[Cryptography] Standards Trolls: Re: Bitcoin is a disaster.

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Sat, Jan 02, 2021 at 06:11:07PM -0500, Karl wrote:
> > We're talking about something which has between [4.7 .. 7] TPS globally. I
> > wrote a range because, nobody knows the exact number. But those are actual
> > numbers. Some people claim there are system who can do better. How much
> > better? x100? x1000? x1,000,000,000?
> > "If you really think it's scalable and enough secure. Don't talk. Just do
> > it and show us! For real life scenario".
> 
> Just to relate some more, I think the pro-bitcoin people simply don't
> worry about this.  I don't think anybody ever imagined that bitcoin
> would grow in popularity as fast as it did, and the protocol simply
> was designed for a smaller scale for a longer time, before invested
> parties did the research to upgrade it, because of the value it held.
> That's mostly happening in altchains.

The problem is that there are lots of altcoins, but none of them are
considered as valuable as Bitcoin or as popularly accepted as Bitcoin.

People talk about Fiat currencies as only having value because
everyone has a collective delusion that they have value --- but the
same is true for Gold.  Why the heck is Gold considered valuable?
There are other metals which are rarer (and thus have a more limited
supply) than Gold, such as for example, Ruthenium and Tellurium, and
some of these elements have more industrial value than Gold.  The
reality is that Gold is considered a valuable financial commodity
because of an an accident of history that Gold was both (a) rare, but
not too rare, and (b) could be refined using the technology from the
Bronze age and up, such that everyone has agreed that Gold is a store
of value for millenia, and so Gold has a privileged position over that
of other more-difficult to find and refine and useful metals that are
out there.

The same is true of Bitcoin; the reason why it is considered valuable
is largely an accident of history.  Can some other altcoin replace
Bitcoin?  I dunno; if someone can figure out how to make one of the
rare-earth elements be considered a recognized, stable, store of value
replacing Gold, maybe the same technique can be used to make some
other altcoin to be more valuable than Bitcoin.

Note that if this has nothing to do with cryptography, or for that
matter, any kind of technical question.  This is fundmentally a social
question.  Whether you use the formulation "everyone agrees that X has
value" or "everyone has the collective delusion that X has value", and
whether X is Bitcoin, or Euro, or U.S. Dollar, or Dogecoin, this is
more about psychology and belief rather than some kind of math or
computer science question.

					- Ted