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BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

blog.bitpay.com

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Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#191

Post by topmonk »

Nursie wrote: post #189
topmonk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it's "just sad", for sure... There has to be some acknowledgement that if you take someone else's work and modify it, you shouldn't then be allowed to claim you are them.

Do you not see the irony in what you're saying here? It is by definition a decentralised, anarchic system. The idea of authorisation or ownership of the one true core is hilarious.

> The idea of authorisation or ownership of the one true core is hilarious.

That's great, but it's not what I wrote. What "one true core"?

Taking someone's software, modifying it, and touting your change as the next version of their software is wrong. Regardless if the code is meant for a block chain, or anything else.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#192

Post by topmonk »

Nursie wrote: post #190
topmonk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take someone else's work, modify it, and then claim you are them, that's not "open to interpretation". It's just wrong.

So Bitcoin/Bitcoin Core/whatever need to stop claiming to be Bitcoin too?

No, because those same developers worked on the earlier versions as well. They didn't just come in, take someone else's code, change it, and say, "Look guys, here is the next version of their software! Enjoy ;)"

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#193

Post by joseluis »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #69

Fascinating how all the comments explaining that for fast and cheap transactions there is Litecoin (which has SegWit and Lightning) and pointing out BCash (still vulnerable to transaction malleability because it does not have SegWit) technical and governance problems immediately got downvoted into oblivion. Edit: including this comment.

Fascinanting the misinformation indeed.

1. Litecoin fees are much more expensive than with Bitcoin Cash and it's not secure with 0 confirmations.

2. The DAA upgrade included the NULLFAIL and LOW_S BIPs, both of which remove sources of transaction malleability. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7hqt7k/transaction_mal...

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#194

Post by makomk »

modeless wrote: post #7

This was foreseeable when Bitcoin Core rejected Segwit2x. BitPay's business model simply fails unless the blockchain can scale much more than Segwit alone achieves, very soon.

That's not the whole story. Litecoin has about the same theoretical capacity as Bitcoin Cash and one huge advantage for BitPay's business model: generating blocks at 4x the speed means it's more likely that transactions will confirm within the window they're willing to lock in a price for. (It's also on more exchanges, as I recall.) There's obviously some other reason besides transaction capacity for Bitcoin Cash to being chosen here.

Also, Bitcoin Cash had the annoying antifeature of using the same address format as Bitcoin, probably because it pretends to be Bitcoin, which means it's easy to accidentally send Bitcoins to a Cash address and vice-versa. Even experienced users seem to screw this up occasionally. (This certainly wasn't for reasons of wallet software compatibility; changing the address version number is trivial compared to the other changes required to port even a lightweight wallet.)

BitPay's workaround for this is apparently to use their own address format for Bitcoin Cash which is incompatible with most existing wallet software ("the BitPay and Copay wallets' BCH address format"). Non-BitPay wallet software seems to have backed a different, incompatible new address format as the solution to this problem. Of course, all of the wallet software is still going to happily let you accidentally send Bitcoin Cash to the Bitcoin payment address... it's only sending it to the correct address that may not be supported.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#195

Post by makomk »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #14
dahdum wrote: post #9

Just this May their CEO was singing a different tune: "We have carefully studied the most significant alternatives to the Bitcoin Blockchain and have concluded that none of them are compelling" [1] He's been a bitcoin maximalist for a while, so it's notable to see him finally cave due to the mining fees. [1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitpay-ceo-we-studied-bitcoin...

He 'caved in' because bitpay was bought by bitmain, the largest centralized chinese miner.

This does seem like a more plausible explanation. Bitcoin Cash is worse for their application than Litecoin in pretty much every way: it has slower blocks so there's more chance of the price shifting before the transaction confirms, it has less exchange support, they had to create their own address format for it that existing Bitcoin Cash wallets don't even support sending to in order to ensure people didn't accidentally send bitcoins there, and so on. However, it does have the major advantage for Bitcoin miners that their existing mining hardware can be used for it.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#196

Post by paul7986 »

pmorici wrote: post #165
paul7986 wrote: post #146

Newbie ... what apps turn BitCoin into cash .... I assume Coinbase can when you sell a BitCoin or a portion of BitCoin to a third party? What other ways and or apps are people using to turn BitCoin into cash/USD?

If you are in the USA you have numerous options including; Coinbase, GDAX, Gemini, itbit, and Kraken among others.

