On Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 3:43 PM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 31, 2022 at 2:20 PM Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > >* a single honest one can run the network.* >> > > So bitcoin can avoid problems if they can just find somebody that > everybody agrees is a saint. But you could say the same thing about the > US dollar if everybody agreed that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is a > saint. > You don't need a saint. That's the genius of the protocol design, a trusted system without any trusted individuals. You just need no majority of the nodes to be working against the system. > > *But my point is the energy requirements are not part of any inherent >> part of the protocol nor is there any inherent computational difficulty in >> validation the chain or transactions. The only high cost is the one the >> protocol adds for the explicit purpose of throttling new blocks to 1 every >> 10 minutes. If there are fewer miners, this cost is reduced by the >> protocol. If there were only 100 miners running on lower power laptops, >> this cost would be no more than the cost of powering these 100 laptops.* >> > > If there were only 100 laptops mining for Bitcoins and I joined as the > 101st then I could make a lot of Bitcoins on my laptop, and if I spent a > few thousand dollars more to get a computer a few times more powerful than > a typical laptop I could make even more. > Yes now you've got it. There will never be more than 21,000,000 Bitcoins so if the world switched > over entirely to Bitcoin then each one would be worth a little more than > 1/21 millionth of the world's economy, and because of technological > improvements the world's economy will increase, so the amount of stuff you > can buy with one Bitcoin will increase, so the incentive to mine Bitcoins > and waste huge amounts of energy will also increase. > Bitcoin allows one to freeze something of economic value (in this case energy) and convert it to money, after which it can facilitate an unlimited number of transactions basically for free and indefinitely, until it is lost/or destroyed. Ideally this shouldn't happen and it will happen less as technology improves. Note that this same process underlies the creation of money in existing monetary systems: E.g., invest energy in mining gold. The amount people will spend to mine new gold is related to the price of gold. Gold, once mined, can be traded unlimitedly. It's a one time cost to freeze this energy and turn it into money. The same is true also for USD. How do dollars come into existence? Something of economic value is created, a house, a car, etc., which required energy, and then money is created by borrowing against these objects. The total amount of USD in circulation is directly related to the amount of energy put into creating physical objects that still hold value, and the outstanding amounts borrowed again them. So in that sense, to mint $500,000 in USD, required building a $500,000 house (and note that much of thalis cost is derived directly or indirectly from the cost of energy). I am not aware of any system of money that does not require an investment of economic energy roughly in proportion to the value of money created. The relationship is just much clearer with bitcoin. Jason > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > kqx > e > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3%2BGV7Boqq2k%2B6aQ%3DbWEG1NDFcje4rwEuPS5dbyY2PurA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3%2BGV7Boqq2k%2B6aQ%3DbWEG1NDFcje4rwEuPS5dbyY2PurA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUjFpwKbhOe_JXavmCrBiHn0iLe5K2sJ4E7xQaqXjK6z2w%40mail.gmail.com.
