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I've had btc since 2012 not super early, but early enough that I briefly used mygox. Bitcoin has become toxic, the block size wars were interesting, but they y

I've had btc since 2012 not super early, but early enough that I briefly used mygox. Bitcoin has become toxic, the block size wars were interesting, but they yielded two communities that were less than what they were before the split. Bitcoin has stagnated technologically and Bitcoin cash believes that it will win based off of the principals that governed the split. Bitcoin will be on top for a good while longer, but I'm not interested in it anymore.

randomhodler84 5y ago
The Bitcoin community got more focused on the fundamentals, long term thinking and actual value preservation. That is not true that it has stagnated technologically — MAST, taproot, Schnorr sigs. Lightning. Getting adopted as an official currency… Bitcoin is as cutting edge as ever. People got used to the slapdash lose a few hundred million in an eth smart contract world, and expect lambos in weeks. Which we see in the short term with frothy exuberance. The perceived toxicity is skepticism, because we have seen it all before. Same scams different year. Bcash is not to be taken seriously. There is and always will be Bitcoin.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  > Bitcoin is as cutting edge as ever. Everything you listed is years old, not cutting edge
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Please name a “cutting edge” feature that exists in a coin today.
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      Ethereum's zk rollups and upcoming sharding
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Sounds like years old things too, things not yet in production…
      - jude- 5y ago
        I'll believe sharding when I see it. It's a much harder problem than it seems. Also, the dirty little secret of zkrollups is that they don't scale the system or make the system more trustworthy in this context. First, the prover, while asymptomatically fast (as one would expect from the PCP theorem), incurs constant factors that are still so high that you need a really beefy server to generate proofs in a reasonable amount of time. Second, even if that wasn't a problem, provers are still bandwidth-constrained and require BFT agreement -- each prover has to process all zkrollup transactions, and a malicious prover can still ignore transactions while generating correct proofs. At best, this leaves provers in a similar position as high-bandwidth chains like EOS, where only a few beefy nodes can feasibly process the requisite transaction load, but a BFT majority of nodes need to agree on state in order to prevent malicious censorship. I honestly think zkSNARKs and zkSTARKs are wasted on blockchains. Imagine if AWS, grid computers, and supercomputers offered a zk prover interface, where they run your computations on beefy hardware and give you a proof that it was faithfully executed, thereby removing themselves from the TCB. I'd pay to use that service before I'd pay to use Ethereum.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  I totally agree Bitcoin is oriented towards fundamentals and value preservation. I don't find that interesting and I think the dominate force in the 21st century will be change and innovation. It's great that bitcoin locked in taproot & that LN is functioning, those are small technical accomplishments compared to what Etherum, mina, zksync and many others have accomplished in that time (in terms of technical achievements). Obviously bitcoin continues to dominate in terms of value, it's just not something that I find interesting anymore. I've found the community get increasingly toxic. I don't believe it's skepticism because I've held bitcoin through much greater skepticism than what is happening now. I've held it through mtgox, before the IRS made any statement about it, through the split, through china banning it countless times, through 4 major crashes, through the 2013 unintended fork. I followed bitcoin during the blocksize wars (I immediately sold all of my bch). It's just not a community interested in growth, it seems like it's only interested in increased adoption & the idea of bitcoin as a global reserve currency.
  - jude- 5y ago
    > It's just not a community interested in growth, it seems like it's only interested in increased adoption & the idea of bitcoin as a global reserve currency. If they're aspiring to build a global reserve currency, then why shouldn't their first priority be increased adoption? Distribution matters more than tech if the tech is already good enough. Also, you seem to have contradicted yourself -- increased adoption begets growth.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
      I don't believe strongly in the global reserve currency framework. I also don't think that the current tech can accomplish much of what I was hoping Bitcoin could accomplish. If the goal is just to increase adoption given the current tech then I'm out, there's more interesting things to pay/give attention to.
    - toomim 5y ago
      Aspiring to build a reserve currency? A reserve currency is something for banks to use. Bitcoin's excitement was as a p2p cash that needs no banks and no reserve. A reserve is something held by a political state. Bitcoin is exciting becauee it exists beyond politics and nation-states. If this is news for you, go read the original bitcoin paper. Its title is "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash."
- Ar-Curunir 5y ago
  > MAST, taproot, Schnorr sigs. Lightning I don’t mean to shit on the work to integrate this stuff, but a lot of it is either something that other chains already had (better versions of), or that other chains don’t need (eg: lightning)
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    “Better”? Features like? There is this narrative that bitcoin is old and not innovating. It’s like TCP/IP. It is, just as tcp/ip innovates in a careful way. If you think any chain doesn’t need a layer 2 overlay, which ultimately is the only way to scale tx’s. Anything else is kicking the can down the road.
    - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
      Lightning barely works, and it’s completely outclassed by roll ups based on validity or fraud proofs.

