4 ms·

No matter how slow bitcoin gets it never goes down. Absolute worst case scenario is a steep difficulty curve that takes awhile to fall back down, only slowing b

by deft 6y ago

No matter how slow bitcoin gets it never goes down. Absolute worst case scenario is a steep difficulty curve that takes awhile to fall back down, only slowing block production. Edit: in order for it to get "so slow its stopped" more than half of the miners would need to go offline and not rejoin for hours.

p1necone 6y ago
After a certain threshold "slow" and "down" are effectively the same thing though.
- capableweb 6y ago
  ACH takes "business" days. Bitcoin takes hours, 24/7.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    It takes days to a week to clear a Bitcoin transaction unless you want to pay a much higher fee than you would for a small or medium sized ACH. And that’s with still very few Bitcoin transactions (single digit transactions per second). If everyone started trying to use base Bitcoin, transaction fees would skyrocket but transaction rate would remain just 7/second.
  - dralley 6y ago
    ACH is in the process of being replaced with a system that handles transactions within a couple of seconds.
  - grey-area 6y ago
    Faster payments takes seconds, 24/7.
  - quesera 6y ago
    ACH costs $0.20 for next-BD settlement, or a little more for same-BD settlement. Bitcoin costs 50-100x that: $10-15-20 for "small number hours" settlement. A Bitcoin transaction with a fee of $0.20, might settle after several days, but would more likely expire from the mempool before confirmation. And the really fun part is the unpredictability! ACH isn't perfect. But Bitcoin is completely inappropriate for the common ACH use case.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > After a certain threshold "slow" and "down" are effectively the same thing though. Except when you realize the mempool has a complete record of every pending tx, unlike the central bank whose system is completely down and cannot and will not have a record of any of these transactions and it's services cannot be reached. A part of me wants to be elated, but another part realizes that the end of US empire may allow the CCP to continue unabated, and that has incredibly horrible consequences given all the sabre rattling and their focus on Taiwan after illegally annexing Hong Kong and enslaving Xianjing. The West will continue, and the lack of the US hegemony may allow it to prosper in other ways, but this will be an incredibly rough patch as it loses its status on sole Super Power, I don't think the CCP's China qualifies as a super power as it cannot unilaterally impose the world to operate on its own standard in anything but trade reliance, something it can and should lose. As creditor it cannot really do much except in a close sphere of emerging African countries, of which Bitcoin is actually flourishing, or the Russia/Iran block, and Iran is a hotbed of Bitcoin influence with state sponsored miners. I hope the US takes the lead once more without the need for overt militaristic, police-state tactics as the petro-dollar loses its gravitas, I just don't want to be here when it happens.
noizejoy 6y ago
If you zoom in/out far enough, the difference between down and slow isn’t always clear
partiallypro 6y ago
I'd take cheap/fast/(won't go down 99.99% of the time) vs expensive/slow/can't go down
- capableweb 6y ago
  They are not even targeting/hitting 99.99% in availability, see https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach/quality-volume-statistics.html https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...
  - partiallypro 6y ago
    Even if it's only 99.9% vs 99.99% it's still more efficient.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  Correction: expensive/slow/is down literally all the time because it can't be used for its intended purpose even if it's theoretically running
mikeyouse 6y ago
There was a plausible scenario in the earlier days that an ill-timed crackdown of Chinese miners could effectively cripple the Bitcoin network. If one of the big mining pools went down early in the "2 week" cycle, it could potentially be months before the difficulty readjusted and in the mean time, the Tx throughput would crater and the unconfirmed transactions would just pile up. I assume that's less possible now, but trouble can come from surprising places even in robust systems.
- NoPicklez 6y ago
  Call me stupid, but I am curious to know if Bitcoin or distributed ledgers became large enough and large banks decided to spend big $$ in purchasing mining rigs could they not hold a significant amount of that particular coin. Also, how does borrowing and interest work with something like Bitcoin or other distributed ledgers?
  - p1necone 6y ago
    I imagine borrowing and interest would work exactly the same way they currently work with regular currency. You sign some legally binding agreement, they send you the bitcoin, you pay it back in the agreed intervals + interest over time. If you don't, the legal system gets involved.
    - p1necone 6y ago
      I can imagine you could build a cryptocurrency system that handles debts automatically via eg smart contracts, but you'd still have to involve the legal system if the debtors account was empty.
    - NoPicklez 6y ago
      "They" being an institution which holds a significant amount of Bitcoin (for example sake) as capital in order to be allowed to issue loans? I'm wondering if there is a smarter way to issue loans through something like smart contracts as another comment mentioned. Where we perhaps remove the need for large single institutions to hold large amounts of capital for the purpose of loans. Otherwise we would then be entering in a very similar structure of what we have today and the inherent drawbacks.

