Talk:Bitcoin
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[edit] Disappointing
I made an edit including all the changes I added to the talk page. David Gerard is not a skeptic, he is blindly against ANYTHING I add to the page.
I made an edit including a critical attack on bitcoin (negative for bitcoin, this is probably the most critical attack on bitcoin for the least expense), a correction of terminology (neutral to bitcoin), mentioned diseconomies of scale (positive for bitcoin), and finally included this:
" The most important of these being the inability to predict the value of a hash function without calculating it. With protein folding not being designed to be difficult to predict, solutions may have a big optimization one day, giving attackers with this optimization an advantage."
which TaiC, another admin said to include "The section about Curecoin is snark that turned out to be accurate. Insert a line about security risks after it instead of deleting it."
He reverted the other half of my edit with 'almost all of this edit was "cool story bro"'
It is truly disappointing to see this. And no, this isn't about him disliking bitcoin, I have a paragraph about an attack on Bitcoin that is well cited that he deleted. I didn't touch the parts of the page such as the altcoin mention since he disagrees.
In the pages discussions he has been incredibly obtuse, making strange illogical arguments rather than addressing the issue:
'"really Bitcoin is just a money transmission protocol" This is not quite as ridiculously incorrect as claiming Gamergate is about ethics in game journalism, but it's on the same scale. We have a whole article on everything else Bitcoin has turned out to be. I'm really not going to buy your blatantly self-serving claims that altcoins are a scam but somehow Bitcoin isn't - David Gerard (talk) 16:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)'
This type of behaviour likely wouldn't have happened if I had just gone with the crowd and left the page at Bitcoin is bad for these <incorrect reasons>, but I thought RATIONALwiki would appreciate me removing irrational reasons and adding MORE rational reasons to think Bitcoin is bad.
You may laugh about this, but I think this is a good time to take a moment to look at how your teams biases (and not biases towards rationality) are effecting this wiki.
--73.168.27.59 (talk) 19:46, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- I am incredibly biased. Not about bitcoin. I barely care about cryptocurrencies at all, except in the narrow context of potentially problematic black markets. But I promise, everyone here has seen this exact screed before with some words swapped out here and there. Click the random article button a few times. When you find an article with a talk page: scroll down to the first post by an anonymous IP(take another random article if there isn't one). See if there's a substantial difference between what you've posted and what they've posted. I'll be even odds that you won't. Ikanreed (talk) 19:54, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- So my lack of an account is the issue?--73.168.27.59 (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- No. It's just that new users tend to think that they've got the unique ideas no one has seen before, and wiki collective is suppressing. An account would help your credibility(unless you build up a negative reputation) but it's not the point. My main point is the "but I thought this was RATIONALwiki"(yes, we are) and "You have a bias"(yes, our articles do) just don't work as arguments the way you're thinking, and we've seen them thousands of times before, and almost exclusively it's about one crank idea the individual newcomer is sure is rational. Ikanreed (talk) 20:24, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- The thing about my ideas are that they are supporting his viewpoint for the most part. I didn't claim his bias is for one idea or another, but against me editing. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret his comments, but I think he's implying they're trivial edits. Here is the edit where he removed it. In order, the first edit is slightly positive explaining that Bitcoin isn't necessarily guaranteed to become centralized. This is useful for when Bitcoiners may say "haha, look they were wrong, this discredits their whole article", however there are many good points made in the article. In that same paragraph I clarified that mining pools exist to decrease variance (neutral), then I wrote a paragraph explaining an attack on Bitcoin (negative for bitcoin). I wrote a few small edits and included a section requested by a janitor.
