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The venom on HN regarding anything to do with bitcoin is surprising and rather sad. The guy is trying to do something new and innovative (what are you doing?),
by yc1010 11y ago
The venom on HN regarding anything to do with bitcoin is surprising and rather sad.
The guy is trying to do something new and innovative (what are you doing?), it might fail or it might be a success, you think a poster on a forum frequented by geeks and entrepreneurs would understand this.
As for Overstock it is nice to see competition in a space dominated by the Ebay/Amazon duopoly.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y agoBitcoin was so ridiculously overhyped, the backlash is natural. "Call me when is scales," is my take on cryptocurrency. 3 transactions per second is laughable. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of energy intentionally wasted per year for that? It just seems to lack promise.
- kordless 11y agoYour comment makes it clear you haven't read how the system works. Seriously, read up on how it works, try to understand it, and then come back here and post about it. The limitations you are trying to point out are actually due to the use of desktops instead of high speed servers for nodes. The comment about mining has zero to do with transaction speed, so that means you are wrong in your assumptions (as most are on here, unfortunately). Again, try to read and understand the technology before you post about it. It's important from an infrastructure standpoint. And yes, it was overhyped by a bunch of morons. Fortunately for all of us, ad hominem arguments are bullshit.
- qopp 11y agoIt can scale: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability
- mpyne 11y agoThe 3 trans/per second limit is an inherent limit in the protocol right now. Fixing that is being discussed but will require a fork (and has already lead to a lot of religious warfare). Even after the fork, the requirements of supporting humongous blocks just to support more than 3 transactions per second will lead to even more centralization of Bitcoin than what's already happened, as full nodes are forced to move onto server-grade hardware instead of an actual decentralized swarm. You don't trust the USG? Great! But now you have to trust China and GHash.io instead, it's been years since Bitcoin has actually been "decentralized" in any meaningful sense. But even with the low current block size, money supply inflation, and plummeting Bitcoin price, the network has still failed to scale as judged by the only thing that matters: Cost per transaction is still $10, and it would be even more expensive if Bitcoin price ever went back up! https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction
- grubles 11y agoKeep in mind that the cost-per-transaction is the total value of the block reward of a block (currently 25 BTC + fees) divided by the number of transactions confirmed on the network in that block.
- mpyne 11y agoOh, I'm quite aware. So are the miners, and so are the Bitcoin core developers, who are increasingly starting to think that Bitcoin will never be able to shift completely over to miners' fees as a way of funding the Bitcoin network, and that the existing block reward subsidy (read: money supply inflation) might have to continue instead of being phased out the way Satoshi had envisioned.
- petertodd 11y agoI really need to get around to fixing that page... it doesn't represent how the majority of devs think Bitcoin will scale. It's basically just saying "throw enough computing power at the problem and we'll be ok", which is very much not what scaling is about - it's not unlike saying bubble sort scales because of Moore's law.
- grubles 11y ago>I really need to get around to fixing that page... Someone does. I tried bugging Luke-jr to start commenting here (as in HN in general), but received no reply. I rarely see bitcoin core developers commenting on HN.
- CyberDildonics 11y agoEmail is so ridiculously overhyped, the backlash is natural. "Call me when it scales," is my take on the internet. 2400 bps is laughable. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of energy intentionally wasted per year for that? It just seems to lack promise.
- sanswork 11y agoDo you really believe hundreds of millions of dollars a year was spent on electricity to keep mail servers running in the 80s or are you just trying to make the Bitcoin = early email argument in a really bad way?
- CyberDildonics 11y agoDo you really believe hundreds of millions of dollars of electricity has been spent on bitcoin mining?
- grubles 11y agoHave you heard of Lightning[0]? [0]https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/
- ThomPete 11y agoSounds like a discussion about the TCP/IP protocol.
- mpyne 11y agoPeople were pointing out back then that TCP/IP's deliberate inefficiencies consumed the electrical output of entire countries? Somehow I neither remember that, nor remember ever reading of it.
- ThomPete 11y agoIt was an analogy, not sure whats up with the snarky remark.
- mpyne 11y agoAnalogies, to be useful, should reveal internal consistencies between the things being related by analogy. If there are no consistencies between the items in the analogy then the analogy is worse than useless.
- ThomPete 11y agoThe analogy was the sentiment around the internet and the underlying technology to support it. It's just a matter of doing a little research to find all the naysayers.
- anigbrowl 11y agoHe's not attacking Bitcoin, but pointing out that Byrne is not an ideal proponent, as many people consider him to be a bit paranoid, making more dramatic allegations than he can supply evidence for. One can support his actions and opinions while simultaneously recognizing that many people view his leadership with skepticism.
- RemoteWorker 11y agoEver heard of astroturfing/cyber shills/paid trolls? On top of that, you have people who suffer of cognitive dissonance every time they hear about Bitcoin and what it fixes. They are too mentally and economically invested in the status quo. To make things worse, most people don't even know what cryptography is. Explaining Bitcoin is hard.