Topic: Could Monero replace Bitcoin soon? - page 3. (Read 33721 times)

Couldn't have put it better myself.

(The chocolate teapot version of that is the "people don't need to see the money" argument   )

Or else he might write something really, really stupid, like (paraphrasing, don't feel like looking up the actual quotation) "cryptocurrencies don't use cryptography."

The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one. He uses the "people need to see the money," argument without realizing that people haven't been watching money go in and out of their wallets since debit cards have become ubiquitous as money. The "new color of money" won the ad war without fiat even putting up a fight, so the plastic vault has been replaced with the black box of cryptography--his argument is that people need to see one transaction leads to another (all the way down to Satoshi) to accept that it is secure--what he fails to grasp is that most of us just watched two U.S. presidential candidates pull the "whatever my experts say" card during a national debate. No one who thinks that they are an authority figure gets the math behind CC's, let alone some last gasper Hodler who twist the simplest idea into a labyrinth of middle manager "overspeak."

In theory, thats correct. Because everything else stems from the validity of the transaction.

In reality, you're not interacting with theory. You're interacting with some random technology that was built by humans with a claim to implement it. You therefore need a large number of reference metrics from all over the place to support public confidence that a particular technology "works".

People make up their own minds what's important to them in that respect. If they want to control-total the outputs for a particular blockchain address and that has meaningful significance in the context of their audit then censor that information at your peril if you want your unbacked blockchain to be worth anything.

All this is well known in every walk of industry. I don't need to defend it. Pilots stick their finger in the wing tanks to measure how many hours endurance they've got, even though the fuel pump told them already and the guage told them already.

You are trying to argue that a blockchain has some kind of 'perfection' at it's heart that's a hotlne to god. It isn't. It's no different from an aircraft refuelling pump, a fuel gauge or a mechanical cash register. All you have is a file on your local hard disk that you have no clue about and a .exe application that claims to parse it that you have even less clue about.

A crypto currency economy is made up of a myriad of failure intolerant technologies that are no more reliable than the weakest link in their chain and, contrary to what you're attempting to convince everyone of here, people who use blockchains do spend a hell of a lot of time inspecting balances - regardless of whether they hold a private key to the address concerned or not. A valid check on the total amount I've sent is the total number of valid transactions I've made. An equally valid cross check on that is the movement in a control balance that includes transactions that I HAVEN'T made and that is generated by an alternative reporting resource in that blockchain's ecosystem.

The cat's out of the bag. If you think that 7 years down the line, people will accept a blockchain that censors their ability to audit any and every address without recourse to a private key then you should think about a line in chocolate teapots as well - it might be even more successful  

That's not possible unless more markets come up and start accepting it...
But there is just one reason that could possibly be a favorable one for the statement that says that Monero could replace Bitcoin, and that's its anonymity, the actual anonymity and non-traceability for which everyone had been looking...

You mean, don't feed him ? 

I think toknormal is a troll. A subtle and uncharacteristically sophisticated troll. But a troll none the less.

Ok, then, there was no misunderstanding on my part, and you *really* are totally confused about these issues.

The "value proposition" of a crypto currency is absolutely NOT that one can check a mathematical triviality on a derived quantity (namely balances), not more so than the value proposition of a ruler is NOT that one can check Pythagoras' theorem with it.

The only thing that needs to be checked for real in a crypto, is the validity of the transaction.  That criterium of validity contains amongst others, that at the same time that new spending rights are granted (the outputs), old spending rights of the same amount are destroyed ; OR new spending rights are created on the basis of an accepted, legit way of coin creation.

We are talking *inside* the transaction here for checking the balance.  On the outside of the transaction, one has to check that the spent spending rights were not double spent on the whole chain.

And this can only be checked once, there is no double check possible.  As well in bitcoin as in monero.  In bitcoin, you make the sum of the inputs by looking up the corresponding outputs and you check it with the sum of the newly created unspend outputs.  You can only do this once ; there is NO OTHER WAY to check this sum.  Even if you make the balance of all "unspend outputs", you are mathematically doing exactly the same.

If you want to check that A + B = C + D, you can check it directly (inside the transaction), or you can check that:

X + Y + Z + A + B = X + Y + Z + C + D when doing your "balance check".  But in the end, you've been using the same data to do that check, so it is not an independent check.

In bitcoin it is checked "naively and explicitly", in monero, it is checked with cryptographic signatures.  The sum is checked (in actual monero, that sum itself is explicitly checked, in CT, it will also be through a cryptographic signature).  And the "no double spend" is checked: in bitcoin, by looking explicitly whether that input occurs somewhere in another transaction, in monero, whether the unique signature has already been used in another transaction.

At no point, you can independently double check this ; if you do so, you are just checking *a theorem*.

In bitcoin, at no point, there is a way to "double check" that either.

