Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale? • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by PKop » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

theWatcher37 wrote: post #296

wildmusings wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sold on Bitcoin but I don’t agree with your definition of what it needs to be successful. There is no reason that actual bitcoin end-users need to deal directly in bitcoin. If Bitcoin were to ever become a major currency, a big if, there would be financial institutions (banks) issuing instruments (physical or digital notes) backed by real bitcoins held by those institutions. Real bitcoin transactions would be…

This defeats the entire purpose of bitcoin. The goal is a decentralized currency that isn’t controlled by shady political interests, and can reasonably replace normal currency. Why would you want Bank 2.0?

No it doesn't. The purpose of Bitcoin is sound money.. A finite currency immune to governments' and central banks' desire to devalue currency for debt financing.

Bitcoin is more scarce and therefore better store of value than any fiat currency could ever be.

Do you not understand second layer solutions do not put your Bitcoin at risk? You commit to a payment channel which defaults to closing the channel according to original amounts when opened.. if the other party doesn't follow through. Again, your funds are not at risk so it's not like a bank, and there's no fractional reserve nor devaluing, so the SOV use case is preserved.

Not at all like current fiat money system.

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

#422

Post by Taniwha » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:44 PM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #371

oarsinsync wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, bitcoin is not good for micropayments. But that's not the only use case that matters.

It depends on your definition of "micro payments" ... With a fixed number of bitcoin ever in existence for it to ever become a real world currency two things have to happen A) it's value inflate to a value that is an order of magnitude of all the value of the world .... B) be cheap enough, and fast enough that you can buy gum at the corner store

Without micro payments it's stuck in a niche paying ransoms and doing drug deals

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

#423

Post by wallacoloo » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:44 PM UTC

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 .

Does every conversation about bitcoin have to devolve into snark and disrespect? It's not fun. It doesn't do any good for anyone.

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

#424

Post by martindevans » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:45 PM UTC

etr-strike wrote: post #413

martindevans wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any data available on how long BCH blocks take to propagate? It's testing big blocks out in the real world so we can see how much delay that introduces and whether that leads to a significant increase in centralisation.

The BCH blocks are all very small. Go look at their blockchain stats. Most blocks are 10kb in size. The network is barely used. Once they start actually mining big blocks we’ll get some real data. I think it’ll be very interesting to see, tbh.

Ah that's a shame it would have been really interesting to see how that worked in reality.

I wonder if it could be measured the _other_ way around - i.e. are the sustained tiny blocks on BCH _increasing_ decentralisation compared to BTC right now? I can't find any good information on block propagation time though :(

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

#425

Post by nojvek » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:54 PM UTC

theWatcher37 wrote: post #296

wildmusings wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sold on Bitcoin but I don’t agree with your definition of what it needs to be successful. There is no reason that actual bitcoin end-users need to deal directly in bitcoin. If Bitcoin were to ever become a major currency, a big if, there would be financial institutions (banks) issuing instruments (physical or digital notes) backed by real bitcoins held by those institutions. Real bitcoin transactions would be…

This defeats the entire purpose of bitcoin. The goal is a decentralized currency that isn’t controlled by shady political interests, and can reasonably replace normal currency. Why would you want Bank 2.0?

Well bitcoin fluctuates like crazy for one. It shouldn't cost me more than a dollar to make a transaction. Some exchanges charge upwards of $4/transaction now.

The vision was, you can have transactions of any value with very minimal fees. like less than 10 cents. People would have micro transactions for all sorts of things.

But what it has now become is a place to store your money. 10X growth in one year. And you can't trust your exchange to still be there when everyone tries to convert that 10X back to cash if the price were to take a dip.

I would love to see online marketplaces taking a flat fee in cents because they can bypass dumb credit card percentage based fees and can still be profitable because they are doing it at scale processing thousands of transactions a second on a digital currency

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

#426

Post by etr-strike » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:57 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #393

etr-strike wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which cryptocurrency supports 60k t/s?

BitShares, apparently. Press release June 10, 2015, claimed 100,000 t/s.

Never heard of it. I suspect their claim is either bogus or their coin is a database.

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

#427

Post by etr-strike » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 10:59 PM UTC

rrix2 wrote: post #406

etr-strike wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why what? Why does increasing block size increase propagation delay? Here’s the research paper on it: http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23... Tl,dr: each additional kB after 1mb adds an additional 80ms in propagation delay. It’s not just bandwidth that’s the problem. Nodes need to validate the block, then communicate that block to other nodes who also need to validate. Big blockers are drinkin…

> Why what? why does increasing propagation delay lead to centralization?

Because miners on the other side of the world don’t hear about the latest block until much later than other miners? Miners who hear about it first get a head start mining the next block. If the delay is significant, you get a single mining cartel.

Mining a block is suppose to be a lottery, not a race.

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

#428

Post by wildmusings » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 11:03 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #421

theWatcher37 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This defeats the entire purpose of bitcoin. The goal is a decentralized currency that isn’t controlled by shady political interests, and can reasonably replace normal currency. Why would you want Bank 2.0?

No it doesn't. The purpose of Bitcoin is sound money.. A finite currency immune to governments' and central banks' desire to devalue currency for debt financing. Bitcoin is more scarce and therefore better store of value than any fiat currency could ever be. Do you not understand second layer solutions do not put your Bitcoin at risk? You commit to a payment channel which defaults to closing the channel according to…

You can certainly have fractional reserve banking in a Bitcoin financial system, just as we did under the gold standard. Banks would give you an incentive to deposit BTC with them (could be interest rates or lower transactions fees) and then lend out some percent of those deposits. Voila, FRB and money supply growth.

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

#429

Post by mattxxx » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 11:05 PM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #253

mitchellberry wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would spin up more CPUs. Because changing code in the near term is expensive and hard. Spinning up more CPUs is cheap and easy and ensures my company remains successful while I optimize the algorithm. Using your analogy Bitcoin Core is saying they are going to shut down Bitcoin service to all new users until they implement a new algorithm that hasn't been proven yet and is still years away from being ready.

^ Exactly. The answer should almost always be spin up more cpu's.

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

#430

Post by dane-pgp » Sat, Dec 09, 2017, 11:13 PM UTC

grubles wrote: post #279

Beejeepa wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 0.001% over-inflated? So it reaches the 2020 halving earlier, and wins then too.

In the ~4 months since its creation, 115,975 Bcash tokens were mined ahead of schedule.

For those interested in this "inflation", there is a good chart here:

https://fork.lol/blocks/height

As it says, "Block height. BCH is currently ahead by 9272 blocks." with the block height of both being about 500k.

In fact, with the rate that BTC gains hashing power, and its comparatively less responsive difficulty adjustment algorithm, it is expected to overtake BCH's block height in the next couple of years.