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Topic: Is Bitcoin good enough; there aren't critically important improvements needed? (Read 6007 times)

full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
as for my experience
single handedly, over $10million has passed through my hands with my work in the retail sector

So that explains everything. You are a technical dunce, and I am a computer scientist.

You obviously don't understand nor respect the field of computer science.

In your perspective, everything that matters is about people and community.

I will teach you a lesson about respecting the power of technology soon. Stay tuned.

I am locking the topic, but the poll remains unlocked. At the time of locking, there were 17 'yes' votes and 35 'no' votes.

I don't want to waste more time here. We've talked enough. Thanks.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
bank notes are not anonymous, i can think of 5 ways to trace bank notes.

There is no way to trace the pesos I am using tonight to buy dinner for cash which I received yesterday as change from the lunch I bought, which they received from another customer for the lunch he bought.

Sure the governments are starting to track the serial numbers on cash via ATMs, but this was not the norm of cash for most of its history. That is only a recent phenomenon and it is not entirely effective for the authorities most of the time. People don't need to jump through hoops to be anonymous, just use cash normally. That is why the powers-that-be want to get rid of cash.

Whereas Bitcoin is nearly always traceable and linkable. The only exceptions are for those who employ an unregistered internet connection (e.g. WiFi or 3G dongle or botnet) and who never impart their identity to the merchant in a way that can be correlated and do not leak their identity in some accidental side-channel. There is also the possibility of using a CoinJoin-like mixing but these are jammable (or the master server knows your identity) and they can be Sybil attacked.

So the chances of being anonymous in Bitcoin are closer to 0.1% and the chances of being anonymous with cash are closer to 99.9%.

You were the fool who didn't recognize the crucial distinction that cash has no central ledger for each transaction.

it is you that does not understand this and thus you are the one ignoring the reality of life,.

WTF Huh

Readers do you see how frustrating it is to argue with an obstinate fool? Does he really believe that?

realise that nearly every single person that has replied to you, has said your idea's are flawed..

Can you not see the poll says 30% agree the features could be needed?

accept it as criticism and either change the idea. realise the flaw, and move onto better things that will be useful for the community.

I see a market for 30% of Bitcoin's community. I also see a huge untapped market in the dark networks arena. I also see that Bitcoin will never have instant transactions and the first coin to provide it is going to cause some massive marketing problems for Bitcoin.

Are you ready to be taught a lesson spankypants?
legendary
Activity: 4214
Merit: 4458
7 pages and the OP has not learned a thing, and calls others that oppose his narrow minded and limited scoped process.

You have been so thoroughly revealed upthread to be a complete ignoramous, I don't understand how you don't feel any shame?

This is why it is impossible to argue with an idiot. They can never recognize when their ideas have been thoroughly vetted and defeated.

bank notes are not anonymous, i can think of 5 ways to trace bank notes. it is you that does not understand this and thus you are the one ignoring the reality of life,.

realise that nearly every single person that has replied to you, has said your idea's are flawed.. accept it as criticism and either change the idea. realise the flaw, and move onto better things that will be useful for the community.

arguing constantly with people that dont praise you, is not really helpful to the community or your real human self. so take a step back, relax, think long and hard about what your trying to say and then think about it in a truly practical way using proper scenario's which will actually benefit the community.

one day you may get the fame which you are obviously seeking. but i am afraid it is not going to happen in regards to the points you are endlessly trying to bash out over the last many pages. bitcoin does not have a flaw with what you are saying. bitcoin does exactly what it is suppose to do, the same as what bank notes do, the same as credit cards.

the sid issues you bring up have nothing to do with bitcoin protocols but to do with human interactions. no protocol change in the world will EVER truly solve it. the only solution is in the physical realm of reality.. meaning human choice and decisions in regards to how much info they give away.

bitcoin cannot hide warehouses full of rigs. neither can any altcoin. a warehouse is a physical brick, not code.
bitcoin cannot hide your name and address.. because they are printed on your birth certificate and drivers licence.

bitcoin NEVER asks for this information, and as such if someone was able to trace your real name and location of your warehouse of mining rigs. it has nothing to do with bitcoin, but more to do with the information you have allowed onto the internet.

as for my experience
single handedly, over $10million has passed through my hands with my work in the retail sector
single handedly i have helped 300 businesses start up
single handedly i have got an uncountable amount of people jobs, careers and experience

then moving into bitcoin i have got to the point that i am living solely on bitcoin. i get paid in bitcoin, life savings in bitcoin, pay my bills, luxuries and and everything else in bitcoin.
i have helped people set up businesses that accept bitcoin, helped inspire others where their flaws are so they can concentrate on their strengths, to increase their chances of succeeding in life.
i have multiple projects that do multiple things in the bitcoin ecosphere.

so please take this as positive criticism, you can argue for 50000000000 more pages on your same topic, the end result is a worn out keyboard and nothing more.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
7 pages and the OP has not learned a thing, and calls others that oppose his narrow minded and limited scoped process.

