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Until segwit, lightning network etc. shape up and the wild bull/bear runs smooth out, BTC (and most other cryptos: see ETH and crypto kitties; or IOATA and thei

Until segwit, lightning network etc. shape up and the wild bull/bear runs smooth out, BTC (and most other cryptos: see ETH and crypto kitties; or IOATA and their overrun nodes) don't really make sense for small transactions. I know LTC says they are the small transaction coin but I guess they'd hit scaling issues too if volume went up (and even if they didn't, speculators and crazy price swings would still make things tricky). XRP seems less prone to wild speculation (much to the chagrin of some holders) but, afaik, Ripple are more focused on positioning XRP as a settlement layer for banks and big FX houses rather than as a day to day currency. Personally, I think all of the above will eventually sort itself out. All the crypto currencies are still very young and the entire space is experiencing hyper growth. Teething issues, design flaws and bumps along the way are to be expected. One thing's for sure though, there's too much promise, money and interest in this space for everyone to give up and decide blockchain/tangle tech can't safely scale. It's just a matter of time before a winner emerges with the right formula.

jameskegel 9y ago
>IOATA and their overrun nodes IOTA is a Tangle[1], which is coordinated[2] flow, similar to a Directed Acyclic Graph[3]. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "overrun nodes" but by virtue of how the network operates, this should not be an issue unless everyone is sticking with only the default nodes in their configuration, but that delves into a conversation of programmer vs user error that isn't pertinent to this thread. Some of us choose to run full nodes without incurring any speed loss, and it doesn't seem to be much of an issue of not having enough of them, only that people aren't using them. Even still, this has not degraded network performance. [1] - https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf [2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/792d6c/eli5_the_coordinator_and_what_does_it_do https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/792d6c/eli5_the_coord... [3] - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2283757/can-someone-explain-in-simple-terms-to-me-what-a-directed-acyclic-graph-is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2283757/can-someone-expl...
- corford 9y ago
  I'm an IOTA fan* but there aren't enough full nodes in the tangle at the moment (and also no direct financial incentive for more public ones to be created, afaik?). You just had to witness their slack last night to see that. People were setting up nodes and getting overrun almost immediately (I saw a guy complain he'd set up 4x 32GB nodes and watched them get swamped and CPU pegged within seconds). I gave up on a bitfinex withdrawal after waiting 12+ hours for it to process. But, yes, at least with IOTA the tech is proven. More nodes will let it scale. I just wonder how they will incentivize these nodes to come in to existence and keep ownership of them reasonably decentralized/well distributed (and make it easy for light wallet users to find and use them). * though admittedly I don't follow the project too closely - so apologies if some of the above is off-base/wrong.
- gruez 9y ago
  it's easy to solve scaling (and the double spend problem) when you're trusting a central entity (the coordinator).
  - corford 9y ago
    I believe the coordinator is slated to be removed sometime next year.
shepardrtc 9y ago
> Ripple are more focused on positioning XRP as a settlement layer for banks and big FX houses rather than as a day to day currency Ripple the company is focused on that because they don't want to spread themselves too thin, however the currency itself can absolutely be used as a day-to-day currency [1]. Its incredibly fast (transfers happen in literally 2 or 3 seconds), and the transaction cost is incredibly cheap [2] (currently about $0.0003). [1] https://ripple.com/build/ https://ripple.com/build/ [2] https://ripple.com/build/transaction-cost/ https://ripple.com/build/transaction-cost/

jameskegel 9y ago

>IOATA and their overrun nodes IOTA is a Tangle[1], which is coordinated[2] flow, similar to a Directed Acyclic Graph[3]. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "overrun nodes" but by virtue of how the network operates, this should not be an issue unless everyone is sticking with only the default nodes in their configuration, but that delves into a conversation of programmer vs user error that isn't pertinent to this thread. Some of us choose to run full nodes without incurring any speed loss, and it doesn't seem to be much of an issue of not having enough of them, only that people aren't using them. Even still, this has not degraded network performance. [1] - https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf [2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/792d6c/eli5_the_coordinator_and_what_does_it_do https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/792d6c/eli5_the_coord... [3] - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2283757/can-someone-explain-in-simple-terms-to-me-what-a-directed-acyclic-graph-is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2283757/can-someone-expl...

corford 9y ago
I'm an IOTA fan* but there aren't enough full nodes in the tangle at the moment (and also no direct financial incentive for more public ones to be created, afaik?). You just had to witness their slack last night to see that. People were setting up nodes and getting overrun almost immediately (I saw a guy complain he'd set up 4x 32GB nodes and watched them get swamped and CPU pegged within seconds). I gave up on a bitfinex withdrawal after waiting 12+ hours for it to process. But, yes, at least with IOTA the tech is proven. More nodes will let it scale. I just wonder how they will incentivize these nodes to come in to existence and keep ownership of them reasonably decentralized/well distributed (and make it easy for light wallet users to find and use them). * though admittedly I don't follow the project too closely - so apologies if some of the above is off-base/wrong.
gruez 9y ago
it's easy to solve scaling (and the double spend problem) when you're trusting a central entity (the coordinator).
- corford 9y ago
  I believe the coordinator is slated to be removed sometime next year.

shepardrtc 9y ago

> Ripple are more focused on positioning XRP as a settlement layer for banks and big FX houses rather than as a day to day currency Ripple the company is focused on that because they don't want to spread themselves too thin, however the currency itself can absolutely be used as a day-to-day currency [1]. Its incredibly fast (transfers happen in literally 2 or 3 seconds), and the transaction cost is incredibly cheap [2] (currently about $0.0003). [1] https://ripple.com/build/ https://ripple.com/build/ [2] https://ripple.com/build/transaction-cost/ https://ripple.com/build/transaction-cost/