Topic: Open Letter to GMaxwell and Sincere Rational Core Devs - page 2. (Read 34841 times)

What an interesting post. I am sorry I missed it when it was very active a few months ago.

It was compelling enough to read it from start to finish. The OP is a poor communicator but he does raise an very intellectually interesting argument. His argument was summarised upthread is as follows


Essentially the OP views bitcoin as a force or weapon that will compel fiat to evolve into more competitive forms to compete with bitcoin.

The OP makes the following points in a compelling manner.

1) That bitcoin can never fulfill Nash's concept of "ideal money" as it its value increases over time due to its deflationary nature.

2) That the value of bitcoin over the long run may be close enough to a stable value metric to force fiat to evolve pushing it closer to Nash's concept of "ideal money" over time. In this it can serve as the "other alternative" who's existence ushers in and accelerates the development of government created "ideal money".

On these two issues I agree with the OP. However, he goes on to make further arguments which are much less compelling.

3) He argues that we should abandon all attempts at increasing bitcoin transactions per second and work towards locking bitcoin into its current state forever so that it may function as said "other alternative". Thus leads to the argument that all attempts to increase bitcoin's price by making it more useful as a currency are misguided as such actions would serve to destabilise bitcoin's predictable "value" rendering it less suitable to serve as an "other alternative" that leads to a reform of fiat currency.

This argument is flawed in that it assumes "value" can be stabilised by artificially suppressing transactions per second. In a consensus system this is likely not possible.

An example may help here:

For most of human history Gold functioned as an "other alternative" forcing other attempts at monetary systems into its orbit or into extinction.

Bitcoin in its current state capped at 1MB blocks can for our purposes here be very grossly conceptualised as a more advanced form of something that has existed for some time. Imagine a primitive system of trade where people exchanged raw gold nuggets for goods and services. As each nugget would be different transactions would be limited and relatively time consuming/expensive to conduct as each nugget would have to be individually weighed.

In this scenario an increase in transactions per second can be envisioned as the transition from a trade in raw nuggets to the trade in hammered strips of common weights. This advance would facilitate trade by reducing the cost of a transaction aka the gross functional equivalent of an increase the transactions per second.

An even further increase in transactions per second would be for the king to mint coins of an official standard weight. This further increases the transactions per second at the cost of centralising the system. We know from history how this centralisation proves problematic over time.

What the OP is advocating is an artificial restraint on bitcoin development. It is the functional equivalent of trying to halt the development of the gold trade in the above example at the nugget stage. It is impossible because you are trying to restrict the system into an inefficient form when broad consensus will eventually develop for a transition. Even if you could somehow succeed in causing a deadlock the market will route around the artificial restraint. In the case of gold nuggets the market could and likely would eventually transition to a new standard of "value" perhaps silver coins instead. In the case of bitcoin the cryptocurrency would likely be supplanted by an altcoin.

Bitcoin will not ossify until it is perceived by market participants as being perfected. To attempt to lock it into place prematurely is doomed to failure as the consensus will follow the self-interest of the participants and the self-interest of the participants is to perfect Bitcoin.

The OP thesis #3 was also disproved by the recent fork of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. This split was ultimately a dispute over how best to perfect Bitcoin. There was no sizeable contingency for status quo forever and such a movement will not form until Bitcoin is widely viewed as perfected. This will probably happen someday in the future but it must form naturally not via an artificial attempt to "capture" Bitcoin.

4) The OP follows an extreme version of efficient market theory arguing that the "markets are God" and that the markets are perfect know the future and are always right. He uses this basis to argue that his position is based in accepted economic science implying that dissenting views are unscientific.

This approach is flawed for several reasons. First the OP bases his economic theory on what most traditional economists would consider fringe thinkers. The dominant school of economic "science" is currently some ideological offshoot of Keynesianism. The OP's favoured economists especially Nash are minority views in the field. I happen agree with the OP that his cited minority views are likely correct and Keynesianism and its children will eventually be looked on with disfavour, however, any argument that this is settled science is misleading.

