11 ms·

Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.

by fisf 5y ago

dandanua 5y ago
Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments and substitute it with a system that has 7 tps cap in which the majority of coins belongs to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin).
- rawtxapp 5y ago
  So you don't think it's valuable to give people power over their incompetent government? 7tps on the base layer, you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, as a matter of fact, unless you're buying directly from a miner, the single transaction that you use to put it in your wallet actually corresponds to many other transactions elsewhere. > (supposedly of criminal origin) Big bold claims also require some proof. It's a decentralized protocol that can't be controlled by anyone. Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart?
  - dandanua 5y ago
    Here [1] is just a recent proof, the complete list of proofs is too big. I don't have much trust in my government either (Ukraine), but at least I know who they are. Also there are many other ways to store a value. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111
    - rawtxapp 5y ago
      So an exchange get's hacked and that makes the origins of Bitcoin criminal? That's like if a bank got hacked and we said US dollar's origin was criminal, it doesn't make any sense. So if you don't trust them, why would you let them control your money, knowing them doesn't change much. Sure there are other ways and people are free to choose whichever one they prefer.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    > Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart? On a scale of 0-1, representing my estimate of P(no catastrophic economic/valuation failure in any given year), my trust is: {Government (German): 0.99, Government (UK): 0.85, Politicians (UK): 0.67, Bankers (collectively and internationally): 0.95, BTC: 0.15, Cryptocurrencies in general: 0.05}. > you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, Thus negating all the so-called benefits of the Blockchain, but without the benefits of a double-entry bookkeeping database audited by professionals and with public liability insurance.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    > Big bold claims also require some proof. It's a decentralized protocol that can't be controlled by anyone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io
- fidelramos 5y ago
  Bitcoin was never supposed to be capped at 7 transactions per second, there are no technical reasons for that limit to exist anymore (it was added in 2010 as a temporary measure). Until (if) Bitcoin BTC decides to scale people can use the Bitcoin Cash [0] fork, which today has ~32 times more capacity, with a roadmap to continue scaling to universal usage while keeping fees low [1]. [0] https://bitcoincash.org/ https://bitcoincash.org/ [1] https://whybitcoincash.com/ https://whybitcoincash.com/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zapdrive 5y ago
    I don't know who is down voting you.. But you are right. That temporary limit has been abused by a faction of people (funded by banks) trying to control Bitcoin. That's why there's a surge of other coins that have removed the limitation. And one of the reasons why Bitcoin's dominance stands below 54% today.
    - fidelramos 5y ago
      There are a lot of BTC maximalists that see any alternative cryptocurrency as a scam, something which is definitely not true for many of them that have thousands of daily active users. I also feel that many BTC maximalists don't appreciate how Bitcoin Cash makes apparent the limitations of BTC, as it processes more transactions than BTC while keeping fees under 1 cent. txstreet [0] makes for a great visualization, check the statistics at the bottom. Personally I wish Bitcoin Cash didn't even need to exist, if BTC had scaled as it was originally planned by Satoshi Nakamoto (increasing the maximum block size before it got full). It was sad watching the adoption rate halt and then regress. Remember when BTC was becoming accepted by Steam, Microsoft, Dell, NewEgg and others back in 2015-2016? There is no doubt in my mind that if BTC had scaled properly almost every online shop and a lot of real-world shops would be accepting BTC by now (and incidentally BTC price would be even higher than it is today). [0] https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc
  - Graffur 5y ago
- o_p 5y ago
  Poor finance guys, they have it so rough.
- dangerlibrary 5y ago
  In fairness, "the majority of coins belong to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin)" is only a small rephrasing away from a description of Erdogan's government / political party [0]. And they are scarier for Turkish citizens than BTC, since he also aggressively punishes dissent and is a de-facto dictator [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Tur... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Auth...
  - m12k 5y ago
    Sure, but the fact that Turkey is becoming increasingly corrupt isn't really a good argument why it would be a good idea to take away the ability of all central banks to perform monetary policy to stabilize the economy.
    - o_p 5y ago
      >Sure these guys are clearly corrupt but that doesnt mean you shouldnt trust them with your money! Are you serious? Honest question.
      - riffraff 5y ago
        he's saying "the fact that there are corrupt people in position X should not disqualify every other people in position X". There are bad surgeons, you should still probably want surgery if you're sick.
