[fdsary]

What mining does in Bitcoin is to generate consensus, so that everyone agrees on the financial history, which === keeping track of what public key owns what amount.

The actual hashes are pretty worthless, but that's the service mining is providing. Personally, I think it's kinda worthless to build a bunch of skyscraper on perfectly fine land just to fill with people working for some bank, just to keep my $ secure. For my intents and purposes, having a bank company (with employees, offices, leaders who get compensated like kings, etc) is a bigger waste that I can't wait to get rid of. Same with my VISA debit card, employing thousands just to let me access my money. Also charging a 3% fee on every transaction.

If only there was some kind of network of computer programs that could replace those people...

[digital-rubber]

Consensus of what? That early miners could mine a bit coin everyday and now you have to mine for 3 months to find one?

[martinko]

Consensus about the timeline and validity of transactions. What does what you said have to do with anything?

[digital-rubber]

consensus means all members of a party agree upon something. Not just 50%+1, majority rule.

This has to do with bitcoins, exchanges (the 3% fee people mentioned before). And people that are about to stuff their money into a futile idea. And don't pretend your comment is contributing in any way.

People doing bitcoins now, people starting the exchanges, online wallets etc, take the exact same positions as bankers have/had now. Pretending they know it all so well and right. And soon they too will take from you just as bankers. This exchange is not going to bring any change to bitcoins, it's just the winklevoss brothers trying to make the news again, and hope they finally have a product own besides a shitload of lawsuit money.

“I'm quite openly against [proof of work] mining as the future of digital currencies based on the amount of energy it wastes, and damage it does to the environment – without giving anything back apart from making the fiat rich richer.”

-- Jackson Palmer, author of Dogecoin.

And i share this point of view.

[jafaku]

> -- Jackson Palmer, author of Dogecoin.

Does replacing Bitcoin's logo with the picture of a cute dog now make you some sort of authority on distributed consensus algorithms?

> And i share this point of view.

And just like him, you don't even understand PoW.

> consensus means all members of a party agree upon something. Not just 50%+1, majority rule.

Actually, consensus means "majority opinion". And I don't know where you got the 50%+1 expression from anyway, or why you think it matters . What are you referring to, exactly? Would you say there isn't consensus for the validity of the theory of evolution, just because initially, or even today, someone disagreed?

[hnnewguy]

>Does replacing Bitcoin's logo with the picture of a cute dog now make you some sort of authority on distributed consensus algorithms?

No more than owning some Bitcoin makes one an authority on monetary economics and finance.

[jafaku]

Ok, so you agree that his quote is irrelevant.

[digital-rubber]

Not sure which bookstore accepts bitcoins, but you might want to invest in a dictionary. :o) Or amazon coins, dogecoins, aurora coin, blackcoin, coinye's, dark coins, etc etc.

Consensus, from the old latin, consentīre, to feel together, agree.

Something everybody in 'a party' can agree with.

"An attacker that controls more than 50% of the network's computing power can, for the time that he is in control, exclude and modify the ordering of transactions."

-- https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

That's 50% plus one, and that's certainly not a consensus, that's majority ruling. Perhaps you don't know as much about bitcoins as you think you did/do. And if you read the link you'll notice some more issues.

And those are mainly technical issues, not even the unfair investment in power, hardware. Simple example, electricity in my country is so expensive, if you'd find a bitcoin, it would hardly cover the costs of the electricity that i spend on it.

Consensus and majority ruling are not the same. We, you and me, probably won't come to a consensus about this. But if one of us was significantly stronger then the other, you could do a majority (in muscle power) ruling and claim your way is the only way to go, and everybody should stick to that (and yes there will be very unhappy people in that situation, the other half).

The quoting of the opinion of the dogecoin author, merely is to indicate there are more people that think like me. Even authors of crypto currencies with funny dog logos. So no it doesn't make him an authority; though i think its safe to assume he is somewhat more knowledgeable about crypto currency than the average greedy miner that just buys a few GPU's and starts mining in hope of (highly speculative, e.g. previously referred to, paintings.) fortune.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies

Why do you think there are so many different crypto currencies. They all are greedy and want to harvest as much in the early stages of their mining, maximum returns on investments. Or sit in that place where banks are at in our current position. (what the Winklevoss brothers now want to be).

And if i don't seem to understand, in your eyes, what proof of work is, then please elaborate. Tell please try to enlighten me about the actual work that is getting done with bitcoins (or other crypto currencies)? What is this work exactly, because as far as i have understood over the years, it's a useless hash. Art like; Art that gets created on resources, we ruin our planet for.

Only thing they managed so far in my opinion is to create a somewhat, (its not,) anonymous payment system that allows the selling and buying of things that are generally illegal. (if those things should be illegal is a different discussion).

So to get back to evolution theory, there certainly isn't a consensus on this around the world. Else why are there still people that frantically fight that idea, and claim there is a creator? People are killing each other every day over this? Trying to do a majority ruling.

Have a good and happy mining weekend :)

[jafaku]

> Not sure which bookstore accepts bitcoins, but you might want to invest in a dictionary. :o) Or amazon coins, dogecoins, aurora coin, blackcoin, coinye's, dark coins, etc etc.

I won't fight over a stupid dictionary definition, but in case you want to know: The one I used I took it from one. Now what? Do you have any algorithm so that we can achieve consensus on this, or I'll have to accept what you say as a doctrine? The fact that you insist so much on a definition makes it clear that your argument is pretty weak, you have no clue how to attack Bitcoin anymore. You just have an irrational hate against it and want it to go away.

And I don't consider any of those coins "investments". They are redundant, they don't do any significant thing that Bitcoin doesn't, and Bitcoin has a much larger network effect, which is one of the most important things for a protocol and a currency.

> That's 50% plus one

Since you keep saying that, let me explain that simple majority isn't 50% plus one, it's >50%. For example, if we have 9 participants, the majority would be 5, not 5.5.

> Why do you think there are so many different crypto currencies. They all are greedy and want to harvest as much in the early stages of their mining, maximum returns on investments.

Yes, people are greedy. Some try to innovate, some just copy/paste the code, like your beloved dogecoin. But what's your point anyway?

> And if i don't seem to understand, in your eyes, what proof of work is, then please elaborate.

It's an algorithm for achieving distributed consensus, and the cost is those hashes. If you think distributed consensus is worthless, that's a separate issue and you should discuss it as such.

> Only thing they managed so far in my opinion is to create a somewhat, (its not,) anonymous payment system that allows the selling and buying of things that are generally illegal.

Cash is much better for illegal activities. Do you know who said this? The FBI. But your hate is too strong to accept this.

> So to get back to evolution theory, there certainly isn't a consensus on this around the world.

I'm talking about the scientific community, obviously. What do I care what preachers or soldiers say about a scientific issue?

> Have a good and happy mining weekend :)

What makes you think I mine? I don't mine Bitcoin, just like I don't mine gold.