6 ms·

Great pos! The more I learn about bitcoin, the more I feel like it still has a long way to go. There are a few hurdles that can not be easily solved now: 10min

Great pos! The more I learn about bitcoin, the more I feel like it still has a long way to go. There are a few hurdles that can not be easily solved now: 10min transaction time; deflationary (this pretty much means it would have a hard time to act a real "currency" based on nowadays economic thinking); the resources wasted in mining and the potential consolidation of mining; the programmable aspect is very limited today. What is your take of it?

reshmakh 12y ago
In the short term, I think it will have a hard time gaining use as a currency. A few currency scenarios might pop up, for example countries with unstable government or corrupt governments could see people store $ in BTC instead. However, I do think it could be very valuable as an application. Like if you layered it on top of the existing payment system to provide better security/anti-fraud.
- moonhorse 12y ago
  Agreed!
  - reshmakh 12y ago
    I also think dogecoin is fun and may have a chance at being a useful tool for reputation and measuring attention.
    - jafaku 12y ago
      > dogecoin is fun What does that even mean? How can a currency be fun? Will my car become fun too if I attach a cute dog picture to it?
      - UweSchmidt 12y ago
        If you look to the top of the page, next to your username, there's a number in brackets. Wouldn't it be nice to take that number and buy something real with it? You could, if it was a fun cryptocurrency that had at least a little traction. I'd imagine certain people could use their Stackoverflow Coins to buy a house!
        jafaku 12y ago
        So what property does Dogecoin have that Bitcoin doesn't, that enables us to do this? The answer is nothing, and Dogecoin is redundant. Might as well use Infinitecoin or any other copycoin before Dogecoin, they are all the same copy/pasted code, with no technical added value and the only effort they put goes to marketing.
- jafaku 12y ago
  > A few currency scenarios might pop up, for example countries with unstable government or corrupt governments Sounds like most of the world would benefit from Bitcoin then.
sneak 12y ago
> There are a few hurdles that can not be easily solved now: 10min transaction time For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often. > the resources wasted in mining It's not wasted if it's being used to process bitcoin transactions. > and the potential consolidation of mining Now you've got one - this is a huge threat to bitcoin today. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next 6-12 months.
- lmkg 12y ago
  > For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often. But could this be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps this property of Bitcoin is hurting its adoption, by relegating it only to uses where this is not a hurdle.
  - reshmakh 12y ago
    Possible, but auth apps or other off blockchain workarounds must be coming. Existing payments systems had similar problems in the past.
- ars 12y ago
  > For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often. Not exactly. If you have all your coins in a single transaction, you will get change - which can take 10 minutes to confirm before you can spend it again. Yes, you can solve this by splitting up your money, but it's not something people expect. > It's not wasted if it's being used to process bitcoin transactions. Yes it is being wasted. Waste doesn't mean "unused", waste means "using more than necessary". Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful. Bitcoin is powered by electricity, a better currency would spend something else instead.
  - jafaku 12y ago
    > Yes it is being wasted. Waste doesn't mean "unused", waste means "using more than necessary". Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful. Due to the arms race, it's only getting more and more efficient. > nothing useful Again with that? You are starting to sound like a troll. > Bitcoin is powered by electricity, a better currency would spend something else instead. Can't you say the same about everything? Why does Bitcoin's energy consumption bother you so much, while you have cars, factories, and everything else still using fossil fuels, coal, etc.? Is your computer running on dark matter energy or what?
olalonde 12y ago
> deflationary (this pretty much means it would have a hard time to act a real "currency" based on nowadays economic thinking) This argument makes no sense to me. If Bitcoin's deflationary nature prevented it from acting as a currency, it would also prevent USD/CAD/dogecoin/etc. from acting as currencies because people would chose to buy Bitcoin instead of spending their inflationary currency on anything else. Every time you spend USD on something, you can instead buy an equivalent amount in Bitcoin. Not buying bitcoins can effectively be thought of as buying them and spending them. In fact, the truth is that no one knows if Bitcoin will be inflationary or deflationary within the next year due to its current small market cap and risky nature. But in an hypothetical world where Bitcoin does become a stable and deflationary currency, why would any selfish actor chose to hold an inflationary currency?
- amscanne 12y ago
  > If Bitcoin's deflationary nature prevented it from acting as a currency, it would also prevent USD/CAD/dogecoin/etc. from acting as currencies because people would chose to buy Bitcoin instead of spending their inflationary currency on anything else. This is exactly what happens. No one holds currency. People don't generally have their assets as cash, just what they need to be liquid. They hold their assets as a mix of stock (incl. funds, bonds, options), real estate, etc. In fact, the majority of people have practically no cash at all because they lend it to a bank (i.e. putting it in a checking or savings account) who invests it or lends it for a return! The bank only holds a small portion of what they say is in the account.
  - olalonde 12y ago
    Not sure if you are disagreeing with me but in case you are: suppose those assets (stocks, bonds, real estate) could be transferred as easily as a currency (instant transfer/fungible/divisible/liquid/etc.), would people use cash at all? What would be the use case for cash? My point was that Bitcoin would be such an asset. Perhaps a deflationary currency would have a negative overall impact on the economy, but that's not what I'm arguing about.
    - 12y ago
jafaku 12y ago
> 10min transaction time, resources wasted in mining, programmable aspect is very limited, deflationary, nowadays economic thinking Getting really tired of these arguments. Transactions take 0-2 seconds. The resources are not wasted, they are used to secure the network and are way lower than what VISA or any other big company use. And It's deflationary because people like me are suffering from this form of theft called inflation, and we desperately needed something like Bitcoin. Besides, without an economic incentive why would people risk money? Nowadays economic thinking is pretty much a pseudoscience, just like Psychology.
- Nursie 12y ago
  A crypto currency network that requires constant hash thrashing is not one I'd call well designed. It appears to be a trade-off for the decentralisation of initial currency issuing, not something everyone considers important.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "It appears to be a trade-off for the decentralisation of initial currency issuing, not something everyone considers important." Mining isn't (primarily) for currency issuance - it's decentralization of secure transaction processing. Which still isn't something everyone considers important, of course.
    - Nursie 12y ago
      Well sure, it does both. There are (theoretical) systems that allow cryptographically secure transactions to take place without so much thrashing though. Even verifiable offline transactions. Of course bitcoin's major advantage is that it's already here and working.
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        "Well sure, it does both." Certainly. Using it to distribute the currency, before there's the critical mass of people wanting to make transactions enough to pay your miners seems a perfectly good fit once you're already needing to mine, though. "There are (theoretical) systems that allow cryptographically secure transactions to take place without so much thrashing though. Even verifiable offline transactions." Verifiable offline transactions with no centralization? Can you link to some?

