If anyone's checked out the bitcoin source and tried to compile it, you might notice that it is... well, kind of bloated. By my standards anyway. It requires huge numbers of gigantic libraries and so forth. Way more than what it actually does. All you really need are some TCP/IP, database, and crypto algorithms.
In fact, unless I'm missing something major, seems like we're really just talking about a glorified IRC bot with some security features... Does anyone else get the impression that Bitcoin's current back end is over-complicated? Also, does this argue in favor of writing (or anticipating someone writing) a cleaner/smaller version?
I've kind of stayed out of this discussion because I think one's interpretation of the product depends on more on your views about economics and politics than any disagreement about bitcoin's properties. And Tyler Cowen's skepticism makes me think that bitcoin proponents are deep enough into Rothbardville that our lines of engagement would get fruitlessly broad.
But I'm curious on one point - why do some people have this dramatic 'coins'll be worth thousands or nothing" attitude. I can see the zero, and I can get my head round the viewpoint where it's...
66% pullback in price this weekend. This certainly isn't a market for the fainthearted.
My probability distribution looks something like 90% chance of going to 0 and 10% chance of going to multiple hundreds of dollars.
My downside is limited to having paid market price for 2 video cards and a power supply if bitcoins go to zero. My friend just built a mining rig with three cards for around $650. I tried to talk him out of it but the concept of free money seems to override people's ability to make cost benefit analysis.
Would anyone care to comment on the recent Mt Gox hack n' crash?
Personally, I'm thinking that this very bad. The currency won't look as good the mainstream, and I'm anticipating panic sells as soon as the exchanges get up and running again. I'm agnostic as to whether Bitcoin will die or not though...
So I had a thought about cryptographically secure titles of ownership.
Let's say we make a public-private key pair that is a hash of some uniquely identifying biometric data. Much like namecoin we then use the blockchain to encode information, specifically contracts. You can sign contracts with your private key and anyone can check what contracts you've signed with your public key. This allows you to reliably signal certain sorts of intentions and know that everyone knows that you are signalling these intentions.
Let me preface by saying that I haven't thought in depth about bitcoin so I am definitely willing to change any of the opinions I currently hold.
I do not understand why people are especially excited about bitcoin. It's certainly moderately interesting and could provide some benefits but doesn't seem revolutionary in any sense I can see. I'd like to hear solid arguments for why bitcoin is something radically different from other currencies rather than a moderate upgrade on currency technology which will eventually be incorporated into existing currencies.
I...
I share with your general impression, but I think your phrasing casts bitcoin advocates as idiots which is a poor discussion tactic.
Yes, I had an ulterior motive in starting this topic right this moment. See, I'm trying to close the inferential gap in explaining Bitcoin to the layperson, so I wrote up a blog post explaining the relevant cryptographic pre-requisites. (It's based on discussions with an economist who plans to write about Bitcoin soon.)
I would appreciate any corrections. Also, this is another case of me claiming to be better at explaining stuff than most people, so see if I live up to the standard (preferably from those that don't already understand this stuff). The ec...
UPDATE: For those of you who are interested in comparing your hash-fast mining rig to FLOP-fast supercomputers out there, I just recently noticed that Bitcoin Watch reports both the network's hashrate per second and its FLOP rate per second. I don't know how they derived the second figure (see "User:"jimrandomh's comments on the difficulty of comparing hash-type and floating point computations).
Dividing the two, it's implicitly assuming ~12,700 floating point operation equivalents per computed SHA-256 hash. For the 2+ users among us that have a...
Just got my second card running a few hours ago. If it all goes bust at least it will have been an entertaining ride.
Building a mining rig is no longer that attractive with the price doubling for the video cards that are good at it.
edit: looks like you can still build a 1Gh rig for $800 with a payoff time of <30 days presuming power is cheap and price/difficulty doesnt drop too hard.
I have in mind the regular use of "real" figures in economics (i.e. those that are "inflation-adjusted," as well as those based on "purchasing power parity" etc.). These concepts are in principle dissolvable -- when citing some "real" figures, economists could address the questions of what exact index was used to adjust the value, what would be the implications of choosing a different index, how much the figures vary under different more or less reasonable definitions of indexes, what political and bureaucratic incentives have influenced the design of the official government indexes, etc., etc. Trouble is, in practice they almost never do, and except for some narrow and specialized work that studies indexes as such, the de facto standard of discourse in economics is to treat the "real" values as having a Platonic reality. (Even people who specifically study price indexes typically speak about "overestimating" or "underestimating" their value, as if there existed some Platonic "true" value out there.)
As an example of nonsense along these lines, you can take almost any paper that discusses how much some "real" variables have changed over a period of several decades (sometimes they'll even talk about centuries). Of course, if you read that something cost a dollar in 1950, you'll want to know how that compares with the 1950 prices of, say, a loaf of bread, an hour of unskilled labor, etc., to get the feel for how much a dollar was worth back then. However, asking what the "real" value of a 1950 dollar is in 2011 dollars, as a unique and well-defined number, is simply meaningless, considering that you can't trade dollars across time, and the world has changed so much, both technologically and socially, that what counts as "living" in the typical "cost of living" in each era is incommensurable. (The same of course goes for comparing very different places in the same era, and even for similar places, what you count as the "typical" cost of living is largely arbitrary, especially considering the increasing prominence of status goods and conspicuous consumption in the modern economy.)
Yet such numbers are regularly cited with three, four, or even more significant digits, without any consideration of how their value depends on arbitrary conventions and how this dependence influences the argument at hand. (And even if such problems are acknowledged, they are usually presented as imprecise knowledge of the Platonic "true" value, not as the fundamental arbitrariness of the whole concept.)
Ok, I was confused by "Platonic" which I thought you were using to refer to intrinsic as opposed to subjective value. Thanks for the clarification.
In the sense you intend, I think you're right that mainstream economists do subscribe to a Platonic concept of "real" value. They believe that real-world price indexes are based on a theory of price indexes, which is based on a theory of social welfare, which in turn is based on sound philosophy. But I think they are also aware that there are lots of problems with both theory and practice (pe...
We've started a habit of creating periodic Bitcoin threads to confine discussion thereof to those threads and prevent excessive proliferation of Bitcoin topics in the discussion section. Here is a link to the last one, which links the other discussions. Lot's to talk about, and another bounce in Bitcoin's value (up to 33 then down to 24), so share your links and thoughts!