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

Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

sidazhang.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 111 posts

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#21

Post by lsadam0 »

etchalon wrote: post #9
sida wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in Bitcoinland, objections against Bitcoin are also often flagged as trolling, and dismissed immediately

There is definitely a pervasive culture within cryptos of people either "getting it" or "not". It's a bit disturbing.

I believe both sides of the aisle hold some responsibility for this disconnect. Detractors of cryptocurrency often like to cite the shady world of BitCoin securities, just like this article does.

However, that's not a valid criticism. BTC functioned only as the method of payment. You can't criticize the future utility of a technology based upon how someone has misused it. If that were the case, we should ban the Internet.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#22

Post by philh »

valarauca1 wrote: post #12
etchalon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely a pervasive culture within cryptos of people either "getting it" or "not". It's a bit disturbing.

This is true for the cultures surrounding most things I'd postulate. A large majority who support it, largely blindly but dismiss valid arguments against with suspicion, and a smaller minority who actually understand counter arguments, but believe, or hold a complex opinion.

Often it goes both ways. Of the people who oppose it, most do so blindly and dismiss valid arguments in favor, while a minority understand the arguments well enough to reply to them.

Ninety percent of opinions are crap.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#23

Post by lsadam0 »

GlickWick wrote: post #11

The title is very click-baity, I think we can all agree on that. However, a lot of the points made within are completely legit. The Bitcoin world is rife with scams and one of the primary uses of Bitcoin is to engage in illegal transactions. The benefits of de-regulation are obvious, but the downsides are killing it right now. A lot of people are stuck on the "regulation is evil!" rehtoric due to the current issues w…

I won't disagree that CryptoCurrencies have by and large been used for illegal transactions. Though, my response would be: So?

Any technology can be applied to do something illegal. Do you think this fact played 0 part in the Internet itself thriving? I don't see us scrambling to throw away steak knives just because some people have been stabbed.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#24

Post by tveita »

hartator wrote: post #10

"Per transaction cost is currently low because mining revenue comes from inflation." It's actually the reverse. Mining speculates on deflation not inflation.

I think the point is that mining is subsidized by "printing" new bitcoins, which currently make up most of the block reward.

Speculation is in theory not a factor, since spending $ on buying a bitcoin == spending $ on mining a bitcoin, so the price would be the same, if a rational market existed.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#27

Post by shillster »

sida wrote: post #8
Mahn wrote: post #6

Despite the click-bait title, the article makes valid points which are very often overlooked or downright ignored by hardcore bitcoiners. As someone who's been watching bitcoin for the past few years, this is in my opinion the plain reality.

And in Bitcoinland, objections against Bitcoin are also often flagged as trolling, and dismissed immediately

As jordon0day just wrote in an unrelated thread, "we have plenty of evidence that people are really bad at being suspicious of the often unreliable stuff they read on the internet"

I think this is a group that is highly sensitive to face value of statements people make and when someone makes an uninformed remark, their entirely argument is cast aside. Dissent is welcomed, but it needs to be backed by a solid justification.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#28

Post by DennisP »

StavrosK wrote: post #19
clavalle wrote: post #16

I think this essay is top heavy: the conclusions can't hold given the assumptions. Take the first argument: for transactions to remain cheap one of three things has to happen, then those three things are painted as almost impossible. But the second one; "At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds." Seems completely possible. If transactions remain relatively cheap then bitcoin can be very useful…

I think he means transactions per block, which is hard to increase 250x.

The Bitcoin devs are working right now on something that could increase the block size more than that.

The main thing that limits the size is latency in propagating large blocks. But most miners already have most of the transactions in each block. All you really need to send is a small data structure that lets the miner reconstruct the full block, from the transactions he already has. An invertible bloom lookup table makes that pretty easy: http://www.i-programmer.info/programming/theory/4641-the-inv...

Using this, a home bandwidth connection could handle about 45,000 tx/sec, which is more than Visa at peak: https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2

The other problem is blockchain storage. They're planning to prune old empty addresses, which should help a lot. A more radical solution is to store the full blocks only for the last couple months, and only a linked set of hashes back to the beginning. That might be a bigger change than Bitcoin can handle, but another currency could do it.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#29

Post by nutschig »

StavrosK wrote: post #19
clavalle wrote: post #16

I think this essay is top heavy: the conclusions can't hold given the assumptions. Take the first argument: for transactions to remain cheap one of three things has to happen, then those three things are painted as almost impossible. But the second one; "At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds." Seems completely possible. If transactions remain relatively cheap then bitcoin can be very useful…

I think he means transactions per block, which is hard to increase 250x.

Gavin argues that 1000x is possible. With the latest features of header-first syncing, and simultaneous multiple downloads of blocks, we're doing pretty well.

https://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/blocksize-economics/

In the future, the blockchain inital sync should be torrented by default.

Re: Why the practical applications of Bitcoin will be limited

#30

Post by valarauca1 »

lsadam0 wrote: post #18
Mahn wrote: post #6

Despite the click-bait title, the article makes valid points which are very often overlooked or downright ignored by hardcore bitcoiners. As someone who's been watching bitcoin for the past few years, this is in my opinion the plain reality.

The problem with that article is not that it makes 0 valid points, it's that it makes some terrible correlations as an attempt to prove cryptos won't be huge. What does a scammer selling unlicensed shares in porn production have anything to do with the success or failure of cryptocurrency? Bitcoin was simply the method of payment, nothing more. That example is immediately followed with the eBay + TicketMaster example…

>You know why I would prefer a decentralized trustful solution like OpenBazaar? Because eBay bends me over with fees. In fact, they double dip. And there's nothing I can do about it.

This is a problem a trust-less system wouldn't solve, inherently. The real problem is ebay lacks competition.

>It's not about illegal use cases. It's about empowerment of the individual over seemingly insurmountable institutions.

Again competition. You want people to have the power to compete, and have options.

>The author is having the wrong discussion.

Yes you are. None of the problems you listed are solve by decentralized trustless systems. Their consumer service problems. Which any company, or system can have.

:.:.:

Ultimately you commit the same sins you argue the blog post commits.

Post reply on HN