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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#251

Post by jchw »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #245
_red wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 7 TPS claim is an apples-to-oranges comparison. You must remember that Bitcoin transactions are "settled" in that 7 TPS timescale, whereas VISA transactions are merely "recorded" in their 50K TPS rate. In reality, it generally takes a minimum of 15 days for your VISA transaction to "settle" with your bank account. Thereby the true TPS rate is orders of magnitude lower for VISA.

So everyone quits making transactions for a week while Visa catches up? Or does there backlog increase indefinitely? OR do they have to settle at the same rate as record, just delayed? I'm guessing the last one...

A better question would be what 50K TPS means. Does it mean on average, or at peak, or etc.

Obviously in any case it will be faster than Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#252

Post by jokoon »

zero_iq wrote: post #165
jpatokal wrote: post #20

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). Ho…

I am rather stunned that the entire global bitcoin network, with its colossal combined computing power, and staggering electricity consumption, is only capable of sustaining 7 tps. The level of inefficiency here is mind-boggling. Surely this must be one of the least efficient, least environmentally-friendly computing ventures ever?

I'm also surprised to learn this, quite disappointed too.

It's weird because people will argue about how bitcoin is safe because you can trust it, but it seems it's safer to pay for a centralized service and trust such a service because it's administered by very competent people with a high level of scrutiny.

If you look globally, that would mean bitcoin is much, much more expensive. It is just some kind of cool toy for people who hate the federal reserve.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#253

Post by wereHamster »

Taek wrote: post #225
wereHamster wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few coins in a copay wallet, which is a BIP32 wallet. Does that mean that wallet is under my control and my coins are safe?

If you are the only one with access to the secret key, then you control the coins. If someone else has the secret key (or keys), then they control the coins. I believe copay is okay from a brief glance, but I honestly can't tell if they give the keys to Bitpay for backup or not. The safest wallet is bitcoin-core, though there are plenty of reasonably safe options.

I used bitcoin-core before, but I wanted to switch to a more light-weight wallet, and one which is based on BIP32. At that time copay looked like the best option. And because it's BIP32, I should be able to transfer the wallet to another compatible implementation without any problems.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#255

Post by upvotinglurker »

sktrdie wrote: post #162
knocte wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anybody can be a miner That is false, nowadays. > Let's not forget that anybody can be a miner! Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) Bitcoin's mining algorithm is so simple that mining industry has specialized too much, and now the best technology for it is ASICs. You cannot mine (or rather, it's nowhere near profitable) if you don't have access to this kind of hardware. And o…

Why is it false? I didn't say "mining is profitable". I just said anybody can do it, and that's the key. Just like anybody can seed torrents without any incentive, or just like Tor nodes exist without any incentive.

I think they mean it is true in the same sense that "anyone can be president of the US" is true, e.g. true in theory, but in practice, it requires significant wealth which most do not have. I would have worded it differently than calling it a "lie" though (since it technically isn't).

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#256

Post by lawn »

knocte wrote: post #224
lawn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how we should see decentralization, "lacking a central point of control" is a better definition. What you're arguing for is the mining to be distributed. https://medium.com/@johnblocke/decentralization-fetishism-is...

Centralization is not a bool variable: true|false. There are degrees to it. Of course I'm not claiming that bitcoin mining is centralized (100%), but it's definitely not very decentralized.

Of course, as argued in the linked article. But I don't agree that it's very centralized as it is now, which is the context I responded to:

> The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#258

Post by lawn »

qznc wrote: post #247
lawn wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course, claiming that anybody can have access to this hardware is very very debatable. The best indicator of how this is not accessible by everybody is how centralized this industry is nowadays (just look at the correlation between ASIC manufacturers and owners of mining pools). Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it's not going to become true :) https://coin.dance/blocks Where is the centralization?…

If Antpool, BTC.top, F2Pool, and Bixin conspire, they control 51% of the mining power. There is the oligarchy aka centralization.

That's the four biggest pools (to get a consistent > 50% it might not even be enough) who need to collude. That's not very centralized. Of course the situation could be better, but it's still in a good place imo. It's better than it has been historically for example when a single pool (GHash.IO) approached 50% by itself.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#259

Post by alex_duf »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #250
alex_duf wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whilst the chain is split, am I correct to assume you can spend your money twice?

Yes, if you can find a place to spend your coins that accepts the old chain, and another place that accepts the new chain.

thanks

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#260

Post by zby »

_red wrote: post #217
zby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with https://…

The 7 TPS claim is an apples-to-oranges comparison. You must remember that Bitcoin transactions are "settled" in that 7 TPS timescale, whereas VISA transactions are merely "recorded" in their 50K TPS rate. In reality, it generally takes a minimum of 15 days for your VISA transaction to "settle" with your bank account. Thereby the true TPS rate is orders of magnitude lower for VISA.

The numbers are about throughput. Bitcoin has 7 TPS throughput and VISA has 50K TPS (peak) throughput.

With regard to latency bitcoin is still worse in practical applications - because VISA confirms a transaction immediately even if as you write it settles after 15 days - while bitcoin more or less settles after and an hour - but the first confirmation you get only after about 10 minutes.

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