You have been so thoroughly revealed upthread to be a complete ignoramous, I don't understand how you don't feel any shame?

This is why it is impossible to argue with an idiot. They can never recognize when their ideas have been thoroughly vetted and defeated.

The best way to teach you a lesson is in the crypto-currency market place. Keep you eye out for an implementation of the ideas in the OP. Your whining is motivating me.

Have you and turvarya ever considered how childish it is to guns blazing trying to embarrass someone who writes about flaws in Bitcoin? Also you both seem to have no respect for the immense level of research I have done and also my nearly 3 decades of experience as a computer programmer, marketer with two software programs which attained million users in my career.

What have you two guys accomplished in your careers? Judging from your childish behavior and your illogical ideas, you probably have not accomplished the large scale projects that I have. I can see the inexperience.
legendary
Activity: 4214
Merit: 4458
7 pages and the OP has not learned a thing, and simply ends up calling others that oppose his narrow minded and limited scoped process.. idiots..

UnunoctiumTesticles: please be aware that many of us have rad your comments a multitude of times, put your idea's into scenario's and feasabily knit-picked whether they will do anyong on a micro-global or macro-global bases.. we have looked into the snowball effects of possible changes, and also an realistic long term benefit or damage of such changes, the result being.. most of what you say is based on human decision, not code..

i think you needs to take a few days off and think about things on a global scale and beyond the small context you are headbutting your head against. as its not healthy for you.

now it seems that you wants to get someone in court for slander. so lets correct you
1. slander is a spoken word with human breath.. libel is a written word..
2. unless your birth certificate says 'UnunoctiumTesticles'  then all people are doing is insulting a random name with no human reputation.

have a nice day
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
I actually really started feeling bad for how far I pushed UnunoctiumTesticles(or what ever his name is).
I obviously hit a nerve. I have never seen someone reacting that emotional to my comments. I don't know, how exactly I did it. In real life I would have ended that long ago, but the Internet is just to much fun and lets you forget, that there is a person on the other side. I met people like the OP in real life, people with real issues, you shouldn't push to far or you could do some real damage.
So, I hope you will get professional help sometimes.
One thing you could learn by your self is just closing the fucking browser. If you think your time is so precious and you see a discussion like that as so much waste, just close the browser, just leave it be for a while. It is not that hard, if you really think about it.

Good luck.

The reason I reacted that way to you is because you started your interaction with me (in the thread linked from the OP) with the attitude that you felt I was a cocky loud mouth and you were going to teach me a lesson or try to call me out as being an idiot. And you are still disrespecting me by insinuating that I need psychiatric help. I could sue you in court and possibly even bring criminal charges against you for making such slander. Real people are actually committed against their free will to psychiatric institutions and for you to insinuate I need such help is a threat to my personal freedom.

I never had anything against you personally. I was writing about Bitcoin. You personalized it and continue to.

Rather I am here to debate ideas about Bitcoin and political economics.

You assume I am incorrect before you even begin, and this is what traps you every time. Because I am not incorrect. These things I have thought about and researched for years. You assume you are debating with a neophyte. It is just incredulous that you don't respect or even recognize the experience of the person you are debating with.

If you were approaching this discussion from an emotionally stable stance of mutual respect and inquiry, then we could have a cordial discussion.
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 500
I actually really started feeling bad for how far I pushed UnunoctiumTesticles(or what ever his name is).
I obviously hit a nerve. I have never seen someone reacting that emotional to my comments. I don't know, how exactly I did it. In real life I would have ended that long ago, but the Internet is just to much fun and lets you forget, that there is a person on the other side. I met people like the OP in real life, people with real issues, you shouldn't push to far or you could do some real damage.
So, I hope you will get professional help sometimes.
One thing you could learn by your self is just closing the fucking browser. If you think your time is so precious and you see a discussion like that as so much waste, just close the browser, just leave it be for a while. It is not that hard, if you really think about it.

