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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?

#361

Post by etr-strike »

lawn wrote: post #332
etr-strike wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re upset the core devs didn’t let Bitcoin become a centralized coin? If you refuse to acknowledge the benefit of SegWit or the other scaling solutions then I can’t help you.

Big blockers have their Jihan and Roger coin now. Stop trying to steal the bitcoin brand. If there was consensus for big blocks then Bitcoin would have activated. Jihan and Roger couldn’t convince the educated people that their proposals would work. Now they’re throwing a tantrum.

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

#362

Post by ben_w »

oarsinsync wrote: post #354
spookthesunset wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's a problem that hasn't been solved (yet). That shouldn't diminish all the other things that BTC does successfully.

When the correct answer is “bitcoin“, what is the question? I genuinely, genuinely, don’t see any task for which it is the best solution — not even for anonymous online payments or secret ways to store wealth.

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

#363

Post by etr-strike »

ben_w wrote: post #359
etr-strike wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I ever claimed 20 t/s was sufficient. Just pointing out the throughput has increased by an order of magnitude and there is a tremendous amount of ongoing innovation in this space.

Marvellous, one whole order of magnitude! If you manage another factor of 5000 and Bitcoin will reach what Visa and Mastercard (and, separately, another cryptocurrency) managed several years ago .

Which cryptocurrency supports 60k t/s?

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

#364

Post by joeschmoecad »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #78
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 -…

This is my thought as well, and I don't understand why it isn't more commonly stated. The sheer chances that the very first implementation of this technology turns out to not only be viable for long-term success, but is actually adopted as such, seems extraordinarily low. There's what I call the "football" effect. The player jumps on the football after a fumble, and while he's the first to grab it, there's a handful…

most if not all the technical issues surrounding bitcoin are solved problems (or very close to being solved).

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

#365

Post by oarsinsync »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #357
oarsinsync wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised if you weren't aware that the fee isn't proportional to the amount being transacted. A $10 fee on a $10 transaction is outrageous.

right, but you can set the fee to 20 cents, if you are willing to wait for a confirm

This you may not be aware of, but there have been periods where the fee has remained in excess of over $1 for over 72 hours. A 20 cent fee will not cover you there.

Looking at my transaction history, of my last 10 transactions, all had fees in excess of $1, one as high as $14.

I'm not losing any sleep over it, but I'm also not going to call the fees reasonable.

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

#366

Post by [deleted] »

seppin wrote: post #287
WA wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the store of value vision is built on the idea that it'll be possible to convert BTC into any other currency at any time. The other way around: If you can't buy most stuff with it (the case right now) and can't convert it into your everyday currency (maybe happens if the exchanges suddenly go down for some reason, even only temporarily), what's the value of Bitcoin?

> what's the value of Bitcoin? Selling it to someone else for more than you paid next week.

[deleted]

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

#367

Post by ben_w »

Phenomenit wrote: post #203
blondie9x wrote: post #141

As engineers and technologists we must always be mindful of our impact on the planet. Bitcoin has been a disaster when it comes to environmental concerns. It is a shadow on techs efforts to lead the way toward a sustainable future. We need to figure out a way to solve this issue, especially if cryptocurrency utilization is to increase, in particular through Bitcoin: Bitcoin uses about 32 terawatts of energy every yea…

Is that really a fare comparison? I mean Visa and Mastercard use the global banking infrastructure to complete its transactions. I cant open a Visa or Mastercard account but I can generate a wallet in one second and use it instantly.

I have two questions:

1) Is this wallet going to have any spendable money in it one second after creation, or do you have to wait for the network to process your transaction like everyone else?

2) How often is it useful to create a wallet in one second?

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

#368

Post by _tulpa »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #333

That's why I tell you guys to just use bitcoin cash instead. Bitcoin cash uses bigger blocks that can accommodate more transactions per second. We are going to increase it as more people use it. Right now the transactions are nearly free.

Ok.

We'll just ignore the issues associated with increasing full-node storage requirements even faster than they're already increasing. And lower transaction fees lead to lower block rewards which lowers mining profitability. Both of these things result in more centralization.

While we're at it we'll forget the post-fork difficulty adjustment faisco brought to us by the Bitcoin cash devs. We'll just trust their competancy and good will.

Also we won't think about the legitimate off-chain solutions for transaction rate scaling, or how the side-chain concept dates back to early Satoshi emails.

There are better alt coins for cheap and fast transactions. Besides, recommending something based entirely on those two factors is a massive oversimplification.

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

#369

Post by joeschmoecad »

mrgordon wrote: post #206

I’m not sure why so many people ignore that Bitcoin and all other serious cryptocurrencies are focused on their next generation scalability improvements. Several of the most viable blockchains like EOS are built to be scalable and the legacy coins like Bitcoin are working to adopt similar ideas. When the entire 2018 roadmap is about scalability, it gets boring reading these same posts about how it’s too slow and does…

this. it's like calling Twitter/Facebook a failure when they were scaling up to meet demand.

So many people are trying to use Bitcoin that it is overloaded (Coinbase is the #1 app in the AppStore btw) - what a great problem to have!

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

#370

Post by lawn »

etr-strike wrote: post #361
lawn wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You’re upset the core devs didn’t let Bitcoin become a centralized coin? If you refuse to acknowledge the benefit of SegWit or the other scaling solutions then I can’t help you. Big blockers have their Jihan and Roger coin now. Stop trying to steal the bitcoin brand. If there was consensus for big blocks then Bitcoin would have activated. Jihan and Roger couldn’t convince the educated people that their proposals woul…

Sigh. Increasing the block size to 2MB nor 8MB for that matter will not make a centralized coin.

Segwit (besides being a crappy implementation) is by far not enough scaling.

That you blame Jihan and Roger is typical stupid propaganda which doesn't belong here.

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