[clarkmoody]

> anti-environmentalist ... vast amounts of wasted electricity

Ironically uses politically-charged language when discussing how bitcoin gets political.

How about: "I'm concerned with the amount of electricity devoted to mining."

Some of the bitcoin-is-going-to-take-over advocates could counter with, "That electricity cost is a lot better for the environment than the standing armies required to secure fiat money."

[Frondo]

And, of course, the idea that bitcoin changes the world so radically that no one has an army anymore is absurd. But I think you've just touched on another reason why people react so strongly to bitcoin-related articles.

It's like, bitcoin started out with a pretty good-sounding idea: decentralized currency, like the old Gnutella network except for money! hey I like it!

Then people start talking about it and the first next step is "hey and bitcoin takes control over money and puts it into the hands of the PEOPLE" except it doesn't! It doesn't at all! Control over the money supply, there's at least some tenuous link between votes we regularly cast as citizens and the people making those decisions. Decisions over bitcoin's economics? Better start coding, except no one will accept your patches to bump up the 21 million bitcoin supply...not so democratic.

Then the conversation turns to pretty goofy new-world-order stuff, like "bitcoin will eliminate the need for nations to have standing armies!!" Except the reality is, look at how the bitcoin people themselves squabble like a bunch of old hens, in the face of what seem to be legitimate critiques. These are the people leading the way to a new world order? I don't think so.

And then we look at the environmental costs, and that's not good. Or the deflationary economics of the system itself, and those aren't good either. Or how it seems a lot more like an elaborate ponzi scheme, and that's not good either.

Basically, what bugs me about bitcoin is that legitimate critiques are always brushed off with really absurd replies. Kinda kills the whole thing for me.

[clarkmoody]

I'm not sure which bitcoin advocates you're talking to, but they seem pretty far out there.

As for monetary policy, I would look to the history of currency devaluations in the wake of wars and emphasize that bitcoin cannot be devalued in the same way. Not that a nation would use bitcoin as its currency, but it begins to look more like the gold that used to back fiat currencies.

Even Rome debased its currency to continue paying soldiers, while throwing the citizens under the bus.

Re environmental costs: a future protocol change could update the proof of work function if this gets out of control.

> deflationary economics of the system itself

Strictly speaking, bitcoin's monetary base is monotonically increasing and never actually shrinks, which would be monetary deflation. I would also challenge the conventional wisdom that says "Deflation bad! Inflation good!" Again, not that a nation's currency will be bitcoin. It exists alongside other systems, behaving more like gold.

Ponzi scheme is almost not worth mentioning as the allegation is obviously ridiculous.

[EdHominem]

> Better start coding, except no one will accept your patches to bump up the 21 million bitcoin supply...not so democratic.

That's a horrible change.

But it's a perfect example of the ultimate democracy. Everyone has the freedom to listen to you, they're choosing not to.

[Frondo]

Well done.

You've just demonstrated the breach with reality in Bitcoin-land that is most personally irritating to me--the conflation of democracy with consensus/mob rule.

Democracy isn't (and never was) just "majority preference that is inferred from behavior". It's the regular, structured process of checking in and putting the rules that affect people up to a group decision, i.e. voting on stuff on a regular basis, and exposing the rules of the system to that process.

Having a regular vote on the # of bitcoins? That'd give it an element of democracy. But bring that up, and you get the kind of nonsense you just gave us.

And it's funny, in bitcoin-land, the very idea of democracy seems really offensive, and I think I know why; I think that the hardcore bitcoin advocates look at bitcoin as a way to get into a system and come out on top. The actual levers of power in the world are closed off to most of us, and getting into them is a long, hard process that involves skills very few in the computer industry have (or want to develop). Bitcoin gives its adherents a way to feel like they're going to be kings in the new world order, and suggesting the democratizing of this system would of course threaten that.

