Miami Uploads Bitcoin White Paper To Municipal Website

The city of Miami on Wednesday uploaded a copy of the Bitcoin white paper to its municipal website, joining a growing chorus of governments and companies now hosting bitcoin's original blueprint. From a report: Mayor Francis Suarez emphasized his commitment to "turn Miami into a hub for crypto innovation" in his tweet announcing the upload. He's been pumping the U.S. city's potential as a landing ground for California tech expats for weeks on social media. Miami is the "first municipal government to host Satoshi's white paper," Suarez asserted. Also see: Twitter thread on who else is participating.

How about HashCash

[lessSockMorePuppet]

Maybe go back to Bitcoin's roots and fix the spam issue while we're at it?

Re:

[Moblaster]

They just learned how to use S3 to host files. Be patient! I am sure Miami dabbling in the world's most volatile cryptocurrency will end well. If not for them, for someone. And if not soon, then soon enough.

Re:

[Whibla]

... Anyone want to venture a guess?

There were a number of reasons but, at a guess, the one you're alluding to is / was independent of government(s).

The irony is not lost on me.

I would add though: while the intent (of bitcoin) was admirable, the implementation has proved to be flawed. The sheer waste of electricity is 'criminal'! It may have had first mover advantage but, imho, bitcoin needs to die asap, to be 'replaced' by one of the more efficient, and scalable, 'coins'.

Re:

[Whibla]

This is a naive reasoning. A car requires more energy than a horse, a plane requires more energy than a sailboat...

I'm afraid this metaphor is lost on me

The progress is using energy to increase the quality of life.

Let's say I agree with the notion that cryptocurrencies increase the quality of life. It's also a given that any cryptocurrency uses energy.

This is what Bitcoin does by removing all the possible manipulations at the money level, known as the Cantillon Effect.

Firstly, this is rubbish. If you're going to invoke the Cantillon Effect as an argument in favour of bitcoin you're going to have to explain how it differs, in first order effects, from investing in stocks. In my view it doesn't - those who have already invested gain disproportionately from any change in, for example, interest rates

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

They just learned how to use S3 to host files. Be patient! I am sure Miami dabbling in the world's most volatile cryptocurrency will end well. If not for them, for someone. And if not soon, then soon enough.

Gonna be the latest bubble. Sigh, I'll be out in the back yard, munching popcorn and enjoying Tequila shots.

Re:

[dimko]

And Dollar will end well? Invisible tax anyone? Anyone wants to buy currency that tomorrow is guaranteed to cost less? And as added benefit if you wait 2 days it will become EVEN CHEAPER! Don't lose on the value, buy one today while it is still expensive!

Ban it

[GameboyRMH]

Cryptocurrency does far more harm than good. It enables a shitload of criminal finance and is an environmental disaster.

Re:

[lessSockMorePuppet]

Criminal finance accurately describes the vast majority of Wall Street.

Re:

[GameboyRMH]

Yes, and Bitcoin can do all of that and worse. Try investing in a terror group or North Korea through a stock exchange and see how far you get.

Re:

[GameboyRMH]

It sort of does, the big difference is that cash is restricted by physical bottlenecks - that's why 500 Euro notes were a terrible idea and there are limits to how much undeclared cash you can legally travel with, for example.

Bitcoin is all of the dark sides of cash with none of the physical limitations and a healthy dollop of environmental destruction on the side.

Re: Ban it

[Malays2 bowman]

Yes, massive server farms that use more power than a frigging steel smelting plant and runs 24/7 to boot, to create IMAGINARY money.

Yes, IMAGINARY. What will people think of us in 200 years? =[

Re:

[Ceseuron]

Yes, massive server farms that use more power than a frigging steel smelting plant and runs 24/7 to boot, to create IMAGINARY money.

Yes, IMAGINARY. What will people think of us in 200 years? =[

Probably the same thing they'll think of us because of our use of fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, and glossing over it all with meaningless, bullshit platitudes along the lines of "backed by the full faith and credit".

Seriously, though, what makes cryptocurrency imaginary? Its supposed value? If we use that metric, fiat currency doesn't fare any better than cryptocurrency in that it also only has value to the extent that people believe it does. You can print numbers, pictures of dead people, and

Re:

[famebait]

IMAGINARY money.

What other kind is there?

And don't bring me that gold-backed nonsense.
None of them are anymore, you'd still have to trust the issuer to honour the contract, and the value of gold itself is driven almost exclusively by the demand for it as de-facto currency.
Value is all in our heads (assisted by written records and computers), and that is the entire point of money.

