1/ @SatoshiLite recently debated @rogerkver about the merits of using Lightning Network vs BCash for payments. In the debate Roger brought up a point that needs to be addressed; Roger claimed that it is easier to censor payments on LN than on BCash.
2/ Here is the tweet that Roger mentioned in the interview. In it we see a strongly connected network with one isolated node - the node was named Roger Ver.
Roger claims that the ostracization of this node is not funny, but a sign of censorship.
3/ Let's consider the economics of his claim. It is important to recognize that with Lightning Network, as with #Bitcoin, or even with free markets in general, you never have guarantees of anything - you have incentives that create long term tendencies.
4/ As with the old economics joke about a $20 bill lying unclaimed on the road (the economist who sees it jokes that that's impossible because if it were a $20 someone would have already picked it up), it's obviously possible, in the short term, but in the long term it's unlikely
5/ The same idea applies to Bitcoin's base layer. Even though miners have an incentive to mine transactions for profit, it's possible (and does happen) that miners mine empty blocks, thereby temporarily delaying transaction confirmations. AntPool has done it a number of times.
6/ So, yes, it is possible for a node to be ostracized on LN in the short term, but it's extremely unlikely in the long term because people are, generally speaking, profit maximizers. As the network grows there would always be someone who wanted Roger's routing fees.
7/ As a final thought: it was quite revealing to discover in the debate that Roger didn't even know what a "peer-to-peer" network was or how it is different to a broadcast network. In a rare moment of self reflection, he said "I'm a natural marketer" (not an economist or coder).
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When I worked at Google, as an engineer on Google News, I was asked to write code to censor news articles in China (circa 2006). I refused and they took me off the project and put someone else on it.
Doesn't surprise me Google is back at it. "Don't be Evil" is a Google myth.
Since this is getting some attention, I want to explain what happened in more detail.
At the time Google was censoring Web results, but this was widely known. It was a conscious decision: being in China and censoring was better for the Chinese people than not being there at all.
Or at least that was the rationalization.
It was not widely known that Google intended to censor News in China. So I got up at an engineering "all hands" meeting (few hundred people) and complained about what we were going to do. Ironically, I got some applause for this.
1/ #Ethereum is crashing (not just in USD terms but in BTC terms); has the demand for a decentralized world computer disappeared, or is something else at play? Let's consider the fundamentals from an economic point of view.
2/ The price level of all monetary goods is determined by (and only by) reservation demand. More precisely, the duration that the average unit of the monetary good is held in reserve.
3/ At one extreme you have a good like gold that is stored in vaults in perpetuity because of a widely held belief that it will retain its value long into the future.
Gold has a very high reservation demand which is why it has a market cap of over seven trillion dollars.
2/ Let us not forget that reputation should be associated with the consequences of our actions. Erik and ShapeShift have earned the suspicion of people who care about #Bitcoin.
If 2X had succeeded (with Erik's help), BTC's core value would have been destroyed.
3/ Bitcoin survived because of a strong streak of corporate suspicion in its community. That suspicion is now trained on ShapeShift, which is clearly changing the nature of its business at the expense of the privacy of its users.
1/ I've found further evidence that the story written for Business Insider about Jeffrey Wernick, by Sara Silverstein (@IChartNY), is based on fabricated facts.
2/ In his self-penned biography at the @CryptoFinCon conference, where Mr Wernick is a key note speaker, he writes that he studied under no less than SEVEN nobel prize winners (see image below)
3/ In another conference he claims he was 15 in 1971, which means he was 6 years old in 1962 when Friedrich Hayek stopped working for the University of Chicago. It is therefore *impossible* that he studied under Friedrich Hayek. He is fabricating facts to manufacture reputation.
1/ @CryptoFinCon it is shockingly irresponsible of you to invite this person as a keynote speaker to your conference. He fabricated a claim to be buying bitcoins in 2009 - no one was buying them back then - and he laughable claims to have studied under 7 nobel prize winners.
2/ Have the conference organizers done a shred of due diligence on this person? There is no information at all on him before late 2017, then he suddenly shows up in a bunch of shady publications saying he was buying bitcoins in 2009 - all the articles have the same verbiage.
3/ It's quite clear this scam artist is manufacturing reputation for himself to be invited to conferences and get speaking fees. Why would an investor in bitcoin in 2009 also need to take board and advisory positions in scammy projects like QTUM and BitForex?
1/ Scarcity seems like such a simple concept, but do we really understand it? Sometimes we need to reframe a concept before its full potential can be unlocked.
How was the concept of scarcity unlocked for the digital age?
2/ At least as long ago as the 16th century, economists (in particular the Spanish School of Salamanca) understood that scarcity played a very important role in how money gained its value.
Money was more valuable where it was scarce, and less valuable where it was abundant.
3/ The modern Austrian school inherited the mantle of "hard money" economics from the School of Salamanca and one might have imagined that Austrian economists would have been the first to anticipate and understand the emergence of #Bitcoin.