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I was listening intently to the 1MB argument, and I'm not blaming bitcoin-core devs for trying to drive up the fee market. I would absolutely blame the ecosyste

by zanny 9y ago

I was listening intently to the 1MB argument, and I'm not blaming bitcoin-core devs for trying to drive up the fee market. I would absolutely blame the ecosystem for staying on core, but the blocksize debate reflects a broader human principal than just something local to cryptocurrency. It represents change inertia. People in general resist change unless they can see immediate personal benefit from that change. The node network that dictates the bitcoin implementation on the primary block chain is interested in making money from mining, and higher fees individually only seem like greater profits. As long as they could believe capping transaction volume and driving up fees wouldn't kill the currency or slow the appreciation in exchanges they are absolutely content with the status quo. And like I said, crypto-gold is useful. It just isn't a currency, and the way both bitcoin-core and the miner network responded to attempts to improve transaction volume reflect on the broader ideology in bitcoin itself - an ideology, like I said, I don't agree with. Not just the developers alone, but the devs and miners that both want inflation and small blocks over longer term adoption that may not translate into guaranteed profit.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Bitcoin is different than other cryptos in a fundamental way. It is inherently conservative. They resist almost any change that isn't an efficiency improvement. The reality is that, for now, and for the foreseeable future, people are not interested in using bitcoin for over the counter purchases. I know this from personal experience as a former service provider of that specific service. It might never have a use-case that way. People say they want those things, but then don't spend their bitcoin. This is backed up but realty too : there are plenty of other cryptos with the same architecture with 10x the throughput and negligible txn fees (i.e. litecoin) and they aren't used for that. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Can't say. I know enough not to want to change something that works for what it is used for though.

by zanny 9y ago

Frogolocalypse 9y ago

Bitcoin is different than other cryptos in a fundamental way. It is inherently conservative. They resist almost any change that isn't an efficiency improvement. The reality is that, for now, and for the foreseeable future, people are not interested in using bitcoin for over the counter purchases. I know this from personal experience as a former service provider of that specific service. It might never have a use-case that way. People say they want those things, but then don't spend their bitcoin. This is backed up but realty too : there are plenty of other cryptos with the same architecture with 10x the throughput and negligible txn fees (i.e. litecoin) and they aren't used for that. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Can't say. I know enough not to want to change something that works for what it is used for though.