Topic: Replacing Bitcoin with something less wasteful (split from Is deepbit.com stealing coins?) (Read 3912 times)

Wow. Guess this is what I get for not reading the thread fully... why did I take this guy seriously at all?

5BTC up for grabs:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-challenge-55318

Holy crap dude, I'm done talking to you.  It's obvious you have some sort of emotional problem...  I don't think I've ever seen so much name-calling and insulting in the same post anywhere.

Anger is a sign of weakness

what a nice, convincing, and well thought out argument.  
and why do you always have to resort to name-calling? (you know... "girl", "junior", "kid") definitely sounds like something a well educated person would say.

I'm beginning to think you're a huge troll.

Once anyone provides an argument to the contrary, you immediately:

• insult the person with names such as "kid", "cranky child", and "little girl"
• ignore the argument and change the topic
• provide a meaningless post detailing a totally unrelated theory and your personal life as a supposedly successful businessman

since i'm such a nice person, i'll even quote all of your posts (interesting parts bolded!)
wow, tons of educated comments there. that must be what they taught you in your 3+ universities, right? not to mention that you get bored in less than 1.5 minutes. i'm beginning to wonder how you even got your high school diploma.

by the way, i'm still waiting on those transcripts, or at least pictures of the diplomas. just in case you went on google and copy pasted a few university names.

bonus round:
let's see if i can guess his response! (assuming he's not too butthurt to reply)

• UR A HUGE FAGGOT AUTISTIC JEW KID ON AMPHETAMINES, I'M NOT GOING TO WASTE MY PRECIOUS TIME ON SCUMBAGS LIKE YOU, I'M IGNORING U
• blablabla strawman blablabla red herring blablablabla game theory blabllabla ad homiem
• bitcoin is a flawed sytem from the start. a better way would be to use microfluxations within the economist's pens to generate a quantum singularity that would be protected from change due to game theory blablablblabla i have no actual design, but that's only because my time is so precious bla blablabla...
• JOKES ON YOU, I'M A TROLL. THAT MEANS I WIN!!1!1111

Bzzzt! Wrong again. Sorry you couldn't keep up with the adults. The project I referred to was the BOINC project, clearly anything that isn't spoon fed to you is automatically above your reading comprehension level. There was an extra-credit question had you answered correctly, so you are now 0 for 2. With regard to the Greencoin posting, that the distinction between work in the requirements phase and a "failure" is lost on you just tells everyone you wouldn't recognize either one even if one came up and bit you on the ass. Keep pretending, it's fun to watch, kind of cute actually.

Thanks for once again confirming you have no knowledge of the software development process, firsthand or otherwise. Actually if the developers are any good at all they could get a real job doing it and one would hope they do. This is probably the most common reason for open-source projects being abandoned, near the top of the list along with simple application obsolescence and the developers finding something more interesting to do. Go wander around SourceForge a bit, it's a great place full of nifty stuff and home to some favorites of mine, but the ratio of dead projects to live ones there must be at least 4 to 1.

If we could find someone with sufficient background in cryptography, it might be interesting to open a discussion of work towards Bitcoin 2.0, although I of course would rather like the name TulipCoin, it captures the current reality of Bitcoin so well. I would look for someone who could show some relevant exposure from a related bachelor's degree or higher, say in math, computer science, or quantitative methods in economics. Yammering teenage monkeyboys may come back later after they grow up.

How did you ever get so simple minded, are you an American 12 year old on Ritalin? If either of my kids were as witless at that age as you are so proud to be, I would have had an obligation to society to either get them fixed or put them down for good. However if you are much older than 12, it raises the question of who gets you ready to be picked up by the short bus each morning. If you weren't already Sargeant Micropenis, we could call you Special Ed.

You may stand at ease, Sargeant Micropenis. Resume being ridiculous at will, we know you can't help yourself 

I rather do enjoy proving people wrong, yes.

You didn't propose a solution based off of some other work.  You linked to a thread where someone had proposed a solution (and a failed one at that).  If you want to use someone else's proposal as your own - fine, but just say it up front.  And again, that "solution" in the thread you linked to - it doesn't work.