No one in bitcoin-land ever comes back to me and says "Yeah, you're right, we should involve more people in the decisions behind how this thing is run." That power's seductive (well, that fictional, imagined power of being a king in bitcoin-land), I guess.

[EdHominem]

> Democracy isn't (and never was) just "majority preference that is inferred from behavior". It's the regular, structured process of checking in and putting the rules that affect people up to a group decision, i.e. voting on stuff on a regular basis, and exposing the rules of the system to that process.

You don't seem to understand that it's a P2P system. Which authority are you proposing counts the votes and enacts the policies?

And democracy isn't three wolves voting to eat a sheep. How are you a part of the community that you deserve a vote, even if such a silly thing was possible? Why should you get to vote on what other people are doing?

> Having a regular vote on the # of bitcoins? That'd give it an element of democracy. But bring that up, and you get the kind of nonsense you just gave us.

Because it's literally the worst idea you could have, short of replacing all keys with the number 7. The entire point of Bitcoin is a non-inflating currency. Even if you could change this, which thankfully you cannot, it wouldn't be fair to the people who joined in the beginning.

You're saying you'd rather ruin the system for everyone because you aren't a ruler. Which is precisely why the system was designed to keep people like you from getting any power, ever.

> And it's funny, in bitcoin-land, the very idea of democracy seems really offensive

No, the idea of your idea of a democracy being imposed on people who you're mad at because they don't listen to you is laughable.

You clearly just want to vote for ridiculous things - seemingly to punish people for not inviting you in the beginning.

> No one in bitcoin-land ever comes back to me and says "Yeah, you're right, we should involve more people in the decisions behind how this thing is run."

Of course they don't. And rather than think about this you've decided you're right.

If you want to vote, do it with your feet.

[krapp]

Of course, what anarcho-capitalist cypherpunks mean when they talk about "democracy" is fundamentally different than what everyone else means. From that point of view, consensus as dictated by the free market is probably the only legitimate form of democracy.

[EdHominem]

How is everyone expressing their choice not a democracy?

What should happen? Who calls for votes? Who counts them, and who forces everyone to change - or not? In a decentralized model how exactly do we add a central authority without centralizing everything?

And further, why would we want to? So that people who aren't involved can have a say? I don't setup a 1-800 number to let people vote on what I watch for movie night - it's only relevant to those who attend.

Similarly, if you don't like Bitcoin then rather than getting involved just to mess with it, why not get involved in something you do like?

[CyberDildonics]

> no one will accept your patches to bump up the 21 million bitcoin supply...not so democratic.

Why would anyone willingly dilute their own money?

> legitimate critiques are always brushed off with really absurd replies

> And then we look at the environmental costs, and that's not good. Or the deflationary economics of the system itself, and those aren't good either. Or how it seems a lot more like an elaborate ponzi scheme, and that's not good either.

These are not legitimate critiques without real data to back them up. Without real data they are conjecture based on emotion.

[Forbo]

> "That electricity cost is a lot better for the environment than the standing armies required to secure fiat money."

There are better alternatives to brute-forcing hashes and generating nothing but waste heat in order to mine cryptocurrency. At least those cycles could be put toward something useful, like the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Gridcoin uses proof-of-research in BOINC as the basis for compensation.

[AgentME]

Who would decide which BOINC projects work with Bitcoin? What if I made a BOINC project for calculating the number 4 and did it before anyone else noticed it was available? How much bitcoin should that be worth? There have to be ongoing decisions about what BOINC projects are accepted and how much they're worth. Who makes those decisions?

More realistically, what if I privately know a fast algorithm for an obscure type of protein folding, and then I push for a new BOINC project to be accepted that focuses on the specific type of problem? I'll be the only one that can mine it efficiently for a long time. If I calculated my expected profits, I would probably see that it's worth it for me to pay a lot of money to lobby the people in charge of the BOINC-coin decision process to get my project accepted. Unless BOINC-coin only uses a fixed set of projects over all time, or is only worth negligible amounts, then lobbying like this is going to influence what projects it accepts.

