Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is a revolution currency but bitcoin is a fairly inefficient payment network. The latter is a perfectly fine consequence of the former. If people turn this on its head and try to market bitcoin as a payment rail where the currency is an unfortunate requirement, it would be immediately out competed in the market by better payment systems which are fundamentally more scalable than the decentralized Bitcoin system or which don't require costly and unpredictable currency conversion.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/57zhd2/another_ridiculous_claim_from_lukejr_in_the/d8wb4hl

Yes, bitcoin is a near perfect currency on the on-chain settlement layer but very inneficient as payment network, since it can't scale on-network, therefore it will need offchain solutions like lightning network and such.

franky1 incoming in 5....4....3....2....1.....

I think, bitcoin is more of a crypto-asset than a crypto-currency. It lacks many properties a currency is supposed to have...

Who's franky1?

Decentralization (which allows for censorship resistance) has a cost.

I enjoy it as a crypto-asset (I like that name) much more so than a currency, and I've said that many times.  I hold it like I'd hold gold or silver.  I have yet to actually use it to buy something, and I have no desire to do so.

Aside from that, I'm glad other people are smarter than me and can make arguments like OP, of which I didn't understand a word.  :)

It's a mixture, it will be both after sidechains are introduced.



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=65837

You will meet him very soon, he always gets triggered when there is a hardfork/bitcoin scaling debate. And he will tell us why a 2mb hardfork is so great, that in 10 years the blockchain will be many terrabytes big so that no node will be able to run it, except centralized data centers.

well, yeah. it's a totally obvious statement. but that's the price you pay for bitcoin's unique qualities. no doubt it's gonna get slicker as the years go by but its very nature will always make database based solutions more efficient by an order of magnitude or two.

Excuse me. That is NOT my statement. It is made by nullc aka Gregory Maxwell, one of the longest contributor of Bitcoin Core software and CTO of BlockStream - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=11425

I do heard a lot of people complains about the inefficient as payment network, but for now most people are using it as investment and many people used it not only for as currency but they used it for many reason, some used it for gambling some used it for trading, so even though it has disadvantage in payment network but it also has a lot of advantage that keep bitcoin alive

The transaction times, meaning the confirmation times, are quite literally the only issue I have with Bitcoin right now, to be honest. Everything else works fine for the most part, and nothing else has to be changed. Getting quicker transaction times, though, kind of requires mucking about with the mining algorithms, which can prove to be detrimental very quickly.

According to Blockchain.info the estimated transaction volume over the last 24 hours was about 343,500 BTC, and the total mining revenue was 2000 BTC.  The cost of the Bitcoin payment system is about 0.6% of transaction volume.

Visa's yearly transaction volume is about $3300 billion, while its revenue is about $14 billion. The cost of the Visa network is about 0.4% of transaction volume.

Visa is currently more efficient than Bitcoin, but I expect that to change in the future.

Thats actually a really interesting point, and I don't think I've seen it brought up before.
Visa has had decades to improve its efficiency so Bitcoin isn't doing that bad IMO.

We do need to improve confirmation times if we want to move beyond being an online payment system.
The only (currently) acceptable option for using Bitcoin in person is to load it on a debit card etc,
which means you are relying on another service to enable your payments. The complication and fees make this really unattractive to most everyday users.

Seriously i'm a franky's fans.  :D he is very active users with good statement and suggestion.

That's right i agree with you. just like the confirmation and unable for using a zero transaction caused by the double spending are preventing the bitcoin could be a efficient payment network. and just hoping the LN will resolving the problem and making the bitcoin be the efficient currency in the future. but we need a lot of the developer are wanna making a new ideas for bitcoin. 8)

Bitcoin is still in its infancy stage and there's still room for improvement, including the transaction speeds. Give it a few more years and we might see improvement happening little by little. For now, we just have to deal with the slow transaction speeds and live with it while people are working on the technology.

Bitcoin is working fine for online payments the problem is in real life where it is not possible to wait more than 10 minutes on a supermarket for your transaction to be confirmed.I hope that lightning network or something similar will fix this issue in the future otherwise, we will have to move on another cryptocurrency(none of the existing ones is good enough to replace BTC imo) for our daily payments and we will keep Bitcoin as an asset only.