Good luck.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1393
You lead and I'll watch you walk away.
Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.


correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Wink Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

There's some egotism going on to be sure.  But also there's some trying to warn noobs of getting scammed.  The general thought is that Bitcoin is "here to stay" and alts aren't necessary.

That's true, some egos are bigger than others. The arguments that the other alts aren't necessary is simply a marketing ploy from a competitor. Visa isn't necessary because there's MasterCard and vice versa. MasterCard and Visa do not issue credit cards.  They make money by processing transactions between a point of purchase and a bank. They have nothing to do with rewards programs, interest rates, late fees or customer service issues. They are payment networks that connect merchant payment terminals with a bank’s credit card department. They compete for business. Competition is healthy and helps systems improve and stay honest. Monopoly is a bad thing. I guess the reason these people don't see it is that nerds shouldn't be in charge of financial systems because they don't understand anything non-technical about the way the world works. It's sad really, all of the blind cultist loyalty just makes Bitcoiners look like a bunch of kooks.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.


correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Wink Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

There's some egotism going on to be sure.  But also there's some trying to warn noobs of getting scammed.  The general thought is that Bitcoin is "here to stay" and alts aren't necessary.

full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.

They don't like the insinuation that there is any flaw in Bitcoin, or at least any flaw that can't be rectified as need be. Any one who makes such a insinuation will cause the franky1 types who don't really know the technology to come out of the woodwork with illogical guns blazing. The experts will remain quiet when they know they can't win the argument, but will become very cold to that person and ignore them forever after, except when they see an opportunity to try to make a fool of that person on some technical discussion.

This is insecurity. They feel we are diminishing their chances for success, because they think we put incorrect ideas in the minds of other adopters. They are afraid of any negative wave of publicity that might develop.

In their defense I will say they deal with a lot of incorrect bullshit hurled at Bitcoin. Some of the experts are probably just tired of dealing with the same mistakes over and over again ad nausea. So I can kind of understand their feelings. I think this is just the nature of this sort of situation and we can't really blame the people involved.

I don't know coblee well in discussion. I have seen his photo and know he created LTC. Seems he might be a quiet type? That is probably the best policy. I could learn from him. Accomplish more, talk less. Especially don't get into debates with n00bs.

Edit: I think also the developers see they have given a lot of effort, perhaps even largely unpaid and the see altcoin developers mostly trying to get rich quick, so they view them as most likely not sincere, realistic, and also not likely to succeed (they think it is mostly just scams, because they know how much effort it takes to produce Bitcoin).
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Of course because all those flaws are inside your head.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

Your reading comprehension is so poor you didn't realize I was referring to large government expressed as share of GDP as I mentioned.

Both the Philippines now (or before Aquino administration, which instituted government subsidized national health insurance crap) and the USA before FDR's New Deal, had very low government as a share of GDP.

The citizens had to practice self-responsibility. What an amazing concept. Duh.
And they are/were still democracies and a democracy is by your logic socialism and socialism is having a bloated GDP.
Weren't that the arguments you used?

No the filipinos were never stupid enough to have the delusion to think collectivism was good for them individually. They rather always followed an Ayn Rand self interested (me first) policy. They always cheated the system, instead of letting the system to cheat them. They learned well from hundreds of years of Spanish occupation how to game the system that was oppressing them. Besides they've never entirely let go of their tribalism. I visit communities where every one is a relative. It is only recently with the yuppie ones who've been indoctrinated by the West who have started to believe in this "nation building" (and that corruption is bad) bullshit so now the size of the government is starting to grow as their tax collection efforts are improving. Constituent level corruption is good (i.e. bribing the customs and tax officials to look the other way). It is the only way you keep the government power impotent and render it entirely ineffective. Argentina (and Italians) apparently know this. The Italians are the closest (other than Iceland) to kicking out the banksters and EU. And Catalonia, Spain seems to also realize the truth.

Also I guess you aren't aware that once upon a time Americans were mostly farmers and very self-sufficient types and they were very isolationist and didn't pay any attention to the federal government. The States and local community had most of the power. Just go review the recent Bundy Ranch issue and you can see he is arguing for Clark County taking jurisdictional priority over the federal government as that is the way it was when his parents received the land grant and that is what our Constitution says. But unfortunately after FDR's New Deal (and the Dust Bowl) America became city dwellers who are not self-sufficient and fell into the lie of democracy and a government that takes care of them. Importing many blacks as slaves probably also worsened it, although I am not a racist, certain statistics don't lie.

