I don't think you're wrong and there are other problems too. Widespread Bitcoin adoption would require more energy for mining coins than the entire world can currently produce.
Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
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Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
You clearly failed to understand what 'hacker' means in this site's context, which is here a general term for a tech-savvy, overall outside-of-the-box thinker that desires to read a variety of interesting things (and maybe discuss them).
hn started getting interested in bitcoin the same time as my parents.
Demonstrably incorrect.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=bitcoin+site:news.ycombin...
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#23One EMP strike could take down this tulip bubble ponzi bonzi garden scheme.
Well, would that happen we would have a lot more to worry about than the price of a virtual coin...
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#24IMHO (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 -…
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Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#25The 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.
Cash is decentralised.
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#26I don't know what you mean by "prove". People have known about the block size limit for years. It's been increased, but most haven't updated their software to make use of it yet. Lightning now works on mainnet, but no one is using that either. Maybe it's more proof that no one cares?
I think I'm living in a different world than yours. Where I live, it's all different that what you said.
The block size hasn't increased. Instead, a new chain forked out with an 8MB block size, it's called Bitcoin cash.
Lightning network hasn't launched yet. A few people are testing alpha on the main net and that's it. (Btw I'm a skeptic of lightning network so i'm not advocating lightning network here).
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#27I don't think you're wrong and there are other problems too. Widespread Bitcoin adoption would require more energy for mining coins than the entire world can currently produce.
Yeah it's amazing how little people complain about this issue, especially when alternatives exist that leave the idea of a blockchain intact (proof of stake, for instance).
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#28It's not really designed to handle every little transaction. I would expect it to be used by exchanges and banks as a settlement layer, with most transactions happening off-chain. It's a mistake to look at recent news, because this has been known since the very beginning.
There is a thread on the site with the original Bitcoin paper right now. The first sentence of the abstract: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. A peer-to-peer network without going through a financial institution. The design was certainly intended to scale up to large numbers of sma…
it would and it will imo. I just don't think bitcoin is it.
It has however bootstrapped a few potentials. Until its decided which that might be, bitcoin kinda serves its purpose.
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#29The 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.
This has always seemed to me to be the elephant in the room to me.
I brought this up with some ethereum devs at one point in a forum a year or two ago, and they addressed the questions pretty openly and graciously, but I still wonder about it. Essentially, they talked about the presumption of branches, subchains, etc. When that happens it seems the system would be a little more complicated than the classic crypto-libertarian currency model.
These chains get pretty large, and the overhead in terms of time and storage space seems well beyond what most people are used to now. Maybe people just have to get used to 15 minute payments, and having an extra drive or computer for financial transactions, as the cost of decentralized finance and economics, but from the current vantage point it seems burdensome to me, and only more so as adoption would grow.
Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
#30The 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?