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All the popular exchanges are facing scaling issues: I know about Poloniex, Coinbase, Bittrex, bitfinex. It's all because of the higher and higher interest in

All the popular exchanges are facing scaling issues: I know about Poloniex, Coinbase, Bittrex, bitfinex. It's all because of the higher and higher interest in bitcoin and crypto currency in general. Even CBOE had issues earlier today when they launched their futures, even though they were not doing active tradings and have many more years of experience (and time to scale). There are interesting times ahead. Something we've never seen before in the history of humanity. Not even the internet was so disrupting as the blockchain technologies will become.

bsurmanski 9y ago
> Not even the internet was so disrupting as the blockchain technologies will become. The internet was a paradigm shift for how we communicate. It seems like blockchains are just sort of an opportunity to do things a different way. From my perspective the main advantage of the blockchain is zero-trust transactions. Everything that can be done on the blockchain can be done easier/better off the blockchain as long as you choose to trust someone. And currently from my perspective, no one is seriously using a blockchain for anything but speculation. In your opinion, what makes the blockchain comparable or more influential to the internet?
- tcoppi 9y ago
  You have to trust miners and developers with blockchains still.
  - e1ghtSpace 9y ago
    You only have to trust that at least 50% of all miners are legitimate. And the public can choose to adopt what the developers create.
    - mhluongo 9y ago
      Not quite. You have to trust that they aren't colluding. It's fine if they're malicious as long as they aren't aligned
      - tromp 9y ago
        It's not fine if 51% of miners are maliciously mining empty blocks. no collusion necessary.
        XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
        If 51% are simply mining empty blocks then tx rate drops by ~1/2 and tx fees double. tx would still go through unless they are colluding.
    - Retric 9y ago
      If 20% of bitcoin miners 'wasted' block space with a very high minimum transaction fee to drive up average transaction fees you get a huge problem. (This could actually be a net gain depending on the demand curve.) If you look at the actual block chain there are many empty blocks so this is less theoretical than you might assume. Another attack is if you get say 40% of miners to block transactions for a specific company you could create a lot of issues for them at minimal costs.
bdcravens 9y ago
Gemini has also had significant downtime.

bsurmanski 9y ago

> Not even the internet was so disrupting as the blockchain technologies will become. The internet was a paradigm shift for how we communicate. It seems like blockchains are just sort of an opportunity to do things a different way. From my perspective the main advantage of the blockchain is zero-trust transactions. Everything that can be done on the blockchain can be done easier/better off the blockchain as long as you choose to trust someone. And currently from my perspective, no one is seriously using a blockchain for anything but speculation. In your opinion, what makes the blockchain comparable or more influential to the internet?

tcoppi 9y ago
You have to trust miners and developers with blockchains still.
- e1ghtSpace 9y ago
  You only have to trust that at least 50% of all miners are legitimate. And the public can choose to adopt what the developers create.
  - mhluongo 9y ago
    Not quite. You have to trust that they aren't colluding. It's fine if they're malicious as long as they aren't aligned
    - tromp 9y ago
      It's not fine if 51% of miners are maliciously mining empty blocks. no collusion necessary.
      - XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
        If 51% are simply mining empty blocks then tx rate drops by ~1/2 and tx fees double. tx would still go through unless they are colluding.
  - Retric 9y ago
    If 20% of bitcoin miners 'wasted' block space with a very high minimum transaction fee to drive up average transaction fees you get a huge problem. (This could actually be a net gain depending on the demand curve.) If you look at the actual block chain there are many empty blocks so this is less theoretical than you might assume. Another attack is if you get say 40% of miners to block transactions for a specific company you could create a lot of issues for them at minimal costs.

bdcravens 9y ago

Gemini has also had significant downtime.