[tptacek]

The article we're discussing might be wrong, but it's fairly level-headed.

Responses like this, with breathless invocations of the world-changing implications of Bitcoin and heroes-and-villains narratives about governments and banks, sap credibility from Bitcoin.

They suggest that very simple arguments with Bitcoin critics can't be addressed without stipulating that Bitcoin is going to rewrite all of commerce and perhaps even all of regulation. Virtually nobody in the real world is willing to stipulate that.

If Bitcoin is going to work out in the long run, it will need arguments that work even if the IRS retains its ability to enforce tax laws and the DOJ retains its ability to regulate casinos.

[xanderstrike]

1. DOJ/IRS retains its ability to regulate/enforce

2. Decentralized, anonymous cryptocurrency based economy

Pick one.

[tptacek]

Like virtually everyone in the world, I pick #1.

[random28345]

> Like virtually everyone in the world, I pick #1.

Then why Bitcoin? If you add regulation compliance, replace the block reward with higher transaction fees (which is built into the protocol as an inevitable end-goal), and remove (pseudo-)anonymity, what good is it? If you take away the ability to use it for illegal activity, why waste millions of dollars of electricity to sustain it?

[stevenh]

I don't care about the Bitcoin argument either way, but I'm annoyed by how you keep bringing up its use of electricity. There are over 877,500 bank branches in the world, each consuming a nontrivial amount of electricity every day.

[tptacek]

Those bank branches burn electricity to keep lights on so that people can work, and to run computers that keep track of the same information you'd need to track in a hypothetical all-Bitcoin economy. Bitcoin burns electricity to solve a math problem of escalating difficulty and cost whose solution has no intrinsic value.

That's overthinking it, though; really, the dig about electricity simply comes from the fact that Bitcoin is essentially a competition between "miners" burning escalating amounts of cycles.

[aliakhtar]

Bitcoin's transaction rate is also 3 transactions per second. That's laughably low for using up the same amount of power as an entire small country. Something running on a Pentium 3 could have a higher TPS.

[tptacek]

I agree. I'm not a Bitcoin believer.

[smokeyj]

If the IRS is going to work out in the long run, it will need arguments that work even if the blockchain retains its ability to maintain a globally distributed ledger.

Are you surprised bitcoin still exists considering the white paper unapologetically spoke heresy against government and bank collusion? That must be frustrating. Seeing the NYSE invest in a bitcoin company must have been a poke in the eye for you!

[mpyne]

Give it 10 years and I guarantee "the white paper" will be treated as reverently as the Qu'ran or the Holy Bible in some circles.

[jbooth]

This kind of comment is probably why Mr. Ptacek chose the word "believer" downthread.

[smokeyj]

Let the record show it's CRYPTOGRAPHY that requires faith, not the enshrined powers of the IRS.