I still hear you saying you will never break the chain
November 20, 2018 8:44 AM Subscribe
Maybe Graphics Cards will be cheaper this holiday season? Every Major Cryptocurrency has dropped in the last week, as the Crypto meltdown continues.
Bitcoin dropped more than 12% last week [Ars], and dropped another 10% today [marketwatch]
The two largest cryptocurrencies have both seen market cap drop significantly over the last few months, while futures trading in alt-currency remains tepid. Is the Bitcoin Cash fork [wikipedia] to blame [marketwatch]? Is the bubble about to burst?
Will it all be too late to lessen [previously] the environmental impact of crypto? [previouslier]
Bitcoin dropped more than 12% last week [Ars], and dropped another 10% today [marketwatch]
The two largest cryptocurrencies have both seen market cap drop significantly over the last few months, while futures trading in alt-currency remains tepid. Is the Bitcoin Cash fork [wikipedia] to blame [marketwatch]? Is the bubble about to burst?
Will it all be too late to lessen [previously] the environmental impact of crypto? [previouslier]
The rush on graphics cards ended months ago.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:49 AM on November 20, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:49 AM on November 20, 2018 [6 favorites]
Cryptocurrencies have every sign of a classic bubble. Some will survive but most will go to zero. Blockchain will be the real winner in the long run.
posted by ShakeyJake at 8:50 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by ShakeyJake at 8:50 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
Let’s hope this continues.
posted by Artw at 8:52 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:52 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
I still don't understand why cryptocurrency has monetary value, or really anything else other than that the word blockchain comes up frequently in connection with it, and I don't understand blockchain either, and please don't go to the trouble of explaining it to me, but THANK YOU for finally using that reference in the title.
posted by monopas at 8:53 AM on November 20, 2018 [22 favorites]
posted by monopas at 8:53 AM on November 20, 2018 [22 favorites]
Unfortunately, I doubt that crypto is the only thing inflating the price of graphics cards. There's also a machine learning craze going on, and graphics cards have become very popular for running neural networks. I'm afraid that even if cryptocurrencies were to go away, graphics cards would still remain overpriced for gaming.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:55 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:55 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
Blockchain will be the real winner in the long run.
Blockchain Forever!
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
Blockchain Forever!
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:55 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
My sense is that the number of neural network gpus is a tiny fraction of the number of crypto currency gpus out there. Additionally, nvidia requires corporate entities to buy extra expensive gpus for data centres (with only slightly better specs than the retail cards), which means that a huge chunk of the machine learning cards are entirely separate from the consumer market. Large crypto miners were theoretically supposed to buy these pricier cards, too, but there's a lot of signs that they just found other ways to get retail cards.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:01 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by kaibutsu at 9:01 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
The rush on graphics cards ended months ago.
I knew I'd be glad I held out!
posted by aspersioncast at 9:01 AM on November 20, 2018
I knew I'd be glad I held out!
posted by aspersioncast at 9:01 AM on November 20, 2018
Fuck Cryptocurrencies. All of them. And fuck Crypto wonks. All of them. And not in the fun way. Cryptocurrency and the "blockchain" (except for JimCoin) are absolute garbage stupidity that do not scale, and have become the 21st Century version of Beanie Babies or Tulip Mania, except that when those bubbles burst, you at least had cute little plush toys or tulip bulbs you could use for things.
posted by SansPoint at 9:06 AM on November 20, 2018 [30 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 9:06 AM on November 20, 2018 [30 favorites]
Blockchain Forever!
JimCoin has never dropped in value*.
*Past performance is not guaranty of future performance. Fire or termites are always a possibility.
posted by bondcliff at 9:06 AM on November 20, 2018 [32 favorites]
JimCoin has never dropped in value*.
*Past performance is not guaranty of future performance. Fire or termites are always a possibility.
posted by bondcliff at 9:06 AM on November 20, 2018 [32 favorites]
Going by things like QAnon, I figure there's enough stone-cold suckers that cryptocurrencies will have at least a few more bounces before any full bubble burst.
posted by tavella at 9:12 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:12 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
I watch crypto from the sidelines. I can't back any of this up (and God forbid I am going to actually do any research) but I think the decline of bitcoin is due to the following factors in combination (in no order):
* The recent split which adds the uncertainty that investors hate and dilutes demand among people who actually want to use a crypto coin.
* Governments around the would becoming more adept at regulating crypto, making it less desirable.
* The shutdown of various prominent darknet sites, which lead to lower demand for crypto and price slumps when governments get around to liquidating seized bitcoins. Also, now is about when those that didn't get caught and have been lying low might think about quietly selling up.
* The people who were using bitcoin to transfer wealth out of various countries have either been caught, or succeeded and no longer need to buy large amounts of crypto.
* People liquidating in anticipation of the killer cyber-monday deals on new Lamborghinis.
* The whole edifice was stupidly overvalued to begin with.
The whole point of Bitcoin was that there were only ever a certain amount, so no government could devalue things by printing more. Whether or not you think that is a good idea (guess what I think), Bitcoin doesn't even live up to its own promise with these idiotic splits.
I would laugh but people are losing money who don't really deserve to.
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:19 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
* The recent split which adds the uncertainty that investors hate and dilutes demand among people who actually want to use a crypto coin.
* Governments around the would becoming more adept at regulating crypto, making it less desirable.
* The shutdown of various prominent darknet sites, which lead to lower demand for crypto and price slumps when governments get around to liquidating seized bitcoins. Also, now is about when those that didn't get caught and have been lying low might think about quietly selling up.
* The people who were using bitcoin to transfer wealth out of various countries have either been caught, or succeeded and no longer need to buy large amounts of crypto.
* People liquidating in anticipation of the killer cyber-monday deals on new Lamborghinis.
* The whole edifice was stupidly overvalued to begin with.
The whole point of Bitcoin was that there were only ever a certain amount, so no government could devalue things by printing more. Whether or not you think that is a good idea (guess what I think), Bitcoin doesn't even live up to its own promise with these idiotic splits.
I would laugh but people are losing money who don't really deserve to.
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:19 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
Blockchain will be the real winner in the long run
Why? What if the solution that is blockchain is found to cause more problems than it solves?
posted by gwint at 9:19 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
Why? What if the solution that is blockchain is found to cause more problems than it solves?
posted by gwint at 9:19 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm fairly confident that it's possible to make a blockchain style shared ledger with cryptographic non-repudiation that does not require exponentially larger compute resources as it scales. In fact, it's probably being tested right now by banks, IBM, etc.. But I'm not interested enough to look it up. But if you think all blockchain must scale the same way as ETH or bitcoin does... well you're probably misinformed.
posted by some loser at 9:21 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by some loser at 9:21 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
It's okay, armchair speculators will just move to buying Iraqi dinars.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:22 AM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Apocryphon at 9:22 AM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]
My fear is when the bubble bursts it will take the resources of people allready inclined to belive in fringe indeologies and push them further
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
It sounds like they're recreating all the problems they were trying to get away from: hard forks are fragmenting the currencies into a bunch of incompatible systems, and at any time a bunch of investors selling off could totally devalue the currency.
posted by echo target at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by echo target at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
some loser: As a blockchain requires the entire ledger to be shared and computed as it's added to, no, it is impossible to make a blockchain-style shared ledger that does not require exponentially increasing computing resources. It might be feasible for very small, non-public, not-widely distributed applications, but even then there's precious little that a blockchain can do that can't be accomplished with a lot lower overhead with a damn wiki, Git, or some other method of tracking changes.
posted by SansPoint at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2018 [6 favorites]
I guess we'll see.
posted by some loser at 9:26 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by some loser at 9:26 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
What, this deep into a Bitcoin-is-crashing thread and no one has yelled HODL! yet?
As I do in every related thread, I'll once again recommend Matt Levine's Money Stuff column - he's a great writer and his dry sarcasm is just the right touch for discussions of Bitcoin.
* Bitcoin ETFs and trading Bitcoin futures.
* "This is the most perfect thing I have ever read about the blockchain: ... I want to cry. I want to give those paragraphs a hug."
* The Bitcoin whale?
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
As I do in every related thread, I'll once again recommend Matt Levine's Money Stuff column - he's a great writer and his dry sarcasm is just the right touch for discussions of Bitcoin.
* Bitcoin ETFs and trading Bitcoin futures.
* "This is the most perfect thing I have ever read about the blockchain: ... I want to cry. I want to give those paragraphs a hug."
* The Bitcoin whale?
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
I still don't understand why cryptocurrency has monetary value--monopas
The answer to that question is a question: how do you come up with your own monetary system that people will trust? The classic story is the one with prisoners of war who have access to some cans of tuna. They end up using the cans as currency to buy objects and favors from each other. (No one dares open up one of the way-too-old cans of tuna). They could have done it by bartering, but having a currency is more efficient.
It works because there is a limited supply and it is easily identifiable. If you want to come up with your own currency that is accepted world-wide, you aren't going to do it by printing your own money (with a few exceptions). But you can do it with math. If the math prevents proliferation without lots of effort and you can prove who owns it and can transfer it electronically, then you have a very efficient, (somewhat) usable currency.
posted by eye of newt at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2018
The answer to that question is a question: how do you come up with your own monetary system that people will trust? The classic story is the one with prisoners of war who have access to some cans of tuna. They end up using the cans as currency to buy objects and favors from each other. (No one dares open up one of the way-too-old cans of tuna). They could have done it by bartering, but having a currency is more efficient.
It works because there is a limited supply and it is easily identifiable. If you want to come up with your own currency that is accepted world-wide, you aren't going to do it by printing your own money (with a few exceptions). But you can do it with math. If the math prevents proliferation without lots of effort and you can prove who owns it and can transfer it electronically, then you have a very efficient, (somewhat) usable currency.
posted by eye of newt at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2018
And, to be honest, since bitcoin is anonymous, it became really popular with drug dealers.
posted by eye of newt at 9:43 AM on November 20, 2018
posted by eye of newt at 9:43 AM on November 20, 2018
See also: Tether scam slowly unraveling. As I understand it, crypto prices on some important exchanges were denominated in USDT, with the assumption that 1 USDT == 1 USD.
posted by clawsoon at 9:43 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 9:43 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
The classic story is the one with prisoners of war who have access to some cans of tuna. They end up using the cans as currency to buy objects and favors from each other. (No one dares open up one of the way-too-old cans of tuna). They could have done it by bartering, but having a currency is more efficient.