The guys maintaining the source code are also the ones continuing to engineer new facets of the software.  They are one and the same in this project.  Many suggestions are made by the community and by the developers themselves, and some of them are chosen to be implemented.  To say that Bitcoin cannot evolve from its current state is to be blatantly ignorant of the current development process.

Wow, I guess you really showed me, monkeyboy. Obviously you are enjoying being a winner somewhere in your own mind, aren't you?

I *proposed* a portion of a solution based on work from another project. With one exception, it was very clear that not one person posting in reply was motivated to go research that project. You aren't all ears little girl, you are all mouth, and such a funny little monkey at that, one for whom everything is black and white and must be settled right now before you pee yourself in mortal angst 

Doing source code maintenance is a long, long, long, long, long way from architectural ownership for the design of bitcoin. Source code maintenance is the stuff I've outsourced offshore many times while keeping the proprietary value of the creative engineering and design work close at hand. Of course you need not hear of firsthand experience in either of these areas since you already know everything about them anyway, don't you?

Nothing is settled here, nothing is closed, it doesn't have to be nor will it be any time soon. When this bitcoin thing blows over as it almost certainly will like so many other half-baked internet phenomena before it, use it as a learning experience.

You started out in this thread stating that Bitcoin was wasteful, and that there were better ways to go about securely recording transactions through p2p.  Now, it seems you have redacted that statement (or at least refuse to support the latter half of it with anything of substance), and have simply reverted to attacking Bitcoin.  Which is fine.  I just don't want someone going around stating that Bitcoin is inefficient, and there is a better way, when so far, there is NOT a better way.  If someone comes up with a better method of securing a transaction log than what is present in Bitcoin, then I'm all ears.  But I was (rightfully) skeptical when you came in here as a know-it-all who claimed to have a solution much better that what Bitcoin accomplishes.

I was attacking you only because you made claims that you couldn't support (and I knew you wouldn't be able to).  Now that it is obvious to both of us that you no longer wish to make such claims, I rest my case.

Also, regarding the "architectural ownership" of Bitcoin - it's an open-source project.  There are several developers working on maintaining and updating the Bitcoin client.  Gavin is one of them, Philip is another.  Sorry, you are wrong that no one has taken ownership of the project.

Were bitcoin to grow into anything of consequence, scalability would still be a factor. Viewed in this light you are correct, it is most likely a non-issue.

The efficiency of Bitcoin mining hardware has already increased by three orders of magnitudes (in terms of MH/W).  

Athlon 64 ~=- 0.02 MH/W   
AMD 5000 or 6000 series GPU ~= 2 MH/W    (peak 3MH/W w/ tweaking & undervolting)
45nm FPGA custom miner ~= 20   MH/W

The desire for more efficiency (and thus higher profitability) will continue to drive efficiency gains.  There is no open ended energy requirement.  The annual revenue from mining puts a limit on the expenditures for the network.  If anything as time goes on the move towards FPGA (higher capital costs and lower energy cost) which further limit the energy cost to maintain the network.  Personally I think the network is overbuilt by a factor of 2x to 3x but as mining becomes a lower margin operation I expect some marginal miners to continue to idle.


Then propose one.  The problem is non-trvial.  How do you acheive consensus in an anonymous network?

The proof of work is the method Bitcoin uses.  If you believe there is a superior method THEN SHOW IT.

You just went on a rant.
Bitcoin is inefficient BLAH BLAH BLAH
There is a better way BLAH BLAH BLAH
I can't tell you what it is but Bitcoin sucks.
If that is the extent of your contribution then the logout button is over there.

Bitcoin is inefficient compared to a centralized network.  Satoshi even discuss that inefficiency in his paper.  There may be alternatives but YOU haven't proposed one.  The cost of the Bitcoin network (both hardware and energy) deters an attacker.  A security guard at a bank which doesn't get robbed is equally inefficient.  It is one component of the costs in that system (physical money).  There may be other ways to deter an attack with lower cost but so far you haven't shown one. 