Wasn't it you upthread who was claiming Americans don't study history. You are the The Pot that calls the Kettle Black.

Are you going to pay me $300 an hour for writing all this shit? I don't have time to be your teacher. You do realize you are forcing me against my will to expend so much effort on this. That is a very disrespectful. I am not doing that to you.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1393
You lead and I'll watch you walk away.
Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.


correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Wink Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

I understand consumer choice. It's not that you can make a free choice that bothers me it's the bashing other crypto when Bitcoiners are doing the same thing. I trust coblee (Charlie Lee) more than some of the Bitcoin devs. He's proven to be more respectable. Bitcoin has some sort of cachet because it was the first when it really wasn't even the first, DigiCash was.
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 500
Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Of course because all those flaws are inside your head.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

Your reading comprehension is so poor you didn't realize I was referring to large government expressed as share of GDP as I mentioned.

Both the Philippines now (or before Aquino administration, which instituted government subsidized national health insurance crap) and the USA before FDR's New Deal, had very low government as a share of GDP.

The citizens had to practice self-responsibility. What an amazing concept. Duh.
And they are/were still democracies and a democracy is by your logic socialism and socialism is having a bloated GDP.
Weren't that the arguments you used?
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Of course because all those flaws are inside your head.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.

Your reading comprehension is so poor you didn't realize I was referring to large government expressed as share of GDP as I mentioned.

Both the Philippines now (or before Aquino administration, which instituted government subsidized national health insurance crap) and the USA before FDR's New Deal, had very low government as a share of GDP.

The citizens had to practice self-responsibility. What an amazing concept. Duh.
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 500
Are you really too stupid to distinguish between democracy and socialism?

You are too stupid to understand the model Eric (and myself and anarchists have) explained is that democracy and socialism (and any form of State collectivism) are the same phenomenon.

I am really amazed by all the flaws in your logic.

Show me the countries, that don't have a welfare system and which are doing so fine, like you said.

Philippines which has been the fastest growing economy in the world. The USA in the 1800s and early 1900s being the fastest growing and most personal freedom economy in the world at that time (before it became laden with government spending on welfare starting with FDR's New Deal).

Both Philippines  and USA  in the 1800s and early 1900s are/were democracies.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
My idea on how to do the programmable block chain.

Hope it is not too late to get some feedback on my thoughts.

My take away from the upthread is consistent with my own analysis—centralization of pools is probably positively correlated with required computation (above some threshold).

The Ethereum applications seem important and reasonably decentralized.

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper#applications

So pray tell me why it isn't superior to have merge-mined chains for new contract types (as we think of them) and optimize those chains rather than a generalized VM on one block chain?

Advantages are:

  • Centralization is granular per contract type.
  • Mining participation is optional, thus chains can compete instead of the swallowing the universe entropy(state) = O(∞)
  • Failure modes are more contained.
  • Incremental development and optimization.
  • Market-based instead of top-down metrics (e.g. Ethereum's gas fees) as chains compete to reward miners.

Etc.

Maybe we need to make the process of starting and publicizing a merge-mined chain easier? Do we need an app store of merged-mined chains?

P.S. Apologies in advance if one post can evaporate a $36 million market cap.

Edit: even if you did want a generalized VM for those contracts which don't have enough economy-of-scale to be their own merge-mined chain, you could make that chain merged-mined. You could make variants and let the market decide which one is the winner. Perhaps Ethereum should do this, if they are not satisfied with the Bitcoin mining structure.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

Every person is entitled to watch their pocketbook rise or decline in relative value. I fully acknowledge you must decide based on your knowledge. I try to impart knowledge (as well learn from others) but I can't force it down anyone's throat.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
I understand your frustration with the government, but the truth is simple - bigger stars need stronger confinement field, they often shine the brightest though.

Anonymity might be a good way out for those feeling that the confinement field is about to crunch under its own weight, though a new type of fuel (Bitcoin) might give it a chance to rebalance and reevaluate the course it is headed.

I don't have frustration with the government. I will win or die. I am frustrated with readers who don't read and study.

As I said, you still haven't studied the Knowledge Age links I provided upthread, so that is why you are still far in left field and making statements about dinosaurs.

The large monoliths are going away. Poof be gone!

Anonymity is how we make it so, by enabling the knowledge workers to take over and not be extorted by the govt+corps.

The only question is do you get crushed while they try to fight their decline. Without anonymity you will be stomped.

