#gm weirdos. Who has some early morning questions about bitcoin for #asknostr ? This is my favorite part of #nostr , as I missed my calling as a teacher, because people actually ask, engage and zap here! For me, there’s nothing more rewarding than helping someone on the cusp of understanding get over the hump to full realization of a concept. It’s like a shot of heroin to me. I like to use metaphors to explain tech to non-techies, or to explain one type of tech that someone in another tech discipline is clueless about. I’m trying not to doxx myself here, but I’m a published author who’s written about cryptography and its history. I’ve studied tons and love to share what I’ve learned. Any related subject at all. Maybe the ai just doesn’t know wtf you mean when you ask your question. Maybe it’s a question that you can’t quite figure out how to ask, but give it a try, even if it takes a whole bunch of messy words, there’s no note too long for me to read. This is what I always tried to do on Reddit, but everyone kicked me in the balls for it: Reddit, redditors, mods, all of em. I left them and that schmuck of a co-founder for abusing the helpful. (I wonder what Reddit would be like now if things had gone differently and Aaron Schwartz were still with us and had ended up in charge over there). But here on nostr, I’m free to share and help without fear of suspension for being…. I don’t know, too helpful?? Gimme your questions. 🍪
Discussion
forget to add #bitcoin hashtag-this should be easier in Damus
My question is how can bitcoin be considered to be "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" as it is called in the whitepaper? It seems to me that it is not peer to peer at least not in the way that peer to peer is usually described to people.
Bitcoin is often said to be P2P just like handing someone gold. But when I hand you gold there is truly no other party involved. It is simply me and you exchanging something. With bitcoin such a transaction is not possible. I can not hand you a bitcoin. Instead I must create a transaction and request a third party (a miner) includes it in a block in order for you to receive the bitcoin.
As such can bitcoin really be called peer to peer?
While the bitcoin may not pass through the custody of a third party it still requires one. The bitcoin does not go "through a financial institution" however it still does not simply require the consent of two peers.
What are your thoughts?
Satoshi proposed the p2p aspect of bitcoin to prevent the double-spend problem that other ecash attempts suffered from. So, that’s why you “need” the network. The p2p part is totally separate from how bitcoin is stored in a random place on the spectrum of possible addresses. Your knowledge of where your coin is on the spectrum is ‘your bitcoin’
But you can absolutely go hand someone a bitcoin by handing them a piece of paper with 12 words on it, or a private key to a single address.
So yes! Bitcoin is backed up and made possible by a p2p network similar to BitTorrent. And like with BitTorrent, you can download a movie, burn it and hand it to a friend. Similarly on the bitcoin network you can receive some coin, transpose the seed or key onto paper and hand it somebody. I hope this help a little- please don’t hold back questions if this doesn’t make sense because it goes deeper still
You can not simply hand someone the keys to bitcoin though. As if I had you cash you are now the sole owner of that cash. You can spend it but there is no way that I could spend it.
If I give you the keys to bitcoin you can spend it but I can also still spend it.
The only way to prevent someone else from spending it is to send the bitcoin to an address whose keys are only in your control. And in order to do this transaction you are required to ask the permission of a third party as without the miners consent to record your transaction on the ledger you are unable to transfer the bitcoin to a new address.
Well, what I would do if someone ‘handed’ me a bitcoin on the spot in the form of a key or seed is sweep it into my wallet immediately from my mobile device, perhaps to a wallet that the device I’m holding doesn’t even have the keys to. So after swept, which takes 30 seconds, yes indeed the person has the bitcoin and you no longer have access to it. Think of the time that takes like counting the money in a back alley drug deal. Once dude sees you brought all the money, it’s part time. So it is with sweeping some coin someone is handing you. It must be transferred immediately to be ‘yours’ and ‘counted’
^party^ time
When you say sweep do you mean to send to a new address?
Yes
And this transaction is accomplished when a miner adds it to a block.
My argument is that this miner is a third party. Thus no transaction is truly just peer to peer.
A third party is always required to confirm transactions.
Thinking that way will just lead us in circles. If the miners fail to put the bitcoin into your address right then and there, which you can sit there and confirm, then it’s no deal, right? It’s like seeing that someone is trying to hand you counterfeit cash, it’s deal off. And anyway, miners are simply assembling blocks, encrypted in a chain that they can not alter. They’re just powerless intermediaries regarding the actual content of transactions, and are only concerned with collecting fees/rewards. The ‘trusted party’ that’s spooking you out here is actually the entire network, which is bitcoin’s strength. It’s the centralization of mining that’s the real threat, but that’s a whole other subject, 51% attacks and all that.
As you said they are "intermediaries".
Therefore how is it peer to peer if there is someone in the middle?
