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Bitcoin undoubtedly is a technical and social phenomenon, but it’s also definitely almost useless as a digital currency at the moment. Other alternatives like B

Bitcoin undoubtedly is a technical and social phenomenon, but it’s also definitely almost useless as a digital currency at the moment. Other alternatives like Bitcoin cash, litecoin, ethereum etc. are much more useful for actually... sending money to people. The dev team needs to make Bitcoin as good as Venmo for sending payments between people, or someone else will beat them to it. People have talked for a long time about currency X being better and replacing Bitcoin but with Bitcoin rising so fast that the network has basically shut down, this may be the first time another currency or fork has the opportunity to overtake it in market cap.

paulcole 9y ago
>Bitcoin undoubtedly is a technical and social phenomenon, but it’s also definitely almost useless as a digital currency at the moment. Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call this a feature not a bug.
- zaidf 9y ago
  Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call this a feature not a bug. By that logic, I could say: "Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call the high price of gold a feature not a bug." Turns out much of the world revolves around drinking some kinda koolaid.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    >Turns out much of the world revolves around drinking some kinda koolaid. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
rubber_duck 9y ago
I think all block chain solutions have the same problem with scaling right ? IOTA sounds like it could potentially solve this since they seem to be P2P with accelerator nodes instead of relying on miners - but honestly I haven't looked too much in to it just put few hundred bucks to it if it actually ends up working.
VMG 9y ago
None of the coins can scale realistically on-chain as a peer-to-peer system. If you run the numbers, the transaction volume of 1B people making one transaction a day goes into the terabytes. If you externalize the costs of verifying that to third parties, you lose properties that make Bitcoin interesting to begin with. For many people it was clear that off-chain transactions are the only feasible way to solve this. Small purchases in particular do not need to be broadcast to the whole network and can be routed in payment channels. Lighting Network is the most promising solution at the moment.
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  If you externalize the costs of verifying that to third parties, you lose properties that make Bitcoin Isn't that what "off-chain transactions" and the "Lightning Network" are?
  - VMG 9y ago
    Lighting Network is a trustless protocol
    - xocyabencl 9y ago
      If lightning network includes tech that can support billions of transactions, can it be used without bitcoin? Why not use lighting with an uncongested coin?
      - ozmbie 9y ago
        Bitcoin is the most popular with the most resources behind it, so it makes sense to leverage off it. There's nothing stopping similar networks occurring on other coins.
      - VMG 9y ago
        Yes, any coin that has segwit or a comparable fix for malleability can use lightning. Litecoin is already supported. You can even have atomic swaps between both over lightning channels.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
surrey-fringe 9y ago
I'm amazed at how many boring and uninteresting posts get upvoted here. You didn't even say anything.
anonytrary 9y ago
This is why I dislike it when people say "Bitcoin has a first-mover advantage". This is like saying Neils Bohr had the first-mover advantage when it came to Quantum Mechanics. Bitcoin is the Bohr model of blockchains. It was a huge first step, but it's not the last step. We have yet to see Schrodinger's blockchain, and all of the altcoins claim they are it.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
> "Bitcoin rising so fast that the network has basically shut down" That is one way to view at bitcoin now, a very pessimistic one. But an alternative positive view is that Bitcoin's network has proved its success at being able to process transaction up to the rate it was designed to handle (1 MB worth of transaction data per ~10min) without failing even in the face of sustained overcapacity barrage of transactions. No bugs since late 2010. No crashes. No successful 51% or other attacks. No double-spent coins. No invalidated transactions.

paulcole 9y ago

>Bitcoin undoubtedly is a technical and social phenomenon, but it’s also definitely almost useless as a digital currency at the moment. Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call this a feature not a bug.

zaidf 9y ago
Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call this a feature not a bug. By that logic, I could say: "Those who have truly drunk the koolaid call the high price of gold a feature not a bug." Turns out much of the world revolves around drinking some kinda koolaid.
- paulcole 9y ago
  >Turns out much of the world revolves around drinking some kinda koolaid. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

rubber_duck 9y ago

I think all block chain solutions have the same problem with scaling right ? IOTA sounds like it could potentially solve this since they seem to be P2P with accelerator nodes instead of relying on miners - but honestly I haven't looked too much in to it just put few hundred bucks to it if it actually ends up working.

VMG 9y ago

None of the coins can scale realistically on-chain as a peer-to-peer system. If you run the numbers, the transaction volume of 1B people making one transaction a day goes into the terabytes. If you externalize the costs of verifying that to third parties, you lose properties that make Bitcoin interesting to begin with. For many people it was clear that off-chain transactions are the only feasible way to solve this. Small purchases in particular do not need to be broadcast to the whole network and can be routed in payment channels. Lighting Network is the most promising solution at the moment.

canoebuilder 9y ago
If you externalize the costs of verifying that to third parties, you lose properties that make Bitcoin Isn't that what "off-chain transactions" and the "Lightning Network" are?
- VMG 9y ago
  Lighting Network is a trustless protocol
  - xocyabencl 9y ago
    If lightning network includes tech that can support billions of transactions, can it be used without bitcoin? Why not use lighting with an uncongested coin?
    - ozmbie 9y ago
      Bitcoin is the most popular with the most resources behind it, so it makes sense to leverage off it. There's nothing stopping similar networks occurring on other coins.
    - VMG 9y ago
      Yes, any coin that has segwit or a comparable fix for malleability can use lightning. Litecoin is already supported. You can even have atomic swaps between both over lightning channels.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

surrey-fringe 9y ago

I'm amazed at how many boring and uninteresting posts get upvoted here. You didn't even say anything.

anonytrary 9y ago

This is why I dislike it when people say "Bitcoin has a first-mover advantage". This is like saying Neils Bohr had the first-mover advantage when it came to Quantum Mechanics. Bitcoin is the Bohr model of blockchains. It was a huge first step, but it's not the last step. We have yet to see Schrodinger's blockchain, and all of the altcoins claim they are it.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

> "Bitcoin rising so fast that the network has basically shut down" That is one way to view at bitcoin now, a very pessimistic one. But an alternative positive view is that Bitcoin's network has proved its success at being able to process transaction up to the rate it was designed to handle (1 MB worth of transaction data per ~10min) without failing even in the face of sustained overcapacity barrage of transactions. No bugs since late 2010. No crashes. No successful 51% or other attacks. No double-spent coins. No invalidated transactions.