asciilifeform: i always thought it was a practical measure, to let people skimp on assaying
asciilifeform: fungibility in this case is an ideal, not the actual reality on the ground (atoms of Au are fungible, btc aren't - at least, as presently implemented)
asciilifeform: does anyone give a damn about coin history in those famous bars where people trade suitcases of benjamins for btc?
asciilifeform: other than the authors of the few most egregious heists
asciilifeform: as i understand, not too many people are presently concerned with dirt
asciilifeform: a penny to the dollar is still better than the gasenwagen.
asciilifeform: miner shits out the cleanest possible coin, so in principle if one's coin is 'dirty' enough, a miner might seem like a good investment.
asciilifeform: anybody wonder how many people purchase miners just to launder coin?
asciilifeform: i don't really keep track of the 'scene', and in fact ended up in this channel entirely by accident!
asciilifeform: but, to be honest, i'm not the one to ask
asciilifeform: i vaguely recall primecoin having its public goatfuck moment
asciilifeform: tape holds until it doesn't (yes, actual duct tape is a material that can be dealt with scientifically; we're thinking of the traditional 'philosophical' duct tape that just fscking snaps on you)
asciilifeform: concrete/steel have breaking points, specified strength
asciilifeform: btc is heavy on the concrete and steel; 'curecoin' (for example) is mostly tape.
asciilifeform: the former is concrete and steel, the latter - 'duct tape.'
asciilifeform: you can cut any 'weirdo' alt into two kinds of parts: actual mechanical parts - what will continue to work in just the algorithmic way specified, by 'byzantine' consensus of the participant nodes; and 'promises' - parts that depend on a handful of human doing as they promised
asciilifeform: isn't that where they had nominally 'unspendable' reserves that got spent?
asciilifeform: then, of course, is the other end of this spectrum:
asciilifeform: scammers scam, and people who think themselves more clever than the scammer try to ride along
asciilifeform: alts as the presently exist seem like a modernized version of 'penny stocks'
asciilifeform: as far as i can tell (by no means an expert view), the thing that mainly drives adoption of classic btc is precisely reliability-as-store-of-value.
asciilifeform: from the 'store of value' point of view, they expect that they can get a similar quantity of g or c or whatnot for the coin later.
asciilifeform: unless they in particular wished it folded
asciilifeform: but even with a coin that provably represents useful work: why should someone give you gold or cocaine because you helped fold a protein?
asciilifeform: if this were really so, 'curecoin' and the like would be great hits.
asciilifeform: (coin with 'useless' workfunction, difficulty rampup, all the things we know and love)
asciilifeform: the person who carries it out will expect to be paid in something that is actually a stable store of value
asciilifeform: at the risk of repeating myself: 'moronhashcrackcoin' or 'foldprotein1B41coin' only has value to whoever commissioned that calculation.
asciilifeform: and were it to exist, i'd have no part of it (otherwise occupied.)
asciilifeform: Duffer1: in case this wasn't obvious, this is not a product that threatens to actually exist.
asciilifeform: result at the end of the day should be to make it a hard fact that anyone who carries out the kind of calculation you want done, ends up with X btc for his trouble
asciilifeform: (one is to promote a certain calculation; the other - store of value.)
asciilifeform: because they serve entirely different purposes
asciilifeform: the subtle thing here is that 'useful' workfuncts must coexist with 'useless' ones - ideally, in the same blockchain.
asciilifeform: 'hard' isn't enough for the purpose of coin, you also need ease of verification.
asciilifeform: the problem with workfunctions that do something useful is that, unless the supply of such jobs naturally tapers off (all interesting proteins found in nature eventually 'folded')
asciilifeform: that'd be an example of the 'promises'
asciilifeform: (vs. an idiotchain that merely promises with kind words to fund things)
asciilifeform: an altchain that *actually folds* would have no problem with wealth injection from the 'meatspace' universe
asciilifeform: but it's one way to solve the energy-minimal 'where should the atoms go' question, yes.
asciilifeform: x-ray crystallography is an actual physical measurement
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: you're probably thinking of ab initio protein folding
asciilifeform: (actually coughing up a workfunction that does useful work is left as an exercise for the alert reader.)
asciilifeform: you, the worker, know that it is an honest trade, because you bring 100 moronhashcoins and get 1 btc, every step of the way, for arbitrarily small chunks.
asciilifeform: the whole exercise takes place on the block chain.
asciilifeform: say, i want mr. moron's md5 hash 'cracked.' i offer to trade 10btc for 1000 moronhashcrackcoins.
asciilifeform: prog. workfunctions would give you a single coin with multiple workfunctions ('coloured' by origin, if you like), and so the actual market value of a particular 'work' could be determined.
asciilifeform: instead, buy ipv4 space, etc. the way spammers do.
asciilifeform: that is, if you are a large miner, it is increasingly a bad idea to look like what you are
asciilifeform: right now, panicking idiots are overwhelmingly incentivising covert mining.
asciilifeform: hard to attract miners if you make total war on them when they start to succeed.
asciilifeform: and drives a wedge between user groups with conflicting interests (existing stakeholders want a difficult-to-mine coin, those who invested in miners want the miners to keep working)
asciilifeform: every forced move of this kind is a 'schism event'
asciilifeform: given that it costs nothing to spawn a new alt, with a new workfunction, while asics are costly
asciilifeform: at first glance, it would seem like the altchain devs could always outrun the asic folks
asciilifeform: anything short of programmable workfunction will lead to a cat'n'mouse game rather expensive and unproductively unpleasant for all involved.
asciilifeform: or hell, even fpga with sdram controller
asciilifeform: the first joker who bothers to bake an scrypt asic will devour the altchains like smallpox devoured aboriginals
asciilifeform: the 'memory hard' people are what is known in the armchair general community as a 'target-rich environment.'
asciilifeform: the widespread obsession with 'memory-hard' workfunctions is peculiar
asciilifeform: (if it's the former, this is deadly boring)
asciilifeform: did i miss something? where does it live? on a particular machine? or on every node running the block chain?
asciilifeform: 'A contract is essentially an automated agent that lives on the Ethereum network, has an Ethereum address and balance, and can send and receive transactions.'
asciilifeform: leaving aside the question whether this was a smart thing to do, that's what it looks like at first glance.
asciilifeform: did someone simply uncomment the scripting module in classic bitcoin?
asciilifeform: Vexual: about the same as apple's ipnohe-4.
asciilifeform: Vexual: that'd be Grignard reaction, no?
asciilifeform: the enviro-whiner substitute for halon, 'halotron', is considerably less effective and more poisonous.
asciilifeform: or ordinary fire extinguishers filled with it.
asciilifeform: you can buy halon bottles with self-opening valves (smoke detector)
asciilifeform: semi-banned by enviro-whiners. but still obtainable.