        o_p 5y ago
        But there are no many surgeons here, theres only one, one central bank. The inflation rate of Turkey is 15%, is anyone really telling people to just "trust the goverment"? Would you put your life savings in the Turkish Lira?
        SiempreViernes 5y ago
- zeepzeep 5y ago
  You don't need an on-chain transaction for most things, as you can just instantly send BTC over Lightning Network, a second layer on the BTC blockchain. There's no speed limit, it's not on the chain, only nodes between you and the node you paying are involved. It's pretty neat.
  - zapdrive 5y ago
    Lol, you are not serious, are you? Oh, I get the sarcasm now. "Lightning Network" is only "6 months away", right? Wink wink!
    - VMG 5y ago
      there are a number of lightning wallets and a number of stores where you can pay using lightning transactions
      - ajkdhcb2 5y ago
        I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. Waiting to contact wallet developers. It still doesn't work
        noch 5y ago
        > I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. The sats will return to you in 2 weeks. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-completing-the-puzzle-and-closing-the-channel-1466178980 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the...
    - zeepzeep 5y ago
      6 months away, what? I use it on a regular basis. Before covid I could even buy beer & burgers in my city. You can get coupons for everything, many online stores accept it.
      - 5y ago
- Galanwe 5y ago
  Sure, if you're in a developed country with proper economical policy and access to an open banking system, your argument stands. But if you're in a country where your money have been dropping 10% per annum for the last 10 years, and where the concentration is anyway not that different from bitcoin, then things start to make more sense. Also, most people in this situation are not looking for a day to day transactional currency, but rather for a store of value to hedge against their falling native currency.
- zoshi 5y ago
  Lightning and sidechains can handle thousands of TPS. Monero has adaptive block sizes, and is estimated to be able to perform 1500-2000TPS. Privacy is a feature, not a bug. I don't want people knowing how much money I have.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Sounds like you’re agreeing that BTC itself is not a solution to anything you care about?
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    If money is opaque then it also cannot be taxed or seized by judicial process. IMO this moves further towards an aristocratic society as possession goes from 90% → 100% to the law.
    - zoshi 5y ago
      Cash is opaque, yet governments have been funding themselves via taxation for thousands of years. If government charged a flat rate for its services, tax evasion would become impossible. One would simply show a proof of payment. This would only be ~$10k/year in US according to its current tax receipts and population. Property tax is also impossible to evade.
      - iamben 5y ago
        Yes, but most people don't keep cash in a box under the bed - they keep it in a bank. This means my elderly mother's house doesn't get broken in to on a regular basis by people trying to take her life savings. Furthermore, her cash in a bank is protected by the government, and there are safeguards in place to help protect her from people trying to scam anything she has saved away from her. There are also mechanisms in place that when things 'go wrong' she's looked after. I'm not arguing for or against cryptocurrency, but there is some value to having a society where those that earn more help those that earn less by paying more taxes. I'm also pretty happy to pay for police, and firemen, and someone to pick up my bins, pave my roads, medical care etc. etc. All too often it seems the crypto argument is "I don't want to pay taxes, it's MY money" - yeah, it hurts, but the benefit of doing so is very real. The caveat, of course, is I say this living in a country with great free medical care, that's actually a pretty nice place to live, even if I really don't agree with some of our politicians. I appreciate not everyone lives in such a country.
- chr1 5y ago
  Most governments on earth are of certainly known criminal origin. In the best case they are taking away 2-5% of your money every year by printing more. And in pathological cases, like Erdoghan, they take 30% and spend it on mega-palace or war with neighbours.
- argvargc 5y ago
  This is very misleading. Cryptocurrencies developed on 10+ year old tech, that have stayed in that state throughout may indeed have very poor tps as you state. However, this is absolutely not the majority, as that base tech has iterated both at the base level, and in the application of layers. Typical these days are tps-handling in the 1k's - 10k's, and beyond. This will only keep improving as the technology progresses. Many systems capable of such throughout are heavily under-utilised, showing that crypto technology is generally ahead of those needs. That there have been hiccups have been more due to "brand loyalty", not tech deficiency, but even those technologies (Ethereum, mainly), are in the process of being upgraded. Given tps in the fiat world is somewhat of an inapplicable metric, as fiat transactions typically take in the order of days to complete - it's even more of a misleading comparison. Credit cards achieve 30k tps throughput only with the considerable caveats of reversibility and 30 day (or longer) finality. Crypto suffers from no such limitations. The majority of worth in the space is absolutely not of "criminal origin", demographics of crypto holders have been studied extensively and are readily available.