It is good engineering practice to seek energy efficiency. It's not just good, it's expected, it's not optional any more. It's hard to believe that an open-ended energy requirement was anticipated in the design of bitcoin. There may have been some rationale about increasing powerful and efficient computing meeting needs in the future, but that doesn't count for much. If I had a bitcoin for every "it's gonna be great!" thing that was just around the corner and then never came to pass, I would have quite a pile of game tokens, I could use them to buy one of them there jet packs everyone uses to commute these days 

Since the bitcoin system was orphaned by its designer and there doesn't seem to be anyone else up to taking architectural ownership, there's no reason to believe that the core of it will evolve. Consequently, the best case expectation is that progress will replace bitcoin with something that addresses its shortcomings, both technical  ( for one, it's an energy pig ) and behavioral ( de facto centralization of its operations in currency exchanges and other institutions cloned from the bad world some would tell you that bitcoin will replace ).

Other than that,  I agree with you, raping children is not nearly as bad as raping and killing them, which is why a comparative advantage case is often hard to win 

I see my initial comment ended up starting a whole thread. I would have never imagined lol.

Here's some food for thought to those that view the mining process as wasteful and not Eco-friendly. Bitcoin mining is how Bitcoins are minted. When a country mints their physical coins and paper money they are wasting far more than what bitcoin mining does. If you're not familiar, go look up how gold mining is done. Then tell me what is more wasteful. Seems a lot more Eco-friendly using up electricity than mining for gold or other precious metals.

Currently bitcoin is a toy, and will most likely remain one until more amusing toys come along to replace it. It is at a best a 1.0 effort that while internally consistent in its logic, didn't anticipate that opportunists would centralize its use and made no provision to prevent it from being turned into just another piece of script ( say that slowly and clearly ). I suppose you could say it is successful as a simulation game within its own limited definition.

The absence of public ownership for bitcoin's design is probably the best indication that its creator recognizes its limitations. If he doesn't at this point in time, one would sincerely hope he hooks up with some management who could make better use of his talents than he can working by himself. It's a shame that he evidently developed bitcoin to this point without partners or peers to give him reality checks along the way.

Your viewpoint that criticism that causes you cognitive dissonance must also come with something that relieves it or otherwise the critic is a bad actor is one of the most childish things about you. You see, your favorite toy can suck out loud and no one who says so is obligated to spare your feelings about it. Wearing your intellectual immaturity on your sleeve is merely your emotional deficiency, which I suspect is mostly a result of your inexperience and lack of education.

Sorry, no one has to fix bitcoin in order to point out areas where it could use improvement. It's funny that this even needs to be said but appropriate given your born-yesterday-and-likes-it-that-way attitude.

It's obvious you spent a lot of time thinking about behavioral economics before you LOL'd it. If you could ever get your head out of your own ass long enough to catch up with the rest of the world, you would already know how very simple-minded, quaint and parochial your insistence on rationalism is, that sort of thinking was already well on its way to becoming passé before you were born.

By the way, what are you a sargeant of? I was a captain by the time I left the U.S. military, the early 1970s was a nasty time to think about making a career of it, I'm very glad I didn't, notwithstanding it helped me grow up a lot in a hurry. Clearly you could benefit from challenging yourself by getting out of your comfort zone, not that I would suggest the military as a first choice.

Folks, please avoid using ad hominem attacks while you are on the Newbie forum.

Tell me, what industries exist that don't depend on game theory in any way? Your small little business could go away tomorrow and the masses wouldn't miss it either. What point are you trying to make there? However, just like how you would be missed by your customers (at least I'd hope that they'd miss you...), the Bitcoin community would be lost without the miners. You see, it is a common misconception that the miners don't do anything. That isn't true. The service that miners provide is securing our transactions into the blockchain. Without that, there is nothing stopping someone from spending the same Bitcoin outputs to multiple people.

Once again, another post full of fancy words that say nothing.  You still haven't explained how your superior version of a virtual, decentralized currency would work.  I'm disappointed - I expected more for someone who came barging on to this forum blurting out about how awful Bitcoin is.

Yes, my comment on the economics of mining presumes rational behavior.  What do you base your own forecasts and predictions on - irrational behavior?  LOL.     No, real-world people won't always act rationally, but there are usually plenty of rational people around to correct for the irrational ones.  Especially within a project with as many participants as Bitcoin has.  And it would be downright foolish to base a business analysis like this on irrational behavior.

