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Comment by easuter | Hacker News Reader

Haha! I'll take bitcoin seriously once it can actually process a useful number of transactions without choking.

It does now. 30 minutes is much better than a day for bank transfer.

He's probably referring to the current maximum transaction rate due to 1MB block size limit. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Maximum_transaction_rate

Those will be addressed with Lighting Network [0]. ATM there are ~4 implementations of the concept. None is complete/mature yet.

[0] - http://lightning.network/

And they're all vaporware as far as I'm concerned until they're actually widely adopted and actually work as advertised.

Yep this is what I'm referring to. And an 8 MB block size still won't resolve the problem.

It's really tiring to see bitcoin promoted as some sort of second-coming-of-Christ when all evidence points to it being nothing more than an interesting experiment.

If current transaction rate is enough for practical purpose of actually using Bitcoin for commercial transactions (I do use it, and it works), then everything's fine as of now.

When it won't be enough, Lightning network will be adapted, as there will be a need for it. Premature scaling is the root of all evil. :)

Typically ~seconds in the UK with Faster Payments (which is generally up to £10,000)

Technically, Faster Payments can handle payments of up to £250,000 (and there are plans to raise that to £1m) but the individual banks place their own limits on the maximum amount they'll accept: http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk/about-us/transaction-limits

> Faster Payments Scheme Limited (FPSL) is (private) company

It's like saying that banks allow you to send money instantly, because you can just give cash to your friend by hand.

Except it's not, as I'm just initiating a normal online payment through my online banking, and the recipient receives it (usually) close to instantly.

Giving cash to a friend still requires me to withdraw the cash from an ATM, pass it to the friend, who then needs to deposit it using a deposit ATM or visit his branch.

One involves a few clicks on your online banking website, the other requires a much longer process. The backend company isn't really relevant, what is relevant is that 'Faster Payments' has been used as a marketing term for 'near instant bank transfers' that transparently use FPSL as a backend.

Not at all equivalent.

This is exactly an equivalent of Lightning network for bank transfers.

> 30 minutes is much better than a day for bank transfer.

Not when it's someone malicious exfiltrating your money.

How so? Security of my Bitcoins is my responsibility. Same as keeping my banking credentials safe.

You have to do everything right, 100% of the time. The bad guys only need a single lucky break. Even the exchanges, whose multi-million dollar businesses depend on it and who have full time devs working on it, managed to get compromised quite a bit.

With the banking system, you generally have some recourse - they're legally responsible for refunding you in some cases, they're able to cancel or claw back transactions in some cases, etc.

TL;DR: It's nice not to be totally fucked for a small mistake.

If I lose my wallet with my 2FA bank access token _and_ my password together, will the bank be responsible? No.

The problem with Bitcoin is that you are your own bank. Implementing personal bank-level security is hard. There is no tech support to call and no authority except your own.

And if you are not confident enough to set up your own security, you can store your money in external wallet, like Coinbase. They will be your bank. Just like IRL!

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