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Comment by mattwilsonn888 | Hacker News Reader

Get rid of 'store of value,' 'decentralization,' 'smart contracts' and all that's left is a ledger. Its really not that complex or special - if that's what fascinates you then you can just as easily approach the topic from the examples of traditional credit or even the history of semi-arbitrary currencies.

If your implication is that the only thing backing crypto currencies is an expectation of reciprocation then you are mistaken. The qualities you want to hand waive away, and most importantly (though often trivialized), is the inability to roll back the chain which is a function of "consensus power." Consensus power simply quantifies the cost of rolling back x blocks. Bitcoin currently has the highest cost to roll back blocks and therefore the most assurance.

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You’re saying things that are true but don’t really make sense.

The history of transactions has no importance to the value currency. A dollar that was stolen is just as valuable as any other because they are bearer bonds (like most currencies).

The whole Immutable thing is just translating the concept of a bearer bond to digital space, nothing to do with its intrinsic value.

What is "the value currency" supposed to mean?

> What is "the value currency" supposed to mean?

People are willing to trade their labour and opportunity cost for entries on this ledger.

>Bitcoin currently has the highest cost to roll back blocks and therefore the most assurance.

This is false. Ethereum has higher block rewards (in $) for over a year now. Bitcoin is the second biggest PoW network by mining expenditure.

The "cost to rollback blocks" is a cost in computational power (to run a 51% attack), _not_ the cost of the block rewards

In theory a higher block reward will incentivize and allow for greater computational power to be thrown at it, thereby increasing the cost to attack it.

The only way to measure that is by looking at expense over longer timescales.

https://www.f2pool.com/coins shows Bitcoin on top in daily dollar issuance. Ethereum was on top a few months ago, but not for over a year.

That appears to not include fees.

https://bitinfocharts.com/

Ethereum ($38,451,803.7)

Bitcoin ($34,875,489.84)

Before EIP 1559 fees were much more important. Ethereum has higher rewards since about Q3 2020

edit: even worse, f2pool just multiplies the base reward (2 eth) - ignoring uncle rewards and fees, by the wrong number of blocks (based on 15 sec block time - it's actually 13.2s). Trash calculation.

Thanks for the correction. Is there a site providing historic graphs of daily miner revenue?

> the only thing backing crypto currencies is an expectation

This is, however, true regardless. The value of cryptocurrencies are measured in USD, and it is expectations of this future valuation that backs up the current price.

The only way to make it more certain than expectations, would be by some sort of government decree.

"Bitcoin currently has the highest cost to roll back blocks and therefore the most assurance."

Bitcoin was rolled back at the cost of sending out emails several times.

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