Overcomplicated and unnecessary considering that Bitcoin and lightning exist and are growing exponentially every month.
Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
Square is currently rolling out the ability for merchants to accept Bitcoin on their terminals.
If paid sites started accepting bitcoin, it would definitely spur wider adoption.
How much energy is the "right" amount?
How does that compare to the amount of energy used for paper and coin?
Can any amount be more than the "right" amount as long as the cost of the energy is willing borne by the entities conducting the transaction?
The proof of stake idea is like a ponzi scheme
I also know a guy who recently installed a dummy load in a thermal power plant which they switch on when they can’t give the power to the network due to overcapacity, as they can’t just switch off the plant willy nilly.
The point is, in a grid with lots of renewables in it not only there’s a lot of stray energy that can be captured, but a flexible load that can be switched on/off in milliseconds is actually hugely valuable if we’re to have stable grids.
They can be opened peer to peer, or hop between other channels, similar to dns routing
They are prefunded with a certain quantity of bitcoin that dictates the size of bitcoin that can move in that route at once - although smaller denominations can go through in rapid succession this just means more fees levied
All of this incentivizes a larger channel to be created by a well funded party, which can be coaxed into censoring transactions because they are a payment processor or institutional service. Likely an incumbent such as Visa joining the lightning network as a victim of LN’s own success.
There are some mitigations built in and actively developed. We are 8 years deep into Lightning.
lighting channels are expensive to open and close
as it stands, there already isn't enough block space for “mass adoption” users to all have their own single lightning channel
let alone several
lightning in its ultimate form will always be a hosted solution
and those with the acumen and willingness to pay to open and close channels (or perhaps use the L1 bitcoin) will be a separate class of people
(Because this is a textual medium, I need to state explicitly that I don’t ask that in an adversial way, just want to have a conversation!)
This is a feature for most crypto enthusiasts and a nightmare for anyone who is not capable of properly maintaining software systems or basic security
> What problems does Bitcoin bring along?
Not “is this tradeoff worth it?”
For a class of non technical people having the bank or credit card company in this case help them reverse charges when they’ve been scammed, and they are at risk of being scammed for a significant chunk of their resources.
I get why crypto enthusiasts like the irreversibility but the inability to understand why someone would want a protected system with an arbiter over it feels like the same energy I get from engineers who can’t fathom why anyone would choose the walled garden that comes with Apple products despite ample evidence for their popularity with the average joe
You could reimplement the traditional censorable banking system on top of bitcoin, where users never touch the asset, and instead interact with tokens/promises of money and transactions were reversible. Reversibility is not an inherent property of the medium of value it’s the property of the trustful model we’ve layered on top.
The difference is that normal people have access to uncensorable digital payment rails if they are motivated and accept the associated risks (the same they accept when performing cash transactions)
This is also not entirely true, to a minor extent law enforcement and the legal system can provide redress for scams. It helps to only do business with registered entities so you can at least take them to court/small claims.
Of course it is, since credit cards are a recent innovation if you are analyzing across historical time frames.
And even so, do you see most people preferring to pay in cash nowadays? Or debit card even? I’m not sure on debit vs cc usage rates but I’d for sure be surprised if cash was in use at a higher rate than cc
2. stability. Crypto is basically a meme stock and it's a mess trying to store currency within it. It's a full time job tracking its worth.
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong." - Scott Alexander [0]
I don't have an answer on how to address that, though. You need to have a very strong stance early on to prevent witchery so your communtiy adjusts accordingly. But decentralization, by its nature, has no way to moderate behavior outside of the core design of the tech.
Banking is sadly one of those few aspects where you need some centralization, in my eyes. That's why finance is regulated the hardest in any given society. You need trust above all else to keep and use a digital currency.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
Hell the whole reason why Steam got big is how FRICTIONLESS it made buying videogames.
Still people will go a long way for their porn fix so who knows?