Topic: Is this the reason the bitcoin price is not exploding right now? (Read 4454 times)
September 22, 2014, 01:03:15 AM
The more the cost of BTC rises, we can expect the expenditure by miners to rise equivilently, which in turn makes an attack even more expensive. By this definition, there is no such thing as getting the same security for a cheaper cost, because it's the cost itself that defines the level of security.
September 22, 2014, 12:56:55 AM
Also, I disagree that the $650M is supposed to "purchase decentralisation". What it's really purchasing, if anything, is security. In the context of bitcoin, we can measure security by the amount it would cost an attacker to mount a 51% attack. Right now, that's ~1800 BTC per day, or nearly $1M/day.
September 22, 2014, 12:50:28 AM
And since we will have so many millions, or billions of dollars worth worth of new coins mined in a year, the equivalent value will be invested to mine them until the cost of production becomes only marginally profitable. Whether this means spending money on large mining data centers, or funding millions of sybil nodes to influence a voting system, it will happen either way, because if there's money to be made mining, everyone will do it until it becomes unprofitable.
September 22, 2014, 12:43:58 AM
The inflation schedule is a non-negotiable. Are you suggesting that we change the 21 million coin cap, or change the halving-every-four-years schedule? Because if we're keeping those rules the same, then the value of new bitcoins created must be * per year. No change of consensus algorithm will change this.
September 22, 2014, 12:16:23 AM
OK, FUD patrol checking in.
"Control four chip manufacturers then you could control 90% of [ASIC chip] production". 90% of ADDITIONAL production, maybe. You still would need to produce > 50% of all hashing capacity that already exists. And you need to hope no other chip designs/manufacturers emerge (since SHA2 hashing isn't a terribly difficult task, that requires a leap of faith. Good luck blowing your $400 million on that gamble.
"By controlling two mining pools you could get more than 50% of the network" Mining pools with 50% can censor transaction but they cannot double spend unless they first take that mining capacity offline (to mine a private fork of the blockchain). Do a Google search for
"Downplaying statistically possible double-spending risks" (http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/08/18/downplaying-statistically-possible-double-spending-risks/) for more on why pools with > 50% are not the same as having your own equipment that exceeds 50% .
"Control one dozen or two dozen mining centers you could get 50%" Again ... that's a $200 million (or more) investment. If the intention is to have just censorship power then maybe that's feasible. Otherwise what is needed for this hashing capacity to be used to double spend is to take it offline and begin mining a private fork. Just like with pools, taking this action would be something noticeable before the damage is done (six confirmations on a much slower fork have passed) seriously lessening the chances of a double spending attack using this method causing serious harm to the big players (who presumable are monitoring the rate of block solving or have hotwallets or other withdrawal limits that woudl protect from such an attack).
Cool story though.
"Control four chip manufacturers then you could control 90% of [ASIC chip] production". 90% of ADDITIONAL production, maybe. You still would need to produce > 50% of all hashing capacity that already exists. And you need to hope no other chip designs/manufacturers emerge (since SHA2 hashing isn't a terribly difficult task, that requires a leap of faith. Good luck blowing your $400 million on that gamble.
"By controlling two mining pools you could get more than 50% of the network" Mining pools with 50% can censor transaction but they cannot double spend unless they first take that mining capacity offline (to mine a private fork of the blockchain). Do a Google search for
"Downplaying statistically possible double-spending risks" (http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/08/18/downplaying-statistically-possible-double-spending-risks/) for more on why pools with > 50% are not the same as having your own equipment that exceeds 50% .
"Control one dozen or two dozen mining centers you could get 50%" Again ... that's a $200 million (or more) investment. If the intention is to have just censorship power then maybe that's feasible. Otherwise what is needed for this hashing capacity to be used to double spend is to take it offline and begin mining a private fork. Just like with pools, taking this action would be something noticeable before the damage is done (six confirmations on a much slower fork have passed) seriously lessening the chances of a double spending attack using this method causing serious harm to the big players (who presumable are monitoring the rate of block solving or have hotwallets or other withdrawal limits that woudl protect from such an attack).
Cool story though.
wait, what about pointing a gun at a couple people costs $200 million?
also, are you aware that the cost of one F-15 fighter jet is $30 million?
You cant just point a gun. You need an army to take and defend the mining farm. (basically a government). Of course this would destroy bitcoin and so the only people to profit is the banking/ government partnership. The degree to which the mining is decentralized and the speed with which you could render the attack useless is the defense against such a hostile government of coalition of.
September 21, 2014, 04:57:44 AM
OK, FUD patrol checking in.
