Add in transaction fees of several dollars each and the idea of buying a pizza with bitcoin becomes pure fantasy.
Because of this threat fiat printing will be never get to the point that BTC is a good store of value. It has been a huge success at what Satoshi was railing against, but will be a huge failure for the Michael Saylors of the world.
I have no idea if Bitcoin will ultimately be successful, but it is telling to look at the powerful people who are the most vocal against it.
You ignore the obvious for some farfetch conspiracy
The first step is realizing that the central bank fiat systems are designed to be corrupted for the benefit of the people issuing the currency and their associates. Bitcoin may or may not successfully counter that, and Bitcoin may not necessarily be less corrupt.
Weren't much the same things said about gold pre-Bitcoin?
Bitcoin has failed for on-chain payments as described in this article, this paper [0] and it's own white-paper.
[0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/aba062
But over the past few weeks I've become really unsettled as I've dug into the history of bitcoin that I missed - the 2013-2017 Era say, when bitcoin really did fail at its core goal of being a currency. It has undeniably failed. That isn't to say it isn't finding a new use - but the whole ecosystem is missing that core currency use case. We're sort of seeing attempts at it with lightning network and stablecoins - but these are toys.
All this to say, I agree with you, and I'm horrified that people will ignore and write off the experience and history offered by people who were there so they can jump on the latest fad - in this case a polarized bitcoin good/bad opinion.
The only thing that has failed is the detractors complaints, meanwhile actual things have happened in the world.
Anyone can run a LN node; you are free to open channels and interact with the network without any centralized controller. For any definition of centralized I know (say, 1 big api provider, or a collection of PoS stake nodes), this does not apply to LN.
There is no censorship possible in this construction — indeed the peers routing the payments don’t even know the originator, just liquidity levels between their channels. Analogous to onion routing — how can a peer censor a circuit if they don’t know the originating and destination endpoints?
Calling Lightning centralized is something an ignorant precoiner would say. Really, rvz doesn’t know what they are talking about.
And somehow you do? Assuming you have read both the paper I linked to and this article? I know it's difficult to read the cold hard truth and evidence on what the Lightning Network has become and will tend towards to in the future via the analysis and inspection. But of course, why would anyone expect someone who calls themselves 'randomhodler' or a Bitcoin maximalist to understand that? Since to them, anyone critiquing anything related to 'Bitcoin' will be like attacking their identity, investment and the technology all in one?
So somehow according to you, it is not 'centralized by design' as the paper has clearly demonstrated, and Bitcoin has somehow 'succeeded' in on-chain peer-to-peer electronic payments as described in the white-paper, due to the Lightning Network which that is an off-chain L2 solution and doesn't directly use the blockchain?
The problem with using anecdotes is that it is not evidence or a concrete refutation against the paper. "I can run one myself" isn't the point. The actual reality has been outlined by the paper on what happens when the Lightning Network grows and it leads towards inevitable centralization of these hubs with the most liquidity (take a guess who runs those hubs) - creating a worse version of the current traditional system without directly using the blockchain for on-chain payments with a volatile ' store of value' as a 'currency' and altogether contradicting the point of Bitcoin.
The whole point of it is to be used for on-chain payments, a digital currency and a P2P electronic cash system and it is evident that in El Salvador, the paper I linked and the inevitability of the LN have clearly demonstrated that this experiment has failed in all of that.
If that's not a failure, then I don't know what is.
I don’t disagree with their conclusions, however I don’t think it follows with your conclusions. Nor do they really matter today. For one, they don’t actually have the visibility into the transaction volumes, just aggregate channels, so their analysis is limited to distribution of value — analogous to blockchain analysis that only looks at output balances and their associated other outputs. Additionally, this space moves fast and any cryptocurrency data from 2018 is of less value post 2020.
If we are arguing that decentralization of value is removed from peer to peer cryptocurrencies, I think this technology cannot deliver, indeed this is a socioeconomic issue rather than the technology. Of course the Gini coefficient is going to model the society that produces this tech, especially today.
What is your criteria of failure here? You absolutely love saying “Bitcoin has failed” or “Lightning network has failed”, but at what? For some socioeconomic centralization of value metric? Ok cool but that’s not what Bitcoiners are getting at.
