Topic: Miner cartel, Bankster cartel, or an altcoin? Your choice? - page 17. (Read 33250 times)

You coming in days late and responding to old arguments which were invalidated by later discussion is adding burden on me. Please if possible read the entire thread first. I really don't have time to be the thread secretary. But I'll try to respond to some such as this one...

The small blocks are required because of this.

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Or maybe you should RTFM on game theory of cooperative games before you reply:


In other words, once some whales defect, they defect from ever (then or in the future) preventing a mining cartel from fucking them over. Thus they will have destroyed the perceived value of Bitcoin which is its immutability (remember Bitcoin is modeled on Nash's Ideal Money).

Satoshi deflected the request for larger blocks by saying that the limit could be raised in the future but then he purposefully never brought it up again and thus obviously knew it will be impossible to change it later. And it is impossible to increase the block size as you are now finding out. BU is getting their ass kicked.

Well, no. On the vanishingly small chance that this assertion has not been corrected downthread (I'm still catching up), there are other ways of splitting coins. As but one obvious example, even one satoshi of newly generated (post-fork) coinbase value is sufficient to poison any amount of pre-fork coins from being valid on the other chain. And once that transaction is made, all the resultant output is available for poisoning more pre-fork value.

With the existence of this trivial mechanism, your postulated need vanishes.


Most likely because we have not seen any evidence to support any link in the tenuous chain of assertions.


You appear to have a conclusion in hand that you have fallen in love with, and are trying desperately to reason backwards to justify it. Not necessarily a fruitless way to arrive at the truth, but likely to be fraught with multitudinous blind alleys.


Of course. But this is one area where Satoshi's design excels. On chain transactions fund the hashpower that secures the integrity of the blockchain. By naturally incentivizing beneficial mining. Any off chain activity dilutes this security.


orly? whowoudlathunkit?


Well, I guess that depends upon your preferred value of 'near'. Can Bitcoin accommodate displacing all economic activity today? Certainly not. But it could in some foreseeable tomorrow. Further, it could certainly accommodate well over the current demand, were it not for the stupid 1MB production quota. Lastly, it is poised to take advantage of the progress of technology -- which despite the claims of the malthusians among us, is on the cusp of another explosion in capacity.

Sure, when we hit the hockey-stick (or more properly the sigmoid inflection), Bitcoin will struggle to meet capacity demands. But that will be at a point where it has become much more a central part of the world's economic activity.


Well, dependent upon your definition of 'cheating'. Every new FRN conjured up out of thin air by the nefarious anti-miracle of FRB derives its value by stealing purchasing power from every holder of FRN-valued stuff at t-minus-zero. That is a very real theft of value. To refer to this theft as 'non-cheating' requires some funny mental gymnastics.


True. Which is one of the reasons we fight against a system where LN, with its attendant hub and spoke system, is the only real alternative for mere users.

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Ponders should have taken Mirceas covered bet on Ethereum and watch as MP got smoked on that one ^^.
Would have been rolling in the bank in Bitcoin.

I am going to agree with you that Bitcoin is an ultimatum that forces us all to compete. In that way, Nash's asymptotic ideal is underway...

I just happen to think the best for me to compete is to make a better decentralized consensus algorithm, with on chain scaling, and compete. For the reasons already stated in our discussion.

Do you think the Inverse Commons of open source and separately the two-way model of media (e.g. blogging with reader commenting versus watching TV) hasn't already been a fledgling viral phenomenon? Second order network effects on the way are for example app developers and their users as a two-way monetary economy (as opposed to Sarnoff’s Law), i.e. crowdfunding. My OpenShareBitNet blockchain will be about this economy.

Btw, our discussion got onto MP's radar:

http://log.mkj.lt/trilema/20170328/#179

I will just quote an interesting portion of the discussion:

I will not respond to all of @jbreher's post, because if he reads the entire thread, he will find we already discussed those issues he raised. And the thread is getting too long, noisy, redundant, and tedious. I think we're approaching the point of diminishing ROI in this discussion. Also I have other work to do and as usual I am sleep deprived and starting to get delirious. As tenacious as I am, I need to pick my spots and not try to do everything. Age 52 now.


