4 ms·

Bitcoin has a usability problem

24 points by abrkn 9y ago

econner 9y ago
I don't really understand their tech yet but I believe Lightning is working on a solution to this problem: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/
- MrBlue 9y ago
  LN is years away.
  - flyingfences 9y ago
    LN works; integration into mainstream wallets is months away.
- slindz 9y ago
  Isn't Lightning Network a layer to centralize what was intended to be a decentralized system?
grubles 9y ago
This is a silly submission and pretty deceiving. Someone sending me $10 in Bitcoin only spent $0.06 in fees. And it was via satellite [0]. [0]https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/899410638371524609 https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/899410638371524609
drcross 9y ago
>It takes ~1 hour and $0.86 to send $1.00 from a SegWit account on @TREZOR. The same fee will send a 1,000,000 amount which the user will be pretty happy about. Bitcoin can't be all things to all people. It doesn't really make sense to store coffee purchases on a global immutable blockchain. Use other coins to pay for coffee and let Bitcoin be a store of value.
- corobo 9y ago
  Can it be faster to people used to instant payments? I thought Bitcoin was supposed to be futuristic and fancy
- Romanulus 9y ago
  The cool part about this is that we are kind of going back a fantasy system with different coins like copper, silver, gold, and platinum.
- simias 9y ago
  You say that now but it wasn't always the narrative from the bitcoin community. It feels more like after-the-fact rationalization than a true objective. It just so happens that bitcoin's original architecture didn't scale and now people are trying to figure it out. And that's perfectly fine but I feel like we're seeing the same thing now with segwit and the lightning network. It's all unicorns and rainbows until you realize that in practice it doesn't work as perfectly as you'd have hopped. What annoys me is that all these issues could always be anticipated even using some rough "back of the envelope" calculations. But there's no place for constructive criticism of bitcoin in the community so the problems are only faced when you really can't ignore them anymore, and then everybody says "well duh, it's obvious that wouldn't work" like you just did. I fully expect that we will see the same thing for segwit and the lightning network when it'll turn out that the pipe dream of "everybody opens channels left and right" will fail to materialize and some alternative, probably more centralized architecture will take its place. It's not necessarily a bad thing but I wish there was a place where this could be discussed without being immediately called a shill and a traitor to the cause.
  - zeroxfe 9y ago
    > What annoys me is that all these issues could always be anticipated even using some rough "back of the envelope" calculations. Hindsight is 20/20. Almost no one could have predicted that Bitcoin would be this big.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  So Bitcoin's only useful to the rich?
KasianFranks 9y ago
One of the most significant rises in cryptocurrency will come when the user experience, including on-boarding, is made close to frictionless for the average consumer.
- mmjaa 9y ago
  What, do you think, is key to on-boarding in crypto? I rate: 1. Basic, fundamental understanding. This is hard! 2. Representation - i.e. education of the user through the interface. 3. The Status-Quo'ers. #1: The words are not commonly representable by modern human vernacular. Crypto's hard to explain, man! The basics have to be really, really virile. #2: If I have to type in a longass number, you lost me. If I have to type in any number, its a losing game. See #1. #3: Nothing beats cash in terms of usability. On-boarding of ¥ € $ == ∄ On-boarding of web/app/&etc. == ?
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > What, do you think, is key to on-boarding in crypto? Convincing someone they need bitcoin. I have no idea how to buy bitcoins. I guess I could find an exchange, or I could also go to the Bitcoin ATM at my local Thai place. (Seriously. No idea why.) But I apparently have to provide my driver's license to exchange cash into crypto-currency. What? I'm not putting that into a random machine. That's insane. I don't have to provide identification when I'm exchanging Euros into Dollars at the airport, why do I have to send off all this valuable information to a random person through an ATM over a god-knows-what-kind of connection? Great. I've just jumped through hoops, and for what? What am I supposed to buy with it that I can't buy with cash or credit? It seems to me that about the only thing I can do with it that's useful is move a large sum of money, relatively cheaply - and if I happened to buy the bitcoins from a guy in a parking garage, I might even be able to do it with something approaching anonymity - assuming I never, ever, ever make a mistake. So how do you convince, say, my mother or my grandfather that they need bitcoin?
    - newmanships 9y ago
      Weird, I've always had to provide identification to exchange dollars & X currency at airports.
joobus 9y ago
The other huge usability problem is the risk of getting hacked. Everybody, even programmers, didn't write 99+% of the code on the machines they are using. Even if you manage to go years and years without issue, that 1 time you get hacked and your coins get transferred out from under you will make you lose everything and there is no way to get it back. For normies, this is an even bigger issue.
- zeroxfe 9y ago
  This is no different from early currency -- it was very difficult to protect from theft, and when you had lots of it, you were an easy target. I suspect how this will go down is the masses will use banks, who will offer cryptocurrency accounts with interest and insurance, while the savvy will continue to manage their own private keys.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Isn't this only a problem if you paint a huge target on your back? Cash has a huge usability problem in that if I carry ten thousand dollars' worth in a grocery sack, someone will eventually snatch and run. So don't store a ludicrous amount in a single wallet.
jacek 9y ago
I would really like links to twitter posts not be common on HM. How can you have a good discussion on 140 characters?
nikcub 9y ago
This is in need of a disclaimer or at least a bit more transparency. The poll is part of an argument being made for support of the recent Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Cash The user submitting here is OP and he also paid to have the poll promoted on Twitter.
- abrkn 9y ago
  I am the submitter and author of the post. I run paid ads on Twitter to shill for cryptocurrency. Ask me anything! :-)

