges will refuse your tainted money if you use a mixing service for privacy. Governments will sanction addresses, making the coins held by them illegal and unacceptable by any business. > Becauee my transactions were cheap and quick Mine were not. Were you using the higher layer networks that delay blockchain settlement? Because that defeats the purpose of having cryptocurrencies in the first place.
    - krzyk 5y ago
      > Bitcoin totally failed to become all that. The ledger is public and perfectly traceable so it's even worse than money at the bank. Well, but that's not about "not regulated", just not totally anonymous. But it if you think about it is better than money in the bank. Because that can be traced only by governments, and here average Joe can do the tracing. So it is at least more egalitarian.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vesinisa 5y ago
To say that Bitcoin has no service cost you have to squint your eyes really hard.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
I totally agree with you. Distributed ledger technology is amazing . But, I think bitcoin could do better if it’s services could be split apart. People use bitcoin to perform transactions , to speculate on its price and to generate value by mining to secure the blockchain. If these services were more broken apart we would have a better solution but this could be intractable problem. The main problems that people cite such as the ESG impact are big. Many people in bitcoin speculate on the price which introduces problems with people that want to use it for payments. Since we need miners to secure the chain it has a large environmental impact by those miners. And socially it is used to allow people to violate various laws .
jayd16 5y ago
>a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value Isn't the absolute value of the transaction pretty irrelevant to the technology? As far as transactions per second Bitcoin is still pretty mediocre, isn't it?
- kebman 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
barkingcat 5y ago
What are you talking about - the bitcoin and ethereum network "service costs" are through the roof and are one of the biggest failures of the network as it was designed. The service costs are so extremely high for each transaction, and if you don't pay the gas/service fees there's a very high potential that no one will process your transaction. It's basically highway robbery. I'm thinking you've never really transacted anything on the bitcoin blockchain?
- camjohnson26 5y ago
  Your reply is missing the point so may want to reread what I actually said. I’ve run Ethereum miners and have a Bitcoin paper wallet.
beardedman 5y ago
> without any meaningful service costs Wow, that's bold. Do you mean service cost to the anonymous individual? Or overall service cost? Because if it's the latter, I think you might be very sorely mistaken.
coffeefirst 5y ago
And to me, that's the tragedy. Clearly the people who created this were absolutely brilliant. And after sinking years of sweat and energy into groundbreaking work, the end result is an energy-sucking ponzi scheme that's done considerably more harm than good.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> All without any meaningful service costs Only by outsourcing those. If BitCoin consumed the electricity equivalent of Argentina[1] recently with basically nothing to show for it, how much longer before your small group of researchers surpasses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. as the most harmful inventors of all time? What other uses could 120TWh of electricity have been put to? Training GPT-3 took approx 200MWh of electricity[2], so enough power to train GPT-3 ~600x over. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 [2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/gpt3_carbon_footprint_estimate/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/gpt3_carbon_footprint...
classified 5y ago
Nuclear weapons are a great technical achievement, too. And not one has been misfired yet. /s
native_samples 5y ago
The site is disingenuous. There have been far more than two service incidents. Around 2015 there were many periods where transactions simply weren't clearing at all due to overload, and there was no way to set a correct tx fee because the fee needed to get to the front of the queue was constantly changing and wallets couldn't inform users of what the current fee was anyway. From the user's perspective these were outages.
Jansen312 5y ago
The amazing part is they hash "no" work as proof of work to get rewarded with digital coin that contribute to global warming hastening "2012 movie" and we celebrate it as a monumental achievement! Maybe Thanos is right.

vanusa 5y ago

All without any meaningful service costs No we can't, because there's no way you can dismiss the climate costs (and the impact on energy prices and chip supply) as not meaningful. It is this blue-sky pollyanna-ism among crypto advocates which generates much of the "hate" against it, btw.