"Control four chip manufacturers then you could control 90% of [ASIC chip] production". 90% of ADDITIONAL production, maybe. You still would need to produce > 50% of all hashing capacity that already exists. And you need to hope no other chip designs/manufacturers emerge (since SHA2 hashing isn't a terribly difficult task, that requires a leap of faith. Good luck blowing your $400 million on that gamble.
"By controlling two mining pools you could get more than 50% of the network" Mining pools with 50% can censor transaction but they cannot double spend unless they first take that mining capacity offline (to mine a private fork of the blockchain). Do a Google search for
"Downplaying statistically possible double-spending risks" (http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/08/18/downplaying-statistically-possible-double-spending-risks/) for more on why pools with > 50% are not the same as having your own equipment that exceeds 50% .
"Control one dozen or two dozen mining centers you could get 50%" Again ... that's a $200 million (or more) investment. If the intention is to have just censorship power then maybe that's feasible. Otherwise what is needed for this hashing capacity to be used to double spend is to take it offline and begin mining a private fork. Just like with pools, taking this action would be something noticeable before the damage is done (six confirmations on a much slower fork have passed) seriously lessening the chances of a double spending attack using this method causing serious harm to the big players (who presumable are monitoring the rate of block solving or have hotwallets or other withdrawal limits that woudl protect from such an attack).
Cool story though.
"Control four chip manufacturers then you could control 90% of [ASIC chip] production". 90% of ADDITIONAL production, maybe. You still would need to produce > 50% of all hashing capacity that already exists. And you need to hope no other chip designs/manufacturers emerge (since SHA2 hashing isn't a terribly difficult task, that requires a leap of faith. Good luck blowing your $400 million on that gamble.
"By controlling two mining pools you could get more than 50% of the network" Mining pools with 50% can censor transaction but they cannot double spend unless they first take that mining capacity offline (to mine a private fork of the blockchain). Do a Google search for
"Downplaying statistically possible double-spending risks" (http://www.ofnumbers.com/2014/08/18/downplaying-statistically-possible-double-spending-risks/) for more on why pools with > 50% are not the same as having your own equipment that exceeds 50% .
"Control one dozen or two dozen mining centers you could get 50%" Again ... that's a $200 million (or more) investment. If the intention is to have just censorship power then maybe that's feasible. Otherwise what is needed for this hashing capacity to be used to double spend is to take it offline and begin mining a private fork. Just like with pools, taking this action would be something noticeable before the damage is done (six confirmations on a much slower fork have passed) seriously lessening the chances of a double spending attack using this method causing serious harm to the big players (who presumable are monitoring the rate of block solving or have hotwallets or other withdrawal limits that woudl protect from such an attack).
Cool story though.
wait, what about pointing a gun at a couple people costs $200 million?
also, are you aware that the cost of one F-15 fighter jet is $30 million?
September 18, 2014, 11:55:44 AM
I sorta can't wait until I drop this primedice signature because I'm so god damn tired of people giving me this "increasing my post count" bullshit. I'll be as pedantic as I feel like being and I do love to argue semantics.
Can you really give me a language where '==' is not a boolean truth value operator? Can you name me a language where '=' is not an assignment operator?
Cheers!
Can you really give me a language where '==' is not a boolean truth value operator? Can you name me a language where '=' is not an assignment operator?
Cheers!
Glad I can help you get your post count.
You really do like semantics. How about I give you languages where = is more than an assignment operator? How about a language where = and == are both boolean operators, but with different meanings depending on operand data types?
September 18, 2014, 10:23:03 AM
Uh, cool list. I don't write in any of those langauges. Can you tell me what '==' and '=' does mean in Pascal/Ada/Google Go/etc/etc?
This linked Pascal tutorial explains what '=' does mean in Pascal.
http://pascal-programming.info/lesson4.php
Wrong:
If x := 20 then x := x + 1; {the underlined character must be excluded}
Correct:
If x = 20 then x := x + 1; {only an equal sign is used for comparison}
September 18, 2014, 09:55:09 AM
I read through the white paper quickly and have a few issues with the way it works, how do you determine that all 100 delegates are unique, your assuming that their is never a bad actor or collusion, this would have the same issue as Bitcoin if it had a higher marketcap more centralization of the 100 delegates. I think the white-paper needs more scenarios of attackers trying to compromise the system. Since you only need 51% vote you only need 51 delegates to agree on something? What if each delegate actually controls 2 delegates, then 26 people need to agree on something?
While I agree with the issue of centralization in regards to ASIC's, it does make mining Bitcoin something not most can do. I think Satoshi truly intended for 1 CPU = 1 Vote or maybe he predicted this.
If you think about traditional metal mining operations that's similar too how they run anyway, its largely inaccessible to produce large amounts of precious metal unless you have a huge amount of money to invest on equipment, land etc.
I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but are you doing that on purpose?
