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Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

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Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#121

Bitcoin is not remotely usable as a currency now. The fees are incredible, the confirmation times ridiculous. We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. immediately. Asking the current 1 mb blocksize version of Bitcoin to be a currency is like Goldman Sachs writing a report saying they want to run their website on Intel 486 processors. They mention Zimbabwe moving to it as an alte…

>We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. All other chains will face the same cost-of-scaling problem as Bitcoin as they grow. No one has yet developed a public consensus mechanism proven to provide the same security as PoW with the requisite order of magnitude higher scalability and lower costs. Unless some technological breakthroughs are made on that subject, they'll all hit t…

Ethereum has already surpassed Bitcoin’s transaction thoroughput and yet features significantly lower confirmation time and transaction cost.*

Bitcoin core has made significant technical decisions that has hampered the project in these two areas.

*Source: https://themerkle.com/bitcoin-vs-ethereum-transaction-throug...

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#122
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an abuse of definitional scope. The commenter is not arguing against a point that has not been made (that would be a strawman); instead, they’re arguing against the applicability of terminology in an argument that was made, but by using an incorrect or alternate definition for the terminology. In this specific instance, the commenter is using a non-standard definition of “intrinsic value” to argue that gold has…

As I stated in my other reply to you, I am very well aware “intrinsic value” is a specific economic term. I was speaking exactly to that term—what it means, what it implies—and disputing the logical sense of the term itself. You have twice now in your comments made a host of assumptions about my intentions and the coherence, relevance, and applicability of my statement. You’re ascribing an awful lot of impossible-to-…

The thing your argument is that no one is arguing about these philosophical ideas of intrinsic value. People are just saying: 'if people didn't use gold as money anymore because they lost faith in it, the gold would still be useful (ie as in jewlery, circuit boards, etc).'

I mean I could do you one better with this type of argumentation and say 'your idea is wrong because all ideas are social constructs, so all are equally the imagination of peoples and all are equally valid,' and we could just have nothing left to talk about and get nowhere with anything.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#123

Bitcoin is not remotely usable as a currency now. The fees are incredible, the confirmation times ridiculous. We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. immediately. Asking the current 1 mb blocksize version of Bitcoin to be a currency is like Goldman Sachs writing a report saying they want to run their website on Intel 486 processors. They mention Zimbabwe moving to it as an alte…

My Bitcoin Cash transaction for USD$280 was confirmed in 47 seconds with 0.1 USD in transaction fees (10 US cents)

That's still 46 seconds too long and how long until you got 6 confirmations? 1 hour. DAG based coins are the future.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#124
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raiblocks has potential to be a good currency, but like any other crypto when will people stop holding and start spending. https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks

No offense, but could you and the other people mentioning other chains in subthreads not do that? These threads just turn into ad pages and nobody has the ability to know what advice is valuable and what is just shilling. These claims have been made about every altcoin/feature since 2009. There's too much baseless hype. You guys want me to buy Raiblocks, Plasma, or Omise Go? Are you sure the devs know what they are d…

RaiBlocks is highly relevant to mention here since it's the only coin solving these very problems while still being decentralized.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#125
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more like gold But without that nifty property of intrinsic value.

There is no intrinsic value in gold. Or any other thing. The only value things have are the exchange and use values humans imbue them with.

Well, there is its physical essence. Cryptocurrencies are a bit like a DVD vs a movie on Netflix. Everyone is starting a new cryptocurrency nowadays, whereas opening a gold mine is an entirely different matter.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I stated in my other reply to you, I am very well aware “intrinsic value” is a specific economic term. I was speaking exactly to that term—what it means, what it implies—and disputing the logical sense of the term itself. You have twice now in your comments made a host of assumptions about my intentions and the coherence, relevance, and applicability of my statement. You’re ascribing an awful lot of impossible-to-…

The thing your argument is that no one is arguing about these philosophical ideas of intrinsic value. People are just saying: 'if people didn't use gold as money anymore because they lost faith in it, the gold would still be useful (ie as in jewlery, circuit boards, etc).' I mean I could do you one better with this type of argumentation and say 'your idea is wrong because all ideas are social constructs, so all are e…

Well, yeah. I didn’t realize I was going to trigger an internet argument.

