Bitcoin debunked 29 Jan

29 January in Bath
Email received from Critisticuffs:

Hi there, we will be presenting and discussing at "Marx in the key of hope" 29 January at University of Bath

http://www.bath.ac.uk/sps/events/news_0114.html

In particular, we will share a panel with the Bristol Pound and Graham Taylor. Our focus will be on criticising alternative money proposals by using Bitcoin as an example.

Here is our blurb: Bitcoin is perhaps the most well-known attempt at an alternative money. By looking at what Bitcoin does to realise this goal, we want to explain what it means to attempt to create a money. Through this, we want to show that alternative monies (on the Internet or not) are no tools for positive social change. Instead, they rely on social relations which mean poverty and domination. Our contribution will be based on an older Kittens piece on Bitcoin:

https://antinational.org/en/bitcoin-finally-fair-money/

Cheers,
Critisticuffs

On the bitcoin thing, from a

On the bitcoin thing, from a different angle, this assessment from a disillusioned bitcoin developer is worth a read:

The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

ocelot wrote: On the bitcoin

ocelot

On the bitcoin thing, from a different angle, this assessment from a disillusioned bitcoin developer is worth a read:

The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment

Thanks for that link, I've been out of the loop with regards to bitcoins for the last 2-3 years, its interesting to see how things have panned out, part of the reason I stopped paying attention was that things seemed to be heading in that direction. Its really a good metaphor for ''anarcho''-capitalism and shows what their right wing utopia would quickly descend into.

Hearn's blog is fairly

Hearn's blog is fairly accessible. This one is a bit more down the geek rabbit hole, but may be of interest to people who like that sort of thing (I do). However this bit is worth a general interest quote

The Bitcoin blockchain: the world’s worst database
.
Would you use a database with these features?
.
Uses approximately the same amount of electricity as could power an average American household for a day per transaction
.
Supports 3 transactions / second across a global network with millions of CPUs/purpose-built ASICs
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Takes over 10 minutes to “commit” a transaction
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Doesn’t acknowledge accepted writes: requires you read your writes, but at any given time you may be on a blockchain fork, meaning your write might not actually make it into the “winning” fork of the blockchain (and no, just making it into the mempool doesn’t count). In other words: “blockchain technology” cannot by definition tell you if a given write is ever accepted/committed except by reading it out of the blockchain itself (and even then)
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Can only be used as a transaction ledger denominated in a single currency, or to store/timestamp a maximum of 80 bytes per transaction

Hum. (starting to wish I

Hum. (starting to wish I hadn't started this one...). In the interests of balance, one of my geek pals on FB sent me links to 3 pieces in opposition to the Hearn article. I don't personally find any of them terribly convincing (at least not in relation to the serious problems of bitcoin, especially the mental power consumption of more than the whole of Ireland for a network that can do about 3 transactions per second - which is beyond ridiculous) but, for completeness' sake:

Point-by-Point Response To Mike Hearn’s Final Bitcoin Post

The Bitcoin experiment is NOT over

KEEP CALM AND BITCOIN ON

None of the above are particularly political (except in the negative, in defaulting to shitty right-libertarian ancap politics)