Good god, someone please tell me that the dev team’s funds aren’t all in bitcoin. o_o;
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It’s curious how various crypto users claim that, and although the logical conclusion would be to abandon all crypto and hoard precious metals, they somehow conclude that the basic problem is particular coin and not human nature.
And that is despite the fact that the same cause - human nature - has successfully destroyed all currencies that people came up with. This crypto is, somehow, different.
That’s absurd… if you’d bother to even read hearn’s criticism he writes about how, due to bitcoin’s methods (proof of work) it has become consolidated into a few mining cabals – these are my words and my interpretations, but it’s all fairly clear from what he wrote that this is what he is saying. To say that this is somehow applicable to every coin makes no sense, when there are quite different methods used in different coins.
EDIT: The point is to develop a tech-based coin that works with human nature for the benefit of all.
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That right there is the problem that I was talking about and that you find absurd. You can’t see it even as you type it with your own hands.
Do you think Bitcoin (or Safecoin) is one of first attempts to develop such a currency?
The only types of coins that have historically worked for the benefit of all honest “users” are the ones that represented value that could be interpreted independently of the (pathetic) human nature.
And arguably the overall state of values among humans today is the lowest in recent history (by that I mean 100-200 years), so to fantasize that a “good” coin is only a matter of tuning some parameters is obviously a total delusion.
The argument against miner consolidation was and still is that no good miner wants to destroy the mine. So far that has worked. Safecoin “solves” that problem by discouraging centralization. Such a network may have all small miners, but it will be very weak and have a high churn as vaults will go down and be deleted, thereby discouraging all good farmers because they’ll pay - with their network bandwidth - for that. This is quite obvious to me and the network hasn’t even started yet. When various other less obvious issues manifest in practice, I wonder what kind of excuses or creative thinking (NXT? lol) you’ll invent after that.
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I’m mystified as to why these would be good miners, and why all those little guys don’t seem to get into that category.
However, the issue raised in the article isn’t good or bad - but centralised v decentralised: inequitable v equitable distribution of power. Bitcoin has failed that test, evidently, and people have quietly stopped proclaiming decentralisation as a key feature because they are heavily invested (not because they are good, or bad).
This doesn’t mean that suddenly decentralisation doesn’t matter, so it remains to be seen if a cryptocurrency can achieve it. Surely that’s why you’re here @janitor? To find out 
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The funny thing is, mining metals and gems is pretty centralised too. Does this make people think gold has failed?
Isn’t it more a question of how decentralized the decision making process is as it relates to the code? When MaidSafe switched from C++ to Rust was that a decentralized decision?
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I wasn’t trying to prove anything, but rather point out that there’s no working system which is ideal, with the intent to introduce a dose of realism in this thinking how a working system with weaknesses is going to be replaced by an in-development system without weaknesses. The both designs have weaknesses, it’s just a matter of which will be exploited, how and when (meaning in the short, medium or long term).
Decentralization does matter, but how to achieve it? I’m just calling for a bit more introspect among the optimists. It’s not time to celebrate.
We’ll find out.
It is partially so because of regulation. But compared to “production” of fiat, which is close to 100% centralized by a global cartel of central banks and the BIS, precious metal mining is competitive and relatively free.
The number of countries with precious metal mines is probably over 50, if not 100 and there are hundreds of suppliers (mines) who compete in this market. I wouldn’t call it centralized.
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They are centralized because of regulations.
You can go to Africa and start mining business for really low fee since there is lack of regulations.
But in Bitcoin world, you need to know how asic chip works, and majority refuse to share the chip protocol with you so you’re sol.
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How does that matter? You also need to know how to mine precious metals.
I don’t follow the mining market much but I do know suppliers of those ASIC chips sell to anyone who wants to buy them. Why would they refuse to sell you the damn chip? That’s what they live from, selling ASICs that let them recover their investment in development.
And of course you can buy mining h/w (systems) from any of the suppliers (I think there are 2-3 significant ones).
Which is not that different from mining - if you want to do it economically you’ll need the right machinery and there’s CAT and few other suppliers that matter. CAT wouldn’t refuse to sell you a freaking truck just as an ASIC supplier wouldn’t refuse to sell you their hashing chip.
