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First, use in commerce peaked when transaction fees went too high in 2017, and consumers didn't try the shitty user experience again okay, temporary problem t

First, use in commerce peaked when transaction fees went too high in 2017, and consumers didn't try the shitty user experience again okay, temporary problem the payment processor's user experience kind of sucks and the network didn't help that better UX and lightning network will help with that. There are also some BIPs regarding signing transactions differently, as well as smaller transactions coming. This year, 2018, more people already use another form of smaller transactions and also combine them. Bitcoin would handle a lot more load this year. Secondly, M1 is a tiny fraction of the supply used for goods and services, M2 and M3 are illiquid stores of value. Bitcoin isn't functioning differently to currencies in this regard so its a weird standard to put it at to proclaim it isn't a good value transfer mechanism.

Nursie 8y ago
> better UX and lightning network will help with that. Lightning appears to be a bit of a joke - routing payments is almost impossible, lots of attempts seem to fail, and there also appear to be requirements like keeping a node up constantly.
- gammateam 8y ago
  yeah I read and repeated all of that stuff without investigating too, at one point. they aren't fundamental flaws to the concept. just like with tcp/ip packets, routing will improve with robustness of the network. I saw a couple of work in progress efforts to address the full node requirements. they'll be growing pains but bitcoin is interesting because the protocol doesn't go away, even as the payment processing companies themselves run out of money. so a different company or group of efforts will implement it with merchants when its better.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    It's different than TCP/IP in that every transaction changes the topography of a payment channel network, by changing the maximum amount that can be sent across various channels. This is a fundamental difference. Moreover, even if LN worked as a full substitute for on-chain transactions (all indications point to only a very centralized hub and spoke LN model working efficiently), Bitcoin's three transactions per second limit makes the maximum proportion of the global population that could participate in a LN very limited. Afterall, LN payment channels do still need on-chain transactions to set up, and do need to be replaced from the time to time. Given every user would need, at the very least, a few payment channels, the math for global adoption of the LN with a 3 tps limit doesn't work.
    - gammateam 8y ago
      Yes this is something I'm following too. So although Bitcoin has a low transaction per second limitation, the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. This is what batching does. Segwit further helps lower the size of Transaction objects. And further proposals also lower that further.
      - CryptoPunk 8y ago
        >>the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. Can you elaborate or provide a link? If you're referring to off-chain transactions through LN that are 'batched' on chain: these cannot set up payment channels. On-chain transactions for payment channel set up are the necessary minimum for the LN, and even to do just this, Bitcoin's block size limit doesn't come close to being adequate. As for Segwit, it's a one time limit increase to something like 1.67 MB per 10 minutes (~2 KB/s). The limit needs a couple order of magnitude increase to make Bitcoin viable as a global currency.
        gammateam 8y ago
        A "transaction" on the bitcoin blockchain can contain many peer to peer actions which are also colloquially called transactions. I'm not referring to lightning. This is basic day-one functionality of bitcoin. I don't feel compelled to provide a link to this at this point. Many popular services' implementation of bitcoin wasn't doing this, and now they are, this is called batching.
  - ledriveby 8y ago
    A lot of software projects fail. Why the blind faith that LN will inevitably get better? ICOs are like this too. Billions of dollars are rallied for technologies that don't exist, for founders who don't exist (their headshots are usually pilfered from stock photos), for problems that don't exist. And yet, funding! This insanity would never happen if cryptocurrency wasn't involved. The multilevel marketing energy of crypto turns off critical thinking.
    - gammateam 8y ago
      I don't have blind faith LN will get better. It already has gotten better from the first time I thought it was irrevocably broken. There are also parallel scaling proposals. All while on-chain transactions are extremely cheap and user experience improvements would help handle much more load than last year.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    I've investigated. AFAICT your only response there is "It will get better". I personally don't believe it will or that it can, given factros like having to tie up BTC in the network to facilitate channels, and race conditions/contention on payments. It's far from trustless and decentralised, and it appears to be far from functional.
prostoalex 8y ago
Fundamentally, though, a consumer in a developed economy with high degree of e-commerce has access to a credit card / PayPal / AliPay -like set of tools, that allow for * cash back (and similar incentives like airline miles) * transaction reversal * consumer protection in case a purchased iPhone X arrives broken due to an unscrupulous seller * custom perks, like extended warranties for consumer electronics, travel insurance or additional coverage for a rented vehicle Even if you have a better UX, what are the incentives for consumer to switch away into BTC? A 2% discount compared to credit card payment? The higher the item price, the stronger is the incentive to employ some consumer protection mechanisms.