Do you understand what I am saying?
I am not arguing against bitcoin but simply wondering if you also think that referring to it as permissionless peer to peer electronic cash is misleading.
I do understand what you’re saying, and I totally get your concern. You have to understand what p2p really is under the hood to not be afraid of it. The person in the middle is just another peer with equal power to change content as every other peer: zero. In BitTorrent, which inspired bitcoin, files are uploaded and downloaded. When it first came out, most home internet connections were spotty and when you tried to download huge files, if it didn’t just lose the connection and fail completely, the file would get corrupted and be useless. BitTorrent introduced a method to disseminate huge files, chunk by chunk, in a way that would only succeed if the resultant file matched a hash of the original, meaning it was the DEFINITELY THE SAME EXACT FILE. This was great for downloading OSs and software that you needed a positively perfect copy of, then later our internet connections got better and we started checking SHA256 hashes to make sure our downloads were good. But BitTorrent still does this job perfectly, and bitcoin’s p2p network is similar in that it IS the protection. It is what makes it possible, and bitcoin would have never grown so huge without it. These peers are your friends. The network doesn’t allow ‘rogue’ peers.
I am glad yoy understand my points.
I think I have a fairly good understanding of what is happening under the hood.
It will be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out in the future.
I am not concerned about a miner changing a transaction however I do see the very real threat of miners censoring transactions in the future. From a protocol level it may be in the miners incentive to always include the transactions with the highest fee however I see significant external pressure from governments ect on miners that could outweigh this incentive.
As you said we might just go around in circles.
It seems to me that while you understand what I am saying you do not see the P2P description as being potentially misleading in the same way I do.
thats fair. Maybe I never thought of it as misleading because I don’t care what anyone else thinks about these descriptions or descriptors because I get it. Typical autist shit, you know. I figure if some miners censor transactions in the future because of the origin of the coins, other miners will be there to do it instead. If not, then the network has been completely compromised anyway. Mining problems from an entity like blackrock are real fears. This is why I hope that hyperbitcoinization includes an explosion of mine development in every nation to fight the current centralization efforts
Also, it’s peer to peer BECAUSE there are people are in the middle. P2P doesn’t mean “directly from one peer to another with no stops” it’s a protocol type that requires and depends on a network of peers. P2P should really be called P2P2P2P etc
This is helpful.
I think the difficulty in the way I was viewing this comes from the fact that miners are now so seperated from every day peers.
Initially every peer was a miner so it was easier to see every person as an equal member for a p2p2p2p network. However as the global hash power increased and became ever more expensive this became a distant memory.
You’re right, and it’s the fact that so much of that hashing power is getting into one set of hands that’s the biggest problem for bitcoin. Increased global hash power is good if it’s spread around evenly among altruistic bitcoiners. You can still be a peer by running a node (and accepting incoming connections) without doing any mining, and every bitcoiner should do this to help balance the network, but nodes can’t stop 51% attacks if a large player with unlimited funds sets their sights on that goal (blackrock?) The white paper doesn’t mention the 51% attack vector, and I haven’t studied enough to know when it was realized, but either way, now the most important thing to do to help this problem is quadruple, scatter geographically and further decentralize the mining efforts, and I hope to see those with large audiences in this space strongly recommend developing mining facilities to each new country proposing a bitcoin reserve as a natural part of the process- they should think of it like insurance for their investment (except this insurance earns you money lol). I think it’s part of the formula for global success of fiat replacement. The little guys can’t compete anymore mining and it sucks, but it’s also why the network scales & works. Cheers! Thanks for the initial question. It’s the kind of thing that I’m here to work on. I don’t know everything, but I refuse to stop learning! Have a great weekend!!
Yes I see it as a concern as well.
And you don't even need a 51% attack.
If bitcoin becomes the basis of a global monetary system block space will become incredibly valuable. Many people predict very high fees. If even a significant percentage (but still less that 51%) censor transactions it will mean that all "unregulated" transactions are competing for even less available uncensored blackspace.
As mining becomes increasingly done less by individuals and more by regulates companies this concern increases.
Trumps statement that "All future bitcoin should be made in the USA" implies an effort to increase the number of blocks mined in the USA which could easily one day come under strict financial regulation. It is not hard to see a future when the US, EU and other nations form treaties agreeing to eachother's bitcoin blacklists/whitelists.
Work needs to be done to ensure bitcoin mining stays decentralised. I like what ocean mining is doing by allowing miners to stay in a mining pool but still choose their own block templates. This goes a long way to ensuring future true decentralization and resisting censorship.
I want to get involved in OCEAN, but I haven’t determined the minimum setup I’d need to make any bit of difference, but this is on my to-do list along with setting up a node