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The network will continue to function at any price and has done so continuously for over a decade looking forward to deeper technology discussions as tiktokers

The network will continue to function at any price and has done so continuously for over a decade looking forward to deeper technology discussions as tiktokers go back to working at McDonalds

Ologn 5y ago
> network will continue to function What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Some currency.
- vmception 5y ago
  No, they’re not. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... About $2 if you are in a rush, and yes potentially days if you use a lower transaction fee if you are not in a rush. you can always try and then replace the tx if you become rushed. About 1/100th of that if you have a lightning channel open already, I think
  - Ologn 5y ago
    Well you're right, $2 is better than $20 Still skeptical about Bitcoin myself
    - vmception 5y ago
      Yeah i figured it wasn’t really about the transaction fees but I didn’t want to prematurely risk writing a strawman argument that wasn’t presented
  - thesausageking 5y ago
    It's amazing that you can send $100m to anyone in the world with a phone, anytime day or night and it costs $2. And it's direct to the other person; no banks or payment processors. I don't get all of the negativity HN has towards Bitcoin. This simple ability is so amazing and scifi to me.
    - fsh 5y ago
      And now the receiving computer has an unintentional $100M bug bounty on all its software and hardware. For digital money to be actually usable, you need some kind of authority that can revert transactions in case of mistakes or fraud.
      - vmception 5y ago
        people can build that, and some services offer that its pretty clear there is a market and user story for a segment of the population that doesn't value reversibility
    - taytus 5y ago
      You are sending $100m in monopoly money thou.
      - rocqua 5y ago
        Some would argue (not me) that the value basis of fiat money is the same basis as the value of bitcoin. People believe that others will believe it has value, so it has value to them. Then there are arguments that bitcoin being non-inflationary should even give people more faith in the value of bitcoin than they should have in fiat. Personally I could see bitcoin maybe getting there in a loooong time. But whilst the actual value of bitcoin is fluctuating this hard, the argument doesn't hold up. I also kinda like the argument: "Because taxes need to be payed, and are payed in fiat money, there will always be some basic demand and price for fiat money".
      - vmception 5y ago
        $100mm that can be exchanged for $100mm worth of goods, services, and investments.
    - abvdj2 5y ago
      What specifically is sci-fi about it? If there were no regulations, I would be able to do the same with my bank account or credit card in a much more efficient way.
  - 3np 5y ago
    That's the average transaction-fee paid - and in practice, a fair amount overpay a lot. And making sure you use a reasonable wallet and bech32 addresses makes a big difference as well. So even with the same network fees and bitcoin price, a transaction costs a lot less today than in 2016. Recently fees have been around 1~10 sats/vB. ~40 sats/vB would be $2. Network fees are quite volatile, so we don't have to go back far in time to find that, though. Source: I look at bitcoin fee graphs way too much. Also mempool.space
- otoburb 5y ago
  >>What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Looks like txn fees are less than $1 USD [1] today; certainly a lot lower than they were back in April. High priority transactions likely can be pushed to $2+ if you are in a rush to get your txn processed. >>Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Backlog seems to be low at the moment.[2] [1] https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/ [2] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count
- ericd 5y ago
  Lightning supposedly drops that to a fraction of a cent, so it’s useful for smaller transactions than could be made with a credit card, but I don’t know how functional it is in practice yet.
- pibechorro 5y ago
  You must love loosing a generation of life savings due to hyperinflation.. its not if, when. Some places on earth every 10 years.
jollybean 5y ago
- texasbigdata 5y ago
  Yeah does Reddit create value? Ignoring their advertising. They also consume energy. The energy comment is so naive. Move to renewable nuclear and who cares. Most people that complain can't even calc the marginal increase in net energy usage for their country.
  - piva00 5y ago
    > Move to renewable nuclear and who cares. Who cares? Any society which could use that energy to actually produce some value instead of cracking a hash. Wasted energy is just that, wasted.
  - anoonmoose 5y ago