by deft 6y ago

p1necone 6y ago

After a certain threshold "slow" and "down" are effectively the same thing though.

capableweb 6y ago
ACH takes "business" days. Bitcoin takes hours, 24/7.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  It takes days to a week to clear a Bitcoin transaction unless you want to pay a much higher fee than you would for a small or medium sized ACH. And that’s with still very few Bitcoin transactions (single digit transactions per second). If everyone started trying to use base Bitcoin, transaction fees would skyrocket but transaction rate would remain just 7/second.
- dralley 6y ago
  ACH is in the process of being replaced with a system that handles transactions within a couple of seconds.
- grey-area 6y ago
  Faster payments takes seconds, 24/7.
- quesera 6y ago
  ACH costs $0.20 for next-BD settlement, or a little more for same-BD settlement. Bitcoin costs 50-100x that: $10-15-20 for "small number hours" settlement. A Bitcoin transaction with a fee of $0.20, might settle after several days, but would more likely expire from the mempool before confirmation. And the really fun part is the unpredictability! ACH isn't perfect. But Bitcoin is completely inappropriate for the common ACH use case.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> After a certain threshold "slow" and "down" are effectively the same thing though. Except when you realize the mempool has a complete record of every pending tx, unlike the central bank whose system is completely down and cannot and will not have a record of any of these transactions and it's services cannot be reached. A part of me wants to be elated, but another part realizes that the end of US empire may allow the CCP to continue unabated, and that has incredibly horrible consequences given all the sabre rattling and their focus on Taiwan after illegally annexing Hong Kong and enslaving Xianjing. The West will continue, and the lack of the US hegemony may allow it to prosper in other ways, but this will be an incredibly rough patch as it loses its status on sole Super Power, I don't think the CCP's China qualifies as a super power as it cannot unilaterally impose the world to operate on its own standard in anything but trade reliance, something it can and should lose. As creditor it cannot really do much except in a close sphere of emerging African countries, of which Bitcoin is actually flourishing, or the Russia/Iran block, and Iran is a hotbed of Bitcoin influence with state sponsored miners. I hope the US takes the lead once more without the need for overt militaristic, police-state tactics as the petro-dollar loses its gravitas, I just don't want to be here when it happens.

noizejoy 6y ago

If you zoom in/out far enough, the difference between down and slow isn’t always clear

partiallypro 6y ago

I'd take cheap/fast/(won't go down 99.99% of the time) vs expensive/slow/can't go down

capableweb 6y ago
They are not even targeting/hitting 99.99% in availability, see https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach/quality-volume-statistics.html https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...
- partiallypro 6y ago
  Even if it's only 99.9% vs 99.99% it's still more efficient.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
Correction: expensive/slow/is down literally all the time because it can't be used for its intended purpose even if it's theoretically running

mikeyouse 6y ago

There was a plausible scenario in the earlier days that an ill-timed crackdown of Chinese miners could effectively cripple the Bitcoin network. If one of the big mining pools went down early in the "2 week" cycle, it could potentially be months before the difficulty readjusted and in the mean time, the Tx throughput would crater and the unconfirmed transactions would just pile up. I assume that's less possible now, but trouble can come from surprising places even in robust systems.

NoPicklez 6y ago
Call me stupid, but I am curious to know if Bitcoin or distributed ledgers became large enough and large banks decided to spend big $$ in purchasing mining rigs could they not hold a significant amount of that particular coin. Also, how does borrowing and interest work with something like Bitcoin or other distributed ledgers?
- p1necone 6y ago
  I imagine borrowing and interest would work exactly the same way they currently work with regular currency. You sign some legally binding agreement, they send you the bitcoin, you pay it back in the agreed intervals + interest over time. If you don't, the legal system gets involved.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    I can imagine you could build a cryptocurrency system that handles debts automatically via eg smart contracts, but you'd still have to involve the legal system if the debtors account was empty.
  - NoPicklez 6y ago
    "They" being an institution which holds a significant amount of Bitcoin (for example sake) as capital in order to be allowed to issue loans? I'm wondering if there is a smarter way to issue loans through something like smart contracts as another comment mentioned. Where we perhaps remove the need for large single institutions to hold large amounts of capital for the purpose of loans. Otherwise we would then be entering in a very similar structure of what we have today and the inherent drawbacks.