  - dash2 5y ago
    Brand loyalty is probably less important than network effects. NewTechCoin may be way better than Bitcoin but nobody's going to buy it until everyone else is buying it.
    - megameter 5y ago
      Well, that's what makes cryptocurrency a worthwhile market for speculation. Many folks look to the "market cap ranking" to see what's hot in the space, and going down the list and positioning yourself in a rank 400 coin - a good one that shows promise as a tech platform, a more efficient coin, a useful financial instrument or whatever - is one of the most straightforward ways to see 1000% returns, because even if it doesn't make it all the way up to the top 10, its valuation can grow faster than the market as a whole. (It can also get hit with huge drawdowns when the bear market hits. It's not all roses...) While it is the case that most things get priced relative to BTC, and this does have a network effect since you end up exiting to BTC and thus reenforce its price, it's increasingly common to see trading pairs for ETH, LTC, USDC/USDT. There is interest in getting more liquidity into the market and that's a large part of "DeFi". It's not that BTC is self-perpetuating lock-in, it's that they're all growing but everything else is running several years behind, so on a day to day basis BTC still holds relatively more of the market.
- VMG 5y ago
  even if your silly "7tps" number was true, the answer would be YES
- insert_coin 5y ago
  > Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments... Governments do that on their own they don't need any help from crypto.
- asah 5y ago
  Artifacts of Bitcoin, not fundamental flaws in cryptocurrency.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  governments are pretty good at destroying financial systems as well
- Erlich_Bachman 5y ago
  Look up Lightning Network.
  - usrusr 5y ago
    Lightning Network. Making Bitcoin payments practical next year since 2015. Banning crypto payments is like an airport refusing landing clearance to bicycles.
- Siira 5y ago
  Do you live in a country with runaway inflation? If not, shut up.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > let's destroy financial systems of governments I'm fine with that. Current monetary policy sucks.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Those financial systems are destroying themselves. At the very least, BTC is a check on irresponsible fiscal behavior from central banks and governments. Manage your currency well or get vaporized.
- dmos62 5y ago
  The quality of this comment is not what I'd like to see on this forum. Firstly, do you really have to participate in this derogatory, sarcastic tone? Secondly, transactions per second are cryptocurrency-specific, so your point (about BTC, I presume) is irrelevant. Thirdly, majority of cryptocurrencies belonging to unkowns is fine, what's your point? Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? Please, put some thought into your comments.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    > Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? I think their point is criminals are bad, so anything they use is also bad. Like guns, and drugs, and cars, and food, and beds, and houses, and air. All bad. We shouldn't use those things, and we should ban them at the earliest opportunity.
    - fvv 5y ago
      There are things very useful for criminals and not so much for common people , air doesn't belong go this category, ak-47 and bitcoin yes, are both vastly more useful to criminals that common people, in countries where governments is not oppressive amd against the people (in those countries good and bad behavior may be more or less inverted depending on situation)
      - dmos62 5y ago
        You're arguing against privacy. It's weird to have to rehash this debate, ever since tracking and data collection has become a widely recognized problem. Would you like to see Tor shut down as well? Same argument could be made for "unlicensed" encryption. Which feature of cryptocurrencies would you say is useful to criminals, but not to not-criminals? I'd argue that there's no such feature.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    Imagine when he learns the currency that the majority of criminals use ... I agree with you. Comments like that have such a low intellectual effort that they are mainly noise. People in stable countries (us, uk, western Europe) don't understand the lack of confidence that citizens of underdeveloped countries have in their own government and financial institutions.
- dogman144 5y ago
  * False on criminal origin majority, majority is non-criminal [1] * roughly false on unknown entities for two reasons. 1) btc is fairly easy to surveil [1], and see Chainalysis 2) logic here doesn’t make sense. Are you saying you know all owners of cash deposits, or just assuming someone does? A lot of folks keep cash “in a mattress.” Is that bad as well, as it’s a mirror of holding crypto? [1] https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance And https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoin_in_Illicit_Finance.pdf https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi..., for the primary source.* * Is this source from a crypto lobbying group - yes. Is the author the deputy director and twice acting director of the CIA, so he probably knows bitcoin’s use for criminal payments more than the average critic - yes.
