That's good Bitcoin PR but clicking the link I hoped for a more in-depth analysis of these ten years, the lessons learned and the way forward. This is mostly fluff.
>These past ten years might be the earliest days of a new golden era of human flourishing, built upon censorship-resistant, sound money.
Good thing they used "might" otherwise I might have scoffed at this grandiloquent and unsubstantiated statement.
Yep, it's definitely a message to Bitcoin insiders, but that's not a bad thing. Sorry to fail your hopes.
> grandiloquent and unsubstantiated statement
Once you've studied money from a critical angle, you start to see that unsound money is the root cause of many of the problems with society and government.
The first ten years of Bitcoin (plus history leading to it) and sound vs unsound money are both huge topics in their own right. Perhaps it would be useful for me to include a little box at the end of each article with links to books and lengthy posts about these topics.
Interestingly, I meet a lot of traditional banking folks who understand how Bitcoin works. It's very rare that I meet Bitcoin/blockchain folks who understand how traditional banking works.
Maybe the information asymmetry is part of the problem itself.
Banking system is centuries upon centuries of arbitraty constructs. It does not make sense from the ground up.
Yes, there are lots of good Bitcoin/blockchain resources online, while the banking system is more complicated and has fewer easily digestible resources available.
while the banking system is more complicated and has fewer easily digestible resources available
I'd wager that the literature on banking and finance far outweighs resources on anything crypto. Specifically compared to papers on crypto coming from a neutral perspective.
I would be more interested to read about these topics, yes. In particular you really need to define what you mean by "sound" vs. "unsound" money and what makes BTC "sounder" than other currencies.
"Soundness" refers to the demand response of the money. Given increased demand for the money, can the supply be increased to absorb that demand while maintaining current purchasing power?
Fiat money can be created or destroyed at any time, so it is the most unsound money. As purchasing power rises (falls), the central bank can create (destroy) money at will to counteract the trend.
Gold exploration increases as the price rises, causing the supply to grow to meet this demand. Yet it is hard to mine gold, and its scarcity means that the increase of supply relative to the existing stock is small (roughly 2% / yr). Thus it is more sound than other metals, which are easier to mine. It is also much more sound than fiat money.
Bitcoin's monetary base increases algorithmically, so there is no supply response to increased demand. On top of that, the monetary inflation rate tends toward zero over time. The supply will reach a maximum and stop increasing. This level of soundness is greater than that of gold in the long run.
A great scholarly treatment of money is The Ethics of Money Production[1]
>Yep, it's definitely a message to Bitcoin insiders, but that's not a bad thing.
Adding more noise to the echo chamber certainly isn't a good thing. I'd be much more interested to hear about the problems surrounding the technology and how you envision them being solved. Most mining is centralized, no one actually uses it as currency, the entire thing is one big speculator market, etc.
I couldn't be bothered to sit through all 30 minutes of this video but it seems to be misrepresenting basic facts about the current monetary system (while claiming that it's somehow hidden from "the people" even though you can read about it on Wikipedia). It also presents opinions as facts (for instance that money should be a store of value).
More importantly as far as I can tell it also completely fails to present the reasoning behind inflation and fiat money, instead asserting that it's just all a big conspiracy to steal money from "the people". It's fundamentally dishonest and tries to push an agenda instead of educating the viewer.
IMO there are many things worthy of critique in our current economic system but these videos are really not helping your cause, whatever it might be.
> BTC will create prosperity we can not even dream of
Pyramid schemes always create prosperity for those at the top. Doesn't make them good for society.
So far, everyone who made money from bitcoin did so at the expense of someone else losing money. Bitcoin is not a corporation. It makes no profit. It gives no dividends. It can't even liquidate its base assets since it has none.
I was expecting/hoping for analysis, but it's more like an anniversary press release touting a bunch of success without reference and ignoring anything negative.
> For ten years, the world has known a decentralized source of truth. At all prior times in human history, we relied on centralized third parties to establish trust.
This is your periodic reminder that >51% of the mining is currently controlled by 5 large mining companies based out of China[0]. If you think these companies not entirely beholden to the non-democratic, highly centralized, Chinese government (or that this is a non-issue) then I'd really like to hear that argument.
I must admit I was surprised to see that 20.1% of mining is currently "Unknown", which was not the case last I checked.
The text in the hex data seen in the article (part of the Bitcoin genesis block) was the headline of The Times to prove the block wasn't generated prior to the newspaper's date.
How can a newspaper prove that the block wasn't generated prior to the publish date? If I were to hash the headlines from a 1969 "ON THE MOON!" article, would it prove that my block is older that the bitcoin's genesis block?
Including it only proves that it was not generated before a certain date. It can't prove that it was generated before something also generated after the headline in question.
You have to predict exactly what the headline is going to be though "On the Moon" is a fair guess but the chances you would get "Men walk on the moon" (plus "astronauts land on plain; collect rocks, plant flag" if we're using the subheadline too) exactly correct to fake it are really low. That's only possible on a very small number of dates where there's a known huge event coming up.
> If I were to hash the headlines from a 1969 "ON THE MOON!" article, would it prove that my block is older that the bitcoin's genesis block?
That would only prove your block is NOT from before 1969. The date of the article in question is 03/Jan/2009. Which is around the time of the block itself (thus proving the block wasn't generated before 2009).
> to prove the block wasn't generated prior to the newspaper's date.
The newspaper could go back and change the title in their archives. Single point of failure. Tsk tsk. Should have picked a newspaper that stores their archives in an immutable blockchain.
