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“ The question then is whether 7 tx/sec really is sufficient to support broad global adoption, even if it's just for savings. Dollars and physical gold have no

“ The question then is whether 7 tx/sec really is sufficient to support broad global adoption, even if it's just for savings. Dollars and physical gold have no such limits.” Yes they do, it takes even longer to move physical dollars or gold around and depending on where and who you are sending them too it might be impossible. Sure in some mainstream cases you can send the digital derivative of gold and dollars to someone but those aren’t the actual asset just a representation issued by a centralized entity or a collection of them. Visas payment network isn’t moving dollars it’s moving digital dollars. Same with gold etfs. Let’s see them try to seize bitcoin and stop transfers it’s much harder

DennisP 6y ago
Their latency is high but they are massively parallel. There's no practical limit on global throughput. To get low latency on dollars/gold you have to go with centralized digital representations, but Bitcoin has to do the same to get more than 7 tx/sec. I might still be a fan if that were the only option, but with other blockchains eliminating this restriction I have a hard time seeing the long-term value proposition of Bitcoin specifically.
- slickrick216 6y ago
  Yeah I agree, not a bitcoin maximalist. Things like wrapped bitcoin and renbtc open up new pathways for it to be successful though due in large part to its network effect and the underlying economics. It changed the whole off chain transaction narrative to just another chain transaction. L2 things like arbitrum make this even more compelling.
- tromp 6y ago
  Others don't so much eliminate this restriction as they shift the problem to creating so much transaction history that it becomes impractical to run a node that fully verifies said history. In other words, they're significantly less decentralized.
  - thomasrognon 6y ago
    Which is a bigger driver of decentralization? Running a node or adoption? I would think a universally adopted blockchain in the multi-TB would turn out more decentralized than a narrowly adopted multi-GB blockchain. # of potential business/research/government nodes >> hobby nodes.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    That could be a serious issue if you're just relying on your nodes having beefy hardware. It's a lesser issue if you can support a large number validating nodes using cheap hardware, they are frequently and randomly assigned to verify different portions of the history, and they always act as secure light clients of the other portions. In fact, it might even compare favorably to the handful of major mining operations that mostly run Bitcoin, on expensive ASICs.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    Out of interest, what would you say is a reasonable minimum amount of disk space for a user to have to devote to their bitcoin node, such that the number of nodes does not cause significant extra centralisation (over and above the centralisation of mining pools and development teams)?
    - tromp 6y ago
      Only an archive node needs to keep a copy of the entire chain. But every full node needs to download and verify all of it, so it's more a question of bandwidth and time. It would be nice to be able to so within a day.
      - dane-pgp 6y ago
        That's interesting, thank you. As a quick calculation, the bitcoin blockchain recently[0] reached 300 GB which, spread over a day, would require a download speed of 27.8 MBit/s. For comparison, "the global average download speed on fixed broadband is 85.73 Mbps as of September 2020"[1] so even if block sizes were triple their historic values it would still be possible for average global users to wait less than a day to complete the initial download. [0] https://decrypt.co/42427/bitcoin-blockchain-grows-to-300-gigabytes-in-size https://decrypt.co/42427/bitcoin-blockchain-grows-to-300-gig... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-...
- andrewjl 6y ago
  You'd be surprised at the complexity involved moving 1-5MM USD across borders, even those without capital controls. And there is definitely a limit on global throughput of dollar movement, which is roughly the slowest processing rate of all the bank compliance divisions involved in the transfer. For complex cross-border transfers there may be more than 2 banks involved. Greater amounts still would attract even more scrutiny due to AML and KYC regulations in most jurisdictions. If you're dealing with capital controls, which many large economies now have, the complexity is exponentially higher. You're also assuming that telecommunications networks, physical infrastructure, particularly power, are in good working order when you want to do the transfer. That may be the case 99.99% of the time, but the edge case should also be a consideration.
  - lmohseni 6y ago
    >You're also assuming that telecommunications networks, physical infrastructure, particularly power, are in good working order the same is true of bitcoin, right? I mean gold will continue to be gold in the absence of power, but will bitcoin even exist? The most damning critique of bitcoin is that it requires power to be free and infinite.
    - andrewjl 6y ago
      Not necessarily if you are in possession of your own keys. Which admittedly most people today are not. A hardware wallet can be physically transported in the same way gold can.
      - lreeves 6y ago
        The TSA will seize your phone if you don't hand over passwords and passcodes in many cases, you're saying you think it'd be a good idea to cross the US border with any amount of bitcoin on a hardware wallet? That's... optimistic.
        andrewjl 6y ago
        You don't need a hardware wallet if you use the mnemonic phrase feature.[1] https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Mnemonic_phrase https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Mnemonic_phrase
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Moving currency around is expensive and difficult, one of the reasons why credit cards exist. I worked at a retail store that turned over lots of cash — as much as $1M on a holiday weekend. The costs, risks and time associated with dealing with that amount of currency was very real.