See also the giant wheel money of Yap.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:51 AM on November 20, 2018
See also the giant wheel money of Yap.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 9:51 AM on November 20, 2018
Sigh... I miss the halcyon days of the 90s when we thought the Internet was going to make everybody free and well-off and happy and make the 21st century a golden age.
posted by Naberius at 10:01 AM on November 20, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by Naberius at 10:01 AM on November 20, 2018 [12 favorites]
And, to be honest, since bitcoin is anonymous, it became really popular with drug dealers.Since Bitcoin is not only not anonymous but in fact provides a widely-replicated, irrepudiable public record of your activities it’s even more popular with cops.
The only thing above anonymity on the list of easily-disproven things people inexplicably believe about bitcoin is that it’s suitable for use as a currency.
posted by adamsc at 10:03 AM on November 20, 2018 [19 favorites]
As a blockchain requires the entire ledger to be shared and computed as it's added to, no, it is impossible to make a blockchain-style shared ledger that does not require exponentially increasing computing resources.
There's nothing exponential about the blockchain's storage requirements. It grows in direct proportion to the number of transactions that are performed.
There's nothing exponential about mining difficulty. It's continually adjusted so that 144 blocks are mined a day. If miners stop mining, mining requires less energy.
A blockchain used in another application can have its parameters adjusted to suit. There's nothing exponential about it unless you design it to be so.
posted by Leon at 10:16 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
There's nothing exponential about the blockchain's storage requirements. It grows in direct proportion to the number of transactions that are performed.
There's nothing exponential about mining difficulty. It's continually adjusted so that 144 blocks are mined a day. If miners stop mining, mining requires less energy.
A blockchain used in another application can have its parameters adjusted to suit. There's nothing exponential about it unless you design it to be so.
posted by Leon at 10:16 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Rock on, bitcoin boosters
Take your crypto spoon and dig your grave
Well it's a heartless market
Pick your path and then you pray
...
Well, did it make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of wealth?
And is it over now
Do you know how
To pick up the pieces and click 'Sell?'
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:22 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
Take your crypto spoon and dig your grave
Well it's a heartless market
Pick your path and then you pray
...
Well, did it make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of wealth?
And is it over now
Do you know how
To pick up the pieces and click 'Sell?'
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:22 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
Perhaps the biggest benefit of the crypto craze will be giving the financial markets an idea of what NOT to do. Secure cryptographic based monetary transactions will take over, whether the data is maintained by a blockchain ledger/algorithm or some kind of tree/hash/ultra-red-black-skip-list (made that last one up:) it's the way of the future. But mistakes will be made, perhaps fewer by using the examples of this wacky period, basically leveraging the investment of venture capitol to fund a bunch of experiments.
posted by sammyo at 10:22 AM on November 20, 2018
posted by sammyo at 10:22 AM on November 20, 2018
The answer to that question is a question: how do you come up with your own monetary system that people will trust?
I guess the response to that is: why do you need one? It's not self-evident to a lot of people that you should. I think the case needs to be made that it's desirable for the world, not just single individuals, to have untraceable currencies. There are negative externalizes for me in anonymous financial transactions even, perhaps especially, if I don't participate. Drugs and petty illegal stuff sure, but there are many Bad Thing this would enable if adopted at the state/sovereign actor levels. Think of funding proxy wars anonymously, for example. This would be a major boon to the NKs and SAs of the world.
posted by bonehead at 10:25 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
I guess the response to that is: why do you need one? It's not self-evident to a lot of people that you should. I think the case needs to be made that it's desirable for the world, not just single individuals, to have untraceable currencies. There are negative externalizes for me in anonymous financial transactions even, perhaps especially, if I don't participate. Drugs and petty illegal stuff sure, but there are many Bad Thing this would enable if adopted at the state/sovereign actor levels. Think of funding proxy wars anonymously, for example. This would be a major boon to the NKs and SAs of the world.
posted by bonehead at 10:25 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
bonehead: the point, as I understand, is not about anonymity, it is about taking control of currencies away from centralized institutions. Crypto people distrust large banks and national governments with the power to issue/devalue currencies and to certify transactions, and want to take that power away from them and vest it in a decentralized community.
posted by agentofselection at 10:38 AM on November 20, 2018
posted by agentofselection at 10:38 AM on November 20, 2018
I've put all my money into frozen concentrated orange juice.
posted by Fizz at 10:42 AM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 10:42 AM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]
One of the cleverest zingers of Jesus was when he was asked a gotcha about taxes:
I wonder what he'd say about Bitcoin.
posted by clawsoon at 10:42 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”The zingerness of it doesn't come across in translation very well, but trust me, it's there.
But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
I wonder what he'd say about Bitcoin.
posted by clawsoon at 10:42 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
"Secure cryptographic based monetary transactions will take over"
Sorry, what does that mean, and why don't existing mechanisms for handling transactions qualify?
posted by bfields at 10:49 AM on November 20, 2018
Sorry, what does that mean, and why don't existing mechanisms for handling transactions qualify?
posted by bfields at 10:49 AM on November 20, 2018
Regarding Tether, as clawsoon mentioned above: the DOJ is now apparently probling whether water is wet whether Tether was just a scam to prop up bitcoin.
which to me suggests that the big investors are already out
posted by phooky at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
which to me suggests that the big investors are already out
posted by phooky at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
"Give unto Doge what is Doge's."
posted by clawsoon at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2018 [17 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 10:50 AM on November 20, 2018 [17 favorites]
... and Satoshi what is Satoshi's. and Ripple what is Ripple's, and Iota what is Iota's, and-- Jesus, this could go on a while. Look, just unwind your positions and get right with God, ok?
posted by phooky at 10:53 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by phooky at 10:53 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
FWIW, Doge is up almost 2% versus bitcoin. Clearly, in these uncertain cryptotimes, "if you're in for the slog, go with the dog".
hit post close tab
posted by phooky at 10:56 AM on November 20, 2018 [14 favorites]
hit post close tab
posted by phooky at 10:56 AM on November 20, 2018 [14 favorites]
I guess the response to that is: why do you need one? It's not self-evident to a lot of people that you should.
The cashless society is inevitable. What properties do you want the cash replacement to have?
The argument for decentralized clearing is that one day you're going to try to use your money in a way the central clearing house disapproves of. The argument for anonymous transactions is that you don't want the new government flipping through the old transactions to find out who's been buying sex toys. The privacy concerns around currency are just as valid as those around communication. (The current generation of cryptocurrencies only meet the first criteria, and have been co-opted as stores of value in any case).
posted by Leon at 10:58 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
The cashless society is inevitable. What properties do you want the cash replacement to have?
The argument for decentralized clearing is that one day you're going to try to use your money in a way the central clearing house disapproves of. The argument for anonymous transactions is that you don't want the new government flipping through the old transactions to find out who's been buying sex toys. The privacy concerns around currency are just as valid as those around communication. (The current generation of cryptocurrencies only meet the first criteria, and have been co-opted as stores of value in any case).
posted by Leon at 10:58 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Crypto people distrust large banks and national governments with the power to issue/devalue currencies and to certify transactions, and want to take that power away from them and vest it in a decentralized community.
Yes, and those people are unhinged. It's the same mentality that begets bunkers full of ammunition and MREs. The last thing we should be doing is encouraging them.
posted by Mayor West at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2018 [13 favorites]
Yes, and those people are unhinged. It's the same mentality that begets bunkers full of ammunition and MREs. The last thing we should be doing is encouraging them.
posted by Mayor West at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2018 [13 favorites]
My favourite quote from r/Buttcoin today: "The true HODL is the friends we make along the way."
posted by clawsoon at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
But no one mines Bitcoin with GPUs any more, do they? I thought GPUs were just for Etherium mining . So the ups and downs of bitcoin won't affect consumer GPU prices much. Etherium is weird and I'm not sure it's 100% just used for straight crypto-cash transactions. So the cause-and-effect maybe isn't there.
Also these bitcoin schisms will eventually make it all worthless. Fiat currency works because it has the force of law behind it. I love how the sociology of bitcoin eventually proves all their non-technical beliefs wrong.
posted by GuyZero at 11:04 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also these bitcoin schisms will eventually make it all worthless. Fiat currency works because it has the force of law behind it. I love how the sociology of bitcoin eventually proves all their non-technical beliefs wrong.
posted by GuyZero at 11:04 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
I wonder what Jesus would say about Bitcoin.
"Fuck Bitcoin," said Jesus, "for it is an abomination to me."
posted by w0mbat at 11:05 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
"Fuck Bitcoin," said Jesus, "for it is an abomination to me."
posted by w0mbat at 11:05 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
"Fuck Bitcoin," said Jesus, "for it is an abomination to me."
"Invest in JesusCoin instead. God-guaranteed ROI!"
posted by clawsoon at 11:07 AM on November 20, 2018 [6 favorites]
"Invest in JesusCoin instead. God-guaranteed ROI!"
posted by clawsoon at 11:07 AM on November 20, 2018 [6 favorites]
I'm always fascinated by one particular thing when BitCoin stories come up anywhere on the internet...
In the comment section (even here), there's always at least 10-12 people who say "BitCoin is so stupid and will never work (except for X kind of cryptocurrency).
posted by kuanes at 11:13 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
In the comment section (even here), there's always at least 10-12 people who say "BitCoin is so stupid and will never work (except for X kind of cryptocurrency).
posted by kuanes at 11:13 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
if you've ever been stuck hanging out with a distant relative you're obligated to be kind to and all they (who am I kidding? he) wants to do is show you his crypto wallet app and talk about bitcoin investing strategies you pretty much need Jesus-level patience
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:20 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:20 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
The argument for decentralized clearing is that one day you're going to try to use your money in a way the central clearing house disapproves of.
So, instead you're now hoping that you can find someone willing to clear your use. Not to mention that this is a somewhat euphemistic argument, as "disapproves of" is often shorthand for "is illegal" in these discussions.
The argument for anonymous transactions is that you don't want the new government flipping through the old transactions to find out who's been buying sex toys.
Which is a bad argument on a few levels - from the fact that creating truly anonymous transactions is hard to the issue that if the government's going through the Bad Dragon customer list, you have much bigger problems.
It's once again looking for technological solutions to social problems,and it never works.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:26 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
So, instead you're now hoping that you can find someone willing to clear your use. Not to mention that this is a somewhat euphemistic argument, as "disapproves of" is often shorthand for "is illegal" in these discussions.
The argument for anonymous transactions is that you don't want the new government flipping through the old transactions to find out who's been buying sex toys.
Which is a bad argument on a few levels - from the fact that creating truly anonymous transactions is hard to the issue that if the government's going through the Bad Dragon customer list, you have much bigger problems.
