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Yes, it has morphed. The devs in charge of Bitcoin have purposely abandoned the idea of it being a currency. On-chain transactions are artificially limited to a

Yes, it has morphed. The devs in charge of Bitcoin have purposely abandoned the idea of it being a currency. On-chain transactions are artificially limited to about four per second, and they refuse to change that. They call it a "store of value" now. Other cryptocurrencies are working hard on scaling to the point of being workable currencies.

bduerst 7y ago
It's more complex than that. It's the miners, not the devs, on the Bitcoin network refuse to come to a consensus on what Bitcoin should be. It's like a weird 21st-century internet tragedy of the commons.
- jhatemyjob 7y ago
  This is why I think "decentralization" will never work. It's just a power vacuum, that will be filled/abused one way or the other.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    Precisely. It turns out that despite some of it's flaws, having your currency managed by a central organization that is incentivized for stability tends to work better than a handful of data miners stealing electricity in China.
    - jhatemyjob 7y ago
      And whoever owns the domain https://bitcoin.org https://bitcoin.org.
xur17 7y ago
> The devs in charge of Bitcoin have purposely abandoned the idea of it being a currency. On-chain transactions are artificially limited to about four per second, and they refuse to change that. They call it a "store of value" now. I don't think they abandoned the idea of it being a currency, I think they just have different ideas about how exactly to go about scaling it. The block size limit (and therefore the transactions per second limit) was raised 2x rather than significantly more because they don't think scaling onchain is a viable long term solution [0]. Lightning, and other second layer networks have always been discussed as the solution to this scaling problem, and while they are still very early, there's already a fair amount of usage. I work at a company that accepts Bitcoin, and as of today, > 90% of our transaction volume is via lightning. [0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy#Arguments_in_opposition_to_increasing_the_blocksize https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy#Argu...
- random_kris 7y ago
  is your company hiring? I am a backend java developer who is looking for opportunities in bitcoin world.

bduerst 7y ago

It's more complex than that. It's the miners, not the devs, on the Bitcoin network refuse to come to a consensus on what Bitcoin should be. It's like a weird 21st-century internet tragedy of the commons.

jhatemyjob 7y ago
This is why I think "decentralization" will never work. It's just a power vacuum, that will be filled/abused one way or the other.
- bduerst 7y ago
  Precisely. It turns out that despite some of it's flaws, having your currency managed by a central organization that is incentivized for stability tends to work better than a handful of data miners stealing electricity in China.
  - jhatemyjob 7y ago
    And whoever owns the domain https://bitcoin.org https://bitcoin.org.

xur17 7y ago

> The devs in charge of Bitcoin have purposely abandoned the idea of it being a currency. On-chain transactions are artificially limited to about four per second, and they refuse to change that. They call it a "store of value" now. I don't think they abandoned the idea of it being a currency, I think they just have different ideas about how exactly to go about scaling it. The block size limit (and therefore the transactions per second limit) was raised 2x rather than significantly more because they don't think scaling onchain is a viable long term solution [0]. Lightning, and other second layer networks have always been discussed as the solution to this scaling problem, and while they are still very early, there's already a fair amount of usage. I work at a company that accepts Bitcoin, and as of today, > 90% of our transaction volume is via lightning. [0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy#Arguments_in_opposition_to_increasing_the_blocksize https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy#Argu...

random_kris 7y ago
is your company hiring? I am a backend java developer who is looking for opportunities in bitcoin world.