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I don't understand why people just can't use Ethereum for this with a little more polishing on the UI end from the devs. It has the added benefit of being dece

I don't understand why people just can't use Ethereum for this with a little more polishing on the UI end from the devs. It has the added benefit of being decentralized, something Facebook or any other company or charity will never be. It even recently implemented proof of stake rollout so it isn't using massive environmental resources for proof of work in the future. Of course Bitcoin was ideal for this but it went off the rails for the banking the unbanked dream when it refused to scale from a blistering 7 transactions per second and the associated high fees. Ethereum fees aren't great either, but my understanding is that massive increases in throughput are coming with sharding etc. in Ethereum 2.0. Monero would be perfect for this, but I don't know if the world is ready for true privacy and fungibility in their e-coin. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth-xmr.html#log&3m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...

alwillis 6y ago
Of course Bitcoin was ideal for this but it went off the rails for the banking the unbanked dream when it refused to scale from a blistering 7 transactions per second and the associated high fees. You can check any bitcoin dashboard (such as https://bitbo.io); https://bitbo.io); the current transaction fee is 1 satoshi/vByte for a transaction. The average bitcoin transaction is ~250 bytes. 1 satoshi = $0.00019273. A transaction that can wait an hour costs about $0.05. The "bitcoin doesn't scale" thing really isn't a thing. Lyn Alden addresses this in her "7 Misconceptions about Bitcoin" article [1]: "In other words, suppose that the Bitcoin network is limited to 250 transactions per minute, which is low. Those transactions could average $100 or $1 million, or any number. If they average $100 each, it means only $25,000 in transaction value is performed per minute. If they average $1 million each, it means $250 million in transaction value is performed per minute. If Bitcoin grows in use as a store of value, the transaction fees and inherent limitations prioritize the largest and most important transactions; the major settlement transactions. Additional layers built on top of Bitcoin can do an arbitrary number of transactions per minute, and settle them with batches on the actual Bitcoin blockchain. This is similar to how consumer layers like Visa or Paypal can process an arbitrary number of transactions per minute, while the banks behind the scenes settle with larger transactions less frequently." Lightning Network is a layer 2 protocol on top of bitcoin; transactions settle in seconds and the fees are tiny—about 1 satoshi—(a fraction of a penny) per hop. Not only are they cheap, they're private as Lightning runs over Tor. The UI/UX of the current crop of Bitcoin/lightning wallets for iOS and Android, such as BlueWallet (https://bluewallet.io https://bluewallet.io) is quite good. [1]: https://www.lynalden.com/misconceptions-about-bitcoin/ https://www.lynalden.com/misconceptions-about-bitcoin/
alwillis 6y ago
Not to put too fine a point on this, but here's a tweet about a $165,000,000 bitcoin transaction; the fee was $1.20: https://twitter.com/coinbeastmedia/status/1336122995652218880?s=20 https://twitter.com/coinbeastmedia/status/133612299565221888...

alwillis 6y ago

Of course Bitcoin was ideal for this but it went off the rails for the banking the unbanked dream when it refused to scale from a blistering 7 transactions per second and the associated high fees. You can check any bitcoin dashboard (such as https://bitbo.io); https://bitbo.io); the current transaction fee is 1 satoshi/vByte for a transaction. The average bitcoin transaction is ~250 bytes. 1 satoshi = $0.00019273. A transaction that can wait an hour costs about $0.05. The "bitcoin doesn't scale" thing really isn't a thing. Lyn Alden addresses this in her "7 Misconceptions about Bitcoin" article [1]: "In other words, suppose that the Bitcoin network is limited to 250 transactions per minute, which is low. Those transactions could average $100 or $1 million, or any number. If they average $100 each, it means only $25,000 in transaction value is performed per minute. If they average $1 million each, it means $250 million in transaction value is performed per minute. If Bitcoin grows in use as a store of value, the transaction fees and inherent limitations prioritize the largest and most important transactions; the major settlement transactions. Additional layers built on top of Bitcoin can do an arbitrary number of transactions per minute, and settle them with batches on the actual Bitcoin blockchain. This is similar to how consumer layers like Visa or Paypal can process an arbitrary number of transactions per minute, while the banks behind the scenes settle with larger transactions less frequently." Lightning Network is a layer 2 protocol on top of bitcoin; transactions settle in seconds and the fees are tiny—about 1 satoshi—(a fraction of a penny) per hop. Not only are they cheap, they're private as Lightning runs over Tor. The UI/UX of the current crop of Bitcoin/lightning wallets for iOS and Android, such as BlueWallet (https://bluewallet.io https://bluewallet.io) is quite good. [1]: https://www.lynalden.com/misconceptions-about-bitcoin/ https://www.lynalden.com/misconceptions-about-bitcoin/

alwillis 6y ago

Not to put too fine a point on this, but here's a tweet about a $165,000,000 bitcoin transaction; the fee was $1.20: https://twitter.com/coinbeastmedia/status/1336122995652218880?s=20 https://twitter.com/coinbeastmedia/status/133612299565221888...