It's once again looking for technological solutions to social problems,and it never works.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:26 AM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
In the comment section (even here), there's always at least 10-12 people who say "BitCoin is so stupid and will never work (except for X kind of cryptocurrency).That quote is a good red flag that the person saying it doesn't know what they're talking about, since it appears to confuse Bitcoin with blockchains.
It is reasonable to say something to the effect of, "Blockchains are stupid and will never work (except for cryptocurrency)". If anyone talks about using a blockchain for something that could also be solved with a database, HODL on to your wallet.
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 11:27 AM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
I've put all my money into frozen concentrated orange juice.
But they'll broadcast the crop report in an hour. What if....
posted by hwyengr at 11:36 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
But they'll broadcast the crop report in an hour. What if....
posted by hwyengr at 11:36 AM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
kaibutsu: What happened was a combination of 1) a mass shift from GPU parallelization to ASICs or hybrid ASIC systems, 2) an announced transition by etherium from proof of work to proof of stake, which is less intensive and reduces speculative mining, and 3) bitcoin got too complex to effectively be parallelized on a GPU.
So I don't really doubt Nvidia's reports that revenue from cryptocurrency miners dropped and they're not expecting substantial new revenue there.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 11:38 AM on November 20, 2018
So I don't really doubt Nvidia's reports that revenue from cryptocurrency miners dropped and they're not expecting substantial new revenue there.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 11:38 AM on November 20, 2018
I know people who are significantly smarter than me who believe that there exists a use case for blockchain technology, and who have won a certain amount of credibility with me by insisting that that use case does not using it as a platform for currency. But I have never convinced those people to sit down long enough to explain what that use case might possibly be in terms that a dummy like me can understand.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Bitcoin dropped more than 12% last week, and dropped another 10% today
I mean, sure, if you're thinking in fiat terms like a rube. One bitcoin is still worth one bitcoin. *cries into pillow*
The rush on graphics cards ended months ago.
And unfortunately they're still really expensive! Not as insanely expensive as this time last year, but still pretty out of reach for a lot of us. Hopefully Nvidia will have to lower prices to a somewhat reasonable level in order to get through some of their excess inventory (WSJ article: Nvidia Reports Huge Decline In GPU Sales for Cryptocurrency Mining).
posted by ODiV at 11:51 AM on November 20, 2018
I mean, sure, if you're thinking in fiat terms like a rube. One bitcoin is still worth one bitcoin. *cries into pillow*
The rush on graphics cards ended months ago.
And unfortunately they're still really expensive! Not as insanely expensive as this time last year, but still pretty out of reach for a lot of us. Hopefully Nvidia will have to lower prices to a somewhat reasonable level in order to get through some of their excess inventory (WSJ article: Nvidia Reports Huge Decline In GPU Sales for Cryptocurrency Mining).
posted by ODiV at 11:51 AM on November 20, 2018
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.Pretty sure he’s talking about the cloud, you guys.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:54 AM on November 20, 2018 [15 favorites]
All I can say is do not, DO NOT try to look up information on blockchain on YouTube. After you do, you will be assaulted with videos about every kook in existence, including flat-earthers.
posted by shorstenbach at 12:01 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by shorstenbach at 12:01 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
"And he dreamed, and behold a blockchain set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to the Merkle root; and behold the transactions of God ascending and descending on it."
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:07 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:07 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
> the point... is about taking control of currencies away from centralized institutions. Crypto people distrust large banks and national governments with the power to issue/devalue currencies and to certify transactions, and want to take that power away from them and vest it in a decentralized community.
Which seems to be a laudable point. After watching the India/Pakistan Partition Dr. Who I got curious & ended up reading about Britain messing with its colonies' economies after WWII, for example.
After reading about the Weimar Republic, the end of Lend-Lease, Bretton-Woods and the like, it appears to me that without pillaging, no one can actually afford war; it's always paid for with currency manipulation tricks like QE for US vs. Iraq/Afghanistan.
The crypto kooks are right to point out the hazards of fiat currencies backed by violence and fractional reserve banking, but just like goldbugs before them, they offer no viable alternative that (sort of) feeds 7 billion people.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 12:08 PM on November 20, 2018
Which seems to be a laudable point. After watching the India/Pakistan Partition Dr. Who I got curious & ended up reading about Britain messing with its colonies' economies after WWII, for example.
After reading about the Weimar Republic, the end of Lend-Lease, Bretton-Woods and the like, it appears to me that without pillaging, no one can actually afford war; it's always paid for with currency manipulation tricks like QE for US vs. Iraq/Afghanistan.
The crypto kooks are right to point out the hazards of fiat currencies backed by violence and fractional reserve banking, but just like goldbugs before them, they offer no viable alternative that (sort of) feeds 7 billion people.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 12:08 PM on November 20, 2018
> I know people who are significantly smarter than me who believe that there exists a use case for blockchain technology,
just to make it clear, this is me asking the smart people here to explain use cases for blockchain that don't require treating it as currency. I read stuff like this, a random-ass medium piece that proposes a blockchain-based tool for scientific publication that's aimed at ending the replication crisis, and I'm like "sounds good but I for reals 100% don't understand why this needs to be blockchain-based. plz help."
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:15 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
just to make it clear, this is me asking the smart people here to explain use cases for blockchain that don't require treating it as currency. I read stuff like this, a random-ass medium piece that proposes a blockchain-based tool for scientific publication that's aimed at ending the replication crisis, and I'm like "sounds good but I for reals 100% don't understand why this needs to be blockchain-based. plz help."
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:15 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
I would laugh but people are losing money who don't really deserve to.
While I am not one to gloat at other's misfortune, those who jumped into the crypto market should have known that it was a speculative gamble, not an investment.
posted by tgrundke at 12:20 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
While I am not one to gloat at other's misfortune, those who jumped into the crypto market should have known that it was a speculative gamble, not an investment.
posted by tgrundke at 12:20 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
a random-ass medium piece that proposes a blockchain-based tool for scientific publication that's aimed at ending the replication crisis
Are you sure these people are smarter than you?
posted by clawsoon at 12:21 PM on November 20, 2018 [10 favorites]
Are you sure these people are smarter than you?
posted by clawsoon at 12:21 PM on November 20, 2018 [10 favorites]
Yeah “blockchain will change everything!” boosters come in two varieties:
Group 1: Scammy consultants promoting blockchain services who do a lot of PR about it. (This category includes usually reputable entities like IBM).
Group 2: People who have been misled by those in Group 1.
posted by chrchr at 12:27 PM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
Group 1: Scammy consultants promoting blockchain services who do a lot of PR about it. (This category includes usually reputable entities like IBM).
Group 2: People who have been misled by those in Group 1.
posted by chrchr at 12:27 PM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
some loser: As a blockchain requires the entire ledger to be shared and computed as it's added to, no, it is impossible to make a blockchain-style shared ledger that does not require exponentially increasing computing resources. It might be feasible for very small, non-public, not-widely distributed applications, but even then there's precious little that a blockchain can do that can't be accomplished with a lot lower overhead with a damn wiki, Git, or some other method of tracking changes.
I'm under the impression that most of the computing load required is a result of the proof-of-work mechanism? It might never be extraordinarily efficient even without that but perhaps not as absurdly inefficient, either?
posted by atoxyl at 12:47 PM on November 20, 2018
I'm under the impression that most of the computing load required is a result of the proof-of-work mechanism? It might never be extraordinarily efficient even without that but perhaps not as absurdly inefficient, either?
posted by atoxyl at 12:47 PM on November 20, 2018
this is me asking the smart people here to explain use cases for blockchain that don't require treating it as currency.
I'm not sure I meet the "smart person" requirement, but there are some legitimate non-cryptocurrency uses for blockchain-esque technologies for decentralized communications. Basically, you can avoid the problem that PGP always had with a need for central keyservers and the associated mess of verification signatures, and do your public key exchanges via a distributed ledger. It lets you see that someone's key was assigned to them, and that others attested to that ownership, at a particular time, and it also creates a way to revoke keys without a separate CRL system.
There are some interesting things you can do related to nonrepudiation and timestamping as well. For instance, if you're a journalist, you could post the hash of every photo you take to an immutable shared chain which also includes periodic timestamp elements (hash of the first four words of the headline of a major international newspaper every day, or similar), in order to prove that a photo was taken on or before a particular date, and was not modified subsequently. This has some appeal in the age of "fake news" and rampant propaganda, and could also prevent plagiarism and establish ownership of an image or other digital asset.
It's arguable whether many of these things are really "blockchain" (digital timestamping and nonrepudiation systems have existed since the late 80s in some forms), but I find that argument tiring and not particularly interesting. "Blockchain technology" includes basically all of modern cryptography and so there's not much you can't jam under the label, if you want to (and you want to, because that's how you get that sweet shut-up-and-take-my-money VC cash, or at least you did six months ago). When it becomes poison instead of an attractant to investors, we can go back to using the proper names for stuff that existed before Bitcoin shat in the pool.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [10 favorites]
I'm not sure I meet the "smart person" requirement, but there are some legitimate non-cryptocurrency uses for blockchain-esque technologies for decentralized communications. Basically, you can avoid the problem that PGP always had with a need for central keyservers and the associated mess of verification signatures, and do your public key exchanges via a distributed ledger. It lets you see that someone's key was assigned to them, and that others attested to that ownership, at a particular time, and it also creates a way to revoke keys without a separate CRL system.
There are some interesting things you can do related to nonrepudiation and timestamping as well. For instance, if you're a journalist, you could post the hash of every photo you take to an immutable shared chain which also includes periodic timestamp elements (hash of the first four words of the headline of a major international newspaper every day, or similar), in order to prove that a photo was taken on or before a particular date, and was not modified subsequently. This has some appeal in the age of "fake news" and rampant propaganda, and could also prevent plagiarism and establish ownership of an image or other digital asset.
It's arguable whether many of these things are really "blockchain" (digital timestamping and nonrepudiation systems have existed since the late 80s in some forms), but I find that argument tiring and not particularly interesting. "Blockchain technology" includes basically all of modern cryptography and so there's not much you can't jam under the label, if you want to (and you want to, because that's how you get that sweet shut-up-and-take-my-money VC cash, or at least you did six months ago). When it becomes poison instead of an attractant to investors, we can go back to using the proper names for stuff that existed before Bitcoin shat in the pool.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [10 favorites]
Not to mention that this is a somewhat euphemistic argument, as "disapproves of" is often shorthand for "is illegal" in these discussions.
Well, you get the good stuff like drug dealing, but also the bad stuff like tax evasion (not really a joke).
