Ah, the good ol’ “I only see what I want to see” behavior.
Very unconstructive.
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That is amazing crypto-community progress Zooko. Thank you!
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This is a decent first step for Bitmain, if they are sincere like you seem to think. However, there is a lot of negative sentiment about how they do business, and the impact they have had, and continue to have, in coins they have ventured into. They will have a long trek up hill in order to repair the “silence” and how it was, and is viewed. Everything will be viewed under a microscope, and everything will be treated as a potential false statement at worst, or a partial truth at best. There is no getting around this. They will have to work hard if they want to change that view.
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This is what ZCash is lacking of https://mobile.twitter.com/wtogami/status/974190613905027073?s=09
Ego is on the way.
Thank you for chatting with Jihan, @zooko.
No one on earth outside of Bitmain’s employees will tell you they don’t mine with their product in private before selling. Before they got wise, people got “new,” Batch #1 ASICs full of dust for heaven’s sake.
Now please go talk with XMR core team for their perspective. If you don’t, you’re only going to see what Jihan wants you to see.
This isn’t the same “experiment” it was back in 2016. Crypto is financial warfare with billions on the line. Honesty and ethics don’t stand a chance with that many zeros in the equation.
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Was that more “tin-foil hat conspiracy” there??? Nope, just some good ol’ fashion business common sense! Thank you
Especially if those dollars matter more to me (in a democratic country) than they do to Bitmain (in a communist country), then Bitmain is more willing to spend those dollars in ways that we might consider “questionable” or “unethical”.
Bitcoin is Bitcoin, no other coin every will have this bonus being the 1st.
If you are looking for everything exactly to be like Bitcoin, than you should be with Bitcoin. Below BTC every coin is different …
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nice info…z9 mini radical transparency is the first step, I guess
We’ll see how Bitmain will carry on their transparancy strategy…
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Thanks for putting it all down in a structured manner, exactly my conclusions after watching how things were evolving for quite some time. I am sad that we have some really clever though naive people here who lack the knowledge about mentality differences and probably (luckily to them) never witnessed first hand how “business” was done and is still being done in some parts of this world (I am not even talking crypto here).
In re: cultural differences in business, when I (twice! ugh) worked as a contractor for NTT, the former state telco in Japan and one of the biggest companies in the world, the only reason I was able to get lots of things I accomplished done was due to getting advice from a long time friend who had “gone native”, as it here, there over a decade before then.
I think the whole Western cryptocurrency sector would do well to consult with more “China hands”, as it were, on how to handle some of this. I know my past attempted projects with Chinese companies did not go well due to communication problems and cultural differences…so I suppose I’m giving advice I wish I had followed myself in the past. 
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I understand this. I’m working with people of different regions and different cultures. It’s certainly something not to underestimate. There is nothing negative or pejorative here: just respect and understand the differences.
The book I was taking of was : when cultures collide.
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So to summarize, Jihan Wu is a good actor and can pass Zooko’s video chat lie detector.
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It seems like this topic didn’t come up in your conversation, perhaps intentionally, but Bitmain’s relationship to the Chinese government is one of the factors that I’m most curious about — and also concerned by. Today I read a Hacker News comment about a Chinese startup that recently raised a big round:
While this article notes that the Chinese government is one of Sensetime’s most visible partners, it doesn’t really make it clear the extent to which private sector companies like SenseTime are inseparable from the public sector in China. By supporting SenseTime as its client, Beijing has signaled to investors like Alibaba that it has chosen a winner, and that it will never let SenseTime fail. As with most mainland tech companies, SenseTime will heed the diktats of the central government, much as social platforms like Weibo march in step on censorship requests.
One interesting question this raises is: How can non-Chinese compete against such national champions, this intense cooperation between public and private sectors? In the US, those relationships are much more problematic, as the recent uproar at Google about Project Maven illustrates. Not only that, but the US government is neither as aggressive nor as forward-looking about such partnerships, preferring to let market forces have their way. China is tilting the playing field in its favor, while the world’s sole superpower is hobbled by clowns and criminals in the executive branch, and corrupt prime contractors pretend to supply the government with tech that they neither understand nor make themselves.
The same questions apply to cryptocurrency companies based in China, especially when outsiders’ ability to audit their work is limited. I understand that Jihan Wu can’t address this topic publicly, but the rest of us should.
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I’ve wondered that too, we’ll probably never know exactly how theyre all connected, the only thing that makes sense to me really is shear income over much of anything else, (its like the import tariff article, China will protect its interests and profit most likely) this chart shows the last 11 years of Chinas gross national income and its serious, 82.5 Trillion RMB which is about 13.2 Trillion USD last year, which I think supports the winner picking (who knows, maybe he got emotional at the end because we’re saving his company? Maybe 2.5 B just doesn’t cut it!)
Edit- If Money Talks, it probably speaks Mandarin! Jeez
Edit2- there gni is number 3 in the world behind Sweden and Qutar (I’m not sure how many things I have that say made in Sweden or made in Qatar)
Edit3- 2.5 B is more than enough (silly) and although I think the majority of Chinas chip manufacturing is centered in low tech applications, theyre poised to become the world leader in semiconductor manufacturers (eventually, long term) and Bitmains definitely up there, but idk, (like when compared to Intel? You wanna talk about a real monopoly? 100x the value of BM so Im just goin with we’re saving their company) especially now that the electronics imports from the US to China is being taxed another 25%, its AT LEAST a two edged sword
So new question, how many US parts are required to build the Z9 and how much more will it cost?
