Topic: John Nash created bitcoin - page 4. (Read 22273 times)

Uh, the way I understand what you say: the bitcoin price, is the price of 1 BTC in $$, right ?  Commensurate, is proportional, right ?
Let us say that the proportionality is 0.0001.  Then that means that a fee is 0.0001 BTC, no ?  So if BTC = $1000,-, a fee is $0.10, if BTC is $1000 000,- then the fee, with the same proportionality, is $100,- , no ?

Or do you mean "transaction amount" instead of "bitcoin price" ?

But then the miners will only take those transactions with highest absolute fee, so only the very large transactions.  Because for them, at a certain point, including an extra transaction (and risking the loss of the entire block) will not be beneficial any more below a certain absolute fee.


Bitcoin was a unique possibility for a few initial players to become immensely rich ; and they had the right timing: after a financial crisis, it was easy to get a big crowd of enthusiastic believers on their hands.  These financed the initial gains of a few whales, who then, had enough means to promote it more.  Such an opportunity happens only once.  There is no need for "dark forces" behind it: in fact, the failure of bitcoin to get seriously adopted indicates rather the fact that there are NOT very powerful dark forces behind it.  Bitcoin was just a hype with right timing, some distrust in banking, and unrealistic promises (that can't be accomplished with its technology, but which need sufficient technological insight and lack of starry eyes), sufficiently enthusiastic useful idiots and so on.  Overstock was a family affair: the big boss of overstock was talked into bitcoin by his own son.  Microsoft was on the look to hook onto any hype that could pull it out of its morass.  

If there were powerful dark forces behind bitcoin, they would have twisted Amazon's hand to accept bitcoin: the story would have been entirely different.  Bitcoin, as a payment system, is essentially a failure.  However, as a greater-fool game, it works marvellously, for the time being, like all greater-fool games, that promise quick riches (and yes, there are a few hundred of quick riches in bitcoin, living off all the donations by the "adoption" crowd).

You are underestimating the explosive combination of useful idiots believing in some libertarian dream, combined with the power of greed and the illusions of quick rich.  THAT is the power behind bitcoin.  Not "organized dark forces", but an explosive mix of foolish idealism and greed.  It is what keeps it up, and this is more powerful than any cigar-smoking "elite" making evil plans that never work out as expected.  Greed and naive idealism.  What more do you need ?  What is better than naive people thinking that their idealistic nonsense is going to make them immensely rich, combined with some smart money that sees the opportunity to exploit this enthusiastic propaganda for making a lot of bucks from starry-eyed greedy idealists "adopting" their new toy ?

Ok, but then the fee is not "proportional to the bitcoin price" as I thought you said.


Oh, but I fully agree with you.  I always say that bitcoin is by far LESS private than fiat.  Bitcoin is a privacy night mare.  It is absolutely NOT anonymous on the contrary.   This is why people doing dark markets with bitcoin, tumbling on an FBI tumbler, are out of their mind.

This is why I only consider seriously anonymous coins, like monero, and to a lesser extend, zcash (lesser, because not compulsory anonymous).  (DASH is a joke in that respect).

But people will soon learn this, and it will be another reason to avoid bitcoin.

Well, most speculative assets need some "bootstrapping" value.  Now, bitcoin is not entirely value-less, because it does have a (small) economic value, namely all the economic exchange it made possible or cheaper than could have been achieved with other means of payment (mainly fiat).  But apart from remittance where you might win somewhat, trying to hide from taxes, and mainly, dark markets, I don't see where the economic value of bitcoin resides.  Most of what you can do with bitcoin, you can just as well do it with fiat, and in those heralded cases where this would not be the case (say, in developing countries), bitcoin didn't really take off.  I'm truly sorry about that, because when I learned about bitcoin, I *was* part of the useful idiots being enthusiastic about that.  But as far as I can see, bitcoin has only a rather small niche application of true economic value, and its design errors/flaws make that this is exactly where it is now being hurt.  So I wonder whether this small "true, economic value" is strong enough to bootstrap the huge speculative value of bitcoin.  Moreover, I think that anonymous coins like monero are much, much better suited for this niche.