camjohnson26 5y ago
Those are externalities, not service costs. Hal Finney didn’t have to pay a dollar to keep the network running, the users pay all the costs, and the users are miners or accounts. Nuclear bombs can be cheap and bad at the same time, the 2 things aren’t mutually exclusive. If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement because it had externalities, then that’s short sighted.
- vanusa 5y ago
  Those are externalities, not service costs. In strict accounting terms, yes. But in practical terms -- the cost offloading that is inherent to BTC is so blatant and direct that it barely qualifies as an "externality" (and only in an abstract, technical sense). The gist of the GP comment was, in essence: "Isn't BTC nifty because it can do all these things, and it costs basically nothing to run." When in fact the exact opposite it true. And in fact there are still countless people running around trying to downplay its true cost. If you can’t admit the nuclear bomb was an engineering achievement I will accept that the bomb was "an engineering achievement". But I'm not going to get out my pom-poms try to lead the room in a cheer to the effect of: "The Bomb was an astounding engineering achievement that keeps the world safe for democracy, and at minimal service cost".
  - camjohnson26 5y ago
    I never said Bitcoin was good or bad, I said it was an engineering achievement. Crypto discussions are so toxic.
    - vanusa 5y ago
      An "astounding" achievement, you called it. We get the achievement part. But the astounding part, no.

planb 5y ago

Bitcoin is not a central service. That's like saying "email never had service failure"... Still, from a technical perspective it sure is (was) an astounding achievement to create the first widely deployed blockchain.

beaconstudios 5y ago

There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.

cft 5y ago
>Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory. Do you have a source for this fact? It might survive the 50 year old fiat dollar experiment. Until 50 years ago, there has not been a currency that wasn't backed up by something that was beyond the government
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  A source for this fact? It's an opinion.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- root_axis 5y ago
  Bitcoin subsists on the massive electrical and internet infrastructure that is only possible through government.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Because no private enterprise could provide power or internet. Sure, some of the internet technology was invented with government grants, but lets not pretend these inventions were only inevitable due to US government. If US government were gone today the internet, electricity, and bitcoin will still be here but the usefulness of the dollar will massively decrease.
    - Guvante 5y ago

slg 5y ago

> were able to build a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value But that is only possible because the value of bitcoin has skyrocketed. The last data I saw had it at only a few transactions per second which isn't that impressive. >All without any meaningful service costs There are service costs, they are just paid in Bitcoin. There is also obviously the electricity spent to keep the whole thing running that exceeds the amount needed to actually process the transactions.

kebman 5y ago
> But that is only possible because the value of bitcoin has skyrocketed. Even if the price of Bitcoin hadn't skyrocketed, it would still be capable of transacting billions of dollars of value. You'd just have to buy more Bitcoin in order to send the value. When you do, however, the price of Bitcoin also increase, because it's a scarce asset. That is why it has skyrocketed. And because it's safe. And because it's decentralized. And because it's censorship and regulation resistant. And because it's even scam resistant, due to all transactions being public. On top of that the transactions per second are irrelevant, as everyday purchases can be handled by side chains that are finally settled on the main chain. This means Bitcoin is still being developed as we speak, and so it's not outdated in any way shape or form. In fact it's getting better day by day.

oldsecondhand 5y ago

> only 2 service incidents in 14 years Only 2 service incidents if you don't count all the scams and lost wallets.

dspillett 5y ago
If you count those, that is no different than blaming traditional banks because your gran was conned out of some money by Bodgit & Scarper Roofing and Driveway Contractors Ltd.

Darmody 5y ago

Using more energy than many many countries with populations of millions isn't meaningful?

krzyk 5y ago
Bitcoin mining can be easily checked for energy usage and that's the problem. But do you know how much energy is used for printing money? Or for agriculture (take into account production of equipment and fertilizer), car production, getting oil from ground into cars? Or by all ACs in the world (which are just a nice-to-have, just like bitcoin)?
- 1270018080 5y ago
  No need to whataboutism this issue. Bitcoin uses over .5% of the world's electricity just to prop up a pyramid scheme and illicit markets. It's an abject disaster.
  - krzyk 5y ago
    This is your opinion, others find bitcoin useful, 0.5% is a small price for convenience. They pay price for electricity just like users of ACs.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Food is required to survive, AC to live in many parts of the world. Money printing gets cheaper the more digital centralized fiat becomes.
  - krzyk 5y ago
    AC is not required to live, it is just convenience. Heating is required (you would freeze to death), but not AC. Food doesn't need to have so many fertilizers or bug-killers, it makes food poisonous.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> can we at least agree that it is an astounding engineering achievement As the first cryptocurrency, it's certainly an incredible innovation and idea. However, it's already outdated technology. Bitcoin failed to become everything it was idealized to be. It's not anonymous. It's not private. It's not fungible. It's not decentralized. It's not unregulated. It's not even a currency since transactions are not cheap and fast which makes them unusable. The best thing this coin can do for the wider cryptocurrency space is disappear and let better projects take the lead. Yet it's the most popular coin and the only one the average person knows about. This is sad and to me it's proof of the complete irrationality of this market.

