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Bitcoin is the long term store of value for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as

Bitcoin is the long term store of value for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. The small transaction issue may be overcome by something like the Lightning Network, but in the short term, you can just use other cryptocurrencies with lower fees or other features that are important to you.

thevardanian 9y ago
The thing I don't understand, and am concerned about the most is that cryptocurrencies rely on public ledgers, and therefore not private. That is all monetary transactions are in essence public record, which is very odd to me, and really doesn't sit well.
- lawn 9y ago
  Exactly. Monero is the only real cryptocurrency because it does not have a public ledger. Monero is fungible, meaning you cannot tell two coins apart, which is an essential property of money. This is a very real issue most people into Bitcoin does not seem to care about. Anyone you transact with can gain insight into your personal finances which at best informs your friends of how rich/poor you are and at worst making you a robbery target.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Bitcoin cares about decentralization. The Chinese government doesn't. So that's why there is bcash. If low fees were important, you'd just use litecoin. It has been around for years. They even have segwit, which allows atomic cross-chain swaps, which even further enables privacy. It is no surprise that the chinese government controlled crypto bcash didn't want that.
    - dylz 9y ago
      Why do you keep using the large phrase "chinese government controlled crypto bcash" instead of just calling it bcash? Sincerely, someone that isn't involved in all of this.
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        Because bcash is overwhelmingly run by bitmain, a chinese company, at every point in its service delivery. The miners, the nodes, and now the payment processor are all one chinese company. It is also not surprising that they have specifically disabled the privacy improvement of segwit in their altcoin. So no atomic cross-chain swaps are possible either. It is a walled garden where they control all of the access.
      - CryptoPunk 9y ago
        It's not even called bcash. It's called Bitcoin Cash. The 1 MB maximalists call it bcash because they don't want it to carry Bitcoin's legacy in the public mind.
        ryebit 9y ago
        Labelling everyone who does that "1 MB maximalists" is a little extreme, and is probably why people are irritated with BCH's marketing tactics. To view your statement in a different light.. maybe people don't care for it trying to succeed based on another coin's name, rather than trying to stand on it's own merits. Bitcoin Gold (for all it's problems) doesn't try to insist it's the real Bitcoin. And 90% of the coins out there were confident enough in their tech to not prefix "Bitcoin" to their name.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork of Bitcoin to implement Bitcoin's original scaling plan, and original vision to be a "peer-to-peer electronic cash", and includes all account balances from before the hard fork. You may disagree that it's the real Bitcoin, but it's undoubtedly open to interpretation, and some of its advocates calling it that doesn't justify mislabeling it as bcash.
  - mrb 9y ago
    Zcash and DASH implement private transactions too. As good as, if not better than, Monero.
betoharres 9y ago
Bitcoin cash sounds good then
lawn 9y ago
> It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. This is only true as long as Bitcoin is worth more. But with it becoming more unusable, while other coins are growing in popularity, this will change and Bitcoin won't have any use case left. > The small transaction issue may be overcome by something like the Lightning Network, but in the short term, you can just use other cryptocurrencies with lower fees or other features that are important to you. The Lightning Network has too many problems to solve Bitcoin's scaling issues by itself. Including: 1. No decentralized routing 2. Hubs need to bind up large amount of capital 3. Nodes need to constantly be online and monitor the state to prevent fraud 4. It is heavily dependent on the network effect: for it to be useful the ones you want to transact with needs to be there. Kind of a chicken and egg problem. And why use it as long as other cryptocurrencies fulfill the users need, with a better user experience than LN would provide as well. 5. Settlements do not work reliably with full blocks (or they need to pay huge premiums) LN might have a usecase for providing microtransactions, such as paying for every X second of a video or similar, but it will not solve Bitcoin's scaling problems.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Most people who push the chinese government controlled bcash don't want to talk about lightning, and refuse to learn how it works, yes. It's probably why they forked bcash before the malleability fix of segwit. To ensure the privacy and decentralization enabled by lightning is never available for their government controlled implementation. Lightning is private by design, implementing onion routing natively. I can see how that would have been a problem for chinese government.
- jncraton 9y ago
  I agree with most of what you said, but I would add that part of the value of Bitcoin vs other cryptocurrencies comes from its incredibly high PoW difficulty. The Bitcoin network currently completes 14 quintillion sha256 hashes every second. A similar amount of computing power would need to be controlled by a successful attacker. I understand that miners can choose to leave Bitcoin, and this is largely dependent on price, but historically, Bitcoin provides the most security, so it is the safest crypto for storing a large amount of value.