It is inefficient because also of all the energy used in proof of work. For now I am on the side of the smaller blocks + looking for off-chain transaction solutions. They must exhaust all possible avenues in finding a solution before the core developers make their own implementation of a hard fork.


Is franky1 a big blocker? I assumed he was neutral and was open to both sides of the argument.

by "realbitcoin" mentioning my name causes me to get involved. like a self fulfilling prophecy.
much like asling people to do an intentional split because the asker is afraid an intentional split will happen is also a self fulfilling prophecy.

anyway
i am open to both sides. i am not in the blockstream camp nor the classic camp. i am in the bitcoin consensus for everyone camp.
i just hold a sceptical mind about many things. not a utopian dream and not a dictatorial desire.

i have said that LN and sidechains have a place in the community. but people need to know the reality of what they are handling and that we should not be pushing for everyone to use offchain. even done subtly to pretend its not being done. especially when pushing false doomsdays.
doomsdays such as "that in 10 years the blockchain will be many terrabytes big so that no node will be able to run it, except centralized data centers." are false doomsdays made by blockstreamers to push their offchain agenda.

there is a balance. a compromise. and although some are presenting 8,6,32 proposals now..
i personally feel 2mb base 4mb weight is a good compromise everyone could agree with, and everyone gets what they want.. IF they put their political party ambitions aside.

forcing false doomsdays to coerce people offchain,(even done subtly) causes less people to want to become nodes(for security). less reason to want to become miners(for security). and turns bitcoin into a less secure system.
thus moving people to sidechains permanently the agenda. (much like "realbitcoins" rhetoric last year involving the altcoin NXT being bitcoin 2.0)

bitcoin needs to continue having an open and fair choice to continue doing onchain transactions for the immutable security. or offchain for the faster convenience.
there should not be an all or nothing debate.(though blockstreamers want all or nothing)

bitcoin is an open network that should have no barriers of entry and no dictatorship in central authority. this should not change.
by barrier of entry i mean. today sticking with 1mb blocks is a barrier to entry. jumping to obscene block sizes of "terrabytes" is a barrier of entry
thus a safe and workable compromise and agreement by the community is the best option to continue bitcoins ethos.

Bitcoin has always been a bit more on the inefficient side, but the transaction times are definitely one of the biggest issues facing the community today, alongside the block size debate. There will always be improvements that can be made, but there has to be an agreement on how these things should be changed.

But isn't it true to a point that the blockchain would be too large and that it will make it harder for people to run a node? The storage problem could be stored. But what about the bandwidth problem?


I also want to know your opinion what a Bitcoin hard fork would look like. I am afraid that it might happen just like what happened to Ethereum. The blockchain splits and now we have 2 chains competing against each other. Will it not slow down Bitcoin's adoption if this happens? I believe Roger Ver said something like if it happens then it happens, and he acted as if it was not a big deal.

If Bitcoin Unlimited "wins", what will happen to the core developers?

As of now,its the waiting time is the issue if you are paying for groceries and other stuff. I am satisfied paying it online and having some confirmations to wait. Bank clearing takes days to clear sometimes if you pay in check :) Hope more improvements will be done.

Visa is used as a example of a efficient payment network, but they have been around for 55 years. PayPal have been doing this for 18 years. Now, we want to compare Bitcoin that has been around for +/- 7 years with those kinds of payment options? Bitcoin are not funded like a corporate entity, it's network has been growing through decentralized contributions by the public and Open Source development through public participation governed by public consensus.

Let's leave Franky to discuss the merit of the scaling solutions being developed and how bigger blocks will solve the problems. ^smile^

this is where doomsday theories rather than rational thought comes in.
some want 4mb (core) some want more. some want onchain some want 100% use offchain. thats where compromises come in and finding the acceptable level.
this "terrabyte block" doomsday has been shot out the park last year. the current compromise is 2mb bas 4mb weight.
the everthing has to be offchain has been shot out the park. the current compromise is expand onchain and allow offchain for freedom of choice.
i dont know why anyone is talking about terrabytes, apart from the doomsdayers who want to twist the future to distract the present
i dont know why anyone is talking about only offchain will work, apart from the doomsdayers who want to twist the future to distract the present


there is misunderstandings and our misrepresenting of what a hard fork is.
ethereum was not a consensus hard fork it was a controversial fork.
ethereum bypassed consensus orphaning mechanism and literally banned communicating with nodes of different rules to avoid orphaning the minority. "--oppose-dao-fork"
it is actually Gmaxwell of blockstream that proposed that BU should split, rather than use the consensus mechanism which BU(ver) wants.

