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You mean the 100% democratic halving algorithm which allows anyone to participate in the process of verifying transactions and earning Bitcoin?

vel0city 4y ago
> allows anyone to participate in the process of verifying transactions and earning Bitcoin? Homeless people living under a bridge have the same ability to participate and get Bitcoin as SV tech bros running racks of ASIC miners in their three car garages?
- rglover 4y ago
  Hypothetically, yes.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Hypothetically they could bevome a british lord through the right of conquest, and then sit in the house of lords. So by your standards medieval Britania was a democracy too.
    - rglover 4y ago
      That's funny, but no. I could apply the standard of a homeless person buying a $300K McMansion in the same way and it'd be equally unachievable (of course you know that, but you're not concerned about being correct—you just want to look smart).
      - vel0city 4y ago
        And yet you suggest a homeless person can reasonably assert influence on the Blockchain and mine it effectively. I'm generally not considered poor (not trying to flex) but there's practically no way I could mine anything of value or exert any amount of influence on the Blockchain. Much less any other random person out there. Bitcoin is dominated by extremely wealthy miners. The only way it comes close to profitability mine is to get into big industrial power plans and buy tons of highly specified computing equipment. Only then are you breaking even (eventually, after the years of paying off the capex). But then you'll finally have a tiny billionth of the overall network speed and can make a tiny wave in choosing what transactions to include and push the chain any particular direction. It's practically democracy but you can pay $5 to vote again and can do it however many times you want, meanwhile lots of people pre-purchased votes at $0.50/ea and bought millions already. Sounds like a level playing field to me!
        rglover 4y ago
        > And yet you suggest a homeless person can reasonably assert influence on the Blockchain and mine it effectively. I never suggested anything even close to that. > Bitcoin is dominated by extremely wealthy miners. No, it recently had a drop in difficulty as the big box miners have had to shut down due to bankruptcy (making it more accessible to more people). That means it's both cheaper to get the equipment you need and easier to earn Bitcoin. What's great is that's by design. > But then you'll finally have a tiny billionth of the overall network speed and can make a tiny wave in choosing what transactions to include and push the chain any particular direction. It's practically democracy but you can pay $5 to vote again and can do it however many times you want, meanwhile lots of people pre-purchased votes at $0.50/ea and bought millions already. Sounds like a level playing field to me! This reads like you don't understand how Bitcoin works. I really don't know what you're referring to here. The network operates according to the current consensus around the protocol. If you want to influence the direction of said protocol, you can submit a proposal and if others want to support it, your changes can be implemented as an upgrade. There is zero prerequisite to spend anything to participate in Bitcoin. If you can offer a product or service to someone and are willing to be paid in Bitcoin, you just participated in Bitcoin. Just like every economy, the more you participate, the more opportunity you have.
        vel0city 4y ago
