4 ms·

Fiat does better than 7 transactions per second.

by eYrKEC2 11mo ago

idiotsecant 11mo ago
So does literally everything other than Bitcoin. Bitcoin was a first draft that decided to freeze development in beta. There are much better technologies out there.
- dpark 11mo ago
  What alternatives actually scale to the level that they could seriously replace fiat currency? I feel like every time I hear about scaling crypto the answer is to build a system that’s actually decoupled from crypto and occasionally writes back a little bit of info. Edit: It seems like Solana was actually built for decent scale and claims ~3k tps. This is surprisingly high, though, given, that Visa does about 7k tps on average. What are all these transactions on Solana?
  - idiotsecant 11mo ago
    I don't know what you mean by replace fiat currency, exactly, but that wasn't the post I was replying to. parent post eluded to BTC's famously extremely low throughput rate. All I was saying is that this low throughput is not a feature of crypto, it's a feature of the very bad design of Bitcoin that was never improved. This is to be expected- BTC was a basically brand new thing and nobody expected that it would ever be in a position that it needed to provide visa-level throughput. It's problem is that the Bitcoin development community is allergic to improvement in a way that, for example, Ethereum is not. Ethereum never would have existed if the BTC community was open to developing the protocol. RE: Other crypto with proper consensus mechanisms that have better throughput: ETH's L2 ecosystem is reasonably fast - something like 19000 TPS sustained was achieved recently, with an average around 10000 TPS and an instantaneous peak of around 24000. This is just an organic number - it certainly could go much higher, there just isn't demand for those transactions right now. It's hard to say how fast it could go. RE: your last point, Solana is junk - it abandons proper consensus mechanism in favor of throughput. It's subject to all the same problems that delegated POS systems have because that's what it is.
    - dpark 11mo ago
      > ETH's L2 ecosystem How does this work? It feels like moving all of this off the blockchain loses a bunch of the supposed value. If I move to a “side chain” do I get to keep the guarantees around settlement? I would assume no, not until this gets worn back to the block chain. I think I understand (theoretically) how the side chain would increase throughput and reduce transaction fees, but these benefits as I understand them come specifically from making the side chain high volume. If I need to do one transaction with you, the side chain is redundant, right? > RE: your last point, Solana is junk Good to know. I only know what I learned in maybe 20 minutes of research.
      - idiotsecant 11mo ago
        L2 doesn't have to mean you leave the chain, it means you 'batch' transactions using this technique, generally : https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/scaling/optimistic-rollups/ https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/scaling/optimistic-roll... Not all L2 are about throughput exclusively, some are, for example, more focused on private ZKSnark based transactions. There is a huge quantity of development out there. Generally the security guarantees on L2 range from identical to the main chain to 'good enough' to 'I pinkie promise not to take your money'. It's a permissionless protocol so that's kinda what you get.
        dpark 11mo ago
        Thanks for the link. I’ll have to read up.
- aardvarkr 11mo ago
  So what makes a bitcoin worth $100k if it’s such a shit currency?
  - dpark 11mo ago
    Speculation. A good currency is stable. Bitcoin has gone up over 5x in the last 5 years. This is not a good currency, though it’s certainly been a good speculative bet.
  - queenkjuul 11mo ago
    You think each unit being $100k and fluctuating wildly is the mark of a GOOD currency?
  - bediger4000 11mo ago
    Drug cartels, sanctioned Russian oligarchs, international arms dealers.
  - esseph 11mo ago
    Used by wealthy Chinese to get more than $50k into the country at a time, bypassing Chinese law.
  - kikimora 11mo ago
    What is BTC inflation? How much BTC was printed by government in recent years? And of course - how much it grew in value? In other words: * deflationary nature * independence of any government * speculation Governments will keep printing money. Stock market is only good in US (check Japan and China). Bitcoin is good alternative investment in places where options primarily limited to property.
    - idiotsecant 11mo ago
      I am really excited to hear you explain in what way BTC is deflationary. Go ahead, I'll wait.
      - kikimora 11mo ago
- eYrKEC2 11mo ago
  Absolutely agree, but most know nothing other than the almighty BTC. I want 3 things from crypto: * throughput that _could_ scale to something like visa. 50k/second christmas. * privacy by default for everyone - "public ledger" for a currency replacement is INSANE * reasonable transaction completion time ( < 1 minute)

Fiat does better than 7 transactions per second.

by eYrKEC2 11mo ago

Fiat does better than 7 transactions per second.

