{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1sgs97fe0n9wehe6zw7drcxdz4cy9yt9pfqjv8gasz5jlk4zezc0quppx3c","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1sgs97fe0n9wehe6zw7drcxdz4cy9yt9pfqjv8gasz5jlk4zezc0quppx3c","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2016-03-03\n📝 Original message:On 03/02/2016 03:02 PM, Peter Todd wrote:\n\u003e On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 11:01:36AM -0800, Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev wrote:\n\u003e\u003e\u003e A 6 month investment with 3 months on the high subsidy and 3 months on low subsidy would not be made…\n\u003e\u003e\n\u003e\u003e Yes, this is the essential point. All capital investments are made based on expectations of future returns. To the extent that futures are perfectly knowable, they can be perfectly factored in. This is why inflation in Bitcoin is not a tax, it’s a cost. These step functions are made continuous by their predictability, removing that predictability will make them -- unpredictable.\n\u003e \n\u003e You know, I do agree with you.\n\u003e \n\u003e But see, this is one of the reasons why we keep reminding people that\n\u003e strictly speaking a hardfork *is* an altcoin, and the altcoin can change\n\u003e any rule currently in Bitcoin.\n\u003e \n\u003e It'd be perfectly reasonable to create an altcoin with a 22-million-coin\n\u003e limit and an inflation schedule that had smooth, rather than abrupt,\n\u003e drops. It'd also be reasonable to make that altcoin start with the same\n\u003e UTXO set as Bitcoin as a means of initial coin distribution.\n\u003e \n\u003e If miners choose to start mining that altcoin en-mass on the halving,\n\u003e all the more power to them. It's our choice whether or not we buy those\n\u003e coins. We may choose not to, but if 95% of the hashing power decides to\n\u003e go mine something different we have to accept that under our current\n\u003e chosen rules confirmations might take a long time.\n\u003e \n\u003e Of course, personally I agree with Gregory Maxwell: this is all fairly\n\u003e unlikely to happen, so the discussion is academic. But we'll see.\n\u003e \nI agree, this is a perfectly rational interpretation. I also agree that\nthis particular instance is academic. But I see more to this than\naccepting what is possible.\n\nIn the case of Federal Reserve Notes the gold obligation was abrogated.\nThis was (at least) a contract default, implemented by force of arms.\nThis contentious hard fork was clearly an attack.\n\nBut in a system with no authority and in which nobody has formed a\ncontractual obligation with anyone else, what would constitute an attack\non the money? There is no difference between state attacks on (or\ncollusion with) miners and miners acting on self interest.\n\nOne answer is that nothing is an attack, it's up to the market to\ndecide. But to the extent that there can be an attack on the money, the\nattempt to move the value of the coin to an altcoin (hard fork) is it.\nThough the choice of the term \"attack\" isn't essential.\n\nThe importance of recognizing an attack is that it affords one the\nopportunity to defend against it. People holding \"dollars\" in 1933 were\nill equipped to defend against a system level attack (monetary policy),\nin part because many did not recognize it as such, and in part because\nthere was insufficient preparation by those who did.\n\nI see us building the tools and awareness necessary for defense. As you\nsay, nobody has to buy into an altcoin forked from their coin. This much\nis simple to achieve. The more difficult problem is preserving the\nutility of the original coin. Clearly the purpose of a hard fork (as\nopposed to a new coin) is to transfer this value.\n\nWe've all seen arguments for contentious hard fork deployment that\nexplicitly depend on the fear of monetary loss to drag people to\nacceptance. While this may be the nature of the technology, it's\nimportant that we develop effective defense against it.\n\nUltimately the only defense is individual validation. The collusion of\nbanks (web wallets) with miners in attacking consensus is obvious. But\neven without active collusion, the surrender of validation leaves people\njust as defenseless as *being* unarmed while retaining a right to\n*become* armed.\n\nEven if every person mines at the same level, the system amounts to\nlittle more than majority rule if validation is not decentralized. There\nare people perfectly willing to exploit this weakness.\n\ne\n\n-------------- next part --------------\nA non-text attachment was scrubbed...\nName: signature.asc\nType: application/pgp-signature\nSize: 473 bytes\nDesc: OpenPGP digital signature\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20160303/10b4501e/attachment.sig\u003e"}