Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Bitcoin Is Not A Democracy. Then What It Is?
by
Krimster
on 07/07/2017, 14:28:29 UTC
This is where your reasoning ultimately fails

Basically, you roughly divide the current market cap of Bitcoin by 2 and get the cost at today's price (since this is what the market cap shows), implicitly assuming that the price will remain the same when you actually start buying 51% of all Bitcoin monetary supply. Nothing could be more false and farther from reality than that. First, not all coins are being traded, I guess, it is somewhere in the range of a few millions (maybe, 3-4 at most), and when you have bought your first million, you will have to spend like 10 times more money to buy the next million of coins (due to prices flying to the moon). Further, you chose to completely ignore my argument that you may never get there at all, no matter how much money you could have since some stake holders may not be going to sell their stakes at any price

First of all, you mentioned a PoS attack from inside.

This would cost exactly 21.678.642.232,83. A PoS attack from the outside, would cost alot more obviously and might be arguably impossible

You simply can't claim that

Mainly, for two reasons. First, there is almost no chance that it would cost exactly that (or any other number based entirely on current market cap). If we talk about an "attack" originating from inside, it might in fact cost next to nothing simply because someone (e.g. a coin creator) might have premined 51% of coins at no cost at all. And once again (this is second), you can't call it an attack at all if the owner (major stake holder) voluntarily chooses to close the whole shebang. In all other cases, it won't be an insider business

Please. If your coins are worth 21B and you throw them away, no matter how you got them, it costs you 21B. Even if you got them for free it costs you 21B

Heck, what are you talking about?

I guess you should go find out what the term cost actually means. As per dictionary, the cost is "the amount of money that is needed in order to buy, do, or make it". In this case specifically, cost means how much you paid to be able to close the whole business. If you are the creator and premined 51% of all coins, that would likely cost you only electricity consumed and time spent on developing the coin. Honestly, you are now shamelessly twisting your position so that it could somehow look even remotely plausible while in fact it is completely untenable

Not really. It is simple economic logic. If you build something for 0 that is worth 21B, your earned 21B at no cost. If you then destroy it, you destroyed 21B of your value. Therefore it cost 21B.

I don't see the flaw in this argument

I guess you are thinking about "cost of oportunity". If you use your stake to nuke the coin rather than sell it, you are indeed paying the cost of oportunity. However, do keep in mind that there is no way in Earth that you are actually selling your stash for 51% of the market cap, for the very same reasons that you can't just buy 51% of the coins at market value. The price would drop catastrophically once you start doing it.