Quote from: iCEBREAKER on February 09, 2015, 03:13:36 AM

Quote from: traincarswreck on February 09, 2015, 01:29:40 AM

20 years of lectures about bitcoin you are all ignoring, about how bitcoin shall come about and what it should be...

Who will bring sanity to this community?

No one who doesn't address the topic of Ideal Money should be given a voice in ANY of these matters.

Given Aristotle and Xenphon, more like 2500 years, but I'll give it a shot. I hope Prof. Szabo doesn't grade my essay too harshly!

I dispute the monopolist-maximalist premise (held by many in both 1MB and 20MB camps) that Bitcoin and only Bitcoin may be Ideal Money.

Ideal Money is a moving target, best approximated by vigorous innovation within a market of competing solutions to the traditional problems of transactional friction, exchange/systemic/technological/firm/counter-party/political risk, and wealth protection.

Because macroeconomic conditions and individual microeconomic situations are always changing, Ideal Money means different things to different entities at different times. Thus gold is historically the ideal money for kings, silver for gentleman, and copper for peasants.

The best form for the ensuing market of competing forms of money is a dynamic equilibrium, with a structure and adjustments governed by Nash non-cooperative game-theoretical rules and constraints.

The monopolist-maximalist holds that Bitcoin alone should convey and record every transaction in the world, from tips for witty posts, to micropayments for paywalls, to coffee at Starbucks, and on up to settlements between central banks.

Satoshi rejected such a one-ledger-to-rule-them-all approach:

Quote from: satoshi on December 10, 2010, 05:29:28 PM

Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.

The networks need to have separate fates.

This monopolist-maximalist approach is unsettling. Given BTC's transparency, it would create a Third Temple with an all-seeing eye. Such NWO hubris is of course doomed to failure, and (mostly for sentimental reasons) I don't want to see it take BTC down with it. Better that BTC serve a Bitopian crypto-heaven than rule a hellish cryto-dystopia.

I favor a different kind of maximalism (let's call it mini-maximalism), where BTC is the gold standard/backbone of crypto and reserve digital currency, while specialized altcoins handle tiny, small, medium, large, and private transactions, leaving BTC for the very important huge deals.

Bitcoin blockchain real estate is the most precious thing ever invented, and must be priced as such, as soon as possible.

Diluting the value of this real estate is functionally equivalent to increasing the maximum number of coins, and should only be done out of absolute necessity.

How many transactions does the BIS settle in 10 minutes? That's about how many BTC blocks need to accommodate.

Rex regnat et non gubernat

I read (reed) this as sanity.

As far as I am aware this is the first and truest attempt to discuss the concept of "ideal money" whether as our own ideal or as the subject described by Dr. Nash in the lectures of the same name. Nobody is on topic if not in relation to this subject. It is not my place to vote on block size, but seemingly it is my place to point out the relevance of the related subjects.

I am also in line with everything you wrote, which is interesting because seemingly I am the only one I can find that is so familiar with the material.