cowtools

16 ms·

121.
by cowtools 4y ago
>there's no way teenagers are interested in political discussions. Maybe they are, but the people I get in flame wars with speak and act like angry adults pretty much describes how I used reddit as a teenager.
122.
by cowtools 4y ago
Yeah but there are also a lot of losers like me here so it averages out
123.
by cowtools 4y ago
By what mechanism will fees increase?
124.
by cowtools 4y ago
It's true that nobody knows for certain what will happen. I am skeptical of the idea that bitcoin in particular will be able to scrounge up enough fees on "L1" to keep the network secure, especially given its small throughput
125.
by cowtools 4y ago
Sure, but I would argue that blockstream and others control bitcoin not by forcing upgrades, but instead by preventing upgrades to the network and creating commercial solutions to easily fixable problems. I'm not saying that blocksize,
126.
by cowtools 4y ago
Good. Money invested in someone's mattress does industry no good.
127.
by cowtools 4y ago
> no one knows for sure, it's still too early to tell. This is true, no one knows for sure. But I am betting against bitcoin here. At some point the fees are just too high and it become prohibitive towards most people using it at al
128.
by cowtools 4y ago
In the stock market, the money you invest into a company is used to pay for workers, equipment, etc that generates more dividends. Anything you invest in staking is competing in a zero-sum with other stakers.
129.
by cowtools 4y ago
does it? If you simply fork bitcoin, won't you also get those properties?
130.
by cowtools 4y ago
Okay, but consider that bitcoin's comparative hashrate must be greater than that of an attacker in order for it to resist an attack.
131.
by cowtools 4y ago
This is a very critical point! But surely the gold-owner would have to cash out some of their gold to pay the guard in cash? Does it make a difference if he pays the guard in gold and then lets the guard cash it out?
132.
by cowtools 4y ago
Well, it has at least facilitated the Silk Road and many others to do business. Regardless, I suppose that I agree with your point here. But I think that cryptocurrency could possible be useful for everyday transactions: it must first overc
133.
by cowtools 4y ago
I think you are misunderstanding the article. Perhaps re-read it. The point is that bitcoin does not spend enough energy to protect the network. Bitcoin mining is not comparable to gold mining because the purpose of bitcoin mining is to s
134.
by cowtools 4y ago
>transaction fees will prop miners up (though it hasn't happened yet so it's valid to be doubtful this'll happen in practice) No, they won't. This is a common talking point, but it is rarely accompanied by facts. Cons
135.
by cowtools 4y ago
In Proof-of-Work, a large fraction of the money you put into the system is destroyed. There are physicially meaningful economies (and dis-economies) of scale involved. You are generally incentivized to sell your cryptocurrency as fast as po
136.
by cowtools 4y ago
Historically many fiat currencies have been dramatically debased, for example the german papiermark or the zimbabwean dollar. Currencies fluctuate. Currencies that are not backed by sound business relationships fluctuate more. But if it fac
137.
by cowtools 4y ago
Gold is useful in chemical and industrial processes. Bitcoin obviously has no use other than money, so I don't know if they are completely comparable in this sense. If people decided that gold was not valuable as money, it would retain
138.
by cowtools 4y ago
>Proof of work plays many roles in the Bitcoin. No it doesn't. It has one purpose, and one purpose only: to secure the network against double-spending attacks by making it infeasible to reverse transactions. I won't comment on
139.
by cowtools 4y ago
The literal hashrate is irrelevant. What matters is the comparative cost/reward of an attacker performing an attack on the network, which will continue to decrease for the reasons i've stated. Sure, the protocol will adjust for th
140.
by cowtools 4y ago
>- Miners fall off the face of the Earth. Bitcoin is still valuable so others rush to their place because there is money to be made. Your logic does not follow. What I am saying is this: You cannot continue to halve the mining rewards wh
141.
by cowtools 4y ago
>Also - there is easily $7B of “stranded” energy in flare gas and hydro “rotating reserve” available to secure Bitcoin and similar systems. Besides, the limiting factor for a successful 51% attack isn’t the energy — it’s the capacity to
142.
by cowtools 4y ago
>Far from “not exactly how market cap works”, this is more or less “not even close to how market cap works”. >Econ 101 time: value is subjective. Human beings merely use value as a description - it does not exist inside of any object
143.
Bitcoin is not a store of value(cryptostackers.substack.com)
224 points by cowtools 4y ago|355 comments
144.
by cowtools 4y ago
But doesn't it imply that the only way to not be the product is to be the customer? In this case, we see that being the customer is insufficient to not be the product.
145.
by cowtools 4y ago
You're not the customer or the product: you're the developer.
146.
by cowtools 4y ago
Sometimes you are neither the customer nor the product. (e.g. a service like wikpedia or a project like linux) I think the context in which the phrase "if you're not the customer, you're the product" is often used implie
147.
by cowtools 4y ago
this really punches a hole in the idea that "if you're not the customer, you're the product"
148.
by cowtools 4y ago
Ridiculous idea. Sure, you can run your own private email server... and watch as your messages go to everyone else's spam. It does not matter what SPV, DMARC bullshit hoop you jump through. Ultimately google gets to decide what email p
149.
by cowtools 4y ago
Sorry, I confused truth social with another website called gab. In any case they are simply mastodon forks, are they not? I can't see why it would require massive funding. I don't think the failure of truth social speaks to the fa
150.
by cowtools 4y ago
The internet infrastructure is completely controlled via local monopolies and bureaucracies, and this extends beyond ISPs. The entire DNS and PKI system for example is simply a racketeering scheme for registrars and CAs. In general the inte

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