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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

I'm unfamiliar with L1 and L2 as presented here. Do these both refer to the Bitcoin blockchain?

If so, no. I strongly predict Bitcoin, both the blockchain and the currency will nearly, if not fully, "die," as the Model T and grey phone have. Ethereum is already much better at it's core, and it's not hard to think even Ethereum will be improved upon.

In the long run, literally all bitcoin has is history and name recognition. Like the Model T, you will see it revered like something in a museum, and also just about nobody will actually use it.

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> Ethereum is already much better at it's core

What you and many others seem to overlook is first mover advantage, network effects and most important: trust. Bitcoin is not Yahoo or Facebook, it is not a company product which has to improve and break things all the time.

In the long run Bitcoin is a store of value. That requires trust, which takes time. To gain trust over time it has to move slow and steady because there can be no mistakes.

When it comes to money and trust it is almost impossible to get a second chance (see Terra UST). Just one mistake could result in everyone distrusting Bitcoin.

What I think others overlook is that in practice (and despite what the retconners are trying to say about bitcoin is gold or some nonsense) -- is that Bitcoin was NOT designed to be a blockchain platform. It was designed to be fungible currency. And it's an excellent proof-of-concept...but with severe flaws that will kill it, especially in light of the fact that we're talking about *open source software, which begs to be forked, and effectively has been.

Your argument strikes me as very odd -- you seem to suggest that nothing can beat Bitcoin in theory, but Ethereum is already beating it in practice.

> Your argument strikes me as very odd -- you seem to suggest that nothing can beat Bitcoin in theory, but Ethereum is already beating it in practice.

In theory everything is possible. I do not follow the beating really. They can both exist with different use cases.

Bitcoin wants to be digital gold (and money) and Ethereum wants to be a smart contract world computer running dapps. They solve different problems.

But Ethereum is a technically superior option for both cases. It does what Bitcoin can't do, but it also does what Bitcoin does better, and has a roadmap to improvement beyond that. Bitcoin is still wildly slow and destroys the environment, and Ethereum is on track to mostly not do that, to say nothing of "post-Eth" projects like Pulsechain.

Now, I'm sure Bitcoin will enjoy name recognition for some time, but in my experience, always bet on the tech.

Bitcoin slow? I make virtually free, instant, micro-payments on Bitcoin hundreds of times every day (Podcasting 2.0). I also accept Bitcoin payments on my e-commerce site that settle instantly for fractions of a percent in fees. I also route hundreds of Bitcoin payments per day using a raspberry pi which draws an extremely low amount of energy. Not sure which "reality" you're referring to...

Man, your use case is one I hope I'm wrong about. I love the idea of microtransactions and tipping and such. But, I never much paid attention to Lightning given that the BTC price didn't really move when it came out, which strongly suggested to me that not enough people really cared.

It's impossible to consider Bitcoin without considering lightning. Two sides of the same coin. It's still early in its adoption curve for sure, but it has been gaining traction.

- Twitter uses lightning for its tipping mechanism

- The Podcasting 2.0 standard is all lightning based

- NCR is integrating lightning

- Blackhawk is integrating lightning

- Kraken has enabled lightning

- Robinhood is integrating lightning

- Square/block is investing heavily into lightning development and enablement

I'm probably missing some big ones...

I'd suggest doing more research before commenting about things you don't understand. Layered Money by Nik Bhatia would be a good place to start.

The concept of layered system design, especially in money and technology, is not new.

Ethereum is an inherently flawed system.

I'd suggest providing actual ideas, or better yet practice, instead of reading assignments?

The reason I know more about Ethereum than Layered Bitcoin stuff is that that is what more people (myself included) are actually using today to do cutting-edge stuff on.

Moreover, it's pretty easy to first-principle your way into why it's probably better; layered Bitcoin saddles you with a particular kind of technical debt -- you're literally trying to hack Bitcoin into something it wasn't intended for, and the Bitcoin code is of course mostly immutable. Ethereum, on the other hand,is built for it.

Sure, all software has problems, but a car built from the ground up is likely going to be better than a Model-T with addons.

(edit)

Bahaha, I checked out the guys book. He's a Bitcoin Maxi who apparently quotes -- Nassim Taleb aka the guy who thinks that BTC will go to zero. Not looking like a worthwhile thing.

Calling Lightning a "hack" is like calling TCP a hack of IP. First principles of protocol design literally dictate layered modular stacks.

Actual ideas:

Bitcoin is layer 1 of the internet of value. It only needs to be secure, decentralized, and stable. It has one job; enforce digital property rights while maintaining the above characteristics (Think the internet layer: IP)

Layer 2 (lightning, liquid, etc) build on top of the secure, decentralized, stable foundation of L1 Bitcoin and create standards/protocols for application/user comms (think the transportation layer: TCP, UDP)

Layer 3 (Strike, TBD, Sphinx, CashApp, etc) applications to fulfill specific use cases built on top of layer 2 (think the application layer: all the things you do on the internet)

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