Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
1–10 of 199 posts
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#2This is interesting to me because it presents the blockchain size dispute in a way that seems much more sympathetic to the "no, we shouldn't increase the blockchain size" crowd than Mike Hearn's essay.
Is it really true that the people who are objecting to increasing the blockchain size see Bitcoin turning into a reserve "currency" to hold wealth instead of a liquid currency used to make real time transactions?
Is that really the debate? Because I didn't get that from Mike Hearn's essay at all...
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#3This is interesting to me because it presents the blockchain size dispute in a way that seems much more sympathetic to the "no, we shouldn't increase the blockchain size" crowd than Mike Hearn's essay. Is it really true that the people who are objecting to increasing the blockchain size see Bitcoin turning into a reserve "currency" to hold wealth instead of a liquid currency used to make real time transactions? Is th…
I think this touches upon an even bigger problem in the Bitcoin community. Very few people actually know what they want other than the price to go up.
And those who do are all at odds with eachother because Bitcoin can't do everything at once.
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#4This is interesting to me because it presents the blockchain size dispute in a way that seems much more sympathetic to the "no, we shouldn't increase the blockchain size" crowd than Mike Hearn's essay. Is it really true that the people who are objecting to increasing the blockchain size see Bitcoin turning into a reserve "currency" to hold wealth instead of a liquid currency used to make real time transactions? Is th…
I think this touches upon an even bigger problem in the Bitcoin community. Very few people actually know what they want other than the price to go up. And those who do are all at odds with eachother because Bitcoin can't do everything at once.
The very people who want the value to go up will keep the Bitcoin alive. It is too early to proclaim it dead.
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#5The actual story here is that the attempt to fork Bitcoin (Bitcoin XT) is dead. Hearn tried to do so, failed, and left. Anyone who doesn't run XT should be celebrating their victory.
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#6This is interesting to me because it presents the blockchain size dispute in a way that seems much more sympathetic to the "no, we shouldn't increase the blockchain size" crowd than Mike Hearn's essay. Is it really true that the people who are objecting to increasing the blockchain size see Bitcoin turning into a reserve "currency" to hold wealth instead of a liquid currency used to make real time transactions? Is th…
The opinion, of course, widely varies. Mike's piece was Mike's opinion, so of course it's not going to be very sympathetic to Core developers.
The limits on transaction size have been known since the beginning of Bitcoin. VISA level transaction rates require insanely high block sizes, much larger than those proposed so far. People have come up with many, many different solutions to this problem.
One thrown around a lot is the lightning network [1], but it's not really a "reserve currency" in this case - it's a way to prevent a bunch of intermediate transactions from entering the blockchain forever, but it's based around advanced Bitcoin scripting usage, so it's using Bitcoin for much more than just a backing value.
Keep in mind that Bitcoin currently has a $6 billion USD market cap. Breaking Bitcoin would reduce that to $0. Many people have strong motivations to be conservative with changes...
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#7Even when Bitcoin was riding high, Wilson was investing in something he believed was likely to fail. It's what he does: invest in startups, I mean.
I don't see any reason to believe that his position on Bitcoin should be read in any other terms than his investment in Bitcoin companies is not appreciably worse or more risky than other companies in his fund. That his personal asset portfolio holds less Bitcoin than wine illustrates the distinction he's making.
His message is for people invested in Bitcoin companies. It is don't panic, these companies were always risky.
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#8This is interesting to me because it presents the blockchain size dispute in a way that seems much more sympathetic to the "no, we shouldn't increase the blockchain size" crowd than Mike Hearn's essay. Is it really true that the people who are objecting to increasing the blockchain size see Bitcoin turning into a reserve "currency" to hold wealth instead of a liquid currency used to make real time transactions? Is th…
The opinion, of course, widely varies. Mike's piece was Mike's opinion, so of course it's not going to be very sympathetic to Core developers. The limits on transaction size have been known since the beginning of Bitcoin. VISA level transaction rates require insanely high block sizes, much larger than those proposed so far. People have come up with many, many different solutions to this problem. One thrown around a l…
The Lightning network is not based on advanced Bitcoin scripting, in the sense that Bitcoin script makes it possible or something. Bitcoin script is, rather, an impediment which has added a huge amount of complexity to Lightning. The same principle expressed without Bitcoin script can be explained in a few minutes[1]
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#9The problem with bitcoin, as I see it, is that discussion of problems that may exist can lower the value of bitcoin- whether the problem is real or not. If you're heavily invested emotionally with bitcoins, you need to discuss these problems so that they can be solved. If you're heavily invested financially, you need to make sure no one talks about these problems, at least until you have a plan for how you're not going to lose your fortune.
Those invested financially have very good reasons to believe in solutions that will retain their investment, and dismiss solutions that put them at risk.
Re: Bitcoin Is Dead, Long Live Bitcoin
#10This is interesting to me because it presents the blockchain size dispute in a way that seems much more sympathetic to the "no, we shouldn't increase the blockchain size" crowd than Mike Hearn's essay. Is it really true that the people who are objecting to increasing the blockchain size see Bitcoin turning into a reserve "currency" to hold wealth instead of a liquid currency used to make real time transactions? Is th…
I think this touches upon an even bigger problem in the Bitcoin community. Very few people actually know what they want other than the price to go up. And those who do are all at odds with eachother because Bitcoin can't do everything at once.
I have no history with Bitcoin, but if people want the value of Bitcoin to go up I think it'd behoove them to make Bitcoin useful to people as a solution to a problem. I'm not sure the idea of a decentralized reserve currency with unknown/random time-to-liquidity is a very useful solution to any problem.
Bitcoin obviously has value right now as demonstrated by the fact that people can go out and exchange coins for things people regard as valuable, but current value is not a perfect indicator of future value and I'd argue that the current value is at least somewhat predicated on the belief that Bitcoin will eventually become a useful replacement for today's highly-liquid real-time transactional currencies.
I am probably naive, but can't a solution be found by simply increasing the block chain size and then creating software that makes the verification of transactions more distributed by making the process more fine grained in terms of CPU and memory resources? In other words, split current "nodes" into a more fine grained distributed virtual node that low end computers can run?