reshmakh 12y ago

In the short term, I think it will have a hard time gaining use as a currency. A few currency scenarios might pop up, for example countries with unstable government or corrupt governments could see people store $ in BTC instead. However, I do think it could be very valuable as an application. Like if you layered it on top of the existing payment system to provide better security/anti-fraud.

moonhorse 12y ago
Agreed!
- reshmakh 12y ago
  I also think dogecoin is fun and may have a chance at being a useful tool for reputation and measuring attention.
  - jafaku 12y ago
    > dogecoin is fun What does that even mean? How can a currency be fun? Will my car become fun too if I attach a cute dog picture to it?
    - UweSchmidt 12y ago
      If you look to the top of the page, next to your username, there's a number in brackets. Wouldn't it be nice to take that number and buy something real with it? You could, if it was a fun cryptocurrency that had at least a little traction. I'd imagine certain people could use their Stackoverflow Coins to buy a house!
      - jafaku 12y ago
        So what property does Dogecoin have that Bitcoin doesn't, that enables us to do this? The answer is nothing, and Dogecoin is redundant. Might as well use Infinitecoin or any other copycoin before Dogecoin, they are all the same copy/pasted code, with no technical added value and the only effort they put goes to marketing.
jafaku 12y ago
> A few currency scenarios might pop up, for example countries with unstable government or corrupt governments Sounds like most of the world would benefit from Bitcoin then.

sneak 12y ago

> There are a few hurdles that can not be easily solved now: 10min transaction time For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often. > the resources wasted in mining It's not wasted if it's being used to process bitcoin transactions. > and the potential consolidation of mining Now you've got one - this is a huge threat to bitcoin today. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next 6-12 months.

