3 ms·
That's not the worst of it. The transaction fee is enormous, something like ~$5 and is even larger if you consider the amount of wasted mining power trying to m
by cyphar 9y ago
That's not the worst of it. The transaction fee is enormous, something like ~$5 and is even larger if you consider the amount of wasted mining power trying to mint a new block (that number peaked at ~$100 per transaction a year ago).
IMO we really should be pushing for GNU Taler, which is a system that doesn't have proof of work, is confirmed effectively immediately, and has many more privacy properties similar to cash. It works by having a mint sell customers coins (using whatever standard method of payment you like), the customer spends coins on merchants and then the merchants can redeem the coins for "real" money.
In particular, customers cannot be identified (nor can their transaction history) but merchants' income can be identified (for tax reasons). As the system doesn't require proof-of-work the speed problem is massively reduced as well as the transaction cost.
- CydeWeys 9y agoTaler isn't a decentralized currency though, so what's the point? It doesn't seem much better than using a credit card, but at least my credit card is already accepted everywhere.
- cyphar 9y agoYour credit card has a history of all of your transactions (and we know that data is used to profile you). Taler makes it so that your transaction history is private. In addition, Taler is _federated_ not fully decentralised. It works basically how cash works, except you don't need to be a new country to set up a new currency. In order for a particular mint's cash to be spent you only need that mint to be around. I don't get why "decentralised or bust" is the end goal. Federation with individual privacy is still an improvement over centralised credit card companies. Also, like it or not, but Taler has much better privacy guarantees than BitCoin.