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Bitcoin is currently not what Bitcoin was when it was created. Slow peer-to-peer transactions and high processing fees. Average fees are hovering around 30 dol

Bitcoin is currently not what Bitcoin was when it was created. Slow peer-to-peer transactions and high processing fees. Average fees are hovering around 30 dollars. That's an average. Unconfirmed transactions has been at over 100k for months. The mempool is also hovering around an ATH. The Bitcoin is crippled. Sentences like "store of value" are now the term used to describe Bitcoin. Very far from what the Bitcoin used to be. I think there is a real possibility of a "death spiral of the blockchain". Fees will increase and it will become impossible to move coins on the blockchain besides the upper 10% of bitcoin holders. For traders on exchanges bitcoin seems fast; because no transactions are taking place. When you actually decide to move your bitcoins to a wallet you own you'll pay high fees... if not your transaction could take months to clear or never actually clear. No wonder Visa cards are being cancelled. The fork that occurred on 1st August created Bitcoin Cash. This fork is much closer to what the Bitcoin was. Bitcoin Cash is this today. Removal of the segwit code (which hasn't solved anything), disabling of RBF (replace-by-fee) enabling 0-confirmation transactions again. A new DAA (difficulty adjustment algorithm). Finally increase the block size to 8MiB. The Bitcoin has been crippled on purpose by Blockstream deep in the pockets of bankers and insurance companies. Blockstream is the main contributor to the Bitcoin development. Look at the sponsors; https://www.blockstream.com/about/#investors https://www.blockstream.com/about/#investors Before the bankers, and their followers, got indirectly involved in Bitcoin development there never was any discussion about limiting the block size to 1MiB; in fact the opposite was discussed. See; https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/636410827969421312?lang=e.. https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/636410827969421312?lang=e.... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1314.msg15143#msg151.. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1314.msg15143#msg151.... https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/71h884/pieter_wuille_im.. https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/71h884/pieter_wuille_im.... Now all of this has led to a complete divide and clusterfuck of the community. It is an very ugly and toxic environment and is sad to look at. On top of that we now have thousands of alternative coins and blockchains.

wmeredith 9y ago
"death spiral of the blockchain" or death spiral of Bitcoin? There's an army of alt coins waiting to take its place. A lot of them are garbage, most are OK, but a handful of them are brilliant. Bitcoin was the proof of concept and it was very successful in that light, but as a consumer product it is quite flawed. The survivors of the current bubble will be the ones that change the world. I'm not sure Bitcoin will be among them.
- etr-strike 9y ago
  All coins built upon PoW suffer the same scaling issues as bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is the most popular, it hit the limitations first. Second layer technologies such as Lightning Network and Rootstock do solve various problematic use cases. Bitcoin is the most widely held cryptocurrency and is the only cryptocurrency with second layer technologies being rolled out into production as we speak.
- jcomis 9y ago
  which do you consider brilliant?
lagadu 9y ago
Bitcoin effectively froze when Blockstream decided against increasing block size. The way I see it, bitcoin only stands as the flag-bearer, as (much like bitcoin cash) the transactions are too slow and still cost money. As the ecosystems grow and stabilize I imagine we'll be having some of the more full-featured, specialized cryptos carve out a spot within their specific domains (Dash or Raiblocks effectively taking over the "currency" use case for example). I agree that the environment between the bitcoin and bitcoin cash communities is extremely toxic but I downplay how much that matters for a simple reason: bitcoin has been steadily losing dominance in the space and bitcoin cash is completely useless feature-wise, when compared newer-gen cryptos and even older ones like Litecoin. So sure, it's a nasty environment but it's one that I suspect we can just let die quietly in the corner.
- etr-strike 9y ago
  > Bitcoin effectively froze when Blockstream decided against increasing block size. You mean when the Bitcoin Core implementation of the Bitcoin protocol decided decentralization was an important feature of the currency and transaction compression should be the prioritized means of scaling.
  - lagadu 9y ago
    That's the "glass is very half-full" way of putting it :) They could've easily gone both ways: block size increase to 2mb, segwit and lightning network. Hell, Litecoin is well on its way to becoming the de-facto transfer currency between exchanges because it iterates so much quicker (and those 2.5 minute blocktimes sure help).
    - lawlessone 9y ago
      They might still increase blocksize at a later date. Some other people decided it was a good idea to try force their hand with segwit2x and it failed.
etr-strike 9y ago
Could you be any more of a shill? RBF is optional. Furthermore, disabling RBF doesn't enable 0-conf transactions -- transactions can still be dropped from the mempool. Anyways, say hi to the BCash CEO for me.
- sctb 9y ago
  We've banned this account like we said you would if you continued to break the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lawlessone 9y ago
Bitcoin cash is fraud.
illumin8 9y ago
> Average fees are hovering around 30 dollars. That's an average. No, they're not. Exaggerating your numbers makes your entire argument less strong. I made a transaction yesterday and the price was only ~$19 if I wanted it confirmed fast (in <2 blocks). The price was about the same last week when I did the same thing. You also have the option of paying a much lower fee if you don't care how fast it transfers. If you're trying to buy a coffee, don't use BTC. If you're transferring 5-6 figures to an exchange, paying $19 to get the money there in minutes is far and away superior to the ETF system, which typically takes days.
- bentruyman 9y ago
  > If you're trying to buy a coffee, don't use BTC. Isn't this sorta what we were hoping to do one day? A proper digital cash replacement? This Bitcoin scalability problem seems like a much bigger deal than most seem to realize. And it's only getting worse.
  - mtw 9y ago
    to pay coffee, you can use any other altcoins, monero, dash, ether has low transcation fees etc. We're past the idea of one crypto rules them all and going to a world where each coin rules in one area. Bitcoin as a store of value, ether for dapps, monero for secure/private transactions, ripple or stellar for international banking etc.
    - RodgerTheGreat 9y ago
      If your vision of the future is individuals carrying a balance of dozens of cryptocurrencies in order to do business, then congratulations: you have managed to reinvent barter, with cryptography as sheer overhead.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Oh, don't worry, Lightning is coming Real Soon Now (TM), if you call a couple of years real soon, that is...