Thanks, yet how do you find buyers .. do these marketplaces connect you with buyers?

As a newbie i went ahead and bought a tiny portion of a Bitcoin recently from say GDAX. So, since I bought it from them I can also sell it back them at a profit or I have to find another interested buyer like a friend?

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#197

Post by paulmd »

davej wrote: post #22
modeless wrote: post #7

This was foreseeable when Bitcoin Core rejected Segwit2x. BitPay's business model simply fails unless the blockchain can scale much more than Segwit alone achieves, very soon.

While I agree that Segwit2x would have been good for BTC, it ultimately only kicks the can down the road a little bit. If BTC (or BCH) is going to be used at Visa/Mastercard scale then the transactions need to happen off-chain. The Lightning Network is the answer here, a lot of work still needs to be done though, particularly on the software side.

> If BTC (or BCH) is going to be used at Visa/Mastercard scale then the transactions need to happen off-chain. The Lightning Network is the answer here

There is a lot of technical complexity to this, and no real working proof at scale (AFAIK there is no production implementation even at a small scale).

Lightning Network at scale will involve routing problems between coinholders analogous to a mesh network (or more realistically, FidoNet/UUnet) which risks centralization since those problems are not solved at scale in any fashion except hub-and-spoke/backbone. BGP is not an acceptable solution for LN since it involves a substantial degree of trust, and manual routing devolves into centralization.

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#198

Post by paulmd »

asciimo wrote: post #79
hrrsn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the major (technical - plenty of political issues) problem I have with Bcash. It’s cheap and fast because transaction volumes, and price, are 10% of BTC, yet blocks are 1.5x the size (roughly, looking at a block explorer). As soon as they fill up, they’ll have the exact same problems down the line. Increasing the block size doesn’t scale long term and is a bandaid solution at best. BTC was fast and cheap when…

Why do some people call Bitcoin Cash "Bcash?" It seems to accompany critical statements. I'll assume you're not doing it to save 6 letters, because later you refer to Bitcoin as BTC. You could have saved more letters by referring to Bitcion Cash at BCH. Is this a campaign to rebrand Bitcoin Cash as something other than a Bitcoin fork?

> Why do some people call Bitcoin Cash "Bcash?"

It's an abbreviation. Bitcoin Cash = Bcash/BCH. This acronym is not confusable with Bitcoin or the BTC acronym at all.

Why is this considered remotely offensive? People are incredibly reactive to this and I don't understand why. It's a pretty straightforward mechanism of acronyms that has been going on for hundreds of years.

Why is this actually considered a serious point of discussion, at all?

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#199

Post by paulmd »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #55
r1ch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the blocks appear larger on Bitcoin Cash even though they have a lower transaction count because they contain transactions that are consolidating unspent outputs (example: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/transaction/5254e22a6a5f... ). These kinds of transactions aren't feasible on the Bitcoin chain since the fees are prohibitive, so all those small unspent outputs remain in the UTXO set forever and are es…

I get it. You want litecoin. It has been around for years.

The inability to clear dust on Bitcoin is a serious problem. It's fragmentation, for your money, that makes it impossible to spend (given the current fee structure, which has been defined as "normal" now that Bitcoin is "digital gold" rather than a transmission network).

It's like every time you buy something, the change just disappears, and once a week you have to spend another $20 to sweep it up. This is not how currency is supposed to work, and it's been retconned as somehow being a good thing.

Don't hate on me for stating the obvious here. Whatever happened to the "no fees" that advocates like Marc Andreesen were promoting circa-2014?

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/

(yeah, obviously false given the transaction fees paid to miners that have since become prominent when the blocks filled up)

Re: BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash

#200

Post by paulmd »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #166
pmorici wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The op is talking about accounts like yours Frogolocalypse. You only comment on crypto related articles on HN and it's always the same talking points over and over. Edit: I see further down the page someone even called you out for spamming this thread and others with identical comments over and over.

I try to talk about the technical implementation of bitcoin and the game theory that supports it. There are lots of kids whose understanding of bitcoin extends to reading reddit. That is what we see here. Unfortunately. I would prefer if reddit discussions, vote brigading, and sockpuppets, remained on reddit.

You've literally responded to this thread more than 10x more than anyone else. You are the brigade/sockpuppet, buddy.

Why is Bitpay processing more than one cryptocurrency so threatening to you personally? How sure are you that you don't have some stake in this?

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