Came across this bitcoin classic on twitter just recently
How Classic uses those tools in the long run is still a work in progress but it is remarkable that Classic has been in existence for a little while but it already has better political consensus mechanism’s than Core has ever had.
The main issue that Bitcoin companies have with the Core way of doing things is that they don’t really have a say. There needs to be a process where companies have a say. Where users have a say. And where the developers make compromises with the eco-system in deciding what to implement.
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The media is portraying this as a “populist” vs “elitist” debate where Hearn and co are on the side of “the people”. It’s sad and reminiscent of political manipulation where populists market solutions that aim to benefit companies and the greater population in the short-term at the expense of long-term effects.
I definitely agree with Bram’s overall perception of Hearn’s “whiny ragequitting” after XT’s failing to gain traction.
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This is a great response to Hearn’s letter by Charles Hoskinson.
https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/goodbye-mike-and-some-thoughts-about-bitcoin
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With about 110,000 transactions per day, that works out to 1.57 households daily usage of electricity per Bitcoin transaction. Yes, every time you buy something in Bitcoin, you could be using as much electricity as 1.57 American families do in a day.
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Glad you posted this, not enough people even consider this problem. I personally don’t like Bitcoin mainly for this reason it’s incredibly wasteful. I do use it but only minimally. Still yet I’m still disgusted by it. Can’t wait for safecoin!
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The most wasteful experimental database in history.
At the other end of electrical efficiency we’ll have…billions of IPv6 IOT SAFE Nodes sipping electricity. That’s gonna take some pretty radical vault refactoring (in machine code I’d guess)
@chrisfostertv but what about all of the electricity used by a bank for it’s money transfer systems that run 24/7 don’t they also use 1.57 times or possibly more, or less (interesting metric to find out)
But nonetheless bitcoin only gets us too few transactions at a high electrical cost, But what does that compare to the current infrastructure, what it does cost, and if bitcoin had a bigger transaction allowance would it cost less than the other infrastructure. And this justifies the expense.
btw glad to see your post again in some time,
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From the Motherboard article:
According to Network Computing, the VISA network can process more than 80 billion transactions per year or 2,537 transactions per second, using two mirrored data centers, each capable of running the entire network. The larger data center is currently pulling enough power for 25,000 households’ daily electricity, so we’ll double that to account for VISA’s total draw. In 2013, VISA’s investor reports say the company processed 58.5 billion transactions.
Working off these (admittedly imperfect) figures, each VISA transaction consumes around 0.0003 household’s daily electricity use. That makes Bitcoin about 5,033 times more energy intensive, per transaction, than VISA, at current usage levels.
How can Blockchain possibly scale to it’s supposed potential with only 360,000 transactions per day I wonder.
Bitcoin can currently handle up to 360,000 transactions per day given current limitations built into the technology, according to Jorge Stolfi, a computer science professor from Campinas University in Brazil, so there’s some headroom left before things bog down.
…and if it’s true that transactions are now reversible, that’s the end of it’s triple entry ledger system. Seems to me it’s original purpose as a public payment network has been shredded.
Bitcoin faced the same challenge that SAFE faces in the long term…how do you keep the code base from being co-opted?
David talks about the Cyber Brain and how machines will learn from each other. He also mentions that the network recognizes behavior that threatens it’s health. Given that the code will someday live on the network, maybe were headed to a time when the network can at the least reject code that threatens integrity and possibly suggest improvements…as some have suggested here, AI behavior.
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What kind of reversible?
The receiver can reverse the transaction (like refunds)
OR
the sender can reverse the transaction (like paypal can somehow do)
If its the first then is it really a problem?
If its the second then bitcoin has lost a lot of appeal.
For SAFE I would hope that any “reversal” of transactions would be at the Application level, for example an escrow system in an app like safex. That form of transaction reversal is easy in SAFE, no fees and instantaneous and safe. At the protocol level and reversible by the sender then its a disaster since anyone could buy a item and then reverse the transaction later.
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