Things are worth whatever else the available takers are willing to give at the time - no more, no less.
That goes for everything, from real estate

Re:

[lessSockMorePuppet]

Try investing in a terror group [...] through a stock exchange and see how far you get.

Easily done! [yahoo.com]

Or, for the more civilian-minded, try this stock [yahoo.com]. You can't tell me they're not a terror group. ;)

Re:

[MrL0G1C]

And? That doesn't make bitcoin OK.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Perhaps we shouldn't make so many activities illegal in the first place.

Money laundering is really just privacy-enhanced finance.

Re:

[GameboyRMH]

Money laundering is really just privacy-enhanced finance.

That's what I told the DA. Why is it anyone else's business if I want to sell weapons to Al Qaeda and spend the proceeds on a few kilos of Mexican conflict cocaine, buy off a few local politicians, put out hits on some of my more annoying neighbors, and stuff a nice nest egg offshore without having to fill out one of those tax forms that got Capone busted? Just live and let live man, nobody's getting hurt here.

Re:

[Krishnoid]

As long as you've got the right connections [youtu.be], you're right.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

I want to sell weapons to Al Qaeda

Weapon sales to terrorists are a tiny fraction of 1% of all money laundering. All the other criminalized stuff makes it even harder to notice the things that are actually a problem.

a few kilos of Mexican conflict cocaine,

The conflict is caused by the criminalization. "We need to criminalize cocaine because criminalizing cocaine causes conflict!" is a stupid argument.

buy off a few local politicians

Yet another reason to have less crime. Criminals need political favors much more than law-abiding businesspeople.

stuff a nice nest egg offshore

If fewer activities were criminalized, there would be much less nee

Re:

[dimko]

'is an environmental disaster' - you mean like paint on trucks of paper disaster? As opposed to expendable power that is mostly used in places where there is excessive inexpensive power?(in order to stay profitable people who do it leave near power plants, use free renewable) "It enables a shitload of criminal finance" and normal money laundering is significantly lower than freaking bitcoin and what not? Also legit companies are able to convert money into bitcoin to avoid taxes, right?

Re:

[remoteshell]

Bitcoin Explained: Imagine if keeping your car idling 24/7 produced solved Sudokus you could trade for heroin. I didn't originate that saying, but it's worth repeating ;-)

bring back the yayo

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck krypto kurrency. Bring back the COCAINE, man!

Is a mining death spiral a possibility?

[14erCleaner]

Serious question: if the value of a cryptocurrency drops enough, it should become uneconomical to mine, and miners will drop out. Could this lead to a self-reinforcing pattern where you're left with nobody to process the transactions?

Re:

[GameboyRMH]

Absolutely possible, energy price spikes have threatened to cause this exact problem in the past. Bitcoin's lightning transactions were partially made as a workaround to avoid this.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Could this lead to a self-reinforcing pattern where you're left with nobody to process the transactions?

Bitcoin is designed to prevent this. When there are fewer miners, transaction fees go up, thus attracting new miners.

Also, there are blackhat miners using stolen electricity. Since their marginal cost is $0, they will never drop out.

Re:

[Beerismydad]

The Internet Research Agency was given a two-week vacation after all their hard work leading up to the election. Don't worry, they'll all be back here soon enough.

Re:

[kqs]

Haven't noticed a difference honestly. Personally, I'm just as worried (and careful) as I was before, but I do feel better now that the person in charge seems to be trying to improve the covid situation, rather than spending all of his time whining that his election was stolen by the ghost of a south american dictator. Sometimes it's the little things that matter.

/Facepalm

[Gravis Zero]

I doubt any of the idiots that pushed this crap actually understand the concepts that Bitcoin is based on. Clearly they aren't understanding the whole decentralization part of it because they are trying to centralize cryptocurrencies in Florida.

Crypto "Innovation"

[backslashdot]

Do you realize the whole thing is a pyramid scheme? It's like GME .. it's fun if you get in early but to those who buy at the top it'll be a collapse when it becomes unsustainable and the fat rats jump ship en masse. The question is where that point of unsustainability is. It all depends on psychology and marketing. I mean, GME stock itself is like a bitcoin. Ultra-speculation on nothing other than "someone will desire this stock worse than I need the money."

Re:

[emc_deus]

Are stocks also "pyramid" schemes? Because I cannot see the difference.

