Monday, March 13, 2017

Bitcoin, currency in A.I., and rise of the machines

comment in reddit:
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I'm objecting to your the implication that "no one" is in control of bitcoin. You actually said "anyone" which leaves open the possibility that "everyone" or "consensus" is in control of it which is my position. I've tried to show why bitcoin is not fundamentally different from the status quo. The only way to fix it is to have a coin who's code is simple enough to write once and it inherently disallows future changes no matter what the consensus wants. I suspect the physics of evolution seeks this so that machine technology can continue to replace biological technology (5000x more extinctions right now than the historical rate).
That bitcoin needs to be changed is proof of its imperfect security (where "security" includes it's value as determined by its usability).
Not defining what is meant by "best" for the coin is also always a problem in these discussions. Increasing its value is in direct opposition to increasing its use as a currency. It is an asset like gold but not a currency (gold has always been the most horrific currency for the masses and very much loved by the 1%). Its limited quantity blocks its widespread adoption as a currency.
Distributed, secure, efficient, intelligent systems depend on a currency that expands as the size of the system expands. This is not bitcoin. Bitcoin is the digital asset that may soon represent percent control of the total physical assets of society that are being guided by it. It needs an expandable but not inflatable currency to go along with it for use in the marketplace. By this I mean we need a currency that expands as its use expands but no faster, so that wages, prices, and contracts remain valid and accurate (a coin that is constant in value but not in quantity). So the marketplace needs to set difficulty and coin emission rate by feedback from total coins per day transacted (not transactions per day), not by programmers arbitrarily deciding the coin emission rate and total final coin quantity. A currency needs to be a living beast, not controlled by anyone or even by everyone but only by the marketplace needs. In this way the corporate machine can continue to take biology out of the economic picture in its pursuit of thermodynamic efficiency.
As an asset Bitcoin may be the one coin to rule them all. But it desperately needs to get married to an efficient, expandable currency in order to exert and extend its control of society. This is an error in your post. You speak as if you are addressing global issues. The other shoe has not dropped. It's going to be as simple as bitcoin and not subject to bickering or change. It will adopt to marketplace change as I just described.
I suspect the bickering is from the lack of understanding that there is this other shoe that is missing. It can't be both the ideal currency and the ideal asset. Each bitcoin can and should represent a percent control (1/20M'th) of assets under its roof. A percent is not a unit of account that can or should be used in the marketplace. The currency should be expressed in "Available Joules" (aka Gibbs free energy).

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