lmkg 12y ago
> For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often. But could this be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps this property of Bitcoin is hurting its adoption, by relegating it only to uses where this is not a hurdle.
- reshmakh 12y ago
  Possible, but auth apps or other off blockchain workarounds must be coming. Existing payments systems had similar problems in the past.
ars 12y ago
> For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often. Not exactly. If you have all your coins in a single transaction, you will get change - which can take 10 minutes to confirm before you can spend it again. Yes, you can solve this by splitting up your money, but it's not something people expect. > It's not wasted if it's being used to process bitcoin transactions. Yes it is being wasted. Waste doesn't mean "unused", waste means "using more than necessary". Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful. Bitcoin is powered by electricity, a better currency would spend something else instead.
- jafaku 12y ago
  > Yes it is being wasted. Waste doesn't mean "unused", waste means "using more than necessary". Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful. Due to the arms race, it's only getting more and more efficient. > nothing useful Again with that? You are starting to sound like a troll. > Bitcoin is powered by electricity, a better currency would spend something else instead. Can't you say the same about everything? Why does Bitcoin's energy consumption bother you so much, while you have cars, factories, and everything else still using fossil fuels, coal, etc.? Is your computer running on dark matter energy or what?

olalonde 12y ago

> deflationary (this pretty much means it would have a hard time to act a real "currency" based on nowadays economic thinking) This argument makes no sense to me. If Bitcoin's deflationary nature prevented it from acting as a currency, it would also prevent USD/CAD/dogecoin/etc. from acting as currencies because people would chose to buy Bitcoin instead of spending their inflationary currency on anything else. Every time you spend USD on something, you can instead buy an equivalent amount in Bitcoin. Not buying bitcoins can effectively be thought of as buying them and spending them. In fact, the truth is that no one knows if Bitcoin will be inflationary or deflationary within the next year due to its current small market cap and risky nature. But in an hypothetical world where Bitcoin does become a stable and deflationary currency, why would any selfish actor chose to hold an inflationary currency?

amscanne 12y ago
> If Bitcoin's deflationary nature prevented it from acting as a currency, it would also prevent USD/CAD/dogecoin/etc. from acting as currencies because people would chose to buy Bitcoin instead of spending their inflationary currency on anything else. This is exactly what happens. No one holds currency. People don't generally have their assets as cash, just what they need to be liquid. They hold their assets as a mix of stock (incl. funds, bonds, options), real estate, etc. In fact, the majority of people have practically no cash at all because they lend it to a bank (i.e. putting it in a checking or savings account) who invests it or lends it for a return! The bank only holds a small portion of what they say is in the account.
- olalonde 12y ago
  Not sure if you are disagreeing with me but in case you are: suppose those assets (stocks, bonds, real estate) could be transferred as easily as a currency (instant transfer/fungible/divisible/liquid/etc.), would people use cash at all? What would be the use case for cash? My point was that Bitcoin would be such an asset. Perhaps a deflationary currency would have a negative overall impact on the economy, but that's not what I'm arguing about.
  - 12y ago

jafaku 12y ago

> 10min transaction time, resources wasted in mining, programmable aspect is very limited, deflationary, nowadays economic thinking Getting really tired of these arguments. Transactions take 0-2 seconds. The resources are not wasted, they are used to secure the network and are way lower than what VISA or any other big company use. And It's deflationary because people like me are suffering from this form of theft called inflation, and we desperately needed something like Bitcoin. Besides, without an economic incentive why would people risk money? Nowadays economic thinking is pretty much a pseudoscience, just like Psychology.

Nursie 12y ago
A crypto currency network that requires constant hash thrashing is not one I'd call well designed. It appears to be a trade-off for the decentralisation of initial currency issuing, not something everyone considers important.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "It appears to be a trade-off for the decentralisation of initial currency issuing, not something everyone considers important." Mining isn't (primarily) for currency issuance - it's decentralization of secure transaction processing. Which still isn't something everyone considers important, of course.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    Well sure, it does both. There are (theoretical) systems that allow cryptographically secure transactions to take place without so much thrashing though. Even verifiable offline transactions. Of course bitcoin's major advantage is that it's already here and working.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "Well sure, it does both." Certainly. Using it to distribute the currency, before there's the critical mass of people wanting to make transactions enough to pay your miners seems a perfectly good fit once you're already needing to mine, though. "There are (theoretical) systems that allow cryptographically secure transactions to take place without so much thrashing though. Even verifiable offline transactions." Verifiable offline transactions with no centralization? Can you link to some?