Sunday, October 15, 2017
Smoothing coin release rate for bitcoin
If a coin wants to implement a continuous reward adjustment to give the same number of coins released as the same rate as bitcoin use:
C/block = 69.3*(0.5)^(-height/210,000)
But to implement it in an an existing coin, it takes a little more work to find a solution:
The halving events in BTC seem absurb in being such a powerful step function. Due to rounding error and trying to keep the same quantity of satoshis emitted every 4 years, it takes some effort to find a formula that exactly ends in 1/2 as many coins per block after 4 years (210,000 blocks) and gives the exact same number of Satoshis in those 4 years. Here's what I came up with.
Once every 4 hours, starting half-way into a halving event, set coins awarded to
BTC=C*int(1E8*A*B^(N/8750))/1E8
where
C = number of coins supposed to be emitted in this halving event.
A = 1.072026880076
B = 0.46636556
N = blocks after the 1/2-way point, up to 8750 when N goes back to 1 and C is cut in half.
8750 is 4 years' worth of 4-hour periods. I didn't like 5, 7, or 10 hours because it is not a multiple of a day. 2 hours would have been harder to check in excel, having 2*8750 adjustment per halving. Other options were not an integer number of blocks. I guess 8 hours is an option.
I guess it could be improved to not have to reset C and N every 4 years.
I believe there is a starting point that is better in the sense that it results in a simpler equation that is good for all time, like ln(2) = 0.693 into a halving event or maybe 1/e into it or 1/e before the end.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
The ideal currency (new)
This does not replace my previous ideal currency article that talks about a p2p coin that depends on "reputation" as the coin itself. I want to connect the lowering of physical entropy on Earth to currency.
Previously I described how all characteristics of an ideal currency such as Nick Szabo's list (scarcity, fungibility, divisibility, durability, and transferability) can be derived from the desire to have constant value in space and time. The best measure of "value" results in a more specific definition: ideal constant value currency is proportional to the net work energy available per person. A legal system creates the relevance of the currency and guides system-wide goals. Otherwise it is an anarchy-type asset where individuals are not necessarily cooperating for a larger goal such as survival and promotion of a society. I'm not talking about that type of currency. The assumed legal system dictates how the energy may be used, which includes enforcing the concept of ownership of "the work energy assets" and enforcing law (settling disputes, collecting taxes, etc) in that particular currency (unless the transfer of other "work energy assets" in certain cases is more appropriate). Intellectual property does not have a visible net work energy that is proportional to its numerical value, but it ostensibly increases the net work energy available in other assets by making the use of them more efficient, even if only by entertaining people which may enable them to work better. Assets have a real net physical work energy, but in calculating how much more currency should be in the system due to those assets, the costs of anything such as intellectual property needed in its conversion to work should be first subtracted out.
There is waste energy as heat when work energy is expended, and the amount depends on the form of the original energy. There is also wasted energy when work energy is expended to get other work energy where it is needed. These and other forms of waste are not included in the "net total work in the system per person" that I'm talking about. So, I can't say this work is exactly based on Gibbs free energy ( E = U + pV - ST) of a set of atoms in some system because that is measured before these wastes. Gibbs free energy is the precise definition of "available work energy". So what I'm talking about is the Gibbs free energy minus the waste which includes cost of the intellectual property. Gibbs free energy includes a subtraction from the total that is due to the energy having an amount of disorder (entropy) at a given temperature (S*T). In a sense, the waste and I.P. expense is like a pre-existing "disorder" (or inefficiency) in the assets. If the size of the system under a common legal and currency control is stable, the new total net work energy coming into the system in a given time is equal to the waste energy going out. The infrastructure that acquires the input energy is a potential energy that will be depleted over time as the infrastructure depreciates. Every asset is similarly a potential energy. So the net work energy I've defined is probably better viewed as a potential energy and new energy coming in and going out in a stable system keep that potential energy constant. If the incoming energy coming is greater than the waste going out, the potential energy of the system is increasing, which should be accompanied by an increase in currency. Also, if the I.P. costs in the system decreases, it is like the S*T part of Gibbs free energy decreasing, enabling more of the potential energy to be converted into work energy. This also demands more currency creation.
The currency is proportional to the net work energy in the system, but not equal to it. All assets in a legal system should have a reference such as a document that defines the owner. The currency gains control of a portion of those assets (say, 10%) by owners having debts as well as assets which places a lien on their assets, so they do not exactly have full ownership of the assets they own. The debts may be expressible in other assets, but the legal system typically allows settlement in the currency. So not all debt is currency, but all currency is based on a debt. An immediate question I have is "Should the total debt-currency (as a percentage of the assets in the system) be constant?" My first guess is "yes" to keep things simple and therefore more measurable and predictable.
The rest is highly suspect that I need to investigate further. I have it here for my future reference.
coins = bytes = DNA = synapses => used to create economically beneficial arrangements of atoms and potential energy
The usefulness of energy depends on the form it is in as well as the pre-existing order of the matter it needs to move. For example, oil in the ground is not as valuable as oil in a tanker. Gold in an vein is not as useful as gold in sea water. So the order in the mass of commodities has value like energy commodities due to making itself more amenable for energy to move. A.I. systems like evolution and economies use energy to move mass to make copies of themselves to repeat the process. More precisely, the historical position of mass and potential energy gradients cause matter to form self-replicating way. Genes, brains, and A.I. are not forces that do anything of their own free will, but they are the result of forces from pre-existing potential energy gradients that created them. They are enzymes that allow energy and mass to move in an efficient direction, not forces. The following is mathematically exactly true: Intelligence = efficient prediction = compression = science. I am referring to the "density" of each of these, not the total abilities. For example, science seeks to predict the most in the least number of bytes. The least number of bytes is known as Occam's razor in science and is the 2nd of two fundamental tenants of science. The first is that observations should have the potential to prove a theory wrong (falsifiability), and that those observations always support the theory (reproducible observations). So the 1st science tenant is prediction and the 2nd is compression or efficiency. Total currency in an A.I. system = bytes / time that are destroyed in CPU computations and memory writes. Every computation in a CPU and memory write to RAM or a hard drive generates heat and entropy. The theoretical minimal entropy per byte destroyed is S =kb * ln(2). kb is boltzmann's constant. The minimal heat energy created (the energy lost) is Q = Temperature * S. In economics, the "bytes" are "dollars" that represent energy spent like a CPU computation to create a mass of a commodity (like the storage of a byte). When we write to memory in A.I. we are creating value that can be used in the future. Typically the writes are assigning weights to the connections in neural nets or the probabilities to a Bayesian net or making copies of a gene in genetic algorithms. Bytes in evolution are DNA. The bytes in our bodies are cellular energy like glucose and energy stored in the crystals of DNA. Energy-based commodities are spent to create mass-based commodities that are used for an economic system to replicate (expand), just like evolution and A.I. Total currency is the total available commodities per economic cycle. Approximating a constant number of economizing agents like people or neurons in a brain or nodes in a neural net means that the currency is also a bytes per economic cycle per economizing agent. Agents compete for the limited number of bytes in order to increase the number of bytes per agent per cycle. Coins are bytes that represent a percent ownership of the total commodities available per economic cycle per person.