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 PM on November 20, 2018
Well, you get the good stuff like drug dealing, but also the bad stuff like tax evasion (not really a joke).
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 PM on November 20, 2018
> just to make it clear, this is me asking the smart people here to explain use cases for blockchain that don't require treating it as currency.
In here? I'm sceptical. But ok, at any point where you may need a sysadmin to stand up in court and say "I guarantee that this data has not been tampered with" and you think "how does he really know?" you can replace that with a blockchain and get much more certainty.
posted by Leon at 12:56 PM on November 20, 2018
In here? I'm sceptical. But ok, at any point where you may need a sysadmin to stand up in court and say "I guarantee that this data has not been tampered with" and you think "how does he really know?" you can replace that with a blockchain and get much more certainty.
posted by Leon at 12:56 PM on November 20, 2018
> When it becomes poison instead of an attractant to investors, we can go back to using the proper names for stuff that existed before Bitcoin shat in the pool.
oh. sort of how like a bunch of pre-existing statistical classification techniques are now called "machine learning" because that's also a money-attracting shibboleth.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:56 PM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]
oh. sort of how like a bunch of pre-existing statistical classification techniques are now called "machine learning" because that's also a money-attracting shibboleth.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 12:56 PM on November 20, 2018 [8 favorites]
Did any drug dealers actually take Bitcoin? Other than that Silk Road business, which always seemed more hype than reality.
Enabling drug deals gets a lot of talk, but if I were a drug dealer, Bitcoin seems like a big pain in the ass versus just having people use Venmo. (Obviously you have people pay someone else other than you, and mix the accounts up frequently, because people who buy drugs are not very subtle. But Bitcoin has that same problem.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:57 PM on November 20, 2018
Enabling drug deals gets a lot of talk, but if I were a drug dealer, Bitcoin seems like a big pain in the ass versus just having people use Venmo. (Obviously you have people pay someone else other than you, and mix the accounts up frequently, because people who buy drugs are not very subtle. But Bitcoin has that same problem.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:57 PM on November 20, 2018
How does a potential move toward proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work enter into this (if at all)? Also can someone explain how proof-of-stake actually works?
posted by theory at 1:02 PM on November 20, 2018
posted by theory at 1:02 PM on November 20, 2018
why don't existing mechanisms for handling transactions qualify?
Do you mean Mastercard and Visa? You're giving them your personal resources and assuming they will be reliable and do the right thing for you. And that is generally a good assumption, trust is their business model. But, they own all the data you've given them, to sum up "what could possibly go wrong".
Not talking pure anonymity or other extreme ideals, but basic "you made a salary, keep it safe until needed" kind of idealism. Look at the Bangladesh central bank heist, many millions of dollars stolen by forging some faxes. The thieves just learned the system (libraries cough) and were only caught by a blatant typos that only someone working in isolation in a repressive regime would have not noticed. I'm sure there were lots of difficult parts but most money is transferred in plain text between trusted parties. (generally over encrypted communications, like https).
The world is becoming too complex and fast for that to work long term, all transactions need computationally security and verifiable processes. That will include encryption. A ledger (list of transactions) that is encrypted is basically blockchain. Every financial institution is working on some variety, my point was they will make mistakes, hopefully examples from the recent few years will help the banks get it right earlier.
posted by sammyo at 1:10 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Do you mean Mastercard and Visa? You're giving them your personal resources and assuming they will be reliable and do the right thing for you. And that is generally a good assumption, trust is their business model. But, they own all the data you've given them, to sum up "what could possibly go wrong".
Not talking pure anonymity or other extreme ideals, but basic "you made a salary, keep it safe until needed" kind of idealism. Look at the Bangladesh central bank heist, many millions of dollars stolen by forging some faxes. The thieves just learned the system (libraries cough) and were only caught by a blatant typos that only someone working in isolation in a repressive regime would have not noticed. I'm sure there were lots of difficult parts but most money is transferred in plain text between trusted parties. (generally over encrypted communications, like https).
The world is becoming too complex and fast for that to work long term, all transactions need computationally security and verifiable processes. That will include encryption. A ledger (list of transactions) that is encrypted is basically blockchain. Every financial institution is working on some variety, my point was they will make mistakes, hopefully examples from the recent few years will help the banks get it right earlier.
posted by sammyo at 1:10 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
The argument for decentralized clearing is that one day you're going to try to use your money in a way the central clearing house disapproves of.
You're making plans for a social apocalypse. If the world is that far gone, we're going to be a lot more worried about a lot more thing than not being able to use official cash to buy sex toys. The real world closest example of this is China. Being able to buy stuff on the black market is certainly important there, but I'd suggest that an anonymous de-centralized cryptocurrency will have it's own set of problems in a highly technological authoritarian state. A totalitarian regime will simply class that as criminal activity and even possession of block-chain technology (let alone some thing like good crypto) could be considered sedition or criminal.
This is a kind of tech myopia: fix a small problem, lack of untraceable access to a grey and black market, and not worry that free society is in collapse. I think the better alternative is to keep traditional currencies free by working at keeping everyone's liberty.
posted by bonehead at 1:36 PM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
You're making plans for a social apocalypse. If the world is that far gone, we're going to be a lot more worried about a lot more thing than not being able to use official cash to buy sex toys. The real world closest example of this is China. Being able to buy stuff on the black market is certainly important there, but I'd suggest that an anonymous de-centralized cryptocurrency will have it's own set of problems in a highly technological authoritarian state. A totalitarian regime will simply class that as criminal activity and even possession of block-chain technology (let alone some thing like good crypto) could be considered sedition or criminal.
This is a kind of tech myopia: fix a small problem, lack of untraceable access to a grey and black market, and not worry that free society is in collapse. I think the better alternative is to keep traditional currencies free by working at keeping everyone's liberty.
posted by bonehead at 1:36 PM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
"Do you mean Mastercard and Visa?"
Sure. Or, how do EFTs work, or anything else? (Honest question, I have no idea.)
"You're giving them your personal resources and assuming they will be reliable and do the right thing for you."
So maybe you meant to say "decentralized", not "secure cryptographic based".
Or, no, it sounds like you're just interested in resistance to fraud. Which is also fine, but the claim that blockchain technology is a help is a claim that needs evidence.
"A ledger (list of transactions) that is encrypted is basically blockchain."
No, that's not true, even under the loose use of the term that Kadin2048 describes.
posted by bfields at 1:38 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sure. Or, how do EFTs work, or anything else? (Honest question, I have no idea.)
"You're giving them your personal resources and assuming they will be reliable and do the right thing for you."
So maybe you meant to say "decentralized", not "secure cryptographic based".
Or, no, it sounds like you're just interested in resistance to fraud. Which is also fine, but the claim that blockchain technology is a help is a claim that needs evidence.
"A ledger (list of transactions) that is encrypted is basically blockchain."
No, that's not true, even under the loose use of the term that Kadin2048 describes.
posted by bfields at 1:38 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
The crypto kooks are right to point out the hazards of fiat currencies backed by violence and fractional reserve banking, but just like goldbugs before them, they offer no viable alternative that (sort of) feeds 7 billion people.
I mean, I'm no scientician, but if BTC was a reaction to fake fiat currency, why replicate those systems? "This cryptocoin is better than that cryptocoin," seems like the same exact arguments, just that they've mechanized the enforcement authorities (to whatever degree, and probably dependent on liquidity and/or popularity).
posted by rhizome at 1:39 PM on November 20, 2018
I mean, I'm no scientician, but if BTC was a reaction to fake fiat currency, why replicate those systems? "This cryptocoin is better than that cryptocoin," seems like the same exact arguments, just that they've mechanized the enforcement authorities (to whatever degree, and probably dependent on liquidity and/or popularity).
posted by rhizome at 1:39 PM on November 20, 2018
"Proof of stake", as commonly used, is not a single system; it's a catchall term for several different (possibly many) approaches to achieving distributed consensus. Basically, they are ways of choosing who, out of a pool of participants, gets to add the next block to the chain. (The entire point of "blockchain" technologies are to create a single ledger which all participants agree upon, and where each block contains a hash of the previous block so it can't be altered, so this is a fairly important deal.)
The easiest proof of stake system is where your account balance is the stake, pure and simple: He who has the gold makes the rules. The idea, I suppose, is that the person with the biggest stake in the system probably doesn't want to screw it up, and you can prove how much stake you have by tracing the blockchain backwards or through some other digital-signature-ish methods. But even the really rabid Galt's Gulch types generally agree this is a bad idea and not likely to last very long, because if the value of the cryptocurrency dips, somebody can swoop in and buy control of the chain, like some 19th century robber baron pillaging a troubled railroad. Also I'm not sure how this would translate to a non-cryptocurrency application, where being a heavy user might not really mean you have the most skin in the game to keep it going properly. But that's the simplest way to avoid mining or other "puzzle" systems (in fairness, there are proof-of-storage and proof-of-memory puzzles in addition to Bitcoin's stupid proof-of-electricity-wastage one).
The next step beyond pure proof of stake is to inject some element of randomness into it, where how much stake you have in the system is part of the block-validator selection, but not solely, to make it harder for someone to buy control of a chain. I suppose there are probably even ways that you could make the randomness scale up or down depending on the concentration of wealth in the network, to make it prohibitively expensive for someone to ever buy control of it (although you could still grab 51% of the nodes and do it, I think?).
Some systems which intend to be actual transaction-processing networks and can tolerate a degree of centralization (though ask yourself why, if this is acceptable, a blockchain is a desirable solution at all...) do a thing where select nodes are delegated authority when the chain is set up, and in some cases can further subdelegate, and these supernodes validate blocks onto the chain. You can tack variously complicated or straightforward reputation systems onto this, to figure out who is worthy of being a block validator, which of course means you just took on an entirely separate problemspace of having a functional, secure reputation system.
FWIW, I find blockchain stuff interesting, but it's interesting in the same way that I find casino games or the Teller-Ulam design interesting; undeniably quite brilliant in its way, but hell of a mess when it meets the real world.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:43 PM on November 20, 2018 [7 favorites]
The easiest proof of stake system is where your account balance is the stake, pure and simple: He who has the gold makes the rules. The idea, I suppose, is that the person with the biggest stake in the system probably doesn't want to screw it up, and you can prove how much stake you have by tracing the blockchain backwards or through some other digital-signature-ish methods. But even the really rabid Galt's Gulch types generally agree this is a bad idea and not likely to last very long, because if the value of the cryptocurrency dips, somebody can swoop in and buy control of the chain, like some 19th century robber baron pillaging a troubled railroad. Also I'm not sure how this would translate to a non-cryptocurrency application, where being a heavy user might not really mean you have the most skin in the game to keep it going properly. But that's the simplest way to avoid mining or other "puzzle" systems (in fairness, there are proof-of-storage and proof-of-memory puzzles in addition to Bitcoin's stupid proof-of-electricity-wastage one).
