8 ms·

Announcing SegWit support

118 points by tluthra 9y ago

VMG 9y ago
Nice to see them being more resourceful. Coinbase was wasting thousands each day for a while by overpaying in bitcoin transaction fees - effectively donating customers funds to miners.
loeg 9y ago
This is good to see for Coinbase users. > A common piece of feedback from customers is transaction fees for sending Bitcoin on Coinbase are too high. For example, around $2.50 for a 1:1 send last week or so. This is on top of the cut they take for purchases. Clients that implemented SegWit were able to charge much lower transaction fees (~$0.15 for confirmation in 20 minutes -- less for longer waits) for the same kind of transaction.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Sadly still nowhere close to the free transaction up to €15'000 within of 10 seconds that’s being rolled out across the European banks right now. Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods, so far, it’s not quite there yet.
  - TTPrograms 9y ago
    It was so nice of them to, out of the goodness of their hearts, provide such a competitively priced service. It sure seems unlikely that it was at all motivated by competition with alternative financial systems.
    - lox 9y ago
      This seems like a particularly uncharitable take, can’t businesses ever do both what they want to make happen as individuals and what makes good business sense?
    - kuschku 9y ago
      SEPA has provided free transfers years before Satoshi even posted his first post, and SEPA ICT's first draft was at a time when Bitcoin was published, but no one had used it yet. The reason isn't the goodness of their hearts, it's simply a government mandated program to improve the payment infrastructure.
  - koonsolo 9y ago
    Sadly still nowhere close to the free transactions from 0.00001 to whatever amount, within 3 seconds, that's already possible today with Nano, worldwide. No need for a bank account. Bitcoin is old technology. Let's see how banks will compete with next gen coins.
  - ripberge 9y ago
    What is this method of transaction? Credit cards?
    - kuschku 9y ago
      SEPA Instant Credit Transfer. The Eurozone has had for many years a free transfer system between bank accounts, nowadays thanks to recent upgrades it's not only free, but also instant. And banks now have to provide an open API to all functionality as well, so that it's very easy to build technology on top to allow people to just quickly transfer money to someone, or pay online with it. But technically, it's just international wire transfers, for free, instantly, with an open API. Like most banks already provided.
      - loeg 9y ago
        > But technically, it's just international wire transfers, for free, instantly, with an open API. Like most banks already provided. Eurozone banking is far ahead of the US in this regard :-(. Wires still cost $20-25 per here and ACH takes days.
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        ACH will be same day next month.
        loeg 9y ago
        Do any US banks actually let users initiate ACH payments to other individuals? As far as I know, my bank does not (USAA).
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Not through ACH, but through a bank owned consortium: https://www.zellepay.com/ https://www.zellepay.com/ USAA is a participant in that network. Transfers are (EDIT: mostly immediate below a certain dollar amount, next day above) between participant bank users. https://www.usaa.com/inet/wc/mobile_banking_send_money_zelle_faqs_index https://www.usaa.com/inet/wc/mobile_banking_send_money_zelle...
  - tekproxy 9y ago
    Lol. It's advantages are that it's sound money and uncensorable, not faster than visa. Layer one will never scale to superior global currency. It's an immutable, append only database. DCS is a trade-off.
    - mrep 9y ago
      > it's sound money Can you explain what you mean by that? > and uncensorable With all the hacks, that is literally the last place people want to hold their money
      - arianvanp 9y ago
        With sound he means it's verifyable. All currency is accounted for
        mrep 9y ago
        That sounds good until fraud/hacks/mistakes happen and your are the customer that needs them to modify the account. Example: I got my bank routing/account numbers from a bank in a state in which I had not set up my checking account in but the bank teller put the routing number as if I had creating the account in that state. Thus, my first paycheck went to an empty account and I went to the bank that day and they fixed it for me. Putting any of my money in a place that is irreversibly is the last place I would put it.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        nicky0 9y ago
        As long as you can trust your banks and your nation's government then that is fine. You probably live in a stable western country. Nice for you.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
  - icelancer 9y ago
    >> Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods, so far, it’s not quite there yet. Your proposed "better" transaction method is worse in many ways that are important to people on the Internet, namely tracking, non-psuedonoymous, not the physical representation of the money, and many other related issues. It isn't all about speed and cost for people who transact in cryptocurrency.
    - asymmetric 9y ago
      How important they are to people on the Internet remains to be seen. Until now, privacy and decentralization have not been successful selling points for any technology looking for wide acceptance (diaspora, mastodon, ...)
