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

Ending Bitcoin Support

stripe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 659 posts

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#41

Post by brndnmtthws »

geofft wrote: post #32
brndnmtthws wrote: post #2

Is this a precursor to pumping their own shitcoin Stellar Lumens? I see they casually dropped it in there after naming a couple others to appear unbiased. They claim to be interested in Lightning Network, but aren't interested in using it? That's a bit lame. Or a lot lame.

> They claim to be interested in Lightning Network, but aren't interested in using it? I don't understand how you conclude this from the post. (Does Lightning even exist today? Could they use it today if they wanted to?)

Lighting Network does indeed exist today. You can use it right now.

Download the desktop app and try it out: https://github.com/lightninglabs/lightning-app

It's early, but that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#42

Post by umurkontaci »

montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

Store value / Investment.

You can buy gold, stocks, foreign currencies as means of investment.

You can't pay your restaurant bill with them but that doesn't mean they don't have a future.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#43

Post by opportune »

viach wrote: post #37
montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? The same as gold does?

Or lead

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#44

Post by nulagrithom »

montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it?

I look at it (maybe naively) like a solid gold bar. You're not going to walk in to a convenience store and pay with a bar of solid gold; you might flee the country with one though.

Beyond that, I totally agree with your read on the post. Linking the pull request[0] was especially backhanded. It feels like there's some underlying frustration there that was expounded upon using good references and kind words.

[0]: https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pull/2010/fil...

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#45

Post by nvk »

wyldfire wrote: post #28
nvk wrote: post #8

They should have replaced it with Lightning Network, is amazingly fast and cheap and works on top of Bitcoin. I'm running a test node, this stuff really works! > Lightning is a decentralized network using smart contract functionality in the blockchain to enable instant payments across a network of participants. In case you are curious https://lightning.network and another good resource here https://www.reddit.com/r/B…

The article does mention it. > We’re interested in what’s happening with Lightning and other proposals to enable faster payments. Please be careful about promoting LN. It's great tech, yes. > this stuff really works! * yes, but please don't actually use it with money yet. [1] [1] https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning#project-status

I think they are being over cautious (other implementations are not as concern), but yes still in testing. There are over 100 nodes, doing a bunch of transactions no money lost.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#46

Post by moduspol »

montrose wrote: post #15

This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much. You're a great person, but you're just more of an asset than a medium of exchange, and what I need in my life right now is a medium of exchange. What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it? That is not a purely rhetorical question; cryptocurrencies change things a lot. But t…

> What future does an asset have if people don't actually buy stuff with it?

Lots of assets have value without people buying things with them. Gold, houses, stocks, etc.

The more interesting question is how long Bitcoin will remain top dog merely as a store of value if other cryptocurrencies solve this on-chain / off-chain scaling problem better / faster. There's definitely some amount of value in the name alone, and some more in the security of the mining, but neither of those are unassailable.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#47

Post by nebulous1 »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #17
horsecaptin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you call it a shitcoin?

It has an uncapped supply, and inflates at 1% per year. It doesn't really seem to offer anything compelling other than its A-list investors. It was also created by the same person who brought the world eDonkey 2000, Mt. Gox, and Ripple.

Those are all very successful projects. All the bad stuff that happened at Mt Gox occurred after he sold it to Karpelès.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#48

Post by chocolatebunny »

makomk wrote: post #29
glesperance wrote: post #3

Given that bitcoin isn't a medium of transaction anymore and a store of value this makes a lot of sense. Too bad they aren't replacing this with another cryptocurrency at the moment.

Well, there was about a month or two when Bitcoin looked more like a store of value than a medium of transaction at any rate. Fees are starting to look increasingly more reasonable now that the insane growth and massive speculation has stopped. (There's reason to suspect that during the worst of that period, a rather large proportion of transactions were to and from Coinbase/GDAX - not helped by the fact they don't b…

I haven't been keeping up with this. What's the bitcoin transaction cost now?

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#49

Post by koheripbal »

vec wrote: post #18

For what it's worth, we just spent two weeks trying and failing to get Stripe's Bitcoin integration working on our site. The short version is that Stripe guaranteed a USD BTC exchange rate for an hour, after which they would automatically cancel the transaction. Given that most transactions now take well over an hour to be verified on the blockchain, that means basically every transaction fails.

I honestly don't know what use-case remains for Bitcoin. If you have large value transactions you'd probably choose something with privacy like Monero, and if you want something cheap and fast, maybe Bitcoin Cash. In both use-cases, you have a few competing alternatives.

In no circumstance is Bitcoin preferable to one of the mature alternatives.

...and if no one is using it as a transaction medium, then acting as a store of value is better placed in an actively used coin network.

Re: Ending Bitcoin Support

#50

Post by fokinsean »

gizmo385 wrote: post #25
glesperance wrote: post #3

Given that bitcoin isn't a medium of transaction anymore and a store of value this makes a lot of sense. Too bad they aren't replacing this with another cryptocurrency at the moment.

> Given that bitcoin isn't a medium of transaction anymore and a store of value this makes a lot of sense. Can someone bother explaining what this actually means? 3 weeks ago everyone is hype about how Bitcoin is going to be the future of currency and now that it's tanking and vendors are dropping it like a hot potato, its no longer a transactional currency and it's now a "store of value".

Currently Bitcoin transactions are very expensive (~$10-$20) and painfully slow taking hours to propagate. There are many more cryptocurrencies that are faster/cheaper such as Litecoin and even ETH (even though it's no _really_ supposed to act like a currency). Also there are some really cool platforms coming out such as REQ and Stellar which will arguably serve as better mediums of payment. The hype in crypto has cooled off a bit from last month's mania, however there is still a lot of innovation going on. This is why you see Bitcoin "regressing" into a store of value.
Post reply on HN