6 ms·

Firstly, Bitcoin does not need to scale that much to be considered widely successful. Heck, Western Union[1] averages only 10 tps, which is only 10x what Bitcoi

by mrb 12y ago

Firstly, Bitcoin does not need to scale that much to be considered widely successful. Heck, Western Union[1] averages only 10 tps, which is only 10x what Bitcoin is doing today, so such a target is clearly within reach with a 2MB block size. Secondly, Bitcoin can actually scale by many orders of magnitudes, see the math and arguments there: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability You need solid counterarguments to this page to convince us it can't possibly scale. Thirdly, Bitcoin has done 6 years in a row what critics have always said it cannot do ("nobody would want bitcoins", "the exchange rate will never reach $1/$10/$100", "it will crash and be forgotten after the Jun 2011/Mar 2013/Nov 2013 bubble", "the US govt will make it illegal", "big companies will never accept it", etc). So you need to sit back and start thinking why is it that Bitcoin keeps growing and reaching milestone after milestone, instead of throwing one more empty statement "bitcoin can't do X" with zero reasoning behind. [1] WU does ~250 million consumer transaction/year. Edit: @inoop I misremembered and meant WU, not Paypal

inoop 12y ago
From your link: > PayPal, in contrast, handles around 10 million transactions per day for an average of 115 tps.
- cgjaro 12y ago
  As the OP corrected, it's Western Union that does 10 tps. But even 100 tps would be easily within reach if the block size is bumped to 20MB, which is not that crazy.
andrea_s 12y ago
Isn't WU a not-so-relevant service that's mostly used by scammers? I'm not from the US, and I've always heard of it in such terms...
- theklub 12y ago
  Pretty much, although in some areas its used more legitimately than others.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  That, and one of the biggest facilitators of remittance, a significant source of income for some of the poorest people on the planet. That may not be very relevant in SV, but they affect a lot of lives positively. At the same time, they charge exorbitant fees, and remittance fees are stuck at around 10%. I'm looking forward to the day they're as redundant as an expensive long-distance phone call is made redundant, which is possible when you have native digital money like we have digital mail or telephony. Bitcoin to me is the most compelling proposal for this to this date.
downandout 12y ago
> Thirdly, Bitcoin has done 6 years in a row what critics have always said it cannot do The one thing that hasn't changed a great deal is accessibility to them. When buying, you are either subject to waiting periods, or have to conduct the transaction in cash in person. No one in their right mind will take credit cards or PayPal for them. I believe this is the major hurdle to adoption of crypto by the mainstream public. Writing tools to make BTC easy to work with is the easy part. Until they can be bought at Walmart or your local check cashing store, it's going to be a fairly rough road for new adoption.
- obi-nine 12y ago
  Circle takes credit cards for them.
- jmonegro 12y ago
  Coinbase does
  - downandout 12y ago
    Not without a several day delay.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jordigh 12y ago
  > The one thing that hasn't changed a great deal is accessibility to them. Just acquire them like you likely acquire any other currency: accept it in exchange for your labour or the goods you have to sell. That's what I do, for online math tutoring. It's just some pocket change on the side for me right now, but it's helped me buy a few Christmas gifts already.
- chm 12y ago
  In Canada I can pay by debit, called an Interac eTransfer. Check out Vault of Satoshi. The funds are allocated in about an hour.
- 12y ago
hnnewguy 12y ago
>So you need to sit back and start thinking why is it that Bitcoin keeps growing and reaching milestone after milestone Because it has the support of a vocal, passionate, educated community of tech people, some with a monetary stake in having it succeed, combined with the hide-in-a-bunker, sky-is-falling crowd, still feeling the effects of the financial crash.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jedunnigan 12y ago
People like to quote the scalability page and claim that Bitcoin will have no problem scaling, but I don't think they really understand what Bitcoin will look like at scale. No one is saying that it _can't_ handle howevermany txs / second. But do you want it to? That is the real question. Right now the network has <7000 nodes, a number that has dropped from almost 30K in the past few years. [0] The blockchain is <30GB and a node can expect to handle ~15GB/day of bandwidth. [1] You will also need at least a gig of RAM, preferably more. The UTXO is 500MB (which needs to be stored in memory). So what we know is that despite the relatively low requirements of running a node, we are bleeding them faster than we can get new ones. People claim that storage space and bandwidth getting cheaper will solve the problem. Given past performance of the node landscape, that statement does not hold weight. So what are the consequences of all this? Well, the node landscape will centralize very quickly as the bandwidth and storage requirements far outpace what most would be willing to provide the network gratis. Universities and large payment processors will be the only ones who can afford to run full (archival) nodes. Pruning and all that will help, sure. But in order for Bitcoin to remain true to its decentralized roots, a distributed node landscape is vital. If everyone isn't validating everyone else's transactions we have a big problem (imo, of course). [0]https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ [1]http://statoshi.info/#/ http://statoshi.info/#/
- cgjaro 12y ago
  Yes we want it to scale, even if it means full nodes run only by large organizations. The benefits of decentralization would be very real and tangible even if only, say, 1000 organizations (companies, universities, etc) were able to host and operate Bitcoin nodes. This would still make Bitcoin clearly decentralized compared to a single company (like MasterCard) processing all your CC transactions. For example Mastercard decided of their own accord to block CC donations to Wikileaks [1] but one of these 1000 hypothetical organizations running full nodes would be unable to do such a thing and block specific transactions. The number of full nodes decreased in large part because in the early history of Bitcoin in late 2010 or early 2011 your only option to have a secure wallet or to mine reliably was to run a full node locally. But nowadays there are many alternative lightweight clients using the SPV protocol, and a lot of reliable mining pools (it was in mid-2011 that pools started mining more coins than solo miners running full nodes). So of course many users stopped running full nodes. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/wikileaks_latest/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/wikileaks_latest/

by mrb 12y ago

inoop 12y ago

From your link: > PayPal, in contrast, handles around 10 million transactions per day for an average of 115 tps.