Now, there are two ways in which bitcoin is speculative: its volatility, and its greater-fool game.  Any volatile token is great game for speculators.  The problem with bitcoin is rather that it is not sufficiently volatile any more, and that alt coins are more lucrative in a cornered, volatile and manipulated market.  

The greater-fool game lasts until one runs out of greater fools.  When does that happen ?  When the general sentiment is that there starts to be more room on the downside than on the upside.  That's probably not the case yet for bitcoin, but it is closing in.  We're in the $1000,-.  Now what is a reasonable upside ?  A factor of 10 ?  Maybe.  A factor of 100 ?  Doubtful but not impossible.  A factor of 1000 ?  Hardly (market cap larger than USD market cap).  What's the downside ?  A factor of 10 ?  Most probably not.

However, after yet another factor of 10, when bitcoin will be around $10 000,-, this may look different.  A factor of 10 on the downside, back to today's value is not unreasonable, and a factor of 100 down (to $100,-), most probably not, but at that point, a factor 10 upwards is still doubtful, and a factor 100, hardly thinkable (market cap larger than USD market cap ?).

So bitcoin is nearing the point where there will be more potential downside than upside, at which point, greater fools will stop flowing in like crazy.

Why are they flowing in in the first place ?

Because a few people got immensely rich with almost no starting capital in bitcoin.  They became millionaires with just a few hundred bucks of starting capital.  There are at most 1000 people like that, and most probably less than that there are football stars, but it got people dreaming.  So they jumped in, making exactly those early adopters very rich, with the illusion that they too, would get rich.  But most of the upward room was already taken by then.  The factor of 10 000 or 100 000 that these few early adopters saw, is gone.  There's at most 10 or 100 left, and much more doubtful.  So, at a point, bitcoin's greater-fool incentive will crash.

What's left then ?  Bitcoin as a long-term store of value.  But for that, it still needs an incentive to find buyers believing in that long term value, when there is no hope for "gains" over other investments like real estate, stock and other investments with more of an economic reality behind it than just a belief system, as well in the monetary belief, as in the technological security of the thing.  

What bitcoin has over other stores of value, is that it is a crypto currency, where one can store the benefit made on other crypto market manipulations.   But essentially, this is a money pump from noobs to whales.  Noobs dream of becoming whales, but they mostly get burned.  In the end, after a while, people will get tired of being undone of their valuable assets through cupid getting-rich-fast games with crypto.  So, while bitcoin will still be the reserve currency for whales pumping alt coin value out of noobs, this will come to an end too at a certain point.


This is my idea.  I have no proof for that, apart from the fact that many, if not most things in life, happen that way.  Most systems with complex properties don't work out as they were initially planned, because, as I said, reality is complex, and people's designs are often based on simple (simplistic ?) assumptions.  People thinking too much, don't do.  And people who do, don't think too much.

The gentlemen code of conduct command that you should not play your wife on trading market or casino 

The thing with code, after looking at many code, i had the big impression the bottom end of the algorithm is very simple, and it's just huge bloating and lack of good design, it's why i started to make my own client, it can do everything with 30Mo of ram, and with the script that is almost finished, i'm sure you can program full node with 200l of script, in the overall the bottom thing is not so complex, but the way the c++ code is made and the choice that has been made make it look super complex, and i can't see the purpose of doing it that other than maximizing deployment to end user with shortest/cheapest development time.

Basically the development is not the priority.

Even a thing that i always find weird and i don't see anyone really speaking about, is that originally in node there is supposed to be a system of account, and for someone who is used to also deal with server side software, even mysql is lighter and less complex than running a bitcoin node, they are huge ram sucker, and are the level above in term of ressource use than what you can find in common lamp configuration, or even with tomcat server, and the way it's made with node who have to know the private key and sign the transaction themselves, without system of accounting, it's still weird, and there is a remaining of system of acoutning in all the nodes and rpc interfaces, but it's always disabled, saying it's obsolete etc, and it's where you see it's really oriented toward having single user system like wallets, but in the same time, wallets are not extremely well polished, below the standard you would expect from a true commercial application that you pay for.