Previously I described how all characteristics of an ideal currency such as Nick Szabo's list (scarcity, fungibility, divisibility, durability, and transferability) can be derived from the desire to have constant value in space and time. The best measure of "value" results in a more specific definition: ideal constant value currency is proportional to the net work energy available per person. A legal system creates the relevance of the currency and guides system-wide goals. Otherwise it is an anarchy-type asset where individuals are not necessarily cooperating for a larger goal such as survival and promotion of a society. I'm not talking about that type of currency. The assumed legal system dictates how the energy may be used, which includes enforcing the concept of ownership of "the work energy assets" and enforcing law (settling disputes, collecting taxes, etc) in that particular currency (unless the transfer of other "work energy assets" in certain cases is more appropriate). Intellectual property does not have a visible net work energy that is proportional to its numerical value, but it ostensibly increases the net work energy available in other assets by making the use of them more efficient, even if only by entertaining people which may enable them to work better. Assets have a real net physical work energy, but in calculating how much more currency should be in the system due to those assets, the costs of anything such as intellectual property needed in its conversion to work should be first subtracted out.
There is waste energy as heat when work energy is expended, and the amount depends on the form of the original energy. There is also wasted energy when work energy is expended to get other work energy where it is needed. These and other forms of waste are not included in the "net total work in the system per person" that I'm talking about. So, I can't say this work is exactly based on Gibbs free energy ( E = U + pV - ST) of a set of atoms in some system because that is measured before these wastes. Gibbs free energy is the precise definition of "available work energy". So what I'm talking about is the Gibbs free energy minus the waste which includes cost of the intellectual property. Gibbs free energy includes a subtraction from the total that is due to the energy having an amount of disorder (entropy) at a given temperature (S*T). In a sense, the waste and I.P. expense is like a pre-existing "disorder" (or inefficiency) in the assets. If the size of the system under a common legal and currency control is stable, the new total net work energy coming into the system in a given time is equal to the waste energy going out. The infrastructure that acquires the input energy is a potential energy that will be depleted over time as the infrastructure depreciates. Every asset is similarly a potential energy. So the net work energy I've defined is probably better viewed as a potential energy and new energy coming in and going out in a stable system keep that potential energy constant. If the incoming energy coming is greater than the waste going out, the potential energy of the system is increasing, which should be accompanied by an increase in currency. Also, if the I.P. costs in the system decreases, it is like the S*T part of Gibbs free energy decreasing, enabling more of the potential energy to be converted into work energy. This also demands more currency creation.
The currency is proportional to the net work energy in the system, but not equal to it. All assets in a legal system should have a reference such as a document that defines the owner. The currency gains control of a portion of those assets (say, 10%) by owners having debts as well as assets which places a lien on their assets, so they do not exactly have full ownership of the assets they own. The debts may be expressible in other assets, but the legal system typically allows settlement in the currency. So not all debt is currency, but all currency is based on a debt. An immediate question I have is "Should the total debt-currency (as a percentage of the assets in the system) be constant?" My first guess is "yes" to keep things simple and therefore more measurable and predictable.
The rest is highly suspect that I need to investigate further. I have it here for my future reference.
coins = bytes = DNA = synapses => used to create economically beneficial arrangements of atoms and potential energy
The usefulness of energy depends on the form it is in as well as the pre-existing order of the matter it needs to move. For example, oil in the ground is not as valuable as oil in a tanker. Gold in an vein is not as useful as gold in sea water. So the order in the mass of commodities has value like energy commodities due to making itself more amenable for energy to move. A.I. systems like evolution and economies use energy to move mass to make copies of themselves to repeat the process. More precisely, the historical position of mass and potential energy gradients cause matter to form self-replicating way. Genes, brains, and A.I. are not forces that do anything of their own free will, but they are the result of forces from pre-existing potential energy gradients that created them. They are enzymes that allow energy and mass to move in an efficient direction, not forces. The following is mathematically exactly true: Intelligence = efficient prediction = compression = science. I am referring to the "density" of each of these, not the total abilities. For example, science seeks to predict the most in the least number of bytes. The least number of bytes is known as Occam's razor in science and is the 2nd of two fundamental tenants of science. The first is that observations should have the potential to prove a theory wrong (falsifiability), and that those observations always support the theory (reproducible observations). So the 1st science tenant is prediction and the 2nd is compression or efficiency. Total currency in an A.I. system = bytes / time that are destroyed in CPU computations and memory writes. Every computation in a CPU and memory write to RAM or a hard drive generates heat and entropy. The theoretical minimal entropy per byte destroyed is S =kb * ln(2). kb is boltzmann's constant. The minimal heat energy created (the energy lost) is Q = Temperature * S. In economics, the "bytes" are "dollars" that represent energy spent like a CPU computation to create a mass of a commodity (like the storage of a byte). When we write to memory in A.I. we are creating value that can be used in the future. Typically the writes are assigning weights to the connections in neural nets or the probabilities to a Bayesian net or making copies of a gene in genetic algorithms. Bytes in evolution are DNA. The bytes in our bodies are cellular energy like glucose and energy stored in the crystals of DNA. Energy-based commodities are spent to create mass-based commodities that are used for an economic system to replicate (expand), just like evolution and A.I. Total currency is the total available commodities per economic cycle. Approximating a constant number of economizing agents like people or neurons in a brain or nodes in a neural net means that the currency is also a bytes per economic cycle per economizing agent. Agents compete for the limited number of bytes in order to increase the number of bytes per agent per cycle. Coins are bytes that represent a percent ownership of the total commodities available per economic cycle per person.
ideal cryptocurrency:
This is jumbled, but I want to save it for future review to pick up where I left off.