The next step beyond pure proof of stake is to inject some element of randomness into it, where how much stake you have in the system is part of the block-validator selection, but not solely, to make it harder for someone to buy control of a chain. I suppose there are probably even ways that you could make the randomness scale up or down depending on the concentration of wealth in the network, to make it prohibitively expensive for someone to ever buy control of it (although you could still grab 51% of the nodes and do it, I think?).
Some systems which intend to be actual transaction-processing networks and can tolerate a degree of centralization (though ask yourself why, if this is acceptable, a blockchain is a desirable solution at all...) do a thing where select nodes are delegated authority when the chain is set up, and in some cases can further subdelegate, and these supernodes validate blocks onto the chain. You can tack variously complicated or straightforward reputation systems onto this, to figure out who is worthy of being a block validator, which of course means you just took on an entirely separate problemspace of having a functional, secure reputation system.
FWIW, I find blockchain stuff interesting, but it's interesting in the same way that I find casino games or the Teller-Ulam design interesting; undeniably quite brilliant in its way, but hell of a mess when it meets the real world.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:43 PM on November 20, 2018 [7 favorites]
But ok, at any point where you may need a sysadmin to stand up in court and say "I guarantee that this data has not been tampered with" and you think "how does he really know?" you can replace that with a blockchain and get much more certainty.There are many ways to attack blockchains (many known: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses), including attacks that can change data. And when a blockchain has been tampered with, there's no audit trail. Its current state is the absolute "truth".
And of course, there's no guarantee that data written to blockchains is correct in the first place. Just ask Terence Eden, who painted the Mona Lisa: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/06/how-i-became-leonardo-da-vinci-on-the-blockchain/
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 1:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
The stupidest design problem with Bitcoin is the proof-of-work algorithm took Hashcash and expanded it to a competitive peer-to-peer system combining best feature of SETI@Home with the worst feature of the Powerball Lottery. Hashcash is actually a good idea for Alice to prove to Bob that a message isn't spam. "Hey, this signature took [n] cpu cycles to create," where [n] is some number that would be prohibitive for a single spammer. Bitcoin says "not only did it take our mining collective [m^x] cycles to create that signature, we beat out [n^y] other collectives to get an acceptable result." And Bitcoin was designed such that it never gets any easier.
That problem doesn't exist if Alice and Bob already trust each other to add to the end of the chain. But everyone jumped on cryptocurrency as the fad and not, authentication of progressive digital communication or cryptographically signed modifications to critical source code.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:09 PM on November 20, 2018
That problem doesn't exist if Alice and Bob already trust each other to add to the end of the chain. But everyone jumped on cryptocurrency as the fad and not, authentication of progressive digital communication or cryptographically signed modifications to critical source code.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:09 PM on November 20, 2018
A weakness of hashcash is also the weakness of bitcoin, spammers these days will just spread that work around to a botnet.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:11 PM on November 20, 2018
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 2:11 PM on November 20, 2018
> And of course, there's no guarantee that data written to blockchains is correct in the first place
Yes, in this respect blockchains are no better than paper ledgers.
posted by Leon at 2:25 PM on November 20, 2018
Yes, in this respect blockchains are no better than paper ledgers.
posted by Leon at 2:25 PM on November 20, 2018
cryptographically signed modifications to critical source code.
OMG this is what git is! You don't need a new source code blockchain. git has always been a source code blockchain.
posted by chrchr at 2:26 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
OMG this is what git is! You don't need a new source code blockchain. git has always been a source code blockchain.
posted by chrchr at 2:26 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
As a blockchain requires the entire ledger to be shared and computed as it's added to, no, it is impossible to make a blockchain-style shared ledger that does not require exponentially increasing computing resources.
1. Say what? What you describe only holds true if you're using proof-of-work or proof-of-stake block signing.
An explanation:
You want to have someone sign off on blocks of transactions to see if they're genuine or not. But you don't want bad guys to be able to jack the system. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work systems work by setting up a lottery where your entry ticket is a unit of computing power. The more you process on a block, the more likely you are to 'win' the lottery, mine a coin, and also have to sign off on the newest block of transactions for the privilege. This works because bad guys can't game the lottery without having vastly more computing power than everyone else.
(Proof-of-stake is similar, but you're more likely to win the signing lottery based on how much money you have in the system. I have some reservations about that version.)
The reason that Bitcoin requires more and more computing power as time goes on is that it's designed to do this on purpose match Moore's Law: the difficulty of 'winning the lottery' literally goes up as more and more coins are mined.
(PS: Cryptographic hash algorithms mean that you don't have to compute things based on the whole chain - just the current and previous block. The chain is kept around mostly for verification purposes to make sure no one tries to forge anything.)
2. The high computing costs associated with proof-of-work are only relevant as long as you want your blockchain to have the block sign-offs be entirely decentralized (done by anonymous crowd members). There's another way to do this, and it's called a permissioned blockchain.
In a permissioned blockchain, a group of known identities ('signers') sign off on transactions using a method known as Byzantine Agreement. It's kind of like a parliamentary voting procedure. As long as less than a third of the signers are bad guys or otherwise behave erratically, the system will work because of how Byzantine Agreement is set up.
Ideally, you have a BIG group of signers, all of whom you trust a little. But byzantine agreement is not computationally expensive, especially in comparison to proof-of-work - in this model, the signers get the new block, do a linear number of voting rounds on it, and accept it or reject it quite quickly.
Permissioned blockchains feel kind of like blockchain's best kept secret, which is a shame because no one is keeping it under their hat - it's just that Bitcoin and other proof-of-work/coined systems stole the spotlight!
posted by Quackles at 2:40 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
1. Say what? What you describe only holds true if you're using proof-of-work or proof-of-stake block signing.
An explanation:
You want to have someone sign off on blocks of transactions to see if they're genuine or not. But you don't want bad guys to be able to jack the system. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work systems work by setting up a lottery where your entry ticket is a unit of computing power. The more you process on a block, the more likely you are to 'win' the lottery, mine a coin, and also have to sign off on the newest block of transactions for the privilege. This works because bad guys can't game the lottery without having vastly more computing power than everyone else.
(Proof-of-stake is similar, but you're more likely to win the signing lottery based on how much money you have in the system. I have some reservations about that version.)
The reason that Bitcoin requires more and more computing power as time goes on is that it's designed to do this on purpose match Moore's Law: the difficulty of 'winning the lottery' literally goes up as more and more coins are mined.
(PS: Cryptographic hash algorithms mean that you don't have to compute things based on the whole chain - just the current and previous block. The chain is kept around mostly for verification purposes to make sure no one tries to forge anything.)
2. The high computing costs associated with proof-of-work are only relevant as long as you want your blockchain to have the block sign-offs be entirely decentralized (done by anonymous crowd members). There's another way to do this, and it's called a permissioned blockchain.
In a permissioned blockchain, a group of known identities ('signers') sign off on transactions using a method known as Byzantine Agreement. It's kind of like a parliamentary voting procedure. As long as less than a third of the signers are bad guys or otherwise behave erratically, the system will work because of how Byzantine Agreement is set up.
Ideally, you have a BIG group of signers, all of whom you trust a little. But byzantine agreement is not computationally expensive, especially in comparison to proof-of-work - in this model, the signers get the new block, do a linear number of voting rounds on it, and accept it or reject it quite quickly.
Permissioned blockchains feel kind of like blockchain's best kept secret, which is a shame because no one is keeping it under their hat - it's just that Bitcoin and other proof-of-work/coined systems stole the spotlight!
posted by Quackles at 2:40 PM on November 20, 2018 [3 favorites]
NVidiocy.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:40 PM on November 20, 2018
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:40 PM on November 20, 2018
OMG this is what git is! You don't need a new source code blockchain. git has always been a source code blockchain.
It is and it isn't. See Linus's comments poh-pohing security issues with SHA-1. A git hash only serves as a quick way to identify if the snapshot has changed, it is not a cryptographic signature. And with
Sure, a source code system based on strong cryptographic verification of the tree's relationships would probably work a lot like git, minus some of the stupider bits. But git wasn't designed with that in mind.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 3:08 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
It is and it isn't. See Linus's comments poh-pohing security issues with SHA-1. A git hash only serves as a quick way to identify if the snapshot has changed, it is not a cryptographic signature. And with
git rebase you can re-order the entire tree at any point in time. Suffice it to say, maintaining a chain of custody for mission-critical code isn't a priority for git as a system. Also my git identity is just a string in a file, and if I want to push to one of my repos as elvis@graceland.uh.huh, there's nothing there to prevent that. I suspect that there's few safeguards to prevent someone from going into the repo with a hex editor and modifying those relationships. Sure, a source code system based on strong cryptographic verification of the tree's relationships would probably work a lot like git, minus some of the stupider bits. But git wasn't designed with that in mind.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 3:08 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Did any drug dealers actually take Bitcoin? Other than that Silk Road business, which always seemed more hype than reality.
I'm sure Silk Road (and its successors and relatives) have never accounted for a huge proportion of global illicit drug sales, in the big picture. For the people who did know about it and use it, though, it absolutely did what it claimed to do. I would imagine some sites still do, though they may be past their peak (and may be looking for an alternative to Bitcoin as its non-anonymity has become more apparent).
posted by atoxyl at 3:16 PM on November 20, 2018
I'm sure Silk Road (and its successors and relatives) have never accounted for a huge proportion of global illicit drug sales, in the big picture. For the people who did know about it and use it, though, it absolutely did what it claimed to do. I would imagine some sites still do, though they may be past their peak (and may be looking for an alternative to Bitcoin as its non-anonymity has become more apparent).
posted by atoxyl at 3:16 PM on November 20, 2018
sort of how like a bunch of pre-existing statistical classification techniques are now called "machine learning" because that's also a money-attracting shibbolethI'm reminded of the period where every damn polymer lab on Earth promised to the heavens that tinkering a bit more with nylon was "nanotech".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:55 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
git supports cryptographically signed commits
Cryptographic signing has some common underpinning with blockchains, but really this is nowhere near using a blockchain.
posted by GuyZero at 4:05 PM on November 20, 2018
Cryptographic signing has some common underpinning with blockchains, but really this is nowhere near using a blockchain.
posted by GuyZero at 4:05 PM on November 20, 2018
A gpg signature added to a tag or commit is just metadata added to whatever the submitter commits. It doesn't say anything about the referential integrity of the commit, and if I have access to
Granted, git is "good enough" and arguably better than any of the alternatives. But, it's not big on referential integrity beyond, "don't do that, stupid."