But i know in the same time it's supposed to break a bit the client/server barrier with the way node are made, and symmetrical node who are in the same time client and server for the protocol, but in the same time it's still not what well though in either manner, no that practical to use on server side who manipulate several different account, neither on client side with application that are still not all that elaborated, and not that well made microsoft style with installer and all.

The only thing that can be seen who has really be though of and developed and spent time on is the whole parameters related to the pow / reward / inflation rate/block emission time etc, this yes, it has been though of clearly to have a system that balance itself, and he also integrated other things from hashcash.

For me it's not impossible someone with 40 year of wall street of sport bet or from high frequency trading world could come up with a good formula to emulate this kind of high stake poker game scenario to rise to the moon.

And the more i think about it, the more i think bitcoin has all quality to be a good thing for trader and big investors, as in the end, all the market value is 100% determined by investors, and they all have the same interest to see the coin rising, and there is not really anything that can truly burst the bubble because there is nothing to index the 'real value' on, all the value is determined 100% by investors, without regulation, or independant expert who can say how much a bitcoin should be worth.

And the mining / pow thing is plain game theory thing, maybe it's the system of hashcash and i can see the idea also from purely turning statistics into proof of work, but in the overall, i don't think that was really the main motivation for it, rather than to induce some kind of high stake, highly non deterministic scenario that is known to attract lot of money and resources.

But maybe also he didn't plan that much anything and now it's completely out of control and completely not what he had in mind in the beginning

It's hard to say for sure =)

Point is, they are doing that already with fiat and internet surveillance.  Why give this tool to EVERYBODY ?
Because with bitcoin, everyone can track you, not just the "shadow elite" ; and their deeds will also be more visible.  Why would they want that ?  And hell, what would make all the individual ego trippers that make up the shadow elite, speak with one voice ?

But that can nevertheless mean a very high fee !  Imagine that the fee is 0.001 BTC, but that BTC is $1 000 000,- for the sake of argument.  That would mean that you can't buy a thing that is worth less than $1000 with a bitcoin transaction !  You couldn't buy the then-equivalent of an i-phone with BTC, because it would cost 0.00012 BTC, and you'd have to spend 0.00022 BTC to buy it with a BTC transaction.
The only kind of stuff you'd start to be able to buy with a BTC transaction, is something like a car or so.

It would even hurt most people if they received their salaries in BTC, and had to pay half of the fee (other half for the employer).  Would you like $500 less on your salary just for the payment ?

So because 4 people have the same opinion different from yours, they are one and the same person

You illustrate the clumsiness of the coding (I never looked at the code itself in much detail) ; I was pointing out the clumsiness in the cryptography and in certain other technical mathematical aspects.  I used this as an argument to point out that who-ever made that design, was not a *mathematical genius*.

Now, I see your point, in that the evil creator of bitcoin didn't CARE about that, because that was not what was important, even though he advertised it in a misleading way, to be important.   My point was simply that a mathematical genius wouldn't even make some of those "mistakes" by neglect, like I would guess that an experienced C++ programmer wouldn't make certain clumsy constructions I think you are referring to, even by neglect.   If you are proficient in a domain, you don't screw it up, even if you're being casual.  If you know that you can never have 2^100 transactions on the block chain, you don't refer to them with a 256 bit hash.  Not even "by neglect".

So my idea was that this kind of crypto, and that kind of math, was actually DIFFICULT for the creator of bitcoin.

As to bitcoin being essentially optimized ON PURPOSE for being speculative by PoW, I don't think so.  I think it was simply because it was the idea of hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash .

Again, I don't put on the back of a conspiring evil genius what can be explained by "ignorance".  Everything is relative.  Also, the speculative aspect of collectibles is well-known, it is one of the problems with non-inflationary payment systems, and why famous works of art are such speculative items.

