Ask HN: If Bitcoin is so great, why doesn’t it help the people in Turkey?

Post by Jeff_Brown » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 3:41 AM UTC

furbyhat wrote: post #9

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #5

Economists distinguish between real and monetary problems. If the government controls a big chunk of the real economy and makes bad decisions -- directing too many resources, say, to last-century commodities like steel and aluminum (the US), or building ghost cities (China) -- the monetary system isn't going to undo that. But suppose Turkey's problems were entirely monetary, so that an alternative currency really cou…

>Bitcoin charges something like $4 per transaction lately, and they take on the order of a day to process. It's unstable, and it's confusing to most people. "Bitcoin" is a protocol, like TCP or HTTP. It does not charge anything. You may as well have said "SMTP charges monthly access fees". The miner's accept transactions and prefer ones with the higher fee. User chooses their fee in accordance with how fast they want…

Post by Jeff_Brown » Wed, Aug 15, 2018, 4:01 AM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #13

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #5

Economists distinguish between real and monetary problems. If the government controls a big chunk of the real economy and makes bad decisions -- directing too many resources, say, to last-century commodities like steel and aluminum (the US), or building ghost cities (China) -- the monetary system isn't going to undo that. But suppose Turkey's problems were entirely monetary, so that an alternative currency really cou…

> Bitcoin charges something like $4 per transaction > lately, and they take on the order of a day to process. Huh? Current fees are $0.16 or less, and there's almost no backlog, meaning transactions confirm at maximum speed. Where are you getting your information from? https://bitcoinfees.info/ https://www.blockchain.com/btc/unconfirmed-transactions https://www.blockchain.com/explorer