4 ms·
"That's a lot!" Nah, if anything, it's surprising Nakamoto would even be that close. Hopes are one thing, but nobody predicts successes of this magnitude.
by mtowle 13y ago
"That's a lot!" Nah, if anything, it's surprising Nakamoto would even be that close. Hopes are one thing, but nobody predicts successes of this magnitude.
- eterm 13y agoHow is a naive back-ward looking algorithm a "success of this magnitude". Some thinking about it and any experience in modelling time-series would lend someone to put in something that predicts the difficultly of the next 2016 blocks (with some damping so that it doesn't oscillate on a constant signal) rather than using a value derived from the previous 2016.
- codeulike 13y agoHe didn't mean that bit of the algorithm was a success, he meant that the 2016-block algorithm was failing because adoption has been so strong.
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago"Adoption" in this case being ASICs coming online...
- eterm 13y agoBut adoption doesn't affect this, in fact it was more strongly negatively affected in 2010 when adoption was overall lower.
- Cushman 13y agoIs it really success when a monetary policy decision turns out to have been wildly inaccurate?
- furyofantares 13y agoThe prediction was 131 years -- I'm not sure 15 years early would be considered wildly inaccurate. I'm also not sure why we should believe that the assumptions the article makes will hold true over the next 72-112 years.
- Cushman 13y agoMaybe what I mean is wildly imprecise. The figure of 131 suggests a precision in years, but based on these projections it should clearly be in decades. Since there will likely be dramatic effects to running low on coins to mine, it's a pretty important thing to predict, and if that's not possible it's not a great sign. I guess I don't know what sort of precision the market requires to deal with it, though.
- furyofantares 13y agoThe prediction was given as ~2140 rather than ~131 years, which perhaps implies less precision, and anyway was presented as an estimate.
- Cushman 13y agoFair enough. I don't mean to belabor the point.
- philhippus 13y agoNot long from now, a quantum computer will solve each new block within a femtosecond before getting back to its main task of high freq trading and playing out millions of tactical nuclear war simulations.
- waterlesscloud 13y agoWildly inaccurate? How happy would central banker be if they could get outcomes within 10% of their planned goals?
- natrius 13y agoA central banker could easily achieve a perfectly accurate prediction of the amount of currency available, which is the type of prediction we're talking about. They print the money, so they can just print according to their predictions. The types of central banking predictions that are usually criticized are predictions of prices in the economy. Bitcoin fares no better there.
- lolcraft 13y ago> A central banker could easily achieve a perfectly accurate prediction of the amount of currency available Not really. Banks and corporations hold reserves, lend "money" that's actually debt between banks not backed by hard currency, pay debt directly to the central bank... it's not that easy. At a given time, there are many "amounts of currency" coexisting at the same time.
- natrius 13y agoRight. I was trying to choose straightforward terms that would make it clear that I was referring to the monetary base, not any other measure of the money supply. I guess that didn't work.