4 ms·

A $100 cellphone isn't a decentralized peer to peer network. You are comparing apples to nose-hairs. Bitcoin will scale in the same way the internet scaled... s

by mbmott 10y ago

A $100 cellphone isn't a decentralized peer to peer network. You are comparing apples to nose-hairs. Bitcoin will scale in the same way the internet scaled... slowly and then suddenly.

aliakhtar 10y ago
People don't use cars because they have a hard on for internal combustion engines. They use cars to go from one place to another, i.e their utility. The utility of bitcoin is its TPS rate.
- mbmott 10y ago
  Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. Like I said, Bitcoin will scale like the internet scaled which is in direct proportion to demand. Blocks aren't often full and if you are in a hurry then you need to pay 10 or 20 cents to prioritize your transaction.
  - aliakhtar 10y ago
    There is already a global currency which works great: USD. I live in Pakistan, and I regularly pay my AWS bill, IDE subscription, Netflix, VPN, and a lot of other things with USD.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    >Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. But it's hard to get and hard to use. It's useful for a pseudo-anonymous transfer for value. Unless I'm doing something illegal, Visa is a better option.
    - Shorel 10y ago
      I use both. I use also MasterCard. And dollars and pesos and euros. There's always one situation where one currency is more convenient than the others. Is this attitude a remnant of the religious wars in Europe? There can be only one?
    - Rmilb 10y ago
      That's very true, Bitcoin doesn't solve many problems for people with access to credit banking. However, billions of people don't have access to Visa or a bank account. They only need a phone to send payments internationally.
      - rhino369 10y ago
        Those people don't have access to bitcoin either.
  - solotronics 10y ago
    The fee is currently 6 cents. One interesting thing is there is an optimal fee based on the size of the block of transactions. https://bitcoinfees.21.co/#delay https://bitcoinfees.21.co/#delay
- maaku 10y ago
  The utility of bitcoin is censorship-resistant transactions. You don't need a high on-chain transaction rate for that.
  - aliakhtar 10y ago
    You mean illegal transactions.
    - explorer666 10y ago
      Seems like you have an agenda here.
    - CyberDildonics 10y ago
      Like getting your money out of Venezuela, Argentina, Cypress or Greece before its gone or you can't get to it? Those are all illegal. Legality and morality are not the same thing and not all of world lives in cozy security.
      - aliakhtar 10y ago
        How would converting all your money into magic beans help in that situation? How would you pay for your groceries in magic beans in that country?
        CyberDildonics 10y ago
        > Like getting your money out of ... If you re read my comment you can see I explicitly said getting money out of those countries, which have been infamous for capital controls. Also - Magic Beans - accepted at 48 locations in Athens https://coinmap.org/#/map/37.99873292/23.73853683/12 https://coinmap.org/#/map/37.99873292/23.73853683/12 Look up the ideal properties of money and you might understand the big picture better, but it may mean challenging your deeply held beliefs and not everyone is ready for that.
    - maaku 10y ago
      As with the 2nd amendment, arguing for the right to bear arms is not in and of itself an argument for their use. In this case, bitcoin represents by which civil disobedience could be practiced. As long as it is maintained as a real alternative (meaning first and foremost it operates outside the constraints of authority) then a reasonable argument can be made that regulators in democracies will compromise in allowing greater user rights in the official alternatives. Napster and bittorrent did change the music industry, in the end. But even without game theoretic arguments involving civil disobedience, Bitcoin is still interesting. It offers cryptographic protections that have never existed before in real fintech applications (e.g. programmable signatures), and radical transparency and configurable trust that can patch the sort of vulnerabilities that led to the 2007 financial crisis.
vesinisa 10y ago
For me the largest put off with Bitcoin is the community. They seem to be very intolerant of criticism, to the appearance of a cult or ideology.[1] The problem lies in that unlike most open source projects, a sizeable portion of the community stands to make huge profits, giving rise to a permanent conflict of interest. Time and time again, the financial interest of the early adopters continue to stifle actual development of the technology.[2] [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49osb4/examples_of_rbitcoin_censorship/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49osb4/examples_of_rbi... [2]: https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin...
- mbmott 10y ago
  This is a valid point, but there are far sharper criticisms out there than Mike Hearn's. I find that following the code and not the community is the way to go in Bitcoin-land.
- jcfrei 10y ago
  That's exactly my problem with bitcoin as well. I'm just elaborating Hearn's points here; but as it turns out the incentive for miners (in order to pay their mining) is actually a deflationary good (so the value of their mined coins keeps increasing). Unfortunately miners are also required for the confirmation of transactions. On the other hand a global payment system would require a currency which is at the very least stable (and not increasing in value). But a stable value might not be enough to cover the expenses of most of the miners. Mining is already dominated by Chinese miners which happen to have access to the cheapest electricity - which incidentally completely undermines the aspect of decentralization. In summary it seems that at this point a decentralized payment system just appears to be too expensive (computationally) to be any serious competition for currencies in countries with a well established, trusted payment system. It still might be of use in the developing world.
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    The value does not need to increase for miners to profit. Mining difficulty scales with the total mining power in order to keep the block rate stable. Increased value only gives an incentive for competition, increasing mining power and THEN increasing difficulty. It works in the other direction too. Lowered value lowers mining competition which LOWERS difficulty. It stabilizes itself automatically.
kalleboo 10y ago
The Internet scaled by adding users and nodes. Bitcoin's transaction limit is coded into the protocol.

