Thoughts on Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and related matters.

[kfm27917]

Am I missing something here? Does anyone remember the pyramid scheme from a good number of years ago? Nothing good came from that scheme except for the very few that got in it first and everyone after that took a nosedive. Are we thinking the same thing here? RB

>> How Crypto Currency works . . . an analogy in laymen terms.
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>> Not long ago a Merchant found a lot of monkeys that lived near a certain village.
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>> One day he came to the Village saying he wanted to buy these monkeys!
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>> He announced that he would buy the monkeys at $100 each.
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>> The Villagers thought that this man must be crazy - How can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each?
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>> Still some people caught some monkeys, gave them to this Merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey.
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>> This news spread like wildfire and people caught monkeys and sold them to the merchant.
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>> After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys at $200 each.
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>> The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys! They sold the remaining monkeys at $200 each.
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>> The Merchant then announced that he will buy monkeys for $500 each!
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>> The Villagers start to lose sleep!.....They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that were left and got $500 each.
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>> The Villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.
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>> Then the Merchant announced that he is going on holiday for a week, but when he returns, he will buy monkeys at $1000 each!
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>> He also said that his employee will be in charge, and would take care of the monkeys he bought pending his return. The Merchant went on holiday!
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>> The Villagers were frantic and very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each as was promised by the Merchant.
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>> Then the Merchant’s Employee contacted them and told them that he would secretly sell them some monkeys at $700 each.
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>> The news spread like wildfire. As the Merchant promised on his return that he would buy monkeys at $1000 each, they would achieve a $300 profit for each monkey.
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>> The next day the Villagers queued up near the monkey cage.
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>> The Employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each. The rich bought monkeys in large lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and bought the rest of the monkeys!
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>> The Villagers took care of their monkeys & waited for the Merchant to return!
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>> However nobody came! ..... They then ran to find the Employee ....
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>> However he was nowhere to be found!
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>> The Villagers then realized that they have been duped buying the useless stray monkeys at $700 each, and were now unable to sell them!
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>> This Monkey Business is now known as Bitcoin!
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>> It will make a lot of People bankrupt and very few People filthy rich in this kind of Monkey Business.
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[palehorse]

Posted by kfm27917 (here)
Am I missing something here? Does anyone remember the pyramid scheme from a good number of years ago? Nothing good came from that scheme except for the very few that got in it first and everyone after that took a nosedive. Are we thinking the same thing here? RB

>> How Crypto Currency works . . . an analogy in laymen terms.
>>
>>
>> Not long ago a Merchant found a lot of monkeys that lived near a certain village.
..
>>
>> It will make a lot of People bankrupt and very few People filthy rich in this kind of Monkey Business.
>>
>

perfect analogy.
If it looks like a ponzi scheme, if it smells like a ponzi scheme, then maybe it is not a ponzi scheme!

.. and the scammers has a seat at a very high level in the hierarchy, they decide not us.
I feel sorry for those poor people selling their real/physical assets and converting it into virtual assets.

[ediwedi]

Anyone understanding german, there is a new upload by "Ernst Wolff". I just want to recommend to watch his latest conference from Vienna only a couple of days old. The video is 48 minutes long, and I think it is going to be a well invested 48 minutes for anyone watching it. It fits to this thread but it ties to many other aspects from the world happening this very moment. If you can somehow find a way to understand it even as a non german speaker, the things he is talking about are well explained. It is really a great and fairly compact "Aufklärung" (clarification) to all the things happening in the world at the moment. As a fellow avalonian, I would say it is really one of the highest watch recommendations I personally could give. Just one spoiler, there is no conspiracies and similar things in there. Thank you if you decide to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtM4B3yIXXw&t=2404s

[norman]

What does Bitcoin look like "under the hood"

https://www.brighteon.com/7494b146-c...c-ece25ac2ae4b

[petra]

LOVE that monkey joke!

Reminds ME of Magic The Gathering Online when one dude would hoard all the Reya Dawnbringers and then control the price.

We will all be dead by the time all the bitcoin has been mined, and it's not like one person .. or entity .. can hoard all the bitcoins anyway.

I expect it'll continue the upward momentum because the rich people won't let it go down. Just like on Magic Online...

There's a new episode of Futurama about NFTs, and it's really funny. Bender ends up really liking his NFT and Fry says "of course you like it, you're a robot. But why would a human want that".

Maybe the AI will steal it all. I wonder what it would buy? *chuckles*

[petra]

Dang that robot check on the search is brutal! I almost didn't make it. Hard time remembering my password too, took me about 4 tries lol

Not sure who else cares about the stupid blockchain but I have a bit more to add!

