Quote from: smooth on January 15, 2016, 08:21:02 AM

Quote from: OROBTC on January 14, 2016, 07:07:11 PM

Quote from: smooth on January 14, 2016, 03:29:25 AM

Quote from: Come-from-Beyond on January 13, 2016, 09:01:49 PM

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on January 13, 2016, 08:44:57 PM

That was a rash statement on my part. Here is a more level-headed statement:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg13542612#msg13542612

Btw, I didn't kill Iota. The fundamentals may (or maybe not and probably not in the short-term). That is not my fault nor decision. I stood ready to adopt their coin and stop my development work if it was sound to my expectations.

You mentioned Satoshi's security model in that post. Did you mean that model which is vulnerable to 25% of hashing power with 33% in the best conditions?

The difference between 25% and 50% is not really that significant anyway. With 25% you can easily acquire more hash rate to get to 50% or conspire with some other 25% to get to 50%.

Satoshi's method only achieves its strong security model with more highly fragmented mining (perhaps with the largest extant mining concentration at 5% or less, to choose a somewhat arbitrarily number), something that hasn't been achieved to date but not everyone rules out that the system could evolve in that manner in the future. (TPTB thinks it is impossible; I and others do not, necessarily.)

With numbers like >15% where investments in capacity comparable in magnitude to the amount already invested or small coalitions can easily attack the system, you can really only rely on Satoshi's secondary model, which is sort of proof-of-stakeish and not really very compelling.

^^^

All of which is a weakness of Bitcoin, at least in the eyes of some (informed?) beginners. Until I see BTC issues (including risks related to concentration of mining) relatively resolved in the eyes of experts, I cannot hold more than a fairly small amount in BTC (as an "investment", yes I know that investing (HODLing) BTC is perhaps not that smart).

But, there are valid reasons for many of us to HODL BTC. Its use of moving large amounts of wealth in a quiet way to other places (even to other countries) has potentially great value.

I wait for a story of some rich Chinese person leaving their country with $1,000,000 or more in BTC...

My view (pure speculation with no evidence) is that Bitcoin's value is constrained by the relatively weak state of its mining infrastructure (and increasing hash rate does little to improve the situation because the main problem is concentration). If somehow we could magically and persistently disperse the mining, the value would increase significantly overnight, even with the current level of adoption (although the increased value would bring more adoption).

But as you say it is being used today for some things and is not completely worthless by any means despite being imperfect. Just quite small when measured by finance standards.

Note I do think there is a design that is a solution. And I agree value would increase much faster in this new design, because not only confidence, but the miners wouldn't be always dumping coins on the market (which what keeps BTC price low and siphons money away from speculators into the pockets of mining farms which have costs < $50 per BTC).

Given Bitcoin has been 51% attacked by Chinese miners now (refusing to allow an increase in the block size), Bitcoin appears to be on its death bed (but may take a while for confidence to collapse due to the ignorance of Bitards). I wouldn't hold it long-term.

The Chinese are siphoning off our speculator money with their $50 per BTC mining costs:

Quote from: JorgeStolfi on December 12, 2015, 09:39:54 PM

Quote from: practicaldreamer on December 12, 2015, 09:18:53 PM

Anyone know what proportion of BTC is produced in China/held in China/sold out of China ?

Without this info I don't know that I can put too much store in this theory Jorge.

There is practically no reliable info on the bitcoin economy, in particular on the flow and ownership of bitcoin by country. (This is a serious problem for would-be investors.)

We can only note that more than 67% of all new bitcoins are mined by Chinese pools, which probably comprise mostly Chinese miners; and that bitcoin has practically no use inside China, except as an instrument of speculative trading inside the exchanges. Until last October, variations of trading volume at those exchanges did not seem to be reflected in the USD transaction volume, which may mean that there was little deposit and withdrawal at those exchanges.

There is efficient arbitrage between the Chinese and non-Chinese exchanges. If Chinese miners sold their coins only in Chinese exchanges, that would tend to depress the price there. Then the arbitragers would immediately move those excess coins to non-Chinese exchanges, until the prices got equalized.

So, I would guess that it does not matter where the Chinese miners sell: the net effect is that a large fraction (if not most) of the bitcoins mined in China are eventually bought and hoarded by non-Chinese investors.