Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

blockchain.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 149 posts

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#91

Post by kindfellow92 »

raarts wrote: post #50
kindfellow92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a currency. It’s digital gold. Gold isn’t easy to exchange and it’s deflationary but it’s a good place to store your money for the long term, especially if you live in an unstable country. What makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s gold without any of the downsides of gold. Hop in an airplane with the equivalent of millions of dollars in your pocket without having to trust or ask permission from anyone.

In the real world you cannot invent new elements, so it's hard to find an alternative for gold. Unfortunately everybody can create Bitcoin alternatives. That's the big difference between gold and Bitcoin.

Another consensus argument. There is more of a consensus around bitcoin than other cryptos and you can’t “invent” consensus either.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#92

Post by kindfellow92 »

betterunix2 wrote: post #43
kindfellow92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a currency. It’s digital gold. Gold isn’t easy to exchange and it’s deflationary but it’s a good place to store your money for the long term, especially if you live in an unstable country. What makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s gold without any of the downsides of gold. Hop in an airplane with the equivalent of millions of dollars in your pocket without having to trust or ask permission from anyone.

In fact gold does not compare favorably to US equity markets as far as saving your money goes. An investment in an S&P500 index fund in late 2007 (right before the crash) would be worth more today than an investment in gold. An investment in the Dow Jones index in 1900 would be worth about six times as much as an equivalent investment in gold (assuming you held for 117 years, and not counting dividends). Granted, peo…

One day this will be true for Bitcoin, once it reaches a stable value.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#93

Post by thevardanian »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #85
thevardanian wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. But no thanks. Even as a store of value it's crappy because of the public ledger. I would rather have some semblance of privacy in terms of my wealth.

It has become a store of value, and there is nothing wrong to see it as a new asset class because of the attention it has been getting. IMO, bitcoin will rise till it finds an equivalent place like gold. Because of the limit, the value of bitcoin can technically reach anywhere between 400K to a million dollars. If they really wanted to see this as a currency, you would never design this to have an upper bound. You ca…

Cool. What I'm saying is that it lacks privacy, and therefore is a poor store of value.

As for it being a store of value akin to gold? I don't think so. For various reason, even disregarding the historicity, and the physical nature of gold, the primarily reason I think it won't be comparable to gold will be because of the nature of technology. That being the lack of long term, and I'm talking centuries, hell even a few decades out, type of stability, and I just don't see Bitcoin being stable for such a long period of time. Technologies improve, and fundamentally demand constant change,and so superior competitors will emerge. Hell if anything even a state sanctioned E-Coin system would obliterate Bitcoin.

Fundamentally at this point Bitcoin is reliant on the network effect. As of even today the technology behind it is in constant flux, experimentation, and competition, what keeps bitcoin afloat is that it's a first mover, and a lot of people use it. The network effect is really a short term moat for most technologies, including Bitcoin, and as such it will not last long enough to be a Long Term store of value. So any sort of comparable "Long term store" of value in any comparable to gold is out of the question.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#94

Post by owenversteeg »

gomox wrote: post #23
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #15

This is referring to the minimum cost in fees for a transaction to get copied from the mempool to a block. Only when a transaction is in a block is it a valid transfer of bitcoin. Its nothing to do with trading or exchange rates or energy costs or fiat. Bitcoin is working exactly the same as it has always, however now because of the backlog, transaction fees are very high. In the order of Western Union + Visa Fees +…

Most wallets allow you get out of this situation with a clever feature. What you do is raise the insufficient fee after the fact by issuing a new transaction that is dependent on the first one, and adding a large enough fee to the second one. This is known as "child pays for parent" in BTC lingo. That being said, the fee for a good transaction now is around $22 so it might not be worth doing for your $50 send.

Unfortunately in a child pays for parent scenario you need to pay double fees. Otherwise it's not worthwhile for the miner to confirm both transactions in order to only get one fee. So they'd need to pay $44 in fees in order to free their $50.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#95

Post by randomsearch »

habosa wrote: post #35

You'll notice the entire Bitcoin community has changed tone. It used to be "this is the currency of the future, down with cash/Visa!" but now you hear "Bitcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value". The wild price swings, slow transactions, high fees, and loq merchant acceptance make it complete garbage as a currency. But as a store of value, none of those arguments apply. It only has to compete with gold bars, w…

How does the volatility not make it a bad store of value?! Surely by definition that is exactly why it is a bad store of value!

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#96

Post by drtillberg »

kindfellow92 wrote: post #91
raarts wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world you cannot invent new elements, so it's hard to find an alternative for gold. Unfortunately everybody can create Bitcoin alternatives. That's the big difference between gold and Bitcoin.

Another consensus argument. There is more of a consensus around bitcoin than other cryptos and you can’t “invent” consensus either.

You need a consensus about what software to run, what it does, what version, and you need the consensus of the community to run nodes and mine.

Imagine that a large majority of miners bet the wrong way on Bitcoin at the CME and go in hoc up to their eyeballs short BTC. Let's say 80% of the BTC mining community is short big and they need BTC for delivery now. As a general proposition, that community could reach a consensus to modify the software they are running to inflate away their debt. The consensus is just like any other fiat currency, and it is very unlike the core nature of gold. The very scarcity is determined by consensus.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#97

Post by jcranmer »

randomsearch wrote: post #95
habosa wrote: post #35

You'll notice the entire Bitcoin community has changed tone. It used to be "this is the currency of the future, down with cash/Visa!" but now you hear "Bitcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value". The wild price swings, slow transactions, high fees, and loq merchant acceptance make it complete garbage as a currency. But as a store of value, none of those arguments apply. It only has to compete with gold bars, w…

How does the volatility not make it a bad store of value?! Surely by definition that is exactly why it is a bad store of value!

But that would mean it's good for nothing except warming the planet!

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#98

Post by razakel »

rankam wrote: post #17
gomox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exchanges (where trades like the one you describe happen) operate outside of the blockchain. You only transact with them on the blockchain when depositing or withdrawing money from the exchange.

Thanks, and just so I understand correctly, these pending orders are waiting within the blockchain to be executed, similar(ish) to a task queue?

Yes, it's called the "mempool". A higher fee means it'll be executed more quickly, because miners prioritise transactions with higher fees for obvious reasons.

It's possible for a transaction to get stuck and never be confirmed if it's fee is low enough. If that happens, then you'd need to send a new transaction, which cancels out the stuck one.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#100

Post by Casseres »

njarboe wrote: post #58
Casseres wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist now allows people to mark their posts as crypto-friendly. Anyone who accepts Bitcoin runs into the problem where others can know their balance by looking up the address (and thus could be at risk for theft/mugging). If people want to keep their balances private and not share their transaction history (or later transactions), they should use a coin that's private by default such as Monero. Additionally, Mon…

You should create a different address for each post on Craigslist. It is pretty easy and prevents this problem. If you have a website and have an address displayed for donations, then you will get multiple donations to the same address. With any one-off just make a new address in your wallet. (I use bitcoin core wallet. Not sure how others work.)

And then later on transfer it to your main wallet and pay another fee, and trust that whomever your first address still isn't paying attention to it, or hope they didn't get their coins from a tainted source?
Post reply on HN