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Hilarious comment. But this is HN so I have to nitpick the minor flaws I noticed: > Bitcoin will become massively deflationary as hash rates plummet and vast q

Hilarious comment. But this is HN so I have to nitpick the minor flaws I noticed: > Bitcoin will become massively deflationary as hash rates plummet and vast quantities of the world's computation & food supply are turned towards mining 1 or 2 blocks a year, but transaction fees sky rocket. (1) Mining difficulty is scaled to the hashpower of the network. In the long run the EV of ten minute time between blocks is maintained. (2) Fun fact, BTC tx fees already spiked high years back, during the bitcoin civil war. The day I had to pay an $80 transaction fee was the day I dumped BTC and never looked back. The tx fees were not due to some true technical limitation but rather an artificially imposed constraint when BTC got taken over from within by a faction that wrested control of /r/bitcoin and censored all dissent, convincing the unending hordes of speculators that the block size was a holy constant that could never be touched without ruining the vaguely-defined “decentralization”. Just a fun bit of history that felt relevant.

grenoire 6y ago
When the hash rates are at 1 per month, I don't think we will have enough hashing power, probabilistically, to match 10 minute marks. Verification of the hash to validate and consent to the block will also be at 1 per month, for consideration.
littlestymaar 6y ago
> Mining difficulty is scaled to the hashpower of the network. In the long run the EV of ten minute time between blocks is maintained. The key part here is “in the long run”. IIRC the difficulty is only adapted after a certain number of mined block, so in case of a mining power collapse you still need to mine blocks at the old difficulty for a while, which would be really slow in the aforementioned scenario before a really long time has elapsed (more than a thousand years). Anyway, in such scenario, you would probably not have a worldwide reliable network anymore, so the whole concept of bitcoin would just be be obsolete.
frankenst1 6y ago
> the block size could never be touched without ruining the vaguely-defined “decentralization” Fun fact: All forks of Bitcoin which attempted to remove it actually ruined their decentralization in the process and are now either dead or valued <1/100 of Bitcoin. Seems like the market values a stable and secure Layer 1 over altcoins promising free lunches.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  The market capitalization of a cryptocurrency has no relation to its utility as a currency, except insofar as a volatile currency - particularly in the downward direction - hampers its usage as a currency without converting from USD at the time of tx
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  "Popularity contests don't think much of forks" seems like a much stronger thesis to me.
  - frankenst1 6y ago
    The second most popular (i.e. valuable) cryptocurrency (ETH) is a fork of Ethereum, while the original (now called ETC) is practically dead.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      I would disagree with calling "ethereum" the fork. But even accepting that premise, it's still an example where exactly one version gets to live, and the one made by a group of average people is the one that died. There is effectively no forking allowed, and implementing a fork of bitcoin is just a slipshod alternative to BIPs.
      - frankenst1 6y ago
        If you redefine 'forks' to refer to the minority chains you are of course correct that "popularity contests don't think much of forks", but this would be a) tautological and b) not the correct use of a well-defined technical term. ETC is not a fork and it wasn't 'made' by anyone. It is just the original, unaltered transaction history of Ethereum. ETH was 'made' by introducing a hard-fork and altering parts of Ethereum's transaction history, diverging from prior consensus rules.
        Dylan16807 6y ago

grenoire 6y ago

When the hash rates are at 1 per month, I don't think we will have enough hashing power, probabilistically, to match 10 minute marks. Verification of the hash to validate and consent to the block will also be at 1 per month, for consideration.

littlestymaar 6y ago

> Mining difficulty is scaled to the hashpower of the network. In the long run the EV of ten minute time between blocks is maintained. The key part here is “in the long run”. IIRC the difficulty is only adapted after a certain number of mined block, so in case of a mining power collapse you still need to mine blocks at the old difficulty for a while, which would be really slow in the aforementioned scenario before a really long time has elapsed (more than a thousand years). Anyway, in such scenario, you would probably not have a worldwide reliable network anymore, so the whole concept of bitcoin would just be be obsolete.

frankenst1 6y ago

> the block size could never be touched without ruining the vaguely-defined “decentralization” Fun fact: All forks of Bitcoin which attempted to remove it actually ruined their decentralization in the process and are now either dead or valued <1/100 of Bitcoin. Seems like the market values a stable and secure Layer 1 over altcoins promising free lunches.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
The market capitalization of a cryptocurrency has no relation to its utility as a currency, except insofar as a volatile currency - particularly in the downward direction - hampers its usage as a currency without converting from USD at the time of tx
Dylan16807 6y ago
"Popularity contests don't think much of forks" seems like a much stronger thesis to me.
- frankenst1 6y ago
  The second most popular (i.e. valuable) cryptocurrency (ETH) is a fork of Ethereum, while the original (now called ETC) is practically dead.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    I would disagree with calling "ethereum" the fork. But even accepting that premise, it's still an example where exactly one version gets to live, and the one made by a group of average people is the one that died. There is effectively no forking allowed, and implementing a fork of bitcoin is just a slipshod alternative to BIPs.
    - frankenst1 6y ago
      If you redefine 'forks' to refer to the minority chains you are of course correct that "popularity contests don't think much of forks", but this would be a) tautological and b) not the correct use of a well-defined technical term. ETC is not a fork and it wasn't 'made' by anyone. It is just the original, unaltered transaction history of Ethereum. ETH was 'made' by introducing a hard-fork and altering parts of Ethereum's transaction history, diverging from prior consensus rules.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago