4 ms·

Well, this is baked into the limited number of transactions per second. At 10 transactions per second max, the usefulness as a day to day currency is inversely

Well, this is baked into the limited number of transactions per second. At 10 transactions per second max, the usefulness as a day to day currency is inversely proportional to its popularity. Our favorite joke coin, DogeCoin, does 10 times better at 100/sec with faster blocks, but it’s still too slow. Visa is like 2000-100,000 transactions per second depending on if you use average or theoretical maximum. Anything which wants to be usable as a day to day currency of the future should shoot for either niche uses or should shoot for 10,000-100,000 transactions per second as a minimum. 1 million to be on the safe side. Otherwise, the more popular it is, the less usable it is as a real currency. (As the transaction fees get bid up to higher levels if transaction throughput is limited.) (Oh, and without a custodian, the Lightning network sucks as a bandaid for this. Maybe something like that will someday be usable but it sucks right now.... and it’s not obvious how these problems will be solved in a way that doesn’t introduce a whole bunch more game theory and/or technical/resource/usability constraints.)

moralestapia 5y ago
>1 million to be on the safe side This + micropayments, (i.e. negligible fees so it makes sense to send 0.01USD to someone, every day, or w/e.
saalweachter 5y ago
> the Lightning network sucks as a bandaid for this. I believe we have now reached the point where more time has passed since the Lightning whitepaper than between the Bitcoin and Lightning whitepapers.
buffalobuffalo 5y ago
It's not just the speed, it's also the fees. You ideally want something that has really minimal fees, so that you can send $.0001 without paying 10x that in fees. The ability to process micro-transactions cheaply and at scale could actually have the transforming affect that bitcoin was originally after.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Right. That’s what Satoshi wrote in their paper. But throughput and fees are related, of course. As I noted, low transaction throughput combined with high popularity means very high fees. Fees get bid up. So to maintain low fees while having high popularity, you need high transaction throughput.
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    Hmmm, working the other way, if your goal is to process 100k transactions / second, with each transaction being 1/100th of a cent and your transaction fees being 1/100th of that, your budget for operating your network would be, what, $3M / year?
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      True centi-cent microtransactions like that is going to need probably tens of millions (or even billions) of transactions per second.
alwillis 5y ago
Bitcoin is Not Too Slow: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/ https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/
- eli 5y ago
  Not sure if you meant that as a rebuttal but it concedes the point: “The bitcoin blockchain will never be a layer for mass payments”
  - alwillis 5y ago
    The base layer of bitcoin is more of a settlement layer; Lightning Network and other layer 2 features allow for super fast and super cheap bitcoin payments. http://lightning.network http://lightning.network Instant Payments. Lightning-fast blockchain payments without worrying about block confirmation times. Security is enforced by blockchain smart-contracts without creating a on-blockchain transaction for individual payments. Payment speed measured in milliseconds to seconds. Scalability. Capable of millions to billions of transactions per second across the network. Capacity blows away legacy payment rails by many orders of magnitude. Attaching payment per action/click is now possible without custodians. Low Cost. By transacting and settling off-blockchain, the Lightning Network allows for exceptionally low fees, which allows for emerging use cases such as instant micropayments.
    - eli 5y ago
      Yeah but those are not Bitcoin and very close to nobody uses them for payments anyway
      - alwillis 5y ago
        1. Nothing could be more wrong; bitcoin is bitcoin whether it’s on the base layer or Lightning Network. Full stop. 2. There are over 10,000 lightning nodes with nearly $70 million in liquidity where payments occur everyday: https://1ml.com/ https://1ml.com/

moralestapia 5y ago

>1 million to be on the safe side This + micropayments, (i.e. negligible fees so it makes sense to send 0.01USD to someone, every day, or w/e.

saalweachter 5y ago

> the Lightning network sucks as a bandaid for this. I believe we have now reached the point where more time has passed since the Lightning whitepaper than between the Bitcoin and Lightning whitepapers.

buffalobuffalo 5y ago

It's not just the speed, it's also the fees. You ideally want something that has really minimal fees, so that you can send $.0001 without paying 10x that in fees. The ability to process micro-transactions cheaply and at scale could actually have the transforming affect that bitcoin was originally after.

Robotbeat 5y ago
Right. That’s what Satoshi wrote in their paper. But throughput and fees are related, of course. As I noted, low transaction throughput combined with high popularity means very high fees. Fees get bid up. So to maintain low fees while having high popularity, you need high transaction throughput.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  Hmmm, working the other way, if your goal is to process 100k transactions / second, with each transaction being 1/100th of a cent and your transaction fees being 1/100th of that, your budget for operating your network would be, what, $3M / year?
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    True centi-cent microtransactions like that is going to need probably tens of millions (or even billions) of transactions per second.

alwillis 5y ago

Bitcoin is Not Too Slow: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/ https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-too-slow/

eli 5y ago
Not sure if you meant that as a rebuttal but it concedes the point: “The bitcoin blockchain will never be a layer for mass payments”
- alwillis 5y ago
  The base layer of bitcoin is more of a settlement layer; Lightning Network and other layer 2 features allow for super fast and super cheap bitcoin payments. http://lightning.network http://lightning.network Instant Payments. Lightning-fast blockchain payments without worrying about block confirmation times. Security is enforced by blockchain smart-contracts without creating a on-blockchain transaction for individual payments. Payment speed measured in milliseconds to seconds. Scalability. Capable of millions to billions of transactions per second across the network. Capacity blows away legacy payment rails by many orders of magnitude. Attaching payment per action/click is now possible without custodians. Low Cost. By transacting and settling off-blockchain, the Lightning Network allows for exceptionally low fees, which allows for emerging use cases such as instant micropayments.
  - eli 5y ago
    Yeah but those are not Bitcoin and very close to nobody uses them for payments anyway
    - alwillis 5y ago
      1. Nothing could be more wrong; bitcoin is bitcoin whether it’s on the base layer or Lightning Network. Full stop. 2. There are over 10,000 lightning nodes with nearly $70 million in liquidity where payments occur everyday: https://1ml.com/ https://1ml.com/