You'll never get the support for a BU hardfork (aka HF) of the miners for a fork without a proven cartel, because the miners risk loosing everything if they lose the fork war because the whales have issued a digitally signed threat (standing since 2014) to change the PoW hash and leave all those miners with ASICs which have no use case. And I showed that the whales absolutely can win without any doubt, unless the whales fight each other (which I showed they would not do without some externality because otherwise it means they have destroyed themselves in any case). You need to catch up on the entire thread for a holistic understanding, instead of responding from earlier posts.

I really don't want to rehash the game theory discussion from upthread. Maybe @dinofelis or someone else will want to engage in it.


No you are incorrect, because you misunderstood the context. We were referring to the case (which your Andrew was discussing in the YouTube section I linked to) wherein the network is saturated and not all of the transactions have arrived and the miner must request them or mine an empty below without validating them.

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He was the $150 million DAO hacker. He is the central public spokesman of the The Most Serene Republic (TMSR). He had or has a million+ bitcoins ($1+ billion) and he sold 250,000 of them after Aug 2016. He claims he ended Hillary Clinton's election on July 16, 2016 when a hack reveal she intended to attack the TMSR. These and more James Bond intrigue are documented upthread.

Is MP the foul-mouthed, sperm whale, Socrates version of 007?  

Note I added a quote from Nick Szabo's latest blog (on the anthropology of money before agriculture) as follows:

If you have any evidence that MP is anything but a bloviating paper tiger, I'd be interested to see it.

MP tends to pop up from time to time, promising to annihilate anyone who does X. Then X occurs, and no ill effects are unleashed upon the perpetrator of X.

So which is the lie? Is the claim if heartlessness and irregard for 'lesser humans' a lie? Or is the claim of power a lie?

Finally getting the chance to start into this thread. Interested to learn that I have already been quoted several times. Something downthread may obviate what I am about to state. We shall see.


Well, let's think about how progress is made in academia. Most research is started upon a simple model. The implications of this model are followed unto their logical conclusion. Later, same or another author will build a more sophisticated model, and apply the same techniques to it to their logical conclusion. And on and on. Truth is approached incrementally.

Peter R has freely stated that he has not modeled all of reality in his first supply/demand paper. It does not make the paper _false_, nor _useless_ -- just limited in applicability.

So with that said, I challenge you to justify the leap from 'the aggregate S/D curve is not identical to the sum of individual miners' S/D curves, because each miner's S/D curve varies from other miners' to 'BU's emergent consensus is unworkable and broken'. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but I think that is your claim? Certainly, miners already need to deal with a panoply of nonuniform externalities (e.g., $/KJ, $/employee-hour, land costs...). Their orphaning probability curve is just one small contribution to their overall cost model, which all must be factored into the point where marginal-orphan-cost = marginal-transaction-fee.


I just wanted to acknowledge that this is the most simple, cogent, and concise explanation of the 'LN centralization problem' that I have yet seen. Kudos.


Your linked post essentially stated a case that there are interests within Bitcoin whose will is irresistible. But you did not go on to make the implied inferior antecedent case that their will includes a change to Bitcoin.

Let alone the fact that I have serious doubts about MP's unverified self-claim of omnipotence - aren't he and his acolytes running a patched version of bitcoin-qt 0.63 or somesuch? Hardly seems like a demand for changing the protocol.


Firstly, any change brought on by a majority of miners -- all acting quite obviously in their individual self interest -- does not imply the collusion of a cartel. Some market behaviors develop without communication between the principals. Of course, this is not to say the existence of a cartel is an impossibility, but it is to say that the existence of a change beneficial to miners is insufficient evidence of cartelization.

Second, even if a cartel would develop, that cartel is not free to enact whatever change they so desire. The 21M limit is one of the very few parameters that are all-but-universally held to be sacrosanct. If the miners were to enact an inflationary change, I would expect Bitcoiners to abandon Bitcoin en masse, thereby leaving the miners destitute with exorbitant unrecoverable sunk costs in hardware - unfit for any purpose other than transmuting expensive electricity into a worthless Bitcoin.