It's estimated 17% of all the bitcoins are LOST. Everyone says it's forever but I'm not so sure. For humans maybe, but what about a super sophisticated AI that thinks faster than the speed of light and never sleeps?

It's the IDEA behind crypto which is so valuable. The monetary value of the coins seems to be more of an incentive to maintain the blockchain.

All we need to do is not be idiots and lose things in our own blockchain. 🤦

[palehorse]

Commenting on the post above by Petra, yes it could be all cracked open in due time with quantum technologies if these cryptocurrencies are not using advanced cryptographic hash functions. For example: Bitcoin rely heavily on SHA-256 hashing function (the current approach in the dev team is to double the hash size, anything else look like hell). Bitcoin used ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm), Shor's algorithm, can break ECDSA when executed with a quantum computer! So signatures can be forged and bitcoins can be spent on your behalf (not joking). Bitcoin was built-in with functions that had a date to expire, the Nakamoto behind it knew that and used the standard of the time, so not much to blame here.

Lamport one-time signatures use each key-pair to sign a single message (old school 1979) and seems to be the most efficient and simple.

The last round with NIST for approval of such algorithms (standardization), we have mostly "Lattice-based Cryptography", but also we "Code-based Cryptography" in the final round, things like BIKE (bit flipping key encapsulation) and the classic McEliece. A few organization(corpo) took a different approach and are considering using a hybrid cryptography form.

What I think might happen is all crypto using ECDSA to be replaced with lattice-based/hash-code-based algorithms but that would require probably a hard fork, assuming the community reached that consensus. The hybrid approach would be necessary to maintain compatibility with the current systems though.


On quantum computers in private institutions

Any bad actor this including large corporations could use it to break/crack ECDSA at this point, and that would allow them to steal bitcoins by using key derivation (deriving Priv K from Pub Key), if that happen the market would create a massive panic and sell-off, but probably nobody would be buying anything, prices would go to the bottom and no one would benefit from the attack, unless the attack happen in phases and not leaving any traces behind. There is a way for those who hold quantum computers.


CBDC as a successor

The central bank digital currencies are already a sofisticated version of bitcoin, so at some point regulator may phase out bitcoin by just placing a legislation that turns it illegal and threat whoever insist to use to be arrested and punished. Since bitcoin is a traceable coin, most people using it would just halt. anyway I am just babbling here about the possibilities, who really knows what will happen. I am as just curious as anyone else.


For whatever it worth, I have some Monero (XMR), and I am using it to buy stuffs sometimes, last purchase was a manual water pump (aka pitcher pump), so I am using it, so far so good, but I can't see how I would purchase something like a car or a piece of land, or anything that imply a tax payment, the local government here probably don't even know what Monero is haha


Conclusion

bitcoin can be phased out in the future by either the threat of quantum computers or by government. I would never invest in anything like that and since bitcoin IS NOT to be used as cash due to high fees, it is basically for investors, I don't see any point using it to buy a cup of coffee or any other thing, I tried in the past to live for 1 month using only bitcoin, the results were very bad, I end up paying a way more for the very same things I usually buy with cash, my landlord didn't know what bitcoin was, so I had to pay in cash, also gas station didn't accept any of that, I could go on and on

[petra]

Thank you so much for detailed reply palehorse! I would have liked to use the quote feature but it's impossible on phone, really need to get my pc working so happy (and surprised) to see the forum is still working and has not vanished!

What a rabbit hole bitcoin is, seriously, I've been up to my eyes in it for over a week now.

I've concluded Bitcoin is a TOY. Nothing more

I'll play with it a bit I suppose. But I sure would not invest very much, keeping it below 200

I see children going all in and it scares me! Warren buffet doesn't believe in it either. I'm currently reading about trying to assign it an intrinsic value and that's when it dawned on me. It's an effing TOY

Solana seems like it might be useful someday so I plopped my money into that one, not Bitcoin itself. The only good thing about bitcoin is I can buy Solana with it

Edit:: Forgot most important part omg. So pretty certain bitcoin is like a CULT now too

[petra]

Here is the article about intrinsic value if anyone is interested....

https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/be...price-analysis

I've been trying to pinpoint where exactly in the article did I have that weird epiphany?

Now when I read it, it just sounds like ... absolute dog poo. Complete drivel, and kind of CULTISH sounding too. I sense a pattern! But maybe just imagining things.

[petra]

I may not understand the demand for these stupid coins but it's becoming pretty obvious that it's taking over! Listening to Michael Saylor talk about it gives me the creeps...

