Quote from: ArticMine on February 04, 2016, 12:52:29 AM

First I am going to comment on the punched card vs the 256 KB Tandy XT. My experience with the punched card was in the mid to late 1970's where this technology was reaching the end of its useful life. The latest punched card standard was formulated in 1928 and together with the tabulating machine was the primary form of data processing for big business and governments until the 1960's when tabulating machines started to get replaced with mainframe computers. The relevant point here is how much data could one store on a punched card. Theoretically 120 bytes and many people quote 80 bytes; however due to the limitations of the then legacy equipment from the 1920's to 1960's the figure was closer to around 10 bytes. Now if we compare this with the 256 KB Tandy XT we have a factor of over 10⁴ in data storage capacity alone. The computers from that era typically came with one or more 5.25in floppy drives and the floppy diskettes would each hold about 360 KB of data. This difference in storage capacity alone is greater than the difference between 1 MB blocks in core and the 8 GB blocks proposed in XT for Bitcoin.

The next question is why is the ancient history highly relevant here? The reason is business models. While technology changes rapidly business models tend to remain static. The key lesson from history is to avoid business models that are dependent upon technology staying still. This is why Diner's Club and even American Express form a very small percentage of the fiat payment networks today, yet in say the early 1960's they were the dominant players. Their payment card business models were based upon punched card and tabulating machine technology and started to run into trouble with the advent of computers such as the 256 KB Tandy XT let alone with today's technology.

It is here where we see the strength of Monero's adaptive blocksize technology. If the real cost of digital storage, bandwidth and computer processing power drops by a factor of say 10⁴ (Punched card to 256 KB Tandy XT) then the cost of processing 50,000 TPS becomes in real terms the same as processing 5 TPS today. Bitcoin with the Lightning Network can easily become the Diner's Club of Crypto currency (an early adopter that becomes obsoleted by changing technology) while Monero can easily become the VISA or MasterCard of Crypto currency (a later adopter that can adapt to changing technology). As a baby boomer in my late 50's I have very little interest in business models that have a very good chance of becoming obsolete in 10 - 20 years. I prefer instead business models that can adapt with technological change. So I choose Monero.

Good choice. I am also betting on Monero to win the race to replace fiat (or more precisely, tie with for first with Bitcoin).

I remember being fascinated with punch cards (from the bank) in the early 80s. It was Reagan's first term; I couldn't have been older than 5 or 6 at the time.

My XT had a single 3.5" FDD. But the wizards at Tandy managed to fit a desktop OS with all the goodies on it (undoubtedly influencing my lifelong intolerance of bloatware, as you now see in the blocksize debate).

So never mind the fact that of course the easy gains (low hanging fruit) in storage density are gone, and that the barriers to entering the field have gone up as fast as the price per byte has gone down.

Storage concerns have never been anywhere near the top of the list of reasons why shoveling Visa-like tps onto a blockchain's layer one is bad engineering. Argumentum ad Seagate does nothing to address the problems and trade-offs with bandwidth/latency, decentralization, perverse incentives (wonky SPV mining, empty blocks), superlinear verification times, and (most importantly) contentious hard forks.

My problem with the 'Bitcoin is doomed and should die so Monero can/will succeed' idea is that it contradicts my investment thesis, wherein BTC and XMR are salt and pepper like complementary goods.

When you crank up the Bitcoin Obituary machine, part of me wonders how Monero can survive should Bitcoin fail to remain antifragile. Cheesy