Indeed, the 1MB limit has had a huge impact upon the users of the system.

I think you are relatively new here. At least having arrived after the 1MB production quota started having a real effect upon the system. But to at least a subset of the participants, it was a given that the abolition of this limitation would be enacted before it became significant. To many, this assumption was indeed part of our 'contract'.

I guess it is our own fault for not having believed 'what it said on the tin'. However, whether it was this particular change, or the widespread notion that Bitcoin could adopt any innovation cooke up in the lab of altcoins, pretty much nobody thought Bitcoin immutable. At the time. I guess we've all got egg on our faces.

And indeed, I used to be of the opinion that the long difficulty retargeting was a stupid hack only used to make the code implementation easier than a smoother curve. I now at least understand that it has important implications related to changing the system. If this be intentional, this has me even more in awe of Satoshi's prescience.


You misunderstand XThin. In XThin, all transactions are individually validated by validating nodes before the block they are contained in is solved. Upon solution, the only thing requiring propagation is the list of transactions within the block (and the solution of course). If any validating node is missing a given transaction, it sends back a bloom filter including specifiers for the missing blocks. This drastically reduces propagation time for the block solution. See https://medium.com/@peter_r/towards-massive-on-chain-scaling-presenting-our-block-propagation-results-with-xthin-da54e55dc0e4 for a better explanation of the design, the theory, and experimental results.

And yes, this reduces the propagation impedance by a significant amount. But it does not reduce it to zero. Accordingly, while it shifts the point of intersection of the BTC/blocksize curve and orphan/blocksize curve, it does not eliminate the intersection thereof.


What mechanism other than agreed ordering is there to ensure the non-contradictory attribute? If differing nodes have different understandings of transaction ordering, then double spends are enabled.

/* I almost fat-fingered this post into oblivion. Hence, I am posting this interim missive before I catch up to the head of discussion*/

Our goal is fundamentally about removing the Prisoner's Dilemma that forms around lack of meritocracy due to rent seekers:

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I'm curious about his 4th order model of space-time, but I don't have enough bandwidth to bite on that diversion right now.


I believe the energy breakthrough may have already been discovered. It is informational in nature. By reducing friction, we increase potential energy. I am contemplating that the Inverse Commons is more profound than we have yet explained.

One little side street Nash also redefined Einstein's works on relativity it is said: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/john-nash-tweaked-theory-relativity-death-article-1.2241346

It will be awhile I think be for someone with significant interest allows me to explain this: http://web.math.princeton.edu/jfnj/texts_and_graphics/Main.Content/An_Interesting_Equation_and_An_Interesting_Possibility/An_Interesting_Equation/Equation.general.vac/From.PennState/intereq.r.pdf

It's true society would all benefit from an energy breakthrough, and it would interesting wouldn't it, if such a breakthrough was predicated on our procurement of Ideal Money technology?

Yes, better than saying we will strive, we might say it is our natural evolution to bring about stable money, this is important because once enough of us realize this then we will grow a stable vision for the future of our society.

It gives us a very very long far ahead point of reference for where we WILL go.

It's just bitcoin's greatest value and utility is as an inflation hedge which means if banks printed better money then bitcoin won't be so valuable as if they printed bad money.  But this just means the silly notion of “hyperbitcoinization” and the hyperinflation of fiat, is a misunderstanding of central banking.

Banks can adjust and serve the people with quality money, they have just never been put on such a stage and forced to participate in such race.  As bitcoin becomes more relevant they will be put in a do or die spot.

Nash's argument begins with that premise.

When we see money that gains or loses value in regard to purchasing power over time especially that which is observably hyper inflated in this way then its an admission that there can be either a less or more perfect money in regard to perfect stability of value. 

So we can ask “HOW perfect might we eventually get our money?” 

And you can't really argue, “Not very perfect at all” can you?

The difficulty and complexity of doing so its not a complete rebuttal or one I think that defeats the notion that there is such a possibility or at the very least that we will approach ideal money as a civilization, over time.

