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I would say the largest existential threat to Bitcoin is scale. All the problems cited by WU are fixable; same with user security. However, dumping even half o
by jedunnigan 13y ago
I would say the largest existential threat to Bitcoin is scale. All the problems cited by WU are fixable; same with user security.
However, dumping even half of the Visa/MC daily tx volume would bring the network to a halt. The transaction fee scheme has issues as is, it needs to be reworked before it can handle even double the current daily volume. [need to find source, gavin mentioned it somewhere]
We could raise the block size, but that's no free lunch (makes it more costly to run a node, etc...), things could go off chain, we could use Ripple, etc... etc.
Point being, something will need to change before the big players come in, and it's more than just liquidity and user security.
- DennisP 13y agoUse offchain transactions for most things and onchain just to settle balances between service providers, and you could scale to major currency levels. Keep the number of transactions per block limited, and transaction fees could be maintained high enough to avoid the "bitcoin tragedy of the commons." That doesn't seem to be the direction they're going, though.
- jedunnigan 13y agoOff chain is always a solution, but requires some form of trust in most situations. In all honesty I see Bitcoin becoming more of a commodity in the long term, and it is traded sparingly, or other coins/digital currencies are built that allow you to peg the value of Bitcoin to them, as to move it faster. This is just speculation, of course.