cgjaro 12y ago
As the OP corrected, it's Western Union that does 10 tps. But even 100 tps would be easily within reach if the block size is bumped to 20MB, which is not that crazy.

andrea_s 12y ago

Isn't WU a not-so-relevant service that's mostly used by scammers? I'm not from the US, and I've always heard of it in such terms...

theklub 12y ago
Pretty much, although in some areas its used more legitimately than others.
IkmoIkmo 12y ago
That, and one of the biggest facilitators of remittance, a significant source of income for some of the poorest people on the planet. That may not be very relevant in SV, but they affect a lot of lives positively. At the same time, they charge exorbitant fees, and remittance fees are stuck at around 10%. I'm looking forward to the day they're as redundant as an expensive long-distance phone call is made redundant, which is possible when you have native digital money like we have digital mail or telephony. Bitcoin to me is the most compelling proposal for this to this date.

downandout 12y ago

> Thirdly, Bitcoin has done 6 years in a row what critics have always said it cannot do The one thing that hasn't changed a great deal is accessibility to them. When buying, you are either subject to waiting periods, or have to conduct the transaction in cash in person. No one in their right mind will take credit cards or PayPal for them. I believe this is the major hurdle to adoption of crypto by the mainstream public. Writing tools to make BTC easy to work with is the easy part. Until they can be bought at Walmart or your local check cashing store, it's going to be a fairly rough road for new adoption.

obi-nine 12y ago
Circle takes credit cards for them.
jmonegro 12y ago
Coinbase does
- downandout 12y ago
  Not without a several day delay.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jordigh 12y ago
> The one thing that hasn't changed a great deal is accessibility to them. Just acquire them like you likely acquire any other currency: accept it in exchange for your labour or the goods you have to sell. That's what I do, for online math tutoring. It's just some pocket change on the side for me right now, but it's helped me buy a few Christmas gifts already.
chm 12y ago
In Canada I can pay by debit, called an Interac eTransfer. Check out Vault of Satoshi. The funds are allocated in about an hour.
12y ago

hnnewguy 12y ago

>So you need to sit back and start thinking why is it that Bitcoin keeps growing and reaching milestone after milestone Because it has the support of a vocal, passionate, educated community of tech people, some with a monetary stake in having it succeed, combined with the hide-in-a-bunker, sky-is-falling crowd, still feeling the effects of the financial crash.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jedunnigan 12y ago

People like to quote the scalability page and claim that Bitcoin will have no problem scaling, but I don't think they really understand what Bitcoin will look like at scale. No one is saying that it _can't_ handle howevermany txs / second. But do you want it to? That is the real question. Right now the network has <7000 nodes, a number that has dropped from almost 30K in the past few years. [0] The blockchain is <30GB and a node can expect to handle ~15GB/day of bandwidth. [1] You will also need at least a gig of RAM, preferably more. The UTXO is 500MB (which needs to be stored in memory). So what we know is that despite the relatively low requirements of running a node, we are bleeding them faster than we can get new ones. People claim that storage space and bandwidth getting cheaper will solve the problem. Given past performance of the node landscape, that statement does not hold weight. So what are the consequences of all this? Well, the node landscape will centralize very quickly as the bandwidth and storage requirements far outpace what most would be willing to provide the network gratis. Universities and large payment processors will be the only ones who can afford to run full (archival) nodes. Pruning and all that will help, sure. But in order for Bitcoin to remain true to its decentralized roots, a distributed node landscape is vital. If everyone isn't validating everyone else's transactions we have a big problem (imo, of course). [0]https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/ [1]http://statoshi.info/#/ http://statoshi.info/#/

cgjaro 12y ago
Yes we want it to scale, even if it means full nodes run only by large organizations. The benefits of decentralization would be very real and tangible even if only, say, 1000 organizations (companies, universities, etc) were able to host and operate Bitcoin nodes. This would still make Bitcoin clearly decentralized compared to a single company (like MasterCard) processing all your CC transactions. For example Mastercard decided of their own accord to block CC donations to Wikileaks [1] but one of these 1000 hypothetical organizations running full nodes would be unable to do such a thing and block specific transactions. The number of full nodes decreased in large part because in the early history of Bitcoin in late 2010 or early 2011 your only option to have a secure wallet or to mine reliably was to run a full node locally. But nowadays there are many alternative lightweight clients using the SPV protocol, and a lot of reliable mining pools (it was in mid-2011 that pools started mining more coins than solo miners running full nodes). So of course many users stopped running full nodes. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/wikileaks_latest/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/wikileaks_latest/