281–290 of 421 posts
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How a large a "cut" they take from every transaction is the question here. As for cash,there's no cut taken by any middle man. And when the central government or bank is involved in pushing a legal currency -- there shouldn't be any cut.
You know damn well that banks and credit card institutions take cuts of transactions. Why this aversion to Bitcoin on HN, even with LN?
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What do you mean they don't have control of the network? The bitcoin network is by definition the network that runs the bitcoin software developed by the bitcoin dev team.
no, the devs can't unilaterally make decisions on how the network works. There are decentralized nodes (very low-barrier to entry) that run the code; the nodes must actually run that code, and devs have no control over it. Then there are miners, not quite as decentralized because the barriers to entry are much higher here; they have to mine on that chain, which is also a way of "running" it. So the devs have to inter…
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Yeah but imagine if you bought a beer for $4 and then next week the beer was actually worth $8 and the next it was worth $7 and then a few months later the beer was worth $50. The whole point of fiat is that it is stable and so you aren't fucking yourself by exchanging it for consumables.
Why does it matter how many dollars the beer is worth? It is worth the same number of bitcoins yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That's the only stability that is relevant.
That would be nice but it goes against the "number go up" theory of "bitcoin investing".
Why is no one pointing out that, in order to receive bitcoins on the Lightning Network (LN), you need to lock bitcoins in a payment channel? So, if a consumer wants to send bitcoins to a merchant, either the consumer needs to lock up bitcoins in a payment channel which can only send bitcoins to that given merchant , or the consumer needs to lock up bitcoins in a payment channel to an intermediate gateway, and the mer…
Imo, all of those are outdated claims. For consumers, it's easy to open outbound channels (e.g. to well connected nodes). For merchants, it's becoming easier as well. Remember that it's a network, merchants can have outbound channels and "pay themselves" to get back inbound liquidity (can also be automated).
You're not limited to one "gateway" either.
If liquidity is a problem on LN right now, you're already dealing with bigger amounts that can happen on-chain.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I find LN to be elegant as a payment system for Bitcoin.
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You think the average person does less than one financial transaction per day? O_o I mean, sure, not everyone is out getting a coffee every morning, but that strikes me as roughly an order of magnitude below reality. Let’s say, shopping three times a week, with 5 transactions per shopping trip; that’s already an average of 2 transactions a day, but worse, since it’s clustered in small time intervals. How do possibly…
Over the last three months, I've made on average slightly more than two transactions per week, most of which is due to buying food every 3 or 4 days. Everything else is a rounding error. Now I won't claim my consumption pattern is typical, but it certainly shows that 0-1 transaction per day is possible. (What are the five shops you visit three times a week?)
If I was still commuting, I’d add at least 5 a week for lunches, might add another 5 a week for train station Brötchen and cookie. If the restaurants were back to normal, might add two more per week for evening meals.
I think I prefer my new normal of the bulk shopping being a once a week collection, so that probably won’t go back to my old habit of whatever/wherever, but even then the local doesn’t have everything I want, so there will be a few additional transactions with grocery stores.
(My commute costs will likely be a once-per-year expense, so a rounding error for transactions per week).
> Bukele said the country is partnering with digital wallet company, Strike, to build modern financial infrastructure using bitcoin technology. Wow, this seems like an incredibly shitty situation for the people of El Salvador. It looks like some lobbyists got hired by a wallet company stacked with angel investors willing to pour money into the idea of being integrated into the government at such a low level. I wouldn…
Their work is open source and they are using standard Bitcoin protocols. Zap is their wallet https://zaphq.io Strike is a payment app that uses Bitcoin Lightning network internally to settle payments between financial institutions. It's useful for sending fiat currency denominated remittances instantly and without fees. https://strike.me When they released Strike in El Salvador, it was an instant success. The preside…
> Bukele said the country is partnering with digital wallet company, Strike, to build modern financial infrastructure using bitcoin technology. Wow, this seems like an incredibly shitty situation for the people of El Salvador. It looks like some lobbyists got hired by a wallet company stacked with angel investors willing to pour money into the idea of being integrated into the government at such a low level. I wouldn…
Their work is open source and they are using standard Bitcoin protocols. Zap is their wallet https://zaphq.io Strike is a payment app that uses Bitcoin Lightning network internally to settle payments between financial institutions. It's useful for sending fiat currency denominated remittances instantly and without fees. https://strike.me When they released Strike in El Salvador, it was an instant success. The preside…
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You argue it is stable by arguing you never need to convert it to fiat. If your economy is running 100% on Bitcoin it doesn't matter what the exchange rate to USD our any other currency is. (Note I'm not actually arguing this is the case in El Salvador, just pointing out that there is a theoretical argument that could be made.)
That is only true if the entire global economy is running 100% on bitcoin. The second you need to trade with another economy (like any nation needs to in order to import/export goods), you are bitten by the same issue. The US is El Salvador's largest trading partner - so Bitcoin's price relative to the USD does matter.
100% on bitcoin means no services, no goods, an economy where nothing but bitcoin exists. As soon as I need to drink water the price of water and the income of the operator of the well will go down over time because of the fixed supply and the hoarding of currency.
Even though the market hasn't really reacted to this news (which I suspect is due to the fact that it's proposed/didn't happen yet), this is one of the most bullish news in a very long time in my opinion (even more bullish than companies buying into it). I suspect this will start the domino effect of countries slowly, but surely adopting BTC. It'll probably be the smaller countries first where they don't have great c…
Why would countries give up control over monetary policy voluntarily? It seems a rather dumb idea.
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no, the devs can't unilaterally make decisions on how the network works. There are decentralized nodes (very low-barrier to entry) that run the code; the nodes must actually run that code, and devs have no control over it. Then there are miners, not quite as decentralized because the barriers to entry are much higher here; they have to mine on that chain, which is also a way of "running" it. So the devs have to inter…
Yes, of course. But the fact that bitcoin governance makes it very difficult to introduce changes means that all the relevant decisions were made during the design phase by the original developers, and that everybody who came later had no influence on these decisions. Whereas a currency that is managed through democratic institutions allows the community that uses it to have control over crucial aspects of the curren…
And... do you really believe currency management decisions on the level of the US Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank are in any realistic sense democratic? I'm not being snippy, I'm really puzzled by that statement.