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Topic: Bitcoin is a flawed technology - page 4. (Read 4995 times)

hero member
Activity: 682
Merit: 500
April 19, 2013, 08:52:52 PM
#3
I wrote in depth about Moore's law this year for English. And while it's true that it was "just an observation 40 years ago," people have done plot studies of exactly how accurate Moore's law has been (read: The Singularity is Near by Ray Kuzweil).
  In addition to the astounding accuracy of Moore's law, the general implications of the axiom hold true for nearly every technology from the past to the future. Much before Moore's law (or even Gordon Moore himself) existed, there were various paradigms of technology (read: vacuum tubes, transistors, etc.). Because of the obvious path for technological innovation, new technologies will arise and continue to follow Moore's law.

In fact, HP already uses platinum latch technology for printer cartridges and is working on moving that technology over to IC's. And at the same time, companies like Intel and IBM are putting a ton of work into carbon nanotubes. The future is literally unfathomable. Following your closed-minded notions, it's easily understandable why people in the 80's thought computers would always be room-sized.
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
Finding Satoshi
April 19, 2013, 08:26:42 PM
#2
Bitcoin relies on distributing a file with unlimited size to every single node in the network in order to function. Bitcoin therefore would theoretically succeed if the resources required for storing and transmitting such an unlimited file size were also unlimited.

However, its clear that for the foreseeable future, storage is not unlimited, and also bandwidth is not unlimited. The unlimited size of the blockchain; the fact that anybody can add transactions for no cost, eg. SDice. The overhead with distributing an unlimited sized file to every node.

Moore's law is cited in Satoshi's paper as being a fundamental tenet on how the bitcoin system works. Quoting from Satoshi's paper:

Quote
If we suppose blocks are generated every 10 minutes, 80 bytes * 6 * 24 * 365 = 4.2MB per year. With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in
memory

However, "Moore's law" is not a law at all. It was just an observation made 40 years ago that the price of storage would decrease for the foreseeable future - that we were entering an era of microcomputing. It cannot hold true forever. There is a hard limit to how much information can be stored on a chip.  Its just we haven't reached it.

Therefore the concept of distributing an unlimited sized file to every node on the network is fundamentally not sustainable or economical - READ: flawed. Storage will not be getting cheaper forever but the principle underlying bitcoin is for the filesize of the blockchain to be getting bigger forever.

Let's not also forget the bandwidth usage requirement as well, which will also be getting bigger forever.


The requirements of porn means the creation of greater storage will never cease.
sr. member
Activity: 260
Merit: 250
April 19, 2013, 08:23:44 PM
#1
Bitcoin relies on distributing a file with unlimited size to every single node in the network in order to function. Bitcoin therefore would theoretically succeed if the resources required for storing and transmitting such an unlimited file size were also unlimited.

However, its clear that for the foreseeable future, storage is not unlimited, and also bandwidth is not unlimited. The unlimited size of the blockchain; the fact that anybody can add transactions for no cost, eg. SDice. The overhead with distributing an unlimited sized file to every node.

Moore's law is cited in Satoshi's paper as being a fundamental tenet on how the bitcoin system works. Quoting from Satoshi's paper:

Quote
If we suppose blocks are generated every 10 minutes, 80 bytes * 6 * 24 * 365 = 4.2MB per year. With computer systems typically selling with 2GB of RAM as of 2008, and Moore's Law predicting current growth of 1.2GB per year, storage should not be a problem even if the block headers must be kept in
memory

However, "Moore's law" is not a law at all. It was just an observation made 40 years ago that the price of storage would decrease for the foreseeable future - that we were entering an era of microcomputing. It cannot hold true forever. There is a hard limit to how much information can be stored on a chip.  Its just we haven't reached it.

Therefore the concept of distributing an unlimited sized file to every node on the network is fundamentally not sustainable or economical - READ: flawed. Storage will not be getting cheaper forever but the principle underlying bitcoin is for the filesize of the blockchain to be getting bigger forever.

Let's not also forget the bandwidth usage requirement as well, which will also be getting bigger forever.
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