Comment by mindcandy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcandy | Hacker News Reader

This is a very bad-faith argument. It basically comes down to "Bitcoin doesn't replace civilization in a single stroke. So, there."

"There are no power stations without a central authority." is a clever twist of words. It's a false statement that sounds true. There are lots of power stations. They are not under A central authority. They are under huge number of centralized authorities locked in a symbiotic/adversarial relationship. The USA can't stop North Korea from powering Bitcoin miners. That's not a happy example. But, it's a strong one.

I've heard of great strides towards decentralized power generation and distribution in Europe. Particularly Germany. But, I don't know the details. I do know that one thing crypto is exceptionally good at is recording, publishing and paying for attribution down to micro details. I would be amazed if someone hasn't started some DistributedPowerCoin. It won't be a Bitcoin script. But, it might be backed by Proof of Staking Bitcoin.

"Can't produce chips and have a computer supply chain without a working legal system." Bitcoin doesn't attempt to replace the legal system. Arguing that it fails to accomplish something it does not attempt to do is bad form. Ethereum hopes to eat a large slice of the legal system's pie. But, that's another topic.

But, in general Bitcoin does not set out to replace central governments entirely. It seeks to reduce their power over individual finances. Arguing that failing to achieve crypto anarchy means failing entirely is not convincing.

I think you're being overliteral on the power stations. It doesn't mean that all power stations are owned by the Government, but that the existence of a power grid relies on the rule of law and the authority to set and enforce laws that is held by the state.

That authority of the state is the central authority he refers to. No matter how your market is actually structured.

Everyone can generate electricity with solar panels or wind turbines, etc. Even if there wasn't a central government at all, bitcoin miners would still have resources to defend their operations.

> Everyone can generate electricity with solar panels or wind turbines, etc. Even if there wasn't a central government at all, bitcoin miners would still have resources to defend their operations.

If things deteriorate to the point where people were forced to self-sufficiently generate their own electricity, one of the last things they'd waste that power on is bitcoin mining.

Furthermore, you need semiconductors to run a bitcoin miner, which are so complicated to manufacture that, in the absence of a government, either manufacturing would stop or the manufacturer would become a government.

Sure. They can. Assuming that they're not reliant on the power grid to back them up when their solar or wind isn't generating so well.

But, even assuming ideal self-sufficient power generation, their Bitcoin are useless unless the rest of the blockchain participants confirm them.

Which requires an interconnected system of networks. An Internet, one could say.

And guess what? the infrastructure to run a national computer network, never mind an international one, also relies on the rule of law and the authority of nation states to provide continuous service.

No no it's not bad faith, it's good faith. I'm not trolling, and I'm not invested in this idea- if you can make this whole house of cards collapse, more power to you.

Power stations are a special case of the more general weakness of Bitcoin- that it depends on resources only readily available under governmentally administered civilization- power, chips, software, maker culture. That gives determined government endless leverage to crush Bitcoin if it so choses.

If something about Bitcoin, say, energy use, turns enough heads to register high enough on political opinion surveys to give the impression that, say, an environmental angle at a Bitcoin ban could win an election or four, then, my friend- Bitcoin is gone. Off the top of my head:

- Cut Internet off of "rogue regimes" willing to continue mining - Ban or highly tax specialized mining hardware - Ban the use of electricity for mining - Ban the use of the currency - Ban the markets - Heavily sanction programmers involved in cryptocurrency - Lean on hardware vendors - Direct sabotage

Or, better yet- just, as one single government, hint at considering any of the above measures, and watch the price tumble everywhere.

Of course, none of these things are done, because harming Bitcoin does not currently win elections.

However, if a centralized digital currency like Taler where edicted to exist- destroying that wouldn't win any elections, either. So, if you take the perspective of hard Realpolitik, Bitcoin's decentralized aspects simply are not the ones that really matter. The aspects that do matter- and which were copied by Taler- is that the one with the power should be heavily restricted by protocol.

If the USA were to ban all things Bitcoin, the price would fall hard, but the machine would keep rolling. If, say, 5 of the top 10 GDP nations followed suit, then not only would the price crash, but the threat of some government sponsoring malicious mining would be strong enough to kill it off (even if it never actually happened).

Bitcoin is not invulnerable. It was bootstrapped from nothing and is still fledgling. Thankfully, it becomes harder to kill as it becomes more of a threat. Right now there is a trillion USD worth of distributed motivation to keep it running. Politically killing Bitcoin would be easier than politically killing Google. But, not that much... First major nation to do so could score some short-term political points. But, all nations are balancing concern about missing out vs. the threat to their own power.

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