The founders of Bitcoin have espoused ideals which Bitcoin has diverged from very significantly.
I'm curious: what ideals, and how is it diverging? 
Topic: Bitcoin trades the inequity of dynastic power for the inequity of early adoption - page 15. (Read 11076 times)
April 13, 2013, 11:44:31 AM
April 13, 2013, 11:42:45 AM
The thread title promises more than delivers 
I read it all but there was not very deep thoughts on the matter. Now just trying to throw some:
- The early adoptership. Which is worse: an early adopter who cashes out, and now has $tuff to play with in his life, or an early adopter who never sells and just hoards his coin? In my opinion, the latter does not steal from the others, on the contrary - his hoarding makes the coin of the others even more valuable. The former, otoh, does benefit financially, but that comes with a risk, and with a cashout mentality there will not be inordinate wealth concentration anyway.
- Plutocracy. I am a plutocrat. I have never mined any coins, just bought with the proceeds of my fiat businesses. Now I am making a transition to serve the bitcoin community with the coin, whose value I know, since I have spent so much of my hard-earned wealth into it. The shakeout this week did not shake any coins from me, actually I gained about BTC1000 during it. And I was playing nice, I did not order anything DDoSed to profit from it, for example. I try to build services to the free market, which people will use for mutual benefit. I intend to grow ever richer in terms of bitcoins. Who exactly am I stealing from?
I read it all but there was not very deep thoughts on the matter. Now just trying to throw some:
- The early adoptership. Which is worse: an early adopter who cashes out, and now has $tuff to play with in his life, or an early adopter who never sells and just hoards his coin? In my opinion, the latter does not steal from the others, on the contrary - his hoarding makes the coin of the others even more valuable. The former, otoh, does benefit financially, but that comes with a risk, and with a cashout mentality there will not be inordinate wealth concentration anyway.
- Plutocracy. I am a plutocrat. I have never mined any coins, just bought with the proceeds of my fiat businesses. Now I am making a transition to serve the bitcoin community with the coin, whose value I know, since I have spent so much of my hard-earned wealth into it. The shakeout this week did not shake any coins from me, actually I gained about BTC1000 during it. And I was playing nice, I did not order anything DDoSed to profit from it, for example. I try to build services to the free market, which people will use for mutual benefit. I intend to grow ever richer in terms of bitcoins. Who exactly am I stealing from?
April 13, 2013, 11:42:28 AM
There is no basis for thinking bitcoins will take wealth away from the rich, that is absurd and there's no need to start a thread about it. If anything, bitcoin will help the very rich avoid taxes, it won't help the average guy with a monthly wage and matching lifestyle who the government can easily check on.
OP: What you really meant to say in the title is that bitcoin replaces one type of plutocrat with another; 'dynastic' is an inappropriate word to use here. I appreciate that you are practising new words, but if you aren't crystal clear on the definition it is best to use a more common expression or word which you are better familiar with- in this case you could have said something like 'established power.'
OP: What you really meant to say in the title is that bitcoin replaces one type of plutocrat with another; 'dynastic' is an inappropriate word to use here. I appreciate that you are practising new words, but if you aren't crystal clear on the definition it is best to use a more common expression or word which you are better familiar with- in this case you could have said something like 'established power.'
You've misunderstood
The dynastic power is the existing setup, with crime families like the Bush's, Rockfeller's and Rothschild's. Each has wielded great power for generations, thus they can be correctly described as dynasties.
April 13, 2013, 11:39:38 AM
That's a very dry technical paper. The founders of Bitcoin have espoused ideals which Bitcoin has diverged from very significantly.
Ah. It's a religious debate. My bad. Later.
April 13, 2013, 11:39:25 AM
That's a very dry technical paper. The founders of Bitcoin have espoused ideals which Bitcoin has diverged from very significantly.
It was writtten by Bitcoin's creator.
April 13, 2013, 11:37:22 AM
the wider purpose seems to have been lost.
