Bitcoin under pressure | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin under pressure

economist.com

17 pointsdamian200011 comments

The system is now straining at the seams. Its computational underpinnings have collectively reached 100 times the performance of the world’s top 500 supercomputers combined: more than 50,000 petaflops. Bitcoin’s success has revealed three weaknesses in particular. It is not as secure and anonymous as it seems; the “mining” system that both increases the Bitcoin supply and ensures the integrity of the currency has led to an unsustainable computational arms-race; and the distributed-ledger system is becoming unwieldy. Will Bitcoin’s self-correcting mechanisms, and the enlightened self-interest of its users, be able to address these weaknesses and keep Bitcoin on the rails?

And this is how you spread misinformation and create fear. Bitcoin certainly has its risks, but either the author is fear mongering, or really does not get it.

He doesn't back up these statements with any evidence...

I agree with you, but to be fair you don't provide any to refute it.

That's like the days of whitchhunts. You're a whitch if you can't prove otherwise.

You can't be guilty unless proven innocent. If you're going to claim bitcoin is at some kind of technical-limit, you have to show it. Otherwise, it's more reasonable to believe it's working as intended.

Those who make the claims are obligated to support it.

1. Bitcoin is as secure as it seems, if used properly.

2. It was never intended to be anonymous. It's pseudonymous.

3. The "computational arms race" doesn't hurt Bitcoin or alter the network performance at all. The only real negative is it wastes electricity.

4. The distributed-ledger system is not unwieldy. That's simply false.

yea that article was a waste of everyone's time. i think it's ok for people to have their opinions though. There are certainly many "pro Bitcoin" articles written that highlight its keys to success and conveniently forget to mention any flaws.

In fact a lot of pro BTC articles still paint it as perfect and Nakamoto is idolized. If the community were more willing to admit to possible errors perhaps they'd have a shot at fixing them. And I'd wager that the people they're idolizing (if they are true to their vision and not just profiteering) see these mistakes and are wracking their brains, rather than watching the numbers and smiling complacently.

i think the key with Bitcoin is to get people thinking... some are inspired but many just want to profit. Decent lesson about greed, I believe...

> Rather than relying on confidence in a central authority, it depends instead on a distributed system of trust

Isn't it built on a distributed system of lack of trust? That is, after all, why it is distributed.

I would say the "trust" is in that the majority of the network is sane.

> Every participant in the system must keep a copy of the block chain, which now exceeds 11 gigabytes in size and continues to grow steadily. This alone deters casual use.

Is 11GB really that much? Downloadable video games and movies easily top this size, and it's not at all uncommon for a person to "have" several pieces of similar media.

This piece was clearly not written out fear from misunderstanding the technicals of Bitcoin, which is forgivable to some degree. It was written out of fear of something uncontrollable and different.

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