randomhodler84 5y ago

The Bitcoin community got more focused on the fundamentals, long term thinking and actual value preservation. That is not true that it has stagnated technologically — MAST, taproot, Schnorr sigs. Lightning. Getting adopted as an official currency… Bitcoin is as cutting edge as ever. People got used to the slapdash lose a few hundred million in an eth smart contract world, and expect lambos in weeks. Which we see in the short term with frothy exuberance. The perceived toxicity is skepticism, because we have seen it all before. Same scams different year. Bcash is not to be taken seriously. There is and always will be Bitcoin.

hanniabu 5y ago
> Bitcoin is as cutting edge as ever. Everything you listed is years old, not cutting edge
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Please name a “cutting edge” feature that exists in a coin today.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    Ethereum's zk rollups and upcoming sharding
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Sounds like years old things too, things not yet in production…
    - jude- 5y ago
      I'll believe sharding when I see it. It's a much harder problem than it seems. Also, the dirty little secret of zkrollups is that they don't scale the system or make the system more trustworthy in this context. First, the prover, while asymptomatically fast (as one would expect from the PCP theorem), incurs constant factors that are still so high that you need a really beefy server to generate proofs in a reasonable amount of time. Second, even if that wasn't a problem, provers are still bandwidth-constrained and require BFT agreement -- each prover has to process all zkrollup transactions, and a malicious prover can still ignore transactions while generating correct proofs. At best, this leaves provers in a similar position as high-bandwidth chains like EOS, where only a few beefy nodes can feasibly process the requisite transaction load, but a BFT majority of nodes need to agree on state in order to prevent malicious censorship. I honestly think zkSNARKs and zkSTARKs are wasted on blockchains. Imagine if AWS, grid computers, and supercomputers offered a zk prover interface, where they run your computations on beefy hardware and give you a proof that it was faithfully executed, thereby removing themselves from the TCB. I'd pay to use that service before I'd pay to use Ethereum.
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
I totally agree Bitcoin is oriented towards fundamentals and value preservation. I don't find that interesting and I think the dominate force in the 21st century will be change and innovation. It's great that bitcoin locked in taproot & that LN is functioning, those are small technical accomplishments compared to what Etherum, mina, zksync and many others have accomplished in that time (in terms of technical achievements). Obviously bitcoin continues to dominate in terms of value, it's just not something that I find interesting anymore. I've found the community get increasingly toxic. I don't believe it's skepticism because I've held bitcoin through much greater skepticism than what is happening now. I've held it through mtgox, before the IRS made any statement about it, through the split, through china banning it countless times, through 4 major crashes, through the 2013 unintended fork. I followed bitcoin during the blocksize wars (I immediately sold all of my bch). It's just not a community interested in growth, it seems like it's only interested in increased adoption & the idea of bitcoin as a global reserve currency.
- jude- 5y ago
  > It's just not a community interested in growth, it seems like it's only interested in increased adoption & the idea of bitcoin as a global reserve currency. If they're aspiring to build a global reserve currency, then why shouldn't their first priority be increased adoption? Distribution matters more than tech if the tech is already good enough. Also, you seem to have contradicted yourself -- increased adoption begets growth.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    I don't believe strongly in the global reserve currency framework. I also don't think that the current tech can accomplish much of what I was hoping Bitcoin could accomplish. If the goal is just to increase adoption given the current tech then I'm out, there's more interesting things to pay/give attention to.
  - toomim 5y ago
    Aspiring to build a reserve currency? A reserve currency is something for banks to use. Bitcoin's excitement was as a p2p cash that needs no banks and no reserve. A reserve is something held by a political state. Bitcoin is exciting becauee it exists beyond politics and nation-states. If this is news for you, go read the original bitcoin paper. Its title is "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash."
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
> MAST, taproot, Schnorr sigs. Lightning I don’t mean to shit on the work to integrate this stuff, but a lot of it is either something that other chains already had (better versions of), or that other chains don’t need (eg: lightning)
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  “Better”? Features like? There is this narrative that bitcoin is old and not innovating. It’s like TCP/IP. It is, just as tcp/ip innovates in a careful way. If you think any chain doesn’t need a layer 2 overlay, which ultimately is the only way to scale tx’s. Anything else is kicking the can down the road.
  - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
    Lightning barely works, and it’s completely outclassed by roll ups based on validity or fraud proofs.