  - tgv 5y ago
    [1] doesn't say anything like that.
    - dogman144 5y ago
      Did you miss this... - me: criminal activity not a majority of btc use and severely overstated overall, and it enables surveillance, aka intelligence gathering for LEO/IC if properly utilized. - 30 year veteran, ex-deputy director of the CIA: “However, based on our research and discussions with industry experts, I have confidence in two conclusions: • The broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated. • The blockchain ledger on which Bitcoin transac- tions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can be used more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and dis- rupt illicit activities. Put simply, blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.” “ All of this together suggests a broader point—that the illicit use of cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular, as a share of total market activity, is cer- tainly not higher than it is in the traditional banking system and is most likely less” Quite literally does say something/anything like what I said.
      - tgv 5y ago
- koonsolo 5y ago
  You are talking about Bitcoin, I thought the article was about cryptocurrencies. (And the comment you replied to said 'Crypto')
- wavepruner 5y ago
  Unfortunately the financial systems of governments are getting destroyed and we are powerless to stop it. Cryptocurrencies are not destroying government run financial systems. They are just an alternative. Bitcoin's 7 tps is a base-layer limitation. Layer 2 technologies like Lightning aim to address this issue. Lightning is functioning well and growing rapidly. I don't think it's fair to say most Bitcoin holders are unknown entities. The AML/KYC requirements for converting crypto into spendable fiat are strong. The criminal use of Bitcoin is a small compared to it's legitimate use as a store-of-value.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Even if you take all decentralized currency fads failures, it's hard not to root a little bit for them compared to your own government ruining your life constantly.
africanboy 5y ago
or why they won't work to solve this kind of issues
imtringued 5y ago
Everyone else just uses dollars.
me551ah 5y ago
You do realize that in a war of Government Vs Crypto, the government will win. Governments can ban crypto but the opposite isn't true.
- xvector 5y ago
  Governments cannot ban crypto. They may ban exchanges, but if crypto ever establishes a value of its own as a currency, the government cannot do anything. At least not without basically turning off the internet. Which is, well, not out of the question for Erdogan as he is a dictator.
  - valdiorn 5y ago
    They can put people in jail for using crypto, which is a strong enough deterrent that 99% of people won't do it.
    - Erlich_Bachman 5y ago
      Yeah because it worked so well for piracy. /s
      - abduhl 5y ago
        This sarcastic and snarky view is a bit shortsighted, isn’t it? Piracy worked because it was decentralized distribution. If the government goes after the gatekeepers in the same way they went after piracy they’re not just shutting down distribution - they’re taking the asset too. When someone takes over a coinbase or a binance they’re taking the coins. Not your keys, not your coins. Your response now will, of course, be “well that’s why you rotate your coins out into cold storage” which is sort of like me saying “you just convert your lira to dollars at the end of the day when you’re done buying food and water.”
      - thehappypm 5y ago
        It's a good comparison but the value here is orders of magnitude off. A pirate might download a few hundreds of dollars' worth of music and movies. Crypto can be millions of dollars in a transaction. Government goes after the whales, the whole ecosystem dies.
jgalt212 5y ago
or you can transact in USD. which is what the world does for oil, for example.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
That's a bizarre statement. Corruption is causing the devaluation of the currency in this case. The devaluation is already a method for hurting the ones responsible. I'd think that the ones that are corrupt would be able to store their currency in crypto, while the rest of the citizens are not. Crypto doesn't help anything. It could help some who know how to use it ( and will not forget their password)
cryptica 5y ago
I was also thinking that this is the perfect excuse for them to dump their fiat monetary system and let their citizens adopt crypto... I'm pretty sure all other countries' fiat monetary systems will also fail soon, Turkey has a unique opportunity to allow their citizens to amass large amounts of crypto ahead of every other country... And yet they choose to pass up on that opportunity due to a fear of the unknown. Imagine if the Turkish government had allowed their citizens to use DogeCoin a few days ago before the big pump, they'd already be out of their recession ;p
- webinvest 5y ago
  How do you think they will fund their government budget deficits with crypto? Rhetorical question — they can’t!
loceng 5y ago
Easy counterargument: Policy like the Magnitsky Act can't be implemented as a pre-physical confrontation approach against known bad actors. If Bitcoin is global currency system then there's no chance of using such a mechanism-tool-lever, however with current system of governments it can be used; Biden's recent financial acids actions against Putin's actions against the US is another example of this.

Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.

by fisf 5y ago

Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.

Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments and substitute it with a system that has 7 tps cap in which the majority of coins belongs to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin).

rawtxapp 5y ago
So you don't think it's valuable to give people power over their incompetent government? 7tps on the base layer, you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, as a matter of fact, unless you're buying directly from a miner, the single transaction that you use to put it in your wallet actually corresponds to many other transactions elsewhere. > (supposedly of criminal origin) Big bold claims also require some proof. It's a decentralized protocol that can't be controlled by anyone. Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart?
- dandanua 5y ago
  Here [1] is just a recent proof, the complete list of proofs is too big. I don't have much trust in my government either (Ukraine), but at least I know who they are. Also there are many other ways to store a value. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111
  - rawtxapp 5y ago
    So an exchange get's hacked and that makes the origins of Bitcoin criminal? That's like if a bank got hacked and we said US dollar's origin was criminal, it doesn't make any sense. So if you don't trust them, why would you let them control your money, knowing them doesn't change much. Sure there are other ways and people are free to choose whichever one they prefer.
- ben_w 5y ago
  > Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart? On a scale of 0-1, representing my estimate of P(no catastrophic economic/valuation failure in any given year), my trust is: {Government (German): 0.99, Government (UK): 0.85, Politicians (UK): 0.67, Bankers (collectively and internationally): 0.95, BTC: 0.15, Cryptocurrencies in general: 0.05}. > you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, Thus negating all the so-called benefits of the Blockchain, but without the benefits of a double-entry bookkeeping database audited by professionals and with public liability insurance.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  > Big bold claims also require some proof. It's a decentralized protocol that can't be controlled by anyone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io
fidelramos 5y ago
Bitcoin was never supposed to be capped at 7 transactions per second, there are no technical reasons for that limit to exist anymore (it was added in 2010 as a temporary measure). Until (if) Bitcoin BTC decides to scale people can use the Bitcoin Cash [0] fork, which today has ~32 times more capacity, with a roadmap to continue scaling to universal usage while keeping fees low [1]. [0] https://bitcoincash.org/ https://bitcoincash.org/ [1] https://whybitcoincash.com/ https://whybitcoincash.com/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zapdrive 5y ago
  I don't know who is down voting you.. But you are right. That temporary limit has been abused by a faction of people (funded by banks) trying to control Bitcoin. That's why there's a surge of other coins that have removed the limitation. And one of the reasons why Bitcoin's dominance stands below 54% today.
  - fidelramos 5y ago
    There are a lot of BTC maximalists that see any alternative cryptocurrency as a scam, something which is definitely not true for many of them that have thousands of daily active users. I also feel that many BTC maximalists don't appreciate how Bitcoin Cash makes apparent the limitations of BTC, as it processes more transactions than BTC while keeping fees under 1 cent. txstreet [0] makes for a great visualization, check the statistics at the bottom. Personally I wish Bitcoin Cash didn't even need to exist, if BTC had scaled as it was originally planned by Satoshi Nakamoto (increasing the maximum block size before it got full). It was sad watching the adoption rate halt and then regress. Remember when BTC was becoming accepted by Steam, Microsoft, Dell, NewEgg and others back in 2015-2016? There is no doubt in my mind that if BTC had scaled properly almost every online shop and a lot of real-world shops would be accepting BTC by now (and incidentally BTC price would be even higher than it is today). [0] https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc
- Graffur 5y ago
o_p 5y ago
Poor finance guys, they have it so rough.
dangerlibrary 5y ago
In fairness, "the majority of coins belong to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin)" is only a small rephrasing away from a description of Erdogan's government / political party [0]. And they are scarier for Turkish citizens than BTC, since he also aggressively punishes dissent and is a de-facto dictator [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Tur... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Auth...
- m12k 5y ago
  Sure, but the fact that Turkey is becoming increasingly corrupt isn't really a good argument why it would be a good idea to take away the ability of all central banks to perform monetary policy to stabilize the economy.
  - o_p 5y ago
    >Sure these guys are clearly corrupt but that doesnt mean you shouldnt trust them with your money! Are you serious? Honest question.
    - riffraff 5y ago
      he's saying "the fact that there are corrupt people in position X should not disqualify every other people in position X". There are bad surgeons, you should still probably want surgery if you're sick.
      - o_p 5y ago
        But there are no many surgeons here, theres only one, one central bank. The inflation rate of Turkey is 15%, is anyone really telling people to just "trust the goverment"? Would you put your life savings in the Turkish Lira?
        SiempreViernes 5y ago
zeepzeep 5y ago
You don't need an on-chain transaction for most things, as you can just instantly send BTC over Lightning Network, a second layer on the BTC blockchain. There's no speed limit, it's not on the chain, only nodes between you and the node you paying are involved. It's pretty neat.
- zapdrive 5y ago
  Lol, you are not serious, are you? Oh, I get the sarcasm now. "Lightning Network" is only "6 months away", right? Wink wink!
