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OfflineKryptos
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Ice9]
    #26936356 - 09/15/20 04:33 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

geokills said:
Quote:

Kryptos said:
Quote:

geokills said:
it is the sum collective of network participants, those running mining rigs (which these days entails considerable capital investment and ongoing energy expense)




The increase in startup costs is the only thing that worries me about bitcoin. It is still susceptible to a 51% attack, and the more expensive it is to get into the mining game, the more likely the chances.




I disagree.  Although the expense of application specific integrated circuits (ASIC's) for use in proof of work networks like bitcoin does take away some of the power from the average participant, bitcoin's network is so large that is seems increasingly unlikely that it will fall prey to a 51% attack, particularly as major industrial players in the electrical industry are getting involved, and nation states are also stepping in to support mining operations as an ancillary revenue source.  In essence, there are so many players at this point, that it would be prohibatively expensive for anyone to amass the resources to enact a 51% attack.  The only black swan scenario I could see that would allow it, were if a country like China, which controls a collectively significant portion of the global hashrate, were to locate all miners in its jurisdiction and enact government control to attempt such an attack.  I just don't see it happening, nor worth the resources required.

In truth, it is the smaller networks that are at great risk.  We have seen this recently with Ether Classic (ETC), where a nefarious party rents hashpower on cloud computing networks for a few hundred thousand dollars and walks away with a few million dollar payload in double-spend attacks against exchanges (smaller networks have been attacked with less than $50K in resources -- although the payout is likewise considerably lower).  The fewer the participants and the less expensive it is to mine, the easier it becomes to stage a 51% attack.  It is worth noting that there are mitigation strategies being discussed that can reduce the damage when such attacks occur.




I don't think this is an example of eternal balance, or a system that is inherently trending towards decentralization. To somewhat butcher your dot com example above, we're in the post-crash period of the early 2000s. The Apple and Amazon of Bitcoin haven't become apparent yet, but as bigger player enter the game, such as power companies and governments, I think we might be seeing the beginnings of an Apple/Amazon type player.

Ultimately I agree with all of your points, in that a 51% attack on bitcoin is not currently worth it, and that it is much more resistant to a 51% attack than a smaller and less decentralized network, but I am mentally appending "for now" to each of those statements. On a long enough time line, any nonzero probability collapses to one.

Quote:

Ice9 said:
It takes 3 nuclear power plants out put to support the bitcoin blockchain right now... this unsustainable and will eventually be it's undoing.




Sounds like we need to build a bigger nuclear power plant.


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OfflinegeokillsA
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Ice9]
    #26936745 - 09/15/20 10:10 AM (3 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Ice9 said:
It takes 3 nuclear power plants out put to support the bitcoin blockchain right now... this unsustainable and will eventually be it's undoing.




Perhaps so, or perhaps not.  While bitcoin's proof of work validation process does require a significant amount of energy, there is a LOT more energy available to us than we are using (and a lot of smarter, renewable or otherwise non-damaging energy at that).

I touched on power companies earlier... a lot of fossil fuel producers for example, are constantly burning off excess fuel that they cannot store or deliver.  Excess energy is often wasted at almost any municipal energy production facility where generators ratchet up power production in relatively large increments depending on demand, and they have to produce at or above the current load requirements to avoid outages.  Major hydroelectric projects can also produce tremendous amounts of excess power in wet seasons, which can likewise be repurposed (and indeed already has been in some areas of China in particular) to power mining rigs that secure the bitcoin network.  The ongoing transition to wind and solar power could also satisfy practically all of our species' power requirements, once the transmission and storage infrastructure is online.

My home state of California is planning to run entirely on zero-emission energy by 2045, and our current governor just made mention last week that he wants to move up that timescale even more aggressively on account of the warming trends and extreme fire seasons we have been experiencing.

Point being, while the energy argument surrounding bitcoin's use tugs on the long running concerns surrounding our population's generally selfish use of limited earthbound resources and the pollution that has come with our aging technologies, our energy systems are evolving to produce less stressful impact upon our environment.  Likewise, cryptocurrency itself is evolving to become more efficient, through the use of layer two solutions that only periodically need to sync with the main blockchain in consolidated increments.

I mean shoot, if we're going to get real meta on this... humanity itself is unsustainable.


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OfflineCherk
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: WhoManBeing]
    #26982683 - 10/13/20 12:54 AM (3 years, 3 months ago)

from what I understand bitcoins attain their value from laundered money....doesnt seem like a good long term investment considering current political tensions


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I have considered such matters.

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OfflineKryptos
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Cherk]
    #26988112 - 10/16/20 09:18 AM (3 years, 3 months ago)

US real estate is probably the most important method of laundering money over the last two decades, and yet "buy a house and build wealth" is the primary long term investment method propagated by US society.

Just because something is being used to launder money, does not make it a bad asset. As a matter of fact, it probably means that asset will outperform the general market, due to the influx of illegal cash. If anything, evidence of money laundering is a good reason to buy.


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OfflineSynKyd
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Kryptos]
    #26989756 - 10/17/20 08:53 AM (3 years, 3 months ago)

For money to be laundered it needs to be converted out of Bitcoin, which is what the governments are making harder to do.  It is a speculative investment at this time, no doubt.


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OfflineCherk
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Kryptos]
    #27000551 - 10/23/20 09:44 PM (3 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Kryptos said:
US real estate is probably the most important method of laundering money over the last two decades, and yet "buy a house and build wealth" is the primary long term investment method propagated by US society.

Just because something is being used to launder money, does not make it a bad asset. As a matter of fact, it probably means that asset will outperform the general market, due to the influx of illegal cash. If anything, evidence of money laundering is a good reason to buy.




yes but how do I get paid to have sex?


--------------------
I have considered such matters.

SIKE


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OfflineJonBa
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Registered: 05/14/19
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Cherk]
    #27043818 - 11/17/20 12:43 PM (3 years, 2 months ago)

There is a theory I heard once that most goverments are worried about mass use of many drugs, but not concerned about their use by a small number of people.
While all these software jumping through hoops and doing all sorts of protocol might actually be fruitless because anyone with enough power can just see through it all anyway, it does demonstrate the person is willing to go through the effort, so access to the chemicals remains gatekept.

They don't like the street dealers because they will make things more easily accessible with less effort, but you know for a fact the agents who go bust the street dealers for selling cannabis are themselves regularly taking coccaine.
Some even seem to feel comfortable bragging about being high on weed while in a courtroom fighting to put some working class kid in prison for smoking weed.

Maybe bitcoin and tor and VPNs and all that are ultimately pointless, and maybe the illegal and legal drug companies are all taking coke and drinking overpriced wine in the same social clubs, but maybe it's more about gatekeeping and minimisation than it is about actually stopping people doing it.


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Life saved by DMT


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OfflineLoaded Shaman
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Re: Why BitCoin? I don’t understand [Re: Kryptos]
    #27044771 - 11/18/20 01:18 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Kryptos said:
Bitcoin is an attempt to create a fiat currency that is backed by itself, instead of a government.




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"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius


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