I got what I wanted, it's not about you, junior. It's been easy enough to sort out the people around here who actually know something about anything from the hopeless fanboys using bitcoin to fulfill a desperate emotional need to be part of something they perceive as successful. If they are teenagers that's to be expected, but there's clearly a lot of arrested development running around here that just never grew up or had any success.

I finally did get some useful information that I think will help my clients to avoid making imprudent choices with respect to Bitcoin World 1.0, and I gained a better understanding of how it has painted itself into a corner in which it will remain until it passes out of general interest completely or becomes something other than a second rate collection of clones of traditional institutions. It was interesting while it lasted, too bad currency exchange and speculation resulted in it becoming a de facto centralized system of the type some would tell me it was meant to replace.

It's really unfortunate that no one competent and willing to take ownership of the design decisions is around. That alone is enough to set expectations very low. There's an "enterprise software" company, Computer Associates, that would be an ideal final resting place for bitcoin if there ever turns out to be any real money in it. CA is known as the mausoleum of software, it creates nothing but instead acquires the work of others who by and large disconnect from their work after selling it. The result is that the software is never enhanced, it's only maintained enough to keep it salable by people who only ever work around the edges of it. Bitcoin already seems to be frozen in amber, so there wouldn't even be an uncomfortable transition to the realization that everybody's favorite cryptocurrency is in an evolutionary cul de sac.

BTW, your comment on the economics of mining presumes rational behavior, and yet economic behavior and choices are full of examples that are famously irrational, enough so to merit a Nobel Prize for work done in this area. Here's a Sunday magazine section light read on the subject, there's tons more where this comes from if you are interested.

harvardmagazine.com/2006/03/the-marketplace-of-perce.html

Oh, and regarding "the unspoken rules of investment". Are they part of another magical cult? Is that why they are unspoken?

The return to mining?  You would think that someone with so many prestigious degrees would use proper terminology.  How about, "the return on mining", "the return on investment of mining", or "the profitability of mining" will tend to zero over the long term.  "The return to mining" does not mean what you were trying to say, hence my confusion.

Even then, I do not believe it to be true.  Anyone with their head on straight will only make investments when the projected return on investment (inclusive of risk) is above the real cost or opportunity cost of those funds.  In the case of a real cost, the projected return would have to exceed the cost of financing - say, 5-6% for someone with good credit on a small loan.  In the case of an opportunity cost, the projected return would have to exceed the return of other potential investments - say, 4-5% on a (virtually) risk-free CD.

So no, I do not agree that returns will tend towards zero over the long term.  Returns will tend towards the cost of funds.  No one is going to invest in hardware when the return is less than they would receive if they just threw the money into a bank CD.

My analogy doesn't fail at all.  No, Bitcoin is not an industry, but analogies don't require the items being discussed to be of the same type - analogies only require similarities to be present.  And the unspoken rules of investment for any given industry apply just as much to investments made towards Bitcoin mining.

Maybe you should have studied more while acquiring your dozens of degrees.  Then you would know what an analogy is.  

Oh, and you still haven't shown me how you would solve any of the problems that Bitcoin solves with regards to a decentralized currency.  So far, your "solution" has fallen flat on its face.  It doesn't work.  Come up with something that works, THEN come back and tell us all how Bitcoin is wrong.

If you're looking for a serious response here, I'd argue it'd go under either 7379 (Computer Related Services, Not Elsewhere Classified) or 6099 (Functions Related to Depository Banking, Not Elsewhere Classified (which includes wire clearinghouses and EFT networks)).

But I suspect this is intended as a sarcastic jab, in which case I'd note that lack of an OSHA classification doesn't stop pyramid schemes from being a major industry either. Also that your habit of making such asides might be contributing to peoples' tendency to construe you as a deliberate troublemaker instead of actually taking you seriously

Glad to help.

If you have time, I think this thread has some interesting ideas for an alternative vote-vetting system, although it's far from a complete proposal as yet (most notably, there are some significant bootstrap problems that need to be addressed).

Last thought for the evening, I tried to look up the SIC ( Standard Industrial Classification ) for bitcoin mining, it's not there. Too bad the codes are 4 digit decimal, "1D10T" would provide an easily remembered designation  

Qoheleth, thanks again for the thoughtful input.