Not surprising: Keynesian economist doesn't like Austrian economics explanations.
Surprising: Bitcoin part is largely left uncriticized.
I would say the author of this article is clearly biased against the Austrian view that make Bitcoin attractive to the libertarian types so the criticism is largely unsurprising.
What we do see is that the author of the critique and the author of the book can't be both right, especially about history. The success of Bitcoin does seem to favor the Austrian interpretation, though I'm sure many will disagree. Whatever the case, the experiment that is Bitcoin will continue and give us more data to make the case ourselves.
> Not surprising: Keynesian economist doesn't like Austrian economics explanations.
When an Austrian economics fan says "Keynesian economist", it's like a creationist calling any sort of scientist who disagrees with them "evolutionary".
Coppola's assertions on history are reality-based. If you have particular objections, you'll need to go into more detail than just saying "Keynesian".
> Surprising: Bitcoin part is largely left uncriticized.
This was largely left to my review: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/07/saifedean-am... He makes a lot of assertions about Bitcoin that are simply factually untrue in plain English, and would only be barely true even being generous in assuming particular jargon.
To Ammous' credit, he appears to know more about the Bitcoin sphere than about ... basic economic history.
My feeling is that either system can probably work if there is some level of known policy stability, education, and the freedom and incentive to innovate. Most improvements to living standards are thanks to innovation (business, process, technological, etc).
In any case, if you believe Bitcoin's main value proposition is as a great store of value, then replay protection simply doesn't matter that much. You wouldn't be transacting enough to matter.
You are right, I suppose because we don't trade gold much, it doesn't make sense to ensure that it's secure when we transfer it. We transfer it so infrequently, there's nothing to worry about...
For the opt-in replay protection, that is a proposal which requires people to update their software to protect themselves. That's unacceptable, many people are unlikely to even know that a fork happened. Replay protection needs to be automatic for un-upgraded nodes.
If you're transacting with an exchange or a merchant and accidentally send both coins (as a result of a replay attack) instead of one, they're going to give it back. It's not nearly the disaster this article makes it out to be.
The only case where this is a problem are business to consumer transactions and p2p txs both of which you rarely do, if ever if you use BTC as a store of value.
It's not that simple. Once a transaction gets confirmed on one chain, it's permanently able to be spent on the other. If, due to fees or other reasons, that transaction is not confirmed quickly, the merchant may not be able to return the funds.
Also, automated system may have no way of handling it if those automated systems are not upgraded. Which means a merchant could end up with thousands of payments that they have to manually fix. And, those merchants will be forced into adopting the new software to correct the issue, they will have no choice to o ignore it.
It FORCES every deployed system in the entire ecosystem to upgrade, even systems that don't consent to the change. That's absolutely unacceptable.
> Once a transaction gets confirmed on one chain, it's permanently able to be spent on the other.
That's simply not true. If the utxo gets spent on the other chain, the two coins are permanently split.
> Also, automated system may have no way of handling it if those automated systems are not upgraded. Which means a merchant could end up with thousands of payments that they have to manually fix. And, those merchants will be forced into adopting the new software to correct the issue, they will have no choice to o ignore it.
And incur legal liability? Businesses will gladly do lots of manual work to avoid thousands of lawsuits.
Fact is, it's really only a problem for the businesses and even without any replay protection, they can very easily split coins by using either post-split coinbase coins or any coins ever mixed with any post-split coinbase coins.
> And incur legal liability? Businesses will gladly do lots of manual work to avoid thousands of lawsuits.
Pretty sure that forcing thousands of businesses to upgrade their systems to avoid defrauding users is grounds for a lawsuit itself.
Imagine if Google, Apple, and Microsoft teamed up to make an incompatible change to web browsers that broke all existing websites and exposed all of the users of those websites to risk of finical loss of the website admins did not perform an upgrade.
Who is liable? The admins who didn't even realize an upgrade was required, or Google, Microsoft, and Apple for creating the situation?
It used to be a 2-person company before it was acquired. A large part, surprisingly is scale. During Black Friday to Cyber Monday, for instance, the site is hit pretty hard by all the on-line shoppers. There's also a ton of different sites they manage, of which RetailMeNot is just one (deals2buy is another, a bunch of other international sites). They also have iOS and Android apps, mobile versions of the sites and a lot of community engagement.
There's a whole department to figure out which coupons do well and which affiliates pay better than which other ones to figure out which ones to feature. There's another department to manage all the different commission rates (mostly to call those companies to pay more). There's a whole community engagement group that tries to get more users to submit coupons or more users to use the site. There's a sales department that tries to get exclusive coupons in return for featuring them. There's even customer service to deal with users that are having trouble. Finally, there's a department to acquire new properties. Also, all those international coupon sites have their own mini versions of all these departments.
You also need HR, finance, office manager, etc. The headcount goes up pretty quick. When I left it was around 400 employees. It actually hasn't grown that much in 3+ years.
Wow, very interesting. I too thought it was a 1 man website, largely based on the aesthetics - is that accidental or deliberate? I think the 1 man show might be a better image.
There's a whole slew of designers and UX people, so whatever you see is definitely deliberate. They do a lot of usability testing, not just for the website, but the app, mobile site, etc. You would not believe how many iterations of something tiny like a slight change in the thumbs up button goes through. Everything is related to clicks and revenue, so there's a lot at stake for even small changes.
Surprising: Bitcoin part is largely left uncriticized.
I would say the author of this article is clearly biased against the Austrian view that make Bitcoin attractive to the libertarian types so the criticism is largely unsurprising.
What we do see is that the author of the critique and the author of the book can't be both right, especially about history. The success of Bitcoin does seem to favor the Austrian interpretation, though I'm sure many will disagree. Whatever the case, the experiment that is Bitcoin will continue and give us more data to make the case ourselves.