Of course, I cannot exclude that Satoshi was an evil sloppy genius.  I tend to think that he was not a math genius, was not an experienced cryptographer, and if I read your (and many other) observations, he was not a high-level C++ programmer either ; I have a hard time thinking that this was "on purpose sloppy" or even worse, that this was in fact pure genius of which we, with our limited brains, could not even fathom the scope of it.

I'm simply using Occam's razor.  

So, bitcoin is what it is.  It has now a life of its own.  And, as most of the things that happen in life, the reason for this is just a coincidence of many aspects, and has not entirely been planned that way.  Nothing ever is.  Reality is much more complex than all men's plans.

You misunderstood me there.  It is not because it is a free market, it is because crypto takes as an assumption, trustlessness.   Now, scam is a violation of trust.  In a trustless environment, there cannot be scam.  But that was more to illustrate the inappropriateness of crypto, than to say that scam is great.  Scam is NORMAL in a system where the basic starting point is trustlessness.  Whether that's a good starting point, is simply the (rethorical) question.


This is not what I'm saying either.  I'm simply saying that there is no "diabolical plan", just clumsy design.  This is not the first time, and it will not be the last time, that people with overblown egos think they've solved a world problem with a "solution" that doesn't live up to the plan, and then goes awry.  There's no need for conspiracy if stupidity can explain the thing.  Of course, *after the fact*, when the ugliness of the solution, despite its earlier hype, is becoming obvious, one can always explain this as an evil plan by an evil genius that foresaw this, and designed it that way.  But most of the time, if not always, one simply has to do with mistakes and errors.  Yes, you can think that
Jean Nicot introduced smoking of tobacco in France and then in England, with an evil plan to bring big business and cancer to people, and enslave them.  Most probably that was NOT his plan.


If your "refutations" consist in repeating that you refuted me, to lead back to a non-rational handwaving argument in which you vent your opinions that you take as evidence against my technical arguments, then there's no need.  I refuse to consider anything else but a rationally and clearly explained argument (and no, your long post in which you just put together your handwaving opinions which I shattered to pieces, does not count as "rational argument").


Until you can bring in a rational argument, I consider them not refuted.  Saying that "I'm wrong" and that you already told me that I was wrong, and vague opinions, are not accepted as rational arguments.  I can't learn much from them so I don't consider them.


No, they aren't.  There is no vote to be taken, because there are algorithmic specifications of the "right" answer.  The vote only consists in wanting to cheat the system or not.  NOT in having to make an open choice.  If all nodes are "honest", that is, if they all follow the algorithmic specification of how to act, then a unique consensus does arise and no choice is to be made, if we can place upper bounds on propagation delays in the network (or if we have to work with unbounded potential delays, but with infinitesimal probability, a high probability of consensus arises).

The only "vote" is to try to game the system, and NOT act according to the algorithmic specifications, in other words, to be a dishonest node.  Being a dishonest node is perfectly normal if there are rewards to be won, because then the algorithmic specifications are not necessarily those that bring in most rewards: we now have a "double contradictory incentive": maximize profits, or follow the rules.

If there are no rewards, there's no primary incentive to be dishonest apart from the gain from dishonesty itself and the will to break the system.  If there are rewards, then strategies that not necessarily want to break the system, but could end up doing so, in order to maximize rewards, will potentially develop and then you have a "vote".

But if you blindly follow an algorithmic determination, there is no "vote".  There's simply the outcome of an algorithm.  And there's no reward incentive to deviate from that algorithm, unless trying to game the whole system and hence break it.

In other words, there's a distinction between:
- trying to develop strategies that maximize rewards without trying to explicitly break the system (like selfish mining for instance)
- trying to game the system by breaking it (everyone will SEE it even though one cannot avoid it, like double spending, rewinding a transaction, etc...).