Quote
I think Satoshi truly intended for 1 CPU = 1 Vote or maybe he predicted this.
From what I've read, he did not intend for one CPU to equal one vote.
September 18, 2014, 08:37:42 AM
Sure, the cooperate mining is the main reason.
Back in the old days, people who mine believe in the technology and refuse to sell at low price.
Cooperate miners will sell at any price because they must pay huge bills for electricity, Internet and maintenance.
Back in the old days, people who mine believe in the technology and refuse to sell at low price.
Cooperate miners will sell at any price because they must pay huge bills for electricity, Internet and maintenance.
September 18, 2014, 07:34:55 AM
He said Satoshi solved the Byzantine General's problem - he didn't. We don't believe it is unsolvable, we know it is. It's been mathematically proven. Satoshi made a mechanism that made it reliable if no one got > 50% of the deciding nodes, based on probability. But the Byzantine Generals' problem has always been based on probability, so this isn't a "mathematical" solution, just possibly a "practical" one. He then goes on to say "solving the centralization problem should be a cake-walk compared to that." Why? I would say that was the hard problem all along. If you can guarantee decentralization, "solving" the generals' problem is the easy part.
I advise that you spend more time understanding distributed systems and in particular distributed agreement.
Byzantine generals is solvable depending on the synchrony of the system and the number of honest nodes vs. dishonest nodes.
It is provably solvable in a system with 3k+1 honest nodes. If you assume an entirely asynchronous system you will not be able to guarantee termination (see Fischer Lynch and Patterson FLP85 for an explanation why you need some degree of synchrony in a system to be able to reach consensus) unless you employ the help of an oracle.
There are three kinds of oracles: Failure detectors, clocks, and randomization.
The Byzantine Generals is not based on probability. What you want to say is that bitcoin uses probabilistic consensus (it converges towards a probability of 1 of agreeing).
By definition if you want to have distributed agreement where each node has a vote (i.e there is no leader) a majority is always required if you want to prevent partitioning (two partitions agreeing on something different).
As for the link by OP: Lets summarize that video as "Omg, my bitcoins are not worth 100k USD a coin! lets change the code so they are"
September 18, 2014, 06:45:22 AM
Sounds like a central banker making a case for raising rates. I thought bitcoin's killer app was the inability for arbitrary rule changes. The issuance especially, must be set in stone. You're not going to change the rules without hurting some stakeholders. Who decides which stakeholders win and which ones lose?
The price of gold hasn't been going up fast enough, lets ban gold mining cuz it uses energy and hurts gold holders' profits.=
The price of gold hasn't been going up fast enough, lets ban gold mining cuz it uses energy and hurts gold holders' profits.=
September 17, 2014, 06:17:27 PM
The price will find a balance between adoption and reward. Just because it's going down doesn't mean it's a technical problem. When the price drops far enough, the $ value entering the market will == 25 BTC/10 minutes. This too shall pass.
25 BTC/10 minutes isn't a dollar value, it's a ratio of bitcoins-to-time
== is a boolean operator in programming languages which returns true or false. As far as I can tell:
'the $ value entering the market will' == '25 BTC/10 mintues' returns FALSE (those strings aren't equivalent)
I think you meant =, which just indicates assertion of equivalence in common parlance.
Do you really not understand? Or do you just want to argue semantics? The exact meaning of == depends on the language, as does =. Considering your "=" changes meaning with context, I assume you're just increasing your post count.
I sorta can't wait until I drop this primedice signature because I'm so god damn tired of people giving me this "increasing my post count" bullshit. I'll be as pedantic as I feel like being and I do love to argue semantics.
Can you really give me a language where '==' is not a boolean truth value operator? Can you name me a language where '=' is not an assignment operator?
Cheers!
Pascal, Ada, Google Go, etc. etc.
Uh, cool list. I don't write in any of those langauges. Can you tell me what '==' and '=' does mean in Pascal/Ada/Google Go/etc/etc?
If '==' and '=' are not operators in this language, then that is not an example of a language where '==' and '=' mean something than boolean evaluation and assignment (respectively). Note I didn't say these exist in all languages, I claimed that these were the meanings in langauges in which they do exist.
Cheers!
September 17, 2014, 06:04:51 PM
The price will find a balance between adoption and reward. Just because it's going down doesn't mean it's a technical problem. When the price drops far enough, the $ value entering the market will == 25 BTC/10 minutes. This too shall pass.
25 BTC/10 minutes isn't a dollar value, it's a ratio of bitcoins-to-time
== is a boolean operator in programming languages which returns true or false. As far as I can tell:
'the $ value entering the market will' == '25 BTC/10 mintues' returns FALSE (those strings aren't equivalent)
I think you meant =, which just indicates assertion of equivalence in common parlance.