The general idea is for people to gain "reputation points" as their own personal coin by "giving" something away, someone receives and gives "reputation to you". It costs them reputation to give to you. So you want to give only to people you trust to stay within the system. You vouch for them and they vouch for you. You lose reputation if they cheat on others in the future. You keep each other's transactions on a blockchain, and those of your mutual nearest neighbors. Everyone will have a different blockchain, supporting your "local" buyers/sellers, who support you. Trust before a transaction is from a potential buyer/seller checking your past transactions and confirming with those people that your blockchain is correct and complete. The exchange rate for reputation depends on how close buyer and seller are in their network of connections. It should be possible to limit the amount of your transactions potential buyers/sellers can see, but your exchange rate will not be good if you are too secretive about your past. Transaction speeds to check everyone and proceed should be very fast, less than a minute. Your reputation could be recoverable from your "local network" if you lose your keys. Outsiders not wanting to disclose information about themselves will not be able to decrypt blockchains that contain your data.
=======
Here's another "insane idea" to be added onto to the timestamp idea (again, not necessarily the stars). People get more coin by having more "friends". It might be a slightly exponential function to discourage multiple identities. Your individual coin value is worth more to your "local" friends than to "distant" friends. The distance is shorter if you have a larger number of parallel connections through unique routes. A coin between A and D when they are connected through friends like A->B->C->D and A->E->F->D is worth more than if the E in the 2nd route is B or C. But if E is not there (A->F->D) then the distance is shorter. More coin is generated as the network grows. Each transaction is recorded, stored, timestamped, and signed by you and your friends and maybe your friends' friends. Maybe they are the only ones who can see it unencrypted or your get the choice of a privacy level. Higher privacy requirement means people who do not actually know you will trust your coin less. Maybe password recovery and "2-factor" security can be implemented by closest friends. Each transaction has description of item bought/sold so that the network can be searched for product. There is also a review and rating field for both buyer and seller. For every positive review, you must have 1 negative review: you can't give everyone 5 stars like on ebay and high ranking reviewers on Amazon (positive reviewers get better ranking based on people liking them more than it being an honest review). This is a P2P trust system, but there must be a way to do it so that it is not easy tricked, which is the usual complaint and there is a privacy issue. But look at the benefits. Truly P2P. Since it does not use a single blockchain it is infinitely faster and infinitely more secure than the bitcoin blockchain. I know nothing about programming a blockchain, let alone understand it if I created a clone. But I could program this. And if I can program it, then it is secure and definitive enough to be hard-coded by someone more clever and need changing only fast as the underlying crypto standards (about once per 2 decades?)
zawy [9:54 AM]
Obviously the intent is to replace fiat, amazon, and ebay, but it should also replace FB. A transaction could be a payment you make to friends if you want them to look at a photo. The photo would be part of the transaction data. Since only you and your friends store the data, there are no transaction fees other than the cost of your computing devices. Your friends have to like it in order for you to get your money back. LOL, right? But it's definitely needed. We need to step back and be able to generalize the concept of reviews, likes, votes, and products into the concept of a coin. You have a limited amount dictated by the size of the network. The network of friends decides how much you get. They decide if you should get more or less relative power than other friends. (edited)
zawy [9:58 AM]
It would not require trust in the way you're thinking. Your reputation via the history of transactions would enable people to trust you. It's like a brand name, another reason for having only 1 identity. Encouraging 1 identity is key to prevent people from creating false identities with a bot in order to get more coin. The trick and difficulty is in preventing false identities in a way that scams the community.
zawy [10:04 AM]
Everyone should have a motivation to link to only real, known friends. That's the trick anf difficulty. I'm using "friend" very loosely. It just needs to be a known person. Like me and you could link to David Mercer and Zookoo, but we can't vouch for each other very well. That's because David and Zookoo have built up more real social credibility through many years and good work. They have sacrificed some privacy in order to get it. Satoshi could get real enormous credibility through various provable verifications and not even give up privacy, so it's not a given that privacy must be sacrificed. (edited)
zawy [10:07 AM]
Right, it should be made, if possible, to not give an advantage to people because they are taking a risk in their personal safety.
zawy [10:15 AM]
The system should enable individuals to be safer, stronger, etc while at the same time advancing those who advance the system. So those who help others the most are helped by others the most. "Virtuous feedback". This is evolution, except it should not be forgotten that "help others the most" means "help 2 others who have 4 times the wealth to pay you instead of 4 others with nominal wealth". So it's not necessarily charitably socialistic like people often want for potential very good reasons, but potentially brutally capitalistic, like evolution.
zawy [6:26 AM]
It does not have to be social network, but it does seem likable social people would immediately get more wealth. It's a transaction + reputation + existence network. Your coin quantity is based on reviews others give you for past transactions (social or financial) plus the mere fact that you were able to engage in economic or social activity with others (a measure of the probability of your existence). There have been coins based on trust networks but I have not looked into them. It's just the only way I can think of to solve the big issues. If the algorithm can be done in a simple way, then it's evidence to me that it is the correct way to go. Coins give legal control of other people's time and assets. If you and I are not popular in at least a business sense where people give real money instead of "smiles" and "likes" like your brother, why should society relinquish coin (control) to us? The "smiles" might be in a different category than the coin. I mean you may not be able to buy and sell likes like coin. Likes might need to be like "votes". You would get so many "likes" per day to "vote" on your friends, rather than my previous description of people needing to be "liked" in order to give likes, which is just a constant quantity coin. Or maybe both likes and coin could be both: everyone gets so many likes and coins per day, but they are also able to buy/sell/accumulate them. I have not searched for and thought through a theoretical foundation for determining which of these options is the best. Another idea is that every one would issue their own coin via promises. This is how most money is created. Coin implies a tangible asset with inherent value. But paper currency is usually a debt instrument. "I will buy X from you with a promise to pay you back with Y." Y is a standard measure of value like the 1 hour of laborer's time plus a basket of commodities. Government issues fiat with the promise it buys you the time and effort of its taxpayers because it demands taxes to be paid in that fiat. This is called modern monetary theory.
zawy [6:40 AM]
So China sells us stuff for dollars, and those dollars gives china control of U.S. taxpayers, provided our government keeps its implicit promise to not inflate the fiat to an unexpectedly low value too quickly, which would be a default on its debt. So your "financially popular" existence that is proven by past transactions of fulfilling your debt promises gives you the ability to make larger and larger debt promises. How or if social likes/votes should interact with that I do not yet know. But I believe it should be like democratic capitalism. The sole purpose of votes is to prevent the concentration of wealth, distributing power more evenly. This makes commodity prices lower and gives more mouths to feed, and that enabled big armies, so it overthrew kings, lords, and religions. Then machines enabled a small educated Europe and then U.S. population to gain control of the world.