- I would prefer this page not have any inaccuracies since it may lead to the rest of this page being dismissed, therefore I edited out minor errors like the misuse of "49% attack".--73.168.27.59 (talk) 20:37, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- No. It's just that new users tend to think that they've got the unique ideas no one has seen before, and wiki collective is suppressing. An account would help your credibility(unless you build up a negative reputation) but it's not the point. My main point is the "but I thought this was RATIONALwiki"(yes, we are) and "You have a bias"(yes, our articles do) just don't work as arguments the way you're thinking, and we've seen them thousands of times before, and almost exclusively it's about one crank idea the individual newcomer is sure is rational. Ikanreed (talk) 20:24, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- So my lack of an account is the issue?--73.168.27.59 (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- (EC)I can see why you'd be frustrated. I can't address the factual merit of your edits, but I can say something about your writing: it made the article seem rougher and less coherent. I'd volunteer to jump in and polish it if I were sure the facts were solid, too. However, from the discussion above (thank you for discussing it as you apparently did), it seems that you hadn't persuaded the locals. That's likely where your changes went awry. You were doing a good job of talking it over. You were on the right path to changing something (not everything) and then ... frustration. Nothing personal, your were just not yet persuasive.MarmotHead (talk) 19:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- I tried discussing and included everything I thought wasn't controversial (basically everything that wasn't disagreed with), but I guess I can't include anything because it's a "cool story bro" edit. I appreciate the commentary on my writing style though. If the undo edit said "make things more coherent" rather than "cool story bro" I would have done so.--73.168.27.59 (talk) 20:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- You don't seem to have understood the objections to your marvellous propositions, and then you add more on top - David Gerard (talk) 21:05, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
- I tried to add only things that weren't controversial. There also wasn't a response to "I'm going to add everything except "Altcoin Reasoning" and "Scaling" (since those two are still being discussed) if that's fine with you" for three days while you were editing the page. Apparently I failed and I included controversial things. I just realized I misread your section about 49% where you said you only wanted a side mention of the 49% attack, however that was only this edit which could have been reverted by itself.
- It is pretty condescending to sarcastically call my edits and talk pages "marvelous propositions". I am just trying to make the page more accurate.--73.168.27.59 (talk) 22:05, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
[edit] "prosecution futures"
I found a few sources for this marvellous phrase in January, all leading back to this NYT story on Silk Road:
- “Bitcoin isn’t really a ‘coin’ as much as a distributed, public balance ledger,” Mr. Weaver added, “with every balance and transaction recorded.” Hence Bitcoin’s wry new nickname in legal circles: “Prosecution Futures.”
Anyone heard it elsewhere, or via someone other than Nicholas Weaver? - David Gerard (talk) 18:31, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
[edit] An apology to IP: I was wrong, a lot of alts are *even scammier*
Per recent edits, the IP above was right: a lot of alts are even scammier than Bitcoin. Oh boy - David Gerard (talk) 12:02, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
[edit] Prediction of the bitcoinpocalypse
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.0534v11.pdf
Spotted on /r/buttcoin. "'m on page 30 of this paper and it is FUCKING AWESOME! It contains the perfect amount of bitcoin bitch slaps, while maintaining a level of professionalism. My guess is that this paper in rough draft form contained at least 72 "bitcoin is totally fucking stupid, and yet, here we are"" - David Gerard (talk) 18:20, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
[edit] Pump and dump
Looking at the history of the article I see that we have been calling this a Pump and dump scheme since the article's inception in June 2011. As it's now 2015 that seems rather a long time, as I was under the impression that "pump and dump" usually works on a shorter time-scale. Or are we suggesting that it's still being "pumped" and the "dump" is yet to come?--Coffee (talk) 19:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
- Didn't Mt Gox already do it once? --Someon (talk) 19:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
- The big hodlers got coins at costs of cents a coin - David Gerard (talk) 21:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
[edit] Name for Bitcoin "Enthusiasts"
I propose that we refer to such a person as a "bitwit". Rhymes with "nitwit". CorruptUser (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
- "Hodler" will do. Standard greeting: "Sorry for your loss" - David Gerard (talk) 22:55, 29 March 2015 (UTC)