Topic: Bitcoin IS basically DESTROYED - page 26. (Read 47260 times)

It is pretty hard to prove that. Could also be that he was less smart than you make him out to be (as in realizing everything from the get-go), but was already executing on his solution to problems that were being discussed for years already.

I explained the economics centralization upthread, just search "sockpuppet1" to find all the posts.

Satoshi obviously intended for us to end up with a centralized token. What other possibility could there be?

Note Satoshi even wrote in the discussions with others, that he did envision Bitcoin's mining becoming controlled by corporations. All that ideological crap about "better gold" and "usurping financial institutions" was just putting lipstick on a pig.

That's very interesting! Could you explain this a bit more?
If this was intended, what did Satoshi ultimately hope for?
Thank you for your time

There is no fix. It is an inherent phenomenon of the economics of mining. Satoshi of course knew this. He was no dummy.

The only possible fix I can think of, would be to make mining unprofitable. But of course this can't be done by changing Bitcoin's source code. No one would support it. The miners would attack any such fork. There would be chaos. You can't attempt to fix this via Bitcoin. Impossible. Too many vested interests in mining.

Can't Shelby Moore go n' do some pull requests at Github and fix the Bitcoin protocol?
sockpuppet1 can you go and ask Shelby if that's something he could think of doing please

You quote an irrelevant statistic. Why would a Bitcoin miner locate next to more expensive coal generation plant, when there is 2 cents per kilowatt electricity available next to the hydroelectric generation plants.

What you are failing to put into your mind, is that these are huge mining farms with huge investments. They will locate with careful planning. Ditto in the USA, the large mining farms are in WA State where there is 4 cents per KWH near hydroelectric dams.


China devalued their currency in order to keep imports low and exports high. You can't compare GDP on an exchange rate adjusted basis.

Besides the West is going to implode soon.

When the dust clears, 2033 China will be largest GDP in the world.

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Yeah nobody going to grude the banks for getting some extra QE from helicopter Bernanke.

Nobody here cares about theft via inflation (aka debasement) of the currency.

Don't tell me you can't see the analogy. Put on your thinking cap.

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Are you proud of making a comment that is entirely irrelevant to the point of this thread, which is that centralization is occurring because Satoshi designed the economics to become centralized.

Whether it is happening in China or Washington State, fact is that eventually only about 12 mining farms will control most of the hashrate of Bitcoin, which means they set smaller block sizes and drive transactions fees sky high.

And we will pay it. We will surely pay $1 transaction fees when selling $100 of Bitcoin, because we will have no other choice. Without centralization, they could never do this 51% attack on us.

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The 51% attack already happened. The Chinese mining cartel (the guys you see in that photo upthread) prevented a timely increase in the block size.

Please stop speaking nonsense out of your ass and acting like you are some kind of authority on the issue. I had already explained this upthread several times if you had bothered to even read the thread before posting.

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Look in the mirror to find one.

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The decentralization is destroyed because Satoshi designed it to do that failure, but the functionality/operation of the coin is not (yet) destroyed.

Please understand carefully the distinction.

Yes Bitcoin IS basically ALIVE if you are referring to the functioning of the coin. But the control of the block chain is becoming ever more centralized and controlled by a small group of mining farm owners. And with this control, they have already started to do their 51% attacks on Bitcoin in order to control the block size and drive transaction fees sky high.

But don't worry that they are raping us and will be raping us more in the future. We love when the banks rape us by getting QE from Bernanke. We love the miners to do the same thing to Bitcoin. We love to bend over and take it in our ass. That is why we are Bit(ret)ards.

It was imminent given the huge population and fastest growing economy of china.But the good news is that it wont effect bitcoin price and as a trader, that is what matters most to me

Honestly I think there's a lot of racism or something against China. If it was some north european country or somewhere in USA people wouldn't complain as much that they would be the leading Bitcoin miners in the world.

If you don't like that china is #1 in mining, then stop complaining and start funding companies in your country.

The weak point of Bitcoin is that *there is, and always will be* an "outside of the system." If store_of_wealth = bitcoin, there's be no problems. Miners are only "within the system" if they store their wealth in BTC, which they don't need to do. They can sell it for USD to go "outside."
Or simply end up outside when Teh Halvening commeth (if a factory mine is paying 1BTC in expenses to mine 1.99BTC? Making a killing. Come Teh Halvening? They are not even breaking even )

For people who love to think outside the box... You know how chemo works? Yeah, it poisons the patient, but it poisons the cancer cells more. I've listed many situations in which miner's interests differ from those of the hodlers. Yes, they're poisoning our well. They also bought nice bottled Evian with the dollars they made, they'll do fine

The weak point of Bitcoin's game theory -at least in the stage where we are currently in- is not the players within the ecosystem (like miners), but the attackers who are operating from outside the ecosystem and have an interest in its failure.

