Discussion
The Spruce goose said:
Trolleys you know your stuff are you a miner or computer expert?
Thanks Goose. I'm a Software Engineer for a large UK bank and a Crypto developer in my spare time. I find it interesting how the company I work for are still paying very little attention to the massive disruptive potential of this new technology. For now they are solely concerned about small banking start ups and Facebook/Google offering bank accounts whilst missing the bigger picture of the threat to the industry as a whole from cryptocurrencies. This may take a few years but it will eventually change. Finance is about to have its major disruptive moment. Those who adapt quickly can still prosper, those that don't will go the way of Kodak, Blockbuster, HMV, Myspace etc etc.
Edited by Trolleys Thank You on Wednesday 20th December 13:32
Glade said:
So the Bitcoin will become pointless for low value transactions where the fee is larger or at least a large proportion of the transaction cost. If you are moving millions internationally transaction fees of hundreds would not be a concern though.
Vs. $30/free for moving millions via international wire using bank/broker. BTC looks increasingly like a solution for a problem no one really has except in the 3rd world.Trolleys Thank You said:
I find it interesting how the company I work for are still paying very little attention to the massive disruptive potential of this new technology.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/19/korean-cryptocurrency-exchange-close-second-hacking-youbitEdited by Trolleys Thank You on Wednesday 20th December 13:32
A Software Engineer for a large UK bank should know this ? , the software engineers here are giving it a wide berth.
Market cap $250 billion? ( and falling ) v $500 + trillion market of global assets , not even a blip .
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bi...
Edited by superkartracer on Wednesday 20th December 14:20
Trolleys Thank You said:
The guy is a lunatic.
ahh,this makes it all a bit clearer.Edited by Trolleys Thank You on Wednesday 20th December 12:37
i'm a bit of a luddite as far as computers are concerned,only use one for work because I have to and they save time on shopping.
if one needs ever increasing computer power to solve equations when does it all grind to a halt?
it just sounds like the worlds biggest electronic ponzi scheme to me which if it is the guy is a clever lunatic.
Thing is it won't directly be the banks as such, it will be SWIFT, BACS, CHAPS, CHIPS, CCCC or whoever that handle the actual mechanisms that would look at this and adopt any extra technology they don't already have.
What none of them will be doing is absorbing an existing pool of coins, so there's no future value gain in the coins to be had there.
There might be value in the tech but that can be had for free, assuming it's needed at all.
To be honest I think a lot of people are ignorant of how existing clearing & settlement systems work (it's a specialist field) so when they get told about the crypto coin stuff they get more excited than maybe they should.
What none of them will be doing is absorbing an existing pool of coins, so there's no future value gain in the coins to be had there.
There might be value in the tech but that can be had for free, assuming it's needed at all.
To be honest I think a lot of people are ignorant of how existing clearing & settlement systems work (it's a specialist field) so when they get told about the crypto coin stuff they get more excited than maybe they should.
superkartracer said:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/19...
A Software Engineer for a large UK bank should know this ? , the software engineers here are giving it a wide berth.
Market cap $250 billion? ( and falling ) v $500 + trillion market of global assets , not even a blip .
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bi...
It's actually over $600bln and rocketing across the space.A Software Engineer for a large UK bank should know this ? , the software engineers here are giving it a wide berth.
Market cap $250 billion? ( and falling ) v $500 + trillion market of global assets , not even a blip .
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bi...
Edited by superkartracer on Wednesday 20th December 14:20
https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/
People are exiting the current system in droves realising the benefits of decentralised financial systems. Practically zero payment fees are coming, censorship resistant, secure, borderless money open to everyone, including the billions of underbanked. Then you'll see "Smart Contracts" on Bitcoin and Ethereum shake up the insurance industry.
It's still a young technology but the cat has been let out of the bag. The change is happening.
TTmonkey said:
Ted2 said:
Mining is just a stupid name for a computer that processes the transactions. If no-one "mined" then no-one would be able to send or receive cryptocurrency as there needs to be a "central" ledger of all the transactions to make sure they're legit and there are no duplicates. In the cryptocurrency world this task is performed by people "mining" and they get a small amount of the coin currency as a reward for doing so.
That's not how it was explained to me. I was of the impression that a new coin could be created from scratch by doing some infinitely long winded mathematical calculations. these get harder and more long winded with other iteration... thus the term 'mining'.
