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> These properties also mean that in a pinch, if you live in an unstable society or one facing high inflation it can work as an alternative financial system. A

> These properties also mean that in a pinch, if you live in an unstable society or one facing high inflation it can work as an alternative financial system. At the time of writing this comment, if you want your BTC transaction confirmed in the next hour it would cost you ~ 10USD ( https://bitcoiner.live/ https://bitcoiner.live/ ) . What planet do you live on where you think a non-negligible percentage of people in ANY country, let alone a developing one, can afford 10 dollars for each transaction they make? That's not even considering the price effect that global demand would have on fees. Bitcoin can't even meet the demand of the relatively small cult of people worldwide that buy it, few of which even move their "assets" off the exchange. Parasitic investors have strangled cryptocurrency. If you think Bitcoin can currently serve any purpose other than making rich people more rich, you're a fool. Wake me when Tether is dead and people start using crypto as it was intended, peer to peer digital cash. EDIT: I apologize for coming off so harsh. My anger is (mostly) not at you. I'm angry at seeing the enormous potential bitcoin had to do good in the world go completely to waste.

UShouldBWorking 6y ago
I make payments almost everyday with Peer to Peer Digital Cash. Real users and devs moved to other projects like Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Monero soon after Blockstream hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo. Bitcoin Core is broken beyond repair but Bitcoin Cash has taken its place and the project and community are doing great.
varajelle 6y ago
With the lightning network, the cost of a transaction is negligible.
- uncletammy 6y ago
  You can't use lightning network without opening a channel. Opening a channel requires making an on-chain transaction which most of the world can't afford. Lightning network is absolutely useless on BTC. Add lightning network to a chain that isn't crippled then let's talk.
  - ohbleek 6y ago
    I use the lightning network almost daily and I’ve never done that. I just use a wallet that is lightning capable and that’s it.
    - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
      How exactly are you using the lightning network without an initial transaction to charge up your metaphorical gift card?
      - random_kris 6y ago
        You could use a custodial solution untill you stack enough to get a channel of your own.
ldbooth 6y ago
regarding the transaction cost, wells fargo charges me $15 to receive a wired payment. If the use case is only large gold like transactions, the BTC use case makes more sense. Tbd.. shake it out.
- uncletammy 6y ago
  I'm not arguing that BTC isn't better than Wells Fargo. I'm arguing that you can't build a "financial network" on it. BTC is a great alternative to Wells Fargo although almost ANY OTHER COIN is a better one.
  - ldbooth 6y ago
    Can you anchor a financial network on BTC stability? (If it achieves stability). IDK.. Total aside..I imagine this utopian energy-financial system future where we overbuild our renewable grid and instead of storing energy we discharge the (green energy) overproduction into crypto mining operations. There are some dudes already on it, it's a new angle to grid power flow modeling.
    - uncletammy 6y ago
      On your aside, I'm amazed that smaller energy producers have not already become crypto miners. It would be so easy and incredibly lucrative. They could simply flip a switch any time the sale price of their generated power is less than the price of the coins their mining facilities could produce. They would get an instant profit increase. Almost all the costs associated with mining are fixed.
      - ldbooth 6y ago
        You are on point there - No one's got to it yet is the best explanation: YC?!? It's happening at the Utility scale with commercial miners, esp. with merchant (uncontracted) energy. Small producers (residential , commercial solar) just need an easy button solution without having to learn the crypto details. I don't know what that threshold kWh price is, but demistify that and one can define target markets across the US in one broad stroke with EIA utility pricing data. The formula in a prepackaged product with an app seems to be the only trick. Then get it in the hands of residential installers and boom. It'd probably sell like (can I say it on HN) liquid crack.
remolacha 6y ago
There are L2s that solve this, in exchange for slower inclusion into the main chain. Or you can just trade wrapped BTC on another network. In that case, the Bitcoin main chain functions like a gold depository institution in traditional finance.
- uncletammy 6y ago
  I'll make sure and tell my grandma that she can save money by wrapping her BTC and trading it on another network rather than making on-chain transactions /s It blows my mind the amount of talent being wasted building "solutions" for an intentionally crippled chain. One can only polish a turd so much.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
  Choose an L2 and send me $1. I dare you.
cactus2093 6y ago
Why are you so set on digital cash? I completely agree, Bitcoin is a bad replacement for cash, just like gold bullion is. 10 dollars is a steep confirmation price but if you have a life savings of, say, the equivalent of a few hundred or thousand USD that you hold in cash and your local currency is rapidly inflating making it worthless, btc is an amazing life raft that you could put your money into. If you are able to migrate and get a high paying job and still have family somewhere far away in the world that you want to help, $10 fee is not that crazy to send them monthly payments that they could then trade for cash or food. Then there are obviously the side chain solutions, lightning network, or even just using exchanges to transfer btc to altcoins with faster settling times and lower fees if you really do want digital cash.