krzyk 5y ago
> not unregulated What do you mean? > transactions are not cheap and fast What do you mean by that? Becauee my transactions were cheap and quick
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > What do you mean? When it was created, it was idealized as the digital equivalent to cash. Totally private and anonymous so you can do whatever you want without some bank or government monitoring you or taking issue. It was supposed to be your money, not your social credit at the bank that the authorities allow you to use for approved purposes. Bitcoin totally failed to become all that. The ledger is public and perfectly traceable so it's even worse than money at the bank. People have even identified the wallets of whales so that they can track their movements and see if they're about to dump on the market. Coins are not fungible which means exchanges will refuse your tainted money if you use a mixing service for privacy. Governments will sanction addresses, making the coins held by them illegal and unacceptable by any business. > Becauee my transactions were cheap and quick Mine were not. Were you using the higher layer networks that delay blockchain settlement? Because that defeats the purpose of having cryptocurrencies in the first place.
  - krzyk 5y ago
    > Bitcoin totally failed to become all that. The ledger is public and perfectly traceable so it's even worse than money at the bank. Well, but that's not about "not regulated", just not totally anonymous. But it if you think about it is better than money in the bank. Because that can be traced only by governments, and here average Joe can do the tracing. So it is at least more egalitarian.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vesinisa 5y ago

To say that Bitcoin has no service cost you have to squint your eyes really hard.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

I totally agree with you. Distributed ledger technology is amazing . But, I think bitcoin could do better if it’s services could be split apart. People use bitcoin to perform transactions , to speculate on its price and to generate value by mining to secure the blockchain. If these services were more broken apart we would have a better solution but this could be intractable problem. The main problems that people cite such as the ESG impact are big. Many people in bitcoin speculate on the price which introduces problems with people that want to use it for payments. Since we need miners to secure the chain it has a large environmental impact by those miners. And socially it is used to allow people to violate various laws .

jayd16 5y ago

>a network capable of transacting billions of dollars of value Isn't the absolute value of the transaction pretty irrelevant to the technology? As far as transactions per second Bitcoin is still pretty mediocre, isn't it?

kebman 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network

barkingcat 5y ago

What are you talking about - the bitcoin and ethereum network "service costs" are through the roof and are one of the biggest failures of the network as it was designed. The service costs are so extremely high for each transaction, and if you don't pay the gas/service fees there's a very high potential that no one will process your transaction. It's basically highway robbery. I'm thinking you've never really transacted anything on the bitcoin blockchain?

camjohnson26 5y ago
Your reply is missing the point so may want to reread what I actually said. I’ve run Ethereum miners and have a Bitcoin paper wallet.

beardedman 5y ago

> without any meaningful service costs Wow, that's bold. Do you mean service cost to the anonymous individual? Or overall service cost? Because if it's the latter, I think you might be very sorely mistaken.

coffeefirst 5y ago

And to me, that's the tragedy. Clearly the people who created this were absolutely brilliant. And after sinking years of sweat and energy into groundbreaking work, the end result is an energy-sucking ponzi scheme that's done considerably more harm than good.

jodrellblank 5y ago

> All without any meaningful service costs Only by outsourcing those. If BitCoin consumed the electricity equivalent of Argentina[1] recently with basically nothing to show for it, how much longer before your small group of researchers surpasses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. as the most harmful inventors of all time? What other uses could 120TWh of electricity have been put to? Training GPT-3 took approx 200MWh of electricity[2], so enough power to train GPT-3 ~600x over. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 [2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/gpt3_carbon_footprint_estimate/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/04/gpt3_carbon_footprint...

classified 5y ago

Nuclear weapons are a great technical achievement, too. And not one has been misfired yet. /s

native_samples 5y ago

The site is disingenuous. There have been far more than two service incidents. Around 2015 there were many periods where transactions simply weren't clearing at all due to overload, and there was no way to set a correct tx fee because the fee needed to get to the front of the queue was constantly changing and wallets couldn't inform users of what the current fee was anyway. From the user's perspective these were outages.

Jansen312 5y ago

The amazing part is they hash "no" work as proof of work to get rewarded with digital coin that contribute to global warming hastening "2012 movie" and we celebrate it as a monumental achievement! Maybe Thanos is right.