Charlie Munger said it best - "Bitcoin is stupid. And evil". God bless you Charlie

That being said, I'm profiting from it. Pretty good toy if you ask me!

[Richter]

Crypto: The World’s Greatest Scam (54:18)
An interesting point of view worth watching.
(imo anything digital is a potential scam or a ponzy scheme).

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ORdWE_ffirg

[palehorse]

Posted by Richter (here)
Crypto: The World’s Greatest Scam (54:18)
An interesting point of view worth watching.
(imo anything digital is a potential scam or a ponzy scheme).

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ORdWE_ffirg

Hi Richter, I would say it is one of the best videos slapping bitcoin that I ever watched, thanks posting it! It should be available in all languages. I mean it explains very well what it really is, but not in technical terms, just popular terms which is what matter for all those people getting into it recently, they need to know the truth of it before getting into it.

~~~

I worked as a programmer for a company that was basically a ponzi scheme (these companies are formerly called Multi-Level Marketing), I helped developing their algorithm and database, and I can confirm first hand that the only people profiting from it was the owners and earlier adopters, and when the recruitment system fails which happen soon or later to all of them unless they invest big money in marketing but still failing in the end, the whole company goes under, then it can take a bit of time to people start realizing it, but when that happen the owners of that company are already out sipping their margaritas far way in some beautiful Caribbean beach.

Back then I didn't know well what a ponzi scheme was, but I realize that the only thing that would keep such company afloat was the non-stop recruitment system, it dies off if no one adopt it, it is basically insanity.

Mathematically speaking it works with the use of binary trees, or ternary trees, or quaternary trees, or even multi-way tree (k-ary tree), these are trees where each node can have up to k children, it will impact the size of the tree. Think about your file system in your OS, it uses k-ary tree.

Example of an octary tree (k = 8), where each node has up to 8 children.
At depth 1 you have max node as 9.
At depth 2 you have max node as 73.
..
At depth 5 you have max node as 37449.

Here "node" equals to number of people. One thing I noticed when working with it, that in practical terms, the max. of levels (depth) be at 10 or around it, because anything more than that require more recruitment and that is the hardest part in this business type, because each will have to recruit in order to reap their profit, if so many start failing in recruitment, it quickly show the true face of the scam and everything falls apart, it is a very fragile business type, scammers love it, because of its nature of unsustainable growth, they can reap profits quickly and vanish.

There is 1 technique used by these companies, when they reach their limit of growth, they split into a new tree and everything reset giving the perception of sustainability and balance, or do like many companies already doing: not recruit anymore, some companies has special line of products where they start new recruitment systems totally fresh, there is so many ways to work with MLM, it is basically everywhere, all those companies like Herbalife, Amway, etc.. they are all fully into it.

[petra]

Thanks for keeping up on this thread guys. Watched that exact video last night along with the cult one and the one about bed bath and beyond.

Things are really coming to a head, and I'm getting that doomy feeling again
I knew I had to come back here when I got banned from just about every Reddit crypto sub. That place is so toxic, still reading it tho. Far cry from project Avalon!

Please guys, if it's me that's being toxic, feel free to say so. Privately is better. I'm not the same person I used to be when I signed up..... that's for certain. I'm also not to be trusted, so don't trust me. Or else! *grin*

This feels like war. It really does. Don't believe me just spend 5 mins on Reddit crypto subs.

I genuinely thought I was getting so obsessed because this is the new invention I have been waiting my entire life for, just been blind to it until trump did his 180. That's the thing that got me paying attention

I'm still a hippie. I don't hate trump, or musk, or saylor. I'll listen to them all, but gotta say my favorite so far is Mr Charlie Munger

[Mike Gorman]

What we are missing here is the de-centralised nature of Bitcoin, there is a fellow named Max Keiser who is one of the arch deacons of Bitcoin and he has been promoting it and explaining it since 2009 when Satoshi first put the Blockchain into operation - we know that our 'fiat' currencies are not any more credible than Bitcoin, it is all based on symbolic representations of energy and surety - right? Well the Blockchain is a means to create surety, don't talk to me of quantum computing and how this can crack the Bitcoin puzzle, it cannot, quantum computing cannot do anything much at the minute, it has very little practical application, the nerds are all baying about 'potentials'. The Blockchain has an inbuilt level of difficulty that adjusts according to the computational energy applied to it: my point here is that Bitcoin is no more a ponzi scheme than the American dollar, and it is a hell of a lot more egalitarian, having no central owner as such.