[6:43]
If my ideas ever solidify, I'll program it in Python.
The end game of currency will be a trust network where your reputation among friends and past buyers/sellers is the amount of currency you own to purchase things in the future. You can't lose your keys because your reputation is stored on the network. It's not centralized in any way like bitcoin, except for the protocol people should agree on. Complete anonymity is not possible, but only sociopaths don't have any friends and don't deserve any currency. A super-majority of friends can rat you out or give your keys back. You can't exchange with strangers until the network grows tentacles via 6 degrees of separation. You are penalized if a friend cheats and vice versa. You can have multiple identities but it means you would have to split friends among them, not getting any net benefit except fall-back security and dispersion to distant networks. There is no currency except how friends of friends of friends etc choose to score your reputation. There's no profit to being a dev or adopting early. There's huge profit in not being anonymous.
your productivity would show in high scores from things youve sold. As I mentioned last time I'm using "friends" losely. The guy in india who gets me cheap meds is a friend. I sent him bitcoin blindly and hope i get the products
[9:26]
he and i benefit based on trust which is based on our reputation with each other
zawy [9:45 PM]
Again, the network would have to really grow "grassroots" style among people like you and me. You and I have not trust with the bots sending us spam and whatnot, and we would not believe anything posted on bitcointalk unless we had a history of knowing someone
[9:47]
the whole point is to solve these problems. I mean I have these problems in mind as a reason for designing it. I just havent worked on any of the details
[9:49]
our computer would check a potential sellers network for connections to ours, and we buy nothing from them because the reliability settings we've chosen would indicate low reputation no matter how many friends they have simply because we and our friends have no experience with them. an interesting side effect is that you're more likely to do business with people you know.
[9:50]
but in the beginning, we would trust strangers as much as we do people on ebay and openbazaar
zawy [9:53 PM]
we are each basically issuing our own credits and debits like the tally sticks. We are issuing our own currency. The settings people choose depend on how much they score our reputation.
[9:54]
so there would be 7 billion currencies and (7B)^2 exchange rates
zawy [9:56 PM]
total currency should equal total energy controlled by the legal system divided by the number of people
and recovering lost coins is not possible. I'm talking about trying to get perfect even distribution and lightening speed pf the network everywhere and the ability to recover lost keys and potentially losing anonymity only among friends
zawy [10:02 PM]
i mean i could be an anonymous person on the internet like Satoshi who has enormous reputation despite the physical body being unknown
your "blockchain" would be only a recorded of your friends transactions. so a buyer and seller's computer would request data from your past buyers and sellers (your friends) to take his own measure of your reputation score
zawy [10:07 PM]
so I should really say friends, but that's the way it could start. Really maybe it's more likely to start with strangers you just have to trust like I do cpeople in india and china. So instead of "friends
I should say "past buyers and sellers"
The general idea is for people to gain "reputation points" as their own personal coin by "giving" something away, someone receives and gives "reputation to you". It costs them reputation to give to you. So you want to give only to people you trust to stay within the system. You vouch for them and they vouch for you. You lose reputation if they cheat on others in the future. You keep each other's transactions on a blockchain, and those of your mutual nearest neighbors. Everyone will have a different blockchain, supporting your "local" buyers/sellers, who support you. Trust before a transaction is from a potential buyer/seller checking your past transactions and confirming with those people that your blockchain is correct and complete. The exchange rate for reputation depends on how close buyer and seller are in their network of connections. It should be possible to limit the amount of your transactions potential buyers/sellers can see, but your exchange rate will not be good if you are too secretive about your past. Transaction speeds to check everyone and proceed should be very fast, less than a minute. Your reputation could be recoverable from your "local network" if you lose your keys. Outsiders not wanting to disclose information about themselves will not be able to decrypt blockchains that contain your data.
=======
Here's another "insane idea" to be added onto to the timestamp idea (again, not necessarily the stars). People get more coin by having more "friends". It might be a slightly exponential function to discourage multiple identities. Your individual coin value is worth more to your "local" friends than to "distant" friends. The distance is shorter if you have a larger number of parallel connections through unique routes. A coin between A and D when they are connected through friends like A->B->C->D and A->E->F->D is worth more than if the E in the 2nd route is B or C. But if E is not there (A->F->D) then the distance is shorter. More coin is generated as the network grows. Each transaction is recorded, stored, timestamped, and signed by you and your friends and maybe your friends' friends. Maybe they are the only ones who can see it unencrypted or your get the choice of a privacy level. Higher privacy requirement means people who do not actually know you will trust your coin less. Maybe password recovery and "2-factor" security can be implemented by closest friends. Each transaction has description of item bought/sold so that the network can be searched for product. There is also a review and rating field for both buyer and seller. For every positive review, you must have 1 negative review: you can't give everyone 5 stars like on ebay and high ranking reviewers on Amazon (positive reviewers get better ranking based on people liking them more than it being an honest review). This is a P2P trust system, but there must be a way to do it so that it is not easy tricked, which is the usual complaint and there is a privacy issue. But look at the benefits. Truly P2P. Since it does not use a single blockchain it is infinitely faster and infinitely more secure than the bitcoin blockchain. I know nothing about programming a blockchain, let alone understand it if I created a clone. But I could program this. And if I can program it, then it is secure and definitive enough to be hard-coded by someone more clever and need changing only fast as the underlying crypto standards (about once per 2 decades?)
zawy [9:54 AM]
Obviously the intent is to replace fiat, amazon, and ebay, but it should also replace FB. A transaction could be a payment you make to friends if you want them to look at a photo. The photo would be part of the transaction data. Since only you and your friends store the data, there are no transaction fees other than the cost of your computing devices. Your friends have to like it in order for you to get your money back. LOL, right? But it's definitely needed. We need to step back and be able to generalize the concept of reviews, likes, votes, and products into the concept of a coin. You have a limited amount dictated by the size of the network. The network of friends decides how much you get. They decide if you should get more or less relative power than other friends. (edited)
zawy [9:58 AM]
It would not require trust in the way you're thinking. Your reputation via the history of transactions would enable people to trust you. It's like a brand name, another reason for having only 1 identity. Encouraging 1 identity is key to prevent people from creating false identities with a bot in order to get more coin. The trick and difficulty is in preventing false identities in a way that scams the community.
