Adopting an adversarial mindset includes admitting that Bitcoin isn't perfect as is.
Discussion
100%
#bitcoin is the de-facto alternative to fiat money (there are a few others, but much smaller)
It's not perfect because it can still have a network split
Bitcoin endgame, if it can be achieved, is just where it can run itself for decades without fear of contentious splits
Which few others?
Main one is LItecoin, which is merge mined with the infinite supply coin, doge. That actually has a pretty decent security model. After that you have to go down a long way further...
Don’t think litecoin could make it as unit of account. Not sure about dodge - what’s the transaction rate on that?
Neither has the security backing of bitcoin. Not even close.
Doge is pretty scammy, same dudes released a ton of coins and then rugged them on cryptsy. Elon doesnt know his history, sadly.
Bitcoin and Litecoin have different algorithms, SHA256 vs Scrypt. You need to be the top in your hash algo to avoid attacks, which are common in alts.
Bitcoin has a subsidy block reward of 6.25 bitcoins, rn. Another way of saying that is that every vbyte has a subsidy of 625 sats/vybte. Fees are incidental.
In 9 years that will move to under 1 BTC, or 82 sats/vbyte + fees. At this time bitcoin will have a different security model. As will litecoin. But on the upside during that epoch 99% of bitcoin will be mined.
Bitcoin needs a plan to avoid reorgs and networks splits for the era which starts when the reward moves under 1. Satoshi didnt really go into it in the white paper and there was some vague talk about competing with Visa.
Adversarial thinking needs to start thinking about 9 years from now. We have some time, but it is not unlimited.
"under 1 BTC" means nothing if you don't account for bitcoins price. The 50, 25 and 12,5 BTC block rewards of the first epochs could buy a lot less than todays 6.25 BTC reward.
Unless you are assuming Bitcoin has already become a unit of account in the next few years its a bit speculative to assume 1 BTC will be worth less than 6,25 BTC now.
Not assuming any price value for btc in 9 years, because nobody knows. I am assuming that the security model will change. And in 13 years the subsidy will be ~40 sats/vbyte then 20 then 10, then 5. The challenge is still to prevent reorgs and network splits.
So you’re assuming hash power will drop because it won’t be economically feasible for miners? That IS assuming price value.
But yeah, I get what you’re saying.
You can reverse the thinking. Instead of thinking that an increased price increases the security, you can think that a robust security model increases the ceiling on the price.
The only reason miners spend so much energy is because it's profitable to do so.
The only way security leads price (and this is bound to happen a little bit) is if people actually base their investment decisions on hashrate.
Maybe institutional investors think this way? They obviously will want to be sure their investment is safe.
As far as I can tell, however, the block reward plus fees multiplied by price determines the security budget, which determines security, at least in the medium to long term.
And for now, because the block reward makes up the bulk of miner revenue and is completely predictable, the price of BTC makes a much larger difference in security budget than fees do, especially when fees in sat terms can go down when the price goes up.
Gotta take into account fiat value, but yea can’t hurt to think about these things.
and LN is 2x less perfect because its L2
Bitcoin, the idea, is perfect. The code just hasn't caught up yet.
There is no difference between the idea and the code.
This is deep.
Interesting thought experiment:
The whole Bitcoin network agrees that there should never be more than 21 million Bitcoin.
Then there is a bug in the code, so that there are 22 million Bitcoin now.
What would happen? Would we just live with 22 million coins or agree to a hard fork that fixes the issue and makes the extra 1 million coins unspendable/deletes them?
*maybe a hard fork wouldn't even be necessary
Yuuuuuup
Bitcoin doesn't have to be perfect to replace all money. Future soft forks may be very challenging, even more so than SegWit and Taproot. I'm in favor of protocol ossification as new functionality and scalability can happen through layers. Both Lightning and RGB both prove that, as a payments L2 and contracts L3, respectively.
Calle is right as always 🌸
Bitcoin is not perfect, but
WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THISSS!?!?
Admiting that something is not perfect does not bring any new information to the table as nothing is perfect.
The resistance to changing bitcoin does not come because one assumes it to be perfect.