a consensus mechanism is what the community want to happen. rather than a dictatorial split.
consensus, everyone wins and everyone continues.
controversial, dictator wins and everyone else f**ks off

better to compare bitcoin now to visa 'XX' years ago and paypal 'X' years ago. (when thinking about user adoption)
then in a few years compare bitcoin then to visa 'TX' years ago and paypal 'T' years ago. (when thinking about user adoption)

trying to assume bitcoin has 1billion users right now is a flaw. and a rhetoric to push an agenda
much like trying to say cars should fly now, because in 50 years, x,y,z

bitcoin wont have 1billion users any time soon. so judgements today should be thinking about short term future. and revisit the judgement later when the reality of the future can be seen rationally. rather than 10-100 year hypotheticals, and doomsdays, which delay rational short term goals.

judgement should be made on reality and scope of logical and rational proposals that are not due purely to economics and politics. but rather bitcoins utility and security

I only see the benefits of using bitcoin as a payment network rather than seeing the negative only. and yes I am aware of the problems. but when it comes to choosing between using another payment processor like paypal, other online processor, a credit card, bank transfer and ... I will always choose bitcoin because it is decentralized, I wouldn't have to pay large fees and many more.

and yes bitcoin can not handle the large number of transactions because of the small block size issue but right now there is not much transactions to be left out (unconfirmed and waiting)

For now, it's inefficient because there is only a few establishement, website, etc. that accepts bitcoin as payment. I think Bitcoin has not yet been recognized by the majority of the world's population, and I feel that this is why most payments have not yet accepted bitcoin as a method of payment. But, if Bitcoin does ever get a major player to make use of it as a payment method, this would boost its popularity and usage.

For example, if bitcoin were implemented as a payment method of Amazon. For sure, Bitcoin will be recognized by the world and most probably will improve its usage and thus will now result in it becoming a standard payment method like Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. If that happens, Bitcoin will surely be a more efficient payment method.

Bitcoin is not yet recognized by most people - and I think we should be grateful for that. Why? Because bitcoin is not ready for mainstream adoption.
Just look at community - constantly fighting over everything: LighningNetwork is not pure bitcoin, then it is not good, 2MB is the only true BTC, 4 MB is the future etc.
Everyone has their own opinion and will fight for it and we can't achieve progress, meanwhile Vitalik has no problems with forcing Hard Forks every month...

For as long as Bitcoin remains headstrong about centralization, it will remain an inefficient payment network. Centralization and decentralization both have advantages and disadvantages, without concessions maximum efficiency can never be reached. In a uniform world where everyone is equal, there would be no need to integrate any form or centralization into the design. But people are not equal, hardware is not the same, bandwidth is not the same, storage is not the same, income is not the same. The ironic thing is that while the war against centralization rages on, Bitcoin is already getting centralized on some levels (and not in a good way), seemingly without anyone noticing.

I'm so amazed with your opinion in this regard,the extent of the bitcoin when applied in a good Government? is it going to reduce crimes like corruption

oh well if handled correctly maybe yes but its still have many downfall since its anonymous it an use in the other way around.

bitcoin is defintely pseudo-anonymous,or maybe some people here even said the most transparent currency ever,it's always publishing every transaction / saving and can be easily accessed through blockchain explorer so it's definitely not anonymous at all

True decentralization can only exist in a system where there is no concept of more/less/better/bad etc, a system where everyone/everything is truly equal. The entire human world is based on centralization, whether it be the government, banks, social class, groups of friends or just human selfishness. So striving for true decentralization is a delusional fool's errand, it's mathematically impossible.
A mergence between the blockchain technology and the current system is the best move going forward, however for it to truly benefit everyone it needs to be acknowledged as such by all parties.
The blockchain is the only invention to date that has the power to significantly change the human world on a global scale.
Nothing of what I've said here assumes a 'good' government, such a thing can never exist.

