Topic: Why exactly is Bitcoin clinging to PoW? - page 4. (Read 1790 times)

technically. bitcoin is the most secure coin in existance from a brutforce energy requirement prospective.
all other coins cant even compete

socially:

they already have these pegged coins
liquid featurenetchain(allows different coins/assets):- exchange arbitrage utility
RSK sidechain
LN featurenet(allows different coins/assets):-consumer banknote utility

but yes. a bank note deemed as 'backed by gold' is still not gold. and we all know how bank note pegs of gold turned out post 1970


bitcoins underlying value is truly based on the fact that it costs thousands to mine bitcoin. much like gold takes over $1k to mine gold

if bitcoin/gold could be mined for under $1. its value would not be as high and its speculative market price above that would not be as high
(mine gold for the price of a dinner spoon and a coffee filter in ur own yard $1. speculative market $5)

once the big organisations start vault managing the peg-ins-outs of these feature/sidechains. then you will see the 1970's bank note/gold games at play in the cryptosphere.vault up btc. play with their tokens withdraw/swap to scamcoin 'coz withdrawal is cheap'

which is why im staying with bitcoin onchain transactions.. thanks

What a typical modern "altcoin" (designed to maximize scalability) really is?

I see a network (blockchain) which can have interesting applications, such as transactions with tokenized Bitcoin or tokenized fiat currency (stablecoins, CBDC).
But I do not see that such a network can directly constitute good money or currency.
Claims by the founders and members of the community of such projects that their product is money (finacial asset, store of value) "better" than Bitcoin, can be rejected even without getting into discussions, knowing that there is no escape from the blockchain trillemma .

For maximized scalability, they inevitably pay the price of losing decentralization or security, right?

So all the features we need from good quality money, reducing counterparty risk, are lost.

Do we understand each other well now?

Even this one requires further clarification. Will a same sized block be generated quicker? That'd mean that the block chain would then weight more and the decentralization would be harder to achieve. It'd also mean that there'd be more orphaned blocks and less network security. One second is around 0.016 minutes and thus, 6 blocks of a 10-minute interval chain would be equal with 3,750 blocks of a 1-second interval chain.

What exactly do you mean with this?

Regarding your statement about altcoins being better than bitcoin. As BlackHatCoiner, mentioned, it depends how you look at things and what features you consider when determining what is better. An altcoin that requires a transaction fee of a fraction of a cent is certainly better than if moving bitcoin requires 50 cents or a dollar. An altcoin with a block time of a second is better than bitcoin's 10 min average.

An altcoin whose transaction confirms in a few seconds but has no liquidity on exchanges and very little interest from the general public is not better than bitcoin. An altcoin whose value can rise 40% one day only to drop 60% the other is not better. A centralized altcoin whose transactions can be rolled back (as we saw with the Ethereum DAO hack) is not better than bitcoin because the interest of a few large investors are more important that the community. An altcoin that is quick and cheap, but has been 51% attacked with a few thousand dollars worth of investments is not better compared to bitcoin where you need millions of dollars to start and maintain the attack.   

If you are not sure what the statement was about, you cannot just ask what it is about instead of blindly calling someone a liar?
Even if someone you are arguing with is wrong, the mistake is not always a lie (the definition of lying implies deliberate deception).
If I have to, I will defend myself in the same fashion.

I thought the context in which I mentioned altcoins is clear considering all the comment, so I didn't expand it.
Let me clarify: I mentioned altcoins in the context that some of them are capable of being a tool for making Bitcoin transactions.
Not every payment system is actually money (even if it needs gas to run and has a token), and money is a much broader term than currency.
Similarly, there is no such currency as Visa, even though Visa network is a layer for making transactions in multiple currencies.

You see, it's a little annoying seeing this phrase between the parenthesis; it doesn't make any sense. In what functionality are altcoins better than Bitcoin? In all of them or in some of them? You need to provide a clarification, otherwise you're lying.

Saying that Bitcoin is worse than altcoins means that they're better in every way, but that's wrong. For example, Bitcoin has the least whales. Have you ever wondered why they are more volatile?

What do you need efficiency for here?

BTC can be used as a payment system (though altcoins are better at it), but in fact it is unique money that is completely resistant to debasement: this is Bitcoin's fundamental value proposition.

Such money can be used in a number of payment systems, which may be characterized by various degrees of centralization (depending on the application), BTC adoption may look like this in the future.

Starting from the Ligtning Network, through tokenization on various scalable altcoins L1, ending with fiat currencies with a fixed exchange rate to BTC.

