11–20 of 47 posts
Ah, the weekly Bitcoin hype thread. That there is still future for BTC other than a specific niche. The make believe story. In case there are still people not fooled yet. Don't get me wrong, I like BTC. But this speculation driven value investment is not the right way.
Nothing stops alt-coins from continuing to exist independently as they do today if sidechains are implemented. I liked the VoIP analogy, although other examples abound where an initial network effect was supplanted by competing implementations (e.g. search engines, social networking).
Network Effect does.
Ah, the weekly Bitcoin hype thread. That there is still future for BTC other than a specific niche. The make believe story. In case there are still people not fooled yet. Don't get me wrong, I like BTC. But this speculation driven value investment is not the right way.
Replace bitcoin in what you just said with internet, VOIP, airplanes, ipod and you got a pretty solid template for historic underestimations of technology in the long run.
>>Lest you think I’m taking sides already, let me stress that it’s not at all clear that AC is actually better than DC No, it has been settled for almost a hundred years that AC, for long distance transmission, is the best. Too bad he included something like this. It diminishes his credibility and colors the entire article. Edit: So I seem to be quite wrong. Well, at least now I know. I stand corrected.
AC transmission is nice for a few reasons, but the biggest reason for its use historically historically has been that you can step down from high to low voltage with a passive element (a transformer).
(Why step up and down? You want to transmit at the highest voltage you can to reduce conduction losses (higher V -> lower I for the same P, and thus lower I^2 * R losses).)
But long distance AC transmission is ugly in a bunch of ways. For one, over very long distances a power line becomes a reasonably efficient 60 Hz antenna, which means radiated losses in addition to conduction losses. For another, AC generators want to produce 3-phase power; transmitting this directly means more wire, balancing phases, et cetera. Further, AC transmission suffers additional conduction losses when reactively loaded because of circulating currents (this is why people care about "power factor"). In practice, the complexity of managing the reactive loading of HVAC transmision wires is substantial: transformer nonidealities turn a resistive load on the secondary into a slightly reactive load seen at the primary, which introduces circulating losses. And let's not forget that an AC grid requires that all the generators feeding the grid are precisely synchronized, while a DC grid has no such synchronization issues, which simplifies the task of bringing power plants up and down.
By comparison, DC transmission requires complexity at the sender and receiver: generation is for the most part a fundamentally AC process (i.e., electrical generators), and of course homes are built for AC power, so the receiver must switch DC back to AC. But as power devices become better and cheaper, and the power grid's load increases (without commensurate increase in copper to handle higher currents), long distance DC transmission is becoming more commonplace. (And since modern AC transmission requires some power factor management anyway, the choice really isn't between "dumb transformer" and "massive inverter" anyhow.)
For example, when I lived in Boston it received a substantial amount of its power as HVDC from somewhere in Canada. Three big (like, BIG) inverting stations around town were responsible for turning this DC into AC for local transmission. This setup ostensibly saved substantially on conducted and radiated transmission losses, according to the folks who gave us a tour of one of the inversion stations.
Wikipedia has more on this topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
>>Lest you think I’m taking sides already, let me stress that it’s not at all clear that AC is actually better than DC No, it has been settled for almost a hundred years that AC, for long distance transmission, is the best. Too bad he included something like this. It diminishes his credibility and colors the entire article. Edit: So I seem to be quite wrong. Well, at least now I know. I stand corrected.
DC is better over long distances than AC. The problem with DC is that generators and many engines operate on AC and that was more important at the beginning of electricity use.
Historically, AC was much more feasible to do this with because you can change the voltage with transformers, which are basically paired coils of copper wire. These days we have the capability to convert between AC and high voltage DC, but it's still requires comparatively complicated equipment and isn't as reliable.
>>Lest you think I’m taking sides already, let me stress that it’s not at all clear that AC is actually better than DC No, it has been settled for almost a hundred years that AC, for long distance transmission, is the best. Too bad he included something like this. It diminishes his credibility and colors the entire article. Edit: So I seem to be quite wrong. Well, at least now I know. I stand corrected.
DC is better over long distances than AC. The problem with DC is that generators and many engines operate on AC and that was more important at the beginning of electricity use.
Ah, the weekly Bitcoin hype thread. That there is still future for BTC other than a specific niche. The make believe story. In case there are still people not fooled yet. Don't get me wrong, I like BTC. But this speculation driven value investment is not the right way.
Replace bitcoin in what you just said with internet, VOIP, airplanes, ipod and you got a pretty solid template for historic underestimations of technology in the long run.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace bitcoin in what you just said with internet, VOIP, airplanes, ipod and you got a pretty solid template for historic underestimations of technology in the long run.
All the things you mention have value. But what is the value of using Bitcoins for the average person? Where are Bitcoins so obviously better than a credit card that switching is a good decision?
The key advantages are decentralization and anonymity and to the average person who just wants a simple secure payment solution a credit card has all the advantages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace bitcoin in what you just said with internet, VOIP, airplanes, ipod and you got a pretty solid template for historic underestimations of technology in the long run.
All the things you mention have value. But what is the value of using Bitcoins for the average person? Where are Bitcoins so obviously better than a credit card that switching is a good decision?