Topic: Bitcoin: The Digital Kill Switch - page 18. (Read 55236 times)

I will make this more clear soon. I already answered some questions about the algorithm somewhere in my past posts in other thread. I can't find it at the moment. Suffice it for now, the proof-of-work is based on having a terabytye (or what ever we decide or maybe scale it by Moore's Law) of shared keys with the other peers, so you have to be ready when your random turn comes, to prove you had stored all those keys. Static storage does not cost electricity. Everybody owns a hard-disk. Hard-disks have numerous suppliers.

I am not offended as long as you are not trying to win a political argument with the use of colorful words. Let's see what logic you have put forth.


That is a reasonable point in the abstract. You should know that I love abstract. I regularly inhabit there

But here we have to come back into reality and try to discern abstract hypothesis from practice.

As my plumber friend says, "there is a big difference between theory and practice".


Failed? Depends how you define fail. Decades of suffering from Windows, with Bill Gates now using the proceeds to sterilize Africans is failure for them?


True, but someone had to articulate it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond

I assume you are younger than me (48), so hope you won't be offended if I say, "Get Off My Lawn":

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3335 (World Without Web)

The prior link explains that someone made the internet happen for you. Somebody was worried then, as I am now, or you would not have the internet now.

So please don't dismiss individual human action.

What have you contributed?

I for one created the first social network which inspired friendster, which inspired myspace, which inspired facebook.

Which is driving a lot of the effects that give rise to Bitcoin.

So I did my part once already.


Sorry but you fail to understand economics, because you over generalize.  Europe will not dis-unify. Watch and learn.

http://www.mpettis.com/2013/03/21/when-do-we-call-it-a-solvency-crisis/#comment-21988

You need to view this has different gears turning at different speeds.

The youth and skilled are migrating. The old and unskilled are staying put in the Euro.

So the Euro is decay itself, but the decay stay unified for as long as it has this political control, which appears to be more like 2033ish and by then the cartel will have another angle up their sleeve.

The cartel is moving their control up the ladder of leverage to the end of the nation-state.

This is precisely why I expected to find the vulnerability planted in Bitcoin, and I found it exactly where I expected to find it. The cartel is trying to find global controlling paradigms, and let us gain our efficiencies from the end of the nation-state structure.

I don't view the end of cartelized instances as failure on their part, rather they are always sacrificing an instance to gain another instance, when it is time to adjust to the movement of the masses.

The cartel (power elite) are like cattle herders. They watch where the cows want to go eat, and make sure they place their capture devices there. After all they are just businessmen trying to maximize profit by any unethical means. But they also claim it is ethical because they claim we are unable to organize ourselves against failure.

So if you leave a monopolization threat in the design of Bitcoin, you are doing exactly what they claim-- designing for failure.


You have to offer the choice to them. That is what I am talking about here, to motivate someone to offer the choice needed.

Choice doesn't create itself.

Nonsense.


Okay now you have a valid point:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3514 (Those who can’t build, talk)

I first want to test my logic, to make sure I am correct. That is why I am here discussing. And also getting feedback on what the market wants and does not want.

I am doing a market survey in this thread.


Fair enough. Point is very valid.

I came storming into the forum with "Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme".


Without fixing the "no debasement", the mining ecosystem will not be healthy enough and you leave the threat wide open to cartelization of mining.

I see you have a vested interest for Bitcoin to remain the only or best or favorite P2P currency. Okay fine. You decide where to invest your time. That doesn't mean you are correct about the threat I see.

You are asserting that the threat is not sure enough to worry about. I STRONGLY DISAGREE.

@itsunderstood: on Leo Wanta:

http://solari.com/blog/solari-stories-the-black-budget/

Better still. Post a link to the source so we can inspect and build it.

How about I do that easy fork, then we test the hard-disk thing and decide whether to adopt it later?

I can do the easy fork in probably a day.

Should I fork Litecoin instead of Bitcoin, so the GPUs have a place to go to recover their capital, while I work on the hard-disk option?

That is the easiest fork.

I also wanted to fix the electricity consumption and ASICs removing the masses from mining.

