[ExI] Sell your Bitcoins!

Tue May 19 15:48:03 UTC 2026

On Tue, May 19, 2026, 9:52 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Mon, May 18, 2026 at 10:11 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> for all that is known, P could = NP, and then all cryptography would be
>> illusory.*
>
>
> *All cryptography except for quantum cryptography, but I don't know how
> you could make a cryptocurrency based on that.  *
>

Even quantum cryptography would be dead if P = NP, because quantum
cryptography is just a quantum key exchange. It still relies on classical
encryption algorithms for protecting the bulk message. Though I suppose you
could do a one time pad (OTP) encryption which would remain secure even if
P = NP, but this requires you to send a key as long as the message to be
encrypted, which may not be practical.

You are right that there's probably no way to build a cryptocurrency on it.
Quantum cryptography provides only a line that you can tell when it's
tapped, but it provides no means of authentication or signatures, and
crypto relies on a digital signature scheme.

> *> Consider how little comparative time went by between when RSA was
>> invented (in 1977) and when it first went into commercial use in 1982, just
>> 5 years.*
>>
>
> *Actually a system exactly equivalent to RSA was invented 4 years earlier
> in 1973 by Clifford Cocks, the discovery was classified but I'm sure
> intelligence agencies studied it diligently during those 4 years because
> from the very start it was clear that Cocks's idea was entirely practical.
> His** contribution to cryptography was not known to the general public
> until 1997 when his work was declassified, why that didn't happen in 1977
> when the idea was independently discovered by others I do not know. *
>

Perhaps it remained classified so adversaries didn't know how far ahead
they were or what areas they'd been studying.

I think there's a similar story where the inventor of the Diffe-Hellman
protocol went to the NSA and asked if this was possible and they told him
no, but later it was revealed they knew it was possible and had known of it
since the 60s.

> *> We've had 30 years looking at lattice based cryptogtaphy and no one has
>> found a weakness yet. *
>
>
> *Lattice encryption may have been discovered 30 years ago but nobody was
> studying it diligently because almost nobody thought it would ever be
> needed. And because it's a pain in the ass to use.  *
>

In cryptography circles there's been quiet a lot of research on lattice
based systems. It's long been known that RSA, DSA, Diffe-Hellman, RCDSA and
basically all algorithms used for modern asymetric cryptography were
vulnerable to Shor's algorithm. So lattice based encryption has been seen
as the best alternative for nquantum threats. If you search the
cryptography literature you'll find a lot of research on them. They are
also the basis for Fully Homomorphic Encryption and other exotic
applications. It is not as of no one was paying attention to this problem
until recently.

>  > *the Bitcoin software can be upgraded to support a wide number of
>> various and distinct cryptographic algorihms from different family types,
>> and even different key sizes.*
>
>
> *Then it would be silly to call all of them "bitcoins", you'd have
> hundreds or thousands of very different incompatible cryptocurrencies
> competing with each other to grab as much energy for their use as
> possible.  *
>

That's not what I am proposing. I am saying the Bitcoin block chain and
protocol need not care what signature algorithm someone uses to sign their
transactions, just like your browser can use HTTPS with any of dozens of
different algorithms, it's still HTTPS. There would still be just one
ledger, in my proposal.

>
>> *>> Bitcoin was originally supposed to replace dollars and pounds and
>>> euros for everyday use, but in that it has proven itself to be a huge FLOP
>>> because it is an energy hog of immense proportions, and the addition of
>>> lattice encryption will make things even worse.*
>>>
>>
>> *> You don't seem to understand what I have been saying. The energy use
>> is unrelated to the algorithms, or the transactions. It's purely from the
>> minting. What makes this confusing is that within the Bitcoin protocol,
>> transaction blocks are bundled with the minting process, both happen at the
>> same time.*
>>
>
> *I agree that about 99.9% of Bitcoin's energy usage is caused by bitcoin
> mining not managing bitcoin transactions, but that is irrelevant because
> the two things are inextricably linked. You can't have one without the
> other. *
>

You can, and that is the eventual plan. As the block rewards shrink towards
zero, then mining decreases accordingly, eventually the block reward hits
zero, and then the entire cost of the Bitcoin network will be for
transaction fees, which are small and less valuable compared to the block
rewards. Then Bitcoin will use very little energy. Essentially if you pay a
$1 transaction fee, you consume $1 of electricity.