  - FreeRadical 9y ago
    You may want to look into the Cyprus bank depositor haircuts of early 2013
    - kuschku 9y ago
      That's a good point, but won't do anything for adoption. Bitcoin will be supported by stores and websites only if enough people use it, and people will use what is most convenient, not what is most secure or most private. As long as people don't care about privacy, Bitcoin won't succeed. And if people ever care about it, half the users of HN will be without a job, considering they're almost all working at Google/Facebook/Amazon/startups selling private data
  - jebeng 9y ago
    > Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods Where are you getting that from? People noted as early as 2009/2010(Hal Finney particularly) that it was inherently inefficient for that purpose. And that perhaps people would build addition layers on top of it, but it was always clear that it wasn't some magic solution to payments at any reasonable scale. Not to mention the value proposition of credit cards for consumers(cash back, fraud protection, various perks like travel insurance ect) has always been obviously superior. Bitcoin is cool/interesting/potentially part of a well balanced portfolio as an investment with unique properties. But I feel anyone who jumped into Bitcoin because they thought it was going to be great at payments was badly mislead.
bitL 9y ago
Centralization of BTC in progress? Could anyone knowledgeable chime in?
- VMG 9y ago
  I'm trying but I don't understand your question
  - bitL 9y ago
    My limited knowledge tells me that BTC will lose its main reason for existence - solution of Byzantine generals problem, allowing trustless store of value. With what I've read about SegWit, it's a practical solution to improve transaction throughput by moving transactions off blockchain, which in turn removes trustlessness from the equation. I'd like to know if my conclusion is correct.
    - Empact 9y ago
      1) Segwit does improve transaction throughput, but it does so by improving the efficiency of transaction storage on the blockchain. 2) The Lightning Network improves transaction throughput by moving transactions off the blockchain, and requires segwit to be active for reasons apart from its transaction efficiency, specifically that it fixes the transaction malleability problem.
      - nicky0 9y ago
        1. Actually that is incorrect. SegWit transactions are several bytes larger than old style transactions.
    - nicky0 9y ago
      You have been misinformed. SegWit does not move anything off the blockchain. It just rearranges things within the blocks.
    - umanwizard 9y ago
      > With what I've read about SegWit, it's a practical solution to improve transaction throughput by moving transactions off blockchain SegWit has nothing to do with this — maybe you are thinking of Lightning Network?
firasd 9y ago
I'm glad to see the adoption of such changes. The 'hodl' crowd have changed their talking points to 'Bitcoin is an asset, not a currency' but as far as I'm concerned, if that's how it ends up--if you can't pragmatically buy a $2 cup of coffee with BTC--it would really puncture the immense promise of decentralized financial tech.
- Beldur 9y ago
  You also can't buy a cup of coffee with TCP/IP. But with PayPal you can. Bitcoin is not ment to be used for buying coffee. But software based on it is.
  - lox 9y ago
    Do you mean “blockchain”? Because bitcoin was designed as a currency. It’s in the name.
- sova 9y ago
  You can't buy a cup of coffee with a slice of a gold bar either!
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    I’m pretty sure that if you offered one to the person behind the counter, good and coffee would rapidly be exchanged.
    - richardw 9y ago
      Not if it's an equivalent amount of gold. Nobody has time to deal with a couple bucks worth of precious metal
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - onoffswitch 9y ago
    That was kind of his point. Crypto sounds less like a revolution if markets treat it as an asset; as opposed to treating it as a currency.
skybrian 9y ago
Why is it that sending the wrong kind of coin to an address results in the money being lost? It seems like a rather severe UI bug to inflict on users.
- AgentME 9y ago
  Bitcoin Cash has a separate blockchain (and peer-to-peer swarm, etc) but uses the same address format and checksum as Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash did that on purpose so people's addresses from before the fork would continue to work if they moved to BCH at the fork. Personally I think they (BCH) like the confusion because it keeps people talking about them where Bitcoin is talked about (never mind the confusingly-similar name). Coinbase technically could make the addresses they show be able to receive both BTC and BCH funds, but it would be more complexity on their end as their BTC and BCH support would no longer be separate systems. There is a plan for Bitcoin to get a new type of address format eventually (BIP 173, "Bech32"), built specifically for Segwit addresses, so this problem will eventually be addressed. Well, it will be fixed until the next Bitcoin Cash Gold Deluxe Whatever fork shows up...
  - makomk 9y ago
    Not with SegWit addresses they couldn't, because the entire point of carrying out the Bitcoin Cash fork was to create something Bitcoin-like that didn't have Segwit and that its well-funded proponents could insist was the real Bitcoin. (They like to call Bitcoin "SegwitCoin".)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

