You mean that the price of Bitcoin is being manipulated just as is happening to each and every other asset class? Wow, surprise!

The lightning network is nearly as trustless as the main layer of bitcoin. It is impossible for another party to run with your funds when transacting with them over lightning. In that respect it offers the same safety as the main layer. But even if it didn't, it wouldn't matter much -- the transactions over the lightning network are mostly low-value transactions usable for retail or buying a coffee. Even in the case trust is reintroduced, it is only for trivial amounts, which most people will be fine with. For larger value transactions, like buying a new car, one would not use lightning, but use the main chain instead.

Lightning transactions are immutable. At any time, it is possible to unilaterally close a lightning channel and record the aggregated result on the blockchain, at which point the transactions becomes immutable and irreversible.

Bitcoin has no theoretical limit of the number of daily transactions it can process. Currently, Bitcoin settles about 600,000 payments per day by recording them on the blockchain. On top of that, millions of transactions are processed every day over the lightning network, a second layer protocol suitable for smaller, near-instant low-cost transactions.

The lightning network protocol allows parties to open up a payment channel and start sending transactions to others also on the lightning network, almost as fast as network latency allows. There is no limit to the number of transactions per second that can be processed over the lightning network.

At any time, a lightning channel may be closed by recording the final balance on the blockchain, creating a single on-chain transaction that is effectively the aggregation of all transactions that took place on the lightning network.

Perhaps it is also possible to measure the relative strength of various moves such as castling by allowing it for one player only. For instance, what happens if black may castle, but white may not?

Outlaw, why exactly? By far most people use bitcoin for perfectly legitimate reasons but yes, bitcoin can also be used by criminals. Do you believe say knives and cash should be outlawed as well?

Let the centrifuge spin down gradually? What are you, an amateur? Don't just release the satellite, but fire it at exactly the right moment with a big ass cannon strapped onto the end of the arm such that the recoil stops the arm dead in its tracks. Problem solved!

Thanks for proving my point. The graphs nicely show how interest rates are all going down in unison after the 1980s, when modern globalization took off.

Developed countries all trade with the US and generally cannot afford their currency from appreciating against the USD. So, they have to lower their interest rates if the US lowers theirs.

I didnâ(TM)t claim interest rates are the same worldwide. I am saying that interest rates in developed countries having a functional currency move in the same direction as the US rates. This is an indisputable fact as interest rates have gone down almost everywhere. Low effort strawman.

What a load of crap.
De facto the US controls interest rates globally and most countries have no choice but to follow US rates in order to keep their currency at a somewhat stable exchange rate against the USD. That in turn is crucial for their economies especially if they trade with the US, which basically every country does. Since the FED fully controls the US interest rates, it effectively controls the interest rates of other countries as well, at least for those countries having a non-trivially sized economy, severely limiting other countries' capabilities to control inflation. The US doing QE? Other countries have no choice but to follow suit.
Zooming out and ignoring bumps in the chart, it is apparent that nominal US interest rates have been on a downtrend since the the eighties. In the past 40 years the US interest rates have been gradually going down from 15% in the eighties to near zero today. At zero the nominal interest rate cannot go down much further, but the real interest rate can by pushing up inflation. Indeed, the real interest rate is by some estimates a negative 5% as inflation starts to pick up steam due to QE programs.
The effects of low and negative interest rates are currently increasing the wealth gap between people and countries. Those with assets or high incomes are able to take advantage of near-zero interest rates by getting loans basically for free which enables them to buy (more) assets such as real estate and stocks, inflating their prices. Those without assets or low incomes do not have access to these loans and just see prices around them increase while their salaries stagnate. The Cantillon effect is real and currently manifesting itself increasing the wealth gap on a global scale.
Sure, governments have an incentive to serve their population but only to the extend that they remain in power after the next elections. This gives governments a myopic 4-5 year time horizon which is especially damning for the US being the country that is de facto in control of global of interest rate policies. At some point, real interest rates cannot go down any further and when the point comes at which financial markets become uncomfortable with the US debt levels interest rates will need to rise to support the USD. In the short term, rising interest rates will likely lead to financial instability and defaults of countries and companies that have come to depend on near zero rates however, resulting in a deadly negative feedback loop of defaulting companies and countries while US interest rates keep going up to support the USD, pushing up interest rates all over the world in its wake. Lower interest rates on the other hand keep up the appearance of a blossoming economy with inflated stock prices, inflated real estate prices and low unemployment caused by all the misallocation of capital. There is no incentive for any US administration to end this facade and start taking the inevitable economic pain today by starting to do what is needed which is increasing interest rates because it would totally destroy them at the next elections.
There is only one asset in the world which operates outside of government control and manipulation, which cannot be arbitrarily inflated and which is practical to use as a money, and you may have guessed it, this asset is Bitcoin.

No they don't, they never had and never will. Users have full control over Bitcoin.

