(At least, that's how it should work if I understand the theory behind bitcoin correctly).
Bitcoin's computation does the job of securing the blockchain by forcing an attacker to spend computation cycles to match up the computation done for these hashes.
So we could call this approach to scaling communications, "brute-force messaging"? (..since it also forces anyone who wants to enlarge its available message space to pre-compute hashes ...with an ongoing race condition, so "raced, brute-force messaging"?) Scaling seems a bit off though, since its design enforces "expensive, frantic scarcity". That seems rather limited for a growing population's needs for communications around an increasingly valuable resource base.
Bear in mind that the proof-of-work algorithm actually aims to reduce chatter on the network. Every ten minutes, a single Bitcoin full node broadcasts: "Hey, this is the latest state of the ledger, and you can trust it because [insert proof-of-work that was calculated out-of-band]." So, as the network's processing power scales up, the computation difficulty is also scaled up, so that the "message space" required for consensus remains constant.
> That seems rather limited for a growing population's needs for communications around an increasingly valuable resource base.
While the way distributed consensus is achieved (see "Byzantine Generals' Problem") consumes most of the network's processing power, it's what makes the resource valuable. However, since this is done in parallel, it hardly consumes any of the network's bandwidth, freeing up that "message space" for important things like sending/receiving/propagating transactions, which are much less demanding computationally. All that is required there is some elliptic curve cryptography (ie. a valid public/private key pair + any low-powered device with correct software and an internet connection.)
HTTPS is the means to an end, bitcoin is just wasting resources.
If the point was just to maintain the blockchain integrity there would be no need to make its difficulty ever increasing.
Bitcoins is also a means to an end, you just don't seem to understand what the end is.
> If the point was just to maintain the blockchain integrity there would be no need to make its difficulty ever increasing.
This is incorrect. The blockchain requires miners to establish an unbiased ledger history. The difficulty parameter is tweaked so that the whole system can be future proofed against an adversary creating a convincing blockchain history (which was biased to double-spending or retracting a transaction).
What was the excuse in the early days of bitcoin then when the difficulty was orders of magnitude lower?
Difficulty is ever increasing just because of the financial model bitcoin tries to propagate. The author of bitcoin wanted to make it deflational and so it had to be this way.
That part has nothing to do with the integrity of the blockchain and you are mixing two concepts here: Blockchain, which was a great invention and bitcoin, a financial experience (nothing against experiences from my part) which turned out to be a waste of resources.
> What was the excuse in the early days of bitcoin then when the difficulty was orders of magnitude lower?
... because there wasn't as much hashing power in the bitcoin network? Isn't that obvious? The difficulty parameters are tweaked so that the proof of work takes 10 minutes for the whole network. As the network gets bigger, you need to make it harder to maintain a 10 minute proof of work.
> Difficulty is ever increasing just because of the financial model bitcoin tries to propagate. The author of bitcoin wanted to make it deflational and so it had to be this way.
Eh. You're full of shit. But that's your prerogative.
> That part has nothing to do with the integrity of the blockchain and you are mixing two concepts here: Blockchain, which was a great invention and bitcoin, a financial experience (nothing against experiences from my part) which turned out to be a waste of resources.
Integrity of the blockchain is maintained by cryptographic hashes. There are other security properties (such as proof of work and thus non-malleability) that are maintained by the difficulty parameter.
Higher difficulty don't waste any more resources than lower difficulty.
It's a cryptocurrency where you have to prove that you are retaining a copy of a file. Whitepaper included.
These people are also behind IPFS, the distributed alternative to HTTP (ambitious, huh?)
> the bottom line is that investing a hundred+ megawatt in a system that creates thousands of jobs is a valuable economic move, not a waste
But yes, that could totally be done! Only problem is everyone would have the result, which I don't think they'd like too much.
Say gold is the currency base. Now we discover Alzheimer's can be cured with a medicine that requires a lot of gold in the processing, and the price of gold skyrockets. That causes the price of everything else (priced in gold) to plummet.
However, I think a compelling case can be made that the amount of hashpower being used to secure Bitcoin is overkill for the measly 3tps that the network is currently capable of. If the same hashpower was used to secure 100X more transactions, it wouldn't seem like such a waste of resources.
1. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/putting-the-blockchain-... 2. https://www.gridcoin.us/ 3. http://www.coindesk.com/5-global-problems-bitcoins-proof-wor...
To be fair, the blockchain is the largest distributed rainbow table in history, so it does have some value in that sense.
But arguing that "it is a waste" to use hashing is to not understand the security properties offered by bitcoin and why it's actually vital to use hashes.
This is what they posted about 2016: https://ripple.com/insights/2016-will-be-the-year-you-realiz...