wmeredith 9y ago

"death spiral of the blockchain" or death spiral of Bitcoin? There's an army of alt coins waiting to take its place. A lot of them are garbage, most are OK, but a handful of them are brilliant. Bitcoin was the proof of concept and it was very successful in that light, but as a consumer product it is quite flawed. The survivors of the current bubble will be the ones that change the world. I'm not sure Bitcoin will be among them.

etr-strike 9y ago
All coins built upon PoW suffer the same scaling issues as bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is the most popular, it hit the limitations first. Second layer technologies such as Lightning Network and Rootstock do solve various problematic use cases. Bitcoin is the most widely held cryptocurrency and is the only cryptocurrency with second layer technologies being rolled out into production as we speak.
jcomis 9y ago
which do you consider brilliant?

lagadu 9y ago

Bitcoin effectively froze when Blockstream decided against increasing block size. The way I see it, bitcoin only stands as the flag-bearer, as (much like bitcoin cash) the transactions are too slow and still cost money. As the ecosystems grow and stabilize I imagine we'll be having some of the more full-featured, specialized cryptos carve out a spot within their specific domains (Dash or Raiblocks effectively taking over the "currency" use case for example). I agree that the environment between the bitcoin and bitcoin cash communities is extremely toxic but I downplay how much that matters for a simple reason: bitcoin has been steadily losing dominance in the space and bitcoin cash is completely useless feature-wise, when compared newer-gen cryptos and even older ones like Litecoin. So sure, it's a nasty environment but it's one that I suspect we can just let die quietly in the corner.

etr-strike 9y ago
> Bitcoin effectively froze when Blockstream decided against increasing block size. You mean when the Bitcoin Core implementation of the Bitcoin protocol decided decentralization was an important feature of the currency and transaction compression should be the prioritized means of scaling.
- lagadu 9y ago
  That's the "glass is very half-full" way of putting it :) They could've easily gone both ways: block size increase to 2mb, segwit and lightning network. Hell, Litecoin is well on its way to becoming the de-facto transfer currency between exchanges because it iterates so much quicker (and those 2.5 minute blocktimes sure help).
  - lawlessone 9y ago
    They might still increase blocksize at a later date. Some other people decided it was a good idea to try force their hand with segwit2x and it failed.

etr-strike 9y ago

Could you be any more of a shill? RBF is optional. Furthermore, disabling RBF doesn't enable 0-conf transactions -- transactions can still be dropped from the mempool. Anyways, say hi to the BCash CEO for me.

sctb 9y ago
We've banned this account like we said you would if you continued to break the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lawlessone 9y ago

Bitcoin cash is fraud.

illumin8 9y ago

> Average fees are hovering around 30 dollars. That's an average. No, they're not. Exaggerating your numbers makes your entire argument less strong. I made a transaction yesterday and the price was only ~$19 if I wanted it confirmed fast (in <2 blocks). The price was about the same last week when I did the same thing. You also have the option of paying a much lower fee if you don't care how fast it transfers. If you're trying to buy a coffee, don't use BTC. If you're transferring 5-6 figures to an exchange, paying $19 to get the money there in minutes is far and away superior to the ETF system, which typically takes days.

bentruyman 9y ago
> If you're trying to buy a coffee, don't use BTC. Isn't this sorta what we were hoping to do one day? A proper digital cash replacement? This Bitcoin scalability problem seems like a much bigger deal than most seem to realize. And it's only getting worse.
- mtw 9y ago
  to pay coffee, you can use any other altcoins, monero, dash, ether has low transcation fees etc. We're past the idea of one crypto rules them all and going to a world where each coin rules in one area. Bitcoin as a store of value, ether for dapps, monero for secure/private transactions, ripple or stellar for international banking etc.
  - RodgerTheGreat 9y ago
    If your vision of the future is individuals carrying a balance of dozens of cryptocurrencies in order to do business, then congratulations: you have managed to reinvent barter, with cryptography as sheer overhead.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Oh, don't worry, Lightning is coming Real Soon Now (TM), if you call a couple of years real soon, that is...