I want they can download and mine, nothing to buy.

I read ur paper about Anonycoin. But it's still unclear to me how peers come to consensus. In Bitcoin it's done via proof-of-work (a blockchain with the highest cumulative difficulty is chosen). Could u post short summary of the approach that solves the consensus issue in Anonycoin, plz?

Your response here makes me interested in reading some of his newer stuff.

Any comments on Leo Wanta or the destruction of the Russian ruble?  That's a key component of the chaos which is coming.

Let me flesh this part out a bit:  See, for example, Silk Road marketplace, allows humans to be free.  They are free to buy what they want.  HOWEVER, the political power-cartel, CANNOT allow SR to continue.  ...So who is right?

Where would bitcoin be, without black markets?  It would be nowhere.  So the essential battle which will be waged, is one of freedom.  The freedom which Americans think they have, but really do not, but which bitcoin and SR, allow to be realized.  There are many people who suggest that drugs should be legal.  Well, bitcoin and all hash-based money, essentially acts like Alexander cutting the gordian knot of this discussion, because the drug war as such, WILL NEVER END, until those who are the enemies of freedom, are diminished from opressing those who are on the side of freedom.  Yes, I am saying that if my neighbor wants to be a meth head, I must, as an American who loves freedom, allow him to be that meth head.  Here is where all your (and Martin's) talk, hits a wall of pain.

Talk to me about how your hash-based money will make drugs more or less accessible to people.  Thats where the real money is.  As you know full well, all the major HSBC type banks were kept afloat in 2008 crisis by the clearing houses and their massive piles of laundered drug money.  I am saying that bitcoin itself, and yes, all anon-enabled hash-money, serves to act as a magnet for black market money, and what this does is severely weaken the existing banks and all their cadre.

Bitcoin right now, stands to acquire literally hundreds of billions of dollars of true, flowing black money.  That is what will cause it to hasten the chaos, because gangsters have a lot of power.  BUT, here also, does bitcoin threaten the gangs of Earth, because on SR for example, it allows the averge joes to sell product.  And the gangs cannot allow that.

You speak of "cartels"  ...Tell me, what is rockefeller cartel, compared to the Sicilian and Columbian cartels?  In the answer to this question, lies the war which is looming.  Bitcoin is like a Promethean weapon given to those who love freedom.  But yes, it may be destroyed, but not by cartels.  It will be destroyed by the same sort of government monitoring that has always been done. 

QUESTION:  Have you read the essays "The End of Money" by J. Orlin Grabbe?  If not, I will post a link.  These are the two most important essays about money, and prostitutes and drugs, and freedom.  Anyone like Martin and his genius friends, who talk at such high levels, without addressing the base human products of hookers and drugs, fail to achieve a realness at the level of J. Orlin Grabbe.  Money as such, is a control matrix, but bitcoin strikes at the root of that concept.  Though I think you are trying to 'perfect' bitcoin, I think the higher conversation is about freedom as a notion, because if the Pope and the Religious and the Politically Obsessed, end up running the world after this next war, it will be a new dark age for humanity anyway.  So I am suggesting there is a bitcoin subject that is not politicall correct to discuss, but which is as obvious as a 1000lb nude digital gorilla in the room, doing lines of coke.

Then you hand the power of the cartel to monopolize your mining. There is no other alternative choice.

Do you hate gold because it is debased every year? Every year new supply of gold is added to total supply.

Debasement is not stealing from your value. It is adding to your value, by keeping the total ecosystem healthy.

Static wealth is the antithesis of innovation and the human spirit. Do you want to force all the new innovators to respect what you innovated 1000 years ago? Come on. Idle capital has to be deplete slowly over time, else you are trying to fight against nature. Put your capital to work in investments that produce innovation, if you don't want it to deplete.

FYI:
New gold is mined at about the rate of 2.5% per annum, based on existing mined stock. And this "debasement" has held steady over very long time scales.

Why not just create a hard fork of bitcoin (or with merged-mining) and a new rule to hold inflation at 2.5% once it drops to that level around block 600,000 in year 2020.