Everyone and everything is equal? You're confusing decentralisation with communism somehow, that would involve a redistributing the coins so that everyone/everything is truly equal, right? ::)


I think you mean "observationally impossible". Just because you can't perceive decentralised systems functioning in the real world, doesn't mean it isn't happening. Imagination failures are not everyone else's responsibility, they're yours. And where's this so-called math you're referring to?


Someone call a taxi for this guy


That's because of the decentralised nature of the network, not in spite of it.


So you don't have faith in centralised systems.... except you do have faith in centralised systems?! What?

My bad, perhaps I should've gone a bit deeper into this one (although deeper might be too deep).
First off, I'm not talking about communism and no I'm not insinuating coin redistribution either. By truly equal I mean people exactly they way they are now, except that there is no appointed entity to oversee/define equality on a global or personal level. Such a system would have no awareness of the equality that prevails within itself.




No, transparency and unalterable ledger first, then decentralized nature since the decentralization is not pure. It if was pure then transparency and unalterable ledger would be redundant.

The problem related to price volatility will be solved as soon as bitcoin marketcap will be around 50% of total online payment processor so i think bitcoin can be efficient payment network in future. However even price volatility doesn't matter if you are merchant and have fear regarding getting less than expected as there are services like bitpay which directly converts your bitcoin to fiat if you like to receive payment in fiat.

Gold price would also be so volatile if it doesn't had this high marketcap, and bitcoin is also GOLD of new era which need few more years to get more investors and holders and we may see quite stable price.

Well sure bitcoin has a problem that is those payment delay, but i do believe the system is amazing, you can send and use your money anytime without limits, taking those into consideration, the time that takes to confirm a transaction means nothing atleast for me, sure bitcoin might and will improve those, it has potencial besides that, bitcoin is a strong currency with huge and unlimited power, meaning no one knows what may happen with the value in the future, i do believe bitcoin will be and its already the DIGITAL GOLD.

the point with gold and its stability comes from the fact that countries own the far majority of all the gold in the world. and i am not only talking about the publicly known gold stash. these countries need gold to remain stable in order to maintain the value of their assets at a certain level. bitcoin doesn't, and will never have this kind of support. volatility will always be a part of bitcoin, no matter what the market cap is.

not sure why this has turned into a market valuation of gold debate. but.
the stability of gold is actually based on 2 things
1. the reserves of a country are known. unlike a bitcoin exchange that does not show the reserves and there are definitely not all ~16mill coins are on exchanges, thus supply metric cant be fixed/known very well in bitcoin
2. the countries are mainly day trading each other where fractions of a percent are profitable trades. so everyone is happy using bots to trade in fractions of a percent.
3. when you see larger blips(over 1%) in the price this is where large selloffs/buyups from country to country occur where one country has alot less in their reserve. and another has more which is something again that cannot be seen clearly on bitcoin exchanges.

some say the gold market is more stable.. i say its more predictable.

but with all that said the price of gold has nothing to do with bitcoins utility, security. so we should not compare bitcoin and gold especially when talking about bitcoins utility

Can you look at the estimated transaction volume over the last 365 days instead of just 24 hours? You are comparing 1 day to 1 year, maybe you should compare a longer time frame such as 30 days, for both Visa and Bitcoin.

Eyeballing the graphs for the last 60 days, the average daily mining revenue is still about 2000 BTC/day, but the average estimated transaction volume is about 220,000 BTC/day, so the rate over the last 60 days is about 0.9%

It is always interesting to note that most of the transaction costs are paid by the holders (and hodlers) of bitcoin in the form of inflation, and not the users.

To my eyes, efficiency questions relate to energy. So we would need to calculate how much energy is needed to confirm a transaction to verify the claim. Then to make a comparison, we would need to find out how much energy Visa or Paypal needs to validate a transaction.

I'm afraid I can't answer the question...

thats alot of electric to power a industry of plastic poker chips,

let alone all the skyscrapers, offices and bank branches of thousands of financial firms powering FIAT

Here's the difference: bitcoin transactions are paid on the size of the data (in bytes), not the value that was transacted. All other fiat payment systems are a percentage of the value.

