Quote from: justusranvier on January 01, 2015, 05:07:06 PM

Quote from: tvbcof on January 01, 2015, 04:54:43 PM

Wrong again Bob. With sidechains, native Bitcoin is available to anyone who wants to pay what it's worth.

That is the opposite of true.

The price of native Bitcoin transactions will be artificially fixed above their free market price because there is a production quota.

That makes no more logical sense than to say it's 'artificially fixed' to where everyone can use of for 'free'. And nothing in this world is 'free'.

The fact is that it's always going to be relatively expensive to have every transaction transmitted nearly instantly and stored indefinitely on multiple
autonomous systems. You can try to subsidize it, but in the end all you are going to have is consolidation as the fixed rates and cost of doing business increases lineally without bound. I'm willing to pay for this since I understand the value and it is valuable to me. Most people bought into the hype so now we have tension.

The real 'costs of doing business' have not even started yet because Bitcoin is still to small to be a noteworthy threat to anyone. Some of those who it might threaten are almost certainly keeping an eye on things, and likely influencing things such that they can win the upcoming battles if they need occur, but these are largely on the horizon.

In the mean time I think that you guys swim in a pool you are not even aware of. That is, you take it for granted as an artifact of the natural environment that there exists a relatively free global network that you will always be allowed to use as a playground. Ever seen the pictures of the rusty ships in the desert in the former Soviet Union? Whoever build those thought there would always be a big pool of water there for them to float in and probably didn't really anticipate the plug being pulled on the dams that created the artificial sea.

Quote from: justusranvier on January 01, 2015, 05:07:06 PM

Quote from: tvbcof on January 01, 2015, 04:54:43 PM

What you want is to model the ubiquitous welfare state structure that abound with plebs being subsidized by powerful institutions who leverage economies of scale to drop their own costs while milking the herd for different kinds of value streams.

Again, what you're saying is the opposite of true.

What I want is for transaction processing to be a competitive open market. That means let the market decide how many transactions to put on the blockchain instead of smugly asserting that most of humanity "doesn't need" that level of security and therefore will be forbidden from having it.

There are problems with the P2P network lacking price discovery, and as a result use of the blockchain creates externalities.

The correct response to that kind of problem, however, is not more central planning - it's more price discovery so that all costs are reflected in the price of using the network.

Why don't you, cypherdoc, and whoever else be a sport and answer my theorem for a change:

"Bitcoin mining will always approach non-profitability due to unlimited supply."

It does not matter how fast the solution grows or how profitable it might be in certain periods. It is beyond absurd to say "we just need to get to 1x10^{n} hashes and everything will be cool." This has vast ramifications for almost everything about Bitcoin, and it's been studiously ignored. I suspect that it simply blows any conventional conceptions and efforts built upon them out of the water.

The best hope is that Bitcoin valuation growth happens in a linear manner, but this puts it at best on terms with modern Keynesian monetary systems which rely on centrally planned inflation to keep the game alive. It doesn't seem likely with Bitcoin absent central control, and that is something I personally don't wish to see. At all!

More likely what will happen is that mining will be profitable only to those who both employ economies of scale and who tap other value streams. The most competative will be a handful of very large player who got very large by playing nice with the powers that be and who only survive by the grace of said. We've seen this game before and see it all around us at present.

Sidechains have some hope of mitigating the inevitable disaster by requiring that Bitcoin itself become subsidized by mutable pool of sidechains no group of which are critical to the value core. The also provide an outlet for the (again, inevitable) oversupply of sha256 hashing power which will otherwise if little to do and little to lose by attacking the very solution they were supposed to support before being powered down forever.

You guys should read the Greek myth about Syphilis. That is an outstanding proxy for sha256 hashing in support of Bitcoin. A much better long term solution for proof of work would have been significantly more sophisticated, but getting there from here probably does not involve Satoshi's Bitcoin at this time. It may or may not include data residing in the blockchain however. Sidechains provides the best bet of not ever finding out whether or not that is the case.