Miners assemble blocks, nodes verify their validity. Nodes that see a block appear that introduces some new miner-rule will collectively judge the block to be invalid and simply ignore that block as if it never even existed. A miner who sees their block rejected by nodes foregoes the reward for finding a block which is 7 to 8 BTC, or about US$300,000 at current rates. Miners therefore cannot introduce any rules of their own -- they'd ruin themselves even if they tried.

Bitcoin users on the other hand are collectively able to introduce new rules. As soon as Bitcoin users reach consensus and decide they want some new rule, they will subsequently update their nodes with software that is programmed to activate a new rule by means of an activation mechanism. This mechanism exists to offer miners some time to adapt their software and implement support for new rules as well as to ensure that all Bitcoin nodes activate the new rules all at exactly the same time, which is crucial for proper functioning of the network.

New rules are therefore introduced by nodes but will not activate before miners indicate that they are ready to support the new rules. The pre-programmed activation mechanism activates the new rules only after a great majority of miners signal that they are ready to support those new rules. A rule will only activate when a great majority of the miners (currently ~90% of all miners measured by hash power) signals readiness.

Again, this activation mechanism exists to offer miners time to implement a new rule. Normally miners have an economic incentive to support new rules that enhance Bitcoin because each enhancement increases the number of use cases for Bitcoin and with that its value proposition. Miners make more profit if Bitcoin is worth more in fiat terms, so miners are normally supportive of new rules that enhance Bitcoin.

However, the activation mechanism also enables a small minority of miners (~10% measured by hash power) to obstruct activation of a new rule by not signaling readiness. There indeed has been a case in the past where miners obstructed activation of a set of new rules (collectively named Segwit) because miners perceived Segwit to be counter to their own economic interests. This ability of miners to obstruct introduction of new rules is what created the false narrative that miners are in control of Bitcoin. The truth is however that miners have no power over the rules at all.

After it became clear that miners were obstructing activation of Segwit, users responded by implementing a new rule which would begin to reject all blocks that would not signal readiness, effectively forcing all miners to signal readiness for Segwit. Even before this rule was effectuated by nodes, miners had already capitulated and began to signal readiness. Soon after, as per the pre-programmed activation mechanism, Segwit got activated. This episode clearly demonstrated that users collectively have full control over Bitcoin.

Generally speaking, miners will want the price of Bitcoin to be as high as possible to earn more profit. This simple economic incentive prevents miners from sustaining any activities that are detrimental to the value of Bitcoin. Even if the economic incentives of miners and users appear to collide, Segwit demonstrated that users prevail and miners bite the dust.

I appreciate that Bitcoin is not the darling of Slashdot, but +5 insightful for straight-up nonsense is just hating on Bitcoin without any regards of the facts.

> Bitcoin mining relies on somebody else shouldering a significant part of the cost. Nope. Miners pay the local market price for the energy that they use.

Mining is a race to the bottom in terms of cost. Only few miners having the lowest expenses will be profitable and survive in the long run. So, mining can only be profitable when done with very cheap electricity. That's why a significant amount of mining is performed near hydropower dams in Sichuan, China, that produce more electricity than the local infrastructure is able to distribute. Normally this electricity would go unused but currently Sichuan hydrodams power a significant part of all Bitcoin mining, at zero carbon emission.

In general, Bitcoin mining is performed using mostly waste electricity simply because the economics of mining demand it. Often, this waste electricity can be found where electricity from renewable sources is generated (hydro, solar, wind). If the local demand for electricity is lower than the generated electricity, the price of electricity turns negative. Storing electricity is uneconomical and transporting it over large distances is expensive. As a result, if the local grid can't absorb the generated renewable electricity then it will remain unused, i.e., be wasted. Since such electricity is nearly free, a significant amount of mining is performed with it.

So, the local market price for energy often is near-zero and the electricity would remain unused if it wasn't for miners. The carbon footprint of cryptocurrency mining therefore is way lower than the mentioned terawatt-hours number suggests.

The litmus test for any new theory is whether it makes any verifiable predictions or is able to model physical phenomena that so far didn't fit within any existing theory or for which differing otherwise successful theories disagreed.

The notions of physical objects, time and space as fundamental properties in the universe is easily challenged. Just note for instance that it is impossible to demonstrate that a particle exists without interacting with it. Consider the double slit experiment: it's hard to maintain that an electron actually is physically traveling in between the space between the emitter and a screen. Does the electron even physically exist? Or does a particle only manifest itself at the moment it interacts? And does any time pass during an interaction? We can't know because we measure physics using interactions.

Apple Silicon is such a major leap in performance with the potential to kneecap or even bankrupt both Qualcomm and Intel. In an ARM PC world, Apple would be pulling the strings as to which silicon goes where. For instance, keep the latest and fastest Apple Silicon exclusive to mac, sell previous generation Apple silicon to PC manufacturers.

Yet. Perhaps there's a future where in which Windows runs on ARM just fine and Apple starts selling their silicon to PC manufacturers.