Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Ending Bitcoin Support
121–130 of 659 posts
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is currently the crypto equivalent of gold. It's not reasonable to use it to buy a coffee. However, Bitcoin is trying (but many would argue, failing) to upgrade the network with something that will allow cheaper/faster transactions and make it a reasonable currency again. However, (imo) in-fighting has seriously hampered this. That being the reality, many people hope that Bitcoin will remain a store of value…
No, Bitcoin is the crypto equivalent of Monopoly money: it is unreasonable to use it for anything but little fun. For real world use cases there are better solutions, including other cryptocurrencies.
Gold isn't reasonable for the average Joe to use for anything either.
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Plenty of people (myself included) have used lightning on mainnet successfully. People know the risks. It's just fun technology to play with.
I actually don't know the risks. Have a short version?
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is currently the crypto equivalent of gold. It's not reasonable to use it to buy a coffee. However, Bitcoin is trying (but many would argue, failing) to upgrade the network with something that will allow cheaper/faster transactions and make it a reasonable currency again. However, (imo) in-fighting has seriously hampered this. That being the reality, many people hope that Bitcoin will remain a store of value…
No, Bitcoin is the crypto equivalent of Monopoly money: it is unreasonable to use it for anything but little fun. For real world use cases there are better solutions, including other cryptocurrencies.
There was a recent bit on NPR (Planet Money?) where they interviewed young people in Seoul - they had so little faith in their ability to earn a living and save money by working a regular job in Korea they were putting all their savings into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and hoping to hit the jackpot. It was alarming.
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is definitely acting more like an asset than a medium of exchange, and yeah, I don't see why it would hold any value if it's treated like an asset. But as soon as people realize that then it should go back to being a medium of exchange and then it'll hold value again as an asset? Either way, just because Bitcoin isn't functioning correctly doesn't mean that all cryptocurrencies are not. But I guess at the mom…
Bitcoin is functioning exactly as designed. Satoshi planned for this; it's in the whitepaper. Most people just don't like the idea of Satoshi's endgame vision. But it's working as intended.
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Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#126This 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…
> This reads a bit like the sort of things people say when breaking up so as not to upset the other person too much.
Probably wise considering Bitcoin's strange cultish following.
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#127[deleted]
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#128Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#129They 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…
Lightning needs two additional transactions to load and unload payment channels, maximum transaction amount is 0.04 BTC, and it is at least 1 year away from maturity for large scale deployment. Current price bubble will bust long before that, and no one will care about LN anymore.
A full-scale LN needs one transaction to get on the network, then loading and unloading can happen entirely on the network, as well as keeping the channel open indefinitely.
Obviously getting to that point will take quite a lot of work, but there is no reason why you ever need to close a payment channel unless someone is trying to break the rules (and if that happens, you'll be happy, because you'll end up with all of the money in the channel, which will more than pay for the TX fees for 2 more transactions to close then reopen the channel).
Re: Ending Bitcoin Support
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gold as a metal has an inherent value though. If not only for jewelry, it also has important uses in electronics. The value associated with bitcoin seems purely sentimental.
This is why I hate the comparison of crypto to gold or any other "value asset'. Houses are lived in. Stocks act as a cashflow for companies. Even if the world economy collapses you can still use a solid gold bar as a blunt instrument to kill an animal and eat it. Cryptocurrencies have exactly 0 secondary uses.
What's the secondary use of all the shares of AMZN one might have in their eTrade account? That's also just data, right?