Some threads on Bitcoin

[Sebby]

Here's a couple of good Twitter threads [twitter.com] by Stephen Diehl (@smdiehl) about what Bitcoin really is (with an earlier one further down below).

*** TRIGGER WARNING The Bitcoin boosters might want to avert their eyes! ***

Let's discuss the environmental cost of bitcoin. Because despite all the push for sustainable and green investment in the tech sector, there's a giant smoldering Chernobyl sitting at the heart of Silicon Valley which a lot of investors would prefer you remain quiet about. Thread (1/)

TLDR on bitcoin economics: It's a pyramid-shaped investment scheme backed by the collective delusion that value can created out of nothing by convincing greater fools to buy it after you do. [references earlier thread, also down below] (2/)

That alone is sufficiently awful on its own merits, but on top of this the environmental damages of bitcoin are enough to make even Greta Thunberg weep at the pointless waste of it all. (3/)

The underlying technology of bitcoin is based on the notion of "mining", a technical term for a process that keeps the network running and processing transactions. (4/)

I won't cover the details of the algorithm, suffice it to say the premise of bitcoin mining is to prove how much power you can waste, and the more power you can waste, the more tokens you can probabilistically secure in exchange for your energy waste. (5/)

And so people have set up entire warehouses of computer hardware dedicated to run 24/7 consuming power and performing the trial computations required by the protocol. Globally this consumes *nation state* levels of energy to keep it all running. (6/)

Bitcoin mining is essentially a fucked up version of Candy Crush where you solve puzzles for coins, except the coins go to buy darknet fentanyl, launder money for warlords and provide gambling for hedge fund managers. (7/)

And the scale of this waste has some scary numbers attached to it. A single bitcoin transaction alone consumes 621 KWh, or half a million times more energy consumption than a credit card payment. (8/)

The bitcoin network annually wastes 78 TWh (terrawatt hours) annually or the energy consumption of several *million* US households. WolframAlpha gives some scary comparisons to help you relate to how much energy this is (think nuclear weapons). (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=77.78+terrawatt+hours [wolframalpha.com])(9/)

Unlike other economic activities, the bitcoin scheme produces absolutely nothing for all this waste. It is a pure speculative activity of people gambling on the random movements of prices and the only output is simply shuffling numbers around in a computer at insane cost. (10/)

In addition to the energy waste and CO2 emitted, the mining process itself requires constant replacement of hardware and produces a steady stream of waste from broken and exhausted computer parts. All of which are full of toxins and rare earth metals. (11/)

The network produces 11.27 kilotons of waste annually or 96 grams of electronic waste per transaction. This is the equivalent annual e-waste as several small countries and equivalent to the waste of 482,456 people living at the German standard. (12/)

Try to imagine a future where paying for your morning coffee involved smashing an iPhone and burning enough fossil fuels to run your entire household for 60 days. That's the environmental cost of the "revolutionary" technology behind #Bitcoin in a nutshell. (13/)

Climate scientists have estimated that #Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2C. And this is just one of *hundreds* of other cryptocurrency networks that run on this apocalyptically wasteful set of ideas. (14/) (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [nature.com])

Climate change is not some abstract threat happening elsewhere, it is very

Influencer propelled investments

[backslashdot]

I am not against it, but what "innovation" are they talking about? A popular influencer can push crypto or stocks up more than technology or intrinsic qualities.. of course at some point influencers doing that may lose credibility unless they are good at misdirecting blame .. so basically someone who either has a cult following or is known as a billionaire obviously can misdirect better because their word carries a lot of weight. I wonder whether penny crypto or stock companies already pay tiktokker, tweete

Florida: it fits

[Anonymous Coward]

Florida has no money cap on the value of a principal residence protected against judgment creditors. Racketeers, telemarketing scammers, and real estate swindlers love Florida. This sounds less like an attempt to attract innovation, than an advertisement seeking drug money and flight capital.

a florida tradition

[retchdog]

Florida (especially Miami) likes to put out the welcome mat for people with shady money. I'm not saying btc is crooked but a lot of crooks use btc. i suspect the innovation here is keeping Miami ltself in the shady money biz.

Nice

[rootb]

It's nice that the Bitcoin (BSV) white paper is going mainstream. I just hope that people read it and see that BTC is not Bitcoin

Yawn

[PCM2]

Wake me up when all the worshippers in the Crypto Cargo Cult are rich and completely free of government regulation of their finances.