etr-strike

Sure, maybe including uncle blocks can help secure the chain. It's not without cost, however: now you're forever persisting valueless blobs of data as part of your blockchain.

Sure, uncle blocks help increase the weight of the chain but are also wasted blobs of data forever taking up space on the blockchain. They serve no value other than to make the PoW weighting heavier.

Because mining is dependent on the rate at which information can propagate across the network. If a mining pool is able to hear about the next block 1s sooner than another pool, it has a significant advantage when blocks only take 12s to mine. If blocks take 10min to mine, that 1s is less of an advantage.

The gold market can be manipulated as most people never take physical delivery of gold. There's no mechanism to audit everyone's holdings. Additionally, I'm of the opinion volatility will decrease as bitcoin matures. Do you really expect a currency bootstrapped from the ground up to not be volatile in its uptake?

We'll see if you're singing the same tune when you're finally confronted with the certain depreciation of your USD holdings. (Will you still reject bitcoin when USD is depreciating at a rate of 5% per year?)

There's two unknowns in this statement. 1) How does bitcoin behave during a recession and 2) What will the next recession look like?

If the next recession takes the form of significant inflation -- resulting in effectively negative interest rates -- you will see flow into bitcoin.

If the next recession is caused by significant defaults on debt, well, bitcoin is also the safe haven asset there.

Bitcoin came into existence as a response to 2008. It's primary purpose is to protect peoples savings from central banks foolishness.

I agree no one knows for sure what will happen. IMO, bitcoin is a reasonable hedge against the monetary policy we have today.

Of course you can do sub one minute blocks. Bitcoin chose 10 minute blocks to maximize decentralization. Bitcoin could also do 12 second blocks, but then the network would be as centralized as Ethereum.

There's no evidence Proof-of-Stake can work as a replacement for Proof-of-Work.

Yes: Rootstock ( https://www.rsk.co/ ). This exists as a sidechain to the bitcoin network and implements the Ethereum virtual machine. It launched on mainnet yesterday.

When the next recession strikes, interest rates have no place to go but into negative territory. The rates will be either explicitly negative, or effectively negative (inflation higher than interest rates).

When that happens, bitcoin will be the only safe haven in the world to protect your wealth. The bubble people will be changing their tune very quick.

Stocks only recovered because of unprecedented money printing by central banks across the world. That experiment is, at best, half over. I'll trust in bitcoin, thanks.

How is that an argument for inflation?

I don’t buy your argument. People will still invest because investment generates a return on their money. Additionally, if the savings rate becomes too high the government has the ability to tax and reinvest that revenue as appropriate.

Inflation is a hidden tax that impacts the poor and middle classes the most. Worse, wealthy people have the means to escape inflation. Today the worlds weathiest simply buy land and property. Is that the sort of “investment” you’re cheering for as a positive result of inflation?

This is an argument against inflation. The fact that an invisible hand can manipulate the value of wages further weakens labors bargaining power — a power which has been nothing but eroded over the last 50years. Sorry, I feel employers should at least be honest and upfront with their employees when they’re cutting wages.

Deflation isn’t guaranteed. Eventually people need to spend. A currency with fixed supply certainly encourages saving. Why is that a bad thing?

I believe a fixed supply of currency is beneficial when determining price. The ability of an institution to secretly change the amount of a currency used to measure price introduces yet another variable into the valuation equation.

Additionally, when the dollar was fixed on the gold standard, employers needed to be upfront and honest with their employees. When they needed to cut wages, employees knew it was happening. Much of the labor movement and union formation happened because employers needed to be honest about what they were doing.

I've yet to hear a convincing argument that inflation is good for me.