It is time to decide which side of the fence you want to be on, with the dinasours (the old world model of State+Corporations+Democracy+Resource Scarcity) or the fledgling Knowledge Age (knowledge is capital, it can't be financed, it can't be sold, it is inherently individual and decentralized). Read the "Economic Devastation" thread. Read the essays I wrote which are linked at the top of that thread. Read the "Dark Enlightment" thread.

I don't have time to explain it all over again. I have written it all several times over on these forums. You have the option to read the links I provided and bring yourself up-to-speed, otherwise we are just talking past each other.

It's nice to be perceived young (to some degree I still am), thanks! Smiley

Compliment intended.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
Would you jump from Bitcoin to a coin with the following improvements?

No. Bitcoin can be improved, we don't need another alt-coin.


correct. end of discussion.

One of the challenges of implementing the improvements referenced in the OP, and also a feature to provide serious competition to Bitcoin, is to offer instant transactions that can't be double-spent. When I say instant, I mean you send the transaction to the other party and what you have sent is already an absolute assurance, no need to verify against the block chain.

Perhaps most people think this can't be done with a decentralized consensus block chain. I think otherwise. Wink Any ideas?

Note I think this idea could be incorporated into Bitcoin, and maybe not even require a hard fork. I would need to study Bitcoin's scripting capabilities in more detail to determine for sure. But Bitcoin (and Monero, Litecoin) will retain a disadvantage in scaling that afaics will not be easy for it (them) to fix.

Several weeks ago I stated (in the Monero BCX fiasco thread) I had solved the selfish mining attack and had written down the math. Recently I decided to share that insight.

It's confusing to me that everyone hates any crypto other than Bitcoin. The claim is that those are just pump & dump for profit but isn't that what many people are pushing Bitcoin for too? Early Bitcoin adopters are looking for the big payday when the value skyrockets. Somehow that's more honorable with Bitcoin?

Its not a question of honor, at least for me.

Anyone can vote with their pocketbook.  I vote for Bitcoin.

full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Why do you believe Bitcoin would "fall" to government regulation (what?), when torrent technology has already proved government regulation impotent against a decentralized target?

You have a category error (i.e. the analogy doesn't apply). Refer to the linked posts in the OP for the detailed explanation. It appears to be a common mistake. Some guy compared BTC to marijuana growing and another guy to piratebay. Upthread franky1 erroneously compared BTC to cash. And now you to bittorrent. When you can identify a centralized (i.e. single instance albeit multiply-referenced) ledger (albeit decentralized consensus) in any of those, let me know.

Computer science requires understanding of very obscure, pendantic details.

I see gmaxwell keeps making my points presciently (the bolded statements are equivalent):

it's really much more than just a money system.  There's people on the forums making all sorts of suggestions: "Lets make a Distributed Wikipedia!".

That one amuses me, one of  biggest reason for my interest and eventual involvement in Bitcoin is that almost a decade ago some people argued that the Wikimedia Foundation shouldn't be formed because Wikipedia should just be decentralized, not only claiming it was possible but that it could be trivially implemented. I wrote one of my trademark rants on the physical impossibility of true decenteralized consensus, as consensus is a necessary component of replicating the functionality of a singular resource as opposed to a grab-bag of assorted repositories. Bitcoin challenged that view but didn't change was was possible— my views weren't overtly wrong, Bitcoin just works under different assumptions which I hadn't considered at the time... primarily the ability to use hashcash and in-system compensation to create an incentive alignment and to force participants to make exclusive choices.  It's far from clear, and— in fact, now seems unlikely— that these different assumptions are anywhere near as strong as they are for other applications as they are for Bitcoin, and the verdict is even still out on if Bitcoin's properties are even good enough for Bitcoin in the long run.

A lot of the things I've heard that crowd talk about don't make a lot of sense to me... e.g. implementing a freestanding rent extractor which does nothing you couldn't just do locally— which is a pretty common event because in that execution environment the agent can't keep any secrets from the public. It's the sort of argument that sounds good until someone not seeped in the excitement steps up and says "The Russians used a pencil.". Some of it would require the network to perform IO which you can't safely do in a consensus environment (except via trusted parties— and in which case you could just have them compute for you too, and thus keep your program private), and even the things which aren't impossible run into the pointlessness problems that some of the verifiable computing stuff does: e.g. you can ask something else to compute for you, but with millionfold overhead and a loss of privacy that makes it pretty pointless to do in almost any conceivable circumstance.
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