118 points by tluthra 9y ago

VMG 9y ago

Nice to see them being more resourceful. Coinbase was wasting thousands each day for a while by overpaying in bitcoin transaction fees - effectively donating customers funds to miners.

loeg 9y ago

This is good to see for Coinbase users. > A common piece of feedback from customers is transaction fees for sending Bitcoin on Coinbase are too high. For example, around $2.50 for a 1:1 send last week or so. This is on top of the cut they take for purchases. Clients that implemented SegWit were able to charge much lower transaction fees (~$0.15 for confirmation in 20 minutes -- less for longer waits) for the same kind of transaction.

kuschku 9y ago
Sadly still nowhere close to the free transaction up to €15'000 within of 10 seconds that’s being rolled out across the European banks right now. Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods, so far, it’s not quite there yet.
- TTPrograms 9y ago
  It was so nice of them to, out of the goodness of their hearts, provide such a competitively priced service. It sure seems unlikely that it was at all motivated by competition with alternative financial systems.
  - lox 9y ago
    This seems like a particularly uncharitable take, can’t businesses ever do both what they want to make happen as individuals and what makes good business sense?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    SEPA has provided free transfers years before Satoshi even posted his first post, and SEPA ICT's first draft was at a time when Bitcoin was published, but no one had used it yet. The reason isn't the goodness of their hearts, it's simply a government mandated program to improve the payment infrastructure.
- koonsolo 9y ago
  Sadly still nowhere close to the free transactions from 0.00001 to whatever amount, within 3 seconds, that's already possible today with Nano, worldwide. No need for a bank account. Bitcoin is old technology. Let's see how banks will compete with next gen coins.
- ripberge 9y ago
  What is this method of transaction? Credit cards?
  - kuschku 9y ago
    SEPA Instant Credit Transfer. The Eurozone has had for many years a free transfer system between bank accounts, nowadays thanks to recent upgrades it's not only free, but also instant. And banks now have to provide an open API to all functionality as well, so that it's very easy to build technology on top to allow people to just quickly transfer money to someone, or pay online with it. But technically, it's just international wire transfers, for free, instantly, with an open API. Like most banks already provided.
    - loeg 9y ago
      > But technically, it's just international wire transfers, for free, instantly, with an open API. Like most banks already provided. Eurozone banking is far ahead of the US in this regard :-(. Wires still cost $20-25 per here and ACH takes days.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        ACH will be same day next month.
        loeg 9y ago
        Do any US banks actually let users initiate ACH payments to other individuals? As far as I know, my bank does not (USAA).
        toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Not through ACH, but through a bank owned consortium: https://www.zellepay.com/ https://www.zellepay.com/ USAA is a participant in that network. Transfers are (EDIT: mostly immediate below a certain dollar amount, next day above) between participant bank users. https://www.usaa.com/inet/wc/mobile_banking_send_money_zelle_faqs_index https://www.usaa.com/inet/wc/mobile_banking_send_money_zelle...
- tekproxy 9y ago
  Lol. It's advantages are that it's sound money and uncensorable, not faster than visa. Layer one will never scale to superior global currency. It's an immutable, append only database. DCS is a trade-off.
  - mrep 9y ago
    > it's sound money Can you explain what you mean by that? > and uncensorable With all the hacks, that is literally the last place people want to hold their money
    - arianvanp 9y ago
      With sound he means it's verifyable. All currency is accounted for
      - mrep 9y ago
        That sounds good until fraud/hacks/mistakes happen and your are the customer that needs them to modify the account. Example: I got my bank routing/account numbers from a bank in a state in which I had not set up my checking account in but the bank teller put the routing number as if I had creating the account in that state. Thus, my first paycheck went to an empty account and I went to the bank that day and they fixed it for me. Putting any of my money in a place that is irreversibly is the last place I would put it.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        nicky0 9y ago
        As long as you can trust your banks and your nation's government then that is fine. You probably live in a stable western country. Nice for you.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
- icelancer 9y ago
  >> Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods, so far, it’s not quite there yet. Your proposed "better" transaction method is worse in many ways that are important to people on the Internet, namely tracking, non-psuedonoymous, not the physical representation of the money, and many other related issues. It isn't all about speed and cost for people who transact in cryptocurrency.
  - asymmetric 9y ago
    How important they are to people on the Internet remains to be seen. Until now, privacy and decentralization have not been successful selling points for any technology looking for wide acceptance (diaspora, mastodon, ...)
- FreeRadical 9y ago
  You may want to look into the Cyprus bank depositor haircuts of early 2013
  - kuschku 9y ago
    That's a good point, but won't do anything for adoption. Bitcoin will be supported by stores and websites only if enough people use it, and people will use what is most convenient, not what is most secure or most private. As long as people don't care about privacy, Bitcoin won't succeed. And if people ever care about it, half the users of HN will be without a job, considering they're almost all working at Google/Facebook/Amazon/startups selling private data
- jebeng 9y ago
  > Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods Where are you getting that from? People noted as early as 2009/2010(Hal Finney particularly) that it was inherently inefficient for that purpose. And that perhaps people would build addition layers on top of it, but it was always clear that it wasn't some magic solution to payments at any reasonable scale. Not to mention the value proposition of credit cards for consumers(cash back, fraud protection, various perks like travel insurance ect) has always been obviously superior. Bitcoin is cool/interesting/potentially part of a well balanced portfolio as an investment with unique properties. But I feel anyone who jumped into Bitcoin because they thought it was going to be great at payments was badly mislead.

