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The Bitcoin network has survived everything that has been thrown at it. Nothing has stopped the damn thing. It's always there. It's one of those things that j

by cs702 3y ago

The Bitcoin network has survived everything that has been thrown at it. Nothing has stopped the damn thing. It's always there. It's one of those things that just keeps on existing, like gold. It doesn't care what you think. It doesn't care whether you like it or not. It doesn't care if you understand it. It's just always been there. Might as well make it easier for people and companies to own it and trade Bitcoin, and for governments to tax profits on it.

peteradio 3y ago
[flagged]
- Zenul_Abidin 3y ago
  This comment gives me the impression that you're one of those people who disparages cryptocurrency.
optymizer 3y ago
It has survived by changing the narrative and getting people to buy the stories. It was going to replace money, but then it didn't because the network slowed down to the point where it was unusable. Nobody was going to wait 30 min for a transaction to complete. So then the message was flipped and Bitcoin was now 'an asset', not a currency, further supported by IRS's decision to tax it like an asset, so it was advertised as a store of value, "like gold". It didn't deliver on the currency promise, even with all the lightening and proof-of-stake talks. It is actively hurting the entire planet at this scale by generating useless heat. And last, but not least, KYC lets governments track all your bitcoin purchases forever to an extent impossible to do with cash, including deanonymizing transactions retroactively decades later. A digital currency will not give us more freedom, it will only take more of it away, which is why I personally no longer support Bitcoin, and I don't think others should either.
- tekchip 3y ago
  This global warming rhetoric against bitcoin is nonsense right? The current financial system doesn't run off as many or more computers in datacenters around the globe? I don't have objective numbers but I'd lay money credit card processing alone dwarfs bitcoin by a pretty good margin.
  - TillE 3y ago
    The global financial system can handle considerably more than three (3) transactions per second.
    - markburns 3y ago
      There's not really a problematic upper bound for global transaction volume on transactions per second with the lightning network. There are other problems in terms of adoption and infrastructure etc, but the actual potential for humankind to have a single currency global low-barrier payment system is there. But this is more like the early days of the internet. The internet seemed pointless to most people even as late as the 90's. A future global system could have settlement on the blockchain. Like the current system does at far less regular intervals than the processing power of non-settled transactions.
      - TimJRobinson 3y ago
        > There's not really a problematic upper bound for global transaction volume on transactions per second with the lightning network There unfortunately is, to open a channel you have to make a Bitcoin transaction, and you can't use lightning without opening a channel. Bitcoin processes a max of ~220M transactions per year so to onboard the world onto lightning with only one channel each would take a few decades. A real layer 2 could solve it, or having some trustless way to use BTC on other chains
        markburns 3y ago
        It's possible I'm too optimistic on this point. I feel I have a good grasp of how bitcoin works, but when it gets to layer 2 it gets fuzzier. The initial discussions sounded really promising, as they seemed to mirror HTTP on top of TCP/IP. And we all know how much of a slow burning revolution that turned out to be. But http seems simpler than what I've read about lightning more recently. Total wild speculation follows: As for the channels problem, it feels to me like you have something like ISPs or AOL being the thing that's needed to kickstart it. And perhaps the ISPs or AOL in this world are the employers and lightning banks. So yes you need bitcoin to open it, but with an employer you have the potential to have an entity with bitcoin resources and with a reason to send bitcoin to an individual. Perhaps HD wallets with lightning kickstarter funds apportioned to new employees. This feels similar to the needing a bank account or national insurance number in the UK (social security number? in the US) to start getting paid, or similar to needing an internet connection. Yes you could choose to get paid in bitcoin and have the fees come out of your wage, and this would be similar to getting paid in physical cash today. Or you could get over the slight roadbump to get you onto the lightning network. What would a real layer 2 look like in your opinion?
- amjnsx 3y ago
  > Nobody was going to wait 30 min for a transaction to complete Depends on the transaction. To buy coffee? Of course not, but there are transactions that can take hours or days to clear.
  - irusensei 3y ago
    If people only knew that a card transaction is the equivalent of a 0 confirmation transaction between two “trust me bro” parties and that said card transaction takes days and a lot of institutional resources to clear…
  - redox99 3y ago
    Yeah, 30 min for a BTC tx which is basically guaranteed to go through is amazing compared to the shitfest that is SWIFT.
democracy 3y ago
Last time i checked it's still gonna suffer from 51% attack? Or its ECDSA implementation might have NSA backdoor? There is no stats how many people were robbed, how many accounts where hijacked, how many keys were guessed (due to crap implementations) etc. I think there was no other technology in the world that lost so much of people's cash with no responsibility of any kind. Yeah, just like gold - if you lived in 860 AC and thought copper was gold too - then it's a valid comparison!
the_gastropod 3y ago
I have a sonicare toothbrush older than bitcoin…
- LAMike 3y ago
  That's disgusting, you should probably change your 15 year old toothbrush
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by cs702 3y ago

peteradio 3y ago

[flagged]