Even if BOINC-coin uses a fixed set of projects, then there's a problem of what work units are given out. I imagine many projects work like SETI@Home where some data is given out to users to process. If processing the data is worth money, then it might make sense financially for me to artificially construct datasets that I've already solved, and bribe the SETI@Home administrators to insert my dataset into the worker queue, which I will then quickly "mine" for BOINC-coin.

A BOINC-coin isn't fully decentralized. It requires trusted people to be in control choosing which projects are worth it and to secure the authenticity of the data sets. Bitcoin is about minimizing the need for trust in administrative systems like this.

Even if you solve the above problems, the proof-of-work system needs to be hard to compute but cheap to verify. Many BOINC projects' work units aren't cheap to verify. They just have several users redundantly recalculate the same work units to check that they get the same answers.

[VMG]

If the PoW serves any other purpose than mining bitcoin, it can't be used, since there won't be any opportunity cost in mining on the most recent chain.

[bduerst]

Their point is that the PoW is wasteful because the redundant work is useless.

See primecoin.io for an example of more useful PoW.

[VMG]

So in primecoin I can mine on any block and generate a useful byproduct?

What stops me from attacking that network by mining on my private chain with a double spend? I have no opportunity cost.

[taejo]

> What stops me from attacking that network by mining on my private chain with a double spend?

Nothing stops you mining on a private chain, but since you have a small minority of the compute power, the network doesn't care about your private chain. The same is true in Bitcoin.

> I have no opportunity cost.

You could be mining blocks that generate useful byproducts and currency.

[VMG]

> Nothing stops you mining on a private chain, but since you have a small minority of the compute power, the network doesn't care about your private chain.

Right, this is not an issue for small miners. But if you have a significant part of mining power, it's important that there is a significant opportunity cost mining on the wrong chain. That can only be ensured by using a PoW that is wasteful outside the currency you're mining.

[bduerst]

That's because if it was valuable to you as a miner it would incentivize you to mine the wrong chain.

Network value is different from individual value.

[Forbo]

I'm not sure I follow what you mean. I didn't mean that this be used for mining bitcoin, but rather that there are other cryptocurrencies that have useful by-products. Am I misunderstanding your comment?

[VMG]

These other cryptocurrencies are less secure than bitcoin.

For them, the cost of attacking the network by mining on an orphaned chain is lower, because by definition the PoW has a useful by-product.

The more useful the byproduct, the less secure the coin.

Edit: to illustrate, imagine a PoW that computes cures for cancer. Somebody can now mine on whichever block of the chain he wants forever, since he's producing a cancer cure anyway. The incentive of a block reward (within the currency) is not primary. Thus there is diminished incentive for the network to create a linear blockchain, where everybody mines on the most recent block. Without that, you cannot order transactions.

[bduerst]

A cure-cancer PoW where each block fixes all of cancer is ridiculous.

A more apt analogy would be that each block would solve a protein folding or active site matching problem for cancer. Then each solution would be public, and useless to mine over again.

[VMG]

It was hyperbole. It's the same deal in your example: if the is a PoW reward outside the currency, the cost of mining on the wrong chain drops.

The PoW must only be useful for the coin you are mining and nothing rise.

[CyberDildonics]

I understand the arguments that people have against proof of work but unfortunately they are extremely short sighted with respect to the whole system. You could say the same thing about all the infrastructure surrounding gold, but crypto-currencies and gold have serve a very valuable purpose that gets lost in the details: they have many of the properties of ideal money.

Gold isn't as valuable as it is today for any other reason. You can dream about a theoretical currency with a proof of work that accomplishes something but it won't have the same properties of ideal money until it is more widely used, mined and attacked.

Also don't forget that space heaters _actually_ do nothing but generate 'waste heat' and no one seems worried about those.