Bitcoin
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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Thanks for that Folsom. Now I'm a little bit more enlightened - and still cannot see how mining is directly equivalent to transactions. Sure the 'sealing number' calculation (otherwise called 'mining') is done on a filled 'ledger' (or 'block'). There's gotta be more than one transaction in a block.
The waste here as I see it is having all miners working on the sealing numbers in parallel so the 'first past the post' is the one to get the reward. To save energy the mining should be organized in some way so that no two miners try the same possible solution to the hash problem, rather the solution space needs to be divided up equitably somehow.
The waste here as I see it is having all miners working on the sealing numbers in parallel so the 'first past the post' is the one to get the reward. To save energy the mining should be organized in some way so that no two miners try the same possible solution to the hash problem, rather the solution space needs to be divided up equitably somehow.
Well I certainly can't believe you are surprised by my comment. I have tried to be very transparent about what I think of bitcoin including a post made within minutes of getting short.
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I think it's very rude and implies I am doing something wrong - so am I surprised that you can be rude? A little, yes, there's a difference between not liking something and making a point against people who do. It's not the first time I've posted my website, and it is just something I do in my free time because I like cryptos.
There are a lot of transactions per block, otherwise the supply of a crypto coin would be up, and price down, from say Bitcoin. There are some like that.
There are mining pools, but there are reasons not to be in one, but be in another. The pools have different requirements, and different payout schemes, etc.
But because of the large pools, it is divided up more equalish. The difficulty is always increasing.
Also, no one will ever agree to give up mining chances that are ultimately redundant. The global competition is one of the biggest reasons that something like Bitcoin has any value.
I would love to see a way to make mining use less energy, or better yet develop sustainable energy. Hard to know what the future will hold, I remain very optimistic. That's coming from someone who rode only a bicycle for nearly 10 years. Humans don't seem to go backwards... even though it could be good for us to revert lots of things to man power.
There are a lot of transactions per block, otherwise the supply of a crypto coin would be up, and price down, from say Bitcoin. There are some like that.
There are mining pools, but there are reasons not to be in one, but be in another. The pools have different requirements, and different payout schemes, etc.
But because of the large pools, it is divided up more equalish. The difficulty is always increasing.
Also, no one will ever agree to give up mining chances that are ultimately redundant. The global competition is one of the biggest reasons that something like Bitcoin has any value.
I would love to see a way to make mining use less energy, or better yet develop sustainable energy. Hard to know what the future will hold, I remain very optimistic. That's coming from someone who rode only a bicycle for nearly 10 years. Humans don't seem to go backwards... even though it could be good for us to revert lots of things to man power.
Everyday somebody posts some new graph. Everyone finds what they are looking for... "based on" leads to every known possibility you can come up with.
Funny no one compares it to things that only went up...
Funny no one compares it to things that only went up...
Well, things transform over time. But there have been a great many things that generally only increased in value. The specifics are harder to quanitfy but... like cellphones, not a passing phase anymore than the original phone. etc.
Net neutrality brings some interesting questions. I hope everyone here protested in some way by letting their senators know it is bad.
Net neutrality brings some interesting questions. I hope everyone here protested in some way by letting their senators know it is bad.
The main problem with bitcoin and other cryptos is the lack of transparency and regulations.
If unlikely your lithcoin or bitcoin will be stolen or redeemed against your will , you will have no legal protection.
If bitcoin will come to maturity, no one knows what will happen.
People want to make money outside of legal structures conrolled by state institutions - they are driven by greed , as always.
I am not sure what will happen, so I asked my son to take tiny postition in Ethereum ETF, effective from yesterday
So I am in
, theory is good , practice is better
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The regulation is built into the code. And so is enough transparency that policing institutions can monitor things if they need to, but not enough that average day people, including hackers, can target people for their wallets.
The fact that no legal entity can forcefully move cryptos is a blessing and a minor curse. No one can steal it from you, or force you to do anything with it. But in the event where you accidentally lose some, or don't have a protected cold wallet and get your computer infiltrated finding an unencrypted private key or such, there is no legal recourse. This is the basic primary reason that taxes are BS within the crypto realm. You're dealing with something that isn't in the purview of the state; but you've paid taxes up until the point of the service that allows you to interact with it.