    I mean, I think Reddit creates value. There are a lot of very positive communities on there that are helping a lot of people. It's a lot easier for me to see the positive value created by those communities than it is for me to see the positive value being actively created by cryptocurrencies.
    - ls15 5y ago
      You haven't heard of crypto communities?
  - Loughla 5y ago
    Reddit provides entertainment? Are you claiming that bitcoin serves as an entertainment item? >renewable nuclear Was that a misprint or intentional? That's a real question. I've never heard nuclear be referred to as renewable. That's an interesting take.
    - rajin444 5y ago
      When your concern is global warming most things in the world today can’t be justified outside of necessities including Reddit. If your argument is “it’s a waste because we’re destroying the environment for no gain” all entertainment falls in that bucket as well.
UncleMeat 5y ago
This is actually a really critical observation of BTC. The system works just as well regardless of the price of BTC. Because this is the case, IMO it would be desirable to have the cryptocurrency not produce a distribution of coins that benefits early adopters and harms late entrants. But it would be nearly impossible to introduce such a change because BTC-as-investment is such a huge part of its ideology nowadays.
- vmception 5y ago
  People have tried many distribution models under proof of work, so far they have all broken the economics of why the networks work: if miners aren't desperately competing to pay off their capital expenditure, then they abuse their market position much more quickly, finding another way to assume control over the production on the network, which discourages anyone else from competing so of all the major working consensus models it has either boiled down to either capital for miners or capital for coins that limit this abuse/control, spurring enough confidence in the network to bring on other participants (whether you or any one person personally agrees with it) keep searching for improvements and alternatives though
- maccam912 5y ago
  Agreed. Currency was the worst thing to happen to blockchains. Maybe someone needs to purposely create a hyperinflationary cryptocurrency.
  - vmception 5y ago
    many people have tried that turns out that speculation drives innovation, which really translates into any interest at all without the competitive pressure, people put their time and resources on other things with high supply creation experiments in the crypto space, the demand never catches up as nobody wants to earn the currency or buy the currency
- tootie 5y ago
  The network won't fail but the price will fluctuate. BTC was always intended to be an alternate currency, not an investment asset so now it's suffering from competing agendas.
checkyoursudo 5y ago
I am naively asking this with real interest because I have no idea: Can it continue to function at any price? Is there a price so low that new transactions would not processed?
- miracle2k 5y ago
  No. Transaction will always be processed as long as there is one person with a Raspberry Pie. The price of Bitcoin is essentially a reflection of it's security budget though. The higher the price, the more people are mining, the harder it is to gain control of 50% of the network hashrate.
- maccam912 5y ago
  The difficulty of mining is adjusted based on how many people are mining. I think it could have trouble if there was a very quick loss of mining power, but if it was a slower process and some miners gave up because it wasn't profitable it would start going back down in difficulty until someone somewhere could get some profit out of it.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  The difficulty of mining the next block is a function of the hash rate. Miners quit, hash rate goes down, it becomes easier to mine the next block. That said, the "price" (in USD) is a function of supply and demand and is completely disconnected from this. The price of a BTC could drop to $1, and mining would still work fine.
  - vmception 5y ago
    > Miners quit, hash rate goes down, it becomes easier to mine the next block. only after the difficulty adjusts downward which could be as long as 2016 blocks
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Not really, but sort of. As the price drops, miners start leaving the network, causing the difficulty to drop, which keeps the block generation at the same rate. Now please correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the difficulty adjustment requires some blocks to get mined, so if the hash rate would drop extremely quickly, the duration needed to adjust to the lower hash rate could take a long time. However that would mean the potential block fees would be steadily increasing so maybe it would quickly fix itself (make mining those blocks more profitable).
dandanua 5y ago
looking forward when they come to your house because of economical and societal collapse caused by this pyramid scheme
- vmception 5y ago
  cute, since I rarely use bitcoin and avoid that particular cryptocurrency network due its worse, decade old, user experience

