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.
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.