Hearn: The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Actually, democracy is "government of the middle class, by the middle class, for the middle class". Which is why it's now under so much threat. And which is also why attempts to impose it on other countries fail so disastrously.

Democracy blossomed in Britain with the rise of the Victorian middle class. Democracy survived in India despite people saying it wouldn't, because there was a large middle class. Various attempts to "democratise" South America have imploded because the countries had no middle class to speak of and they elected a dictator to power (and just look at the similar mess in Africa. In fact, because of hyper-inflation, that's probably why a certain AH was *elected* to power in Germany!).

The middle class is being squeezed. More and more of the world's wealth is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Even as the "average salary" is rising, the salary of the "average man" is falling ...

I think our democratic experiment is coming to an end. Look at pretty much EVERY election nowadays, America being a perfect example, victory goes to the person who managed to outspend everyone else. Our setup isn't quite so bad - there are strict spending limits - but it's still pretty obvious that throwing money at a constituency will win that constituency. It's just that there's a limit to the amount of money you can throw.

Cheers,
Wol

No, most bitcoins are not used for criminal activity. They are used as a store of value, use case that is first only to its second: legal commerce. All of those are *legitimate* uses.

You are not totally wrong here -- there is absolutely a demonstrable and substantial (even if minor) illegal use of Bitcoin. You clearly see that as a bug due to your bias for obedience stemming from your political indoctrination (which you've made very obvious, and entirely gratuitously, at the expense of the S/N ratio of this comments section).

You know what else is used, much more often, to trade drugs and other contraband? Dollars. Far more than Bitcoin, in fact. Why not go rant somewhere else about all of those illegals illegally trading in illegal disobedience your political rulers while using dollars? Post to reddit.com/r/politics where your post will be received with open arms into the circlejerk of obedience.

Yes, cash has this problem where, if you're pickpocketed, the cash is gone. Irreversible transactions have their advantages and disadvantages, and therefore they have their good use cases and their bad use cases. The fact that *you don't like* others having the option of using something you don't find appealing, doesn't mean said something is bad. It just means you're intolerant of others' decisions.

Another fiction in your post, easily proven wrong: everyone participating in the Bitcoin network algorithmically and precisely controls the amount of bitcoins available for circulation. If you wanted to disabuse yourself of this fourth erroneous notion, all you'd have to do is read a file of C++.

The fact that Bitcoin is subject to relatively large swings in price has nothing to do with how many coins have been produced. It's simply a byproduct of it being young, just like many other businesses and technologies whose value fluctuates stochastically as they gain or lose adoption. Your argumentation here is no different from demanding that a toddler perfectly pronounce "water" before handing him a water bottle, and when the toddler dies of thirst, you exclaiming "See? That thing was so stupid! LOL!" No, the kid's not an idiot -- you're just being unreasonable within the confines of your double standards.

All in all, the things you call "problems" are just fine, growth continues to the point that last year Bitcoin did better than all other asset classes. Also, no thanks, the network is already governed by math.

You are not the first person to repeatedly inject shitty "Bitcoin is doomed because it doesn't work how my obviously true political opinions say things ought to work" dogmatism into a convo about Bitcoin. You won't be the last. But at least spare us your political doctrines -- we don't come here to hopscotch around them.

Unfortunately, miners can get a reward for empty transaction blocks, which does not do useful work and wastes energy & carbon emissions. Also distributing the whole block chain to every node becomes more and more inefficient.

To scale, some sort of hierarchy like NTP or DNS, imposed socially to have independantly run ledger copies, with mining rewards also distributed to pay for this service would be required, plus having transactions for independant wallets being verified in parallel in each confirmation window, that is multiple streams of transaction confirmations for wallets A, B, C & D which are making payments.