zawy [10:04 AM]
Everyone should have a motivation to link to only real, known friends. That's the trick anf difficulty. I'm using "friend" very loosely. It just needs to be a known person. Like me and you could link to David Mercer and Zookoo, but we can't vouch for each other very well. That's because David and Zookoo have built up more real social credibility through many years and good work. They have sacrificed some privacy in order to get it. Satoshi could get real enormous credibility through various provable verifications and not even give up privacy, so it's not a given that privacy must be sacrificed. (edited)
zawy [10:07 AM]
Right, it should be made, if possible, to not give an advantage to people because they are taking a risk in their personal safety.
zawy [10:15 AM]
The system should enable individuals to be safer, stronger, etc while at the same time advancing those who advance the system. So those who help others the most are helped by others the most. "Virtuous feedback". This is evolution, except it should not be forgotten that "help others the most" means "help 2 others who have 4 times the wealth to pay you instead of 4 others with nominal wealth". So it's not necessarily charitably socialistic like people often want for potential very good reasons, but potentially brutally capitalistic, like evolution.
zawy [6:26 AM]
It does not have to be social network, but it does seem likable social people would immediately get more wealth. It's a transaction + reputation + existence network. Your coin quantity is based on reviews others give you for past transactions (social or financial) plus the mere fact that you were able to engage in economic or social activity with others (a measure of the probability of your existence). There have been coins based on trust networks but I have not looked into them. It's just the only way I can think of to solve the big issues. If the algorithm can be done in a simple way, then it's evidence to me that it is the correct way to go. Coins give legal control of other people's time and assets. If you and I are not popular in at least a business sense where people give real money instead of "smiles" and "likes" like your brother, why should society relinquish coin (control) to us? The "smiles" might be in a different category than the coin. I mean you may not be able to buy and sell likes like coin. Likes might need to be like "votes". You would get so many "likes" per day to "vote" on your friends, rather than my previous description of people needing to be "liked" in order to give likes, which is just a constant quantity coin. Or maybe both likes and coin could be both: everyone gets so many likes and coins per day, but they are also able to buy/sell/accumulate them. I have not searched for and thought through a theoretical foundation for determining which of these options is the best. Another idea is that every one would issue their own coin via promises. This is how most money is created. Coin implies a tangible asset with inherent value. But paper currency is usually a debt instrument. "I will buy X from you with a promise to pay you back with Y." Y is a standard measure of value like the 1 hour of laborer's time plus a basket of commodities. Government issues fiat with the promise it buys you the time and effort of its taxpayers because it demands taxes to be paid in that fiat. This is called modern monetary theory.
zawy [6:40 AM]
So China sells us stuff for dollars, and those dollars gives china control of U.S. taxpayers, provided our government keeps its implicit promise to not inflate the fiat to an unexpectedly low value too quickly, which would be a default on its debt. So your "financially popular" existence that is proven by past transactions of fulfilling your debt promises gives you the ability to make larger and larger debt promises. How or if social likes/votes should interact with that I do not yet know. But I believe it should be like democratic capitalism. The sole purpose of votes is to prevent the concentration of wealth, distributing power more evenly. This makes commodity prices lower and gives more mouths to feed, and that enabled big armies, so it overthrew kings, lords, and religions. Then machines enabled a small educated Europe and then U.S. population to gain control of the world.
[6:43]
If my ideas ever solidify, I'll program it in Python.
The end game of currency will be a trust network where your reputation among friends and past buyers/sellers is the amount of currency you own to purchase things in the future. You can't lose your keys because your reputation is stored on the network. It's not centralized in any way like bitcoin, except for the protocol people should agree on. Complete anonymity is not possible, but only sociopaths don't have any friends and don't deserve any currency. A super-majority of friends can rat you out or give your keys back. You can't exchange with strangers until the network grows tentacles via 6 degrees of separation. You are penalized if a friend cheats and vice versa. You can have multiple identities but it means you would have to split friends among them, not getting any net benefit except fall-back security and dispersion to distant networks. There is no currency except how friends of friends of friends etc choose to score your reputation. There's no profit to being a dev or adopting early. There's huge profit in not being anonymous.
your productivity would show in high scores from things youve sold. As I mentioned last time I'm using "friends" losely. The guy in india who gets me cheap meds is a friend. I sent him bitcoin blindly and hope i get the products
[9:26]
he and i benefit based on trust which is based on our reputation with each other
zawy [9:45 PM]
Again, the network would have to really grow "grassroots" style among people like you and me. You and I have not trust with the bots sending us spam and whatnot, and we would not believe anything posted on bitcointalk unless we had a history of knowing someone
[9:47]
the whole point is to solve these problems. I mean I have these problems in mind as a reason for designing it. I just havent worked on any of the details
[9:49]
our computer would check a potential sellers network for connections to ours, and we buy nothing from them because the reliability settings we've chosen would indicate low reputation no matter how many friends they have simply because we and our friends have no experience with them. an interesting side effect is that you're more likely to do business with people you know.
[9:50]
but in the beginning, we would trust strangers as much as we do people on ebay and openbazaar
zawy [9:53 PM]
we are each basically issuing our own credits and debits like the tally sticks. We are issuing our own currency. The settings people choose depend on how much they score our reputation.
[9:54]
so there would be 7 billion currencies and (7B)^2 exchange rates
zawy [9:56 PM]
total currency should equal total energy controlled by the legal system divided by the number of people
and recovering lost coins is not possible. I'm talking about trying to get perfect even distribution and lightening speed pf the network everywhere and the ability to recover lost keys and potentially losing anonymity only among friends
zawy [10:02 PM]
i mean i could be an anonymous person on the internet like Satoshi who has enormous reputation despite the physical body being unknown
your "blockchain" would be only a recorded of your friends transactions. so a buyer and seller's computer would request data from your past buyers and sellers (your friends) to take his own measure of your reputation score
zawy [10:07 PM]
so I should really say friends, but that's the way it could start. Really maybe it's more likely to start with strangers you just have to trust like I do cpeople in india and china. So instead of "friends
I should say "past buyers and sellers"
Monday, September 25, 2017
What's wrong with global warming?