. Suffice to say you don't need a metal detector and a spade, which was what I was expecting when I first read about mining bit coins around a decade ago 
. I expect I was not alone in thinking this at the time, either.Saleen836 said:
Coinbase CEO said:
Brian Armstrong responded that he had repeatedly warned his staff not to disclose its launch plans to family or friends or to trade in the digital asset themselves.
Yes Brian, that will definitely work. I don't see any problems with that whatsoever./s
Trolleys Thank You said:
New Bitcoin transaction blocks are generated every 10 minutes. In order for a block to be written to the blockchain, somebody must solve a mathematical puzzle in that time frame. So the miners compete furiously against each other, making currently around 14 quintillion guesses a second at this puzzle. Eventually, one miner gets lucky and is given a reward of 12.5 BTC (~£165k). Thousands of Bitcoin nodes then act like teachers marking homework and verify the block was correctly generated. And then whole process starts again and the next block is mined.
This process has been working without failure for 8 years now with 100% uptime and ZERO mistakes or hacks in the mining process. Other financial institutions could only dream of such a robust system. No wonder the banking dinosaurs are trying to spread fear about Bitcoin. They know it’s a threat.
I'm obviously missing something here. (Real) money is a method of trade. I farm some crops and sell them to a supermarket and earn £1,000. Joe Bloggs is a miner, he goes into the supermarket and buys the food with the money he made mining coal. I use some of my £1,000 to buy some coal from Joe to heat my farm. This process has been working without failure for 8 years now with 100% uptime and ZERO mistakes or hacks in the mining process. Other financial institutions could only dream of such a robust system. No wonder the banking dinosaurs are trying to spread fear about Bitcoin. They know it’s a threat.
So there is a point to it, it's a way of valuing work we do against work other people do. And from that it gets its value.
But you're saying the Bitcoin is earned by people guessing the answers to puzzles? Where is the value in that?
That's my issue with this - there seems to be no basis for value.
Ari said:
I'm obviously missing something here. (Real) money is a method of trade. I farm some crops and sell them to a supermarket and earn £1,000. Joe Bloggs is a miner, he goes into the supermarket and buys the food with the money he made mining coal. I use some of my £1,000 to buy some coal from Joe to heat my farm.
So there is a point to it, it's a way of valuing work we do against work other people do. And from that it gets its value.
But you're saying the Bitcoin is earned by people guessing the answers to puzzles? Where is the value in that?
That's my issue with this - there seems to be no basis for value.
Bitcoins also a method of trade. It (in theory at least) is just another currency - you could get paid for your crops in bitcoin as could Joe for his coal. The concept of 'mining' is irrelevant to this. So there is a point to it, it's a way of valuing work we do against work other people do. And from that it gets its value.
But you're saying the Bitcoin is earned by people guessing the answers to puzzles? Where is the value in that?
That's my issue with this - there seems to be no basis for value.
Ari said:
I'm obviously missing something here. (Real) money is a method of trade. I farm some crops and sell them to a supermarket and earn £1,000. Joe Bloggs is a miner, he goes into the supermarket and buys the food with the money he made mining coal. I use some of my £1,000 to buy some coal from Joe to heat my farm.
So there is a point to it, it's a way of valuing work we do against work other people do. And from that it gets its value.
But you're saying the Bitcoin is earned by people guessing the answers to puzzles? Where is the value in that?
That's my issue with this - there seems to be no basis for value.
Define 'real' money So there is a point to it, it's a way of valuing work we do against work other people do. And from that it gets its value.
But you're saying the Bitcoin is earned by people guessing the answers to puzzles? Where is the value in that?
That's my issue with this - there seems to be no basis for value.
Arguably Bitcoin has more inherent value than fiat currencies as they're a finite resource (in fact, mathematically guaranteed to be finite). More akin to gold or commodities (the crops and coal in your analogy). Pounds and dollars can be and are magicked out of thin air by the banking system on an unlimited basis.deggles said:
Define 'real' money Arguably Bitcoin has more inherent value than fiat currencies as they're a finite resource (in fact, mathematically guaranteed to be finite). More akin to gold or commodities (the crops and coal in your analogy). Pounds and dollars can be and are magicked out of thin air by the banking system on an unlimited basis.