If you consider off-chain, the actual cost might be lower. But since most off-chain solutions are "private" except maybe for the lightning network or whatever side-chains the core devs are trying to do, you can't really see how they all work.

I mean, just look at the statistics of a lot of off-chain gambling sites, millions of bets, but they only charge on withdrawals. Old SatoshiDice was different. (on chain)

Well it is not really a "dooms day theory" but a rational thought questioning and speculating on what would happen if we had bigger blocks. As said before storage would be solved by having cheaper HD available but the question on how bandwidth is limited in a lot of areas in the world that it might become a problem if the blockchain has become really large enough and still growing.

I believe that is one area of concern for the big blockers.


I now understand your view on this from your posts from the other threads. Thank you for enlightening us on the real situation.

Nothing is perfect, for sure bitcoin have their own fails.

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Perfect or not, is better than be on the hands of the banks.

And do you think that would change if we were not FIAT based but instead bitcoin would be primary currency?
Because I don't think it it would be any difference in energy consumption whatsoever.

Plus, just to power bitcoin network we are consuming much, much more:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020 (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020)

How? Bitcoin's value is by design deflationary in the long run.

lol so you link an article that is hypothesising the year 2020.. but uses out dated numbers of mid 2015, along to exaggerate numbers of january 2016 in regards to electricity utility so far. and then uses that fudged number to hypothecate something in the future..
lol.. guess the guy reads tea leaves too

lets break it down
ok lets go backwards 2012
2 PC's with 4 GPU = 1.3kw... but only produces say 1.3ghash
now
1 ASIC = 1.3kw.. produces 1300Ghash(13Thash)
and this happened in just 3 years.. no extra power but ~1000x (100,000%) increase in hashrate.
same electric but 1000x efficiency 20012-2016 'unit for unit'

the article linked in the quote is calculating old obsolete tech, so lets update it.
i do love their wisting of details to hide the details.. by talking about grams of weight and not mentioning actual hashpower
hmm so each ASIC in that articles base number was under 1 T/hash ASIC..
lol.. dang thats so 2015!
using mid 2015 technology to calculate power of spring 2016 hashrate to get to 350megawatt (facepalm)

but anyway.. moving on
at 13thash an asic.. with the network at ~1,600Phash..
thats only 125,000 units =~160megawatt (125,000*1.3k/w)
160megawatt.. compared to the articles out dated 350megawat
 
so we have DROPPED the power usage while INCREASING the hashrate.
.. enough said?!?

you do realise that there are 90,000 bank branches that use more then 1.3kw/h each. after all just 13 light bulbs in a bank branch totals that, let alone the PC's on each bank tellers desk and bank managers office and security guard station.(only 4 standard pc's add another 1.3kw)
thats atleast 180mwat just for the bank branches
thats without including the call centres, offices and bank HQ skyscrapers that protect fiat. which add up to more again
let alone the markets and private financial institutions on top.

inshort:
fiat wastes more electric "protecting" a system thats:
not immutable
where people can take funds at will..
records 'disapear'
money created out of nothing.

but hey. (sarcasm)lets not talk about facts that bitcoin is more efficient. lets instead talk about old data to make bitcoin today look bad by fudging some numbers fiat style and then inflate the numbers for the future too.. (sarcasm)

Anonymity is a two edged sword. It has its own +ve as well as -ve implications. But, there should be choice available to the common people regarding the path they want to chose in terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

Soo you do wanna to be exposed and allow the criminals to hunt you and your family because you made or hold a huge ammount of bitcoins? That make you to be a rich person, i do like be almost anonymous, my small coins are safe with bitcoins, and no one will hunt me because those. Even with transactions taking longer then needed  or expected bitcoin network its safety, and i do like those, even if i do have to wait some minutes till transaction be confirmed, as i do spend my coins online i can wait.

Where & how I said so? ::)

The inefficiencies we may be worrying about will be getting rid of by future enhancements.

In the case of we are not ready to wait for at least 10 minutes, we can have many alternative solution like having bitcoin debit cards. (yes, with some extra fees)

I strongly believe that payment network functionality of bitcoin system just one of many benefits we are enjoying with bitcoin ecosystem. Any difficulty of this payment system will get removed over time by enhancements.