What’s bad about global warming? Plants generally love the doubling of CO2, possibly offsetting the destruction of marine life. Shifting of farmlands is probably not going happen faster than we can adapt, as evidenced by Netherlands (of all places) being 2nd largest exporter (in dollars) of vegetables. I read a study that concluded it has no impact on manufacturing. It appears solar cells for fueling cars and homes (with thorium reactors for night?) could stop the CO2 increases. Worse, I do not even see global warming as relevant. We will still continue destroying species at roughly 5,000 the background rate until we are left with only the ones we find economically relevant. But it’s not exactly “us” destroying biology. The “rise of the machines” makes other species irrelevant to the point of unintentional destruction. Even human thought and labor are already so irrelevant that it’s hard to imagine of what use humanity will be to our economic machine 50 years from now other than spending basic guaranteed income. Free money destroys culture and seems to create needless violence (research on the result of the past 50 years of U.S. welfare). Even now “the machines” don’t even need capital to suddenly change everything via 1 or 2 decent programmers and/or someone making good marketing decisions. I mention capital because it has always been thought of as the tool by which the machines and a few capitalists would enslave everyone else without government intervention. The tech that makes capital irrelevant could make everyone wealthier and more independent (for example: solar cells and hydroponic gardening packages for your backyard, not to mention peer-to-peer blockchain technology replacing governments and financial industry). But I do not believe the physics that governs evolution (closed thermodynamic system receiving energy and emitting energy and entropy to the universe) that results in economizing structures of lower and lower entropy per mole is going to forever blindly find it optimal to merely fulfill human desires. Even now thinking we are somehow in control is a suspect idea. We are merely one of the many resulting enzymatic pathways physics uses to move matter via potentials. The machines are vastly better than biology at every aspect of evolution: capturing energy from the sun, moving matter with that energy, having strong structures to do it, and to model and optimize future scenarios with thinking machines. It’s taking my children 4 hours a day for 6 years and ~100 grams of grey matter to understand spoken and written Chinese as well as 1 gram of silicon on my smart phone learned in 30 seconds. It’s because the low entropy per mole of silicon allows the control of electrons instead of ions in wet brains that weigh 40,000x more. Global warming is irrelevant because biology as we know it will soon be irrelevant.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
BitcoinCash difficulty algorithm problems
BitcoinCash allows a drop in difficulty down to 1/4 if the last 5 blocks took > 12 hours. But the rise in difficulty takes 2016 blocks (two weeks if the difficulty matches hashrate) like bitcoin. They did this so that difficulty could drop quickly after the fork. But this asymmetry (long time to adjust up, but short time to adjust down) is causing unexpected feedback that will cause oscillations that could cause too many coins to be issued and the price go towards zero until there is a fork to fix it.
This is how it starts and why it gets worse: Assume price is stable and difficulty matches hashrate correctly. If for some reason price relative to bitcoin falls at the end of a set of 2016 blocks, some will jump ship but next difficulty adjustment will still be too high because it is a long averaging window. A short rolling averaging window would not have caused a problem (and does not even need the attempted BCH "fix" to get difficulty lower). But as it is, difficulty will be too high for the next block, so miners are still discouraged from mining. The slower issuance of coins may actually support price, but maybe he longer solve times, seen as a problem, can cause an even more negative effect on price. If price falls a little more due to this, the threshold of mining profitability may be passed, so a flood of miners could exit, causing really long solvetimes. This can cause the price to drop even further due to not being able to get transactions to go through. So REALLY long solvetime could occur. As soon as the 5 blocks take more than 12 hours, difficulty in the next 2016 set (only the 3rd in this sequence) will go to 1/4. remember difficulty in the 2nd block had actually dropped a little, so the 1/4 is not fixing an accidental 4x increase in difficulty. Suddenly, it is really profitable to mine, unless the price also dropped to 1/4. Let's say it had dropped to 1/2 or less. So the blocks will come at a fast rate. But as soon as that 2016 set ends, difficulty will be massive in the 4th set of 2016 blocks, and the price may be even lower due to people seeing the problem and due to too many coins being mined too quickly and sold. No longer have long solvetimes is "fixed" for that set, but it is only replace by the opposite problem. The 4th set will have very high difficulty and last maybe only 5 blocks as it will take too long to solve, then the 6th block will get the difficulty down to 1/4. If there was more than 4x increase in hashrate due to miners jumping on, then 1/4 downward change may not be a lower difficulty than it was in the 3rd set of 2016. The price should also be worse. These two effects may reduce the oscillation. But notice it depends on a huge number suddenly jumping on AND a worse price, and this is the best case scenario for reducing the size of the oscillations. The alternative of larger oscillations will also have a negative effect on price. So it's an unavoidable downward pressure on price. I saw a buy/sell opportunity in BCH and made good on it. This is actually looking like an impending buying opportunity, right before a fork that fixes it.
A huge part of this is that BCH miners can go back and forth to BTC. But notice large BTC miners have no place to go if there was a similar problem in BTC. It's kind of another reason 1 big coin naturally results.
edit:
Summary
Causes:
1) Asymmetrical math in how difficulty rises verses falls.
2) There is a threshold to mining profitability, so that only a minor fall in price can cause many miners to jump ship
3) Miners can switch back to BTC while waiting for the difficulty to fall which magnifies the problem caused by 2).
3) 1 and 2 may not have been a problem if it was a short rolling average window to determine the difficulty instead of being like BTC and suddenly changing every 2016 blocks.
4) This problem erodes price from reducing the quality of the coin by have 2 hour solvetimes if not issuing too many coins too quickly.
This is how it starts and why it gets worse: Assume price is stable and difficulty matches hashrate correctly. If for some reason price relative to bitcoin falls at the end of a set of 2016 blocks, some will jump ship but next difficulty adjustment will still be too high because it is a long averaging window. A short rolling averaging window would not have caused a problem (and does not even need the attempted BCH "fix" to get difficulty lower). But as it is, difficulty will be too high for the next block, so miners are still discouraged from mining. The slower issuance of coins may actually support price, but maybe he longer solve times, seen as a problem, can cause an even more negative effect on price. If price falls a little more due to this, the threshold of mining profitability may be passed, so a flood of miners could exit, causing really long solvetimes. This can cause the price to drop even further due to not being able to get transactions to go through. So REALLY long solvetime could occur. As soon as the 5 blocks take more than 12 hours, difficulty in the next 2016 set (only the 3rd in this sequence) will go to 1/4. remember difficulty in the 2nd block had actually dropped a little, so the 1/4 is not fixing an accidental 4x increase in difficulty. Suddenly, it is really profitable to mine, unless the price also dropped to 1/4. Let's say it had dropped to 1/2 or less. So the blocks will come at a fast rate. But as soon as that 2016 set ends, difficulty will be massive in the 4th set of 2016 blocks, and the price may be even lower due to people seeing the problem and due to too many coins being mined too quickly and sold. No longer have long solvetimes is "fixed" for that set, but it is only replace by the opposite problem. The 4th set will have very high difficulty and last maybe only 5 blocks as it will take too long to solve, then the 6th block will get the difficulty down to 1/4. If there was more than 4x increase in hashrate due to miners jumping on, then 1/4 downward change may not be a lower difficulty than it was in the 3rd set of 2016. The price should also be worse. These two effects may reduce the oscillation. But notice it depends on a huge number suddenly jumping on AND a worse price, and this is the best case scenario for reducing the size of the oscillations. The alternative of larger oscillations will also have a negative effect on price. So it's an unavoidable downward pressure on price. I saw a buy/sell opportunity in BCH and made good on it. This is actually looking like an impending buying opportunity, right before a fork that fixes it.
