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> electricity usage has an upper limit of $37m per day I don't see how you compute such an upper limit given that it depends on the transactions fees. You're t

by hiq 5y ago

> electricity usage has an upper limit of $37m per day I don't see how you compute such an upper limit given that it depends on the transactions fees. You're talking about the profitability if miners don't mine any transaction, and maybe this used to be a reasonable approximation, but as the block reward halves it will become less and less accurate. The profitability limit can be just as arbitrarily high as the transaction fees. > We are getting money that is unforgeable, uninflatable, irreversible, uncensorable The article convincingly argues that it's not irreversible nor uncensorable given that it's centralized, and that any similar permissionless blockchain would tend towards such a centralization. > capable of millions of transactions per second Are you saying that the 14 cents a month would cover the transaction fees? That's not the case right now with way less transactions, I don't see how that will ever be the case if the number of transactions increase to this number.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
transaction fees are currently very small percentage of miner's income, and probably will be so for another ~3 halvings. By that time, protocols would evolve so that you won't need a mainnet transaction at all to create a second layer wallet. >> The article convincingly argues that it's not irreversible nor uncensorable Not convincingly at all. Not a single tx has been reverted on BTC network in 13 years (well, except of couple of early bugs that caused network split), maybe you are confusing with some other network. No one is able to prevent a tx from going out, as we just witnessed - FBI wasn't able to revert a $3.6B theft transaction without getting hold of private keys. >> Are you saying that the 14 cents a month would cover the transaction fees? I paid a tx fee once, two years ago, to fund my Satoshi Wallet, and haven't paid another satoshi in tx fees for about a hundred of purchases since then. So I don't see why everyone can't do that. As to the initial funding of the wallet for everyone, I don't see why it can't be done off chain as well in the future.
- hiq 5y ago
  > Not a single tx has been reverted on BTC network in 13 years (well, except of couple of early bugs that caused network split) The article mentions that the networks tends towards centralization, at which point the guarantees BTC was supposed to provide no longer hold. You can say that the big miners still won't do it for $REASON, but the point stands that it's not irreversible nor uncensorable, due to this centralization. > No one is able to prevent a tx from going out, as we just witnessed - FBI wasn't able to revert a $3.6B theft transaction without getting hold of private keys. The money stolen is not relevant, the budget they were willing to spend to retrieve the funds is. I don't think this was in the billions as you implicitly state. Preventing the transaction from being mined is also completely different from reverting it several blocks after it has been mined. See also my last paragraph in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30313344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30313344 > I paid a tx fee once, two years ago, to fund my Satoshi Wallet, and haven't paid another satoshi in tx fees for about a hundred of purchases since then. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network#Limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network#Limitations you still need a "watchtower" to ensure things won't go wrong, so if you consider everything, it's not completely free. I don't want to guess what the exact price will be because it's a futile exercise (we'll see soon enough if it gains traction), but this suffices to show that you're sweeping some costs under the rug.

by hiq 5y ago

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

transaction fees are currently very small percentage of miner's income, and probably will be so for another ~3 halvings. By that time, protocols would evolve so that you won't need a mainnet transaction at all to create a second layer wallet. >> The article convincingly argues that it's not irreversible nor uncensorable Not convincingly at all. Not a single tx has been reverted on BTC network in 13 years (well, except of couple of early bugs that caused network split), maybe you are confusing with some other network. No one is able to prevent a tx from going out, as we just witnessed - FBI wasn't able to revert a $3.6B theft transaction without getting hold of private keys. >> Are you saying that the 14 cents a month would cover the transaction fees? I paid a tx fee once, two years ago, to fund my Satoshi Wallet, and haven't paid another satoshi in tx fees for about a hundred of purchases since then. So I don't see why everyone can't do that. As to the initial funding of the wallet for everyone, I don't see why it can't be done off chain as well in the future.

hiq 5y ago
> Not a single tx has been reverted on BTC network in 13 years (well, except of couple of early bugs that caused network split) The article mentions that the networks tends towards centralization, at which point the guarantees BTC was supposed to provide no longer hold. You can say that the big miners still won't do it for $REASON, but the point stands that it's not irreversible nor uncensorable, due to this centralization. > No one is able to prevent a tx from going out, as we just witnessed - FBI wasn't able to revert a $3.6B theft transaction without getting hold of private keys. The money stolen is not relevant, the budget they were willing to spend to retrieve the funds is. I don't think this was in the billions as you implicitly state. Preventing the transaction from being mined is also completely different from reverting it several blocks after it has been mined. See also my last paragraph in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30313344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30313344 > I paid a tx fee once, two years ago, to fund my Satoshi Wallet, and haven't paid another satoshi in tx fees for about a hundred of purchases since then. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network#Limitations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network#Limitations you still need a "watchtower" to ensure things won't go wrong, so if you consider everything, it's not completely free. I don't want to guess what the exact price will be because it's a futile exercise (we'll see soon enough if it gains traction), but this suffices to show that you're sweeping some costs under the rug.