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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?

#461

Post by Operyl »

FireBeyond wrote: post #321
xorcist wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the argument that you think Reddit users are representative of Bitcoin investors? Most of the time it feels like these discussions are stuck rehashing old arguments in circles, but this was truly innovative. Thank you for not being predictable. As for the argument itself, I think you are correct not to make any investment decisions based on what you described.

With 520,000 subscribers, is your argument that Reddit is -not- a statistically notable segment of Bitcoin investors?

Just because someone is subscribed to a public forum doesn’t necessarily mean they’re holding or investing in bitcoin, just as easy to observe.

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

#462

Post by 20after4 »

statguy wrote: post #376
fooker wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Bags of grain or N cows did not do transactions well. Yet they were successful as currencies for millennia.

times have changed since...

I'm pretty sure bags of grain are still a significant unit of value exchange[1].

[1] yep: http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/wheat.aspx

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

#463

Post by WA »

oarsinsync wrote: post #377
chakalakasp wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're evading the question. If you can't at some point in the chain trade your fancy bitcoin beads for services or goods, then how is it any different than monopoly money? Right now it is useful because it can be easily traded for currencies that can purchase those things.

Stores of value tend to have high liquidity. I hate the analogy, but a single exchange (or a series of exchanges) going down doesn't prevent you from selling your gold. Your preferred method of selling gold may be temporarily unavailable, but it'll be back. Meanwhile, keeping with that analogy, actually selling gold takes quite a long time when you hold the physical asset yourself, and the fees are not small there ei…

The thing is, if one ore more major exchanges go down, there might be a panic, which rapidly decreases the selling price and thus, the value of BTC. So where is your store or value, if you can’t withdraw?

What if a law is passed that allows BTC currency conversion only to a small amount per day, because of whatever reason?

Currencies like the USD don’t have this property. There is no need to exchange your money to make it valuable.

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

#464

Post by nikolay »

etr-strike wrote: post #182
KirinDave wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a lot of things, and many of them interesting, but suggesting that ~4 t/s is impressive or "scaling" is an insult to kids in high school writing rails apps that can do 100x the volume. We already know at least 2 obvious ways to improve the transaction flow rate of bitcoin in trustless ways, and many others are being proposed that do not also create energy arms races. Please don't redefine success.

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…

So, you pretty much admitted that Bitcoin is unfit and outside of the fact that many people are vested in it, a new project would be a better idea unless we're emotionally and financially tied to the prehistoric thing.

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

#465

Post by scalesolved »

KirinDave wrote: post #167
moduspol wrote: post #79

Others here are touching on Bitcoin being like the "1.0" of cryptocurrency, but it's actually a lot more than that. In the public eye, it's a symbol of what cryptocurrencies can be. You're suggesting Bitcoin just proved it can't scale, but it actually just proved it did--just not with transaction volume. The network continued to process transactions averaging one block every ten minutes exactly as it was built to do,…

Bitcoin is a lot of things, and many of them interesting, but suggesting that ~4 t/s is impressive or "scaling" is an insult to kids in high school writing rails apps that can do 100x the volume. We already know at least 2 obvious ways to improve the transaction flow rate of bitcoin in trustless ways, and many others are being proposed that do not also create energy arms races. Please don't redefine success.

100x the volume of hello world or a basic CRUD app does not make it more impressive than what BTC has achieved. (Disclaimer I hold no BTC).

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

#466

Post by lawn »

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.

Ah, the "Greater fool theory".

That's not sustainable though when you have perfect replacements readily available.

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

#467

Post by rejschaap »

jondubois wrote: post #286
etr-strike wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning isn’t vaporware. Follow the project on github, they are very active. Better yet, watch the first lightning transaction happen on mainnet which occurred just last week: https://youtu.be/a73Gz3Tvx3k With regards to blocksize, the only reason it’s not widely embraced is because it’s known to directly impact propagation delay. One side couldn’t care less about centralization, the other side cares dearly. SegWit…

The lightning network is not a decentralized solution. It gives more power/trust to a few large exchanges.

The lightning network is actually a textbook example of a decentralized network. But I agree, how it will work out in practice is unclear and it could lead to centralization. I see it as a trade off between cost and convenience on one side and freedom on the other.

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

#468

Post by tlrobinson »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #355
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…

PoS will never be adopted by Bitcoin. The mining pools that have invested in PoW won't allow it. Every attempt to date to improve transaction rates on BTC have been hampered by a small group of developers who have a vested interest in it not scaling for reasons explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info... Bitcoin won't get any of the improvements you hope it will because there is to…

Despite Bitcoin primarily using miner signaling for consensus changes so far, miners don’t actually matter as much as users: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

If the vast majority of users and services decided to switch to PoS tomorrow there’s absolutely nothing miners could do about it.

That said, I’m not saying it would be easy to get consensus for such a major change. Futures markets might be useful for determining how much support for a change there is.

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

#469

Post by ben_w »

etr-strike wrote: post #460
ben_w wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are far too many cryptocurrencies to keep track of, bit even if the claim is false, Bitcoin is still absurdly slow compared to existing normal systems.

What existing “normal” systems?

Visa and Mastercard, like I wrote a few layers above.
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