A huge part of this is that BCH miners can go back and forth to BTC. But notice large BTC miners have no place to go if there was a similar problem in BTC. It's kind of another reason 1 big coin naturally results.
edit:
Summary
Causes:
1) Asymmetrical math in how difficulty rises verses falls.
2) There is a threshold to mining profitability, so that only a minor fall in price can cause many miners to jump ship
3) Miners can switch back to BTC while waiting for the difficulty to fall which magnifies the problem caused by 2).
3) 1 and 2 may not have been a problem if it was a short rolling average window to determine the difficulty instead of being like BTC and suddenly changing every 2016 blocks.
4) This problem erodes price from reducing the quality of the coin by have 2 hour solvetimes if not issuing too many coins too quickly.
Friday, August 11, 2017
Strong Drink mix for Parkinson's
I have been putting together a really strong drink. I guess it's about $15 a day, with most of the cost being in the powder extracts, $2 to $3 per day each, straight from China in bulk.
12 oz pomegranate juice from Hispanic store (not the expensive POM)
added sweet concentrates:
=================
black cherry concentrate 12 g
black molasses 12 g (sugar cane juice after most of the white sugar is removed)
Jallab 12 g (Arabic grape skin extract plus others)
powder 10:1 extracts:
==================
blueberry extract 12 g (my eyesight sharpened enough to not need my barely-needed glasses in 4 days)
strawberry extract 12 g
apple peel extract 12 g
tangerine peel extract 12 g
Citrus flavonoids with animal studies in PD, bought from china in bulk.
These doses are 1/4 the human-equivalent doses because the studies are "shock" studies on the animals by which I mean they are very short term to see how the chemicals work in response to PD-like toxin challenges.
===================================
nobiletin 500 mg
naringin 300 mg
tangeretin 100 mg
Other stuff in pills with strong animal and epidemiological evidence for PD and ability to absorb and cross blood brain barrier (pills not in the drink):
====================
black tea extract
green tea extract
grape seed extract
fisetin
(inosine to be added)
The American producer of patented fisetin is not clear that it is pure fisetin and the brand is hiding details about what it is, so I'll spend 1/3 as much to get pure fisetin from China and then sell the excess on ebay. Inosine in bulk is also 1/3 the cost from china.
Canola mayonnaise, the bomb!
Broccoli, Sardines, home-made very yeasty beer, olive oil
1 hour exercise, then drink it to absorb the sugar.
12 oz pomegranate juice from Hispanic store (not the expensive POM)
added sweet concentrates:
=================
black cherry concentrate 12 g
black molasses 12 g (sugar cane juice after most of the white sugar is removed)
Jallab 12 g (Arabic grape skin extract plus others)
powder 10:1 extracts:
==================
blueberry extract 12 g (my eyesight sharpened enough to not need my barely-needed glasses in 4 days)
strawberry extract 12 g
apple peel extract 12 g
tangerine peel extract 12 g
Citrus flavonoids with animal studies in PD, bought from china in bulk.
These doses are 1/4 the human-equivalent doses because the studies are "shock" studies on the animals by which I mean they are very short term to see how the chemicals work in response to PD-like toxin challenges.
===================================
nobiletin 500 mg
naringin 300 mg
tangeretin 100 mg
Other stuff in pills with strong animal and epidemiological evidence for PD and ability to absorb and cross blood brain barrier (pills not in the drink):
====================
black tea extract
green tea extract
grape seed extract
fisetin
(inosine to be added)
The American producer of patented fisetin is not clear that it is pure fisetin and the brand is hiding details about what it is, so I'll spend 1/3 as much to get pure fisetin from China and then sell the excess on ebay. Inosine in bulk is also 1/3 the cost from china.
Canola mayonnaise, the bomb!
Broccoli, Sardines, home-made very yeasty beer, olive oil
1 hour exercise, then drink it to absorb the sugar.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Potential value of bitcoin, empires, and taxes
M3 is roughly "all cash". For US dollars, it's about $30 trillion. The rest of the world I'll estimate at $25 trillion because the Euro is about $12 T in USD. I expect bitcoin and alts to roughly follow this ratio, so BTC would be compared to dollars. so the max would be 30T/21M = $1.5M per BTC. As this happens, dollars all over the world will come flooding home making them worthless, so it's more important for Americans to switch early than in other countries, to maintain current lifestyle. The ability to print dollars and the growing world economy accepting them has been the biggest boon any country has ever seen. We were basically allowed to print them as fast as the world's economy grew. We spent half the surplus on a military which pushed and supported the use of the dollar, enabling stability and exchangeability in the same way MicroSoft "helped" software. Bitcoin is the Linux of money. Wealth will be more evenly distributed as the dollar monopoly in currency ceases.
Not just the U.S. but all governments will lose power to control if they lose control of the currency that their citizens demand. Countries enforce a currency by demanding taxes and legal disputes be settled in their dollars. Empires use currency to enslave other countries. So countries can start their own cryptocoin, enabling them to enforce law more directly and automatically extract taxes by being privy to every transaction. This would relegate BTC to replacing only gold for private holders, which is $7T, $350,000/BTC, but potentially a lot more since a lot of countries want to be more fair in international exchange instead of being stuck with the dollar. Gold is harder to move so there's a great desire to switch to BTC. Also, buying stuff directly from other countries instead of Amazon will need BTC, which is a "black market" as far as the U.S. government will be concerned. It takes away their power as the dollars come home. They can make it illegal to import things from other countries without dollars. The U.S. desperately needs dollars to stay out of the country. When foreigners like the Chinese government start giving us wads of dollars to get BTC, that is NOT the time to switch back to dollars. That is the end of the U.S. as the world power. That is when great powers fall: they spend too much on military to support a coin or gold, lose their skills at production due to enslaving people in the distant lands (via the coin supported by the military), then find themselves powerless as their coin collapses. In the case of Spain getting gold, they just spent it all, then the armada fell and Britain's superior skill at ship building took over. There is also the possibility that BTC will be a basis for establishing ownership of assets and enforcing smart contracts, again putting it well over the $1M/BTC range. I do not expect it to go over $500,000 in 20 years. If it reaches $100,000 it will be a primary way of buying $1M beach houses as old money finds itself increasingly poor and BTC millionaires start looking for something to do with their gains.