I think you believe that the technology did not live up to its promises. I don’t agree, but I can see how one could feel that way. Now, I ask you, what is the alternative? It’s all well and good to deny existing technology as achieving its goal, but what should we do instead? If you think blockchain as a construction cannot remain decentralized in the face of spam bots and worldwide tx load, what are our alternatives that could possibly lead to this optimistic decentralized solutions?
Both rvz and I have been really clear about the failure
rvz: > Bitcoin has failed for on-chain payments as described in this article, this paper [0] and it's own white-paper.
Me: > bitcoin really did fail at its core goal of being a currency.
As I went on to say, the failure at being a currency doesn't preclude it finding success at something else (and its price suggests its finding it).
1) BTC - PoW 2) ETH - PoW (but the Beacon chain PoS merge seems to be going well) 3) BNB - PoS-like 4) XRP - PoS 5) SOL - PoS
So of the top five really only BTC & ETH are PoW and soon it will just be BTC.
That's because "pure" PoS is a pipe dream. For PoS to work the network needs to start with PoW or a pre-sale (ETH did both). Staking 0 value tokens doesn't work. PoW is the most efficient method to convert raw energy to a digital and secure token. The value off all BTC in existence === all energy spent since the genesis block
All PoW miners are rational actors that choose to spend energy to secure the network. We can and should push that the energy is generated cleanly and renewably, thus pushing clean energy further as there is a clear incentive for use, regardless of external load or demand.
Don't attribute to stupidity what can be explained by malice.
Only litecoin and Dogecoin are cheaper in the top 25. Yeah ok polygon is the cheapest ($<0.01) if you include EVM chains but the rest of them are much more expensive ($1tx+).
2. PoW is security. Rather than crusade against “work”, maybe we should be crusading against fossil fuels?
Because that will only work as soon as we reached full saturation of renewable energy production and consumption.
Otherwise it will always be more lucrative to consume the renewable through Bitcoin than using it for everything else.
A EV car fuel consumption would need to cost more than what Bitcoin can make. A very unhealthy relationship Bitcoin has on consuming energy.
The only real possibility is creating a Bitcoin heater system but most of the time I see Bitcoin mines I'm seeing also AC's which increases the energy consumption even further.
And no, the demand for renewable from Bitcoin will not mean we will create and invest more money into renewable energy overall with a net positive it will only add to more Bitcoin mining.
My take on what you are saying is that you deem other uses of energy more appropriate — “you can’t use it that way! You must use it in this way”. Ultimately it is market forces that determine if using energy for a particular purpose. If there are no pollution externalities to add complexity, it is up to whomever is paying the bill on what they want to spend it on.
I appreciate that some miners will find it rational to use their entire renewable power to mine Bitcoin; and that is ok. Not everyone wants to mine. For some, the utility of an EV is greater than that of mining, and so just looking at a energy/cost ratio ignores demand and utility.
Additionally, the PoW paradigm was invented, and exists today, and there is not a lot one can do to stop it. From 2009 onwards, humanity has decided to dedicate some percentage of global energy output and to the purposes of maintaining ledger security. I have always said this is a good thing, and if you have a problem with this, complaining about it achieves nothing.
And it's not just me who thinks 'other' uses are more critical: even you prefer light over bitcoins. You probably prefer goods and services also higher than Bitcoin hashes.
And in a world hurt by co2, everyone who has to suffer the consequences from climate change would also tell you what they think if they knew and could tell you.
You better not own a clothes drier or a set of Christmas tree lights (2 things that use more energy globally than Bitcoin) because in a world hurt by co2, everyone has to suffer the consequence from climate change.
I have not mentioned IF I think those use cases are less or more bad than Bitcoin. Your argument becomes irrelevant when I say 'yes! Good point let us also stop doing Christmas lights etc.
Independent of this, I even have the feeling that I read the exact example before on hn.
But just for the fun of it: yes we need to do much much more. It would be a good way to list the biggest energy consumers and rank them based on alhow helpful they are for the whole world and how critical.
Bitcoin would be below plenty of things.
