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Comment by hanniabu | Hacker News Reader

Yes, there is a gap, but that will be closing quickly. What I hate to see is people using this gap as a reason against crypto/ blockchain as if every new technology is ideally perfect and meets every demand. This is the type of mindset that would have prevented us from having computers, laptops, and cell phones because computers the size of record courts don't make sense, computers take too much energy to be portable, and nobody wants to carry around a suitcase all day to make a phone call.

It's all part of technological maturation.

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> Yes, there is a gap, but that will be closing quickly.

Bitcoin is more than 10 years old. That is almost as old as 1st generation iPhones. How much longer do we have to wait to fix these deeply fundamental flaws in the stack?

> It's all part of technological maturation.

An alternative interpretation might be that Bitcoin is fundamentally broken and isn't a useable technology.

Bitcoin is 10 years old and may or may not be broken depending on the end use case, but that isn't the only crypto/ blockchain project. For you to center the conversation around those arguments shows you're not very informed on the topic.

A lot of developmental progress in the ecosystem with models/architectures, tools, and infrastructure hasn't happened until recently (past year, give or take).

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, but would love some feedback.

I didn't downvote but the tone here is pretty patronizing:

>For you to center the conversation around those arguments shows you're not very informed on the topic.

The "it's too complicated for you to understand" tact is a tired, overly-used canned response from cryptocurrency evangelists, who seek (intentionally or not) to derail discussions about very real issues.

I can see that, but at the same time I'm tired of people (intentionally or not) using Bitcoin as a representation of the entire ecosystem.

> For you to center the conversation around those arguments shows you're not very informed on the topic.

I've been following Bitcoin for almost its entire life and am probably vastly more informed than most of the shysters who show up on sites like HN to shill their coin.

> A lot of developmental progress in the ecosystem with models/architectures, tools, and infrastructure hasn't happened until recently (past year, give or take).

I've heard this line forever. Lightning network, for example, has been "just around around the corner" since forever. So far, it is still just as "just around the corner" as it was 5 or 6 years ago and ranks among the top all-time vaporware software projects out there.

The attempt to refocus on "The Blockchain" is only done to distract from the fact that Bitcoin, poster child of "The Blockchain" has no lawful use. It doesn't scale, it isn't free, it isn't trustless, it isn't censorship resistant, it isn't a good store of value, it isn't instant and it isn't anonymous. It isn't even deflationary (as if that is a good thing) because it has been forked and cloned thousands of times. Oh yeah, it also requires more energy than small nations to secure. (And don't feed me the line about it being "green energy" or "less than conventional banking"–we both know that is a laugably horseshit argument)

The whole space is a joke. Aside from self-driving cars, Bitcoin will be the biggest overhyped pile of complete nonsense this decade.

> So far, it is still just as "just around the corner" as it was 5 or 6 years ago and ranks among the top all-time vaporware software projects out there.

The paper was released April 2015. Progress is definitely slower than I'd like, but wanted to correct this claim.

[ Disclaimer: lightning developer and specification guide ]

Lightning was talked about before the release of the whitepaper, along with a number of other side-chains, off-chains, etc. None of have really been the magic bullet they claimed to be.

Again, I'm not talking about Bitcoin. There are many other projects in the ecosystem. It's like using shortcomings with Windows to represent Linux,mac, and any other OS that's out there.

Bitcoin is yesterday but look at Ethereum. You can now trade dollar backed tokens issued by fully regulated banks for the cost of an Ethereum transaction. This lets you use smart contracts backed by US dollars, or write contracts to trade US dollars for other currencies. The writing is on the wall, more regulated tokens are on the way. Public stocks to municipal bonds. Why wouldn't people want to cut out the middle man?

If these tokens are truly regulated by the state and the ledger is editable by the courts, then there's nothing decentralized about it and it provides no advantages over the current system. All of this talk about decentralization and cutting out the middleman is a mirage.

Decentralized isn’t a binary. The courts can’t edit the blockchain but a federation of private keys can. It still allows an alternative to transferring money without Visa or PayPal.

If the courts cannot control it then they will not recognize it as a source of truth. It's very binary.

> Why wouldn't people want to cut out the middle man?

Who exactly am I cutting out when I'm trading USD-backed currency via a smart contract owned by a company?

How will the gap be closing quickly?

Computers the size of tennis courts made a lot of sense when those were the fastest, cheapest way of calculating ballistics tables.

The ecosystem is gathering a lot of contributors and researchers. A lot of the issues revolving around tools, infrastructure, scaling, security, user experience have various solutions in development, which are expected to come to fruition in (roughly) the next 2 years.

Those are merely wishes, not rational expectations based on a realistic engineering schedule.

This is considering realistic scheduling. If following marketing roadmaps these items would have either already been done or will be done in 2019.

I didn’t know marketing roadmaps were considered realistic scheduling :D

They're not and that's my point. Id following these publicized roadmaps then these items would be either completed already or completed next year. Realistically they'll be completed in roughly the next 2 years.

> A lot of the issues revolving around tools, infrastructure, scaling, security, user experience have various solutions in development, which are expected to come to fruition in (roughly) the next 2 years.

This line has been the standard party line in Bitcoin land since time began. Everything about bitcoin is "just around the corner".

All of your talk is a thin veil around the hidden message: "don't sell your Bitcoin or it will crater the value of my stash!" and of course layered under that message is "buy my Bitcoin!!!!".

I've mentioned in a another comment this isn't about Bitcoin and that the ecosystem is much larger than that with other developments.

What ecosystem? What developments? What use case?

Again, its been like 10+ years now of 'cryptocurrencies' and its failed to provide a use case apart from 'speculating' and getting yourself uninvited from family Christmas.

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