Topic: Bitcoin Is Having Its Moment But There Are Better Sustainable Currencies - page 2. (Read 4994 times)

I think the entire debate misses the point:  consensus is based upon users not code.   Code helps people reach a consensus faster, but in reality users would reject a fork that came out of nowhere based upon stake manipulation.

With Delegated Proof of Stake, as used by BitShares X, if the broad user base can mostly agree on 101 delegates then an attacker would have to buy up 51% to gain the right to produce a single block... but they wouldn't be able to change history and of course everyone would know there was a new sharif in town and could choose to hard-fork the attacker out (all balances voting for the attacker as delegate) without anyone suffering any losses.

Bottom line, these networks are social in nature and not based upon technology.  Technology just helps.

Also DPOS allows anyone to earn block rewards regardless of their stake assuming they can convince the shareholders that they provide a valuable service.

With DPOS you cannot even have a delegate producing blocks on two chains at once without it resulting in a provable automatic firing.

BitShares X has built in derivatives (to be enabled in a month) so it should put centralized derivative markets out of business.  This in turn means that an attacker that attempts to leverage against BTSX on chain through buying BitUSD cannot profit from bringing down the network because BitUSD is backed by BTSX.   Now you have a system that is even resistant to derivatives.

Proof of Stake has one little problem. Stake does not equal exposure once a derivatives market develops. So go long the coin and get the "stake", then go short the derivatives for an equal amount to create zero exposure, while keeping the "stake".

A 51% attack is against a specific pseudonymous target. The only sane reason to waste a lot of money attacking a target is to reverse its transactions. That's one reason why nobody in Bitcoin bothers to do a 51% attack, because it costs money even though there are plenty of potential targets that get mentioned frequently, i.e. Satoshi Nakamoto, Mark karpeles, the FBI's SR stash, etc. They are known addresses in the blockchain. If that happened, it would not kill Bitcoin, but would make people realize how powerful mining pools are and that they should be avoided. Once they had the power to do that, they could target anyone, so it must not happen again. This is similar to nuclear war. It happened once and hasn't happened since.

In NXT, there is little cost if everyone wanted to attack a specific person, it would be quite easy. Mob rules. There would be no mining pools to blame. Nobody would know who is innocent and who is guilty because it only takes 51%. This is why anonymity is crucial. Nobody can be targeted if they can't be traced. The same thing goes for attackers, they are also anonymous. If an attack happens, good luck, they are behind 7 proxies. If a target was found out, and a lynch mob of at least 51% was convinced to attack the target, how would anyone know who to blame? If it was a business that managed to aggregate 51%, how would you even know it was an attack and not a normal orphaning since there are no IPs to compare blocks like GHash.io. There is no electricity cost to bring a bunch of miners in, just get a bunch of coin and attack your enemy. Then sell the coin anonymously. Your enemy is defeated and it cost very little compared to the same attack in Bitcoin.

Agreed completely.

How would an attack destroy an NXT business if they are anonymous? How would you even know they are attacking?
[/quote]Any attack that reduces the value of NXT reduces the value of the attacker's NXT holdings. If you own 51% of NXT, you are primarily attacking yourself. Even if you only own 1%, you are still devaluing your own holdings.

Aside from that, I don't really understand your question. What does anonymity have to do with it? Is an attack that no-one is aware of even an attack? Did something get garbled when you applied GHash.io's mining business to Nxt forging?

"Bitcoin suffers two other major downsides, neither of them headline-grabbers but important nonetheless. First, the idea of an alternative currency isn't that new. Recent decades have seen waves of other examples, says Leander Bindewald, a currency expert at the New Economics Foundation, a London-based think tank. Think Local Exchange Trading Systems in the 1980s, Time Banking in the 90s, and "transition currencies" such as the Brixton Pound or online community exchange systems more recently."

pfff, well it's the first de-central, working one. So.... there's that.

"Nor is Bitcoin actually that unique. Dogecoin, Litecoin, Darkcoin, Namecoin, Peercoin and a myriad of other cryptocurrencies like them are all based on a similar premise and adopt similar technologies. It's just the narrative around Bitcoin – its mysterious founder, its claims to disruption, its decision to set the total issuance of Bitcoins at a fixed amount, and so on – that cause it to stand out, Bindewald claims."

Oh put all your money in Doge, go ahead. It's just as secure and innovative. /s

"nor is bitcoin that unique...."


It was designed to be that way and rightfully so, look at the bitcoin foundation and the centralization of mining.


"alternative options...."

what kind of no name off the cuff crapola is this article even suggesting? Who has even heard of these "alternatives"?


the "dark side" is all propaganda. Not dark enough if you ask me. Can we even get an audit of our national currency and no who and where it is going with names. Nope...



Additionally, with regard to commodity money and intrinsic value.

I think perhaps money needs to be classified as money. The innovation that is money.

Start coming up with what makes people value the innovation money...because there are a billion things that could "serve" as money that is also a commodity. The crux with commodity money is that it needs a centralized holder.


What makes money valuable:

easily divisible
easily used electronically
secure and safe
privacy
decentralized
good store of value
not easily replicated



Commodity money could have some of these properties, but would require a centralized holder or insurer. Who keeps track of the centralized holder? Well, history proves time and again that apparently no one.


I think it's hilarious that this currency (bitcoin) is worth as much as it is yet no one was forced to use it. Yet the dollar continually loses values year in and year out and it's backed by big aircraft carriers, oil deals that keep it's velocity high, and a public that's forced by a gun to use it. Yet they can't make it gain value. It's almost like central bankers are the dumbest people alive or that's how they want it to be. I'll go with option two. Because they are little sociopathic human parasites.

I wait for the day when a common working Joe gets up and spends his free time elaborating on how good the dollar is for the world. These people make me sick. Get me a barf bag or Jamie Dimon's lap.

There is no possible way for bitcoin to fail because I am heavily invested into it. 

I think compared to the USD,
BTC isn't THAT reliable.
Of course, you can't really FRAUD BTC. (Not that I know of anyways)

USD is popular for laundering money.
I'm not sure what to say about this.

BTC is still more reliable than the other 'sustainable currencies'

What a stupid, misinformed and meaningless post.

How would an attack destroy an NXT business if they are anonymous? How would you even know they are attacking?

At the moment, for Nxt, yes. Because we don't have Nxt forgers forging on multiple chains, but we do have mining pools hovering close to 51%.

Not to my knowledge, no.

POS is save energy and has no intrinsic value. BTC is mined through expensive mining rigs and consuming a lot of electricity. Its price is over $620 and stable. There are intrinsic value to support its high price.

Proof of State...lmao.  Was this intentional?

What's your opinion that you can now mine QRK with GPU? What is the cost/benefit? Doesn't this mean that Quark is being taken seriously and popular or some wouldn't of got it working with GPU? Won't this be a game changer with the rich buying up GPU's and pushing the average Joe out?

I personally like Quark, just started using it - so there is confirmation bias on my part, but to me it looks like a good currency that will do well long term.

Time will tell I suppose.

One of the benefits of Quark is I believe their developers really "get it" and understand what this is suppose to be about. Or least they "get" what I think this is suppose to be about.

Proof of Steak imho gives an un-fair advantage to those with higher financial status, just like fiat systems do.

Old money has all the power.

Close, it's actually Pile of Shit.



Jeff agrees.

Does PoS stand for Piece of Shit?  

If Silk Road 2.0 say it allowed BTC and say Monero... would you buy dodgy stuff with BTC or with Monero? Is BTC anonymous enough for such ends?