5 ms·

Just reads like a pitch? Might be valid but Vitalik has kind of a lot skin in the game so it's hard for me to take it at face value.

michaelwww 4y ago
I have the opposite attitude. I want to hear the best arguments from PoS people and the best PoW people. I'm not putting money into it until I understand it to the best of my ability, which admittedly may be never because it's so far over my head
- fezfight 4y ago
  There's a famous quote by Uptain Sinclair that is applicable, if indirectly. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." If Vitalik was wrong, do you think he'd be able to see it?
  - michaelwww 4y ago
    That's a good point if I were forced to make a decision by only listening to Vitalik. But he doesn't strike me as a profiteering salesman trying to get me to sign the dotted line based on just what he says. It's a huge debate that will invent the future so no doubt Bitcoiners will engage in the debate and tell me why Vtalik is wrong about Bitcoin and Proof of Stake. You wouldn't complain to the judge in a courtroom that the lawyer for the other side is biased. That's essentially what some people in this thread are saying. Instead, you'd engage the opposing lawyers arguments and come up with better ones. I'm on the jury, trying to make up my mind.
    - fezfight 4y ago
      The court compels the lawyers to tell the truth or face consequences, so at the very least, out right blatent lies will be called as such by the other lawyers or the judge. Certainly things will sneak by so you should be weary of whatever is said in court, too. However this interview is PR, not a court.
      - michaelwww 4y ago
        I'll be the judge of that. But seriously, this interview is just one piece of evidence I've been collecting in my crypto folder. Like everyone else except for people who get into the team spirit and join one side or the other. I should just invest in both an forget about it, but that's not my nature.
        fezfight 4y ago
        I liked your metaphor, by the way. Thank you for engaging!
        michaelwww 4y ago
        Thank you too. I used to love speech and debate in high school where it was about ideas, not emotions
  - PretzelPirate 4y ago
    > If Vitalik was wrong, do you think he'd be able to see it? Vitalik is one of the few people that prioritize the technology over money. He's often been critical of Ethereum, its price, and previous choices he and the rest of the Ethereum development community has made.
paulgb 4y ago
Is it wrong, though? I’m constantly surprised how incurious Bitcoiners are about what will happen when the block reward subsidy pool runs out. I still haven’t heard a convincing story about what will happen to the network security a few halvings from now, besides “who cares, I will have sold by then”
- fezfight 4y ago
  Donno! But would you take Tim Cooks opinion on Android phones? How about Elons on NASA? Gonna need a less invested source.
  - paulgb 4y ago
    Honestly I’d probably learn more from hearing Tim Cook talk about iPhone vs Android, or Elon Musk talk about NASA vs SpaceX, than I would from hearing from almost any impartial observer. I’m by no means a fanboy of either, but I respect the fact that both of them have spent a bunch of their life learning about this stuff and understand it at a level I don’t. Of course I’d treat it as a biased source of information, but I’d still treat it as informative.
    - fezfight 4y ago
      How could you, a non-expert, discern what parts were bias or not? You might believe you'd learn more things, but how much of it would be spun? What is left out, glossed over, or exaggerated?
  - michaelwww 4y ago
    > But would you take Tim Cooks opinion on Android phones? How about Elons on NASA I sure would. I'm always interested in what people have to say about their competition. When Steve Balmer said iPhones were a losing idea, did I believe him? No, I thought he was making a mistake, to put it politely. But it was instructive to let me know where Microsoft's mindset was at.
- adastra22 4y ago
  It is wrong. It is conflating two things: market cap and total vulnerable funds in a reorg. Doing a 51% attack isn't free range to steal any bitcoin, all you can do is reverse a recent transaction. And in practice it needs to be very recent (like within the last hour) to be pulled off. Let's work out an actual attack: I send 1000 btc to an exchange, let it confirm, exchange for something else (Ethereum, let's say) and withdraw. Once my ethereum withdraw is seen on that network, I start 51% attacking the bitcoin chain and unwind the dozen or so blocks that have occurred since I sent the deposit. Maybe this attack costs me 500 btc, but in doing so I get my 1000 btc back. So I effectively bought that ethereum at half price by defrauding the exchange. It needs to be a lot of currency because the 500 btc price of the reorg (made up number!) is a fixed cost, independent of the value of the transaction I'm reversing. The total market cap of bitcoin doesn't enter into this. The most value I can obtain is the lesser of (1) how much bitcoin I have, and (2) what limit the exchange places on deposits. Exchanges (or other trading partners) can put a hold or delay on high-value deposits, which completely mitigates this attack. Now the expense of the attack is dependent on the mining revenue per block. So if the mining revenue per block is $300k or so, to use a number from the article, then exchanges and other users of bitcoin should require extra confirmations for transactions > $1MM or so. I don't know about you, but I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that settling a transaction worth $500MM will require waiting for at least a day's worth of confirmations. And that's all that's required to prevent this attack from being profitable at scale.