Real money... the money you have to pay the government every year in tax to keep you out of jail. That btc is limited is irrelevant. Etherium isn't, neither is the number of crypto currencies there are now over 1300! The number of old VW Beetles is also limited to 21m what are they worth? Arguably Bitcoin has more inherent value than fiat currencies as they're a finite resource (in fact, mathematically guaranteed to be finite). More akin to gold or commodities (the crops and coal in your analogy). Pounds and dollars can be and are magicked out of thin air by the banking system on an unlimited basis.I'd go further and say the fact it's limited means it's inherently deflationary and immune to monetary policy which means it's highly unsuitable as a major currency. Eth on the other hand...
Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 20th December 20:54
deggles said:
Define 'real' money Arguably Bitcoin has more inherent value than fiat currencies as they're a finite resource (in fact, mathematically guaranteed to be finite). More akin to gold or commodities (the crops and coal in your analogy). Pounds and dollars can be and are magicked out of thin air by the banking system on an unlimited basis.
The problem is that this argument is bulls Arguably Bitcoin has more inherent value than fiat currencies as they're a finite resource (in fact, mathematically guaranteed to be finite). More akin to gold or commodities (the crops and coal in your analogy). Pounds and dollars can be and are magicked out of thin air by the banking system on an unlimited basis.
t.Physical commodities have inherent value - something like a gold coin had worth both from the material and from being a coin.
'Fiat' currencies have no inherent value but is money because a government and its resources stand behind it and say it's money.
Bitcoin is an artefact with a specific process to create it - unforgeable, limited supply - but it's still just a token with no inherent value. And unlike the much derided 'fiat' no-one actually stands behind it so it's even further down the ranks. The fact that the token is secure is unrelated to the value, the stability of the value or whether it is tradable at all. Being unable to print more on demand doesn't really mean much.
Ari said:
Trolleys Thank You said:
New Bitcoin transaction blocks are generated every 10 minutes. In order for a block to be written to the blockchain, somebody must solve a mathematical puzzle in that time frame. So the miners compete furiously against each other, making currently around 14 quintillion guesses a second at this puzzle. Eventually, one miner gets lucky and is given a reward of 12.5 BTC (~£165k). Thousands of Bitcoin nodes then act like teachers marking homework and verify the block was correctly generated. And then whole process starts again and the next block is mined.
This process has been working without failure for 8 years now with 100% uptime and ZERO mistakes or hacks in the mining process. Other financial institutions could only dream of such a robust system. No wonder the banking dinosaurs are trying to spread fear about Bitcoin. They know it’s a threat.
I'm obviously missing something here. (Real) money is a method of trade. I farm some crops and sell them to a supermarket and earn £1,000. Joe Bloggs is a miner, he goes into the supermarket and buys the food with the money he made mining coal. I use some of my £1,000 to buy some coal from Joe to heat my farm. This process has been working without failure for 8 years now with 100% uptime and ZERO mistakes or hacks in the mining process. Other financial institutions could only dream of such a robust system. No wonder the banking dinosaurs are trying to spread fear about Bitcoin. They know it’s a threat.
So there is a point to it, it's a way of valuing work we do against work other people do. And from that it gets its value.
But you're saying the Bitcoin is earned by people guessing the answers to puzzles? Where is the value in that?
That's my issue with this - there seems to be no basis for value.
jammy-git said:
Unhackable? Haven't several people had wallets hacked and bitcoin stolen?
Technically that was the wallet that was hacked, not the currency itself and even then the Bitcoins could be traced easily, it just couldn't be returned to its owners.This explains it a bit better:
Bitcoin said:
Bitcoin is a bit of a paradox. It can be used nearly anonymously: any two people can easily set up brand new Bitcoin wallets, meet in a park, and exchange cash for Bitcoin. But at the same time, Bitcoin trades are public: all transactions are shared in a publicly available file called the Blockchain that’s posted to the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network.
Probably the best support for its security is the fact that a lot of people, even on here, own Bitcoins, but because they can't remember the very secure passwords for their wallet, they have no way of accessing them.That guy with the significant amount of Bitcoins on a hard drive in a rubbish dump reckons it will take him over 300 years to brute force his passwords even with a super computer.
Edited by youngsyr on Thursday 21st December 01:19
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