Topic: The state of crypto - The only serious thread on the subforum - page 16. (Read 19481 times)

^this x 1000

so much of crypto i could describe as solutions looking for a problem.

"All that is required?" You act like this is no big deal. It is a big deal, and it is quite likely it doesn't exist. "Even if it is less secure" does not work, by the way. You would have to qualify that with it only being slightly less secure. and then further qualify in what ways it is less secure ("secure" is not really a one-dimensional scale)


PoW mining facilities don't have to be large. Outlawing big mining facilities would likely be the best thing that could happen, because that would shatter them into a million smaller pieces that could not be effectively regulated. Subtle pressure is perhaps more problematic. See below. Governments are not (always) dumb though; maybe this is why no one is really pushing banning.


First mover advantage is overrated anyway. Historically only a few first movers actually ended up dominating. How do you make a law out of something that requires cherry picked exceptions to support? Seems like bullshit to me.


If that's true then we are home free when it comes to mining because countless people grow weed and these busts are routine enough to be part of the landscape, with no real effect on the ultimate market situation. PoW with 1/10 the number of mining facilities as there are grows would be very secure, very decentralized, and highly resistant to being undermined by regulation (unlike Bitcoin now run by a few big farms and pools). But see above of course. If governments don't ban and start busting people then this doesn't happen.


No, it really is "he doesn't understand how it works", or he does (or more likely people who work for him do) but he actively wants to undermine  it. "The blockchain" is nonsense without a native currency. Even PoS requires the ability to issue native tokens in order to incentivize people to do it (and even then in current PoS systems, many don't even bother). Hash chains (which is what you are left with if you remove the native issuance) are nothing new and not particularly interesting.

The bigger question behind all this in my mind is whether crypto actually solves any useful problem that anyone cares about. Outside of gold bugs and some anti-Fed zealots no one really cares about "fixed supply" and all that stuff. The existing banking system works pretty well for swipe-your-card-and-pump-gas. Likewise for e-commerce. With Paypal, Swipe, etc. even ordinary people can do convenient payments via the existing banking systems. Where is the compelling use case for crypto coins? I'm not sure it exists (outside of a complete collapse 10x worse than 2007 that makes people demand something radically different).

Overall a good balanced post and a refreshing change from the usual pure-hype/FUD dichotomy with little actual thought.

Id like to make some comments about the general theme that eMunie is complex.  In actual fact, the core fundamentals, algorithms and protocols are quite simple.

I guess it manifests an assumption of complexity simply because it has the potential to be all encompassing.  Almost every single component of the platform is a stark departure from current technology and not only is there a steep learning curve to understand it, it can also be difficult to detach from the "Bitcoin" way of thinking.

After working on this for 2 years now, I find myself in the same position, but in reverse.  Detaching from the "eMunie" way of thinking when participating in discussions about Bitcoin and others can be an issue.  I find myself slipping up sometimes and misunderstanding, even though I spent 12 months, full time, experimenting and taking Bitcoin apart to understand it prior to starting eMunie.

Hopefully over the coming months, with more comprehensive information this illusion of extreme complexity can be relieved some.

some say the blockchain tech is more important/bigger then bitcoin itself.

however i think the whole blockchain and like ideas as the biggest thing holding alt to fiat p2p currencies back.

also almost all this crypto community is about is ROI, making a currency that increases in value so all the early adapters (ie us), get the spoils.

like i've always said, whats the point of making an alternative to the greedy banker controlled fiat if we ourselves become the new breed of greedy bankers  

you got to look more at what the mass' need. not what gets a few nerdy underground users off.

I must say that this is for the most part a very balanced assessment. I do have some comments:

1) Bitcoin. The most fundamental problem I see here is how can it scale, and at the same time keep miner incentives after the emission runs out? I do not see a solution here that does not involve constant forking, centralized  control etc. This only leaves Dogecoin and Monero as viable POW alternatives because of the small but non zero tail emissions.

2) Monero (Cryptonote). The one fundamental problem here is bloat / blockchain size. Pruning will not solve it in any significant fashion since it is a linear saving in space vs exponential growth. What does have a very significant chance of solving this problem is a continuation of Moore's, (processing), Kryder's (storage) and Nielsen's (bandwith) laws. This is comparable to someone betting on credit cards in 1951 when Diner's Club was launched. Credit cards also could not scale with the technology of the time (tabulating machines and punch cards). By this token Bitcoin would be Diner's Club, Monero has a chance at American Express or even possibly Master Card or Visa. Dogecoin also has a chance here to compete here as an open ledger if it steps up to the plate and fixes it blocksize limit issue. I do not see governments censoring centralized mining as an issue in Monero because with Monero it is an all or nothing proposition, since a miner would not know what transactions to censor. In any event regulators are focusing on service providers (way easier to regulate) than miners. The environmental issue can be mitigated to a large degree by using the "waste" heat for space heating since the heat  only has value when compared to the electricity consumed, if the mining is performed in a in a distributed fashion.