*Bitcoin's huge energy expenditure is used to solve silly hash
> puzzles which are of no use to anyone and have nothing to do with the
> transactions themselve, energy that AI could've used to increase the sum
> total of human knowledge or doing something a little more useful than
> solving a hash puzzle, like curing cancer.  **It's locked into the
> fundamental nature of bitcoin that the more people value it the more energy
> it consumes, but in 2008 I doubt if Satoshi considered the thermodynamics
> consequences of his idea. *
>

Have you considered that cryptocurrencies enable AI to become self
sufficient entities, and they may be crucial to their emergence as a new
kind of life? An AI today that provides some useful service can pay for its
own computing resources, and reproduce itself, adapt, etc. so long as it is
profitable by doing something of benefit to others it can survive.

>
>> *> Don't think of it in terms of Watts per transaction, think of it in
>> terms of Watts per bitcoin minted.*
>>
>
> *You can't think about them separately because you can't have one without
> the other.  *
>

You can change one without changing the other. You can reduce the block
reward (even make it zero) without affecting the number of transactions,
and you can increase or decrease the number of transactions per block
without affecting the mining. Given that you can have blocks without any
block rewards I think it is most logical to think of the two (transactions
and mining) separately and independently.

> *> you don't complain about how energy intensive our current monetary
>> system is. Bitcoin at least, only need mint a coin once. And once mintes,
>> no more energy need ever be spent to mint it again to create more bitcoins.
>> Dollars, have to be minutes continuously and can only be created by first
>> making things of lasting economic value.*
>
>
>
> *But like it or not if you make an economic transaction with bitcoins then
> more silly hash puzzles will be solved, and more energy will be wasted, and
> more bitcoins are going to be mined.*
>

That happens whether or not anyone transacts. Transacting neither increases
nor decreases the rate new blocks are generated.

* Worldwide bitcoin uses more energy than the countries of Sweden or
> Poland. I hope you don't expect me to believe that government printing
> presses making paper money uses more energy than that.*
>

You're ignoring the energy involved in hard assets used as collateral when
printing that paper money. I gave you that example for a reason: how our
monetary system works is subtle.

What could perhaps be done in the future, however, is to create a system
where the puzzles that are solved are useful rather than useless. But
making useful problems generic with controllable difficulty is hard, but
perhaps not impossible. This would then be more similar to our current
monetary system, where objects used as collateral are also usually useful
for some purpose.

Also, you are ignoring that Bitcoin itself has many uses and advantages
that neither gold nor printed paper money have. Making bitcoins is not
entirely useless, it can be life saving in certain situations.

>
>
>> *>>> The value of gold is set in large part by the economic cost of
>>>> mining gold, which primarily comes down to the energy that must be spent to
>>>> mine it.*
>>>>
>>>
>>> *>> It might take a lot of energy and be difficult to make artificial
>>> dog shit, and if you have the gift of gab you might be able to convince
>>> enough people that artificial dog shit is valuable and everybody should own
>>> some and create a fad, but no fad lasts forever. As for gold, I maintain
>>> that our civilization would be just as prosperous if there was no gold at
>>> all in the earth's crust; well OK nearly as prosperous,*
>>>
>>
>> *> Not at all.*
>>
>
> *So if there were 10 times as much gold in the earth's crust then our
> civilization would be 10 times as wealthy? I don't think so. *
>

That wasn't my claim.

If gold were 10X more common, we would arguably be less wealthy, since gold
would then be much less valuable and then the cost of carrying,
transporting and securing it would increase by 10X, making it less
efficient as a currency and store of value.

>
>> *> If Gold were used only for industrial purposes, its value would be
>> much lower than it is today,*
>>
>
> *Not necessarily because if Gold was not used only for industrial purposes
> the demand would be much less; and it's all about supply and demand.  The
> metallic element Rhodium is used only for industrial processes but it costs
> about $13,000 an ounce, and Iridium is about $7400 an ounce, but Gold is
> only about $4500 an ounce.  *
>

Analyses have been done on this. If gold were only used industrially and
not sought after for jewelery or kept in bank vaults, the demand would be
much less, and so too would it's price. The analysis I am thinking of
(which indo not recall exactly) said the majority of gold's value is not
from its industrial uses (I think it was on the order of 2/3rds).

It's basic supply & demand, if there were no longer demand for gold jewelry
or for hoarding it in safes and vaults, then the price would decrease.

Jason
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260519/4a5e82a1/attachment-0001.htm>