The greed isn't a bad thing in that it gives shared consensus on best coarses of actions for maintaining the blockchain. But by doing so it eliminates things like clearing houses, because of the way it works. Essentially the shared greed stops a lot of shady stuff that banks&MSB's are into, since the blockchain is immutable because of the shared greed.
The fact that no legal entity can forcefully move cryptos is a blessing and a minor curse. No one can steal it from you, or force you to do anything with it. But in the event where you accidentally lose some, or don't have a protected cold wallet and get your computer infiltrated finding an unencrypted private key or such, there is no legal recourse. This is the basic primary reason that taxes are BS within the crypto realm. You're dealing with something that isn't in the purview of the state; but you've paid taxes up until the point of the service that allows you to interact with it.
The greed isn't a bad thing in that it gives shared consensus on best coarses of actions for maintaining the blockchain. But by doing so it eliminates things like clearing houses, because of the way it works. Essentially the shared greed stops a lot of shady stuff that banks&MSB's are into, since the blockchain is immutable because of the shared greed.
As I said recently anything done in software can be hacked
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Transneft (TRNF_p.MM) said on Friday its computers had been used for the unauthorized manufacture, or “mining”, of the cryptocurrency Monero but said the firm now had systems to prevent this happening again.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s Now 2017-12-15&utm_term=US Reuters News Now
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Transneft (TRNF_p.MM) said on Friday its computers had been used for the unauthorized manufacture, or “mining”, of the cryptocurrency Monero but said the firm now had systems to prevent this happening again.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...s Now 2017-12-15&utm_term=US Reuters News Now
Yup, the amount of malware leaching off CPUs and GPUs in our computers and phones is probably off the charts with an extremely significant portion of our devices compromised.
This should be estimated and added to the total power consumed by Bitcoin activity.
IMO, this is only going to get worse and the big problem is massive energy usage for zero value added to our society and our lives. People are pouring money into a black hole instead of supporting their fellow human beings to go out and provide REAL VALUE for the world. This is like video-game investing but the money is real. The last couple years has shined a bright light on the collective stupidity of humans, and this is yet another great example.
And so far I've heard no good arguments refuting this or refuting the thought that "fake" Tether currency is driving bitcoin's value.
While bitcoin's value may be driven on nothing but dreams, it's going to be a nightmare for many who will lose, driven by greed and stupidity to invest and participate in this grand con.
This should be estimated and added to the total power consumed by Bitcoin activity.
IMO, this is only going to get worse and the big problem is massive energy usage for zero value added to our society and our lives. People are pouring money into a black hole instead of supporting their fellow human beings to go out and provide REAL VALUE for the world. This is like video-game investing but the money is real. The last couple years has shined a bright light on the collective stupidity of humans, and this is yet another great example.
And so far I've heard no good arguments refuting this or refuting the thought that "fake" Tether currency is driving bitcoin's value.
While bitcoin's value may be driven on nothing but dreams, it's going to be a nightmare for many who will lose, driven by greed and stupidity to invest and participate in this grand con.
News about energy consumption linked to bitcoin operations, the text is a picture my son sended to me, sorry for inconveniences:
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the more I read about this the more I shake my head. The fall out will be disastrous for many people who have nothing more than a dream and now their houses mortgaged to the max to obtain money to buy Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency.
Can someone who is a believer in this cock and bull story tell me succinctly why cryptocurrency will be the currency of the future and why Uncle Sam's greenbacks will be used for nothing more than wiping our butts in the future. It sounds all too Orwellian for me
It doesn't work for my anal sphincter.
Can someone who is a believer in this cock and bull story tell me succinctly why cryptocurrency will be the currency of the future and why Uncle Sam's greenbacks will be used for nothing more than wiping our butts in the future. It sounds all too Orwellian for me
It doesn't work for my anal sphincter.
Yes, but the blockchain is unhackable as far as we know, at this point in history.
This type of hacking isn't any more interesting than hi-jacking computer power for super computing. That is a normal thing, people use to compete a lot for how many numbers they could crunch. But cryptos pay more, generally speaking. It's actually a lot less scary than identity theft. So your computer runs a little slower until you run an adware program? I'll take that any day over my life being ruined.