If there are no rewards, the only reason to not follow the specified consensus algorithm, it by trying to break the system.  There's nothing wrong with that.  If it works out, the system is simply broken and will not do any harm any more (I don't consider losing your holdings in a crypto as "harm" - this was the game you played and you lost) OR people will accept this kind of inconsistency and system breaking, and continue to use it, in which case, this kind of breaking becomes a standard accepted procedure in the system (for instance, there are maybe tricks to systematically double spend).

What nonsense. BTC will not reach $500000 by 2030 let alone $600000 fees.

Depends.  If you don't like your wife, you'd go for option B, no ?

I dunno.

I only remember this:


Probably your "refutations of my technical arguments" are of the same kind    "how many times have I written that I refuted your technical arguments"
Remember, I'm only here to learn stuff.  For myself.  That's all that matters.

It's certainly more useful for computer than to human  most human with a brain can do this sort of math naturally, but computer dont have a brain, and they strut a lot with non determinism :p

Irrational behavior is totally canceled out if the risk is as close to nil as possible (or zero, for optimum level) while the reward is as high as possible (or infinite, for optimum level).

But life situation is not like that.

You will generally see risk:reward that is 50:50, thus you end up having a situation that gives rise to maximum level of irrationality.

Because if risk:reward is truly in favor of the participants, then the house/broker/middleman/etc will go out of business asap.

It is much like playing roulette on whether black or white will turn up. The reward must match the probability of each turning up, i.e. 50%, minus some house edge so that the house will always make profit over the long term. Or else the house will go broke and there won't be anymore roulette to play. This wouldn't be game theory if you ask me. Game theory comes with randomness. And randomness comes with irrational behavior.

Or maybe game theory is in fact really no-brainer theory, but nobody wants to use that term because they would appear to be dabbling in dumb art. Thus they name it "game" theory to sound sophisticated. It aint' no not sopistikated to Dorky.

Edit:
By the way, making the risk:reward (or probability) 40:60 or 60:40 does not make it more sophisticated or predictable, but merely to reduce the irrational behavior. And the extent of the reduction depends very much on the will and intent of the game master. One man's loss is another man's gain. The rest goes to the game master as tip/commission/fee/etc.

From the moment you can reduce a system to a sum of interest like this, it become easy to see how randomness tend to be eliminated from game theory. And system tend to equilibrate on consencus where risk is lower, and irrational behavior cancel each other out.

I take clear cut example to show this, the figure are taken on purpose to show easily how it works, but you could twist the figure to get to odds that are less obvious to   resolve.

To see which option is best is you can play max 5 times, with figure of proba that are less obvious to determine which is the more rewarding strategy at the end with the lowest risk.

Understand WHAT are the objectives of the shadow elite over us with bitcoin.
1. To control us thru digital tracking.
2. To serve as settlement layer.

Which one is more important (first priority)? First and foremost, to control.

How will forcing us out of bitcoin and into altcoins with high fee will serve the objectives? Does not serve.

Can the shadow elite make do without the high fee and still fulfill its objectives? Yes.

Can the shadow elite fulfill the 1st objective without the 2nd objective with bitcoin? No, because there won't be reason to adopt bitcoin.

Can the shadow elite fulfill the 2nd objective without the 1st objective with bitcoin? No, because bitcoin will not be needed.

Don't worry about it.
If they want to push us to altcoins, they wouldn't be persuading us to adopt segwit and LN.
If that is just a distraction, then it is a very unnecessary, time-wasting distraction that can backfire.

Addresses can be blacklisted to enforce obedience.

In term of game theory, the shadow elite do not consider us sheep as some intelligent animals that will make the most optimal decision.


A lot of people, billionaire and millionaire, will not be exempted from paying transaction fee even if the shadow elite own 100% of all mining power.
Because the truly elite at the top only consist of the 13 bloodlines.
The shadow elite do not need bitcoin to prosper.
Bitcoin is not their money; bitcoin is their tool of total control.
Bitcoin was made not for them; it was made for us.
They don't need to kick us out to altcoins in order to control us.
You have to be born into the family in order to have special privileges.
Being a self-made billionaire does not cut it.
Just because Roger Ver and many others will become a new generation of multibillionaires do not mean they will be exempted.