Anyway, it’s pretty late, and you make a great point that nobody wants to talk about philosophical ideas. Cheers.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#127
The first few bitcoin transactions happened when the government rolled out bond notes correlating well with a reduction in US$ money supply. The black market was paying 90% on a bond note a few weeks later it was 55% on a bond note. Bitcoin is making it easy for these parties in this market to repatriate money. The important consideration is this is usually principle+profits and so the risk vs reward of using bitcoin is at a minimum over ‘getting the money out’. I don’t think there is any problem with this. Will this reduce the need to use the US$ on the black market ? Yes if more people owned bitcoin then they could swap it for goods on this market rather than deal with any fiat transactions. Most of these transactions would be US$10k+-US$150k. Compare buying a bitcoin to the cost of offshoring US$ which is usually about 10% on principle. If you look at the math bitcoin is a good proposition assuming you can sell it on the other side. Bitcoin is useable in Zimbabwe or any other country which has a black/grey market for repatriating money.

Edited for brevity.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#128
post #118
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that some banking systems are improving in terms of speed. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's happening now that crypto has been around for 8 years, and is increasing in size. Most immediate US-based sends and receives are virtual, based on 2nd-layer systems like Venmo and PayPal, not actually moving money but updating the numbers in your account before funds land. Unfortunately for the Fed, speed a…

> Most immediate US-based sends and receives are virtual, based on 2nd-layer systems like Venmo and PayPal, not actually moving money but updating the numbers in your account before funds land. This is really only the case in the US. Most of the rest of the world can have bank transfers that are cleared in seconds, for free. The US is just way behind on this, it's a solved problem for Europeans.

Actually, most of the rest of the world does not have any access to traditional finance at all.

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. All other chains will face the same cost-of-scaling problem as Bitcoin as they grow. No one has yet developed a public consensus mechanism proven to provide the same security as PoW with the requisite order of magnitude higher scalability and lower costs. Unless some technological breakthroughs are made on that subject, they'll all hit t…

Ethereum has already surpassed Bitcoin’s transaction thoroughput and yet features significantly lower confirmation time and transaction cost.* Bitcoin core has made significant technical decisions that has hampered the project in these two areas. *Source: https://themerkle.com/bitcoin-vs-ethereum-transaction-throug...

Ethereum is similarly not scalable, as you know

Re: Goldman Sachs Report Explores Use of Bitcoin as Currency

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need to move on to something more modern like Ethereum, Stellar Lumens, etc. All other chains will face the same cost-of-scaling problem as Bitcoin as they grow. No one has yet developed a public consensus mechanism proven to provide the same security as PoW with the requisite order of magnitude higher scalability and lower costs. Unless some technological breakthroughs are made on that subject, they'll all hit t…

Ethereum has already surpassed Bitcoin’s transaction thoroughput and yet features significantly lower confirmation time and transaction cost.* Bitcoin core has made significant technical decisions that has hampered the project in these two areas. *Source: https://themerkle.com/bitcoin-vs-ethereum-transaction-throug...

While technically Ethereum's ~15tx/s is an order of magnitude more than Bitcoin's 7x max, that's not really what I had in mind, they're effectively equivalent in relation to where they need to be (hundreds or thousands/sec). And as expected Ethereum's tx cost is increasing with usage too. And Vitalik to his credit is clear that Ethereum still has significant work to do on this front:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/vitalik-buterin-fenbushi-c...

>In a lengthy statement released to TechCrunch, Buterin explained that he plans to spend more time ensuring that Ethereum fulfills its potential as a platform.

"2017 really has been the year where hype in crypto, including financial hype and social hype in general has far exceeded the reality of what existing blockchain systems can offer. There is a lot of attention, and a lot of eager expectation, but as far as reality goes the practical usability of blockchains has in some cases even regressed due to rising transaction fees."

"I expect 2018, at least within the Ethereum space that I’m best able to speak about, will be the year of action. It will be the year where all of the ideas around scalability, Plasma, proof-of-stake, and privacy that we have painstakingly worked on and refined over the last four years are finally going to turn into real, live working code that you can play around in a highly mature form in some cases on testnets, and in some key cases even on the public mainnet. Everyone in the Ethereum space recognizes that the world is watching, and we are ready to deliver."

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