If you are given a transaction, and if you check "the sum of all bitcoin before", and the "sum of all bitcoin after" OR you check the balance within the transaction, that is THE SAME OPERATION.

You've only done A+B = C+D versus  X+Y+Z+A+B = X+Y+Z+C+D

It is a mathematical property that both are equivalent.  So you don't check anything "more".  There is simply no way to have a "right" transaction, and have your check not work out, and in your checking, you USE the same numbers, from the same data.  If there is a transaction (spending 5 and spending 6 to output 11), when you check the transaction and you see that 5 + 6 = 11, that's all you can check.  If you do the check of all bitcoin balances, in the end, you will apply a -5 and a -6 to some balances (from the same data, of the same transaction), and you will add 11 somewhere, and Lo and Behold !  It will come out the same.  EVEN if there's a double spend somewhere, I may add.

You haven't checked anything more than by just looking at 5 + 6 = 11.  That 5, that 6 and that 11 come from the same piece of data.

The point is that mathematics works.  The point is that *the same check* of the validity is done by hundreds or thousands of independent nodes. *that* is the real double check.  There is no mistake in the mathematics.  There is no need (and no possibility) for an "independent check", nor in bitcoin, nor in monero.

Monero may bump its price but still we cannot say that it will replace bitcoin as a coin success do not rely on its value but the opportunity with it and its usage as currency. we can see that bitcoin is widely used as a currency all over the world while monero is just an asset for trade currently.

No, is very hard this thing happen but maybe Monero can bump his price again. so I will keep an eye on this coin.

but i'm surely monero can't take over bitcoin.

No this is never gonna happen, I do not see this happen and I think that this honestly will not happen at all.
The small is just very small if you are asking me.

It was a nice new paradigm pump.

No. Thats not what "I'm wanting to check" but I think you already know it  

P.S. I don't know if you realise you've spent this entire thread trying to convince me of how useless the ability to perform control balances is when a system is transaction based and yet this coin's entire value proposition is based on the exclusive right to do just that.

Funny that  

It now occurs to me that we may be totally talking next to one another.  Maybe the only thing you want is to check whether your wallet software is deriving the right balances from the block chain, and that you are simply afraid of a bug in your wallet not showing you what it should ?

And that you say: "if I could check that number against some public display of it, at least I would know that my wallet is not buggy ?".

I was thinking that you were fighting the principle of an obscured block chain an sich, but maybe your problem is much more down to earth, and you want to double-check what your wallet is showing you ?

Well, that's pretty simple.  Use two different wallet software systems, on two different computers ; say a linux machine and an apple computer.  That's after all, exactly what you do with the web interface: the web server uses another wallet software (if it uses *the same* software, your check is not a check of course) on another computer.

Note that if there were a fundamental bug in the display of balances in bitcoin core, and web servers are based also on bitcoin core, then they would make exactly the same errors.  This has nothing to do with "obscured or open block chains".  This is software double checking.

I'm betting on it also.

This is simply not true.  All transactional systems (= monetary systems) are SUPPOSED TO DERIVE from a list of transactions, but not all of them have as atomic data, the transaction list. In fact, ONLY crypto has this.  It is what sets crypto apart from other monetary systems.  ALL other monetary systems I know off, are "state" based ; crypto is "transaction based".

Gold is state-based: you HOLD the gold or not.  You have a balance of gold.  There is no memory of the gold transactions as "fundamental atomic data".  There is the "balance state" as fundamental atomic data: how much gold do you own ?

Now, with gold, one counts on the laws of physics to certify that this balance state is DERIVED from transactions: that you cannot "double spend" gold, and that the only way to "create" gold possession, is to dig it up, make it by nuclear transformation, to get it from space or to have it made from lead through the Stone of Wisdom, all of these ways to "create gold balance" being accepted as legit.

Very similar with cash.  The fundamental data of the cash system is "who holds what cash ?".  Again, one counts on the laws of physics that the state of cash holdings is derived from transactions, and that the origin of the cash is legit (printed by the FED), done by checking the bill physically, and counting on the fact that counterfeiting is severely punished, so that not many people do so and get away with it.

With bank accounts, again, the fundamental state is the holdings of the bank accounts.  However, this time, there is no a priori guarantee that the state of bank accounts is derived from transactions or legit creation, as the contents of computer memory in bank computers has no intrinsic method of being derived from transactions.   The software that is supposed to do so, can always be modified to do otherwise, and there's no way to make sure.  THIS is why accountants are necessary, to check this.

What is checked, is whether the "state of bank accounts" is derived from a possible set of legit transactions.

With crypto, this is meaningless.  The fundamental data IS already the list of valid transactions.  The state is only derived from that, locally, and without any authority.  The only thing that has authority is the list of transactions.  So there's NO POINT IN PROVING that the balances are derived from a list of transactions, because that's what you do when you calculate the balances.