It's new technology. There will be problems along the way. But the reality is a lot more people's lives have been ruined by problems in monetary systems, that cryptos can combat. They are still a very small thing in the world, really, despite all the hype. I promise you alcohol, gambling, and drugs are a much bigger problem by the numbers for the general public. Then you can mix in things like war and government changes in other countries. Cryptos are small.
But what cryptos are, is new, so it is no surprise that people are having a reaction. The irony is that for every fear people have with cryptos, there are thousands, if not millions, of daily occurrences that are equivalent to the fear but don't involve any cryptos of any kind. "Someone might use cryptos for drug!" Sure, someone might be that stupid, but more importantly while a couple people are doing that, millions of people are using fiat for drugs. It's a joke to rave on about cryptos, as if fiat is somehow problemless.
Cryptos actually represent a great reduction in a lot of problems of fiat, not a great enhancement of crime.
I don't believe fiat is going to disappear. There are lots of reasons it won't go anywhere. It's healthy for a country in some ways. But that doesn't mean we need clearing houses, cheating banks, or iffy stuff going on in the FED. Cryptos represent ways to improve all of those situations.
Someone at a meeting asked me what if the government makes its own cryptocurrency and forces us to use it. Well, what the **** difference would that be from the US dollar, fiat? The vast majority of "money" is digital already. The banks don't have a note for every $ in your account (and you can make notes for cryptos; eliminating fakes). But what they have is a system that's so faulty that they need independent 3rd parties to verify whether that digital $ exists or not, and can be transfered without double spending.
Cryptos can become the backbone of financial business as a more secure way to do things (it's all digital already). And not just purely financial as in dollars, but be capable of storing a lot of things more securely. The problem right now is everyone is figuring out how to use and access the most secure thing on the planet right now, but in a secure way. That is the challenge. Currently it's not easy. That is why many people recommend cold wallets so your cryptos are untouchable by anyone besides a person whom watched you put it somewhere - as opposed to on an exchange that could have problems.
It's important to understand, Steve, that even if cryptos do take over a majority function for monetary systems, it's unlikely you'll even notice/know unless someone tells you. Your VISA that uses cryptos will look like a VISA. Dollar bills with a crypto code on them will look like dollar bills. Nothing has to change for the average person. But do you own Bitcoin, and your bank is backed by it? Now that might make a big difference in your net worth.
If you think it will all flop... Go back to a fullscreen CRTV, landline phone, paper & ink letters, try to pay your cable bill at the local station, only carry cash no cards, etc etc etc etc etc... Technology doesn't go backwards.
Hello Folsom,
Technology never goes backwards, agreed (1). And any new technology will have teething problems - that’s a given. The problem however is not that a new technology will have problems, but that greater adoption of that technology creates conditions that are favourable when that technology works well, but catastrophic when they fail.
In other words, the more “secure”, “safe” and “ubiquitous” the technology, the greater capacity for harm it poses when it fails. A privately guarded hospital will be the safest place on the planet for the doctors who work there in which the benefits of world-class health care will be numerous, unless the conditions of the hospital itself create second-order effects (2) whereby a disease mutates and infects those who are not sick, leading to mass contagion outside the hospital (3).
The net worth of the individual will be irrelevant in the case in which the “security” of Bitcoin becomes it’s greatest vulnerability, especially for a (speculative) “asset” with no discernible fundamentals (4).
Best,
853guy
(1) Usually, it’s abandoned before its zenith for something cheaper, quickly replicable and more easily distributed (i.e. vinyl and reel-to-reel > CD > mp3 > streaming).
(2) The second-order effects of Bitcoin are readily apparent in its energy consumption, which most agree is not indefinitely sustainable. Gold may be lots of things, but we have thousands of years of data to back up its place in history. Let's see how the Lindy Effect rates Bitcoin past the end of next year.
(3) This is essentially what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis. The very conditions in which “profit” was generated for the banks via deregulation, securitisation, and models that “could not fail” lead to a crisis of catastrophic proportions not seen since the Great Depression. An airliner is a very safe, very comfortable and very inexpensive way to travel, unless that same airliner is used to torpedo a high-rise building, in which case it's extremely dangerous, expensive and fatal, and not just to those in the airplane. The "safety" of air travel made it ideal for terrorism because no model could have predicted it would be used for something other than its intended purpose. (*My apologies in advance if the latter example is considered inappropriate or offensive. Neither of those things are my intention. If asked, I'll remove it.)