Finally regarding the OP views of extreme efficient market theory it is very unlikely this perfection is wholly descriptive of markets composed of human actors. The best sources to convince you of this are likely billionaires who have made their fortunes exploiting the very inefficiency traditional market theory says should not exist. Although George Soros is not my favourite billionaire his writings on economic reflexively highlight this well.

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new Wall Observer thread incoming!!!

     

/thread

one of my posts was deleted for being off topic.  yet numb nuts repeats the same post 7 times and nothing and no one says nothing.

I'm in a zoo, with monkeys.  I have no bananas left.

Burt, you're always my friend... but i definitely don't agree at all.  Bitcoin can scale if Blockstream gets out of the way.  That's all I'm gonna say as I've
argued this to death in a dozen threads.

Here is a sad thread that proves that Bitcoin is not good for micro-transactions.  Micro-transactions need to move to another crypto and leave Bitcoin for larger value transactions:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/blockio-scam-1829494

OP believes that Bitcoin will force the banking system to invent the "Ideal Money", so it is not important for him if, and how much of a role they will play in Bitcoin.

I think banks and governments will try to keep their current system working as is and they will try to destroy Bitcoin as soon as a critical level of some parameters are reached. And they will have a lot of different powers to achieve that.

You're refusing to answer the question? It's because you can't, isn't that right? It contradicts your Ideal Money dogma, doesn't it?


What useful role can banks play in Bitcoin at all? Everything they can do, the individual can do better. If you mean that everyone becomes their own bank, I guess the statement could be sensibly argued, but I doubt that's what Nash meant

you are in front of a group of intelligent people.  You have made an assertion and asked me to back it up with reason.  I have repeatedly told you the assertion is false and asinine.  And you repeatedly are making fun of me for not being able to come up with the reason for an unreasonable argument.

How many more posts will be in this thread of you being completely unreasonable and assertive about  it?

You're refusing to answer the question? It's because you can't, isn't that right? It contradicts your Ideal Money dogma, doesn't it?

I don't agree with the assertion its silly, how am I supposed to give reasoning for it when there is none?

What useful role can banks play in Bitcoin at all? Everything they can do, the individual can do better. If you mean that everyone becomes their own bank, I guess the statement could be sensibly argued, but I doubt that's what Nash meant


Respond with actual reasoning please, it's not too much to ask, I think you can do it

false.  you are making an ass out of yourself.

What useful role can banks play in Bitcoin at all? Everything they can do, the individual can do better. If you mean that everyone becomes their own bank, I guess the statement could be sensibly argued, but I doubt that's what Nash meant

Why aren't any of you capable of -

• reading this question
• answering this question

I actually want to hear your erudite answers, but you seem highly adverse to reading or answering the actual question I'm asking.

ive answered it like 5 times in different ways I don't think you understand what banks are for.

How about this, the times you are thinking about, where there are no banks, is beyond your lifetime.  Banks do far more than a crypto currency can do, certainly at this point in time.

Nonetheless you certainly aren't understanding your question. The individual cannot do what a bank can do, thats a silly assertion.  Read szabo or hayek again.

What useful role can banks play in Bitcoin at all? Everything they can do, the individual can do better. If you mean that everyone becomes their own bank, I guess the statement could be sensibly argued, but I doubt that's what Nash meant

Why aren't any of you capable of -

• reading this question
• answering this question

I actually want to hear your erudite answers, but you seem highly adverse to reading or answering the actual question I'm asking.

Hayek gives the same argument based on the same conceptual basis of the introduction of a "good" international money which evokes competition (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@jokerpravis/internationally-ideal-money-the-re-solution-of-nashian-and-hayekian-economic-theory):


In comparison to Nash:

Good you have read Hayek:


Now that we understand Nash to be inline with Hayek we can start to understand the relationship.  Banks are good, they can just be better, because they can control inflation it IS possible for them to print ideal money, they just don't because there is no incentive.

Just for sake of argument: the banks could hold your privatekeys in this proposed future,
since the average person could not be trusted to protect their own wealth. The banks would hold
and insure their btc. This is contrary to what Satoshi intended, "be your own bank", but ultimately
the average person is not qualified to fully protect themselves from all types of btc theft.