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  Can someone explain to me the technical reason as to why it costs $10, when it used to cost pennies (I think)? Has the proportion of transactions gone up compared to the miners?
  - tradri 6y ago
    It's kinda hard to create a world-class transactions system when the philosophy is that the bottleneck should be a below-average computer and internet connection.
  - cactus2093 6y ago
    AFAIU, it's just basic supply and demand. A block is mined every 10 minutes and has a fixed size, so you're paying for a slot to put your transaction in the block. And there actually is no fee listed anywhere that you pay and it guarantees you a spot, it's a bit like a stock order book where you can offer any fee that you want on your transaction and the miners will pick the highest fee transactions available to match with. $10 is about the average minimum fee size being accepted in blocks atm. Ultimately as demand to send transactions goes up, fees go up.
  - uncletammy 6y ago
    cactu2093 is exactly right. It's basic supply and demand. What their explanation doesn't touch on are the things that have affected supply and demand. Here are a few of them: 1. Massive media hype surrounding the price in 2014 caused everyone and their mom to try and buy bitcoin. The original developer (Satoshi) had added short term limit on the number of transactions that could be processed in a given time (transactions per block) as a short term fix for a few bad actors spamming the network. So the network was left unable to process the massive increase in demand caused by the price hype. This "fix" was stated to be temporary but was left in for the reason below. 2. A handful of new BTC devs ran off the old guard who believed the network should scale up with demand. This resulted in them intentionally refusing to change the software to accommodate yet another round of increased demand due to media attention (2016). 3. Increased regulatory scrutiny made it difficult to buy/sell crypto outside of large, regulated exchanges, effectively reducing liquidity for those that aren't institutional traders and those unwilling to give Coinbase a DNA sample just so they can buy crypto. The new regulatory and institutional friction killed many of the original use cases for bitcoin leaving mostly institutional traders left. These traders are unphased by high transaction fees, especially since most of their trading takes place off-chain on an exchange website.
delaaxe 6y ago
The whole point of his comment is that BTC is better viewed as store of value rather than a medium of exchange
- jariel 6y ago
  Except that BTC is a terrible store of value, possibly the last option in a long line of better classical options such as real estate (or related funds), stocks, bonds, basket of currencies, commodities. We already have tons of options for 'store of value' why on earth would we invent another, worse one? BTC is not a store of value or a currency - it's a weird social movement.
  - swampfrog 6y ago
    ...how embarrassed would you be for being like a decade late to such a massive "social movement" that went from like $1 to more than $ trillion dollars...? Yeah. sorry about your ignorance.
    - jariel 6y ago
      ""social movement" that went from like $1 to more than $ trillion dollars...? " This is pure Ponzi Scheme language, helping to prove my point. There are rooms on Clubhouse you can join where people talk and hype up these kids of schemes, this is not one of them - don't bring this here.
  - entropea 6y ago
    Absolutely. There's no storing value in something that regularly swings 20%+ on a given day. The only people who are saying this are holders of Bitcoin. It was originally designed to be a decentralized currency, and now it's not. There are much better & safer value stores, even traditional rare metals.
    - jariel 6y ago
      Worth noting: there is no such thing as a 'perfect store of value'. We are psychologically caught up in the idea that 'gold' or 'property' has some 'intrinsic value'. Like if there were a nuclear war, it would all be cool, our 'Billions' would be protected! But no, we can only hold on to stuff that others might find valuable some day. In other words: currency, even 'stores of value' is a social contract within the system you operate. If the system fails, well, both currency and stores of value are probably going to not be worth a lot. Yes - Gold is nice because it's a default currency you can use anywhere. Property tends to hold value as long as there are people there who want to use it - and the legal system that recognizes ownership exist. But otherwise, there is no way around it: you cannot magically store value in your pocket independent of a bunch of other complex systems being in place. BTC is reminiscent of the 'Drain the Swamp' ideas, that somehow all the politicos and bureaucracy are useless and irrelevant. Well yes, shenanigans abound and does inefficiency, but that doesn't meant it's worse than nothing (!) our systems are made by smart people. The only way forward is 'doing something better' and BTC is probably not that.
creato 6y ago
> Parasitic investors have strangled cryptocurrency. If you think Bitcoin can currently serve any purpose other than making rich people more rich, you're a fool. This is an inevitable result of deflationary currency.

