10 ms·

The most damning: Seven transaction a second. You cannot have a functioning financial system that is constrained to seven transactions per second.

snitko 10y ago
I think you misunderstand the purpose of Bitcoin. It's not meant to be a payment system, but rather a settlement layer.
- fucking_tragedy 10y ago
  The top ten results of "bitcoin purpose" on Google concur that in it's current implementation, in how the community and business world view and use it, Bitcoin is meant to be an electronic currency. The FTC recognizes it as a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. In it's current incarnation, it is the equivalent of bartering with baseball cards in lieu of cash. If your point is true, then the purpose has been abandoned for the popular and current realization of Bitcoin as a means of electronic monetary value transfer. I personally followed development and the community from the time it was introduced. It was always pitched as an 'anonymous' electronic currency.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    >The FTC recognizes it as a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. In it's current incarnation, it is the equivalent of bartering with baseball cards in lieu of cash. The US government has a stake in the failure of non-state-controlled currencies, though, so this isn't really evidence of anything.
    - fucking_tragedy 10y ago
      It's evidence that it is popularly interpreted as something that has value and can be traded. So is money. I really can't care any less than I already don't if Bitcoin is or isn't a legal currency. The point is it isn't commonly purported to be a 'settlement layer' but something else entirely.
      - gozur88 10y ago
        I don't disagree with anything you've said. It's just that the government classification doesn't support (or refute) the point because the government isn't a disinterested party.
- homogeneous 10y ago
  > you misunderstand the purpose of Bitcoin That's quite a confidently presumptuous tone for an opinion that is clearly controversial at best. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49c7ij/so_consens_here_seems_to_be_that_bitcoin_is_no/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49c7ij/so_consens_...
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >It's not meant to be a payment system That's why it makes the front page of HackerNews when some random company starts accepting Bitcoin payments?
jbmorgado 10y ago
Can't stop to notice the downvoting of outright facts in this thread when they show the problems with Bitcoin. It's quite interesting.
elif 10y ago
So when you say that for a "fact" the system is constrained to 7TPS, you are intentionally ignoring most bitcoin transactions, which are off-chain transactions at exchanges. That's not just oversight that's deceit.
- homogeneous 10y ago
  Ah, the "off-chain" transaction, AKA "using a traditional centralized database because the blockchain is too slow and expensive".
- jbmorgado 10y ago
  You are telling us is that there is no problem with the bitcoin protocol because the problems with the bitcoin protocol can be solved by not using the bitcoin protocol.
- fucking_tragedy 10y ago
  Weird, I don't see side chains in specified in the protocol or implemented in the source. It's almost as if side chains are an ad hoc attempt at a solution to a problem inherent to Bitcoin.
statoshi 10y ago
Thankfully the Lightning Network is being developed to support high volumes of off-chain trustless transactions.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Too bad it only works for transactions, not users. LN is one of the better side-chain ideas to date, but it's still a bunch of I.O.U.s that have the bitcoin bottleneck. With LN, two people can reasonably send hundreds of thousands of transactions to each other, but hundreds of thousands of people cannot reasonably send two transactions. And then there's centralization, off-network volatility, etc. issues as well. Side-chains are still not a viable fix for the blocksize issue.
CydeWeys 10y ago
7 transactions per second is just a tuning parameter though, it's not a fundamental flaw in Bitcoin. The problem is being attacked from two angles right now: The release of segregated witness and increasing the block size. The real question is, what is the maximum real throughput of the system if we could adjust the tuning parameters to be as high as possible? It's well north of 7 but I bet also well south of, say, 1,000.
- bduerst 10y ago
  >just a tuning parameter though, not a fundamental flaw Lol, that's the best "it's a feature, not a bug" spin I've seen on the blocksize issue to date.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    You aren't contributing anything to this conversation. You're misrepresenting what I said and you're even responding with a flippant "Lol".
    - bduerst 10y ago
      You're demonstrating confirmation bias by trying to redefine a payment network flaw as a "tuning parameter", so if you want to actually discuss something, make a case rather than spinning it as something else. I find your comment funny because it reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/whnms4CLJys?t=44s https://youtu.be/whnms4CLJys?t=44s
      - CydeWeys 10y ago
        A clip from The Simpsons is not a very compelling argument. Setting the number of blocks at 2,016 per two weeks is completely arbitrary, as is setting the block size at 1 MB. None of these are "fundamental flaws" because they can be changed. They're hard-coded constants that can be changed in code in a trivial amount of time. The hardest part about changing them is getting consensus on the change and the time it takes the change to roll out to most of the clients on the network before cutting over. The existence of altcoins that have changed these parameters is proof that it's not a technological flaw. A technological flaw would be some kind of vulnerability in ECDSA or SHA256 that would allow people to spend other's Bitcoins. Now that would be a fundamental flaw that would destroy Bitcoin over night. But coding constants that can be changed, and as time goes on, most likely will be? You are seriously over-dramatizing things. All I'm getting from you is flippancy, Simpsons references, and strawman arguments. You have failed to make your case at all. If what we are talking about is a fundamental flaw, then every program you have ever written is fundamentally flawed, because I'm sure they've all initially had bugs in them that were much worse than what could be changed by adjusting the values of constants.

