Personally, as more big companies pile up the hardware, I think decentralization will suffer. If bitcoin winds up where only those with enough money to buy expensive mining equipment are left, what is that but another form of centralization (where a few companies hold all the power over mining). I see this as more of a long term threat to bitcoin than the current blocksize debate, XT or anything else. Just my opinion.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 4:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: bitcoin-dev Digest, Vol 3, Issue 240 Send bitcoin-dev mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of bitcoin-dev digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Your Gmaxwell exchange (Mike Hearn) 2. Re: Your Gmaxwell exchange (Monarch) 3. Re: Your Gmaxwell exchange (Justus Ranvier) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 21:11:52 +0200 From: Mike Hearn <[email protected]> To: Justus Ranvier <[email protected]> Cc: Bitcoin Dev <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Your Gmaxwell exchange Message-ID: <CA+w+GKQk=thtkrryfayjwwdadij3k8ccfci-yp9k7wrw9am...@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" I think your summary of what people actually want from decentralisation is pretty good, Justus. > I don't believe that any Bitcoin user actually cares about > decentralization, because none of them I've asked can define that > term. > +1 Insightful It's been quite impressive to see so many Bitcoin users and developers saying, "Bitcoin is totally decentralised because it's open source and nobody is in charge...... oh nooooooo we didn't mean you could change *those lines! *If you want to change *those lines* then *we* must agree first!" Believing simultaneously that: 1. Bitcoin is decentralised 2. Nobody should modify the code in certain ways without the agreement of me and my buddies is just doublethink. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150831 /d0a2bac3/attachment-0001.html> ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 20:06:21 +0000 From: Monarch <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Your Gmaxwell exchange Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed On 2015-08-31 19:11, Mike Hearn via bitcoin-dev wrote: > I think your summary of what people actually want from > decentralisation is pretty good, Justus. > > >> I don't believe that any Bitcoin user actually cares about >> decentralization, because none of them I've asked can define that >> term. > > +1 Insightful > What is Bitcoin if not decentralized? Bitcoin the most awkward, unprivate and damaging currencies ever created. It is terribly slow for general use, and it is very difficult for users to get over the technical hurdles required to use it safety. It is simultaneously the least private payment system ever conceived for general use, yet still manages to consistently help terrorists and pedophiles. Over half a gigawatt of power is used to power the miners which timestamp the network, causing hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 and radioactive particles to be spewed into the atmosphere. Perhaps we can justify these damages as the cost of decentralization, similar to one justifying the tor anonymity network as having significant positive effects outweighing the negative. However if you are truly willing to give the goal of absolute decentralization up as unachievable or unrealistic, it would be much more sensible to replace the entire Bitcoin network with a couple of geographically distributed SQL servers and call it a day. Without decentralization as an ultimate goal, Bitcoin is an abomination that is best dismantled. ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 15:27:53 -0500 From: Justus Ranvier <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Your Gmaxwell exchange Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On 08/31/2015 03:06 PM, Monarch via bitcoin-dev wrote: > What is Bitcoin if not decentralized? > > Bitcoin the most awkward, unprivate and damaging currencies ever > created. It is terribly slow for general use, and it is very > difficult for users to get over the technical hurdles required to use > it safety. It is simultaneously the least private payment system ever > conceived for general use, yet still manages to consistently help > terrorists and pedophiles. Over half a gigawatt of power is used to > power the miners which timestamp the network, causing hundreds of > millions of tonnes of CO2 and radioactive particles to be spewed into > the atmosphere. > > Perhaps we can justify these damages as the cost of decentralization, > similar to one justifying the tor anonymity network as having > significant positive effects outweighing the negative. However if you > are truly willing to give the goal of absolute decentralization up as > unachievable or unrealistic, it would be much more sensible to replace > the entire Bitcoin network with a couple of geographically distributed > SQL servers and call it a day. > > Without decentralization as an ultimate goal, Bitcoin is an > abomination that is best dismantled. You don't understand what value proof of work provides, or what features differentiate good money from poor money, and you can't make a defensible statement of Bitcoin's value proposition. Because you can't do these things, you assume nobody else can do them either and therefore the only way for Bitcoin to survive is to sweep the problem under the rug and distract users with a word that means nothing (and therefore means whatever the observer wants it to mean). This is not a strategy that can be successful in the long term. -- Justus Ranvier Open Bitcoin Privacy Project http://www.openbitcoinprivacyproject.org/ [email protected] E7AD 8215 8497 3673 6D9E 61C4 2A5F DA70 EAD9 E623 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 0xEAD9E623.asc Type: application/pgp-keys Size: 18381 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150831 /6756f898/attachment.bin> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150831 /6756f898/attachment.sig> ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev End of bitcoin-dev Digest, Vol 3, Issue 240 ******************************************* _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