The network will continue to function at any price and has done so continuously for over a decade looking forward to deeper technology discussions as tiktokers go back to working at McDonalds

Ologn 5y ago

> network will continue to function What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Some currency.

vmception 5y ago
No, they’re not. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... About $2 if you are in a rush, and yes potentially days if you use a lower transaction fee if you are not in a rush. you can always try and then replace the tx if you become rushed. About 1/100th of that if you have a lightning channel open already, I think
- Ologn 5y ago
  Well you're right, $2 is better than $20 Still skeptical about Bitcoin myself
  - vmception 5y ago
    Yeah i figured it wasn’t really about the transaction fees but I didn’t want to prematurely risk writing a strawman argument that wasn’t presented
- thesausageking 5y ago
  It's amazing that you can send $100m to anyone in the world with a phone, anytime day or night and it costs $2. And it's direct to the other person; no banks or payment processors. I don't get all of the negativity HN has towards Bitcoin. This simple ability is so amazing and scifi to me.
  - fsh 5y ago
    And now the receiving computer has an unintentional $100M bug bounty on all its software and hardware. For digital money to be actually usable, you need some kind of authority that can revert transactions in case of mistakes or fraud.
    - vmception 5y ago
      people can build that, and some services offer that its pretty clear there is a market and user story for a segment of the population that doesn't value reversibility
  - taytus 5y ago
    You are sending $100m in monopoly money thou.
    - rocqua 5y ago
      Some would argue (not me) that the value basis of fiat money is the same basis as the value of bitcoin. People believe that others will believe it has value, so it has value to them. Then there are arguments that bitcoin being non-inflationary should even give people more faith in the value of bitcoin than they should have in fiat. Personally I could see bitcoin maybe getting there in a loooong time. But whilst the actual value of bitcoin is fluctuating this hard, the argument doesn't hold up. I also kinda like the argument: "Because taxes need to be payed, and are payed in fiat money, there will always be some basic demand and price for fiat money".
    - vmception 5y ago
      $100mm that can be exchanged for $100mm worth of goods, services, and investments.
  - abvdj2 5y ago
    What specifically is sci-fi about it? If there were no regulations, I would be able to do the same with my bank account or credit card in a much more efficient way.
- 3np 5y ago
  That's the average transaction-fee paid - and in practice, a fair amount overpay a lot. And making sure you use a reasonable wallet and bech32 addresses makes a big difference as well. So even with the same network fees and bitcoin price, a transaction costs a lot less today than in 2016. Recently fees have been around 1~10 sats/vB. ~40 sats/vB would be $2. Network fees are quite volatile, so we don't have to go back far in time to find that, though. Source: I look at bitcoin fee graphs way too much. Also mempool.space
otoburb 5y ago
>>What are transaction fees, still $20 USD average like they were in April? Looks like txn fees are less than $1 USD [1] today; certainly a lot lower than they were back in April. High priority transactions likely can be pushed to $2+ if you are in a rush to get your txn processed. >>Also, there is a backlog of transactions, so it can be days to get a transaction done. Backlog seems to be low at the moment.[2] [1] https://mempool.space/ https://mempool.space/ [2] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,1y,count
ericd 5y ago
Lightning supposedly drops that to a fraction of a cent, so it’s useful for smaller transactions than could be made with a credit card, but I don’t know how functional it is in practice yet.
pibechorro 5y ago
You must love loosing a generation of life savings due to hyperinflation.. its not if, when. Some places on earth every 10 years.