        You absolutely did when you said "yes" to the ability of a homeless person to exert as much influence and get bitcoin as a SV tech bro with racks of mining rigs in their garage. Its just a few comments ago. > No, it recently had a drop in difficulty as the big box miners have had to shut down due to bankruptcy A few miners shut down. The difficulty barely moved. Its still massively unprofitable for me to mine with any hardware I still own, and many friends of mine with ASICs can't profitably mine either. Leaving...those with extremely cheap energy sources (i.e., not residential rates, i.e., industrial plans, i.e., using lots of power total, i.e....big miners!) or those who have cheap generation sources they've already invested in. How much does a MW of solar panels cost again? How much land does that take up? Sounds easy for someone living under a bridge to put together. So mining hardware has gotten a lot cheaper huh? Difficulty has dropped a lot? I guess I can mine on my Ryzen 5 2600 CPU then? No? Huh. Maybe my 1070 GPU? No? Huh. Clearly a $2k Macbook Pro M1. Still no? I wonder what a normal used miner goes for these days. https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 $2,255, 100Th. https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 $1,680, 100Th. So easily $1,600-$2,255 for a noisy purpose-built box to mine. What's that gonna cost to operate? ~3kW of power usage, at $0.15/kWh, that's ~$10.80/day, assuming you're not spending any extra on cooling. What's my revenue for that 100Th of mining power these days? ~$6.60/day? Cool, so after spending somewhere around $2k on used mining hardware, I'll be generating -$4.20/day in profits when converting back to USD. Wait, that's a minus symbol... Wait, I'll have some losses from pool fees? Now I've got exchange fees as well? Well at least I'll have generated some bitcoins. How many did I mine my first day? 0.00036715BTC? Over a year I'll have ~0.134, assuming the difficulty doesn't continue its few year history of continuing to go sky high. We'll say BTC is back to ~$20k, that means for that ~$2k capex investment and $3,942 in power costs (ignoring the fact I had to pay to have space to put the things and might have needed to cool them) I'll have generated ~$2,680. Yeah, definitely seems like a normal thing average people are gonna be able to participate in. That guy living under the bridge is gonna be able to mine so many bitcoins. > If you want to influence the direction of said protocol, you can submit a proposal I can petition the lords for change. They can also just choose to ignore me. Some people wanted larger block sizes. Some wanted faster generation times. We've seen how those changes have turned out over and over. In the end, Bitcoin is what the miners want it to be.
UncleMeat 4y ago
100% democratic? Satoshi didn't ask me when he chose the halving algorithm. Do you mean democratic in the sense that the miners get votes according to their hash rate and they could tell the core devs to get bent if enough of them got together? That's not democracy. "All landowners get a vote according to the amount of land they own. Work for scraps you peasant." Unethical nonsense.
- rglover 4y ago
  > Unethical nonsense. You can propose changes to the network at any time via a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) [1], so sorry, but you're just wrong. Bitcoin is the most ethical form of money that has ever existed. > "All landowners get a vote according to the amount of land they own. Work for scraps you peasant." This is an impressive contortion of reality, but nonetheless completely wrong. Your "voting" ability has nothing to do with participation in mining. Your vote is participation in the network, open ability to submit proposals, run a node to bolster the network, and if you wish, run a mining rig to validate blocks and earn Bitcoin. You can also earn Bitcoin from others directly providing products and services. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips https://github.com/bitcoin/bips
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    But I have no vote in its adoption. "Anybody can propose a change" is not democracy. Not even remotely close. I am frankly horrified that somebody could conclude that this is a just system under which to operate money.
    - rglover 4y ago
      It’s better than democracy. Anyone can influence the direction of the network. The best ideas win (if you want to be pedantic call it a meritocracy). The status quo is a bunch of bankers, behind closed doors, determining your fate. I’m frankly horrified that you think that’s a just system.
      - UncleMeat 4y ago