NSA spending, say, 200mn to built a mining farm so that they can have a bitcoin "kill switch" is an issue, for example. Their 200mn "expenses" would be nothing compared to the trillions at stake for the hegemony of the dollar.

Compared to issues like these, miner attacks pale in comparison - especially when the miners stand to lose by poisoning the system where they themselves live and have their investments.

It's just an attemnt to make monopoly around bitcoin, users don't care where coins was mined or smth like this. People who using bitcoin as investment will get a new chanse to get good money.

Hm, bitcoin is about providing a currency to people that no-one else can interfere even if the powers that be dont like it. It should not be about mining and fee profit-making from operating its network. Those are only necessities to make it happen.
An imaginary network where everyone would join to reduce their own costs for having and using that currency might work out better (assuming freedom and absolute bottom price in participating).

@Ultrafinery and AlexGR
You have some good thoughts there and I don't think we are so far apart really. Satoshi was worried about a 51% attack, but that is not what is happening. The Chinese miners have the most to lose if bitcoin were to be hurt by an attack. They are participating and each time they route a Tx they are spending their money on electricity, parts, rent. Their effort is rewarded with fees and a chance at a block reward. This not only strengthens the network, it is the network.


You may be right that many people misunderstood bitcoin. Many seem to confuse "fair" with "moral". Bitcoin is fair because there are no rules or barriers to the market like in all other monetary systems. It is not, however, moral. It is not distributed based on need or who is most deserving. The Chinese account for most sale, most mined coins, most capitol input, take the greatest risk, and therefore have come to dominate the network. Of course this could all change tomorrow. Anyone on Earth may build a bigger mine and take their shares.
The only other option I see would be a system where some people decide who can participate in bitcoin and who can't. If that ever happened I would divest 90% of my BTC and would assume the project really is dead.

Pls troll harder, we haven't had a good troll for a long time. 

But you're missing the point. Many people invested in Bitcoin through a misunderstanding, on the oft-repeated and fallacious assumption that their money is secured by maths and sciences, not by 9 dudes whose interests may or may not coincide with theirs.

Had they known that they may have to start mining themselves t protect their shekels, most wouldn't have done it. Not unless their electricity rates are as low as those in China, because otherwise they couldn't compete.  Bitcoin is predicated on decentralized mining, if that ceases to be the case? Yeah, it's broken.


But there's so much more than a 51% attack that a mining consortium (controlling most of the hashpower) can do. They could could literally kill the network, you're 100% at their mercy, no different than a central bank.

I agree with this point of view. China is huge country, and Bitcoin mining is still decentralized, even if few Chinese mining operations joined, there would be still
enough other mining operations to keep the system decentralized.

As long as the Chinese don't gang up and try to do a 51% attack, nobody is going to grudge the Chinese getting some extra bitcoins.

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main
benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending.
We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network.
The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of
hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing
the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of
events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As
long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to
attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The
network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort
basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest
proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

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The majority
decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested
in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the
fastest and outpace any competing chains

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If a greedy attacker is able to
assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it
to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to
find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than
everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth.

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The three assumptions hold. In theory, mining centralization is a direct increase in risk. However it hasn't turned into an attack due to game theory. Actually the game theory is now more "loaded" with heavier disincentives (=losing millions in ASIC investment value) instead of just losing block rewards.

Generally speaking, the Chinese government would definitely prefer for bitcoins to be produced internally, than externally. This means that Chinese don't have to buy their BTCs from abroad. They can sell to foreign buyers though. It helps their trade balance and foreign reserve position. It's like gold, in a sense. Their 500+ tons per year mining output aren't sold to others - they are used internally, while keeping their USDs too (some of which they use for importing more gold).

I would also like to see broad, worldwide mining by a diverse set of mines. But if one or a few players gain an 80% share of the hashes then they deserve to decide the future. It is not great if you disagree with their decisions. However bitcoin is designed to be in the hands of it's users and miners. No one forced anyone to do something or kept anyone from joining in. They invested the capitol, they built the mines, they took the risk, and now will receive a large proportion of the wealth generated.

If you or I had done the same then we would be the beneficiaries. During the time the Chinese were growing, many other bitcoin peers, like in the U.S., were engaged in senseless infighting and fruitless speculation. Speculation produces almost nothing in the economy while building mines directly strengthens the network and is worth something. IMO, bitcoin is not about what I want or some social equalizing by giving everyone a trophy. It is a capitalist contest in which the hardest workers get the most. Ironically, China seems to get this more than the west.