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:06 PM on November 20, 2018
git, there are multiple ways I can manipulate that. I could pull old code, change the parent to the current head, throw in a bunch of trivial changes to make using diff tedious, and submit it with a gpg signature. Granted, git is "good enough" and arguably better than any of the alternatives. But, it's not big on referential integrity beyond, "don't do that, stupid."
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:06 PM on November 20, 2018
"A ledger (list of transactions) that is encrypted is basically blockchain."
No, that's not true, even under the loose use of the term that Kadin2048 describes.
Sorry an oversimplification, this very clear math oriented video make my ledger observation much better.
Again to oversimplify "money" is a list of who owes or owns units of value. Banks do not have bags of cash in the vaults (unless all the laundromats deposit at the same time). One key idea is to remove the trust requirement, instead of handing a teller a bundle of dollars and essentially trust that it's recorded in the banks ledger a mathematically supported software process lets you do the transaction. It IS NOT simple and relies on elements of math that are not proven (P vs NP) but it at a certain abstraction the blockchain is just a list of values kept accurate and secure.
posted by sammyo at 4:09 PM on November 20, 2018
No, that's not true, even under the loose use of the term that Kadin2048 describes.
Sorry an oversimplification, this very clear math oriented video make my ledger observation much better.
Again to oversimplify "money" is a list of who owes or owns units of value. Banks do not have bags of cash in the vaults (unless all the laundromats deposit at the same time). One key idea is to remove the trust requirement, instead of handing a teller a bundle of dollars and essentially trust that it's recorded in the banks ledger a mathematically supported software process lets you do the transaction. It IS NOT simple and relies on elements of math that are not proven (P vs NP) but it at a certain abstraction the blockchain is just a list of values kept accurate and secure.
posted by sammyo at 4:09 PM on November 20, 2018
I still have yet to see any convincing case for crypto currency. However, the following scheme occurred to me the other day while learning about JavaScript cryptojacking scripts. Perhaps some form of non-malicious cryptojacking could replace online advertising and tracking. Basically, you knowingly opt in to letting the product harness X% of your processor for mining in exchange for ad free access to the content. Ideally, this would incentivize the content provider to clean up their act instead of aiming at race-to-the-bottom click bait. Someone please explain to me why this can't work in the real world. You know, other than the whole crypto being Earth-cooking garbage thing.
posted by cirrostratus at 4:25 PM on November 20, 2018
posted by cirrostratus at 4:25 PM on November 20, 2018
Cryptographic signing has some common underpinning with blockchains, but really this is nowhere near using a blockchain.
Both git and bitcoin utilize a common datastructure concept: Merkle trees. git does not provide any sort of consensus, but at it's core it's a series of commits whose commitref is a hash that includes a reference to their parent commitref. A chain of blocks, if you will.
That's what people are talking about when they say git is a blockchain. The rest of the stuff that makes blockchains a currency and shared ledgers is the block sharing protocols and distributed consensus to agree on what 'reality' is. Definitely useful if you're running a shared ledger, probably less useful if you're just writing code. It's not like 'signed by pwnguin@example.com' is particularly meaningful, beyond perhaps some liability concerns for lawyers surrounding provenance.
Now you might just ask folks to use the term Merkle tree to describe what they have in common, and use blockchain to denote that plus all the distributed ledger stuff. Hokay. But it's kinda weird that the obvious meaning of the word doesn't reference all that.
posted by pwnguin at 4:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
Both git and bitcoin utilize a common datastructure concept: Merkle trees. git does not provide any sort of consensus, but at it's core it's a series of commits whose commitref is a hash that includes a reference to their parent commitref. A chain of blocks, if you will.
That's what people are talking about when they say git is a blockchain. The rest of the stuff that makes blockchains a currency and shared ledgers is the block sharing protocols and distributed consensus to agree on what 'reality' is. Definitely useful if you're running a shared ledger, probably less useful if you're just writing code. It's not like 'signed by pwnguin@example.com' is particularly meaningful, beyond perhaps some liability concerns for lawyers surrounding provenance.
Now you might just ask folks to use the term Merkle tree to describe what they have in common, and use blockchain to denote that plus all the distributed ledger stuff. Hokay. But it's kinda weird that the obvious meaning of the word doesn't reference all that.
posted by pwnguin at 4:48 PM on November 20, 2018 [2 favorites]
folks I think we've solved it. the anarchocapitalists and ancap-adjacent shitheads who push cryptocurrency think that the problem with money is that it's controlled by the state. but really the problem with money...
> I'm reminded of the period where every damn polymer lab on Earth promised to the heavens that tinkering a bit more with nylon was "nanotech".
... is that it forces smart people to act super fucking dumb in order to get access to it. and once the smart people are acting dumb to shake money out of the rich people, that leaves space for naked scammers to take advantage of the world's resultant endumbification.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:52 PM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
> I'm reminded of the period where every damn polymer lab on Earth promised to the heavens that tinkering a bit more with nylon was "nanotech".
... is that it forces smart people to act super fucking dumb in order to get access to it. and once the smart people are acting dumb to shake money out of the rich people, that leaves space for naked scammers to take advantage of the world's resultant endumbification.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:52 PM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
I still have yet to see any convincing case for crypto currency.Do you ever find cash useful, but wish you could spend it without trading paper and metals? Then cryptocurrency may be interesting for you.
Perhaps some form of non-malicious cryptojacking could replace online advertising and tracking.That's a good idea, and also is a thing right now: https://www.salon.com/about/faq-what-happens-when-i-choose-to-suppress-ads-on-salon/
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 4:52 PM on November 20, 2018
> Basically, you knowingly opt in to letting the product harness X% of your processor for mining in exchange for ad free access to the content. Ideally, this would incentivize the content provider to clean up their act instead of aiming at race-to-the-bottom click bait. Someone please explain to me why this can't work in the real world. You know, other than the whole crypto being Earth-cooking garbage thing.
This already exists. I'm not going to go digging up links to it, because it's not a scheme that needs more visibility.
note: you have pinpointed exactly why it doesn't need more visibility; the carbon complexity of this "solution," if widely used, is jawdropping. I hate advertising and what it does to the world, but as solutions to the problem of advertising goes, distributed javascript bitcoin mining ranks well below, like, Stalinism.
like, I'm no tankie, don't get be wrong, but I stand by this statement: distributed bitcoin mining is worse than Stalin.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:57 PM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
This already exists. I'm not going to go digging up links to it, because it's not a scheme that needs more visibility.
note: you have pinpointed exactly why it doesn't need more visibility; the carbon complexity of this "solution," if widely used, is jawdropping. I hate advertising and what it does to the world, but as solutions to the problem of advertising goes, distributed javascript bitcoin mining ranks well below, like, Stalinism.
like, I'm no tankie, don't get be wrong, but I stand by this statement: distributed bitcoin mining is worse than Stalin.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:57 PM on November 20, 2018 [5 favorites]
That's a good idea, and also is a thing right now: https://www.salon.com/about/faq-what-happens-when-i-choose-to-suppress-ads-on-salon/
"Hahahaha," cackle the Salon execs huddled around the trash fire can they have built for warmth in these, the post-advertising-revenue days. "Surely the people who have figured out how to programmatically block 'Punch the Monkey to win $20' ads will not have the resources to disable malicious third-party Javascript served in their stead."
posted by Mayor West at 5:21 PM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
"Hahahaha," cackle the Salon execs huddled around the trash fire can they have built for warmth in these, the post-advertising-revenue days. "Surely the people who have figured out how to programmatically block 'Punch the Monkey to win $20' ads will not have the resources to disable malicious third-party Javascript served in their stead."
posted by Mayor West at 5:21 PM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]
Someone please explain to me why this can't work in the real world.
Because users will pay more in electricity than they 'produce' in cryptocurrency: it's a negative-sum transaction.
posted by Pyry at 5:26 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
Because users will pay more in electricity than they 'produce' in cryptocurrency: it's a negative-sum transaction.
posted by Pyry at 5:26 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
But, also, it's entirely technically possible to have a centralized digital currency backed by, for example a government, that would have all the good points of Bitcoin (e.g., the ability to send tiny amounts of money to another individual with minimal friction) without the wasteful proof of work. The major impediment to a digital cash is that having the government run such a thing instead of a chain of rentiers sounds suspiciously like socialism.
posted by Pyry at 5:36 PM on November 20, 2018
posted by Pyry at 5:36 PM on November 20, 2018
hey I have an idea instead of using vast amounts of computational resources to solve bullshit puzzles in order to make a janky version of currency, which itself is a shitty tool for allocating resources, how about we use our vast amounts of computational resources to instead approximate solutions to the massive system of linear equations that we'd have to solve to efficiently run a planned economy?
cause that would be pretty sweet if you ask me. I mean, no one asked me. but I think it'd be pretty sweet. it would at the very least be better than javascript bitcoin miners or stalinism.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:54 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
cause that would be pretty sweet if you ask me. I mean, no one asked me. but I think it'd be pretty sweet. it would at the very least be better than javascript bitcoin miners or stalinism.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:54 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
but really the problem with money is that it forces smart people to act super fucking dumb in order to get access to it.
Close the thread, we've cracked it
posted by Merus at 5:54 PM on November 20, 2018
Close the thread, we've cracked it
posted by Merus at 5:54 PM on November 20, 2018
humboldt32: "(Also best bassline evah.)"
FACTCHECK: The best bassline ever is actually "Psycho Killer."
posted by Chrysostom at 10:43 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
FACTCHECK: The best bassline ever is actually "Psycho Killer."
posted by Chrysostom at 10:43 PM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]
how about we use our vast amounts of computational resources to instead approximate solutions to the massive system of linear equations that we'd have to solve to efficiently run a planned economy?
Sigh, (important derail) that is kinda what is being done, just wrong. Read Weapons of Math Destruction.
posted by sammyo at 5:34 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sigh, (important derail) that is kinda what is being done, just wrong. Read Weapons of Math Destruction.
posted by sammyo at 5:34 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
A git hash only serves as a quick way to identify if the snapshot has changed, it is not a cryptographic signature.
Yes it is. SHA1 is a cryptographic hash. It's a cryptographic hash that has been discovered some weaknesses, but it's not just a CRC or something.
And with git rebase you can re-order the entire tree at any point in time.
Not without changing the commit ID of the result.
A git commit ID is a SHA1 over the changelog, the commit IDs of the parent(s), and a SHA1 of the repository's root directory, which recursively covers a snapshot of the file tree's contents.
