Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 114. (Read 387493 times)

Your post means you agree fungibility is necessary and a coin isn't a coin if it isn't fungible.

I was attacking fools claiming it is ok not to be fungible, not people worried it might isn't.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Partly I agree with your worry, but actually... you know, there's plausible deniability: if they can't demonstrate you are associated with someone, you "should" be ok. If you aren't ok, then something is wrong at another level, and you have bigger problems anyway.

 
LuckyBit is currently an on-chain game, in that aspect it is similar to the good old famous satoshidice. Technically, we cannot run the same game with Monero (thank the anonymity!).
But, we're working towards a new off-chain version (similar to just-dice). Once we have that, I'm seriously considering a Monero version of it, no kidding.

EDIT: I assumed people are familiar with the on-chain, off-chain distinction. On-chain means you actually send a transaction to place a bet, off-chain means you deposit on a website and then play with "virtual money", and withdraw when you decide. Open blockchain.info and look at the Latest Transactions, you have a good chance to see one or two LuckyBit transactions going through These are bets, with payouts returned to the sending address, that is why we cannot run it with the CN protocole.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"


Sure, this makes sense, but they are still very small niches, surrounded by the vast main network: they wouldn't make any practical difference to the size of the real blockchain.

Yet you don't provide services in XMR?  I am somewhat puzzled.

Comedy gold.  Thank you.

I must be a "clueless fool randomly blabbering about things I don't even try to understand"

I agree with smooth. I run a gambling service and this is a very practical concern to me. Some people IRL might not accept coins that come from me, fearing in the next couple of months/years they would need to justify the coins are fully legit to some authorities. I'm not talking about newbs, but people who understand how bitcoin works, and what are the legal implications surrounding it now or in the near future. If you can get a 100% clean coin from an exchange for price X, or a coin tainted with whatever activity is not explictly fully legal everywhere on the globe, also for price X, which one do you choose?

Fungibility is broken in bitcoin, because of the perfect transparency. There is no "if the currency is legal there is nothing wrong with any coin", at least not in the near future. We are talking about a decentralized currency with very dissimilar and quickly changing legislations, so the opinion of the basic user is pretty much the only thing that matters. Note also that this argument of "legality brings fungibility", is fallacious in that legislation cannot fix technical weaknesses. We don't experience these issues with fiat simply because the basic user has no way to know what is the history of a note, and has no reason to fear other might know it and take him as responsible, so the analogy with USD is worthless.

Many people seem to just starting to find out how much bitcoin is transparent when they were actually assuming or expecting the opposite. Perceived fungibility (which the lack of is technically correct, and which again is the only thing that matters) is decreasing as this "discovery" keeps increasing.

My logic is not at issue.  At issue is the logic applied by courts of law.  I don't agree with it, I merely try to anticipate its consequences. 

The U.S. government does not consider bitcoin to be a currency.  It considers bitcoin to be property, a commodity.

That's not a name we like reminded of.

I was thinking more like steam, iTunes, sony entertainment network, envato, etcetera

I see another possibility which is simply many separate blockchains, along with highly liquid and safe trading between them (probably decentralized). If bitcoin can't scale up and there is huge demand for crypto then what will happen is that some number of alts (and maybe that number is very high) will also gain in value and liquidity.

i.e. scale horizontally.

EDIT: regarding XCN, the people who actually understand the technology better than you and me have weighed in and said that it adds little if anything on top of bitcoin-type chains with SPV.

We agree on that part. Traceability is an obstacle.

Fungibility is an essential property of any currency. If it is not fungible, it is not a currency. Following your logic, plumbers should not repair drug dealers pipes, waiters should not serve them at the restaurant, etc, because their US$ is not the same as any other US$. The issue is if you accepted currency for legal goods or services, if it is legal then there is nothing wrong with the money you've received.

Yeah, like inputs.io!

+1000

Anyone who attacks fungibility – and to my dismay there's plenty of people who do that – is a clueless fool randomly blabbering about things he doesn't even try to understand.

I'm glad you're not yet convinced minichains are "really enough to do it at this point."

Nobody (except Bitfreak and Cation) should already be convinced by a coin which has only taken the first few baby steps towards proving the promise of it's underlying technological innovation.

But aren't we all enthralled by the enticing *possibility* that XCN may live up to hype?  Exploding volume on bter says 'yes we are.'

Yes, 1TB of storage is trivial, bandwidth and RAM somewhat less so.  But it is not "safe to say" Bitcoin usage will not expode to "Visa levels" in the event of some black swan (I'm looking at you, Mr. End of Petrodollar Hegemony).

In the event of a dollar collapse type black swan, Bitcoin would either have to scale to petabyte levels and/or be relieved of less important transactions by XCN.

Remember, only two years ago people thought it 'safe to say" Bitcoin would never reach $1000...   

Even without any direct legal issues, fungibility may be an issue at the point of acceptance.

Would you accept bitcoins from a known drug dealer or terrorist?

I would not. I would also be reluctant to accept them from someone I didn't believe to be so careful about not doing so.





 

Considering there is one miner who has been mining (and is still mining) almost 25% of the coins this should not be too surprising.

http://minichain.info/address/CNCzEBdvxzKSsGGdeqdGv17zuyWLeyAFvw

Interesting it appears he hasn't sold any, although that could be a bug in the block explorer.

Altcoins provide a valuable role to serve the unbanked and specialty sectors.









"Borg coin has 500,000,000 coins to be minted. 500 million being based on the mass ton of the borg trans warp ship with a maximum rated speed of 29.968 warp factor with advanced trans warp drive. The fastest trans warp drive ship ever to exist. Join the collective now."

Yes, gmaxwell explains it well (nice analogy!).

I don't believe myself bitcoin will ever reach VISA-scale. I don't believe it is what we should look at, even if everything should be done to make bitcoin and other crypto networks payments as efficient as possible, of course.

But for any alt popping up with strong claims involving VISA-scale somehow (not necessarily mentioned explicitly), the blockchain size on disk is far from being the major problem.
Let's exagerate that view to make it clear: it's a bit like someone claiming "hey guys, my coin scales better than yours, once compiled, the executable for the wallet is only 150KB instead of 1MB! More people can run it on their computer!". Who cares?

Small high frequency transactions do not need to be handled by a blockchain, they can be performed under any number of microtrust based services which already exist and which can easily be created. Later, when applicable, solutions like sidechain can be added.

With most new technologies people try to apply it to everything, replacing what already exists, needlessly, turning something simple and effective in to a bloated mess.

Often approaching a technology with the question "how does this fit in with what already exists?" produces a far better result.

binaryFate, I enjoy your posts and I'm quoting yous because it is the latest to mention VISA scale.  I found the following interesting.  It comes from the most recent(?) discussions on the 1 MB block size limit. 

The bolded is mine as well as a video link illustrating gmaxwell's point



https://screen.yahoo.com/shimmer-floor-wax-000000185.html

It's nice to read, something worth reading.