
Distributed Ledgers Part I: Bitcoin is dead - balnaphone
http://finiculture.com/distributed-ledgers-part-i-bitcoin-is-dead/
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csomar
Sorry to be blunt, but this is a rather childish article. Here is how it goes:
The author has a point of view, opinion, idea about something.

He then goes to find anything that is, or seems to be an issue about it.

He then makes a list of them. He then claims it's dead.

So, what can kill bitcoin? The only thing that can kill bitcoin is a
technological advancement that makes its security weak or vulnerable.

Bitcoin is huge to many industries:

1\. Extortion, Ponzi Schemes, Gambling, Lottery.

2\. Drugs, Weapons, Terrorism, Out-lawed organisations (donations).

3\. Tax Evasion, Money Laundering, Moving Capital Overseas.

Given these huge industries (or illegal fields, doesn't matter). Annexed
industries can emerge

1\. Bitcoin banks, exchanges, and derivative financial services.

2\. Bitcoin mining.

3\. Bitcoin consulting and development services.

And that assuming Bitcoin is not good for your day-to-day legal services, is
unstable, and has lots of technical challenges to overcome.

~~~
cwp
> The only thing that can kill bitcoin is a technological advancement that
> makes its security weak or vulnerable

If by "bitcoin" you mean "cryptocurrencies" then yeah, security is the only
real killer. But the thing that's most likely to kill _Bitcoin_ is a better
cryptocurrency.

The article's laundry list includes some real issues. Mining really is
horrendously inefficient. Confirmation time really does make BTC infeasible
for many kinds of transactions. And deflation really will cause problems, if
it's not doing so already.

~~~
brighton36
Mining is always 100% efficient. If you don't understand that, then you don't
understand how a blockchain works. The purpose of mining is specifically to
waste something of value. Without destroying value, there is nothing to keep
the network anchored to 'truth'.

How much energy is needed to be burned? Precisely as much as is needed to
combat 'spam' (both in the form of speculation and block-space consumption).

The only 'alternative' that has been pitched is the ironically named Proof of
Stake. PoS has many, many problems (Andrew Poelstra itemizes many of them) not
least of which is that they will degenerate into Work-based attacks/mining-
strategies.

Thus far, miners have been reluctant to switch to an alternate chain. It is
probably a very tall claim that this will ever happen at this point. SMTP
was/is a terrible protocol, but the advantages of the network effect sustained
its success. This effect is particularly pronounced in Bitcoin, mostly due to
the way that blockchains work. The longest chain will almost always secure the
most 'faith'.

------
kang
[http://bitcoinobituaries.com/](http://bitcoinobituaries.com/)

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poopsmithe
ah, perfect. was just going to suggest this. _moves along_

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williamcotton
This is a very poorly written and poorly argued article from an author that at
least admits in the first paragraph to not have very much experience with this
technology.

Balnaphone, why did you post this article? What is special about it?

His dismissal of being able to use the Bitcoin blockchain in a 100% secure
manner for digital assets is completely unfounded and the network remains
incredibly resilient and secure. No one would continue to be using the
currency unless it retained these properties. Without any hard evidence to the
contrary, this authors opinions are unworthy of discussion.

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rabbyte
Just want to counter some of the negativity here to say I enjoyed the article
and agree with many of the points. Bitcoin is a difficult subject for a lot of
hackers to get right because when you're deeply embedded in the tech stack it
can be difficult to remember humans are part of the software. Our emotions are
part of the network.

The purest metric for Bitcoins decline can be found in the hundreds of
spiteful, insulting, censoring, excluding conversations that are replacing the
hope and optimistic tinkering that started it all.

~~~
brighton36
Wait, you believe bitcoin is declining in popularity because... "meanies"?

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rabbyte
Toxic work environments scare away smart people. Cynicism trumps innovation.
Noise obscures signal. So, yes, meanies have a measurable impact on the health
of a community. If every post on HN was toxic vitriol, would you be here? This
isn't a thesis. I'm not suggesting this is Bitcoins only problem but that it's
a very serious problem hackers tend to overlook.

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gizi
Bitcoin has issues. So? What real thing is there around that does not have
issues? If everything that has issues is supposed to be "dead", none of us
could still be around today ...

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brighton36
This person has an adolescent understanding of blockchains. Blockchains are
for regulatory arbitrage, as for permissioned ledgers, these are merely the
newest round of altcoins.

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avodonosov
Text color of #909090 is hardly readable. Why not #f0f0f0 ?

~~~
avodonosov
W3C supports me: [http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-
contr...](http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-
contrast.html)