(4) Even if gold were to fall to its lowest price of $34, you'd still have a bar of gold.
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2. This is interesting because it actually creates more backups than you would usually have, and they have consensus built in.
We don't really have a failure scenario for, say, Bitcoin. It doesn't really exist yet. There could be something but it is unknown, at least when we are speaking about the tech, not the capitol spent on it. Surely something exists. But when you talk about it, you might as well talk about aliens, the second coming, texas sized meteors, etc. People keep thinking Bitcoin is super fragile, but it is inherently less fragile than any given economy in the world.
3. Bitcoin could "fail" in price, but if it retains enough value that mining is worth the endevour, it won't disappear like companies do. It is the opposite of the 2008 crisis in many ways. It was created in spite of the situations that led to the crash. Comparing fake ratings and untraceable mistakes to something that is basically as written in stone, digitally, as can be possible... Well it's not a good comparison. Consider that it's typically more secure than any physical stone you can write on and try to hide/protect, for that matter. Even the strongest attempts of trying to squash it would likely only result in a temporary situation. Blanket EMP bombing the world probably wouldn't even work.
I don't think cryptos are the end all, but they are a big deal, they are today's transistor.
We don't really have a failure scenario for, say, Bitcoin. It doesn't really exist yet. There could be something but it is unknown, at least when we are speaking about the tech, not the capitol spent on it. Surely something exists. But when you talk about it, you might as well talk about aliens, the second coming, texas sized meteors, etc. People keep thinking Bitcoin is super fragile, but it is inherently less fragile than any given economy in the world.
3. Bitcoin could "fail" in price, but if it retains enough value that mining is worth the endevour, it won't disappear like companies do. It is the opposite of the 2008 crisis in many ways. It was created in spite of the situations that led to the crash. Comparing fake ratings and untraceable mistakes to something that is basically as written in stone, digitally, as can be possible... Well it's not a good comparison. Consider that it's typically more secure than any physical stone you can write on and try to hide/protect, for that matter. Even the strongest attempts of trying to squash it would likely only result in a temporary situation. Blanket EMP bombing the world probably wouldn't even work.
I don't think cryptos are the end all, but they are a big deal, they are today's transistor.
Which is exactly - exactly - what everyone said about mortgage-backed securities (especially those making money from it).
I'm not talking about Bitcoin "failing" in price. I'm attempting to articulate the second-order effects (1) in which a failure happens precisely because of the conditions in which failure was believed to be impossible. The failure occurs because it was believed it could not fail. (See above.)
No doubt cryptos are a big deal (at least, they are to the whales who own them). Question is, are they too big to fail?
853guy
(1) The consequence of the consequence (second-order effect) is always less well understood than the initial consequence (first-order effect), and usually masked by it, especially if the first-order effect has an upside. Energy consumption is one second-order effect, and it's consequence is negative. It's very, very likely it will not be the only second-order effect. The question will be what happens when other yet-to-be-identified second-order effects combine with the one we do know about. Time will tell.
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DaveC: If it is a "con" you have an incredible opportunity to make a fortune shorting it. Why aren't you?
Steve: As I have posted a couple of times I do not believe it is a currency. Bitcoin is a type of asset.
853guy: I would agree with a much simpler point. I think there is almost no liquidity on the sell side of the Bitcoin market. Futures could easily go locked-limit down for days (unless the CME and CBOE are applying different rules on Bitcoin). Two-way Bitcoin trading could reopen at $2,000. But I do not agree with those who say that bitcoin is going to zero.
Folsom: I applaud you for having the patience to systematically answer each of the questions raised in some of these snarky and ill-informed posts.
Steve: As I have posted a couple of times I do not believe it is a currency. Bitcoin is a type of asset.
853guy: I would agree with a much simpler point. I think there is almost no liquidity on the sell side of the Bitcoin market. Futures could easily go locked-limit down for days (unless the CME and CBOE are applying different rules on Bitcoin). Two-way Bitcoin trading could reopen at $2,000. But I do not agree with those who say that bitcoin is going to zero.
Folsom: I applaud you for having the patience to systematically answer each of the questions raised in some of these snarky and ill-informed posts.
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