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There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

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Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

betterunix2 wrote: post #43
kindfellow92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a currency. It’s digital gold. Gold isn’t easy to exchange and it’s deflationary but it’s a good place to store your money for the long term, especially if you live in an unstable country. What makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s gold without any of the downsides of gold. Hop in an airplane with the equivalent of millions of dollars in your pocket without having to trust or ask permission from anyone.

In fact gold does not compare favorably to US equity markets as far as saving your money goes. An investment in an S&P500 index fund in late 2007 (right before the crash) would be worth more today than an investment in gold. An investment in the Dow Jones index in 1900 would be worth about six times as much as an equivalent investment in gold (assuming you held for 117 years, and not counting dividends). Granted, peo…

> Granted, people in unstable countries may have difficulty investing in the US stock market.

People in unstable countries may have trouble safeguarding gold stockpiles, as well.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#52

Post by Casseres »

rhino369 wrote: post #25
blurbleblurble wrote: post #22

People who actually use bitcoin must be ignorant of all the much more usable and useful alt-coins. Can anyone think of a good reason to actually use bitcoin vs. ripple/stellar/dash/zcash/monero/nem/...? Maybe it's just cause so many platforms have been built around bitcoin?

Because your drug dealer only accepts bitcoin? Does anyone else actually use it? Other than as a get rich quick scheme?

Craigslist now allows people to mark their posts as crypto-friendly.

Anyone who accepts Bitcoin runs into the problem where others can know their balance by looking up the address (and thus could be at risk for theft/mugging).

If people want to keep their balances private and not share their transaction history (or later transactions), they should use a coin that's private by default such as Monero.

Additionally, Monero has a dynamic blocksize, so as usage increases it won't experience the transaction backlog that Bitcoin faces.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#53

Post by tromp »

gomox wrote: post #34
aaron_m04 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be simpler to send another transaction with identical inputs, but with a higher fee? I haven't tested this, but I'd expect it to replace the old (conflicting) transaction in the mempool.

I think if you just naively did that, you would risk the funds being spent twice if both transactions are included in the block (unlikely, but possible). There is an implementation of essentially the same concept that you are describing called "replace by fee". I haven't seen it implemented in any wallet software, but apparently it's in Bitcoin Core. I think the tricky part is getting nodes to relay transactions that…

It's not possible for a valid block to include multiple transactions spending the same input. All full nodes will reject such a block as invalid.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#54

Post by Kinnard »

habosa wrote: post #35

You'll notice the entire Bitcoin community has changed tone. It used to be "this is the currency of the future, down with cash/Visa!" but now you hear "Bitcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value". The wild price swings, slow transactions, high fees, and loq merchant acceptance make it complete garbage as a currency. But as a store of value, none of those arguments apply. It only has to compete with gold bars, w…

Actually there's been a vigorous enough debate happening in the community about how to fix some of these problems and how to move forward toward what Bitcoin will ultimately be that the community and blockchain split.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#55

Post by makomk »

gomox wrote: post #34
aaron_m04 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be simpler to send another transaction with identical inputs, but with a higher fee? I haven't tested this, but I'd expect it to replace the old (conflicting) transaction in the mempool.

I think if you just naively did that, you would risk the funds being spent twice if both transactions are included in the block (unlikely, but possible). There is an implementation of essentially the same concept that you are describing called "replace by fee". I haven't seen it implemented in any wallet software, but apparently it's in Bitcoin Core. I think the tricky part is getting nodes to relay transactions that…

This is exactly how replace by fee works. If you use the same inputs, only one of the transactions can be included. The reason it's called replace by fee is that unlike Satoshi's original design for transaction replacement, which he disabled because it could be abused to waste node resources for free by repeatedly replacing transactions, it requires a higher fee for each replacement to discourage abuse. (Bitcoin Cash subsequently removed replace by fee out of some weird belief it was an attack on Satoshi's vision; this was of course nonsense, since he specifically designed transactions to be replaceable. It was also pointless, since it's a voluntary miner policy rather than a consensus rule and there's economic incentive for them to support it.)

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#56

Post by njarboe »

gomox wrote: post #34
aaron_m04 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be simpler to send another transaction with identical inputs, but with a higher fee? I haven't tested this, but I'd expect it to replace the old (conflicting) transaction in the mempool.

I think if you just naively did that, you would risk the funds being spent twice if both transactions are included in the block (unlikely, but possible). There is an implementation of essentially the same concept that you are describing called "replace by fee". I haven't seen it implemented in any wallet software, but apparently it's in Bitcoin Core. I think the tricky part is getting nodes to relay transactions that…

If your fee was so low that it has not cleared in many days then it is probably not being included in any blocks. Especially in a time like now when fees are increasing, putting in another identical transaction with a high enough fee to get confirmed should work fine. I'm not sure how your wallet software will deal with it though.

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#57

Post by hoveringcto »

hanbura wrote: post #28
blurbleblurble wrote: post #22

People who actually use bitcoin must be ignorant of all the much more usable and useful alt-coins. Can anyone think of a good reason to actually use bitcoin vs. ripple/stellar/dash/zcash/monero/nem/...? Maybe it's just cause so many platforms have been built around bitcoin?

Alt-Coins don't have astronomic price increases, are far less accepted by merchants and have far less backing from the finance industry. In short, most altcoins are neither useful for investment nor payment. Which is a shame, because there are some coins that have substantial technical improvements over bitcoin, and nearly all of them can handle more transactions/second than bitcoin

Ether is up about 10,000% over a year, while BTC is up about 2500%...

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#58

Post by njarboe »

Casseres wrote: post #52
rhino369 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your drug dealer only accepts bitcoin? Does anyone else actually use it? Other than as a get rich quick scheme?

Craigslist now allows people to mark their posts as crypto-friendly. Anyone who accepts Bitcoin runs into the problem where others can know their balance by looking up the address (and thus could be at risk for theft/mugging). If people want to keep their balances private and not share their transaction history (or later transactions), they should use a coin that's private by default such as Monero. Additionally, Mon…

You should create a different address for each post on Craigslist. It is pretty easy and prevents this problem. If you have a website and have an address displayed for donations, then you will get multiple donations to the same address. With any one-off just make a new address in your wallet. (I use bitcoin core wallet. Not sure how others work.)

Re: There are now more than 200k pending Bitcoin transactions

#59

Post by stingraycharles »

Kinnard wrote: post #54
habosa wrote: post #35

You'll notice the entire Bitcoin community has changed tone. It used to be "this is the currency of the future, down with cash/Visa!" but now you hear "Bitcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value". The wild price swings, slow transactions, high fees, and loq merchant acceptance make it complete garbage as a currency. But as a store of value, none of those arguments apply. It only has to compete with gold bars, w…

Actually there's been a vigorous enough debate happening in the community about how to fix some of these problems and how to move forward toward what Bitcoin will ultimately be that the community and blockchain split.

Yes but these debates have been going on for years with very little progress being made. Bitcoin is growing faster than it can keep up with, it seems.
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