Or it could go down to its intrinsic value which is "0". Btc isn't widely used as payment method because of its inefficiency (high transaction fees, long delay for confirmations...)

Initially one dollar was backed by one ounce of gold
Today one bitcoin is backed by 36 822,00 USD

In its actual form BTC is worst than fiat. You can buy a lottery ticket instead of putting your money into bitcoin (you'd have more chances of becoming a billionaire).

PoW mining will never be completely banned, and any country that attempts to ban it will do so at their own financial disadvantage compared to other countries that accept them. Plant growers use a lot of electricity and if they pay for it (and not steal it) then they all make money. They can always use the sun to grow their plants, but lots of them use really bright light bulbs.

As bitcoin goes above $100k and beyond, I doubt there will be a "growing number of people" that will refuse to accept bitcoin.

I mean, go ahead and not accept it, that's perfectly fine for the rest of us that do accept it.

I get the point, but actually there's no correlation between average TPS (transaction per second) and energy consumption to mine Bitcoin. It's possible to have few miners (which means low energy consumption), while Bitcoin have big block size limit (which allow higher TPS) and vice versa.

If there are no bitcoin transactions for any extended period of time, there would be little reason for the miners to continue mining. Transaction fees make up an increasing amount of miners’ total revenue, and this will increase over time; if there are no transactions, there are no transaction fees. Also, if there are no transactions, there is a good chance that bitcoin will be worth very little; if bitcoin is worth little, the block subsidy will be worth little and the miners’ revenue will be worth little.
There is a limit as to the number of on-chain transactions that bitcoin can handle, but changing to POS would not fix this. If POS were to be used, nodes would still need to validate all blocks and incur the related costs with storing, validating and receiving each block every 10 minutes (on average). There will still be problems if block propagation and validation takes too long.

Bitcoin has a scaling solution, even if imperfect, and that is LN. LN allows for many transactions per single on-chain transaction. LN somewhat resembles POS, at least from the perspective that someone can commit bitcoin to earn fees over time after keeping their coin on a single address.

Please spend time to understand first that HOW PoW works and WHY it has to work the way it does. Think about the "race" for finding the next transaction as early as possible which ensures that miners have economic incentive to provide security and not collaborate.

The way you talk about "energy consumption scaling", you seem to suggest changes to difficulty can be made on the fly without affecting the miner roles. Do you know of a working example of this?

You are just saying what "businessmen", with zero concern for centralization, have been saying since 2014. This has all bee discussed in the scaling debate and there's no new perspective. Go through the history or support whatever corporate/ foundation-coin makes sense to you.

What I meant was that even if nobody is using the BTC network for transactions (not likely, to be sure, but bear with me for a moment) then the energy consumption of this network would still be enormous as it is idly standing by as (while some measure of) mining occurs. It would be far more ideal if the energy consumption scales  as much as possible with transaction volume.

Another way to state the problem with the BTC network would be to say: Imagine how far much further BTC adoption would have been (and how far more value and utility it would have) if it could do 2000 TPS out of the box. The low transaction speed is a major stumbling block (no pun intended) in the penetration of BTC into the global economic structure. And, 11-12 years later, there still is no widely accepted solution to this problem.

The bolded part is the concern, because if you have truly thought it through, there’s no place to be “open minded” about it. A POW change, that would disable the current ASICs, and reduce a great amount of hashing power, will break the incentive structure, will break the Game Theory, will break the very thing that keeps the whole system together.


I know that I am the stupid one, but ask gmaxwell about our discussion. Let’s learn.

Your attempts to discredit the response by calling it hostile are obvious, and a bit funny.

There was no profanity or vulgar language. (ok, I said shitcoin, but come on, we all know that 99% of the altcoins out there are trash, right?)
There was no name-calling.
There was no attacking the character or intelligence of the original poster.
There was nothing written in ALL CAPS.
There was nothing written in bold.
There was no use of exclamation marks!

Either you've never used an internet discussion forum before in your life, or you are being very disingenuous when you say you're not sure what is hostile and aggressive.


Yep.  But if you're going to have a "reasonable discussion", then you need to expect some people to disagree with your opinion. If a disagreement is going to scare you off, then you'll want to find an echo chamber somewhere so that everyone can re-affirm whatever you've already decided is true.  I suggest Twitter, YouTube, or the altcoin subforum of your favorite coin.


He did refer to a simple response as "surprisingly aggressive", referred to me as "very angry",  claimed that he "hit a nerve", told me to "calm down", asked me to "get my emotions under control", and claimed that it was a "toxic answer".  So, yes, it did seem that he "had trouble with (a person) disagreeing with him".