  - VMG 5y ago
    there are a number of lightning wallets and a number of stores where you can pay using lightning transactions
    - ajkdhcb2 5y ago
      I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. Waiting to contact wallet developers. It still doesn't work
      - noch 5y ago
        > I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. The sats will return to you in 2 weeks. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-completing-the-puzzle-and-closing-the-channel-1466178980 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the...
  - zeepzeep 5y ago
    6 months away, what? I use it on a regular basis. Before covid I could even buy beer & burgers in my city. You can get coupons for everything, many online stores accept it.
    - 5y ago
Galanwe 5y ago
Sure, if you're in a developed country with proper economical policy and access to an open banking system, your argument stands. But if you're in a country where your money have been dropping 10% per annum for the last 10 years, and where the concentration is anyway not that different from bitcoin, then things start to make more sense. Also, most people in this situation are not looking for a day to day transactional currency, but rather for a store of value to hedge against their falling native currency.
zoshi 5y ago
Lightning and sidechains can handle thousands of TPS. Monero has adaptive block sizes, and is estimated to be able to perform 1500-2000TPS. Privacy is a feature, not a bug. I don't want people knowing how much money I have.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Sounds like you’re agreeing that BTC itself is not a solution to anything you care about?
- threatofrain 5y ago
  If money is opaque then it also cannot be taxed or seized by judicial process. IMO this moves further towards an aristocratic society as possession goes from 90% → 100% to the law.
  - zoshi 5y ago
    Cash is opaque, yet governments have been funding themselves via taxation for thousands of years. If government charged a flat rate for its services, tax evasion would become impossible. One would simply show a proof of payment. This would only be ~$10k/year in US according to its current tax receipts and population. Property tax is also impossible to evade.
    - iamben 5y ago
      Yes, but most people don't keep cash in a box under the bed - they keep it in a bank. This means my elderly mother's house doesn't get broken in to on a regular basis by people trying to take her life savings. Furthermore, her cash in a bank is protected by the government, and there are safeguards in place to help protect her from people trying to scam anything she has saved away from her. There are also mechanisms in place that when things 'go wrong' she's looked after. I'm not arguing for or against cryptocurrency, but there is some value to having a society where those that earn more help those that earn less by paying more taxes. I'm also pretty happy to pay for police, and firemen, and someone to pick up my bins, pave my roads, medical care etc. etc. All too often it seems the crypto argument is "I don't want to pay taxes, it's MY money" - yeah, it hurts, but the benefit of doing so is very real. The caveat, of course, is I say this living in a country with great free medical care, that's actually a pretty nice place to live, even if I really don't agree with some of our politicians. I appreciate not everyone lives in such a country.
chr1 5y ago
Most governments on earth are of certainly known criminal origin. In the best case they are taking away 2-5% of your money every year by printing more. And in pathological cases, like Erdoghan, they take 30% and spend it on mega-palace or war with neighbours.
argvargc 5y ago
This is very misleading. Cryptocurrencies developed on 10+ year old tech, that have stayed in that state throughout may indeed have very poor tps as you state. However, this is absolutely not the majority, as that base tech has iterated both at the base level, and in the application of layers. Typical these days are tps-handling in the 1k's - 10k's, and beyond. This will only keep improving as the technology progresses. Many systems capable of such throughout are heavily under-utilised, showing that crypto technology is generally ahead of those needs. That there have been hiccups have been more due to "brand loyalty", not tech deficiency, but even those technologies (Ethereum, mainly), are in the process of being upgraded. Given tps in the fiat world is somewhat of an inapplicable metric, as fiat transactions typically take in the order of days to complete - it's even more of a misleading comparison. Credit cards achieve 30k tps throughput only with the considerable caveats of reversibility and 30 day (or longer) finality. Crypto suffers from no such limitations. The majority of worth in the space is absolutely not of "criminal origin", demographics of crypto holders have been studied extensively and are readily available.
- dash2 5y ago
  Brand loyalty is probably less important than network effects. NewTechCoin may be way better than Bitcoin but nobody's going to buy it until everyone else is buying it.
  - megameter 5y ago
    Well, that's what makes cryptocurrency a worthwhile market for speculation. Many folks look to the "market cap ranking" to see what's hot in the space, and going down the list and positioning yourself in a rank 400 coin - a good one that shows promise as a tech platform, a more efficient coin, a useful financial instrument or whatever - is one of the most straightforward ways to see 1000% returns, because even if it doesn't make it all the way up to the top 10, its valuation can grow faster than the market as a whole. (It can also get hit with huge drawdowns when the bear market hits. It's not all roses...) While it is the case that most things get priced relative to BTC, and this does have a network effect since you end up exiting to BTC and thus reenforce its price, it's increasingly common to see trading pairs for ETH, LTC, USDC/USDT. There is interest in getting more liquidity into the market and that's a large part of "DeFi". It's not that BTC is self-perpetuating lock-in, it's that they're all growing but everything else is running several years behind, so on a day to day basis BTC still holds relatively more of the market.