Do you really not understand? Or do you just want to argue semantics? The exact meaning of == depends on the language, as does =. Considering your "=" changes meaning with context, I assume you're just increasing your post count.
I sorta can't wait until I drop this primedice signature because I'm so god damn tired of people giving me this "increasing my post count" bullshit. I'll be as pedantic as I feel like being and I do love to argue semantics.
Can you really give me a language where '==' is not a boolean truth value operator? Can you name me a language where '=' is not an assignment operator?
Cheers!
Pascal, Ada, Google Go, etc. etc.
September 17, 2014, 05:23:44 PM
The price will find a balance between adoption and reward. Just because it's going down doesn't mean it's a technical problem. When the price drops far enough, the $ value entering the market will == 25 BTC/10 minutes. This too shall pass.
25 BTC/10 minutes isn't a dollar value, it's a ratio of bitcoins-to-time
== is a boolean operator in programming languages which returns true or false. As far as I can tell:
'the $ value entering the market will' == '25 BTC/10 mintues' returns FALSE (those strings aren't equivalent)
I think you meant =, which just indicates assertion of equivalence in common parlance.
Do you really not understand? Or do you just want to argue semantics? The exact meaning of == depends on the language, as does =. Considering your "=" changes meaning with context, I assume you're just increasing your post count.
I sorta can't wait until I drop this primedice signature because I'm so god damn tired of people giving me this "increasing my post count" bullshit. I'll be as pedantic as I feel like being and I do love to argue semantics.
Can you really give me a language where '==' is not a boolean truth value operator? Can you name me a language where '=' is not an assignment operator?
Cheers!
September 17, 2014, 05:10:34 PM
The price will find a balance between adoption and reward. Just because it's going down doesn't mean it's a technical problem. When the price drops far enough, the $ value entering the market will == 25 BTC/10 minutes. This too shall pass.
25 BTC/10 minutes isn't a dollar value, it's a ratio of bitcoins-to-time
== is a boolean operator in programming languages which returns true or false. As far as I can tell:
'the $ value entering the market will' == '25 BTC/10 mintues' returns FALSE (those strings aren't equivalent)
I think you meant =, which just indicates assertion of equivalence in common parlance.
Do you really not understand? Or do you just want to argue semantics? The exact meaning of == depends on the language, as does =. Considering your "=" changes meaning with context, I assume you're just increasing your post count.
September 17, 2014, 04:46:48 PM
The price will find a balance between adoption and reward. Just because it's going down doesn't mean it's a technical problem. When the price drops far enough, the $ value entering the market will == 25 BTC/10 minutes. This too shall pass.
25 BTC/10 minutes isn't a dollar value, it's a ratio of bitcoins-to-time
== is a boolean operator in programming languages which returns true or false. As far as I can tell:
'the $ value entering the market will' == '25 BTC/10 mintues' returns FALSE (those strings aren't equivalent)
I think you meant =, which just indicates assertion of equivalence in common parlance.
September 17, 2014, 04:24:41 PM
This PoW algorithm is not only for security, but also for distribution and adoption. While the time scale may be non-optimum, I believe the logic is sound. I don't think Satoshi anticipated it would catch on so quickly. The reward rate halves, but the time between halvings maybe should have halved as well.
On the contrary, if it had actually caught on more quickly, we wouldn't be having this problem. Obviously, the demand for it actually hasn't met the rate that it is being mined, or the price would still be going up. Your solution, though, doesn't seem to be off.
The price will find a balance between adoption and reward. Just because it's going down doesn't mean it's a technical problem. When the price drops far enough, the $ value entering the market will == 25 BTC/10 minutes. This too shall pass.
September 17, 2014, 02:53:01 PM
This PoW algorithm is not only for security, but also for distribution and adoption. While the time scale may be non-optimum, I believe the logic is sound. I don't think Satoshi anticipated it would catch on so quickly. The reward rate halves, but the time between halvings maybe should have halved as well.
On the contrary, if it had actually caught on more quickly, we wouldn't be having this problem. Obviously, the demand for it actually hasn't met the rate that it is being mined, or the price would still be going up. Your solution, though, doesn't seem to be off.
September 17, 2014, 08:33:38 AM
He said Satoshi solved the Byzantine General's problem - he didn't. We don't believe it is unsolvable, we know it is. It's been mathematically proven. Satoshi made a mechanism that made it reliable if no one got > 50% of the deciding nodes, based on probability. But the Byzantine Generals' problem has always been based on probability, so this isn't a "mathematical" solution, just possibly a "practical" one. He then goes on to say "solving the centralization problem should be a cake-walk compared to that." Why? I would say that was the hard problem all along. If you can guarantee decentralization, "solving" the generals' problem is the easy part.
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