Note: As a baby boomer, I have actually worked with punch cards and have also sent a telegram, so that does give me a strong bias towards the continuation of  Moore's,  Kryder's  and Nielsen's  laws. that a much younger person would not have.

3) POS, 4) DPOS. The biggest weakness  I see here is borrowed stake. This is where those controlling the coins do not have exposure to the coins. For example: Borrowing, derivatives and hedging. We must keep in mind is that at a very fundamental this is what nearly brought down the fiat monetary system in 2008. The same problem only worse is also present in any DPOS system. In addition in DPOS the delegates would likely be subject to government regulation under existing laws unlike the miners above.

5) eMunie. I agree with the OP here. It is extremely complex. If it works it could be a player. Otherwise no. At this point I simply prefer KISS.

My bet at this point is for the most part Monero with a significant Canadian Dollar (cash) position as a hedge.

Great read. Watching thread for any new posts. Good luck and keep this thread alive please! 

I could argue this point all day, but it'd be a waste of both our times, and send the thread a tad off track. litecoin is one example., but we'll agree to disagree (save me dragging out a ton of evidence this time in the morning).


but to a more ontopic important point.

I've travelled in the background on so so many 'breakthrough' alt to bitcoin communities, and one thing they all have in common. all doing the exact same thing as many others, yet in their own community thinking what they are doing is so out side the box and original.

its almost scary the same stuff being repeated by all.

especially when a ton of this 'original' stuff was floating around even before bitcoin.

Wladimir

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/pull/329

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/issues/389


Gmaxwell

http://i.imgur.com/HxG4bRf.jpg

I guess you could go out on a limb and say there probably was some coordination between BTC and LTC devs in the past, but they seemed to have distanced themselves from it for a long time now.  There's not really any evidence of them currently running any LTC nodes or holding anything in LTC wallets.

For the most part, they don't either.

It's a lot of limping to the market with this week's frankenstein.

Kind of embarrassing at this point, how market demographics show over and over again these dumb idiots would drop their life savings to the new 'gold of the week'. Really?

It's easier than letting people who can't afford them, take loans against their 401k's.

systematized zombie theft, in the name of security and fear.

I bet tla's love it, being a problem that's also a solution to itself.

horizontal value-scaling doesn't provide any value added to anything.

Anyways, glad to see a compendium of everything that's already been said on a board for which there's nothing much left to say.

state of cryptos is everything mentioned in the OP post is following the same route ie over-complicating whats technically needed.

small side note;

how is this;

"D)  The only known altcoin to have github activity or ownership by Bitcoin core devs themselves."

re monero even remotely true.

You make some good points about PoS, but NXT has functionality that BitShares doesn't.  I've used NXT, it was easy, and it looks like eBay or something.  Something that people can use.  

With BitShares, I've tried multiple times to use it.  I can't get it to work.  

In order to register an account, you have to send some BitShares.  I bought some on an exchange, but I couldn't send those until I registered an account.  But I couldn't register an account until I could send some. 

There's an option to get your registration fee from a faucet, but there was no faucet there the times I tried.  

I talked to one of the main devs, and his final advice was to wait until a faucet was up again.  In other words, "BitShares is unable to accept new users at this time". 

I gave it more effort than 99.99% of people would have bothered to do, and I never got it to work.  

I'm not hearing anything to argue with LOL
and this deserves a bump.. I want to keep an eye on this topic, thanks for posting Roach

I am monitoring this thread.  
  
I would like to see discussion here limited to specific implementations of a currency and not the currency itself.  
  
For example, if coin x has stolen a lot of its code and the devs have constantly lied, let's not focus on that.  The currency can be relaunched under better circumstances if the technology does what it needs to do.

Great article ... i agree with all of these ....

Good write up, and thanks for including us (even though I don't align with some of you points ).

One thing I would just like point out is that eMunie isn't really Vapourware.  Anyone is free to join the forum and request access to the regular beta tests where they can test drive the client and see subsequent progress.

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