snitko 10y ago

I think you misunderstand the purpose of Bitcoin. It's not meant to be a payment system, but rather a settlement layer.

fucking_tragedy 10y ago
The top ten results of "bitcoin purpose" on Google concur that in it's current implementation, in how the community and business world view and use it, Bitcoin is meant to be an electronic currency. The FTC recognizes it as a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. In it's current incarnation, it is the equivalent of bartering with baseball cards in lieu of cash. If your point is true, then the purpose has been abandoned for the popular and current realization of Bitcoin as a means of electronic monetary value transfer. I personally followed development and the community from the time it was introduced. It was always pitched as an 'anonymous' electronic currency.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >The FTC recognizes it as a commodity, something that can be bought and sold. In it's current incarnation, it is the equivalent of bartering with baseball cards in lieu of cash. The US government has a stake in the failure of non-state-controlled currencies, though, so this isn't really evidence of anything.
  - fucking_tragedy 10y ago
    It's evidence that it is popularly interpreted as something that has value and can be traded. So is money. I really can't care any less than I already don't if Bitcoin is or isn't a legal currency. The point is it isn't commonly purported to be a 'settlement layer' but something else entirely.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      I don't disagree with anything you've said. It's just that the government classification doesn't support (or refute) the point because the government isn't a disinterested party.
homogeneous 10y ago
> you misunderstand the purpose of Bitcoin That's quite a confidently presumptuous tone for an opinion that is clearly controversial at best. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49c7ij/so_consens_here_seems_to_be_that_bitcoin_is_no/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/49c7ij/so_consens_...
forgetsusername 10y ago
>It's not meant to be a payment system That's why it makes the front page of HackerNews when some random company starts accepting Bitcoin payments?

jbmorgado 10y ago

Can't stop to notice the downvoting of outright facts in this thread when they show the problems with Bitcoin. It's quite interesting.

elif 10y ago

So when you say that for a "fact" the system is constrained to 7TPS, you are intentionally ignoring most bitcoin transactions, which are off-chain transactions at exchanges. That's not just oversight that's deceit.

homogeneous 10y ago
Ah, the "off-chain" transaction, AKA "using a traditional centralized database because the blockchain is too slow and expensive".
jbmorgado 10y ago
You are telling us is that there is no problem with the bitcoin protocol because the problems with the bitcoin protocol can be solved by not using the bitcoin protocol.
fucking_tragedy 10y ago
Weird, I don't see side chains in specified in the protocol or implemented in the source. It's almost as if side chains are an ad hoc attempt at a solution to a problem inherent to Bitcoin.

statoshi 10y ago

Thankfully the Lightning Network is being developed to support high volumes of off-chain trustless transactions.

bduerst 10y ago
Too bad it only works for transactions, not users. LN is one of the better side-chain ideas to date, but it's still a bunch of I.O.U.s that have the bitcoin bottleneck. With LN, two people can reasonably send hundreds of thousands of transactions to each other, but hundreds of thousands of people cannot reasonably send two transactions. And then there's centralization, off-network volatility, etc. issues as well. Side-chains are still not a viable fix for the blocksize issue.

CydeWeys 10y ago

7 transactions per second is just a tuning parameter though, it's not a fundamental flaw in Bitcoin. The problem is being attacked from two angles right now: The release of segregated witness and increasing the block size. The real question is, what is the maximum real throughput of the system if we could adjust the tuning parameters to be as high as possible? It's well north of 7 but I bet also well south of, say, 1,000.

bduerst 10y ago
>just a tuning parameter though, not a fundamental flaw Lol, that's the best "it's a feature, not a bug" spin I've seen on the blocksize issue to date.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  You aren't contributing anything to this conversation. You're misrepresenting what I said and you're even responding with a flippant "Lol".
  - bduerst 10y ago
    You're demonstrating confirmation bias by trying to redefine a payment network flaw as a "tuning parameter", so if you want to actually discuss something, make a case rather than spinning it as something else. I find your comment funny because it reminds me of this: https://youtu.be/whnms4CLJys?t=44s https://youtu.be/whnms4CLJys?t=44s
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      A clip from The Simpsons is not a very compelling argument. Setting the number of blocks at 2,016 per two weeks is completely arbitrary, as is setting the block size at 1 MB. None of these are "fundamental flaws" because they can be changed. They're hard-coded constants that can be changed in code in a trivial amount of time. The hardest part about changing them is getting consensus on the change and the time it takes the change to roll out to most of the clients on the network before cutting over. The existence of altcoins that have changed these parameters is proof that it's not a technological flaw. A technological flaw would be some kind of vulnerability in ECDSA or SHA256 that would allow people to spend other's Bitcoins. Now that would be a fundamental flaw that would destroy Bitcoin over night. But coding constants that can be changed, and as time goes on, most likely will be? You are seriously over-dramatizing things. All I'm getting from you is flippancy, Simpsons references, and strawman arguments. You have failed to make your case at all. If what we are talking about is a fundamental flaw, then every program you have ever written is fundamentally flawed, because I'm sure they've all initially had bugs in them that were much worse than what could be changed by adjusting the values of constants.