24 points by abrkn 9y ago

I don't really understand their tech yet but I believe Lightning is working on a solution to this problem: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/

MrBlue 9y ago
LN is years away.
- flyingfences 9y ago
  LN works; integration into mainstream wallets is months away.
slindz 9y ago
Isn't Lightning Network a layer to centralize what was intended to be a decentralized system?

grubles 9y ago

This is a silly submission and pretty deceiving. Someone sending me $10 in Bitcoin only spent $0.06 in fees. And it was via satellite [0]. [0]https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/899410638371524609 https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/899410638371524609

drcross 9y ago

>It takes ~1 hour and $0.86 to send $1.00 from a SegWit account on @TREZOR. The same fee will send a 1,000,000 amount which the user will be pretty happy about. Bitcoin can't be all things to all people. It doesn't really make sense to store coffee purchases on a global immutable blockchain. Use other coins to pay for coffee and let Bitcoin be a store of value.

corobo 9y ago
Can it be faster to people used to instant payments? I thought Bitcoin was supposed to be futuristic and fancy
Romanulus 9y ago
The cool part about this is that we are kind of going back a fantasy system with different coins like copper, silver, gold, and platinum.
simias 9y ago
You say that now but it wasn't always the narrative from the bitcoin community. It feels more like after-the-fact rationalization than a true objective. It just so happens that bitcoin's original architecture didn't scale and now people are trying to figure it out. And that's perfectly fine but I feel like we're seeing the same thing now with segwit and the lightning network. It's all unicorns and rainbows until you realize that in practice it doesn't work as perfectly as you'd have hopped. What annoys me is that all these issues could always be anticipated even using some rough "back of the envelope" calculations. But there's no place for constructive criticism of bitcoin in the community so the problems are only faced when you really can't ignore them anymore, and then everybody says "well duh, it's obvious that wouldn't work" like you just did. I fully expect that we will see the same thing for segwit and the lightning network when it'll turn out that the pipe dream of "everybody opens channels left and right" will fail to materialize and some alternative, probably more centralized architecture will take its place. It's not necessarily a bad thing but I wish there was a place where this could be discussed without being immediately called a shill and a traitor to the cause.
- zeroxfe 9y ago
  > What annoys me is that all these issues could always be anticipated even using some rough "back of the envelope" calculations. Hindsight is 20/20. Almost no one could have predicted that Bitcoin would be this big.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
So Bitcoin's only useful to the rich?

KasianFranks 9y ago

One of the most significant rises in cryptocurrency will come when the user experience, including on-boarding, is made close to frictionless for the average consumer.

mmjaa 9y ago
What, do you think, is key to on-boarding in crypto? I rate: 1. Basic, fundamental understanding. This is hard! 2. Representation - i.e. education of the user through the interface. 3. The Status-Quo'ers. #1: The words are not commonly representable by modern human vernacular. Crypto's hard to explain, man! The basics have to be really, really virile. #2: If I have to type in a longass number, you lost me. If I have to type in any number, its a losing game. See #1. #3: Nothing beats cash in terms of usability. On-boarding of ¥ € $ == ∄ On-boarding of web/app/&etc. == ?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > What, do you think, is key to on-boarding in crypto? Convincing someone they need bitcoin. I have no idea how to buy bitcoins. I guess I could find an exchange, or I could also go to the Bitcoin ATM at my local Thai place. (Seriously. No idea why.) But I apparently have to provide my driver's license to exchange cash into crypto-currency. What? I'm not putting that into a random machine. That's insane. I don't have to provide identification when I'm exchanging Euros into Dollars at the airport, why do I have to send off all this valuable information to a random person through an ATM over a god-knows-what-kind of connection? Great. I've just jumped through hoops, and for what? What am I supposed to buy with it that I can't buy with cash or credit? It seems to me that about the only thing I can do with it that's useful is move a large sum of money, relatively cheaply - and if I happened to buy the bitcoins from a guy in a parking garage, I might even be able to do it with something approaching anonymity - assuming I never, ever, ever make a mistake. So how do you convince, say, my mother or my grandfather that they need bitcoin?
  - newmanships 9y ago
    Weird, I've always had to provide identification to exchange dollars & X currency at airports.

joobus 9y ago

The other huge usability problem is the risk of getting hacked. Everybody, even programmers, didn't write 99+% of the code on the machines they are using. Even if you manage to go years and years without issue, that 1 time you get hacked and your coins get transferred out from under you will make you lose everything and there is no way to get it back. For normies, this is an even bigger issue.

zeroxfe 9y ago
This is no different from early currency -- it was very difficult to protect from theft, and when you had lots of it, you were an easy target. I suspect how this will go down is the masses will use banks, who will offer cryptocurrency accounts with interest and insurance, while the savvy will continue to manage their own private keys.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
Isn't this only a problem if you paint a huge target on your back? Cash has a huge usability problem in that if I carry ten thousand dollars' worth in a grocery sack, someone will eventually snatch and run. So don't store a ludicrous amount in a single wallet.

jacek 9y ago

I would really like links to twitter posts not be common on HM. How can you have a good discussion on 140 characters?

nikcub 9y ago

This is in need of a disclaimer or at least a bit more transparency. The poll is part of an argument being made for support of the recent Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Cash The user submitting here is OP and he also paid to have the poll promoted on Twitter.

abrkn 9y ago
I am the submitter and author of the post. I run paid ads on Twitter to shill for cryptocurrency. Ask me anything! :-)