Comments by "SAL" (@SAL-fs1mr) on "Computerphile" channel.

  1. It is very misleading to say all the energy goes simply to process Bitcoin blockchain transactions. Each new block found increases the security of all past transactions as well. And there is no way to know if one Bitcoin blockchain transaction means only one. For example, opening a Bitcoin lightning channel is one blockchain transaction, but with that channel, you can do Thousands of Bitcoin lightning transactions! In the end though, it comes down to what people want to spend their electricity on. Most people waste electricity on TV, Christmas lights, etc. If I want to spend it on mining Bitcoin, it is my choice to do so. And as far as I can see, spending it on a system to replace central bank control is something this world desperately needs.
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  2. Bitcoin is more efficient.
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  3. Not quite. The first part of the video was illustrating the point everyone directly using the blockchain for all their transactions is unfeasible/inefficient, thus, 2nd layer bitcoin protocols (Such as Lightning Network) will be needed (and thus are being built out now) to efficiently enable the same level of transaction capacity we see with VISA.
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  4. Which highlights exactly why 2nd layer solutions are the way to go for massive scale (and avoid doing reckless blocksize increases).
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  5. both would be useless when it comes to bitcoin mining.
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  6. Miners are incentivized to publish their blocks as quickly as possible to ensure they are accepted by the network. The longer they wait to publish their blocks, the higher the risk of all the other miners publishing their mined blocks (and take the reward for each block).
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  7. Mining actually secures the network. If you want your transaction to be confirmed by this network, you pay the necessary transaction fee to the miners.
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  8. They are generated based on parameters of the previous block that was mined.
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  9. Transactions sit in a collective "mempool" before they are added to blocks by the miners. If for some reason your transaction isn't included in a block, it sits in the mempool until it is included in one. Once a block is mined, it doesn't change, and each subsequent block "hardens" all the previous blocks. and yes, miners do need to be constantly connected to see all current transactions AND to publish any blocks they create to the network.
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  10. stachowi solution: get the same bitcoin mining power to also mine the sidechain. No trusted third party needed. Problem solved.
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  11. "please don't use bitcoin, it is a mistake" - says the banker worried about losing his job.
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  12. TheMadBradProductions possibly, but it is likely POS will introduce a security hole.
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  13. Miners earn the fees from all the transactions - so even if there are no more coins to mine, they still have the incentive of earning the transaction fees.
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  14. the term "off-chain" is kind of a misnomer, because for something like bitcoin lightning network, you would still need to use on-chain bitcoin transactions as smart contracts to initially create lightning payment channels - so you can see that each channel can send UP TO however much it committed to the particular lightning channel, and when a particular channel closes, then the closing transaction will show new balances.
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  15. no, anyone who fraudulently claims to be satoshi should be avoided at all costs! Conmen make these kind of false claims because they want the limelight, so the best solution is to NOT GIVE IT TO THEM. Also, segwit is bigger blocks - go look at the last 100 blocks of bitcoin, and you'll see they are now bigger than 1MB.
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  16. Since PoC is much more "efficient" in terms of not using much electricity, then the hurdle of requiring an enormous amount of electrical energy to 51% attack is no longer there. To me, this leads to a problem similar to proof of stake where there is a "nothing at stake" issue which means it could be easier to rewrite the blockchain from the genesis block. To avoid this, you would likely need a time-stamping server (which would be a point of central failure). But then again, I imagine you could develop a PoC blockchain which relies on the bitcoin blockchain as a decentralized time-stamping service.
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  17. The proof of work mechanic is how you ensure no double spends occur. The only other known way to solve the issue is to have a central authority (bank/paymentprocessor) that acts as the central point - but the whole point of bitcoin is to have a decentralized peer to peer system of transferring value.
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  18. ANYONE can make changes. If the changes are incompatible with the network, then you hardfork off and make a new altcoin (such as bitcoincash). If your changes are compatible and optional softfork changes (such as what bitcoin Core developers work on) , then they can get incorporated into bitcoin proper.
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  19. Lightning works by having a network of payment channels. So when any particular channel closes, all the net difference of that particular channel has to be broadcast as 1 regular sized transaction (even if that channel did thousands of transactions). Also, yes, it is possible to tell a lightning transaction verses a slower on-chain transaction.
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  20. creating the coins is the by product - what mining really achieves is an ultra secure way of doing bitcoin transactions on a global scale.
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  21. No different than directing resources towards mining Gold.
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  22. um yea it does. Have you seen the price of bitcoin lately??
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  23. Wake up! That is how all money works!
