cypherpunks Digest, Vol 25, Issue 9

[Juan]

On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 12:25:36 +0200
ksenia bellman <k at friendlygruppen.se> wrote:

> Before you can maintain the network with simple hardware,
> and get btc for it, now you have to be a mining rig. 

	Right.

> We know that btc
> is good for P2P financial transactions, 

	Well, that's the theory, but as you just mentioned, at least
	part of the network isn't looking too much P2P-like anymore...


> but the first important
> question now is: How do you earn bitcoin? (as an individual, you
> can't mine, if you are not a programmer or a designer, how do you
> earn btc?) 

	Working for people who pay in btc. For instance, selling drugs
	to them =) 

> It becomes less and less of a question how do you spend
> btc, but still, unless I mined a lot in the past or bought it for
> cash, where do I get it?

	I don't think that's really a problem. You can earn btc like
	you earn any other kind of money. Or you could at least if btc
	was a common medium of exchange. (you can of course simply buy
	btc)


> 
> Secondly, the rhetoric we hear often in the mainstream btc discussion
> is "it is a solution for banking the Unbanked" This talk is obviously
> dodgy - lets say "the unbanked wants to be banked" 


	But why should they? So that they can be easily monitored? THAT
	is dodgy too.



> if you have an
> account with nothing in it, and no way of filling it in, there is no
> point. The only good thing about btc walled vs bank account when its
> empty is that there is no one is proposing you to get an overdraft or
> a loan. But still, empty btc wallet is pretty useless.

> 
> Rather decent response to poitical btc frenzy I found in this post -
> https://blog.caseykuhlman.com/entries/2014/bitcoin-somaliland.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=%24feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+underWater+desert+Blogging


	Sorry, that's a typically retarded rant against 'anarchy'.
	Bitcoin isn't the same thing as political anarchy so valid
	criticism of bitcoin isn't the same thing as valid
	criticism of political anarchy. 

	"If You Want to Sit At The Adults' Table Act Like Adults" 

	Adults know the basic meaning of words and know that the STATE
	of somaliland isn't 'anarchy'. Adults are intellectually
	honest. Unlike the author of the article you linked. 


> 
> Another mainstream talk is: its not about bitcooin, it is all about
> blockchain technology. Thats correct, it can be useful for some
> stuff. But what drives me up the walll is a hype around it mixed with
> vagueness. 


	Yep. It is mostly bullshit. Blockchain
	'technology' (technology? it's just an algorithm) seems like a
	more robust version of digital signatures. And what of it? What
	kind of fundamental problem does a better digital signature
	system solve? 


> "We can build all this amazing socio-technical systems
> with it"

	That is bullshit. But that bullshit is not the same as the
	political theory of anarchy. In other words don't confuse
	bitcoin with anarchy, regardless of what bitcoin pushers may
	say.



> and very rarely, amongst general public (not blockchain
> devs) you come across concrete ideas of a design. What exactly does
> this weird data structure does in a very specific social context?
> What are exact detailed functions it has, how does it integrates with
> other layers - software and hardware. So the talk "some devs will
> write cryptographically verifiable scripts for us which interact on
> the blockchain and it will give the world some cool ways of
> interaction" is just dangerous. Similar rhetoric brought humanity
> things such as Facebook. The only thing which i consider right in the
> blockchain discussion that "ok, it allows adding some features to a
> system that can be useful in some particular cases"
> 
> On the technical side: fork, xt-code etc - I would like to organise
> and stream a panel discussion on WCN
> <http://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/> channel soon-ish. I dont want to
> turn cypherpunk list into a Bitcoin Talk :) but will ping a link here
> and the time we will schedule it.
> 
>