This reads like a press release — I thought the puffery would be followed by something substantive but hit the bottom of the page instead. If you aren’t a true believer before reading this you wouldn’t leave having learned anything.
No doubt, this is a rare achievement of technology, community and economics.
At the same time, if everyone abandoned the project today, it's tough to imagine a measurable impact on the world outside the cryptoscene.
Personally, I feel that everyone has been too obsessed with the desire to hoard assets to actually build shit that's useful to society. The fact that this rent-seeking desire is baked into the core of most cryptocurrency schemes makes me skeptical that the space will amount to much in the near term. I suspect that when it does, it'll come about in a way that avoids rewarding the squatters. Certainly nowhere near the ratio of dumb money to strategic investment we've seen in the past couple years.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 80.8 ms ] thread>These past ten years might be the earliest days of a new golden era of human flourishing, built upon censorship-resistant, sound money.
Good thing they used "might" otherwise I might have scoffed at this grandiloquent and unsubstantiated statement.
Yep, it's definitely a message to Bitcoin insiders, but that's not a bad thing. Sorry to fail your hopes.
> grandiloquent and unsubstantiated statement
Once you've studied money from a critical angle, you start to see that unsound money is the root cause of many of the problems with society and government.
The first ten years of Bitcoin (plus history leading to it) and sound vs unsound money are both huge topics in their own right. Perhaps it would be useful for me to include a little box at the end of each article with links to books and lengthy posts about these topics.
This is a real "if you have a golden hammer everything looks like a nail" philosophy.
I'd wager that the literature on banking and finance far outweighs resources on anything crypto. Specifically compared to papers on crypto coming from a neutral perspective.
Your statement is just plain wrong.
edit : clarification
That also describes the English language, and yet here we are, still using it.
In general, something that's lasted centuries is more likely to last centuries more, than something that's only lasted one decade.
Fiat money can be created or destroyed at any time, so it is the most unsound money. As purchasing power rises (falls), the central bank can create (destroy) money at will to counteract the trend.
Gold exploration increases as the price rises, causing the supply to grow to meet this demand. Yet it is hard to mine gold, and its scarcity means that the increase of supply relative to the existing stock is small (roughly 2% / yr). Thus it is more sound than other metals, which are easier to mine. It is also much more sound than fiat money.
Bitcoin's monetary base increases algorithmically, so there is no supply response to increased demand. On top of that, the monetary inflation rate tends toward zero over time. The supply will reach a maximum and stop increasing. This level of soundness is greater than that of gold in the long run.
A great scholarly treatment of money is The Ethics of Money Production[1]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6520108-the-ethics-of-mo...
Adding more noise to the echo chamber certainly isn't a good thing. I'd be much more interested to hear about the problems surrounding the technology and how you envision them being solved. Most mining is centralized, no one actually uses it as currency, the entire thing is one big speculator market, etc.
BTC will create prosperity we can not even dream of
More importantly as far as I can tell it also completely fails to present the reasoning behind inflation and fiat money, instead asserting that it's just all a big conspiracy to steal money from "the people". It's fundamentally dishonest and tries to push an agenda instead of educating the viewer.
IMO there are many things worthy of critique in our current economic system but these videos are really not helping your cause, whatever it might be.
Pyramid schemes always create prosperity for those at the top. Doesn't make them good for society.
So far, everyone who made money from bitcoin did so at the expense of someone else losing money. Bitcoin is not a corporation. It makes no profit. It gives no dividends. It can't even liquidate its base assets since it has none.
> For ten years, the world has known a decentralized source of truth. At all prior times in human history, we relied on centralized third parties to establish trust.
This is your periodic reminder that >51% of the mining is currently controlled by 5 large mining companies based out of China[0]. If you think these companies not entirely beholden to the non-democratic, highly centralized, Chinese government (or that this is a non-issue) then I'd really like to hear that argument.
I must admit I was surprised to see that 20.1% of mining is currently "Unknown", which was not the case last I checked.
[0] https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools
So its good people are chomping at the Chinese mining pools
I'd argue non-issue. Attack vectors could be to attempt a double spend (not worth it) or confirming empty blocks (why?).
Bitmex (one of the largest exchanges at the moment) put an ad on the frontpage of the newspaper's issue exactly 10 years later as a tribute: https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/108059040132345036...
EDIT: It seems there is a full page ad that goes with the front page one: https://imgur.com/sVBZVfN
You have to predict exactly what the headline is going to be though "On the Moon" is a fair guess but the chances you would get "Men walk on the moon" (plus "astronauts land on plain; collect rocks, plant flag" if we're using the subheadline too) exactly correct to fake it are really low. That's only possible on a very small number of dates where there's a known huge event coming up.
That would only prove your block is NOT from before 1969. The date of the article in question is 03/Jan/2009. Which is around the time of the block itself (thus proving the block wasn't generated before 2009).
The newspaper could go back and change the title in their archives. Single point of failure. Tsk tsk. Should have picked a newspaper that stores their archives in an immutable blockchain.
At the same time, if everyone abandoned the project today, it's tough to imagine a measurable impact on the world outside the cryptoscene.
Personally, I feel that everyone has been too obsessed with the desire to hoard assets to actually build shit that's useful to society. The fact that this rent-seeking desire is baked into the core of most cryptocurrency schemes makes me skeptical that the space will amount to much in the near term. I suspect that when it does, it'll come about in a way that avoids rewarding the squatters. Certainly nowhere near the ratio of dumb money to strategic investment we've seen in the past couple years.