So does literally everything other than Bitcoin. Bitcoin was a first draft that decided to freeze development in beta. There are much better technologies out there.

dpark 11mo ago
What alternatives actually scale to the level that they could seriously replace fiat currency? I feel like every time I hear about scaling crypto the answer is to build a system that’s actually decoupled from crypto and occasionally writes back a little bit of info. Edit: It seems like Solana was actually built for decent scale and claims ~3k tps. This is surprisingly high, though, given, that Visa does about 7k tps on average. What are all these transactions on Solana?
- idiotsecant 11mo ago
  I don't know what you mean by replace fiat currency, exactly, but that wasn't the post I was replying to. parent post eluded to BTC's famously extremely low throughput rate. All I was saying is that this low throughput is not a feature of crypto, it's a feature of the very bad design of Bitcoin that was never improved. This is to be expected- BTC was a basically brand new thing and nobody expected that it would ever be in a position that it needed to provide visa-level throughput. It's problem is that the Bitcoin development community is allergic to improvement in a way that, for example, Ethereum is not. Ethereum never would have existed if the BTC community was open to developing the protocol. RE: Other crypto with proper consensus mechanisms that have better throughput: ETH's L2 ecosystem is reasonably fast - something like 19000 TPS sustained was achieved recently, with an average around 10000 TPS and an instantaneous peak of around 24000. This is just an organic number - it certainly could go much higher, there just isn't demand for those transactions right now. It's hard to say how fast it could go. RE: your last point, Solana is junk - it abandons proper consensus mechanism in favor of throughput. It's subject to all the same problems that delegated POS systems have because that's what it is.
  - dpark 11mo ago
    > ETH's L2 ecosystem How does this work? It feels like moving all of this off the blockchain loses a bunch of the supposed value. If I move to a “side chain” do I get to keep the guarantees around settlement? I would assume no, not until this gets worn back to the block chain. I think I understand (theoretically) how the side chain would increase throughput and reduce transaction fees, but these benefits as I understand them come specifically from making the side chain high volume. If I need to do one transaction with you, the side chain is redundant, right? > RE: your last point, Solana is junk Good to know. I only know what I learned in maybe 20 minutes of research.
    - idiotsecant 11mo ago
      L2 doesn't have to mean you leave the chain, it means you 'batch' transactions using this technique, generally : https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/scaling/optimistic-rollups/ https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/scaling/optimistic-roll... Not all L2 are about throughput exclusively, some are, for example, more focused on private ZKSnark based transactions. There is a huge quantity of development out there. Generally the security guarantees on L2 range from identical to the main chain to 'good enough' to 'I pinkie promise not to take your money'. It's a permissionless protocol so that's kinda what you get.
      - dpark 11mo ago
        Thanks for the link. I’ll have to read up.
aardvarkr 11mo ago
So what makes a bitcoin worth $100k if it’s such a shit currency?
- dpark 11mo ago
  Speculation. A good currency is stable. Bitcoin has gone up over 5x in the last 5 years. This is not a good currency, though it’s certainly been a good speculative bet.
- queenkjuul 11mo ago
  You think each unit being $100k and fluctuating wildly is the mark of a GOOD currency?
- bediger4000 11mo ago
  Drug cartels, sanctioned Russian oligarchs, international arms dealers.
- esseph 11mo ago
  Used by wealthy Chinese to get more than $50k into the country at a time, bypassing Chinese law.
- kikimora 11mo ago
  What is BTC inflation? How much BTC was printed by government in recent years? And of course - how much it grew in value? In other words: * deflationary nature * independence of any government * speculation Governments will keep printing money. Stock market is only good in US (check Japan and China). Bitcoin is good alternative investment in places where options primarily limited to property.
  - idiotsecant 11mo ago
    I am really excited to hear you explain in what way BTC is deflationary. Go ahead, I'll wait.
    - kikimora 11mo ago
eYrKEC2 11mo ago
Absolutely agree, but most know nothing other than the almighty BTC. I want 3 things from crypto: * throughput that _could_ scale to something like visa. 50k/second christmas. * privacy by default for everyone - "public ledger" for a currency replacement is INSANE * reasonable transaction completion time ( < 1 minute)