7 ms·

Why not just use bitcoin?

tlrobinson 9y ago
Because they want to cash in on the cryptocurrency hype.
AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
10-minute block times make Bitcoin unusable as a transactional currency in it's current state (don't shoot the messenger).
- JTon 9y ago
  What currency isn't transactional? I'm not following; are you suggesting bitcoin is not well suited for any purpose?
  - 52-6F-62 9y ago
    From my understanding, and what I can read from what they said: They're suggesting Bitcoin is not practical for what the current average rate of transactions on other payment networks would require of it, should it even take on a lesser portion of those transactions (eg. X-thousand transactions per second). It is useful however for a value store. Eg. You can't rightly trade units of gold 50,000 times per second, but it's a good bet that if you buy some and stow it that it will at least hold or even appreciate in value.
  - uncletammy 9y ago
    Believe it or not, Bitcoin isn't actually transactional these days. A new feature called "replace by fee" was introduced that allows coins that were used in a transaction which is still in queue for processing (hasn't yet been included in block by the miners) to be spent in a different transaction as long as the spender pays a high enough fee to jump to the front of the queue.
    - placeybordeaux 9y ago
      I was under the impression that that had always been allowed by the protocol, it's just an implementation detail on if a node will relay the tx and which tx the miner will choose.
  - sushid 9y ago
    Imagine if your visa card took anywhere from 10 minutes with high fees to 30 minutes with "average" fees. It would be fairly annoying to use on an everyday basis.
splintercell 9y ago
Bitcoin is failing to scale. Whenever network is jammed, only the the high economic value transaction is sent through it. If you want to transfer the payment for your home, then it makes sense to use bitcoin, but today most people sell their btc for daily expenses, convert it into a faster crpyto (like Ether or litecoin etc) and use that instead. Bitcoin maximalists don't want that, but I am quite comfortable with this scenario.
- petertodd 9y ago
  "Jammed" is a inaccurate way of describing the status of the Bitcoin network. Transactions are included in blocks in an auction system, where people bid for the limited amount of blockchain space available. If your bid is high enough, your transaction is included immediately. There have always been far more people who want to get transactions mined than there is blockchain space. You can find gigabytes of valid transactions that people have broadcast for various reasons, including deliberate DoS attacks, and extremely low-value applications like inefficient timestamping protocols. Any website that makes claims like the mempool is "100MB" is simply incorrect. The supply of space fluctuates randomly, as block creation is a poisson process, and demand fluctuates for other reasons. So if you have a lower bit you might get lucky in the future. But that's no different than the prices of any good subject to natural supply and demand fluctuations.
  - splintercell 9y ago
    > But that's no different than the prices of any good subject to natural supply and demand fluctuations. You're just explaining my point in more detail, but not disagreeing with it. My point was, "Bitcoin can't be used for kik tokens because it has limited space and kik transactions are not justifiable for this purpose (via the high fees)".
ihaveahadron 9y ago
Its a competing currency to bitcoin mr hawking.

Because they want to cash in on the cryptocurrency hype.

10-minute block times make Bitcoin unusable as a transactional currency in it's current state (don't shoot the messenger).

JTon 9y ago
What currency isn't transactional? I'm not following; are you suggesting bitcoin is not well suited for any purpose?
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  From my understanding, and what I can read from what they said: They're suggesting Bitcoin is not practical for what the current average rate of transactions on other payment networks would require of it, should it even take on a lesser portion of those transactions (eg. X-thousand transactions per second). It is useful however for a value store. Eg. You can't rightly trade units of gold 50,000 times per second, but it's a good bet that if you buy some and stow it that it will at least hold or even appreciate in value.
- uncletammy 9y ago
  Believe it or not, Bitcoin isn't actually transactional these days. A new feature called "replace by fee" was introduced that allows coins that were used in a transaction which is still in queue for processing (hasn't yet been included in block by the miners) to be spent in a different transaction as long as the spender pays a high enough fee to jump to the front of the queue.
  - placeybordeaux 9y ago
    I was under the impression that that had always been allowed by the protocol, it's just an implementation detail on if a node will relay the tx and which tx the miner will choose.
- sushid 9y ago
  Imagine if your visa card took anywhere from 10 minutes with high fees to 30 minutes with "average" fees. It would be fairly annoying to use on an everyday basis.

splintercell 9y ago

Bitcoin is failing to scale. Whenever network is jammed, only the the high economic value transaction is sent through it. If you want to transfer the payment for your home, then it makes sense to use bitcoin, but today most people sell their btc for daily expenses, convert it into a faster crpyto (like Ether or litecoin etc) and use that instead. Bitcoin maximalists don't want that, but I am quite comfortable with this scenario.

petertodd 9y ago
"Jammed" is a inaccurate way of describing the status of the Bitcoin network. Transactions are included in blocks in an auction system, where people bid for the limited amount of blockchain space available. If your bid is high enough, your transaction is included immediately. There have always been far more people who want to get transactions mined than there is blockchain space. You can find gigabytes of valid transactions that people have broadcast for various reasons, including deliberate DoS attacks, and extremely low-value applications like inefficient timestamping protocols. Any website that makes claims like the mempool is "100MB" is simply incorrect. The supply of space fluctuates randomly, as block creation is a poisson process, and demand fluctuates for other reasons. So if you have a lower bit you might get lucky in the future. But that's no different than the prices of any good subject to natural supply and demand fluctuations.
- splintercell 9y ago
  > But that's no different than the prices of any good subject to natural supply and demand fluctuations. You're just explaining my point in more detail, but not disagreeing with it. My point was, "Bitcoin can't be used for kik tokens because it has limited space and kik transactions are not justifiable for this purpose (via the high fees)".

ihaveahadron 9y ago

Its a competing currency to bitcoin mr hawking.