2nd very interesting read today. This one here is really very complex in my opinion and there won’t be an easy answer either. As soon as it comes up to politics things get difficult.
I will add some thoughts on it as someone that doesn’t live in the USA, neither in China.
From what i know the USA is one of the countries where a given lobby has the most influence and it’s actually legal what made me really stunning when i learned about that. Me personally is neither a fan of strong industrial lobbies nor of corruption, both in my opinion go hand in hand and the difference is so thin in my opinion that i personally can not see much diffference in the outcome. I guess for the US people that’s normal, but for us europeans legally openly having a lobby in congress or wherever is more than questionable.
I pretty bet that in the US the big players have a huge lobby that gives them an amazing advantages/benefits as well, or they wouldn’t be monopolists, some even worldwide. Or let’s take Germany, just be sure that the car industry is well protected by the governement.
This said i think every bigger country tries to protect, influence and “help” the own given economy in the field where they want to be strong. For sure in the USA it’s for example the arms industry, in germany the car industry, in russia the raw material industry and in china the semiconductor industry and so on… Just as examples.
I’am not taking any side here, no way i will do that in general thought from a 3rd point of view (outside US/outside China).
This was my first thought, my second thought is into a bit other direction.
Where to draw the line on what’s possible, what’s wishable, what’s doable, what’s reality based, what’s morality confirm, who expects what from whom and who has going to decide what and who has the same right to do as someone else.
I personally see a lot of ideology in the decentralization discussion on many parts. No problem at all, but many times i get remembered about communism, while reading Marx it sounds pretty good and fair, but than in practice full of flaws, everybody interpreting something into it for his own advantage.
Zcash is based in the US, isn’t that automaticlly now allready centralization by following US law?
For me personally a place outside any big player country would be more decentralized.
How is zcash going to deal if let’s say there comes an offer from MasterCard including the deal that Zcash can be used only by MasterCard? Huge profit for sure, but would it be still decentralized?
Do we know where the miners come from, what if 80% of the Zcash miners are chinese? Would this be allready considered centralization?
What if next month Samsung alone makes the best semiconductor used by every miner, no matter if asic or gpu? Would this be centralized again?
I don’t know which nationalities are in the zcash foundation or board, but somehow i doubt there is a chinese, japanese, russian member for example, isn’t that again centralized and represents more the US view ( i guess most are US) than a world point of view?
Same with miningpools, are some of them favoured over others? In many projects i have seen there are favoured miningpools over others smaller mining pools. Fair?
There are more things, but it would get way to long. Just as a final word.
Sometimes i really ask myself IF the decentralized projects will survive long term vs the centralized projects.
While in the beginning their have been only decentralized projects nowadays things are different and shifting quickly in my opinion. There is no doubt that i favour personally a decentralized project, but does it have realy a chance long term? I mean a decentralized project makes everything possible to stay decentralized (not sure if this works out due the things i mentioned above anyway) and uses resources for that another centralized project just goes straight forward and mostly delivers products faster, stays from beginning in a given country that favours the given project and just outperforms over short or long the decentralized project.
Damn, this got too long, too far, too everything, sorry.
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Having some experience with PR work with Chinese companies, it’s more of a question of culture difference. We might be alarmed by the involvement of the Chinese government in their businesses (and I believe we should be) but the Chinese see that as just how you conduct business. Kinda like a really extreme version of business licenses here in the west. We accept that we will need them and just deal with it.
It’s sort of like calling Russian business and politics nothing but gangs and Russian Mob. Well, truthfully, it is. But that’s just the culture in that area. Groups of people organize together and look after one-another. In the west we might see that as “organized crime” and call foul but they see it as looking after their friends.
Don’t even get me started on cultural differences between the west and the middle east. But crypto is global and if people really want to wrap their heads around the market as a whole, then educating themselves on how these different parts of the glob conduct business is important (especially with as popular as crypto has gotten in Korea and Japan).
So as such, it could be a little difficult to ask Bitmain to “explain” that situation as to them it could very well seem like business as usual. Though, if they spent any time in the west, which is very common for rich Chinese, it’s likely he would know exactly what you’re talking about but it would be easy to feign ignorance (or just outright lie about it).
Easiest way to approach that is to simply be aware of that cultural difference and act accordingly on your own end. Which is the main reason I am so adamantly anti-bitmain. East and west can do business…but crypto specifically was designed under the philosophy that is directly contrary to what the Chinese do in business (which is why they are fighting to suppress crypto adoption within China).
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You cannot do a serious business without government (or whatever you call it ) being involved and having a share of it in countries like China, Bielorussia, etc. You just can’t.
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Touching on JWs tweet and the Venezuela thing, according to the chart in this article there is a real incentive to get his miners to Venezuelans
Edit - touching on saving his company, according to the other chart, Avalonminer has a greater efficiency curve
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