Hacker News Reader

Comment by VMG | Hacker News Reader

Which algorithms are more efficient at doing what Bitcoin does?

You’re thinking efficient compared to another hashing algorithm. I think op is saying efficient compared to the value it creates. I.e. cryptocurrency is useful for some things, but it’s burning a LOT of energy to do it.

I'm asking what is more efficient at doing what Bitcoin does: censorship-resistant transactions with sound money.

Cash?

I think the point here is that the need for such a currency is not absolute and may be outweighed by the cost of such a large energy consumption rate.

What does Bitcoin (et al) do for someone such as I, who cares not a fig for speculative gambling?

- edit

this was a sort of response to your statement below "Don't get me wrong, I use VISA all the time, but it's a different product", but I couldn't reply to it direct.

It is an asset with a fixed issuance and censorship-resistant transactions.

Some people don't trust the authorities with the powers of issuance and censorship and find it interesting for those reasons. It is likely that you are not in that category.

Presumptuous. I've long had my own concerns about The System, but I don't think the fix is in a highly volatile and comparatively easy-to-disrupt electronic ledger.

Now, Gold OTOH...

"easy-to-disrupt"... no, that's the whole point. Prove me wrong.

Yeah, have you ever tried to send .002 gram of gold to anyone recently?

Leave your comfortable bubble and look at countries with hyperinflation like Zimbabwe/Argentina, how are they going to use a cash (not dollar) in a trustless fashion?

But they do use dollar, right - mano a mano?

If you think that crypto's hardier than real world fungible assets when the shit hits the fan, I imagine it's not me who is trapped in a 'comfortable bubble' as you so condescendingly put it.

Given now infamous recent disclosures about fundamental flaws in our trust in IT at the deepest levels we can imagine, I suspect you vastly overestimate the resilience of digital 'securities'.

Never mind power cuts or flat batteries...

Whatever VISA is doing is orders of magnitude more efficient.

* not censorship resistant

* issuance controlled by a monopoly

Don't get me wrong, I use VISA all the time, but it's a different product.

Bitcoin is neither of those things. Mining, developers and exchanges are all centralized. All a government that cares has to do to control issuance or censor transactions is regulate those entities.

do you really understand how transactions are recorded in bitcoin? Care to educate me how a government can censor a transaction?

One example that the US government's OFAC is considering is blacklisting addresses and tainted UTXOs [0]. Miners would be forbidden by law to confirm a transaction related to a tainted UTXO. This means if the transaction is spending a tainted UTXO or sending to a blacklisted address (and thus creating a tainted UTXO), it wouldn't be confirmed. "taint" in this case travels forward in a chain of transactions and is a well documented property if you google it.

Companies like Chainalysis have become really good at not only clustering related UTXOs but also monitoring taint as UTXOs are attempted to be obfuscated. [1]

[0] https://www.coindesk.com/goodbye-fungibility-ofacs-bitcoin-b...

[1] https://www.chainalysis.com

As an aside, the patronizing tone is unwarranted. It was acceptable five years ago when the jury was out on Bitcoin, but science is slowly revealing the inadequacies of the technology. Examples here [2] and here [3] and here [4]

[2] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30177-6

[3] https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/...

[4] https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03998

A bit of paper called cash backed by the state?

* Issuance is controlled by a monopoly

* high transaction costs unless both parties are in physical proximity

* not durable

* not programmable

Tried and tested. Doesn't use a shitload of energy.

To each their own!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com