Thank you for noticing.


And it does, so we are in agreement on that, and fortunately, that's already been thought of and implemented.


We disagree on this, but the good news is that there are altcoins that have been implemented by those with similar beliefs.  If they truly have found a substantially better solution, then they have the opportunity to become the flagship cryptocurrency of the world.


Thankfully we already have solutions such as Lightning Network and Taproot to aid in "scaling up transaction throughput". I'm confident that additional features will be available in the future.


You will need to provide an incentive for someone to actually run one of these devices.  Then, you'll need to find a way to provide an incentive for someone to not run more than one of them, otherwise it just becomes yet another ASIC and people will find ways to run warehouses full of them. Bitcoin started with many people each running just one (or a few) devices, but greed exists and as long as there is an incentive people will find a way to scale up the solution to match their greed. Fortunately Bitcoin was designed with an awareness of this, so the incentives to secure the network are designed to scale with the value of what is being secured.


No usage?  When was the last time that the number of unconfirmed transactions remained below 1000 transactions for more than 10 minutes?

Bitcoin energy consumption scales up with the exchange rate of bitcoin. The exchange rate scales up with demand for Bitcoin.


Again, at least we agree on this.


And to demand change in the fundamentals that define what it is to be Bitcoin, the longest-running and most successful cryptocurrency in the world, without providing a viable alternative that is actually implementable and won't weaken its security is tilting at windmills.

I am not sure what your concern is. I was clear that I believe that POW is superior to any other means of mining in the portion of my post you quoted. I have an open mind to be willing to listen to arguments to the contrary. I was also clear in the portion of my post you did not quote that I don't think the OP is making valid arguments against POW. Having an open mind does not mean I will agree with any proposal supported by flimsy evidence, having an open mind means I am willing to debate someone on the merits of a proposal and am willing to listen to a debate on the merits of a proposal, and am willing to change my mind given a sufficiently strong argument and evidence.

Believe it or not, but I am a very smart person, and I have the ability to evaluate the evidence presented to me, for or against a technical argument. It is also healthy to have these types of debates so the community can have confidence that POW is in fact superior to alternatives.

Wow. if that initial reply was not majorly hostile and indeed aggressive I am not really sure what is. are you sure this is the forum where reasonable discussion can take place? and then to suggest that it is the original poster who has trouble with people disagreeing with him. very mature.

PoW can (and probably should) have some role to play as a means of securing the chain and should be present, but not as the only system in place, and only if it can be built so that it does not get in the way of scaling up transaction throughput. alternatively you can explore the possibility of having a very large number of devices (such as phone or iot apparatus) doing jus a little bit of PoW now and then - instead of having relatively few devices doing a lot of the work. this way the energy consumption also scales up with adoption, something that is far less the case at the moment, as consumption can not drop below a very high level even with no usage.

the key is that we want a secure, manipulation-proof network that can't be screwed with. to single-mindedly and ignorantly hang on to PoW because current alternatives have weaknesses (and to casually dismiss and ridicule even the mention of what others perceive as PoW downsides) is pretty stupid and shortsighted.

The potential of Bitcoin with its mining environment is almost intact yet.
I mean merged mining and the ability to secure an infinite number of additional networks (performing functions other than monetary, expanding the capabilities of Bitcoin) without incurring any additional energy expenditure.
Merged mining is also beneficial for the parental chain security (which may be particularly noticeable in 2140).

PoS of course does the opposite.
Virtually any form of horizontal scalability, instead of increasing, reduce the security of the main chain.

I believe you are not thinking of it well enough, or you probably forgot why Bitcoin actually works. Are you willing to break Bitcoin’s incentive structure, the Game Theory, or break everything about why the whole system simply works? Change POW, you break Bitcoin. Bitcoin is proof that POW is superior. POW as implemented in Bitcoin is Satoshi’s REAL breakthrough.

I don’t think it is good to have absolutes. FTR, I believe that POW is superior to POS, and I am not aware of any superior means to mine above POW. I do however have an open mind and am willing to support an alternate means of mining if there is substantial evidence that POW is creating unnecessary risks for bitcoin and that there is a superior means of mining.

I don’t buy the argument that POW results in waisted electricity. I think the major risk that POW creates is that mining tends to be concentrated in areas with very cheap electricity. This creates the risk that a government with cheap electricity could seize miners equal to 51%+ of mining capacity. Another drawback is that POW results in governments being able to detect the physical location where the miners are. This gives governments additional influence over the miners because they cannot hide their activity.