Here's the original purpose:
Quote
"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."
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Everything else is conflation.
That's a very dry technical paper. The founders of Bitcoin have espoused ideals which Bitcoin has diverged from very significantly.
April 13, 2013, 11:35:38 AM
There is no basis for thinking bitcoins will take wealth away from the rich, that is absurd and there's no need to start a thread about it. If anything, bitcoin will help the very rich avoid taxes, it won't help the average guy with a monthly wage and matching lifestyle who the government can easily check on.
OP: What you really meant to say in the title is that bitcoin replaces one type of plutocrat with another; 'dynastic' is an inappropriate word to use here. I appreciate that you are practising new words, but if you aren't crystal clear on the definition it is best to use a more common expression or word which you are better familiar with- in this case you could have said something like 'established power.'
OP: What you really meant to say in the title is that bitcoin replaces one type of plutocrat with another; 'dynastic' is an inappropriate word to use here. I appreciate that you are practising new words, but if you aren't crystal clear on the definition it is best to use a more common expression or word which you are better familiar with- in this case you could have said something like 'established power.'
April 13, 2013, 11:34:09 AM
And as a show of good faith and an example of my generosity, I'm going to gift it to revan.
Not cool! I should have the first coin. That's not fair.
And you gave away your first coin. lol. luzer to the max.
April 13, 2013, 11:31:50 AM
No, he's right. So...
Introducing Commie-coin, the egalitarian alternative to Bitcoin. Commie-coin, available to anyone, no hard-core mining equipment (nor even a computer) needed. Commie-coin is simple, each commie coin is denoted by the letters CC followed by a 16 digit hexadecimal number. Just pick one. Here, just to prove how easy it is, I'll mine one right here in this thread
CC0000000000000001
And as a show of good faith and an example of my generosity, I'm going to gift it to revan.
Security? Not needed. If your coins get stolen, you can just create more. Double spending? Not an issue, there are not rules against duplicate commie-coins. For the same reason, deflation is not an issue, commie-coin can simply be inflated by anyone anytime they like. You don't even have to be a fat-cat banger to do so. How's that for egalitarian?
Revan, don't spend it all at once now. I'm sure it's going to be a big success.
Introducing Commie-coin, the egalitarian alternative to Bitcoin. Commie-coin, available to anyone, no hard-core mining equipment (nor even a computer) needed. Commie-coin is simple, each commie coin is denoted by the letters CC followed by a 16 digit hexadecimal number. Just pick one. Here, just to prove how easy it is, I'll mine one right here in this thread
CC0000000000000001
And as a show of good faith and an example of my generosity, I'm going to gift it to revan.
Security? Not needed. If your coins get stolen, you can just create more. Double spending? Not an issue, there are not rules against duplicate commie-coins. For the same reason, deflation is not an issue, commie-coin can simply be inflated by anyone anytime they like. You don't even have to be a fat-cat banger to do so. How's that for egalitarian?
Revan, don't spend it all at once now. I'm sure it's going to be a big success.
April 13, 2013, 11:31:23 AM
the wider purpose seems to have been lost.
Here's the original purpose:
Quote
"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."
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Everything else is conflation.
April 13, 2013, 11:28:53 AM
Revans, your original points were food for thought. Later in this thread you wax defensive and lose the objective highground you held.
Maybe stop for now and return to this discussion on Monday.
Question. Do you yourself own any Bitcoins? Tens, hundreds or thousands?
Respects
Maybe stop for now and return to this discussion on Monday.
Question. Do you yourself own any Bitcoins? Tens, hundreds or thousands?
Respects
Just under a thousand at the moment, I have had more but have been steadily giving them away to what I deem good causes. I will ultimately give away my entire holding as my interest in Bitcoin was never to make money for doing nothing of value, and it is clear Bitcoin is now infested with speculators and the wider purpose seems to have been lost.
April 13, 2013, 11:27:41 AM
The problem with proof-of-work is that in order to make the ledger impeachable, people need to throw real-world value into a hole.