It is the argument of Nash Szabo Hayek that central banking, especially as it stands today (or before bitcoin) cannot achieve this and that their (central banks) mechanism and method for doing so actually destroys the quality in the sense of stability of value.

The gold system including when Newton pegged the pound to gold in the 1700's are examples when money had a strong/stable value, but there are weakness to such a system (and the bretton woods system) in regard to their macro-economic implications and long term reliability.

It was good and “ideal” when it worked, but the pressures that affect the system showed that neither were strong enough. 

An evolved idea is therefore needed.


Nash would agree to an extent I am sure:



But he is thinking of an even stronger standard ultimately:

Yes but all the metrics we use and have available are corruptible in some form, in regard to being a basis for value.  Even gold is not rare but has a cost of production limitations (and politically held limitations) which technology could change in a relative instant. 

Nash explains that an aggregate of our most stable commodity prices would limit towards ideal if properly chosen.  But its politically corruptible in reality isn't it?  Who chooses it?

Today I think most inflation targeting countries use different cost of living metrics, but again, who chooses them?
Yes and even that would need adjustment because the cost of energy could change drastically in the future:



It's the one thing we must figure out together, it cannot be forward designed.  It can't be a planned money as the planner is a signal that the money is corrupt.  And it wouldn't be just them that benefits or in other words this is a technology that benefits us all (most out of any technology possible at this time).

There is no perfect because humans aren't perfect and their needs and desires are not perfect and as subject to confidence determined by those factors are not deterministic and thus no system will exist such that variables can be adjusted in the economic system to achieve perfect balance to provide real growth without inflating wages or at the expense of future work. Central rate targeting IS the best known system we have today that is in wide use by the first-world. It has evolved from the use of gold-based debt type of system. But asymptotically we will reach a better alternative over time, one which may or may not resemble central bank rate adjustments, may or may not be centralized at all. We think that bitcoin/crypto serves that role as a more asymptotically ideal form of money because it removes the central man away from the picture of adjusting economic variables to the betterment of the health of society(because there is incentive for corruption). What he argued was that supply of the monetary base should be based on directly or indirectly on an known public metric so that it removes any negative shocks to the system when it changes, to preserve health of the economy and thus increase real growth. I thought that perhaps miner efficiency was one metric that is based on efficiency of creating electricity for the purpose of mining bitcoins... since increasing efficiency is directly linked to helping society grow as well as linked to the growth of supply. The person(s) who figure it out will get the rewards until the system adjusts, and society benefits from technological growth. However perhaps another way would be to inflate based on a GDP type metric that is derived from the use of the crypto-currency ecosystem.

There is some perfect, god only knows, metric in which all things can be compared in valuation.

Well then it makes me think that in the asymptotic case the many monies become so numerous as to be not fungible with each other, i.e. the actual perfect money which is individual the knowledge creation skill whose utility can't be transferred.

Fungible money is a middle-man rent seeking activity that free loads on knowledge creation due to Coasian barriers such as the Theory of the Firm which exists due to the tragedy-of-the-commons. This is why Eric Raymond's discovery of the Inverse Commons is so profound, because it is the first known positive scaling law of the commons (and of engineering for that matter, as opposed to the Mythical Man Month).

Lemme slow you down a little.  "Ideal" means conceptual in nature.  Nash defines Ideal Money as money that doesn't degrade in value over time.  This is a limit, he argues, we will asymptotically approach-a ceiling of perfect. It's not quite addressing what he is saying, to say it can't be brought about.

First and foremost its a useful thought experiment as a conceptual METRIC for comparison.

Run with that...

Relating to my recent posts in this thread on the proposal of Ideal Money by Nash and Hayek (and readers must understand my prior comments because I am not going to repeat all the context again in this post), wherein there is a standard of honest money (or monies) which the free market information system can anneal (converge) to an optimal dynamic fitness, I have listened to an interview session with Nash where he alludes to gold and silver as prior attempts to have such idealized power money. And this example of precious metals exemplifies my thesis as to why I claim that Ideal Money is impossible, because for example the value of gold and silver is not based solely on supply but rather on collective human psychology (i.e. public CONFIDENCE) which is not an absolute metric but rather subject to externalities.