Anyway I can and will continue to advocate against Bitcoin as it consumes terrawatts of energy, has very little benefit to the rest of the world and people try to play this issue down by putting weird renewable arguments out there which are just lie's.
We need to push back. Most of us are getting hurt by Bitcoin. Either to additional climate change, speculation/gambling or by hardware supply issues.
I bet 99% people here paid for Bitcoin more than they made through it. The higher GPU price, higher taxes through climate changehigher utility costs.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
Don't forget that bitcoin still has the throughput of a dialup modem.
https://mempool.space is a better indication of cost. I only ever pay 1sat/vbyte (min cost) myself, and have for years. I am able to wait a few hours to get such low fees if required. Real time payments are to be done via Lightning network. The network is reasonable congested today so the high priority tx is 12sat/vbyte or 67 cents.
That “dial up modem” seems fine. We can look at incremental changes if the need arises. It doesn’t today.
Real time payments are to be done via Lightning network
Real time between two people on the exact same tiny side chain with no one else on it. This is not the same as people sending a transaction to each other on the actual bitcoin chain.
The network is reasonable congested today
You can see in the chart I linked that it is not.
That “dial up modem” seems fine. We can look at incremental changes if the need arises. It doesn’t today.
It is not fine. That's why transaction fees have spiked in the past, that's cheap transactions no longer exist, that's why there is an awkward second layer that few use and no one wants.
It has been 12 years and every other currency has proved that restricting a chain to a few kilobytes per second is ridiculous.
What are you advocating? 10MB Bitcoin blocks? When did you last use Bitcoin?
LN is the fastest growing cryptocurrency network by nodes. Lots of people are using it. I know it doesn’t fit the big block Bcasher story, but we stopped listening to those fools in 2017.
I'm showing you what people are paying. It's the truth, nothing more.
10MB Bitcoin blocks
That would be about 16KB/s
LN is the fastest growing cryptocurrency network by nodes. Lots of people are using it.
The difference is that I backed up what I said with real information.
I know it doesn’t fit the big block Bcasher story, but we stopped listening to those fools in 2017.
Every cryptocurrency has more throughput than bitcoin. There is no reason not to. You can throw around labels and propaganda nonsense, but there is no technical reason to restrict a cryptocurrency to the throughput of a 28.8 modem. It destroys all the reasons for a cryptocurrency to exist in the first place.
The real question is why someone would use an awkward second layer that completely fragments who you can send and receive from when every other cryptocurrency works without it because they aren't limited to 1 KB/s. An office laser printer can print characters on paper at a higher throughput than 1 KB/s.
It is a bizarre and absurd world where a currency that is supposed to work for everyone pragmatically allows everyone in the world a single transaction for their entire lifetime.
There are many technical reasons for constraints like block size, block time, tx complexity, etc. most of these are for an availability or reliability metric. It is really important that low powered hardware can run a node if it is to be universal.
So far unbounded solutions have presented fragile constructions on unproven math; low reliability with multiple hours long outages; very high compute and storage requirements for node hosting.
We use a so called awkward second layer because we have realized that maybe not every tx needs to be recorded for all eternity for all to see in a data structure. Lightning provides a similar value exchange of satoshi like BTC mainnet txs, with better privacy and lower fees.
Why would nodes need to be low powered and how lower powered do you think they need to be? A $35 raspberry pi with an SD card or a $10/month VPS can run a node, even though these nodes don't really matter. This is propaganda that has no technical merit. You are repeating the same nonsense that gets repeated for the last 8 years, but never with any technical details, reasoning or explanation. This assertion is as deep as it goes.
So far unbounded solutions have presented fragile constructions on unproven math; low reliability with multiple hours long outages; very high compute and storage requirements for node hosting.
I have no idea what you are talking about here since you gave no examples, details, numbers or real information of any kind. Every cryptocurrency besides bitcoin has more throughput. Ethereum, doge coin, lite coin, bitcoin cash and many others. Bitcoin is the only one that is artificially constrained to a pathetic trickle of data. Who would attach themselves to something that can't scale? If I give you an address, you can't send to it through the lightning network. Why use a side chain when you can just use a chain that actually works?
If they are printing money I'd love to know how.