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Bitcoin and reusable proof of work is the mind blowing innovation that represents a turning point for human civilization. Mutually assured preservation via soft

Bitcoin and reusable proof of work is the mind blowing innovation that represents a turning point for human civilization. Mutually assured preservation via softwar. The rest will at best be iterative technology that may eventually be integrated into the traditional securities and exchange systems governed by the local monopoly on violence, but is generally uninvestable in its current form.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
The whole thing is uninvestable. None of it (including Bitcoin) generates any value. Nothing is created that benefits the human race. It's speculation all the way down - the only value that a bitcoin has is the likelihood of someone else paying more for it than you paid for it. It's not a turning point for human civilisation; it's a slot machine in a digital casino. Not that the derivatives of "tradfi" are any better. But underneath all that speculation at least there is actual stocks in actual companies that are actually making real human value.
- rahen 4y ago
  > Nothing is created that benefits the human race. With Bitcoin, we're talking about nothing less than the separation of money and state, like we obtained the separation of church and state. This is huge.
  - unicornmama 4y ago
    There's no separation of money and state - unless the state allows it.
    - rahen 4y ago
      Doesn't seem to go so well, does it?
      - unicornmama 4y ago
        Relative to what?
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Yes but it’s controlled by like 3 people. They can revert the chain and have done so in the past. How is that better?
    - rahen 4y ago
      Mining is more decentralized now than it was when Chinese pools had 60% of the hashrate. We're also rolling the Stratum v2 protocol, which will considerably improve the decentralization. https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization
    - roland35 4y ago
      Let's not forget that the entire point of "proof of work" is to waste electricity and waste electronics in persuit of making pointless calculations until one is randomly correct. What a great system!!
      - rahen 4y ago
        The point of PoW is to make money hard to create, unlike state money (fiat). You could say gold, silver or basically any store of value use PoW too: they require a considerable amount of time and energy to obtain. If you could just use dirt as money, it would be worthless as anyone could produce some effortlessly. It's the basis of sound money. Bitcoin currently uses about 85TW/year of energy for its mining. Estimations for the traditional finance system seem to be around 2000TW/year. Factoring the amount of transactions, Bitcoin is about 50 more efficient per transaction (accounting transportation, paper and coin production, datacenters, energy used by banks). Its energy usage is also independent of the amount of transactions, so it becomes more efficient as the number of transactions grow.
  - tromp 4y ago
    With Bitcoin, we're talking about a concentration of wealth (on early miners and "hodlers") orders of magnitude worse than with fiat. It benefits mostly a tiny fraction of the human race.
  - marcus_holmes 4y ago
    Bitcoin actively took a decision to not be a currency but to be a "store of value". It cannot function as a currency because it's too slow (you can't wait for ~10 minutes to see if your transaction for included in the block in order to pay for a coffee). In order to separate State from Money, we need a currency. Until I can buy a coffee with my hypothetical FreeCoin, I need to rely on fiat currency supplied by someone both I and the barista trust (like a government). This isn't huge, it's shit
    - rahen 4y ago
      The Bitcoin blockchain is a layer 1, it acts as a settlement layer, or put simply, a notarization layer, or a store of value layer. It's not intended to be used as a full scale transaction layer as it couldn't scale and would bloat the blockchain. Large amounts of transactions should be made off-chain through payment channels, with only the final balance between the parties written to the blockchain. This what layers 2, sitting above the blockchain, are about. Common layers 2 are Lightning and Liquid, the former being the most widely used. https://www.bitcoin.com/get-started/what-is-lightning-network/ https://www.bitcoin.com/get-started/what-is-lightning-networ... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lightning-network.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lightning-network.asp It might interest you to note than clightning is written by Rusty Russel, mostly know for its work with the Linux kernel, and also author of iptables. We're also seing some layer 3 like RGB for smart contracts, but I digress. Suffice to say, Bitcoin is more than its layer 1 and store of value.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  I don't own any crypto but I think this is an overly reductive take and fails to make comparisons to its natural competitors - cash and gold. Cash has zero intrinsic value and while gold's intrinsic value is non-zero it would be worth far less if only industrial uses were considered. It isn't reasonable to compare crypto to stocks or farmland for this reason. The distinction between cash and crypto boils down to if you have more trust in centralization or de-centralization.