Zenul_Abidin 3y ago
This comment gives me the impression that you're one of those people who disparages cryptocurrency.

optymizer 3y ago

It has survived by changing the narrative and getting people to buy the stories. It was going to replace money, but then it didn't because the network slowed down to the point where it was unusable. Nobody was going to wait 30 min for a transaction to complete. So then the message was flipped and Bitcoin was now 'an asset', not a currency, further supported by IRS's decision to tax it like an asset, so it was advertised as a store of value, "like gold". It didn't deliver on the currency promise, even with all the lightening and proof-of-stake talks. It is actively hurting the entire planet at this scale by generating useless heat. And last, but not least, KYC lets governments track all your bitcoin purchases forever to an extent impossible to do with cash, including deanonymizing transactions retroactively decades later. A digital currency will not give us more freedom, it will only take more of it away, which is why I personally no longer support Bitcoin, and I don't think others should either.

tekchip 3y ago
This global warming rhetoric against bitcoin is nonsense right? The current financial system doesn't run off as many or more computers in datacenters around the globe? I don't have objective numbers but I'd lay money credit card processing alone dwarfs bitcoin by a pretty good margin.
- TillE 3y ago
  The global financial system can handle considerably more than three (3) transactions per second.
  - markburns 3y ago
    There's not really a problematic upper bound for global transaction volume on transactions per second with the lightning network. There are other problems in terms of adoption and infrastructure etc, but the actual potential for humankind to have a single currency global low-barrier payment system is there. But this is more like the early days of the internet. The internet seemed pointless to most people even as late as the 90's. A future global system could have settlement on the blockchain. Like the current system does at far less regular intervals than the processing power of non-settled transactions.
    - TimJRobinson 3y ago
      > There's not really a problematic upper bound for global transaction volume on transactions per second with the lightning network There unfortunately is, to open a channel you have to make a Bitcoin transaction, and you can't use lightning without opening a channel. Bitcoin processes a max of ~220M transactions per year so to onboard the world onto lightning with only one channel each would take a few decades. A real layer 2 could solve it, or having some trustless way to use BTC on other chains
      - markburns 3y ago
        It's possible I'm too optimistic on this point. I feel I have a good grasp of how bitcoin works, but when it gets to layer 2 it gets fuzzier. The initial discussions sounded really promising, as they seemed to mirror HTTP on top of TCP/IP. And we all know how much of a slow burning revolution that turned out to be. But http seems simpler than what I've read about lightning more recently. Total wild speculation follows: As for the channels problem, it feels to me like you have something like ISPs or AOL being the thing that's needed to kickstart it. And perhaps the ISPs or AOL in this world are the employers and lightning banks. So yes you need bitcoin to open it, but with an employer you have the potential to have an entity with bitcoin resources and with a reason to send bitcoin to an individual. Perhaps HD wallets with lightning kickstarter funds apportioned to new employees. This feels similar to the needing a bank account or national insurance number in the UK (social security number? in the US) to start getting paid, or similar to needing an internet connection. Yes you could choose to get paid in bitcoin and have the fees come out of your wage, and this would be similar to getting paid in physical cash today. Or you could get over the slight roadbump to get you onto the lightning network. What would a real layer 2 look like in your opinion?
amjnsx 3y ago
> Nobody was going to wait 30 min for a transaction to complete Depends on the transaction. To buy coffee? Of course not, but there are transactions that can take hours or days to clear.
- irusensei 3y ago
  If people only knew that a card transaction is the equivalent of a 0 confirmation transaction between two “trust me bro” parties and that said card transaction takes days and a lot of institutional resources to clear…
- redox99 3y ago
  Yeah, 30 min for a BTC tx which is basically guaranteed to go through is amazing compared to the shitfest that is SWIFT.

democracy 3y ago

Last time i checked it's still gonna suffer from 51% attack? Or its ECDSA implementation might have NSA backdoor? There is no stats how many people were robbed, how many accounts where hijacked, how many keys were guessed (due to crap implementations) etc. I think there was no other technology in the world that lost so much of people's cash with no responsibility of any kind. Yeah, just like gold - if you lived in 860 AC and thought copper was gold too - then it's a valid comparison!

the_gastropod 3y ago

I have a sonicare toothbrush older than bitcoin…

LAMike 3y ago
That's disgusting, you should probably change your 15 year old toothbrush

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]