I was wondering about following paragraph:
- Bitcoin vs. Other Cryptos:
The only proven technique for creating a digital commodity is Proof of Work (bitcoin mining) deployed in a fair, equitable fashion (i.e. no pre-mine, no ICO, no controlling foundation, no primary software development team, no series of forced hard fork upgrades that materially change the monetary protocol). If we remove the dedicated hardware (SHA-256 ASICs) and the dedicated energy that powers those mining rigs, we are left with a network secured by proprietary software running on generic computers. That places all security & control of the network in the hands of a small group of software developers, who must create virtual machines doing virtual work with virtual energy in a virtual world to create virtual security. [...]
If I understand correctly, he is talking about blockchains like Ethereum with this:
(i.e. no pre-mine, no ICO, no controlling foundation, no primary software development team, no series of forced hard fork upgrades that materially change the monetary protocol)
Now I have following question:
If we remove the dedicated hardware (SHA-256 ASICs) and the dedicated energy that powers those mining rigs, we are left with a network secured by proprietary software running on generic computers.
This sounded first like an argument against Bitcoin since he uses "SHA-256 ASICs" (which afaik are only used by Bitcoin). But "proprietary" does not make sense since Bitcoin is open source. So he is still talking about these other blockchains he mentioned in the parentheses. But then I don't know why he is using "proprietary". Isn't Ethereum open-source, too? Or is he just (wrongly) generalizing since some other blockchains use proprietary software?
Also, I think
who must create virtual machines doing virtual work with virtual energy in a virtual world to create virtual security.
is a clear reference to a Ethereum developer meeting where Vitalik used similar words. So he is talking about (blockchains like) Ethereum.
I think this paragraph is a bit hard to understand. I would have asked Saylor on twitter directly about this but I have no twitter and no intention to have it.