VMG 5y ago
even if your silly "7tps" number was true, the answer would be YES
insert_coin 5y ago
> Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments... Governments do that on their own they don't need any help from crypto.
asah 5y ago
Artifacts of Bitcoin, not fundamental flaws in cryptocurrency.
cblconfederate 5y ago
governments are pretty good at destroying financial systems as well
Erlich_Bachman 5y ago
Look up Lightning Network.
- usrusr 5y ago
  Lightning Network. Making Bitcoin payments practical next year since 2015. Banning crypto payments is like an airport refusing landing clearance to bicycles.
Siira 5y ago
Do you live in a country with runaway inflation? If not, shut up.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> let's destroy financial systems of governments I'm fine with that. Current monetary policy sucks.
nemo44x 5y ago
Those financial systems are destroying themselves. At the very least, BTC is a check on irresponsible fiscal behavior from central banks and governments. Manage your currency well or get vaporized.
dmos62 5y ago
The quality of this comment is not what I'd like to see on this forum. Firstly, do you really have to participate in this derogatory, sarcastic tone? Secondly, transactions per second are cryptocurrency-specific, so your point (about BTC, I presume) is irrelevant. Thirdly, majority of cryptocurrencies belonging to unkowns is fine, what's your point? Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? Please, put some thought into your comments.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  > Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? I think their point is criminals are bad, so anything they use is also bad. Like guns, and drugs, and cars, and food, and beds, and houses, and air. All bad. We shouldn't use those things, and we should ban them at the earliest opportunity.
  - fvv 5y ago
    There are things very useful for criminals and not so much for common people , air doesn't belong go this category, ak-47 and bitcoin yes, are both vastly more useful to criminals that common people, in countries where governments is not oppressive amd against the people (in those countries good and bad behavior may be more or less inverted depending on situation)
    - dmos62 5y ago
      You're arguing against privacy. It's weird to have to rehash this debate, ever since tracking and data collection has become a widely recognized problem. Would you like to see Tor shut down as well? Same argument could be made for "unlicensed" encryption. Which feature of cryptocurrencies would you say is useful to criminals, but not to not-criminals? I'd argue that there's no such feature.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Imagine when he learns the currency that the majority of criminals use ... I agree with you. Comments like that have such a low intellectual effort that they are mainly noise. People in stable countries (us, uk, western Europe) don't understand the lack of confidence that citizens of underdeveloped countries have in their own government and financial institutions.
dogman144 5y ago
* False on criminal origin majority, majority is non-criminal [1] * roughly false on unknown entities for two reasons. 1) btc is fairly easy to surveil [1], and see Chainalysis 2) logic here doesn’t make sense. Are you saying you know all owners of cash deposits, or just assuming someone does? A lot of folks keep cash “in a mattress.” Is that bad as well, as it’s a mirror of holding crypto? [1] https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance And https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoin_in_Illicit_Finance.pdf https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi..., for the primary source.* * Is this source from a crypto lobbying group - yes. Is the author the deputy director and twice acting director of the CIA, so he probably knows bitcoin’s use for criminal payments more than the average critic - yes.
- tgv 5y ago
  [1] doesn't say anything like that.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    Did you miss this... - me: criminal activity not a majority of btc use and severely overstated overall, and it enables surveillance, aka intelligence gathering for LEO/IC if properly utilized. - 30 year veteran, ex-deputy director of the CIA: “However, based on our research and discussions with industry experts, I have confidence in two conclusions: • The broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated. • The blockchain ledger on which Bitcoin transac- tions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can be used more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and dis- rupt illicit activities. Put simply, blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.” “ All of this together suggests a broader point—that the illicit use of cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular, as a share of total market activity, is cer- tainly not higher than it is in the traditional banking system and is most likely less” Quite literally does say something/anything like what I said.
    - tgv 5y ago
koonsolo 5y ago
You are talking about Bitcoin, I thought the article was about cryptocurrencies. (And the comment you replied to said 'Crypto')
wavepruner 5y ago
Unfortunately the financial systems of governments are getting destroyed and we are powerless to stop it. Cryptocurrencies are not destroying government run financial systems. They are just an alternative. Bitcoin's 7 tps is a base-layer limitation. Layer 2 technologies like Lightning aim to address this issue. Lightning is functioning well and growing rapidly. I don't think it's fair to say most Bitcoin holders are unknown entities. The AML/KYC requirements for converting crypto into spendable fiat are strong. The criminal use of Bitcoin is a small compared to it's legitimate use as a store-of-value.
agumonkey 5y ago
Even if you take all decentralized currency fads failures, it's hard not to root a little bit for them compared to your own government ruining your life constantly.