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  24. The amount of energy used correlates with the level of blockchain security it achieves.
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  25. Nodes should be able to earn money if they also run lightning network nodes.
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  26. .....you might want to read up on a bitcoin project called Mimblewimble...
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  27. exchanges are just one method of doing off chain transactions.
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  28. Very interesting and apt analogy! The main difference is that an entire blockchain system is always 100% synchronized and updates its database constantly (over 100 updates per day).
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  29. It sounds like you prefer to have a trusted custodian of your bitcoin, there are plenty of services for you.
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  30. the sender uses the private key of their wallet to digitally sign a transaction that says "here is my 5, one will go to your address, 4 back to my address". Hopefully that makes sense.
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  31. chemicalsam lol. Won't work.
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  32. ablanchi using a PlayStation to mine for bitcoin is idiotic. It would be like trying to use a spoon to mine for gold.
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  33. segwit enables bigger blocks and 2nd layer solutions like lightning.
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  34.  @kakizakichannel  It seems you don't understand how the bitcoin lightning network makes your point irrelevant. You can do an unlimited number of bitcoin transactions on the lightning network and it will not bloat the blockchain. The energy is used (not wasted) to make the world's most secure and decentralized ledger that acts as the open base internet protocol layer of financial innovation.
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  35.  @kakizakichannel  no thanks, I'm not interested in altcoins.
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  36. You're right, storage isn't the problem. Bandwidth is. Imagine trying to start a new node to download a blockchain that is several TBs large, but you can't because your ISP limits your download data.
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  37. exactly, by having massively bigger blocks, then less people will be able to run bitcoin nodes, thus causing bitcoin to be more centralized.
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  38. people sending and receiving bitcoin.
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  39. Keith Keydel like numbers in your bank account?
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  40. The key differences are that (a) tulips are not fixed in supply, and (b) the tulip bubble was actually due to poor regulation of a futures market gone crazy (there was almost no trading of the actual tulip bulbs themselves). The better analogy here for bitcoin would probably be gold (and bitcoin is actually much more reliably scarce than gold). Bitcoin is being used more and more as a long term store of value (daily fluctuations don't have much impact on this), not so much as a currency just yet. I suspect we will see bitcoin emerge as a global hedge against central bank failures (it is easier to understand this potential if you don't live in a first world country).
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  41. neddy, the string of leading zeros is used as proof by the bitcoin network that the miner expended a large quantity of computational power to secure the bitcoin network. In simpler terms: the rewards go to the miners for securing the bitcoin network!
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  42. codycast you can always make more tulips. Bitcoin on the otherhand has a fixed limit of 21 million coins.
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  43. codycast all of which are much less secure compared to Bitcoin.
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  44. Gold mining definitely uses more resources than bitcoin. And actually, the process of bitcoin mining involves releasing new units AND maintains/updates the current state of the global blockchain ledger. So to compare to fiat, you need to add up all the resources/costs of running all banks globally (all the buildings, electricity, security, armored vehicles, ATMs, etc etc). I suspect bitcoin would actually still be more efficient.
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  45. and even after "collapsing", each bitcoin is still worth thousands of dollars.
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  46. Vegemite Toast best is to do softfork changes so that there is no splitting of the blockchain. That is how Core upgrades Bitcoin in a responsible manner.
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  47. The varying difficulty is needed to ensure that bitcoin works reliably (and pretty much all other mining algorithms for other cryptos). If it is too way to easy to mine, then many competing blocks will be found by multiple miners simultaneously, which will lead to various parts of the global bitcoin network not being in consensus (which would lead to bitcoin being broken). The mining process is there to ensure that bitcoin continues to operate in a secure manner in real time (in addition to releasing new coins, but that is a secondary purpose). You are correct about bitcoin's purpose - we bitcoiners very much want a monetary system completely different than debt based currency managed by central banks, a new system that is completely open to everyone all over the world. You ask "what component is the lasting value" - the answer is 2 fold: A) the actual bitcoin tokens themselves and B) the secure global block-chain ledger.
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  48. Lightning is cool, but another scaling technology we can use is the RSK sidechain (which should launch in 2-3 weeks). We can also achieve scale (and better privacy) for bitcoin by using a mimblewimble blockchain.
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  49. Roeland Creve Very true! Fee market is absolutely essential to the underlying security of Bitcoin. Unfortunately not many people realize this.
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  50. It might be beneficial for you to picture bitcoin as a large accounting ledger where the units (bitcoins) are tied to addresses. You need to own the corresponding private key (of your address) to sign transactions.
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