Most folks won't do that unless there was something tangibly "in it for them".
Bitcoin answers this with the block reward - it uses the distribution mechanism to incentivize the busywork that makes the bones of Bitcoin actually function.
The unfortunate result is that a lot of people early on in the project got a lot of coins, and if Bitcoin gets wide adoption those coins will make them about as rich as a Buffet or a Helu, and with an equal capability of screwing up the market if they had cause. (User A in the Shamir paper has 2.8 million BTC -> 28 billion dollars at $10k/coin).
So then... what? If this is a troubling result of the network rules, what rules would have worked better? How do you distribute newly created BTC in a "fair" way, when an anonymous system means that Sybil shenanigans are trivial? How do you incentivize mining, except via block rewards?
I'm sincerely interested in hearing your ideas.
Most folks won't do that unless there was something tangibly "in it for them".
Bitcoin answers this with the block reward - it uses the distribution mechanism to incentivize the busywork that makes the bones of Bitcoin actually function.
The unfortunate result is that a lot of people early on in the project got a lot of coins, and if Bitcoin gets wide adoption those coins will make them about as rich as a Buffet or a Helu, and with an equal capability of screwing up the market if they had cause. (User A in the Shamir paper has 2.8 million BTC -> 28 billion dollars at $10k/coin).
So then... what? If this is a troubling result of the network rules, what rules would have worked better? How do you distribute newly created BTC in a "fair" way, when an anonymous system means that Sybil shenanigans are trivial? How do you incentivize mining, except via block rewards?
I'm sincerely interested in hearing your ideas.
April 13, 2013, 11:25:12 AM
Better the devil you know.
Indeed. I know far more about the technorati who designed computers, the web and digital cryptography than the shady world of politicians and bankers who run the current financial system.
+10!
April 13, 2013, 11:24:29 AM
Better the devil you know.
Indeed. I know far more about the technorati who designed computers, the web and digital cryptography than the shady world of politicians and bankers who run the current financial system.
April 13, 2013, 11:23:43 AM
What a rapier like intellect I am dealing with ere.
At least I'm armed in this battle of wits.
April 13, 2013, 11:22:49 AM
I imagine anyone who disagrees with you is deemed deficient in their understanding
Only if they actually are deficient. A wise man always cedes to knowledge. A fool never knows he's a fool because he's too busy being smarter than everyone else.
April 13, 2013, 11:22:12 AM
If the refutation had merit why not put it through proper peer review as the paper it attacks was? Why should the debunker be held to a lower standard than the person he is debunking?
The peer review didn't catch all the errors in the paper, did it?
And you're still moving goalposts around. If I was the skeptical sort, I'd wonder if an honest discussion was your intent.
I see. So the lack of peer review means no errors were found in the rebuttal ergo the rebuttal is right. What a rapier like intellect I am dealing with ere.
April 13, 2013, 11:18:34 AM
IBM stock...
I was speaking of Bitcoin, a topic in which you seem deficient but still feel entitled to expound upon.
I imagine anyone who disagrees with you is deemed deficient in their understanding, that just the way incorrigible ideologues are.
April 13, 2013, 11:17:31 AM
Revans, your original points were food for thought. Later in this thread you wax defensive and lose the objective highground you held.
Maybe stop for now and return to this discussion on Monday.
Question. Do you yourself own any Bitcoins? Tens, hundreds or thousands?
Respects
Maybe stop for now and return to this discussion on Monday.
Question. Do you yourself own any Bitcoins? Tens, hundreds or thousands?
Respects
April 13, 2013, 11:17:13 AM
If the refutation had merit why not put it through proper peer review as the paper it attacks was? Why should the debunker be held to a lower standard than the person he is debunking?
The peer review didn't catch all the errors in the paper, did it?
And you're still moving goalposts around. If I was the skeptical sort, I'd wonder if an honest discussion was your intent.
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