So if you sign a commit ID, then you're effectively signing the entire history, including the contents of every previous state of the tree. It should be impossible to change the contents of any snapshot and still verify the signature--unless you can attack SHA1 or the signature algorithm.
There are some reasons to believe the SHA1 attacks aren't yet enough to seriously compromise git. It's still reasonable to be concerned about them.
Sure, a source code system based on strong cryptographic verification of the tree's relationships would probably work a lot like git
It could work exactly like git, possibly with SHA1 replaced by some other algorithm (which is work in progress for git).
posted by bfields at 5:35 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yes it is. SHA1 is a cryptographic hash. It's a cryptographic hash that has been discovered some weaknesses, but it's not just a CRC or something.
And with git rebase you can re-order the entire tree at any point in time.
Not without changing the commit ID of the result.
A git commit ID is a SHA1 over the changelog, the commit IDs of the parent(s), and a SHA1 of the repository's root directory, which recursively covers a snapshot of the file tree's contents.
So if you sign a commit ID, then you're effectively signing the entire history, including the contents of every previous state of the tree. It should be impossible to change the contents of any snapshot and still verify the signature--unless you can attack SHA1 or the signature algorithm.
There are some reasons to believe the SHA1 attacks aren't yet enough to seriously compromise git. It's still reasonable to be concerned about them.
Sure, a source code system based on strong cryptographic verification of the tree's relationships would probably work a lot like git
It could work exactly like git, possibly with SHA1 replaced by some other algorithm (which is work in progress for git).
posted by bfields at 5:35 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Do you ever find cash useful, but wish you could spend it without trading paper and metals?
Nope.
And do you know why? Like pretty well 99.999% of humanity, I don't understand enough about crypto currencies to ever really trust it. The whole thing is way too complicated and janky to consider messing around with. How do you set it up? Which one do you use? How do you make payments? Does the person you want to give a payment to even accept the crypto crap you want to foist on them.
All the potential use scenarios for crypto are all so sketchy that I can't imagine anyone doing anything legal would ever need to use it. They always seem to boil down to criminal activity or tax avoidance.
Cash is simple and easy and everyone understands it.
Hell, you can even use pre-paid credit cards if you want to make anonymous payments. Much easier than messing around with tech-bro crypto crap.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:31 AM on November 21, 2018
Nope.
And do you know why? Like pretty well 99.999% of humanity, I don't understand enough about crypto currencies to ever really trust it. The whole thing is way too complicated and janky to consider messing around with. How do you set it up? Which one do you use? How do you make payments? Does the person you want to give a payment to even accept the crypto crap you want to foist on them.
All the potential use scenarios for crypto are all so sketchy that I can't imagine anyone doing anything legal would ever need to use it. They always seem to boil down to criminal activity or tax avoidance.
Cash is simple and easy and everyone understands it.
Hell, you can even use pre-paid credit cards if you want to make anonymous payments. Much easier than messing around with tech-bro crypto crap.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:31 AM on November 21, 2018
Crypto is the Linux of money. Sure, Linux may be great. But the average person is not going to mess around with it because it is just complicated and difficult and non-compatible enough to set up and use that it scares off most people. Why fart around with figuring out what fork or distribution or whatever to use and command lines and sudo this and apt-get that when you can buy a nice mac that just works.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:49 AM on November 21, 2018
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:49 AM on November 21, 2018
We have 1: a solid consensus that SHA1 is not suitable as a signature, 2: the inventor of git saying that collisions don't matter because the default action is to do nothing, and SHA1 is only used as a checksum.
SHA1 is about where MD5 was ten years ago. And lo and behold, turns out that the US was able to weaponize that with boffins and a big fucking cluster.
Linus's assurance that collisions don't matter doesn't inspire confidence. I'm ( finally) rolling out git at work next month, but don't have illusions that it's hardened against accidental or malicious changes.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 7:54 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
SHA1 is about where MD5 was ten years ago. And lo and behold, turns out that the US was able to weaponize that with boffins and a big fucking cluster.
Linus's assurance that collisions don't matter doesn't inspire confidence. I'm ( finally) rolling out git at work next month, but don't have illusions that it's hardened against accidental or malicious changes.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 7:54 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Cash is simple and easy and everyone understands it.
That is patently false.
But as you point out, most aspects of that problem have largely been solved by the creditors, who (to vastly oversimplify) with the central banks already set up a system by which you are essentially carrying a little "card" that points to a ledger, which verifies transactions with a set of central authorities and adjusts balances accordingly. For many transactions you don't even need to carry the card.
It's a complex system most people also don't understand, but are perfectly willing to use. And it comes with its own massive problems, from some of which pre-paid credit cards aren't exempt (they're still less anonymous than cash, for one thing, although the desirability of anonymous transactions isn't top of the list of my concerns with the credit industry).
But from the start Bitcoin seemed to appeal most to people who didn't understand the basic concepts of fiat currency particularly well, and/or gamblers who figured those rubes would be left holding the hot potato.
Crypto is the Linux of money.
See now you're just trolling.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:04 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
That is patently false.
But as you point out, most aspects of that problem have largely been solved by the creditors, who (to vastly oversimplify) with the central banks already set up a system by which you are essentially carrying a little "card" that points to a ledger, which verifies transactions with a set of central authorities and adjusts balances accordingly. For many transactions you don't even need to carry the card.
It's a complex system most people also don't understand, but are perfectly willing to use. And it comes with its own massive problems, from some of which pre-paid credit cards aren't exempt (they're still less anonymous than cash, for one thing, although the desirability of anonymous transactions isn't top of the list of my concerns with the credit industry).
But from the start Bitcoin seemed to appeal most to people who didn't understand the basic concepts of fiat currency particularly well, and/or gamblers who figured those rubes would be left holding the hot potato.
Crypto is the Linux of money.
See now you're just trolling.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:04 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
"I'm ( finally) rolling out git at work next month, but don't have illusions that it's hardened against accidental or malicious changes."
OK, I'd really like to understand how exactly you think it's vulnerable to accidental changes.
I mean, of course you can, say, accidentally delete stuff, but I think that's not the kind of problem you're thinking of?
posted by bfields at 8:18 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
OK, I'd really like to understand how exactly you think it's vulnerable to accidental changes.
I mean, of course you can, say, accidentally delete stuff, but I think that's not the kind of problem you're thinking of?
posted by bfields at 8:18 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
That is patently false.
Ugh. You are splitting hairs. This is like saying if wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Sure, it is true, but not applicable to every day life.
If I have $100 cash in my pocket, I got cash. If I hand it to someone, they got cash.
Sure, there may be a giant complicated banking system and whatnot behind it, but I don't have to understand any of it to use cash or trade cash with other people.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:19 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ugh. You are splitting hairs. This is like saying if wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Sure, it is true, but not applicable to every day life.
If I have $100 cash in my pocket, I got cash. If I hand it to someone, they got cash.
Sure, there may be a giant complicated banking system and whatnot behind it, but I don't have to understand any of it to use cash or trade cash with other people.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:19 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
the infrastructure behind extant cash is complex, but the underlying concept is relatively simple and easy to both understand and replicate. You have some object (call it M) issued by a central organization that's understood by participants in the organization as freely exchangeable for some set of commodities C. M can be dollars printed by a government, it can be values stored in bank databases, it can be tokens issued by a babysitting co-op, exchangeable for hours of babysitting.
If you've read your Marx — and if you haven't read your Marx, what are you doing talking about political economy?! go read Capital Vol. 1! It's friccin' foundational! — you may understand the objections to money that I might raise, simply by my choice of M to designate the money commodity and C to designate the other commodities within the system.
The point is, money is relatively simple. I think maybe the logic behind cryptocurrency is relatively simple too, though I must confess I haven't given myself the time to sit down and work through the math. On a good day I can untangle the prime number tricks behind, say, public key encryption, which gives me hope that given a few days uninterrupted time and/or someone to guide me through it, I can understand cryptocurrency as well. I could be wrong, though! I'm not very good at math that involves numbers.
The real problem is, cryptocurrency doesn't appear to solve any of the actual problems with money. See Capital vol. 1 chapters 1-3 for more on this, and don't pretend you can't follow the M-C-M' stuff. if yr eyes don't glaze over reading about blockchain implementation, you have it within yrself to take yr adderal and focus on Marx's tedious fiddling-about with exchanging linen for coats. I promise.
Moreover, cryptocurrency introduces a passel of other problems, mostly related to its total inability to scale. Like, if your plan is for your system to be used every day, many times a day, by literally billions of users, you can't just pretend that it doesn't matter that (for example) the space required for your ledger grows exponentially, and the maximum number of transactions per second is tiny, and oh yeah it incentivizes all participants to burn everything they can burn in order to power mining operations.
I can see why cryptocurrency might be attractive to someone who has taken as articles of faith that money is a good thing and states are a bad thing, but only a dum-dum would think that those two things should be foundational axioms.
anarchocapitalists: living proof that being exactly half right is significantly worse than being entirely wrong.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:37 AM on November 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
If you've read your Marx — and if you haven't read your Marx, what are you doing talking about political economy?! go read Capital Vol. 1! It's friccin' foundational! — you may understand the objections to money that I might raise, simply by my choice of M to designate the money commodity and C to designate the other commodities within the system.
The point is, money is relatively simple. I think maybe the logic behind cryptocurrency is relatively simple too, though I must confess I haven't given myself the time to sit down and work through the math. On a good day I can untangle the prime number tricks behind, say, public key encryption, which gives me hope that given a few days uninterrupted time and/or someone to guide me through it, I can understand cryptocurrency as well. I could be wrong, though! I'm not very good at math that involves numbers.
The real problem is, cryptocurrency doesn't appear to solve any of the actual problems with money. See Capital vol. 1 chapters 1-3 for more on this, and don't pretend you can't follow the M-C-M' stuff. if yr eyes don't glaze over reading about blockchain implementation, you have it within yrself to take yr adderal and focus on Marx's tedious fiddling-about with exchanging linen for coats. I promise.
Moreover, cryptocurrency introduces a passel of other problems, mostly related to its total inability to scale. Like, if your plan is for your system to be used every day, many times a day, by literally billions of users, you can't just pretend that it doesn't matter that (for example) the space required for your ledger grows exponentially, and the maximum number of transactions per second is tiny, and oh yeah it incentivizes all participants to burn everything they can burn in order to power mining operations.