bitL 9y ago

Centralization of BTC in progress? Could anyone knowledgeable chime in?

VMG 9y ago
I'm trying but I don't understand your question
- bitL 9y ago
  My limited knowledge tells me that BTC will lose its main reason for existence - solution of Byzantine generals problem, allowing trustless store of value. With what I've read about SegWit, it's a practical solution to improve transaction throughput by moving transactions off blockchain, which in turn removes trustlessness from the equation. I'd like to know if my conclusion is correct.
  - Empact 9y ago
    1) Segwit does improve transaction throughput, but it does so by improving the efficiency of transaction storage on the blockchain. 2) The Lightning Network improves transaction throughput by moving transactions off the blockchain, and requires segwit to be active for reasons apart from its transaction efficiency, specifically that it fixes the transaction malleability problem.
    - nicky0 9y ago
      1. Actually that is incorrect. SegWit transactions are several bytes larger than old style transactions.
  - nicky0 9y ago
    You have been misinformed. SegWit does not move anything off the blockchain. It just rearranges things within the blocks.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    > With what I've read about SegWit, it's a practical solution to improve transaction throughput by moving transactions off blockchain SegWit has nothing to do with this — maybe you are thinking of Lightning Network?

firasd 9y ago

I'm glad to see the adoption of such changes. The 'hodl' crowd have changed their talking points to 'Bitcoin is an asset, not a currency' but as far as I'm concerned, if that's how it ends up--if you can't pragmatically buy a $2 cup of coffee with BTC--it would really puncture the immense promise of decentralized financial tech.

Beldur 9y ago
You also can't buy a cup of coffee with TCP/IP. But with PayPal you can. Bitcoin is not ment to be used for buying coffee. But software based on it is.
- lox 9y ago
  Do you mean “blockchain”? Because bitcoin was designed as a currency. It’s in the name.
sova 9y ago
You can't buy a cup of coffee with a slice of a gold bar either!
- IntronExon 9y ago
  I’m pretty sure that if you offered one to the person behind the counter, good and coffee would rapidly be exchanged.
  - richardw 9y ago
    Not if it's an equivalent amount of gold. Nobody has time to deal with a couple bucks worth of precious metal
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- onoffswitch 9y ago
  That was kind of his point. Crypto sounds less like a revolution if markets treat it as an asset; as opposed to treating it as a currency.

skybrian 9y ago

Why is it that sending the wrong kind of coin to an address results in the money being lost? It seems like a rather severe UI bug to inflict on users.

AgentME 9y ago
Bitcoin Cash has a separate blockchain (and peer-to-peer swarm, etc) but uses the same address format and checksum as Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash did that on purpose so people's addresses from before the fork would continue to work if they moved to BCH at the fork. Personally I think they (BCH) like the confusion because it keeps people talking about them where Bitcoin is talked about (never mind the confusingly-similar name). Coinbase technically could make the addresses they show be able to receive both BTC and BCH funds, but it would be more complexity on their end as their BTC and BCH support would no longer be separate systems. There is a plan for Bitcoin to get a new type of address format eventually (BIP 173, "Bech32"), built specifically for Segwit addresses, so this problem will eventually be addressed. Well, it will be fixed until the next Bitcoin Cash Gold Deluxe Whatever fork shows up...
- makomk 9y ago
  Not with SegWit addresses they couldn't, because the entire point of carrying out the Bitcoin Cash fork was to create something Bitcoin-like that didn't have Segwit and that its well-funded proponents could insist was the real Bitcoin. (They like to call Bitcoin "SegwitCoin".)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]