Nursie 8y ago

> better UX and lightning network will help with that. Lightning appears to be a bit of a joke - routing payments is almost impossible, lots of attempts seem to fail, and there also appear to be requirements like keeping a node up constantly.

gammateam 8y ago
yeah I read and repeated all of that stuff without investigating too, at one point. they aren't fundamental flaws to the concept. just like with tcp/ip packets, routing will improve with robustness of the network. I saw a couple of work in progress efforts to address the full node requirements. they'll be growing pains but bitcoin is interesting because the protocol doesn't go away, even as the payment processing companies themselves run out of money. so a different company or group of efforts will implement it with merchants when its better.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  It's different than TCP/IP in that every transaction changes the topography of a payment channel network, by changing the maximum amount that can be sent across various channels. This is a fundamental difference. Moreover, even if LN worked as a full substitute for on-chain transactions (all indications point to only a very centralized hub and spoke LN model working efficiently), Bitcoin's three transactions per second limit makes the maximum proportion of the global population that could participate in a LN very limited. Afterall, LN payment channels do still need on-chain transactions to set up, and do need to be replaced from the time to time. Given every user would need, at the very least, a few payment channels, the math for global adoption of the LN with a 3 tps limit doesn't work.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    Yes this is something I'm following too. So although Bitcoin has a low transaction per second limitation, the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. This is what batching does. Segwit further helps lower the size of Transaction objects. And further proposals also lower that further.
    - CryptoPunk 8y ago
      >>the database Transaction objects can contain hundreds of transactions between users. Can you elaborate or provide a link? If you're referring to off-chain transactions through LN that are 'batched' on chain: these cannot set up payment channels. On-chain transactions for payment channel set up are the necessary minimum for the LN, and even to do just this, Bitcoin's block size limit doesn't come close to being adequate. As for Segwit, it's a one time limit increase to something like 1.67 MB per 10 minutes (~2 KB/s). The limit needs a couple order of magnitude increase to make Bitcoin viable as a global currency.
      - gammateam 8y ago
        A "transaction" on the bitcoin blockchain can contain many peer to peer actions which are also colloquially called transactions. I'm not referring to lightning. This is basic day-one functionality of bitcoin. I don't feel compelled to provide a link to this at this point. Many popular services' implementation of bitcoin wasn't doing this, and now they are, this is called batching.
- ledriveby 8y ago
  A lot of software projects fail. Why the blind faith that LN will inevitably get better? ICOs are like this too. Billions of dollars are rallied for technologies that don't exist, for founders who don't exist (their headshots are usually pilfered from stock photos), for problems that don't exist. And yet, funding! This insanity would never happen if cryptocurrency wasn't involved. The multilevel marketing energy of crypto turns off critical thinking.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    I don't have blind faith LN will get better. It already has gotten better from the first time I thought it was irrevocably broken. There are also parallel scaling proposals. All while on-chain transactions are extremely cheap and user experience improvements would help handle much more load than last year.
- Nursie 8y ago
  I've investigated. AFAICT your only response there is "It will get better". I personally don't believe it will or that it can, given factros like having to tie up BTC in the network to facilitate channels, and race conditions/contention on payments. It's far from trustless and decentralised, and it appears to be far from functional.

prostoalex 8y ago

Fundamentally, though, a consumer in a developed economy with high degree of e-commerce has access to a credit card / PayPal / AliPay -like set of tools, that allow for * cash back (and similar incentives like airline miles) * transaction reversal * consumer protection in case a purchased iPhone X arrives broken due to an unscrupulous seller * custom perks, like extended warranties for consumer electronics, travel insurance or additional coverage for a rented vehicle Even if you have a better UX, what are the incentives for consumer to switch away into BTC? A 2% discount compared to credit card payment? The higher the item price, the stronger is the incentive to employ some consumer protection mechanisms.