I can see why cryptocurrency might be attractive to someone who has taken as articles of faith that money is a good thing and states are a bad thing, but only a dum-dum would think that those two things should be foundational axioms.
anarchocapitalists: living proof that being exactly half right is significantly worse than being entirely wrong.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:37 AM on November 21, 2018 [4 favorites]
I did see a ATM-like thing downtown with something to the effect of “BITCOIN even people LIKE YOU can use!”, presumably for people to convert their cash to Bitcoin.
Yeah, I wouldn’t trust it either.
posted by Artw at 9:38 AM on November 21, 2018
Yeah, I wouldn’t trust it either.
posted by Artw at 9:38 AM on November 21, 2018
“I'll just give you the money, you give me the donut -- end of transaction. We don't need to bring [cryptography] into this.”
posted by Huffy Puffy at 10:03 AM on November 21, 2018
posted by Huffy Puffy at 10:03 AM on November 21, 2018
My primary, practical issue with cryptocurrency is that most people understand physical security pretty well (do not leave all your cash savings in a pile on your countertop) but information security is a lot, lot harder (using a secured crypto wallet device that's kept offline at nearly all times).
Additionally credit cards and banks give contractual guarantees against fraud whereas all of the online coin exchanges pretty much just say "whoops our bad, sorry" when all your "money" gets stolen.
anarchocapitalists: living proof that being exactly half right is significantly worse than being entirely wrong.
yeah, bitcoin is for when you hate the state so much that you're willing to accept a product that's incredibly terrible just to get that one feature of being nationstate-free.
posted by GuyZero at 11:02 AM on November 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
Additionally credit cards and banks give contractual guarantees against fraud whereas all of the online coin exchanges pretty much just say "whoops our bad, sorry" when all your "money" gets stolen.
anarchocapitalists: living proof that being exactly half right is significantly worse than being entirely wrong.
yeah, bitcoin is for when you hate the state so much that you're willing to accept a product that's incredibly terrible just to get that one feature of being nationstate-free.
posted by GuyZero at 11:02 AM on November 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
> yeah, bitcoin is for when you hate the state so much that you're willing to accept a product that's incredibly terrible just to get that one feature of being nationstate-free.
it's not even that, though, since any nation-state worth its salt can run an effective attack on it. basically it's for people who hate things created by nation-states, but love things hijacked by nation-states.
oh my god I just realized. it is exactly what Trevor from the Bad Place would come up with if asked to devise a monetary system.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:08 AM on November 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
it's not even that, though, since any nation-state worth its salt can run an effective attack on it. basically it's for people who hate things created by nation-states, but love things hijacked by nation-states.
oh my god I just realized. it is exactly what Trevor from the Bad Place would come up with if asked to devise a monetary system.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 11:08 AM on November 21, 2018 [3 favorites]
Well I think everything can be hijacked by a nation-state so this is where libertarians have to concede that the only way they can ever be happy is by teleporting to their own unoccupied but otherwise earth-like planet.
posted by GuyZero at 11:22 AM on November 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 11:22 AM on November 21, 2018 [2 favorites]
> “I'll just give you the money, you give me the donut -- end of transaction. We don't need to bring [cryptography] into this.”
Lot of anti-forging technology in there, though. EURion, fluorescent ink, mica ink, holograms, guilloché, microprinting, polymer notes...
> it's not even that, though, since any nation-state worth its salt can run an effective attack on it.
How?
posted by Leon at 6:25 AM on November 22, 2018
Lot of anti-forging technology in there, though. EURion, fluorescent ink, mica ink, holograms, guilloché, microprinting, polymer notes...
> it's not even that, though, since any nation-state worth its salt can run an effective attack on it.
How?
posted by Leon at 6:25 AM on November 22, 2018
> How?
50% + 1.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:30 AM on November 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
50% + 1.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:30 AM on November 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
I can't imagine any sane nation state bringing 2.5GW of power to bear to steal bitcoin. But if they did, I think a consensus to partition them out of the network as a bad actor would quickly develop.
posted by Leon at 2:19 PM on November 22, 2018
posted by Leon at 2:19 PM on November 22, 2018
(Interesting stat here - you could power 6000 US homes for what the bitcoin network costs).
posted by Leon at 2:22 PM on November 22, 2018
posted by Leon at 2:22 PM on November 22, 2018
The thing with the git "blockchain" is that it's only mostly immutable. To paraphrase Miracle Max, mostly immutable is slightly mutable. If you use git replace the cryptographic chain will be broken, but the tooling will accept the new history.
For day to day backouts you wouldn't use this, instead you'd add a revert commit (the "reverse charges" of source code). But if you have reasonable governance, the ability to fix your repository/ledger should something go badly wrong is a good property to have.
posted by mscibing at 4:21 PM on November 22, 2018
For day to day backouts you wouldn't use this, instead you'd add a revert commit (the "reverse charges" of source code). But if you have reasonable governance, the ability to fix your repository/ledger should something go badly wrong is a good property to have.
posted by mscibing at 4:21 PM on November 22, 2018
>I can't imagine any sane nation state bringing 2.5GW of power to bear to steal bitcoin. But if they did, I think a consensus to partition them out of the network as a bad actor would quickly develop.
You are exploiting an ambiguity in the English language. you are saying "I can't imagine any sane nation state bringing 2.5GW of power to bear to steal bitcoin," implying that the attack is a means to steal some number of bitcoins, sort of like robbing a bank lets you steal some number of dollars.
The point of a nation-state running a 50% + 1 attack isn't to steal bitcoins. It's to steal bitcoin — to get to decide what counts as mining activity going forward, to become the new central bank of the previously decentralized system.
Yes, the community can respond by hard forking. Against a nation-state attacker, that wins you... a week? at the outside? Fork again. you get another week. Fork again... but I promise the attacker will be more tenacious than your community.
I don't think it's terribly plausible that a nation-state would run this attack either, but the reason I don't think it's plausible isn't because I think it would be too energy-expensive, or because I think it's possible for the community to fight back against it. I don't think it's plausible because bitcoin, as a means of exchange, is too fundamentally useless to be worth hijacking.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:02 PM on November 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
You are exploiting an ambiguity in the English language. you are saying "I can't imagine any sane nation state bringing 2.5GW of power to bear to steal bitcoin," implying that the attack is a means to steal some number of bitcoins, sort of like robbing a bank lets you steal some number of dollars.
The point of a nation-state running a 50% + 1 attack isn't to steal bitcoins. It's to steal bitcoin — to get to decide what counts as mining activity going forward, to become the new central bank of the previously decentralized system.
Yes, the community can respond by hard forking. Against a nation-state attacker, that wins you... a week? at the outside? Fork again. you get another week. Fork again... but I promise the attacker will be more tenacious than your community.
I don't think it's terribly plausible that a nation-state would run this attack either, but the reason I don't think it's plausible isn't because I think it would be too energy-expensive, or because I think it's possible for the community to fight back against it. I don't think it's plausible because bitcoin, as a means of exchange, is too fundamentally useless to be worth hijacking.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:02 PM on November 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
Also, it's not like a nation-state has to play along with the whole mining farce, throwing tons of computer power at the task. They can also just physically grab control of mining systems within their jurisdiction, if they want to. If China wanted to grab control of Bitcoin (and most other proof-of-work based cryptocurrencies) tomorrow, there's not much stopping them from doing so, because 60% of mining takes place there. (Periodically there's speculation that they may have effectively done that already, because much of the electricity for the mining operations comes from state-owned enterprises, and the control of the "mining pools" themselves is pretty opaque.)
Bitcoin, and crypto-anarchism generally, is built on a pleasant illusion, popular in the 1990s, that the Internet somehow exists or can exist on a plane divorced from the messiness of the physical world and its attendant power structures. It was a nice—arguably seductive—daydream while it lasted, but from here in 2018, I think it's pretty damn clear that it doesn't exist separate from the world at all.
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:02 PM on November 22, 2018 [7 favorites]
Bitcoin, and crypto-anarchism generally, is built on a pleasant illusion, popular in the 1990s, that the Internet somehow exists or can exist on a plane divorced from the messiness of the physical world and its attendant power structures. It was a nice—arguably seductive—daydream while it lasted, but from here in 2018, I think it's pretty damn clear that it doesn't exist separate from the world at all.
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:02 PM on November 22, 2018 [7 favorites]
Yup. Or lock up or execute anyone involved.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:14 PM on November 22, 2018
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:14 PM on November 22, 2018
> They can also just physically grab control of mining systems within their jurisdiction, if they want to.
At a small scale I think that would be as successful as busting indoor weed grow-ops. Similar energy usage, smaller physical footprint.
> because much of the electricity for the mining operations comes from state-owned enterprises
Yes, you're right, the large outfits are probably vulnerable to a dude with a badge walking in and taking over. I don't know what the exact size distribution of miners is, but I suspect you're right - that if you co-opt the big outfits the small ones don't matter.
posted by Leon at 12:33 AM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
At a small scale I think that would be as successful as busting indoor weed grow-ops. Similar energy usage, smaller physical footprint.
> because much of the electricity for the mining operations comes from state-owned enterprises
Yes, you're right, the large outfits are probably vulnerable to a dude with a badge walking in and taking over. I don't know what the exact size distribution of miners is, but I suspect you're right - that if you co-opt the big outfits the small ones don't matter.
posted by Leon at 12:33 AM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Bitcoin sliding even further to below $3,800 USD. It’s like watching that 99% sale by Cards against Humanity yesterday......everyone scrambling for that one spot....though in this case it’s to get out. Coins against Sanity.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:58 PM on November 24, 2018
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:58 PM on November 24, 2018
Turns out half the bitcoins in the world are worth about 600 live ants.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:20 PM on November 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:20 PM on November 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
everyone scrambling for that one spot....though in this case it’s to get out.
In real estate I've heard this called, "trying to catch a falling knife."
posted by rhizome at 6:46 PM on November 24, 2018
In real estate I've heard this called, "trying to catch a falling knife."
posted by rhizome at 6:46 PM on November 24, 2018
An interesting possibility that I hadn't heard of before is the Bitcoin mining heart attack: "In short, we will reach a day when all miners have small profit margins, and then a blockreward-halving will slash their revenues in half. The result will be that not half, but all miners will shut off their mining rigs."
posted by clawsoon at 3:46 AM on November 25, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 3:46 AM on November 25, 2018 [3 favorites]
I can't find a definitive answer, but in a few articles from earlier this year, the approximate break-even cost for mining (in the US) was $4K. BTC currently at $3,600.
posted by gwint at 8:33 AM on November 26, 2018
posted by gwint at 8:33 AM on November 26, 2018
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posted by tocts at 8:48 AM on November 20, 2018 [4 favorites]