UShouldBWorking 6y ago

I make payments almost everyday with Peer to Peer Digital Cash. Real users and devs moved to other projects like Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Monero soon after Blockstream hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo. Bitcoin Core is broken beyond repair but Bitcoin Cash has taken its place and the project and community are doing great.

varajelle 6y ago

With the lightning network, the cost of a transaction is negligible.

uncletammy 6y ago
You can't use lightning network without opening a channel. Opening a channel requires making an on-chain transaction which most of the world can't afford. Lightning network is absolutely useless on BTC. Add lightning network to a chain that isn't crippled then let's talk.
- ohbleek 6y ago
  I use the lightning network almost daily and I’ve never done that. I just use a wallet that is lightning capable and that’s it.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    How exactly are you using the lightning network without an initial transaction to charge up your metaphorical gift card?
    - random_kris 6y ago
      You could use a custodial solution untill you stack enough to get a channel of your own.

ldbooth 6y ago

regarding the transaction cost, wells fargo charges me $15 to receive a wired payment. If the use case is only large gold like transactions, the BTC use case makes more sense. Tbd.. shake it out.

uncletammy 6y ago
I'm not arguing that BTC isn't better than Wells Fargo. I'm arguing that you can't build a "financial network" on it. BTC is a great alternative to Wells Fargo although almost ANY OTHER COIN is a better one.
- ldbooth 6y ago
  Can you anchor a financial network on BTC stability? (If it achieves stability). IDK.. Total aside..I imagine this utopian energy-financial system future where we overbuild our renewable grid and instead of storing energy we discharge the (green energy) overproduction into crypto mining operations. There are some dudes already on it, it's a new angle to grid power flow modeling.
  - uncletammy 6y ago
    On your aside, I'm amazed that smaller energy producers have not already become crypto miners. It would be so easy and incredibly lucrative. They could simply flip a switch any time the sale price of their generated power is less than the price of the coins their mining facilities could produce. They would get an instant profit increase. Almost all the costs associated with mining are fixed.
    - ldbooth 6y ago
      You are on point there - No one's got to it yet is the best explanation: YC?!? It's happening at the Utility scale with commercial miners, esp. with merchant (uncontracted) energy. Small producers (residential , commercial solar) just need an easy button solution without having to learn the crypto details. I don't know what that threshold kWh price is, but demistify that and one can define target markets across the US in one broad stroke with EIA utility pricing data. The formula in a prepackaged product with an app seems to be the only trick. Then get it in the hands of residential installers and boom. It'd probably sell like (can I say it on HN) liquid crack.

remolacha 6y ago

There are L2s that solve this, in exchange for slower inclusion into the main chain. Or you can just trade wrapped BTC on another network. In that case, the Bitcoin main chain functions like a gold depository institution in traditional finance.

uncletammy 6y ago
I'll make sure and tell my grandma that she can save money by wrapping her BTC and trading it on another network rather than making on-chain transactions /s It blows my mind the amount of talent being wasted building "solutions" for an intentionally crippled chain. One can only polish a turd so much.
x3n0ph3n3 6y ago
Choose an L2 and send me $1. I dare you.

cactus2093 6y ago

Why are you so set on digital cash? I completely agree, Bitcoin is a bad replacement for cash, just like gold bullion is. 10 dollars is a steep confirmation price but if you have a life savings of, say, the equivalent of a few hundred or thousand USD that you hold in cash and your local currency is rapidly inflating making it worthless, btc is an amazing life raft that you could put your money into. If you are able to migrate and get a high paying job and still have family somewhere far away in the world that you want to help, $10 fee is not that crazy to send them monthly payments that they could then trade for cash or food. Then there are obviously the side chain solutions, lightning network, or even just using exchanges to transfer btc to altcoins with faster settling times and lower fees if you really do want digital cash.