jollybean 5y ago

texasbigdata 5y ago
Yeah does Reddit create value? Ignoring their advertising. They also consume energy. The energy comment is so naive. Move to renewable nuclear and who cares. Most people that complain can't even calc the marginal increase in net energy usage for their country.
- piva00 5y ago
  > Move to renewable nuclear and who cares. Who cares? Any society which could use that energy to actually produce some value instead of cracking a hash. Wasted energy is just that, wasted.
- anoonmoose 5y ago
  I mean, I think Reddit creates value. There are a lot of very positive communities on there that are helping a lot of people. It's a lot easier for me to see the positive value created by those communities than it is for me to see the positive value being actively created by cryptocurrencies.
  - ls15 5y ago
    You haven't heard of crypto communities?
- Loughla 5y ago
  Reddit provides entertainment? Are you claiming that bitcoin serves as an entertainment item? >renewable nuclear Was that a misprint or intentional? That's a real question. I've never heard nuclear be referred to as renewable. That's an interesting take.
  - rajin444 5y ago
    When your concern is global warming most things in the world today can’t be justified outside of necessities including Reddit. If your argument is “it’s a waste because we’re destroying the environment for no gain” all entertainment falls in that bucket as well.

UncleMeat 5y ago

This is actually a really critical observation of BTC. The system works just as well regardless of the price of BTC. Because this is the case, IMO it would be desirable to have the cryptocurrency not produce a distribution of coins that benefits early adopters and harms late entrants. But it would be nearly impossible to introduce such a change because BTC-as-investment is such a huge part of its ideology nowadays.

vmception 5y ago
People have tried many distribution models under proof of work, so far they have all broken the economics of why the networks work: if miners aren't desperately competing to pay off their capital expenditure, then they abuse their market position much more quickly, finding another way to assume control over the production on the network, which discourages anyone else from competing so of all the major working consensus models it has either boiled down to either capital for miners or capital for coins that limit this abuse/control, spurring enough confidence in the network to bring on other participants (whether you or any one person personally agrees with it) keep searching for improvements and alternatives though
maccam912 5y ago
Agreed. Currency was the worst thing to happen to blockchains. Maybe someone needs to purposely create a hyperinflationary cryptocurrency.
- vmception 5y ago
  many people have tried that turns out that speculation drives innovation, which really translates into any interest at all without the competitive pressure, people put their time and resources on other things with high supply creation experiments in the crypto space, the demand never catches up as nobody wants to earn the currency or buy the currency
tootie 5y ago
The network won't fail but the price will fluctuate. BTC was always intended to be an alternate currency, not an investment asset so now it's suffering from competing agendas.

checkyoursudo 5y ago

I am naively asking this with real interest because I have no idea: Can it continue to function at any price? Is there a price so low that new transactions would not processed?

miracle2k 5y ago
No. Transaction will always be processed as long as there is one person with a Raspberry Pie. The price of Bitcoin is essentially a reflection of it's security budget though. The higher the price, the more people are mining, the harder it is to gain control of 50% of the network hashrate.
maccam912 5y ago
The difficulty of mining is adjusted based on how many people are mining. I think it could have trouble if there was a very quick loss of mining power, but if it was a slower process and some miners gave up because it wasn't profitable it would start going back down in difficulty until someone somewhere could get some profit out of it.
dustintrex 5y ago
The difficulty of mining the next block is a function of the hash rate. Miners quit, hash rate goes down, it becomes easier to mine the next block. That said, the "price" (in USD) is a function of supply and demand and is completely disconnected from this. The price of a BTC could drop to $1, and mining would still work fine.
- vmception 5y ago
  > Miners quit, hash rate goes down, it becomes easier to mine the next block. only after the difficulty adjusts downward which could be as long as 2016 blocks
BenjiWiebe 5y ago
Not really, but sort of. As the price drops, miners start leaving the network, causing the difficulty to drop, which keeps the block generation at the same rate. Now please correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the difficulty adjustment requires some blocks to get mined, so if the hash rate would drop extremely quickly, the duration needed to adjust to the lower hash rate could take a long time. However that would mean the potential block fees would be steadily increasing so maybe it would quickly fix itself (make mining those blocks more profitable).

dandanua 5y ago

looking forward when they come to your house because of economical and societal collapse caused by this pyramid scheme

vmception 5y ago
cute, since I rarely use bitcoin and avoid that particular cryptocurrency network due its worse, decade old, user experience