DennisP 6y ago

Their latency is high but they are massively parallel. There's no practical limit on global throughput. To get low latency on dollars/gold you have to go with centralized digital representations, but Bitcoin has to do the same to get more than 7 tx/sec. I might still be a fan if that were the only option, but with other blockchains eliminating this restriction I have a hard time seeing the long-term value proposition of Bitcoin specifically.

slickrick216 6y ago
Yeah I agree, not a bitcoin maximalist. Things like wrapped bitcoin and renbtc open up new pathways for it to be successful though due in large part to its network effect and the underlying economics. It changed the whole off chain transaction narrative to just another chain transaction. L2 things like arbitrum make this even more compelling.
tromp 6y ago
Others don't so much eliminate this restriction as they shift the problem to creating so much transaction history that it becomes impractical to run a node that fully verifies said history. In other words, they're significantly less decentralized.
- thomasrognon 6y ago
  Which is a bigger driver of decentralization? Running a node or adoption? I would think a universally adopted blockchain in the multi-TB would turn out more decentralized than a narrowly adopted multi-GB blockchain. # of potential business/research/government nodes >> hobby nodes.
- DennisP 6y ago
  That could be a serious issue if you're just relying on your nodes having beefy hardware. It's a lesser issue if you can support a large number validating nodes using cheap hardware, they are frequently and randomly assigned to verify different portions of the history, and they always act as secure light clients of the other portions. In fact, it might even compare favorably to the handful of major mining operations that mostly run Bitcoin, on expensive ASICs.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  Out of interest, what would you say is a reasonable minimum amount of disk space for a user to have to devote to their bitcoin node, such that the number of nodes does not cause significant extra centralisation (over and above the centralisation of mining pools and development teams)?
  - tromp 6y ago
    Only an archive node needs to keep a copy of the entire chain. But every full node needs to download and verify all of it, so it's more a question of bandwidth and time. It would be nice to be able to so within a day.
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
      That's interesting, thank you. As a quick calculation, the bitcoin blockchain recently[0] reached 300 GB which, spread over a day, would require a download speed of 27.8 MBit/s. For comparison, "the global average download speed on fixed broadband is 85.73 Mbps as of September 2020"[1] so even if block sizes were triple their historic values it would still be possible for average global users to wait less than a day to complete the initial download. [0] https://decrypt.co/42427/bitcoin-blockchain-grows-to-300-gigabytes-in-size https://decrypt.co/42427/bitcoin-blockchain-grows-to-300-gig... [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-...
andrewjl 6y ago
You'd be surprised at the complexity involved moving 1-5MM USD across borders, even those without capital controls. And there is definitely a limit on global throughput of dollar movement, which is roughly the slowest processing rate of all the bank compliance divisions involved in the transfer. For complex cross-border transfers there may be more than 2 banks involved. Greater amounts still would attract even more scrutiny due to AML and KYC regulations in most jurisdictions. If you're dealing with capital controls, which many large economies now have, the complexity is exponentially higher. You're also assuming that telecommunications networks, physical infrastructure, particularly power, are in good working order when you want to do the transfer. That may be the case 99.99% of the time, but the edge case should also be a consideration.
- lmohseni 6y ago
  >You're also assuming that telecommunications networks, physical infrastructure, particularly power, are in good working order the same is true of bitcoin, right? I mean gold will continue to be gold in the absence of power, but will bitcoin even exist? The most damning critique of bitcoin is that it requires power to be free and infinite.
  - andrewjl 6y ago
    Not necessarily if you are in possession of your own keys. Which admittedly most people today are not. A hardware wallet can be physically transported in the same way gold can.
    - lreeves 6y ago
      The TSA will seize your phone if you don't hand over passwords and passcodes in many cases, you're saying you think it'd be a good idea to cross the US border with any amount of bitcoin on a hardware wallet? That's... optimistic.
      - andrewjl 6y ago
        You don't need a hardware wallet if you use the mnemonic phrase feature.[1] https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Mnemonic_phrase https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Mnemonic_phrase
Spooky23 6y ago
Moving currency around is expensive and difficult, one of the reasons why credit cards exist. I worked at a retail store that turned over lots of cash — as much as $1M on a holiday weekend. The costs, risks and time associated with dealing with that amount of currency was very real.