by mbmott 10y ago

A $100 cellphone isn't a decentralized peer to peer network. You are comparing apples to nose-hairs. Bitcoin will scale in the same way the internet scaled... slowly and then suddenly.

aliakhtar 10y ago

People don't use cars because they have a hard on for internal combustion engines. They use cars to go from one place to another, i.e their utility. The utility of bitcoin is its TPS rate.

mbmott 10y ago
Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. Like I said, Bitcoin will scale like the internet scaled which is in direct proportion to demand. Blocks aren't often full and if you are in a hurry then you need to pay 10 or 20 cents to prioritize your transaction.
- aliakhtar 10y ago
  There is already a global currency which works great: USD. I live in Pakistan, and I regularly pay my AWS bill, IDE subscription, Netflix, VPN, and a lot of other things with USD.
- rhino369 10y ago
  >Bitcoin's utility is being a global currency. But it's hard to get and hard to use. It's useful for a pseudo-anonymous transfer for value. Unless I'm doing something illegal, Visa is a better option.
  - Shorel 10y ago
    I use both. I use also MasterCard. And dollars and pesos and euros. There's always one situation where one currency is more convenient than the others. Is this attitude a remnant of the religious wars in Europe? There can be only one?
  - Rmilb 10y ago
    That's very true, Bitcoin doesn't solve many problems for people with access to credit banking. However, billions of people don't have access to Visa or a bank account. They only need a phone to send payments internationally.
    - rhino369 10y ago
      Those people don't have access to bitcoin either.
- solotronics 10y ago
  The fee is currently 6 cents. One interesting thing is there is an optimal fee based on the size of the block of transactions. https://bitcoinfees.21.co/#delay https://bitcoinfees.21.co/#delay
maaku 10y ago
The utility of bitcoin is censorship-resistant transactions. You don't need a high on-chain transaction rate for that.
- aliakhtar 10y ago
  You mean illegal transactions.
  - explorer666 10y ago
    Seems like you have an agenda here.
  - CyberDildonics 10y ago
    Like getting your money out of Venezuela, Argentina, Cypress or Greece before its gone or you can't get to it? Those are all illegal. Legality and morality are not the same thing and not all of world lives in cozy security.
    - aliakhtar 10y ago
      How would converting all your money into magic beans help in that situation? How would you pay for your groceries in magic beans in that country?
      - CyberDildonics 10y ago
        > Like getting your money out of ... If you re read my comment you can see I explicitly said getting money out of those countries, which have been infamous for capital controls. Also - Magic Beans - accepted at 48 locations in Athens https://coinmap.org/#/map/37.99873292/23.73853683/12 https://coinmap.org/#/map/37.99873292/23.73853683/12 Look up the ideal properties of money and you might understand the big picture better, but it may mean challenging your deeply held beliefs and not everyone is ready for that.
  - maaku 10y ago
    As with the 2nd amendment, arguing for the right to bear arms is not in and of itself an argument for their use. In this case, bitcoin represents by which civil disobedience could be practiced. As long as it is maintained as a real alternative (meaning first and foremost it operates outside the constraints of authority) then a reasonable argument can be made that regulators in democracies will compromise in allowing greater user rights in the official alternatives. Napster and bittorrent did change the music industry, in the end. But even without game theoretic arguments involving civil disobedience, Bitcoin is still interesting. It offers cryptographic protections that have never existed before in real fintech applications (e.g. programmable signatures), and radical transparency and configurable trust that can patch the sort of vulnerabilities that led to the 2007 financial crisis.

vesinisa 10y ago

For me the largest put off with Bitcoin is the community. They seem to be very intolerant of criticism, to the appearance of a cult or ideology.[1] The problem lies in that unlike most open source projects, a sizeable portion of the community stands to make huge profits, giving rise to a permanent conflict of interest. Time and time again, the financial interest of the early adopters continue to stifle actual development of the technology.[2] [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49osb4/examples_of_rbitcoin_censorship/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49osb4/examples_of_rbi... [2]: https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin...

mbmott 10y ago
This is a valid point, but there are far sharper criticisms out there than Mike Hearn's. I find that following the code and not the community is the way to go in Bitcoin-land.
jcfrei 10y ago
That's exactly my problem with bitcoin as well. I'm just elaborating Hearn's points here; but as it turns out the incentive for miners (in order to pay their mining) is actually a deflationary good (so the value of their mined coins keeps increasing). Unfortunately miners are also required for the confirmation of transactions. On the other hand a global payment system would require a currency which is at the very least stable (and not increasing in value). But a stable value might not be enough to cover the expenses of most of the miners. Mining is already dominated by Chinese miners which happen to have access to the cheapest electricity - which incidentally completely undermines the aspect of decentralization. In summary it seems that at this point a decentralized payment system just appears to be too expensive (computationally) to be any serious competition for currencies in countries with a well established, trusted payment system. It still might be of use in the developing world.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  The value does not need to increase for miners to profit. Mining difficulty scales with the total mining power in order to keep the block rate stable. Increased value only gives an incentive for competition, increasing mining power and THEN increasing difficulty. It works in the other direction too. Lowered value lowers mining competition which LOWERS difficulty. It stabilizes itself automatically.

kalleboo 10y ago

The Internet scaled by adding users and nodes. Bitcoin's transaction limit is coded into the protocol.