Bitcoin has shown it is uninterested in being anything but digital gold.
Etherium is more oriented towards transactions than Bitcoin.
In the longer term, the value of Blockchain will be in facilitating transactions. In this, it's 100% analogous to the Internet. The current crop of blockchain is dot.com, where we're still figuring things out. People will look back on it and think it quaint for analogous reasons. I think Harry Dent has a section in a book about this idea.
An even bigger explosion of value will be created with the next wave analogous to "Web 2.0." No more multi-day dead tree transactions for settling checks, equities, real estate transactions, etc...
Maybe Bitcoin is so much horrendously worse that makes what you said true but Ethereum is pretty terrible. Unless I’m missing something?
If I want to send .001 ETH (i.e. $1.81) from my MEW wallet to my Coinbase wallet, I am charged $7.388 in fees if I want it confirmed in three minutes. If I’m not in a hurry and pick the slowest option that goes down to the low low price of $6.133. To send $1.81 from me to myself. These are network fees, not Coinbase (who will then charges me fees again to either sell or transfer the money).
I love that there’s a link right on the transfer page of MEW that says, “Why are the fees so high?” that basically tells you it might get better someday but for now it’s how it is.
I’ve been using Crypto since you could mine BTC with a GPU but I still don’t get what the use case is outside of illicit purchases and “buy it because it goes up.” Maybe I’m stupid.
In my opinion bitcoin, by not taking scaling seriously, has declared it's self as only good for store of value, L1 bitcoin seems like it won't really become any more efficient and essentially all L2 systems require 2 tx on L1. Etherum will scale L1 a bit more with allows overfull blocks and then much more when PoS rolls out.
True. But once an L2 channel is anchored on L1 using those 2 L1 transactions it can support an unlimited number of L2 transactions, they take milliseconds to do, and an unlimited number can happen in parallel - all without any more L1 transactions.
L1's main use is to become the place L2 channels are created. Creating 7 entire channels per second sounds like it should be more than enough.
Those things don't really exist right now, though.
The US is moving from ACH to RTP for instant settlements, so the multi-day thing is gone.
Checks aren't processed in paper terms, they're scanned and converted to ACH transactions - and soon RTP.
Equities are instant and electronic.
Real estate transactions are legal transactions, and for the once every 5 years you need to get a title company to record the deed is that really a big deal? The real burden isn't the title recording.
There's absolutely no reason any of these things have to be achieved with a blockchain. There's absolutely no reason to think any of these things would even be better achieved with a blockchain. It's not analogous to the internet because the internet was fundamentally more efficient than what came before it, not less.
You can agree on a transaction instantly on a web page. But the actual confirmed trade comes the day after.
Real estate transactions are legal transactions, and for the once every 5 years you need to get a title company to record the deed is that really a big deal?
My wife works in banking, and yes, the cumbersome and primitive nature of this stuff introduces delays and opportunities for miscommunication that make it kinda a big deal.
There's absolutely no reason any of these things have to be achieved with a blockchain. There's absolutely no reason to think any of these things would even be better achieved with a blockchain. It's not analogous to the internet because the internet was fundamentally more efficient than what came before it, not less.
Dude, you clearly don't have any clue about how primitive lots of transactions still are. I'm glad that progress has been made in checking, but it seems like you only know about that, and have no clue what happens with title companies, and what banks have to go through to deal with them.
Blockchain could clearly be better for that.
Does that matter? That's why we have loans.
> My wife works in banking, and yes, the cumbersome and primitive nature of this stuff introduces delays and opportunities for miscommunication that make it kinda a big deal.
Lucky thanks to trust and centralization it can be resolved instead of lost forever.
> Blockchain could clearly be better for that.
Lots of non-blockchain things could clearly be better for that, too. Since centralization and trust represents a massive optimization, a non-blockchain solution by definition can be more efficient.
Tremendously. Just as the Robinhood CEO and watch videos on the mechanics of why they did what they did. Then come back here and hang your head in shame.
Lucky thanks to trust and centralization it can be resolved instead of lost forever.
It's the centralized systems of disparate parties which causes this. You clearly don't know what you're talking about here.
I'm very familiar with that situation, lol, no need to get hyperbolic. A small tweak to liquidity requirements is all that's needed to rectify that. Not burning the whole system down.
This reads a lot like the engineering preoccupation with rewriting instead of refactoring because reading code is hard and writing it is easy.
> It's the centralized systems of disparate parties which causes this. You clearly don't know what you're talking about here.
No, I'm saying that decentralized systems leave no recourse to correct errors. SFYL. Centralized systems do.
When you speak with such hyperbole and unbridled, untempered enthusiasm it raises questions about your answers. Especially when the system you espouse has had no end of issues, of bigger magnitude, constantly. Robinhood just taking that opportunity to exit scam or shut down would have been "just another day" in crypto. At least Vlad didn't fly off to India to open an orphanage, fake his own death and tell everyone to get stuffed. The entire space is one step from collapse at all times haha.
None of that changes what I said: a non-blockchain solution that's new, clean and modern would do just as much good as a new blockchain solution. Possibly more. And definitely more efficiently. Why approach this from the solution domain instead of the problem domain?
That still makes it very relevant here. Bitcoin is the reserve, while Eth is the settlement layer.
I think that's a Bitcoin holder's fantasy. If you're already using one chain for settlements, why use an entirely separate and unrelated one as well? Ethereum can be both. Actually, almost any other cryptocurrency can be both. It's only (original, core) Bitcoin that is so badly crippled.
Many other things than Bitcoin also have finite supply.
Etherum is so much more than a settlement layer. In my opinion the biggest potential for bitcoin is to displace gold. It's only ~6x away from eclipsing gold's market cap. After that I think the growth story of it growing faster than index funds starts to get kind of tenuous.
Bitcoin's fees are currently worse than eth and their development direction is ... toxic ...
Bitcoin cash is currently what I expect to take the lead....though that could be quite a long time. 25-140 years....give or take.
This differs from other blockchains such as Ethereum, that try to build everything on L1. This is a problem, because it introduces a lot of risk and uncertainty on the base layer. Even on Ethereum, the most promising solutions seem to arrive on L2, making the premise of Ethereum rather pointless.