There is nothing special about payment networks, the technology is simple and has been around for ages. Whats new and revolutionary about bitcoin is the decentralized currency.

Bitcoin is not anonymous is pseudonymous, basically you can hide behind a fake identity if you want but all your transactions are visible to anyone so if someone is really looking for you, like a government agency they can find you unless you take additional measures to try to avoid that.

dont like anonymity..?
then please post your bitcoin addresses and then tell us your home address real full name social security number, date of birth.
have nothing to hide and dont mind police having heat vision CCTV camera's on every street? ok well walk around naked.
dont mind businesses buying up medical records? ok then tell everyone you meet your entire medical history.

you may think you are doing nothing wrong to not care about privacy but if someone asked you to have your medical records tattooed to your body and had to walk around naked.. im sure you will see the subtle point of why even innocent people want privacy

Nope, he's about quote in the wrong post.  ::)

Already there, Following or nothing, just like for choosing  the terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

Try to test it on my signature website. (NSFW)
It work fast and efficient.

Well i am quite agree with op, bitcoin is a pioneer to the new era of digital currency, but in this early stage we still have some problem to handle, the one that still become major problem is the transaction speed, this is the one that's make some local store doubt to adapt bitcoin

How much customers of them have bitcoins to buy goods?

as altcoins that outruns bitcoin in some perspective are introduced, wouldn't such things inflate the digital currency market?

Lol omg...  Most people are saying yes.  ;D Then why you here ? If everyone used bitcoin then amount you would pay would just be the donbertion of your local fiat currency. I think bitcoin maybe does work better with fiat still around ? I say this because different countries use different currency and bitcoin is only one currency.

We are here because we believe in bitcoin and I am sure that it can evolve into perfect payment network. It is not that current version or protocol is final.
SegWit just been added, if miners will accept it then it will be the biggest update to bitcoin network up to date. I am not even talking about of Lightning Network here.

U simply did not understand the statement in title.

I do agree to this one. Mainly the current problem right now by a traveller is that they do have to find an exchanger first before thwy can purchase in that certain place. Now imagine bitcoin as a globally accepted currency everytime you travel you can easily pay your dinner, your travel fees etc without even thinking of the exchangers and its fees

that is only adoption dependent which is irrelevant to this topic. the fact that you can not exchange or even spend bitcoin is because it is not yet adopted everywhere.

this topic is about efficiency of bitcoin to act as a payment network and handle the same number of transactions which other counterparts are handling. which i half agree with and half disagree :)

Nope, in my opinion still adoption affects the efficiency of btc. Of course, the more people adopts bitcoin then there would be someone that can build another system that handles bitcoin payment that makes it partly relevant

I agree also that maybe it is the adoption rate. Though it is becoming popular now, but still not a mainstream.Still we are getting there,and we as a community has a greater role in it.

Yes, bitcoin is a near perfect currency on the on-chain settlement layer but very inneficient as payment network.Mainly the transaction times, meaning the confirmation times, are quite literally the only issue I have with Bitcoin right now, to be honest. Everything else works fine for the most part, and nothing else has to be changed. Getting quicker transaction times, though, kind of requires mucking about with the mining algorithms, which can prove to be detrimental very quickly.
many people used it not only for as currency but they used it for many reason, some used it for gambling some used it for trading, so even though it has disadvantage in payment network but it also has a lot of advantage that keep bitcoin alive

Bitcoin is inefficient payment method because it`s irreversible.

If bitcoin had to compete with the reversible payment methods all the people will choose the reversible

payment methods.This is normal.

I still prefer bitcoin. :)

Seems like a lot of the person are not understand about the title of this place especially about who are just searching more and more post count.  :D

Not efficient, that's the suitable word for bitcoin in this time, even the other payment giving instant for sending some amount. even we are need waiting for a half hours for that.
Efficient in the speed? it's not.

The only realistic chance of Bitcoin becoming a currency that has trillions of transactions per second (probably what a worldwide currency that gets used at a dollar/euro/yen level would be like) is through Lightning Network type of solutions. No amount of blocksize increases will ever get us anywhere without it.

Not many here do realize this basic.