dennis_jeeves 6y ago
Can someone explain to me the technical reason as to why it costs $10, when it used to cost pennies (I think)? Has the proportion of transactions gone up compared to the miners?
- tradri 6y ago
  It's kinda hard to create a world-class transactions system when the philosophy is that the bottleneck should be a below-average computer and internet connection.
- cactus2093 6y ago
  AFAIU, it's just basic supply and demand. A block is mined every 10 minutes and has a fixed size, so you're paying for a slot to put your transaction in the block. And there actually is no fee listed anywhere that you pay and it guarantees you a spot, it's a bit like a stock order book where you can offer any fee that you want on your transaction and the miners will pick the highest fee transactions available to match with. $10 is about the average minimum fee size being accepted in blocks atm. Ultimately as demand to send transactions goes up, fees go up.
- uncletammy 6y ago
  cactu2093 is exactly right. It's basic supply and demand. What their explanation doesn't touch on are the things that have affected supply and demand. Here are a few of them: 1. Massive media hype surrounding the price in 2014 caused everyone and their mom to try and buy bitcoin. The original developer (Satoshi) had added short term limit on the number of transactions that could be processed in a given time (transactions per block) as a short term fix for a few bad actors spamming the network. So the network was left unable to process the massive increase in demand caused by the price hype. This "fix" was stated to be temporary but was left in for the reason below. 2. A handful of new BTC devs ran off the old guard who believed the network should scale up with demand. This resulted in them intentionally refusing to change the software to accommodate yet another round of increased demand due to media attention (2016). 3. Increased regulatory scrutiny made it difficult to buy/sell crypto outside of large, regulated exchanges, effectively reducing liquidity for those that aren't institutional traders and those unwilling to give Coinbase a DNA sample just so they can buy crypto. The new regulatory and institutional friction killed many of the original use cases for bitcoin leaving mostly institutional traders left. These traders are unphased by high transaction fees, especially since most of their trading takes place off-chain on an exchange website.

delaaxe 6y ago

The whole point of his comment is that BTC is better viewed as store of value rather than a medium of exchange

jariel 6y ago
Except that BTC is a terrible store of value, possibly the last option in a long line of better classical options such as real estate (or related funds), stocks, bonds, basket of currencies, commodities. We already have tons of options for 'store of value' why on earth would we invent another, worse one? BTC is not a store of value or a currency - it's a weird social movement.
- swampfrog 6y ago
  ...how embarrassed would you be for being like a decade late to such a massive "social movement" that went from like $1 to more than $ trillion dollars...? Yeah. sorry about your ignorance.
  - jariel 6y ago
    ""social movement" that went from like $1 to more than $ trillion dollars...? " This is pure Ponzi Scheme language, helping to prove my point. There are rooms on Clubhouse you can join where people talk and hype up these kids of schemes, this is not one of them - don't bring this here.
- entropea 6y ago
  Absolutely. There's no storing value in something that regularly swings 20%+ on a given day. The only people who are saying this are holders of Bitcoin. It was originally designed to be a decentralized currency, and now it's not. There are much better & safer value stores, even traditional rare metals.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Worth noting: there is no such thing as a 'perfect store of value'. We are psychologically caught up in the idea that 'gold' or 'property' has some 'intrinsic value'. Like if there were a nuclear war, it would all be cool, our 'Billions' would be protected! But no, we can only hold on to stuff that others might find valuable some day. In other words: currency, even 'stores of value' is a social contract within the system you operate. If the system fails, well, both currency and stores of value are probably going to not be worth a lot. Yes - Gold is nice because it's a default currency you can use anywhere. Property tends to hold value as long as there are people there who want to use it - and the legal system that recognizes ownership exist. But otherwise, there is no way around it: you cannot magically store value in your pocket independent of a bunch of other complex systems being in place. BTC is reminiscent of the 'Drain the Swamp' ideas, that somehow all the politicos and bureaucracy are useless and irrelevant. Well yes, shenanigans abound and does inefficiency, but that doesn't meant it's worse than nothing (!) our systems are made by smart people. The only way forward is 'doing something better' and BTC is probably not that.

creato 6y ago

> Parasitic investors have strangled cryptocurrency. If you think Bitcoin can currently serve any purpose other than making rich people more rich, you're a fool. This is an inevitable result of deflationary currency.