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Bitcoin is a value store. It likely won't ever be widely used to purchase a cup of coffee. Other cryptocurrencies (eg. Litecoin) will pop up to fill this niche

by mparr4 9y ago

Bitcoin is a value store. It likely won't ever be widely used to purchase a cup of coffee. Other cryptocurrencies (eg. Litecoin) will pop up to fill this niche.

StavrosK 9y ago
In this future, why isn't the cryptocurrency that's used to buy a cup of coffee also used as a store of value?
- 21 9y ago
  For the same reason you don't buy coffee with a treasury bond. Bitcoin at the moment is just not a good debit card/pocket money for a number of reasons. While this might change, the rest of the world isn't staying put either. In EU/US now you can have almost realtime bank transfers, which was one major pain point in the past.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    I'm not asking why you can't buy a cup of coffee with the store of value. I'm asking why the currency you buy a cup of coffee with can't be the store of value.
Taek 9y ago
Litecoin has the same fundamental bottleneck as bitcoin, every node most must process every transaction. And, the Bitcoin network will eventually have lightning (it's in beta testing now, not just theory anymore), which will more cleanly enable things like coffee purchases.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  Except Litecoin afaik has changed that when they did their fork of the Bitcoin codebase. The problem isn't as bad as you might think, compare blockchain size of Litecoin to another blockchain with similar amount of transactions / coins, the filesize of the entire blockchain is ridiculous. The other alternative is to host your wallet on a remote server that has already downloaded the whole blockchain, or use someone else's service that does the very same, Electrum comes to mind in the case of BTC. Edit: Litecoin adopted "segwit" or "Segmented Witnesses" so the blockchain size isn't what it used to be. Some were pushing for this with Bitcoin, others were pushing another direction, hence Bitcoin Cash. Disclaimer: I am not a complete and total expert in the crypto world, just still picking up things here and there. There's definitely way too much to digest in my free time, and I was mining some BTC for fun back in 2010...
  - AgentME 9y ago
    Bitcoin has segwit too. Litecoin's blockchain is smaller because it has fewer transactions on it. One of Litecoin's claims to fame is that it has a smaller block confirmation time. It's not some technological break-through but just the tweaking of a constant with trade-offs. Adjusting the block time down means network latency and bandwidth are a bigger deal to miners and can increase the block orphan rate, possibly resulting in a small push toward miner centralization compared to a higher block time. Though as the Lightning Network comes to Bitcoin (and Litecoin), users will be able to make transactions without waiting for block confirmations (while still getting the same guarantees against counterparty risk and doublespends), decreasing the benefit of shorter block times.

by mparr4 9y ago

Bitcoin is a value store. It likely won't ever be widely used to purchase a cup of coffee. Other cryptocurrencies (eg. Litecoin) will pop up to fill this niche.

StavrosK 9y ago

In this future, why isn't the cryptocurrency that's used to buy a cup of coffee also used as a store of value?

21 9y ago
For the same reason you don't buy coffee with a treasury bond. Bitcoin at the moment is just not a good debit card/pocket money for a number of reasons. While this might change, the rest of the world isn't staying put either. In EU/US now you can have almost realtime bank transfers, which was one major pain point in the past.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  I'm not asking why you can't buy a cup of coffee with the store of value. I'm asking why the currency you buy a cup of coffee with can't be the store of value.

Taek 9y ago

Litecoin has the same fundamental bottleneck as bitcoin, every node most must process every transaction. And, the Bitcoin network will eventually have lightning (it's in beta testing now, not just theory anymore), which will more cleanly enable things like coffee purchases.

giancarlostoro 9y ago
Except Litecoin afaik has changed that when they did their fork of the Bitcoin codebase. The problem isn't as bad as you might think, compare blockchain size of Litecoin to another blockchain with similar amount of transactions / coins, the filesize of the entire blockchain is ridiculous. The other alternative is to host your wallet on a remote server that has already downloaded the whole blockchain, or use someone else's service that does the very same, Electrum comes to mind in the case of BTC. Edit: Litecoin adopted "segwit" or "Segmented Witnesses" so the blockchain size isn't what it used to be. Some were pushing for this with Bitcoin, others were pushing another direction, hence Bitcoin Cash. Disclaimer: I am not a complete and total expert in the crypto world, just still picking up things here and there. There's definitely way too much to digest in my free time, and I was mining some BTC for fun back in 2010...
- AgentME 9y ago
  Bitcoin has segwit too. Litecoin's blockchain is smaller because it has fewer transactions on it. One of Litecoin's claims to fame is that it has a smaller block confirmation time. It's not some technological break-through but just the tweaking of a constant with trade-offs. Adjusting the block time down means network latency and bandwidth are a bigger deal to miners and can increase the block orphan rate, possibly resulting in a small push toward miner centralization compared to a higher block time. Though as the Lightning Network comes to Bitcoin (and Litecoin), users will be able to make transactions without waiting for block confirmations (while still getting the same guarantees against counterparty risk and doublespends), decreasing the benefit of shorter block times.