50x = $150k/BTC does not need BTC to be lucky. It only needs to be the best idea. When BTC reaches $150k it will be because it is starting to be used as an international standard for trade. It will be because dollars are coming home which will make them lose all their value. The U.S. government will then have to decide to cancel all social security and most government expenses (pollution, law, roads, retirements) and foreign debts, or print money (hyperinflation). That will not stop the inflation because there will be 3x more dollars inside the U.S. from foreigner not wanting them. If it takes 15 years, that will be 7% inflation plus our current 3%. 10% inflation is far from hyperinflation, but still a disaster. Actually the disaster was letting there be a "balance of payments" surplus the past 50 years which means more money going out (via free trade, military, and dept) than what was coming in. This results in erosion of the country's ability to support itself. Free trade is a disaster if it makes the balance of payments worse. The U.S. (like China) got out from under enslavement of a foreign currency by enacting trade tariffs. China's devaluation of currency is in effect a trade tariff on the external world's imports which forces its people to work harder and develop more skill. I believe the U.S. is sophisticated enough not to have hyperinflation. When it reaches $150k, it is NOT the time the sell, but a time to keep holding, unless you see a better option. But I think a capped-quantity coin is not a good solution and not the solution the rest of the world will want due to late-comers being at a disadvantage. But unless a new coin lets smartphones determine their own time via the stars or random or 3rd party consensus trust, and combine it with a local trust network to decentralize the coin (protecting it from big miners), BTC may be the best option. This is because all alts subject to 51% can be destroyed via simple forward-stamping timestamps, and if BTC miners are hodlers, they will soon find it more profitable to destroy alts than to mine, forcing more money into a few coins. They may even use their BTC value gains to buy more equipment to retain power by destroying alts instead of mining BTC. The miners may turn into BTC's military. This is what happens to all empires: they win by might is right until all the slave countries figure out a way to get out from under the coin that controls them. The coin is backed by a military. Coins are how governments exert control. Some argue BTC has no government, that devs are not really in control. However that may be, anyone who holds BTC will be the new lords, enslaving the late comers, backed by our military, the miners. At least this is our best-case scenario in our search for personal profit.
Not just the U.S. but all governments will lose power to control if they lose control of the currency that their citizens demand. Countries enforce a currency by demanding taxes and legal disputes be settled in their dollars. Empires use currency to enslave other countries. So countries can start their own cryptocoin, enabling them to enforce law more directly and automatically extract taxes by being privy to every transaction. This would relegate BTC to replacing only gold for private holders, which is $7T, $350,000/BTC, but potentially a lot more since a lot of countries want to be more fair in international exchange instead of being stuck with the dollar. Gold is harder to move so there's a great desire to switch to BTC. Also, buying stuff directly from other countries instead of Amazon will need BTC, which is a "black market" as far as the U.S. government will be concerned. It takes away their power as the dollars come home. They can make it illegal to import things from other countries without dollars. The U.S. desperately needs dollars to stay out of the country. When foreigners like the Chinese government start giving us wads of dollars to get BTC, that is NOT the time to switch back to dollars. That is the end of the U.S. as the world power. That is when great powers fall: they spend too much on military to support a coin or gold, lose their skills at production due to enslaving people in the distant lands (via the coin supported by the military), then find themselves powerless as their coin collapses. In the case of Spain getting gold, they just spent it all, then the armada fell and Britain's superior skill at ship building took over. There is also the possibility that BTC will be a basis for establishing ownership of assets and enforcing smart contracts, again putting it well over the $1M/BTC range. I do not expect it to go over $500,000 in 20 years. If it reaches $100,000 it will be a primary way of buying $1M beach houses as old money finds itself increasingly poor and BTC millionaires start looking for something to do with their gains.
50x = $150k/BTC does not need BTC to be lucky. It only needs to be the best idea. When BTC reaches $150k it will be because it is starting to be used as an international standard for trade. It will be because dollars are coming home which will make them lose all their value. The U.S. government will then have to decide to cancel all social security and most government expenses (pollution, law, roads, retirements) and foreign debts, or print money (hyperinflation). That will not stop the inflation because there will be 3x more dollars inside the U.S. from foreigner not wanting them. If it takes 15 years, that will be 7% inflation plus our current 3%. 10% inflation is far from hyperinflation, but still a disaster. Actually the disaster was letting there be a "balance of payments" surplus the past 50 years which means more money going out (via free trade, military, and dept) than what was coming in. This results in erosion of the country's ability to support itself. Free trade is a disaster if it makes the balance of payments worse. The U.S. (like China) got out from under enslavement of a foreign currency by enacting trade tariffs. China's devaluation of currency is in effect a trade tariff on the external world's imports which forces its people to work harder and develop more skill. I believe the U.S. is sophisticated enough not to have hyperinflation. When it reaches $150k, it is NOT the time the sell, but a time to keep holding, unless you see a better option. But I think a capped-quantity coin is not a good solution and not the solution the rest of the world will want due to late-comers being at a disadvantage. But unless a new coin lets smartphones determine their own time via the stars or random or 3rd party consensus trust, and combine it with a local trust network to decentralize the coin (protecting it from big miners), BTC may be the best option. This is because all alts subject to 51% can be destroyed via simple forward-stamping timestamps, and if BTC miners are hodlers, they will soon find it more profitable to destroy alts than to mine, forcing more money into a few coins. They may even use their BTC value gains to buy more equipment to retain power by destroying alts instead of mining BTC. The miners may turn into BTC's military. This is what happens to all empires: they win by might is right until all the slave countries figure out a way to get out from under the coin that controls them. The coin is backed by a military. Coins are how governments exert control. Some argue BTC has no government, that devs are not really in control. However that may be, anyone who holds BTC will be the new lords, enslaving the late comers, backed by our military, the miners. At least this is our best-case scenario in our search for personal profit.
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