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You've accidentally stumbled upon the Bitcoin's true strength in your own answer. > unless the group governing it decides to 'fix' those flaws, but there's ano

You've accidentally stumbled upon the Bitcoin's true strength in your own answer. > unless the group governing it decides to 'fix' those flaws, but there's another issue, I don't want you messing with how my money works... That's exactly the reason why arguably technically superior projects are worth less - they are constantly messing with how their money works. The community around Bitcoin, it's so called "immune system" is incredibly conservative. All they care about is stability and security. Every new feature is being introduced as an opt-in soft fork. It can take around 3 years of rigorous testing and discussion to go from a BIP to a protocol upgrade. Yes, other projects may be technologically superior, but it doesn't matter because they are funny money and Bitcoin's rigor and resistance to change make it hard money.

willmadden 7y ago
This is inaccurate. Bitcoin could handle many, many more transactions per second than it currently does with less risk and technical complexity than has been introduced since we hit the blocksize limit in 2017. There's a lot of money making sure it does not get bigger. Instead it's being rate limited with high fees and limited throughput to force transactions onto "layer 2" systems that allow 3rd party companies (ironically acting like banks) to extract fees. This is what caused most of the original Bitcoin community to fork off to Bitcoin Cash, which has improved upon the original code base and proven Bitcoin can handle far more transactions per second.
- icebraining 7y ago
  How does that make the previous post inaccurate?
  - willmadden 7y ago
    Calling the development team "incredibly conservative" isn't accurate. The idea of Bitcoin is peer to peer electronic cash directly between two counterparties. The current roadmap doesn't focus on that as a priority and instead focuses on intermediaries for scaling. That isn't "incredibly conservative", it's a different system of priorities entirely, that have little to do with technical risk or original vision of Bitcoin.
- xorcist 7y ago
  > most of the original Bitcoin community While it's hard to define what the "original" Bitcoin community really is, you'd struggle to make up a definition under which the above is true. Looking through the commit log, none of the developers match any known Bitcoin developers at all, neither past nor present. It's hard to know for certain of course since there are many pseudonymous developers in this space. A large reason might be that drumming up interest in consensus breaking changes is difficult enough as it is, and interest in a completely different codebase with incompatible rules is likely to be even harder.

willmadden 7y ago

This is inaccurate. Bitcoin could handle many, many more transactions per second than it currently does with less risk and technical complexity than has been introduced since we hit the blocksize limit in 2017. There's a lot of money making sure it does not get bigger. Instead it's being rate limited with high fees and limited throughput to force transactions onto "layer 2" systems that allow 3rd party companies (ironically acting like banks) to extract fees. This is what caused most of the original Bitcoin community to fork off to Bitcoin Cash, which has improved upon the original code base and proven Bitcoin can handle far more transactions per second.

icebraining 7y ago
How does that make the previous post inaccurate?
- willmadden 7y ago
  Calling the development team "incredibly conservative" isn't accurate. The idea of Bitcoin is peer to peer electronic cash directly between two counterparties. The current roadmap doesn't focus on that as a priority and instead focuses on intermediaries for scaling. That isn't "incredibly conservative", it's a different system of priorities entirely, that have little to do with technical risk or original vision of Bitcoin.
xorcist 7y ago
> most of the original Bitcoin community While it's hard to define what the "original" Bitcoin community really is, you'd struggle to make up a definition under which the above is true. Looking through the commit log, none of the developers match any known Bitcoin developers at all, neither past nor present. It's hard to know for certain of course since there are many pseudonymous developers in this space. A large reason might be that drumming up interest in consensus breaking changes is difficult enough as it is, and interest in a completely different codebase with incompatible rules is likely to be even harder.