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by maxerickson 2958 days ago
I think people looking into it doesn't necessarily rise to the level of obsession. The incentive here was likely to publish something (rather than an emotional attachment to some aspect of bitcoin).

That Bitcoin are probably little more than coal-fired Beanie Babies likely does contribute to message board attention.
1 comments
mkirklions 2958 days ago
Beanie Babies can be reverse engineered and replicated.

Bitcoin cannot generate copycat coins(on the BTC blockchain). They are rare numbers.

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SlowRobotAhead 2958 days ago
That’s true. But like beanie babies they only have value people want to believe.

Bitcoin is not fiat, it’s a commodity. It’s not decentralized at all and there are a handful of people thus could destroy it at any time.

Sounds a lot like beanie babies the more I think about it.

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TangoTrotFox 2958 days ago
Everything only has value that people assign it. I think paying some thousands of dollars for a handbag that has a certain label, or paying $1000 for a phone with a certain label, or so on is completely irrational. But in a market economy, I don't get to decide - the market does. And there's no irony using dollars in that example, as once again they face the same problem. The value of a dollar changes quite regularly against other currencies and it's just a market supply:demand reaction. Should the petrodollar end, I'd expect to see the dollar plummet globally. Great for our exports if our economy doesn't go down alongside the dollar!

51% attacks in Bitcoin are not a real risk for two reasons. The first is that it'd be completely illogical. If there were a group of miners able to work together to generate the resources sufficient to obtain a 51% attack on a major coin, they'd already be printing massive amounts of money completely legitimately. If they started trying to use that to do things like double spend, that'd ruin all of this because of the second point.

Bitcoin is decentralized. And if one branch becomes broken because of something like a 51% attack, it is trivial to fork it and go. Bitcoin Cash being the obvious example of this, and that was over something that lacked a unanimous consensus - nobody is going to want to stay on a fork that's been compromised.

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mkirklions 2958 days ago
>It’s not decentralized at all and there are a handful of people thus could destroy it at any time.

Uh you might want to check that.

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haikuginger 2958 days ago
The three largest pools combined hold over 50% of the total hashing power, and all are based in China.
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mkirklions 2958 days ago
Thats the mining pool though. You can join those pools from anywhere.
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SlowRobotAhead 2958 days ago
Ok, wink, because the blockchain I’ll play along and pretend there aren’t at least 12 people that could crash the entire thing one way or another if they wanted to.
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maxerickson 2958 days ago
They aren't even rare numbers, they are entries in a ledger.

There's no technical limitation on how many bitcoin can be produced either, only the network consensus that a limited number will be produced. It's built into the software and unlikely to change, but it isn't fundamental, it's part of the consensus.

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mkirklions 2958 days ago
>There's no technical limitation on how many bitcoin can be produced either, only the network consensus that a limited number will be produced.

Yeah but then you need to start saying things like:

Well Walmart MIGHT start building tanks. Its unlikely to happen, but it isnt fundamental, its part of business.

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