101–110 of 412 posts
So one of the things I liked the idea of was micro payments - eg click to donate 5 cents to the author of an article. Are there any crypto currencies that work with negligible fees for micropayments? Is there a framework to use them? Thanks
why are transaction costs so high? I thought one of the selling points was that the transaction cost is negligible because miners main incentive comes from mining new bitcoins?
There's a finite number of bitcoins, fewer and fewer bitcoins are being produced over time by design. There can only be 21 million bitcoins, and the majority have already been mined. So the reward just for completing a block (not including the transaction fees) has been steadily decreasing, and that's not even taking into account that more and more miners means it's harder to get that reward. Thus the trend is going…
How is the bitcoin community rationalizing this seemingly inescapable mathematical failure?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The volatility alone wouldn't be a huge problem if the transactions were quick, apart from having to constantly re-price the goods (not a big deal with an automated system selling digital downloads, even though it is a real PITA for the accounting afterwards!). However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the trans…
If you treat it like gold(store of value) then having a service that makes it liquid is just a bonus. Is like expecting to be able to purchase something using stock.
Bitcoin is no more a store of value than tulips were. Bitcoin is a speculative product, not a store of value.
why are transaction costs so high? I thought one of the selling points was that the transaction cost is negligible because miners main incentive comes from mining new bitcoins?
There's a finite number of bitcoins, fewer and fewer bitcoins are being produced over time by design. There can only be 21 million bitcoins, and the majority have already been mined. So the reward just for completing a block (not including the transaction fees) has been steadily decreasing, and that's not even taking into account that more and more miners means it's harder to get that reward. Thus the trend is going…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possibly much, much longer, but it could be returned in 14 days if it's too low and never makes it out of the mempool. That's where traditional electronic payments have a huge edge -- instant, incredibly cheap guaranteed verification.
Bitcoin transaction are never "returned" - they are simply either confirmed or not yet confirmed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a finite number of bitcoins, fewer and fewer bitcoins are being produced over time by design. There can only be 21 million bitcoins, and the majority have already been mined. So the reward just for completing a block (not including the transaction fees) has been steadily decreasing, and that's not even taking into account that more and more miners means it's harder to get that reward. Thus the trend is going…
... so bitcoin is doomed as a real currency as the prices are only going to get higher and people are not going to pay a $5 transaction fee for a $10 product. How is the bitcoin community rationalizing this seemingly inescapable mathematical failure?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but at the same time Visa requires you to hand over your payment information to each and every merchant you transact with, and they are able to pull as much money from your card as they want, and they are able to charge you multiple times at any point in the future. But there are some really cool solutions being worked on right now for this problem in bitcoin that can make it scale to a similar way to Visa. But…
It’s possible that merchants could charge you whatever they like for however much they want. But it’s unlikely. And if they did, you would get all your money back and the merchant would pay a fine. The privacy info is valid, but BTC isn’t private either and people are connecting identities to purchases all the time. Not to mention 99% of the time I must give my info to the merchant so they can mail me whatever I purc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin transaction are never "returned" - they are simply either confirmed or not yet confirmed.
Technically they can be 'returned' by using a higher fee to move the coins to a different address making the original transaction un-confirmable.
Which means it's a gamble if that will ever work.
It's for the same reason that no one wanted to touch zimbabwe dollar back in 2007, if the value of the medium of exchange differs from breakfast to lunch it's not really a good medium of exchange. Doesn't matter if value is appreciating or depreciating, currency needs to have a reasonably stable value to be useful.
The volatility alone wouldn't be a huge problem if the transactions were quick, apart from having to constantly re-price the goods (not a big deal with an automated system selling digital downloads, even though it is a real PITA for the accounting afterwards!). However, getting the transaction confirmed can take many hours at the times of high demand and then it still fails because thanks to the volatility, the trans…
I am having trouble fathoming why you think that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you make a bitcoin transaction, it gets put into a "mempool". Basically you send your TX to a node, that shares it with other nodes on the network, and they all hold it in memory. Once a block is found, the miner that found the block will pull as many transactions as possible from the mempool and put them into that block and sign it on the blockchain forever. Since TX fees go to miners, they are incentivized to…
I don’t understand why miners wouldn’t include all pending transactions in their block. Seeing as how pow is a guessing game, there are plenty of permutations of the Merkle tree to generate plenty of roots. I guess to dissencentivize free loaders so miners can continue to make money once Coinbase txns are no longer a thing? It’s certainly not free to mine!