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Replying to Avatar Lyn Alden

A steelman argument is the opposite of a strawman argument. It's where you imagine the best possible argument from your opposing side (sometimes even better than they themselves can articulate it), and address that. In other words, you treat your critics like absolutely serious people and try to address any concerns they may have with regards to your outlook.

If someone were to argue that, "yeah bitcoin is cool, but ultimately when push comes to shove the major governments are going to outlaw it, drive it into the black market as a small asset, and issue a replacement that they back as legal tender", what would your steelman argument be?

Similarly, if someone were to argue, "Look how fast they are advancing on superconductors. Quantum computing may come sooner than we think, and threaten Bitcoin's security. That's why I don't buy bitcoins", what would your steelman argument be?

61
Uhu 2y ago

Hashing remains safe even if we have quantum computers and since bitcoin addresses are hashed money is still safe. This will buy some time to upgrade bitcoin, currently some methods using just hashing alone could be implemented though they suck compared to elegant Schnorr signatures. So quantum would be a crippling blow to bitcoin, but it would survive in some form. Ethereum on the other hand has naked private keys and is toast.

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61
Uhu 2y ago

Naked public keys ...

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