You are missing the point. Difficulty is irrelevant. It just takes longer to glean bitcoins as difficulty increases. As the electricity is free (and you have already sold some bitcoins to recoup the initial outlay), you can just leave it switched on without incurring electricity costs. The issue becomes is it more profitable to mine bitcoins or sell the juice to the grid.

But this is an aside to your main points (it was just a comment to the poster about electricity).

More in line with your OP...........

I find the 51% very troubling. As I pointed out in this thread a 51% hashing power takeover has already taken place and was been proven to be effective. In this case the "cartel" was the bitcoin community, but it might not have been.

Firstly, I don't retract my opinion - if you are offended, tough.

Your whole approach seems top down, and while it makes it easy to create a strategy, reality is different.

You also are conveniently forgetting every technology which has failed even though it had 'cartel' support.

For instance, nobody replaced Windows. It was the market that changed, with lots of little innovations from individuals and small groups like those that got bitcoin off the ground and Microsoft couldn't keep up.  The same thing will happen to Google, and Apple, and bitcoin (eventually!)

As for this worry of not being able to get rid of currencies, you have obviously forgotten the Euro experiment in Europe where 17 currencies were deleted and a new one introduced in a weekend.  With full political support, anything is possible! That is also true in reverse!

Finally, you have a very off putting dismissive attitude to the public's ability to make a choice. The public change things all the time, in fact the whole concept of the free market depends on it!

If people feel that the advantages of using bitcoin is being compromised by some big forces, they might do something about it, or maybe they won't, however, without actually offering a solution, your post is a bit meaningless.  

On the other hand, if you had started the thread with 'there are some problems brewing for bitcoin, and here is my solution..' you might have got a fairer hearing

The fact is that good enough is actually all you need, and at the moment, bitcoin is almost good enough - it just needs to be more public friendly to hit the mainstream! That is something I am working on and when I'm ready, I will be posting my solution!

No one will be hurt by this. The bitcoiners are already being rewarded. This is all open. Everybody can see what is coming and plan accordingly (if it comes).

More markets are better for all of us.

If someone can implement my idea before I can, then great! Let them win.

Can someone donate a great domain name in exchange for something (permalink in the About?)?

OP I am pasting this portion from the link you provided above:


So to discuss your concept, most people would see debasing of coins, gold and silver specie type coins, as being a lessening of the metals content, meaning a 99% pure gold coin would be debased such that it becomes a 50% gold coin, i.e. debased by half.

As I understand the words above (correct me if I am wrong), you identify that bitcoin does not ever debase its coins, but indeed, aims to have the final block, even if it is worth a billion US dollars, be the same as to its nature, as the first bitcoin block.  Am I explaining this right?  So in essence, bitcoins can never be clipped or debased, and you're saying that's a problem because the people who mine those final blocks, won't get "paid"?  Is that right?

And so your explanation of debasement as good, is somewhat obverse as to what people associate that word with (myself included) because, I suppose, the debasing is done by assholes who want to enrich themselves.  But you are saying, I think, that debasing the coins as they move forward (the final blocks produce more coins than the first blocks) is a GOOD thing, because it makes for a consistent flow of coins?  Is that right?

Just trying to allow you to clarify your points.  But again, since we won't approach the final bitcoin blocks before total global warfare (means: death of half of all humans on Earth), I stick to my claims that long term predictions are essentially just so much guessing.  Bitcoin here in Q1 of 2013 has crossed the rubicon, and within a few more years, I believe it will cause massive changes politically before your cartels can grab miners as your theory describes.  Chaos will be increasing from here out.  Hmm but perhaps that chaos will cause the miners (be they prisoners or just weakling in their basement) to adhere to the cartels.  Hmm...

That is not entirely correct (partially yes). Difficulty will scale up accordingly. But I do agree the ASICs hardware cost now far exceeds the electricity cost. This may change as ASICs are converted to IC chips that are mass produced.

My design uses hard-disk space, which is much more reliable to predict. We won't have these phase-shift changes causing miners to waste capital in a direction that becomes obsolete. The Moore's Law for hard-disks is very predictable.