thevardanian 9y ago

The thing I don't understand, and am concerned about the most is that cryptocurrencies rely on public ledgers, and therefore not private. That is all monetary transactions are in essence public record, which is very odd to me, and really doesn't sit well.

lawn 9y ago
Exactly. Monero is the only real cryptocurrency because it does not have a public ledger. Monero is fungible, meaning you cannot tell two coins apart, which is an essential property of money. This is a very real issue most people into Bitcoin does not seem to care about. Anyone you transact with can gain insight into your personal finances which at best informs your friends of how rich/poor you are and at worst making you a robbery target.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Bitcoin cares about decentralization. The Chinese government doesn't. So that's why there is bcash. If low fees were important, you'd just use litecoin. It has been around for years. They even have segwit, which allows atomic cross-chain swaps, which even further enables privacy. It is no surprise that the chinese government controlled crypto bcash didn't want that.
  - dylz 9y ago
    Why do you keep using the large phrase "chinese government controlled crypto bcash" instead of just calling it bcash? Sincerely, someone that isn't involved in all of this.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      Because bcash is overwhelmingly run by bitmain, a chinese company, at every point in its service delivery. The miners, the nodes, and now the payment processor are all one chinese company. It is also not surprising that they have specifically disabled the privacy improvement of segwit in their altcoin. So no atomic cross-chain swaps are possible either. It is a walled garden where they control all of the access.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      It's not even called bcash. It's called Bitcoin Cash. The 1 MB maximalists call it bcash because they don't want it to carry Bitcoin's legacy in the public mind.
      - ryebit 9y ago
        Labelling everyone who does that "1 MB maximalists" is a little extreme, and is probably why people are irritated with BCH's marketing tactics. To view your statement in a different light.. maybe people don't care for it trying to succeed based on another coin's name, rather than trying to stand on it's own merits. Bitcoin Gold (for all it's problems) doesn't try to insist it's the real Bitcoin. And 90% of the coins out there were confident enough in their tech to not prefix "Bitcoin" to their name.
        CryptoPunk 9y ago
        Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork of Bitcoin to implement Bitcoin's original scaling plan, and original vision to be a "peer-to-peer electronic cash", and includes all account balances from before the hard fork. You may disagree that it's the real Bitcoin, but it's undoubtedly open to interpretation, and some of its advocates calling it that doesn't justify mislabeling it as bcash.
- mrb 9y ago
  Zcash and DASH implement private transactions too. As good as, if not better than, Monero.

betoharres 9y ago

Bitcoin cash sounds good then

lawn 9y ago

> It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. This is only true as long as Bitcoin is worth more. But with it becoming more unusable, while other coins are growing in popularity, this will change and Bitcoin won't have any use case left. > The small transaction issue may be overcome by something like the Lightning Network, but in the short term, you can just use other cryptocurrencies with lower fees or other features that are important to you. The Lightning Network has too many problems to solve Bitcoin's scaling issues by itself. Including: 1. No decentralized routing 2. Hubs need to bind up large amount of capital 3. Nodes need to constantly be online and monitor the state to prevent fraud 4. It is heavily dependent on the network effect: for it to be useful the ones you want to transact with needs to be there. Kind of a chicken and egg problem. And why use it as long as other cryptocurrencies fulfill the users need, with a better user experience than LN would provide as well. 5. Settlements do not work reliably with full blocks (or they need to pay huge premiums) LN might have a usecase for providing microtransactions, such as paying for every X second of a video or similar, but it will not solve Bitcoin's scaling problems.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Most people who push the chinese government controlled bcash don't want to talk about lightning, and refuse to learn how it works, yes. It's probably why they forked bcash before the malleability fix of segwit. To ensure the privacy and decentralization enabled by lightning is never available for their government controlled implementation. Lightning is private by design, implementing onion routing natively. I can see how that would have been a problem for chinese government.
jncraton 9y ago
I agree with most of what you said, but I would add that part of the value of Bitcoin vs other cryptocurrencies comes from its incredibly high PoW difficulty. The Bitcoin network currently completes 14 quintillion sha256 hashes every second. A similar amount of computing power would need to be controlled by a successful attacker. I understand that miners can choose to leave Bitcoin, and this is largely dependent on price, but historically, Bitcoin provides the most security, so it is the safest crypto for storing a large amount of value.