> There are a lot of organizations with the resources needed to perform the "51% attack" on Bitcoin and no compelling reason to think that a faster attack is not possible.
I'm aware of that. There are also lots of organizations with the power to kill you, yet you won't lose your sleep, because they have nothing to gain from that, so you are pretty sure that it won't happen. It could be argued that the central banks have a lot to lose to Bitcoin, so they should attack it. But after giving it a bit of thought, I remembered that most people just try to pass the current problems to the next guy (think of presidents, bankers, etc), so why would they bother? Right now, Bitcoin is not big enough to be a threat to anyone. It will keep growing as a threat, but everyone will pass the problem to the next guy, until Bitcoin becomes too big to be stopped. If there is a future that makes sense, this is it. Bitcoin takes over because lazy politicians don't do what they have to (in this crazy world, where their function seem to be to ruin everything), and ironically, that will be the best for everyone.
> For the same reason you should care about what cryptography theorists, physicists, and doctors have to say.
I was thinking about economists mostly (which in many cases will have vested interests), but still, if it works it works. Many theorists have spoken against the phone, the internet, the email, the aeroplanes, etc, and see what happened. I'm no cryptographer, but Bitcoin doesn't seem like something that would require one to begin with since all its crypto was done at the user level, it's pretty simple. Satoshi didn't try to create his own hashing algorithm or anything like that.
> You are calling the informed opinions of dozens of experts in cryptography and economics "raging" because they are saying that the system you love and support is based on dubious technical and economic ideas. It sounds more like you started out believing that Bitcoin is the future and are not willing to accept any argument that concludes anything else.
There are quite informed people on the other side too. So what do we do about them? Ignore them? I said raging, because Bitcoin has this crazy effect on a lot of people. They will hate Bitcoin for no reason, spread outright lies, and try to convince everyone that it is a scam. Why? We still don't know what causes it, so we just call it fear of the unknown.
"Satoshi didn't try to create his own hashing algorithm or anything like that."
No, he tried to create his own digital cash system, and digital cash is a cryptography problem that has been extensively studied by cryptographers (and had been studied for decades prior to Bitcoin). Bitcoin is also a system that involves multiparty computation, and secure multiparty computation has also been studied extensively by cryptographers, also going back decades. It is a mistake to think that the only relevant cryptography in Bitcoin are digital signatures and hash functions.
This is really the crux of the issue here. Bitcoin is not a hash function. It is not a digital signature system. The security of hash functions and digital signatures is not in question here; Bitcoin could be vulnerable to attack even if it is built using secure hash functions and secure signature systems. The point of having a security definition is to be clear about these things. We need to be clear about what the meaning of "security" is in the case of Bitcoin if we want to make any statements about whether or not Bitcoin actually achieves that security goal. It is not hard to see that the definition of security for a hash function or a digital signature system is not what we want for Bitcoin; what is not so clear is what we actually do want.
I'm aware of that. There are also lots of organizations with the power to kill you, yet you won't lose your sleep, because they have nothing to gain from that, so you are pretty sure that it won't happen. It could be argued that the central banks have a lot to lose to Bitcoin, so they should attack it. But after giving it a bit of thought, I remembered that most people just try to pass the current problems to the next guy (think of presidents, bankers, etc), so why would they bother? Right now, Bitcoin is not big enough to be a threat to anyone. It will keep growing as a threat, but everyone will pass the problem to the next guy, until Bitcoin becomes too big to be stopped. If there is a future that makes sense, this is it. Bitcoin takes over because lazy politicians don't do what they have to (in this crazy world, where their function seem to be to ruin everything), and ironically, that will be the best for everyone.
> For the same reason you should care about what cryptography theorists, physicists, and doctors have to say.
I was thinking about economists mostly (which in many cases will have vested interests), but still, if it works it works. Many theorists have spoken against the phone, the internet, the email, the aeroplanes, etc, and see what happened. I'm no cryptographer, but Bitcoin doesn't seem like something that would require one to begin with since all its crypto was done at the user level, it's pretty simple. Satoshi didn't try to create his own hashing algorithm or anything like that.
> You are calling the informed opinions of dozens of experts in cryptography and economics "raging" because they are saying that the system you love and support is based on dubious technical and economic ideas. It sounds more like you started out believing that Bitcoin is the future and are not willing to accept any argument that concludes anything else.
There are quite informed people on the other side too. So what do we do about them? Ignore them? I said raging, because Bitcoin has this crazy effect on a lot of people. They will hate Bitcoin for no reason, spread outright lies, and try to convince everyone that it is a scam. Why? We still don't know what causes it, so we just call it fear of the unknown.