It seems like no matter how many times this is repeated, some people are still deluded and think we can raise the blocksize and keep having onchain cheap and fast transactions for life. Unfortunately this is not going to happen, there will always be a fee market and limitations in order to keep the nodes decentralized.

yes i agree on this but when i rethink on this i find an answer to one of my doughts that why will bitcoin price gets increased when more and more people join the network.so the ans is as you can see the bitcoin is dividen upto 8smaller units and total bitcoin in network is 21million bitcoin so each coin's price will increase when more people join the network

Thinking about it, I would say No, Bitcoin is not an inefficient payment network. Once the news started getting out on how to carry spam attacks on the network at ease, those larger whales could abuse the network by spamming the network and filling the block size quickly. I would say this does make Bitcoin slow to process and confirm, but it is still efficient considering how decentralized it is and that you get to pay from your mobile wallet at ease at any Bitcoin accepting merchant. You'll notice that a lot of sidechain tools are proposed to be out right after segwit especially Lightning networks which could really help with the block size issue and confirmation concerns. It's efficient considering how stable its price is these days and also provides good reliability to those who'd want to accept Bitcoins as a payment method.

Just think about it, you need a decentralized currency by which you could be your own bank and something that is of higher value and accepted by many (more than any other altcoins). It's just the start folks! there's more to improve.

yes i am agree with you, bitcoin is really a global currency and you can use it any where and is more easy to exchange if you need the feel to exchange it in to fiat, it is more convenient than any other currency of of the world.

Off chain aspects seem to be a real issue for me and having a way to achieve this would really help speed up transactions and spread use.
The problem is hard to for me as a layman to figure out and I think it would have already been achieved if it was simple task.

Would love nothing more than to some how pre confirm my bitcoins to use in day to day transactions on even a limited scale of transactions under $20.

Almost 2 months over since the poll was created. It seems, people are really divided here regarding what they want from bitcoin.

How is it non-efficient?
I have found it to be faster to use than credit unions and even bank wire transfers.
So I don't see the reasoning behind this rather bold statement that is made here on a bitcoin forum none the less. :-\

You must understand that there are flaws in this system that needs to be worked on, or somehow find a way to alleviate the sluggishness of some parts so that it would not outweigh what good can bitcoin do. Most of us here believe in the project, it's just that there are some things in the whole protocol that still needs to be developed so that we could have a reliable currency in our hands.

It is fine but we are talking about mainstream levels of usage.... for that it's just not possible to do onchain, we would need a second layer solution like the lightning network, anything else just doesn't cut it, and we can't keep raising the blocksize to accommodate fast and cheap transactions on-chain all over the world because that would make the network useless in terms of decentralization, wereas LN+conservative approach on block size is still decentralized.

As the original statement was made by GMaxwell, I'd expect him to take part in the conversation...

This is one of the most interesting points made in this thread.

We should expect transaction volume to go up and mining volume to go down the next couple of years. Even if this weren't the case, I'd say that Bitcoin is still pretty efficient as a payment network since it's currently just 0.2% more costly than Visa, one of the biggest payment networks out there.

I'd also like to see the numbers for Mastercard, I'm guessing they're processing even more than Visa, but I could be mistaken.

Anyway, aside from the comparison with Visa, if you compare Bitcoin to the regular banking system, I'd say it's more efficient for the end-user. Transactions go through almost instantly, if you add enough fees, compared to waiting a couple of days for bank transfers.

Bitcoin evolved as a payment gateway and over the short it got acceptance from people as a currency and a high valued investment. But as quoted by the OP it hasn't got much acceptance in stores and other online markets similar to local fiat and other cards available. This makes it a bit ineffective as a currency comparatively. This scenario will change soon.

Bit coin is truly revolutionary currency. I think all the world will never be the same after bitcoin appearance. I am not saying that bitcoin is going to be top currency. I suppose all financial operations will go on the crypto level and all the fiat that we know today will go in the past.

In my view it's better than the payment network in most countries. In most countries, banks aren't executing transactions for days (for instance when it's weekend) and take a hilarious amount of fee for everything as SMS security. I can use the Bitcoin network with very good security and not having to pay more than what'll be used on keeping the network running which network's working 24/7.

