Maksimaliste võite uskuda: Bitcoin on krüptost lahus

See on Stephan Livera, saate "Stephan Livera Podcast" võõrustaja ja Swan Bitcoin Internationali tegevdirektor, arvamustoimetus.

Financial Timesi kolumnist Jemima Kelly avaldas artikli pealkirjaga "Don’t Believe The ‘Maximalists: Bitcoin Can’t Be Separated From Crypto” earlier today and I’d like to share some reactions from a Bitcoiner perspective. Quoted text below is all from Kelly’s article.

“If you have ever dared to direct criticism at the world of crypto, the chances are you will have received some charming rebukes. You are likely to have been told to ‘have fun staying poor’…”

Mis see väärt on, usun, et meem "lõbutsege vaeseks jäämiseks" on enamasti mõeldud naljaks, mitte tõsise pahatahtlikkuse avalduse teise inimese suhtes. Miks? Sest me nägime rahva seas Bitcoiners telling Elon Musk, the richest man in the world at the time, to “have fun staying poor” as he backs away from his public support of Bitcoin. Clearly, this is not meant as a serious rebuke.

“But there is another slightly more sophisticated flavour of counter-criticism finding its way into my inbox with increasing regularity these days. It usually starts with something designed to appease — some kind of agreement that crypto is immoral, a scam, or some version of a Ponzi scheme. But then it quickly changes course, to explain that none of this applies to bitcoin.”

Here is where my principal disagreement with this article lies. I and many other Bitcoiners do believe that we peaks draw a line of distinction between Bitcoin and “crypto.” Bitcoin is unique in many ways:

• It has no pre-mine or “dev. tax” to enrich the founder or founding team.
• It has a culture that actually prioritizes decentralizing the ecosystem.
• It enables cheap blockchain validation and participation (i.e., it’s relatively easy to run a fully-validating Bitcoin node), while also maintaining a robust, open, scalable, trust-minimized system.
• It has a very strong preference for soft forking and retaining backwards and forwards compatibility for those running older Bitcoin node software.
• It is continually growing in acceptance and mindshare around the world. Of course, this does wax and wane with bull and bear markets, but zoomed out, bitcoin liquidity and acceptance is only going one way: up.

Kui olete neid punkte tõeliselt uurinud, leiate selle ainult Bitcoin meets these criteria. Many altcoins regularly hard fork, which is an indicator that they have a certain level of centralization in their development and community. Other altcoins do things that simply would not be scalable if they were scaled up to the level of Bitcoin and the number of bitcoin transactions. Other altcoins do things that are more permissioned, and thus they are not an avatud system like Bitcoin is.

Võite isegi väita, et konkreetne altcoin seda teeb üks specific thing better than Bitcoin does, but are any of them meaningfully making improvements on the whole? I don’t think so, and that’s why Bitcoin is rightly in a category of its own. There is also the question of whether Bitcoin peaks omama neid oletatavaid muid funktsioone või asju, kuna see võib samuti põhjustada negatiivseid kompromisse süsteemi mõne muu kasuliku omaduse osas (jõulisus, detsentraliseeritus, mastaapsus, kontrollitavus jne).

Kelly seems to believe that Bitcoin “arguments don’t stand up,” as she takes issue with any financial incentive whatsoever. For instance:

“First, it doesn’t matter what bitcoin’s origins were — the people who push it now have the same financial incentives as those pushing any other crypto token.”

How is this a justified attack on Bitcoin promotion? Imagine that you are an investor in a company, and you openly promoted that company without hiding the fact that you are an investor. Is there an issue with this?

Kujutage nüüd ette, et on petturlikke konkurente, kes väidetavalt tegutsevad "samas tööstuses". Te propageerite seda, et inimesed kasutaksid selle asemel teie mittepettusliku ettevõtte tooteid. Kus on eetiline probleem? Kuidas see teid "ümber lükkaks"? See lihtsalt ei tee seda, välja arvatud juhul, kui te õlgedest kinni haarate.

Of course, Bitcoin is not a company. But in any case, the promise of Bitcoin is not that “there were no people who got in cheaper than you,” which is an absurd and impossible standard to live up to. The promise of Bitcoin is an open, decentralized, scarce, robust, programmable monetary system with no rulers. The product does what it proverbially says on the tin and Kelly’s critique falls flat.

“Second, bitcoin is not in fact decentralized — not only do miners group together to form ‘mining pools’ but wealth is also hugely concentrated.” 

Kelly ei võta kaevurite ja basseinide vahelist suhet õigesti kokku. Kaevurid on basseinidest erinevad üksused ja nad saavad oma räsimäära kiiresti teisele kogumile suunata. Ja kuigi basseine võib olla suhteliselt vähem, saavad üksikud kaevurid nende vahel vahetada ja teevad seda, kuna tegemist on julma konkurentsiga turul. Vaadake seda 23. septembri 2022. aasta seisuga ekraanipilti Braiins Insightsi armatuurlaud, mis näitab, kuidas basseinide peakorterid asuvad erinevates riikides üle maailma:

Aktuaalne on ka hiljutine Poolini uudis, mille kohaselt peatas ettevõte väljavõtmised. Seda arvestades osutasid paljud kaevurid oma räsimäärale ära from Poolin. Notice how Poolin’s global share of bitcoin mining hash rate has gone from 12% previously, down to around 4% at the time of writing. 

„Teisipäeval teatas MicroStrategy, et on bought another 301 bitcoins, mis tähendab, et ainuüksi sellele ettevõttele kuulub nüüd peaaegu 0.7 protsenti kogu tarnest.

Kelly claims to “steelman the argument” in this article, but unfortunately, she does a poor job steelmanning on the question of bitcoin ownership. If she grasped the libertarian and cypherpunk ethos of Bitcoin, she would understand that the point is to create a monetary system inimesi sellesse sundimata. So, of course given this, there will be some people who get it before others do. Those who get it will buy, earn or mine coins before others do. The fact that one company owns 0.7% of the circulating supply of bitcoin is not an issue.

So, Bitcoin remains far more decentralized than the “crypto” coins.

"Kolmandaks, "esimese astuja eelis" ei kesta alati." 

That’s true in a general business context, however to understand why Bitcoin is distinct, we have to understand just why and how far it beats alternatives, be they fiat money, gold or altcoins. Generally, in order to displace another product, you have to come up with something ten times better. But with Bitcoin, it’s doubtful that ten times better is even võimalik. Siin tsiteerin oma sõpra Gigit tema hiljutine Twitteri lõim:

 The design space of money is limited, and a ten-fold improvement on the monetary properties of Bitcoin is simply not possible. You can marginally improve one thing, but only by dramatically worsening trade-offs in other ways (verifiability, scalability, robustness, accessibility).

Seejärel kirjutab Kelly uuesti Maximalistide stiimuli kohta:

“The real reason bitcoin maximalists want to separate bitcoin from the rest of crypto is to create the illusion of scarcity in a world where there is none.”

It’s fair to say that Bitcoin Maximalists have an incentive and want to distinguish bitcoin from “crypto.” But the real question is: Are they right? Yes, they are.

Bitcoin is rightly distinguished from altcoins, but it just takes a lot of research and reading to understand why. Unfortunately, Kelly has not done the research required and presents only a shallow surface level misunderstanding.

See on Stephan Livera külalispostitus. Avaldatud arvamused on täielikult nende omad ja ei pruugi kajastada BTC Inc või Bitcoin Magazine'i arvamusi.