marcus_holmes 4y ago

The whole thing is uninvestable. None of it (including Bitcoin) generates any value. Nothing is created that benefits the human race. It's speculation all the way down - the only value that a bitcoin has is the likelihood of someone else paying more for it than you paid for it. It's not a turning point for human civilisation; it's a slot machine in a digital casino. Not that the derivatives of "tradfi" are any better. But underneath all that speculation at least there is actual stocks in actual companies that are actually making real human value.

rahen 4y ago
> Nothing is created that benefits the human race. With Bitcoin, we're talking about nothing less than the separation of money and state, like we obtained the separation of church and state. This is huge.
- unicornmama 4y ago
  There's no separation of money and state - unless the state allows it.
  - rahen 4y ago
    Doesn't seem to go so well, does it?
    - unicornmama 4y ago
      Relative to what?
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Yes but it’s controlled by like 3 people. They can revert the chain and have done so in the past. How is that better?
  - rahen 4y ago
    Mining is more decentralized now than it was when Chinese pools had 60% of the hashrate. We're also rolling the Stratum v2 protocol, which will considerably improve the decentralization. https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization https://braiins.com/blog/stratum-v2-bitcoin-decentralization
  - roland35 4y ago
    Let's not forget that the entire point of "proof of work" is to waste electricity and waste electronics in persuit of making pointless calculations until one is randomly correct. What a great system!!
    - rahen 4y ago
      The point of PoW is to make money hard to create, unlike state money (fiat). You could say gold, silver or basically any store of value use PoW too: they require a considerable amount of time and energy to obtain. If you could just use dirt as money, it would be worthless as anyone could produce some effortlessly. It's the basis of sound money. Bitcoin currently uses about 85TW/year of energy for its mining. Estimations for the traditional finance system seem to be around 2000TW/year. Factoring the amount of transactions, Bitcoin is about 50 more efficient per transaction (accounting transportation, paper and coin production, datacenters, energy used by banks). Its energy usage is also independent of the amount of transactions, so it becomes more efficient as the number of transactions grow.
- tromp 4y ago
  With Bitcoin, we're talking about a concentration of wealth (on early miners and "hodlers") orders of magnitude worse than with fiat. It benefits mostly a tiny fraction of the human race.
- marcus_holmes 4y ago
  Bitcoin actively took a decision to not be a currency but to be a "store of value". It cannot function as a currency because it's too slow (you can't wait for ~10 minutes to see if your transaction for included in the block in order to pay for a coffee). In order to separate State from Money, we need a currency. Until I can buy a coffee with my hypothetical FreeCoin, I need to rely on fiat currency supplied by someone both I and the barista trust (like a government). This isn't huge, it's shit
  - rahen 4y ago
    The Bitcoin blockchain is a layer 1, it acts as a settlement layer, or put simply, a notarization layer, or a store of value layer. It's not intended to be used as a full scale transaction layer as it couldn't scale and would bloat the blockchain. Large amounts of transactions should be made off-chain through payment channels, with only the final balance between the parties written to the blockchain. This what layers 2, sitting above the blockchain, are about. Common layers 2 are Lightning and Liquid, the former being the most widely used. https://www.bitcoin.com/get-started/what-is-lightning-network/ https://www.bitcoin.com/get-started/what-is-lightning-networ... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lightning-network.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lightning-network.asp It might interest you to note than clightning is written by Rusty Russel, mostly know for its work with the Linux kernel, and also author of iptables. We're also seing some layer 3 like RGB for smart contracts, but I digress. Suffice to say, Bitcoin is more than its layer 1 and store of value.
osigurdson 4y ago
I don't own any crypto but I think this is an overly reductive take and fails to make comparisons to its natural competitors - cash and gold. Cash has zero intrinsic value and while gold's intrinsic value is non-zero it would be worth far less if only industrial uses were considered. It isn't reasonable to compare crypto to stocks or farmland for this reason. The distinction between cash and crypto boils down to if you have more trust in centralization or de-centralization.