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I'm not sure why you would compare Visa with Bitcoin, unless you had no idea what you were talking about.. Visa does not enable one to transact without the rest

I'm not sure why you would compare Visa with Bitcoin, unless you had no idea what you were talking about.. Visa does not enable one to transact without the rest of the banking system. It's useless on its own. Really pointless point of reference.

bean5 6y ago
apples = oranges
chiph 6y ago
Bitcoin (and the other coin systems) ultimately need to be able to handle transactions by a large number of users if they are to gain widespread acceptance. If I want to buy something with my coins, I don't expect to see "Sorry your transaction timed out. Please try again in a few moments". That is NOT confidence inspiring to me as the coin holder, and certainly not to the person/business expecting to receive my coins. Bitcoin needs to be able to handle at least a few hundred transactions per second as a first goal.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Bitcoiners don't actually want people spending Bitcoin. The entire Bitcoin narrative has become buy and never sell (HODL). The more friction around transacting with your coins (other than buying) the better it is for the asset value.
- qqii 6y ago
  Transactions can't time out and there are two main solutions for businesses that want to accept bitcoin: * Accept transactions that are in the mempool * Use the lightning network Accepting mempool transactions obviously has lesser guarantees and unfortunately lightning hasn't seen great adoption even from centralised exchanges.
  - paulmd 6y ago
    transactions that are not chosen for inclusion in a block (likely due to low transaction fees) do age out of the mempool eventually, so there is a network-enforced "timeout". It's not a hard number but it will eventually happen. Also obviously there is a human-imposed "timeout" too. Like, if you buy something with Bitpay they expect your transaction to be included in one of the next 3 blocks. If it's not, they will "timeout" the transaction and it bounces. If it is eventually mined for inclusion, they will voluntarily return it to you minus whatever fees they choose to charge (average transaction fee is $24 right now, so you will lose $24 sending it to them, then $24 for them sending it back to you, and $24 to send it again). https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... (of course they don't have to send it back to you, there is no network-enforced mechanism for this, they could bounce the transaction and then if it gets included an hour later they could not pay you back, the money is under their control once you've signed the transaction. They could even maintain a separate mempool of these "dead" transactions and use a friendly mining pool to process those transactions preferentially...)
- cloudhead 6y ago
  When this becomes an actual problem (it isn’t yet), the lightning network is ready to handle that kind of throughout.
insertnickname 6y ago
Satoshi compared Bitcoin to Visa in 2009. >The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over the ways it would cope with extreme size.

bean5 6y ago

apples = oranges

chiph 6y ago

Bitcoin (and the other coin systems) ultimately need to be able to handle transactions by a large number of users if they are to gain widespread acceptance. If I want to buy something with my coins, I don't expect to see "Sorry your transaction timed out. Please try again in a few moments". That is NOT confidence inspiring to me as the coin holder, and certainly not to the person/business expecting to receive my coins. Bitcoin needs to be able to handle at least a few hundred transactions per second as a first goal.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Bitcoiners don't actually want people spending Bitcoin. The entire Bitcoin narrative has become buy and never sell (HODL). The more friction around transacting with your coins (other than buying) the better it is for the asset value.
qqii 6y ago
Transactions can't time out and there are two main solutions for businesses that want to accept bitcoin: * Accept transactions that are in the mempool * Use the lightning network Accepting mempool transactions obviously has lesser guarantees and unfortunately lightning hasn't seen great adoption even from centralised exchanges.
- paulmd 6y ago
  transactions that are not chosen for inclusion in a block (likely due to low transaction fees) do age out of the mempool eventually, so there is a network-enforced "timeout". It's not a hard number but it will eventually happen. Also obviously there is a human-imposed "timeout" too. Like, if you buy something with Bitpay they expect your transaction to be included in one of the next 3 blocks. If it's not, they will "timeout" the transaction and it bounces. If it is eventually mined for inclusion, they will voluntarily return it to you minus whatever fees they choose to charge (average transaction fee is $24 right now, so you will lose $24 sending it to them, then $24 for them sending it back to you, and $24 to send it again). https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... (of course they don't have to send it back to you, there is no network-enforced mechanism for this, they could bounce the transaction and then if it gets included an hour later they could not pay you back, the money is under their control once you've signed the transaction. They could even maintain a separate mempool of these "dead" transactions and use a friendly mining pool to process those transactions preferentially...)
cloudhead 6y ago
When this becomes an actual problem (it isn’t yet), the lightning network is ready to handle that kind of throughout.

insertnickname 6y ago

Satoshi compared Bitcoin to Visa in 2009. >The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over the ways it would cope with extreme size.