I want miners to be healthy. I want every user to be able to mine some. In the design of a P2P currency, you can't neglect a part of your ecosystem. Investment requires predictability.

itsunderstood, the human spirit will prevail. How else would you characterize my attempt to make a fix or better bitcoin?

Let's keep progressing, that is the way to win.

Martin is out of jail (7 years held in jail without a trial) and he writes much more sensibly now. I couldn't understand him when he was writing from jail. Now that he gets daily email questions, he is able to explain his stuff better.

Now I realize he is not nonsense. Before I thought he was.

You don't need mains electricity anymore with the new ASICs. 4 solar panels will run it so as long as you can recoup the ~$3500 outlay in the medium term. (A lot less than the outlay on GPU rigs and no running costs). When/if bitcoins become unprofitable, you can then just sell juice back to the grid.

1: Okay we will see your articles, and the discussion will continue.  Cool.

2: Probably bitcoin will not be fixed, but you have failed to explain how cartels will trump the human spirit which strives for less assholes in the world, controlling the workers. (see below)

3: Very cute how you frame it "Are you saying tax will disappear?"  In a way, yes, along the lines of the colonists who dressed up as Indians and threw biritsh tea into the sea to protest taxation and gun confiscation, as a prelude to full on warfare.  I am saying war will probably kill you and me and 50% of those reading this forum.  What our children build after that, cannot be predicted, not by you and certainly not by Martin Armstrong.


I am very familiar with Martin's work, I have printed all of it and studied it at length.  Is he still in jail?  Like I said, prisoners make the best employees, yet you think humans will still remain imprisoned in the future?  I am not so sure.  But Martin's ability to predict the future is not yet proven, his idea that gold may go to 30,000 USD per ounce is interesting, and his knowledge of Japanese money manipulation is deep, but he is not too different from Leo Wanta and his cronies, who crashed the Russian ruble, from a practical perspective.  Neither of these men, are now bitcoin billionaires and so I am saying if you are describing a curve which will meet some point in 2030, you are giving your vector-analysis too much credit.  But don't get all hurt about it, I look forward to your articles, and respect your desire to defeat evil, though you seem to see taxation as like food?  Something humans will never live without?  That's silly.

Martin Armstrong is a knowledgable guy, a Princeton U. genius, and the enemy of Goldman Sachs.  But his idea about cycles can be compared to any other prophet.  An example would be "The Bible Code" type modality where people take words from a page of the bible, and read "Hitler will take over Germany" from it.  They do their bible code ticks, in hindsight 20/20, and that's fine, but indeed many messages can be gathered from any book even Moby Dick has pages that spell out "Hitler will take over Germany" if you look close enough.  But analyzing the past is slipshod brainwork when applied to the future.  The very existence of bitcoin shows that to be true.  The street level geeks, mined the early coins and got rich or spent them, but all the experts like Martin, were nowhere to be found.  Similar to that idiot Bill Gates who said that the Internet wouldn't amount to much.  So I guess I am just knocking you around, and seeing if you bruise easily.  Genius often do.  I look forward to your articles and worldwide fame.  

If the debasement continues forever, then the miners always get paid. Thus they never go bankrupt.

Thus there will always be some good miners.

We still have the 51% attack to worry about, where malicious is done. But remember the power elite don't want to be obvious, because then we would switch to an alternative.

And if all the miners are making money (which is more true in my design, because in my design you don't use electricity!  ), then we will have more inertia against the bastards any way.

*In my design, only a few peers are computing the next block at a time, but most of the time, they are idle. The proof-of-work is based on hard-disk space. It is very clever.

I am not talking about a large debasement. Very slow similar to gold. Set in the protocol, nobody can manipulate it.

All transactions will be free.  Micropayments work very well. Everything scales better than Bitcoin.

http://anonycoin.org (this is very rough, needs a lot of work to make it more clear)

If you all would prefer to change Bitcoin, I am happy with that! But can you?

If you want continuous debasement of Bitcoin, how do you distribute new coins? (not to the cartel miner I assume)