That's silly.  If you and that block explorer in cloudland differ, then there are only 3 possibilities:

1) you and that block explorer are looking at DIFFERENT BLOCK CHAINS, at different lists of transactions

2) your wallet application is buggy

3) that block explorer is buggy

If your wallet and your block explorer are working correctly, and are looking at the same block chain then of course they find the same balances.

This is as ridiculous as saying that "if I have a common list of numbers, which is shared by a cloud server, then in order to check the validity of that list, I make the sum of those numbers locally, and I ask that cloud server to make that sum.  If the numbers agree, then the list of numbers is good.

Of course not.  IF you share an identical list of numbers with a cloud server, and both of you make the sum, then of course both of you will find the same number.   If not, the lists weren't identical, or one of both summing operations was buggy.  Nothing else.


Indeed.  And that doesn't matter, in fact.  What counts, and the ONLY thing that counts, is that your valid transaction is on the block chain.  What your wallet may think, what the block explorer may think, and whatever erroneous calculations you may do doesn't matter: the right thing happened on the block chain, and everybody using correct software will be in agreement with the transaction as you intended it.  No double spending will be happening, no false creation of coins will have happened - whatever your faulty software may tell you.


As the only data that matter, are the block chain transactions, you using faulty software to misunderstand those data has nothing to do with audibility.  You seeing that web sites use faulty software doesn't matter.  In the end, the block chain is what counts and nothing else.  With balance checks you cannot check the block chain because there are no balances on the block chain, you can only DERIVE balances FROM the block chain.

However, you CAN check the validity of transactions.  That's what nodes and miners do.  If ever non-valid transactions are included in the block chain, in any case the whole thing failed and the crypto is dead.  So the only thing that matters is that the transactions are valid.  In as much as the principles of the checking are correct (whether the bitcoin way, or the cryptographic monero way), then that's all that is needed.  And if the *principles* are faulty, then the whole coin is dead in any case.

So in the end, the mathematical principles are sound, or they aren't sound.  If they aren't sound, then the whole thing is dead.  If they are sound, then you can check them, and that is the ONLY necessary and sufficient check that there is to it.


Ah, I guess you regularly check Pythagoras' theorem too ?


Of course gold has privacy and obscurity build in.  There's no way for you to check the world's gold balances.  You only know how much gold YOU own.  There is even no transaction history anywhere.  Nowhere there is a centralized ledger with the balances of gold ; let alone a ledger of all gold transactions.  The ONLY thing that you can do with the "gold system" is to look how much you own.  You don't know how much gold your neighbour has, how much Putin is holding, how much gold Bill Clinton holds, and there's no way for you to make any "balance check" to see whether the amount of "spend gold" and the amount of "received gold" are in agreement.  What you are complaining about with monero, you cannot do it with gold.  You know that the balances check because of the laws of physics.  You know that the balances check in monero, because of cryptographic properties.

That has never undermined people's trust in the value of gold.

I think bitcoin is the payment system. It's established and people use it.
No matter what advantages an altcoin could bring, as long as people don't use it for payment, its only worth is for traders.
And people don't use altcoins for payment because there is bitcoin...
My point is, as long as nothing goes dramatically wrong with bitcoin, no other coin will stand a chance to be stablished on the market.

anything is possible with these coins

Wtf... This is exactly what monero does. Just because an outside observer can not know the balance of a given address or which address has interacted with which doesn't mean it lacks "consensus on the blockchain state was altered and the nature of that alteration." It wouldnt even work if it didn't accomplish this.

Ok well everyone does look at the same information but I suppose not everyone has access to the same data.

For certain applications maybe. For other applications that is terribly undesirable. Do you think someone on the dark net wants everyone to be looking at their data? What about a corporation that needs to keep its information private from competitors.

And thats not how monero works... It is limited to anyone who holds the private key or the view key. That could in theory be everyone in the world or only one person or a group of the private key holders choosing.

This is false. The computational overhead is relatively negligible.

For privacy. Privacy is valuable to a lot of people. And it doesn't have far higher maintenance. It has marginally higher maintenance.

You are extremely uninformed. Which is fine. I'm uninformed about roughly infinity more things than I'm informed about. That's the nature of life. But I don't go around spouting nonsense about the things which I am not informed about. You seem to understand bitcoin well enough but you should study monero more before you attempt to argue their relative merits.

reality: the post.

It is better if multiple communities can coordinate and work together. Monero is the most anon coin, once RingCT releases in january it will be light years ahead of other coins, and Bitcoin is the most widely used cryptocurrency right now, but isn't anonymous and that is ok. The better we can all get along the better it is for everyone. We all know how important cryptocurrencies are in the world and the impact they will have. Some coins will have different uses and better usecases for different things, Bitcoin may not be the best thing for purchases compared to Monero for privacy. Each coin has its specific value so use it right ?