vel0city 4y ago

> allows anyone to participate in the process of verifying transactions and earning Bitcoin? Homeless people living under a bridge have the same ability to participate and get Bitcoin as SV tech bros running racks of ASIC miners in their three car garages?

rglover 4y ago
Hypothetically, yes.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  Hypothetically they could bevome a british lord through the right of conquest, and then sit in the house of lords. So by your standards medieval Britania was a democracy too.
  - rglover 4y ago
    That's funny, but no. I could apply the standard of a homeless person buying a $300K McMansion in the same way and it'd be equally unachievable (of course you know that, but you're not concerned about being correct—you just want to look smart).
    - vel0city 4y ago
      And yet you suggest a homeless person can reasonably assert influence on the Blockchain and mine it effectively. I'm generally not considered poor (not trying to flex) but there's practically no way I could mine anything of value or exert any amount of influence on the Blockchain. Much less any other random person out there. Bitcoin is dominated by extremely wealthy miners. The only way it comes close to profitability mine is to get into big industrial power plans and buy tons of highly specified computing equipment. Only then are you breaking even (eventually, after the years of paying off the capex). But then you'll finally have a tiny billionth of the overall network speed and can make a tiny wave in choosing what transactions to include and push the chain any particular direction. It's practically democracy but you can pay $5 to vote again and can do it however many times you want, meanwhile lots of people pre-purchased votes at $0.50/ea and bought millions already. Sounds like a level playing field to me!
      - rglover 4y ago
        > And yet you suggest a homeless person can reasonably assert influence on the Blockchain and mine it effectively. I never suggested anything even close to that. > Bitcoin is dominated by extremely wealthy miners. No, it recently had a drop in difficulty as the big box miners have had to shut down due to bankruptcy (making it more accessible to more people). That means it's both cheaper to get the equipment you need and easier to earn Bitcoin. What's great is that's by design. > But then you'll finally have a tiny billionth of the overall network speed and can make a tiny wave in choosing what transactions to include and push the chain any particular direction. It's practically democracy but you can pay $5 to vote again and can do it however many times you want, meanwhile lots of people pre-purchased votes at $0.50/ea and bought millions already. Sounds like a level playing field to me! This reads like you don't understand how Bitcoin works. I really don't know what you're referring to here. The network operates according to the current consensus around the protocol. If you want to influence the direction of said protocol, you can submit a proposal and if others want to support it, your changes can be implemented as an upgrade. There is zero prerequisite to spend anything to participate in Bitcoin. If you can offer a product or service to someone and are willing to be paid in Bitcoin, you just participated in Bitcoin. Just like every economy, the more you participate, the more opportunity you have.
        vel0city 4y ago
        You absolutely did when you said "yes" to the ability of a homeless person to exert as much influence and get bitcoin as a SV tech bro with racks of mining rigs in their garage. Its just a few comments ago. > No, it recently had a drop in difficulty as the big box miners have had to shut down due to bankruptcy A few miners shut down. The difficulty barely moved. Its still massively unprofitable for me to mine with any hardware I still own, and many friends of mine with ASICs can't profitably mine either. Leaving...those with extremely cheap energy sources (i.e., not residential rates, i.e., industrial plans, i.e., using lots of power total, i.e....big miners!) or those who have cheap generation sources they've already invested in. How much does a MW of solar panels cost again? How much land does that take up? Sounds easy for someone living under a bridge to put together. So mining hardware has gotten a lot cheaper huh? Difficulty has dropped a lot? I guess I can mine on my Ryzen 5 2600 CPU then? No? Huh. Maybe my 1070 GPU? No? Huh. Clearly a $2k Macbook Pro M1. Still no? I wonder what a normal used miner goes for these days. https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 $2,255, 100Th. https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334660278672 $1,680, 100Th. So easily $1,600-$2,255 for a noisy purpose-built box to mine. What's that gonna cost to operate? ~3kW of power usage, at $0.15/kWh, that's ~$10.80/day, assuming you're not spending any extra on cooling. What's my revenue for that 100Th of mining power these days? ~$6.60/day? Cool, so after spending somewhere around $2k on used mining hardware, I'll be generating -$4.20/day in profits when converting back to USD. Wait, that's a minus symbol... Wait, I'll have some losses from pool fees? Now I've got exchange fees as well? Well at least I'll have generated some bitcoins. How many did I mine my first day? 0.00036715BTC? Over a year I'll have ~0.134, assuming the difficulty doesn't continue its few year history of continuing to go sky high. We'll say BTC is back to ~$20k, that means for that ~$2k capex investment and $3,942 in power costs (ignoring the fact I had to pay to have space to put the things and might have needed to cool them) I'll have generated ~$2,680. Yeah, definitely seems like a normal thing average people are gonna be able to participate in. That guy living under the bridge is gonna be able to mine so many bitcoins. > If you want to influence the direction of said protocol, you can submit a proposal I can petition the lords for change. They can also just choose to ignore me. Some people wanted larger block sizes. Some wanted faster generation times. We've seen how those changes have turned out over and over. In the end, Bitcoin is what the miners want it to be.

UncleMeat 4y ago

100% democratic? Satoshi didn't ask me when he chose the halving algorithm. Do you mean democratic in the sense that the miners get votes according to their hash rate and they could tell the core devs to get bent if enough of them got together? That's not democracy. "All landowners get a vote according to the amount of land they own. Work for scraps you peasant." Unethical nonsense.

rglover 4y ago
> Unethical nonsense. You can propose changes to the network at any time via a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) [1], so sorry, but you're just wrong. Bitcoin is the most ethical form of money that has ever existed. > "All landowners get a vote according to the amount of land they own. Work for scraps you peasant." This is an impressive contortion of reality, but nonetheless completely wrong. Your "voting" ability has nothing to do with participation in mining. Your vote is participation in the network, open ability to submit proposals, run a node to bolster the network, and if you wish, run a mining rig to validate blocks and earn Bitcoin. You can also earn Bitcoin from others directly providing products and services. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips https://github.com/bitcoin/bips
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  But I have no vote in its adoption. "Anybody can propose a change" is not democracy. Not even remotely close. I am frankly horrified that somebody could conclude that this is a just system under which to operate money.
  - rglover 4y ago
    It’s better than democracy. Anyone can influence the direction of the network. The best ideas win (if you want to be pedantic call it a meritocracy). The status quo is a bunch of bankers, behind closed doors, determining your fate. I’m frankly horrified that you think that’s a just system.
    - UncleMeat 4y ago