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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?

#331

Post by andoriyu »

mitchellberry wrote: post #243
pmorici wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Use a different cryptocurrency." I started using Bitcoin Cash instead and I'm loving it. All the good parts about Bitcoin Core w/o the brain dead approach to scaling.

If i gave you a search algorithm with a big db then asked if it could done quicker would you prefer to spin up more cpu's or try to improve the algorithm?

Hold on, this is a bad analogy. First, the issue right here is writing to disk, not seek and read. Second, bitcoin network has enormous processing power right now. It's just whole one block every ten minutes with a size of 1 megabyte isn't going to scale.

Just think about it you have all this power, but you only allowed to write 1mb in 10 minutes. So yeah, if it was my database I'd reduce commit time and increase commit size. Remember blockchain is nothing more than a distributed append-only database.

Personally, I think bitcoin is good in place of wire transfer/SWIFT, but right now it can't do that because it's too volatile.

I think banks having their own blockchains (i.e. quorum from Chase) is what is going to happen.

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

#332

Post by lawn »

etr-strike wrote: post #323
theWatcher37 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lighting network completely undermines the entire purpose of bitcoin, and blockstreams seeming desire to sabotage bitcoin for daily use coincides suspiciously with their outside “investment”. If you read the original bitcoin white paper it is clearly evident that the purpose of bitcoin was as a currency. These insane fees, wait times, and rediculous technical decisions by core have made it such that bitcoin is be…

Yea, no. Lightning network still depends on the bitcoin network. All it means is any two parties can transact off chain and settle up later. Not sure what the problem is.

That the Bitcoin network is being crippled in favor of these solutions.

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

#334

Post by QML »

mitchellberry wrote: post #243
pmorici wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Use a different cryptocurrency." I started using Bitcoin Cash instead and I'm loving it. All the good parts about Bitcoin Core w/o the brain dead approach to scaling.

If i gave you a search algorithm with a big db then asked if it could done quicker would you prefer to spin up more cpu's or try to improve the algorithm?

Depends on the search algorithm; if it can be parallelized, then modify the algorithm to take advantages of multiple CPUs. If not, then start throwing more threads at it.

In Bitcoin’s case, I don’t think we have a lack of CPUs though.

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

#335

Post by lawn »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #309
theWatcher37 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lighting network completely undermines the entire purpose of bitcoin, and blockstreams seeming desire to sabotage bitcoin for daily use coincides suspiciously with their outside “investment”. If you read the original bitcoin white paper it is clearly evident that the purpose of bitcoin was as a currency. These insane fees, wait times, and rediculous technical decisions by core have made it such that bitcoin is be…

I am not sure why it matters what the original purpose was. It seems that current consensus of bitcoin is to be a competitor to gold for store of value. there may be other cryptocurrencies that act more like currencies

> It seems that current consensus of bitcoin is to be a competitor to gold for store of value.

Only made by the incompetent/corrupt developers. Regular users just don't want to pay outrageous fees.

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

#336

Post by lawn »

grubles wrote: post #245
moduspol wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I expect the fee market alone will drive normal people toward Bitcoin Cash.

Dogecoin has much cheaper fees than Bcash and its block confirmation target is around 1 minute -- roughly an order of magnitude cheaper and faster than Bcash.

A note to readers: "Bcash" is a derogary term used by Core supporters to undermine and discredit Bitcoin Cash. Always be mindful when someone uses it.

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

#337

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

spookthesunset wrote: post #262
jwatte wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it does is not just arbitration things, but establish global consensus and an unalterable log of that consensus. If you've tried linking distributed Oracle databases between just a few different sites, you'd understand this has tons of failure cases and is, in fact, not a solved problem, even in the centralized world. (Bigtable probably gets the closest these days, if you want proprietary and not globally audita…

> What it does is not just arbitration things, but establish global consensus and an unalterable log of that consensus. That is nice. But can I, and everybody else in the USA successfully use Bitcoin on Black Friday? According to the National Retail Foundation, in 2016 over 101 million people went out on black friday to buy something. If Bitcoin could somehow 10x its transaction rate to even 40 transactions per secon…

Lightning Network protocol has reached v1.0 and they have demonstrated transacting real bitcoins instantaneously on youtube.

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

#338

Post by lawn »

grubles wrote: post #260
pmorici wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way neither of those "bcash"'s are What I'm talking about Bitcoin Cash. I think you are confused.

Don't feign ignorance. You know exactly what I'm talking about. :)

We are all aware of your stupid troll attempts.

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

#339

Post by tom_mellior »

garmaine wrote: post #46
asddkk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-lib…

Lightning allows instantaneous and cheap payments without the need to hit the chain. Mimblewimble allows for pruning of block chain history down to a few dozen bytes per historical transaction in the limit. If it is still an issue then at some point we could decide to checkpoint the UTXO set of a block sufficiently buried in the past (say, 1+ year) and just sync from there.

> Lightning allows instantaneous and cheap payments without the need to hit the chain.

But a transaction to set up a channel needs to hit the chain first. What's the intended workflow for occasionally (once every few weeks) instantaneously ordering pizza via Lightning? Would I have to set up a very long lived channel with my preferred pizza place in advance?

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

#340

Post by SaltyFetus »

theWatcher37 wrote: post #291
etr-strike wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If proof of stake proves itself to actually work, Bitcoin will adopt it. Migrating a 200 billion dollar network to an untested PoW proposal would be irresponsible. Arbitrarily increasing blocksize without addressing propagation delay and centralization impacts is also irresponsible. Bitcoin has been tirelessly working on the scaling problem in a responsible way. SegWit will allow up to 12t/s. Mimble Wimble and Schnor…

The lighting network completely undermines the entire purpose of bitcoin, and blockstreams seeming desire to sabotage bitcoin for daily use coincides suspiciously with their outside “investment”. If you read the original bitcoin white paper it is clearly evident that the purpose of bitcoin was as a currency. These insane fees, wait times, and rediculous technical decisions by core have made it such that bitcoin is be…

If you believe lightning undermines the whole purpose and is the product of sabotage (or whatever core is being accused of these days), there are multiple forks to choose from that don't use it.

No need to attack Bitcoin, just go all in on Bitcoin Cash , put your money where your mouth is, and move on.

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