africanboy 5y ago

or why they won't work to solve this kind of issues

imtringued 5y ago

Everyone else just uses dollars.

me551ah 5y ago

You do realize that in a war of Government Vs Crypto, the government will win. Governments can ban crypto but the opposite isn't true.

xvector 5y ago
Governments cannot ban crypto. They may ban exchanges, but if crypto ever establishes a value of its own as a currency, the government cannot do anything. At least not without basically turning off the internet. Which is, well, not out of the question for Erdogan as he is a dictator.
- valdiorn 5y ago
  They can put people in jail for using crypto, which is a strong enough deterrent that 99% of people won't do it.
  - Erlich_Bachman 5y ago
    Yeah because it worked so well for piracy. /s
    - abduhl 5y ago
      This sarcastic and snarky view is a bit shortsighted, isn’t it? Piracy worked because it was decentralized distribution. If the government goes after the gatekeepers in the same way they went after piracy they’re not just shutting down distribution - they’re taking the asset too. When someone takes over a coinbase or a binance they’re taking the coins. Not your keys, not your coins. Your response now will, of course, be “well that’s why you rotate your coins out into cold storage” which is sort of like me saying “you just convert your lira to dollars at the end of the day when you’re done buying food and water.”
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      It's a good comparison but the value here is orders of magnitude off. A pirate might download a few hundreds of dollars' worth of music and movies. Crypto can be millions of dollars in a transaction. Government goes after the whales, the whole ecosystem dies.

jgalt212 5y ago

or you can transact in USD. which is what the world does for oil, for example.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

That's a bizarre statement. Corruption is causing the devaluation of the currency in this case. The devaluation is already a method for hurting the ones responsible. I'd think that the ones that are corrupt would be able to store their currency in crypto, while the rest of the citizens are not. Crypto doesn't help anything. It could help some who know how to use it ( and will not forget their password)

cryptica 5y ago

I was also thinking that this is the perfect excuse for them to dump their fiat monetary system and let their citizens adopt crypto... I'm pretty sure all other countries' fiat monetary systems will also fail soon, Turkey has a unique opportunity to allow their citizens to amass large amounts of crypto ahead of every other country... And yet they choose to pass up on that opportunity due to a fear of the unknown. Imagine if the Turkish government had allowed their citizens to use DogeCoin a few days ago before the big pump, they'd already be out of their recession ;p

webinvest 5y ago
How do you think they will fund their government budget deficits with crypto? Rhetorical question — they can’t!

loceng 5y ago

Easy counterargument: Policy like the Magnitsky Act can't be implemented as a pre-physical confrontation approach against known bad actors. If Bitcoin is global currency system then there's no chance of using such a mechanism-tool-lever, however with current system of governments it can be used; Biden's recent financial acids actions against Putin's actions against the US is another example of this.