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Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#131

Post by Xorlev »

whiskyant wrote: post #129
jen729w wrote: post #4

IMHO (because to claim to "know" anything about how this is all going to turn out is to be a fraud), Bitcoin is the proof of concept for this whole crypto thing. It was the first. It was the genesis idea. But good lord, do we think it's the actual solution? What would be the odds? I imagine that Bitcoin will play its part as the public face of the blockchain revolution, but something else - or many other somethings -…

You do realize bitcoin is constantly evolving and can change its code right? If another crypto creates a better scaling tech, bitcoin can incorporate that idea.

Can, but won’t as has been proven repeatedly.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#132

Post by berberous »

badloginagain wrote: post #127
eternalcode wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is a tough question as many other alt-coins have yet to be challenge by the huge volume that btc/eth experience. Some might say litecoin for one.

I also like litecoin for the purely selfish reasons of it still being (relatively) cheap. BTC prices are out of my ability to play, and most ICO's are derivatives of 'ScamCoin'. LiteCoin is one of the few options it feels I can still get in on the action with a purpose driven coin with a strong/transparent dev team.

You know you can buy fractions of a BTC, right?

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#133

Post by CPLX »

Bitcoin is a quasi-legal worldwide distributed mechanism for financial gambling that everyday people can now participate in from their smartphone.

Clearly it has scaled well, it is now one of the more successful means of gambling extant. The fact that it is becoming unusable for any other purpose could have implications, but it's self evident that this use case has scaled considerably.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#135

Post by gruez »

etherael wrote: post #125
gruez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not due to technical reasons but because they want to redirect scaling off-chain, using technology they coveniently develop. But how does that benefit them? Lightning network is open source, so it's not like they can make money on transaction fees.

https://mobile.twitter.com/adam3us/status/923309367260274688 Good reason to believe the entire thing was simply the old system attempting to hijack bitcoin. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7fsbw5/divorcing_the_s...

>https://mobile.twitter.com/adam3us/status/923309367260274688

selling a SaaS (presumably with support) to enterprises is a bad thing now?

>Good reason to believe the entire thing was simply the old system attempting to hijack bitcoin.

>https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7fsbw5/divorcing_the_s....

most of the post wasn't really relevant to the on-chain vs off-chain discussion, so i'm going to quote (what i think is) the relevant bits

>The divorce of the transaction layer from the settlement layer enables corrupt influence and tampering within the system in much the exact same way as the fiat system. [...] The core treachery that has been inflicted upon the project is what? You guessed it; to divorce the settlement and transaction layers from one another, which makes it once again subject to the exact same weaknesses as gold in the modern world with its laughable 542 to 1 paper to physical transaction to settlement layer.

how i'm understanding the argument it is that by separating the transaction/settlement layer, it would lead to fractional reserve banking, as seen in fiat currencies. how does lighting network achieve that? to start a payment channel that can handle x BTC in net transactions, you have to lock x BTC beforehand, so it's not like using lighting network is equivalent to issuing IOUs for bitcoin. am i missing something?

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#136

Post by betterunix2 »

jstanley wrote: post #77
ericsoderstrom wrote: post #45

People now envision bitcoin as 'store of value', and less like an actual currency. I imagine there are many technical and financial reasons why it will never be suitable as a currency. (Deflationary by design, technical limitations on size of blocks leading to slowness of transactions) Does being unsuitable as a currency mean it's also unsuitable as a 'store of value'? The answer to that isn't obvious to me. The valu…

> The value of the US dollar comes in part from our ability to pay taxes with it (and perhaps ultimately from the US military). It doesn't come from either of those things. It only has value because people believe it does, otherwise they would all try to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

The value of anything depends on demand; the demand for USD comes in part from the need to pay taxes to a government that will only accept USD (and more generally, from the fact that in the United States, the law only recognizes USD as money -- so things like debts, torts, etc. wind up being measured in USD, so anyone who has a legal obligation to make such payments will add to the demand for USD).

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#137

Post by noobermin »

moduspol wrote: post #89
mchristen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The size of blocks is not core to the algorithm of Bitcoin though. What would you say to the person trying to send $30 only to have $20 of it eaten up in fees? Come back later when you can afford to use Bitcoin?

Use a different cryptocurrency. Seriously. And I'm not trying to be cheeky. If Bitcoin ends up only being a settlement layer, it'll still be a colossal success just being a decentralized, supply-limited, uncensorable, world-accessible payment system and store of value. If someone else solves the scaling debacle better, I'll be the first to recommend that normal people switch to it. But it's not easy, and the world is…

This sounds a hell lot like changing the goal posts.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#138

Post by busyra »

Off Topic: Is anyone else creeped out by having an open ledger? As soon as I transact with someone or an entity, they now have access to view my wallet's holding/transactions via pub key. I don't know how I feel about Overstock having that information.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#140

Post by SeoxyS »

moondev wrote: post #30
badminton1 wrote: post #16

The idea is that bitcoin is decentralized. But common sense tells you that by having an append only system, eventually you will need a supercomputer to deal with the blockchain. Naturally, the blockchain will have to be hierarchical, or find ways to compact it.

Dosen't the blockchain already compact? Correct me if i'm wrong but once a block is hashed and confirmed as the most recent block, why would you need to store the previous blocks?

"Balances" are stored on every block. If you threw away the beginning of the chain, you could keep generating blocks, but you couldn't spend any transaction outputs that are stored in the thrown away parts of the chain.

Unless I'm missing something something pretty big about how Bitcoin's blockchain works.

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