Yeah I mean it's pretty true dude

How often can you just get payment right away? Unless yu know of an ATM close by

Bitcoin has made a huge progress form being an easy safe way to exchange money on the internet to being a way of life, because if how the bitcoin price is constantly going up makes it a very good and profitable way of getting payed , signature campaigns on this forum are a really good example for that

GMaxwell never joined in. But, even after two long years, the statement is still valid IMHO.

The units and total bitcoin in the network are 21million bitcoin so that the price of each coin will increase as more people join the network. Once the news starts to realize how easy it is to carry out online spam attacks, larger whales can abuse the network by sending spam and slowing their network size. fast You will notice that a lot of sidechain tools are proposed to be out soon after segwit especially the lightning network which can really help with block size issues and validation concerns. Just think about it, you need a decentralized currency that you can be your own bank and something of higher value and be accepted by many.

I believe that bitcoin is not a revolution, but an evolutionary stage of the financial system. In the future, it is unlikely to be a generally accepted means of payment, but will greatly affect the development of the system.

No doubt bitcoin is very revolutionary crypto currency and it has made a tremendous progress and made its unique position in the world of investment and now there are millions of people around the world who are investing into bitcoin but as we all know that bitcoin is still not centralised all over the world therefore it is now used as a kind of investment but no one has ever seen the the potential of bitcoin as when it will get centralised all over the world, then it would be the best payment method.

When bitcoin was introduced a decade ago, there was no one who was ready to believe on it and they even started calling it a Ponzi scheme or a bubble that would burst soon but the very few who believed on it are now the bitcoin billionaires and after that bitcoin started believing in bitcoin and now there are approximately millions of people around the world who are investing into bitcoin so bitcoin has made revolutionary change in the economic world and has provided employment to millions of people and opend many job opportunities.

Bitcoin is not an inefficient payment network. I would say this makes Bitcoin slower to process and validate, but it's still worth considering how decentralized it is and you can easily pay from your wallet phone at any Bitcoin-accepting seller. any. It is effective to look at how stable its price is these days and also provide good reliability for those who want to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. It's just beginners! The chain aspect seems to be a real problem for me and there is a way to achieve this that will actually help speed up the transaction and widespread use. will not love anything more than a few ways before certifying my bitcoin for use in everyday transactions with a limited trading size of under 20 dollars. It seems, people are really divided here about what they want from bitcoin. I've found it faster to use than credit union and even bank transfer. As the original statement was made by GMaxwell, I hope he joins the conversation

Bitcoin is only the currency with value and its network is inefficient in terms of speed but very efficient in terms of security. Lightning Network was born to fill the gap. And now it will fly!

   What are the advantages of BTC? In my opinion it has non, it's slow, not reliable enough nor anonymous and you can't really say it's digital gold. Gold has so much value, you couldn't use your phone without gold in it but you don't need BTC for that. But things can change in the near future - "Lightning Network"  ;)

Blockchain will be a healthy alternative to the banking system. And if bitcoin transactions are still slow, then another cryptocurrency with greater scalability will become an alternative to fiat payments.

I agree that bitcoin has problems with the speed of transaction processing but do not forget that it is working on a whole team of developers who will solve this problem in the future ! Bitcoin is actually a very convenient way of payment and transfers as it does not require the intervention of third parties.

No doubt that bitcoin is a revolutionary crypto currency as it has brought many revolutionary changes  in the economic market after its introduction in to the market and itself has made tremendous progress as from having millions of haters to millions of investors bitcoin has gone through a lot and now is on the top of the crypto rankings but for now it is only a kind of investment or as s part time investment for its permanent use or to be used as a payment system it should have to get centralised all over the world.

I will not say that it is not useful, it can successfully become a network currency only if it will be regularly used, which can be very good in the future, because everything goes to this.

Based on the statement that was given by odolvlobo Btc transaction per day is $2b and the profit was around $12.4M

If I am going to give an estmation the yearly profit of bitcoin is probably not too far from those digital currencies. The fact that they are just using FIAT scheme and has higher fees. It is just pretty acceptable that BTC profit is currently behind

I agree with you that bitcoin has some problems as a payment system. But this is permissible at the stage of development of bitcoin as a currency. Therefore, we should be more lenient to him and just give him time for full development.