michaelwww 4y ago

I have the opposite attitude. I want to hear the best arguments from PoS people and the best PoW people. I'm not putting money into it until I understand it to the best of my ability, which admittedly may be never because it's so far over my head

fezfight 4y ago
There's a famous quote by Uptain Sinclair that is applicable, if indirectly. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." If Vitalik was wrong, do you think he'd be able to see it?
- michaelwww 4y ago
  That's a good point if I were forced to make a decision by only listening to Vitalik. But he doesn't strike me as a profiteering salesman trying to get me to sign the dotted line based on just what he says. It's a huge debate that will invent the future so no doubt Bitcoiners will engage in the debate and tell me why Vtalik is wrong about Bitcoin and Proof of Stake. You wouldn't complain to the judge in a courtroom that the lawyer for the other side is biased. That's essentially what some people in this thread are saying. Instead, you'd engage the opposing lawyers arguments and come up with better ones. I'm on the jury, trying to make up my mind.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    The court compels the lawyers to tell the truth or face consequences, so at the very least, out right blatent lies will be called as such by the other lawyers or the judge. Certainly things will sneak by so you should be weary of whatever is said in court, too. However this interview is PR, not a court.
    - michaelwww 4y ago
      I'll be the judge of that. But seriously, this interview is just one piece of evidence I've been collecting in my crypto folder. Like everyone else except for people who get into the team spirit and join one side or the other. I should just invest in both an forget about it, but that's not my nature.
      - fezfight 4y ago
        I liked your metaphor, by the way. Thank you for engaging!
        michaelwww 4y ago
        Thank you too. I used to love speech and debate in high school where it was about ideas, not emotions
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  > If Vitalik was wrong, do you think he'd be able to see it? Vitalik is one of the few people that prioritize the technology over money. He's often been critical of Ethereum, its price, and previous choices he and the rest of the Ethereum development community has made.

paulgb 4y ago

Is it wrong, though? I’m constantly surprised how incurious Bitcoiners are about what will happen when the block reward subsidy pool runs out. I still haven’t heard a convincing story about what will happen to the network security a few halvings from now, besides “who cares, I will have sold by then”

fezfight 4y ago
Donno! But would you take Tim Cooks opinion on Android phones? How about Elons on NASA? Gonna need a less invested source.
- paulgb 4y ago
  Honestly I’d probably learn more from hearing Tim Cook talk about iPhone vs Android, or Elon Musk talk about NASA vs SpaceX, than I would from hearing from almost any impartial observer. I’m by no means a fanboy of either, but I respect the fact that both of them have spent a bunch of their life learning about this stuff and understand it at a level I don’t. Of course I’d treat it as a biased source of information, but I’d still treat it as informative.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    How could you, a non-expert, discern what parts were bias or not? You might believe you'd learn more things, but how much of it would be spun? What is left out, glossed over, or exaggerated?
- michaelwww 4y ago
  > But would you take Tim Cooks opinion on Android phones? How about Elons on NASA I sure would. I'm always interested in what people have to say about their competition. When Steve Balmer said iPhones were a losing idea, did I believe him? No, I thought he was making a mistake, to put it politely. But it was instructive to let me know where Microsoft's mindset was at.
adastra22 4y ago
It is wrong. It is conflating two things: market cap and total vulnerable funds in a reorg. Doing a 51% attack isn't free range to steal any bitcoin, all you can do is reverse a recent transaction. And in practice it needs to be very recent (like within the last hour) to be pulled off. Let's work out an actual attack: I send 1000 btc to an exchange, let it confirm, exchange for something else (Ethereum, let's say) and withdraw. Once my ethereum withdraw is seen on that network, I start 51% attacking the bitcoin chain and unwind the dozen or so blocks that have occurred since I sent the deposit. Maybe this attack costs me 500 btc, but in doing so I get my 1000 btc back. So I effectively bought that ethereum at half price by defrauding the exchange. It needs to be a lot of currency because the 500 btc price of the reorg (made up number!) is a fixed cost, independent of the value of the transaction I'm reversing. The total market cap of bitcoin doesn't enter into this. The most value I can obtain is the lesser of (1) how much bitcoin I have, and (2) what limit the exchange places on deposits. Exchanges (or other trading partners) can put a hold or delay on high-value deposits, which completely mitigates this attack. Now the expense of the attack is dependent on the mining revenue per block. So if the mining revenue per block is $300k or so, to use a number from the article, then exchanges and other users of bitcoin should require extra confirmations for transactions > $1MM or so. I don't know about you, but I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that settling a transaction worth $500MM will require waiting for at least a day's worth of confirmations. And that's all that's required to prevent this attack from being profitable at scale.