Bitcoin Forum

OK, I'm going to prepare myself for the influx of hate here but can we please attempt to have a mature discussion about this.

How in the hell can people claim Bitcoin is still in line with Satoshi's original vision?

How can we even call Bitcoin a crypto CURRENCY, it's really not a CURRENCY anymore and I'll explain why.

I sold my Bitcoin off a long while ago, mainly for the reasons I've given above, I didn't believe that Bitcoin was still in line with what Satoshi originally envisioned, I'm also sceptical about it's long term success.

I've just tried to send £1 worth of BTC to my other wallet, the fee was 25p that's literally 25% in fees.

Sure, lower the fee I hear you say but if I do, I'm going to be waiting an extremely long time for confirmations and for my transaction to go through.

I honestly fear that a lot of people are into Bitcoin from the surge of popularity, after hearing you can get rich quick or people who did get rich quick.

For a lot of early investors who invested before Bitcoin took off, back in the days when you could purchase it for less than a cup of coffee, those investors got in because they were passionate about Bitcoin, they believed in the technology and most importantly, they believe in Satoshi's original vision.

What was Satoshi's original vision?

1) A digital, decentralised currency
2) That could be sent anywhere in the world
3) For fractions of a penny / as cheap as possible
4) In a short amount of time
5) Sending microtransactions to developing countries who were run down by poverty was a big selling point at the time

Most of those things no longer ring true, honestly, it's become terribly expensive to use, it can take such a long time to confirm and as such is now a pretty shoddy currency.

It's not doing anything revolutionary and it's not shaking up the system anymore. Let's be honest 90% of people getting in now, aren't here for the tech, aren't here to create a financial revolution, they're here because they've heard Bitcoin is a good investment that can see returns that make any other conventional investment look mediocre.

People who truly think Bitcoin can displace or replace major world currencies and become a day to day globally accepted form of payment are DELUSIONAL in my eyes.

Why are people going to give up their banks and bank cards when they can:

* Tap & Go - Use Contactless - Pay instantly for free without any fees
* There are so many ways to send payment across borders now for free or cheaper than Bitcoin

Like, there is literally nothing that current forms of payments don't do better than Bitcoin, well... actually... decentralisation but that's about it, that alone wont be enough for Bitcoin to win the day.

I still believe in Blockchain and I'm passionate about how Blockchain technology can revolutionise so many different industries, that's why one of my biggest holdings is in ETH.

I also believe that there is room for Crypto to actually replace currency as we know it, there's still a need for instant, feeless, microtransactions that can be sent across the world. I don't look to Bitcoin for doing that though, projects like NANO, in my opinion, are much more in line with what Satoshi's original vision and passion was.

Obviously, my opinion doesn't matter. Bitcoin will continue to rise because of speculation, because investors don't want to miss out on any gains. People often refer to Bitcoin as being like digital 'gold' now and it really is! What does it actually do that is useful, technology wise? What is it doing that is revolutionary?

Bitcoin has the first mover advantage and I'll always be thankful that it sparked off something amazing, it paved the way for so many great projects and inspiring blockchain technologies; but Bitcoin is literally a store of value now, it's become just like gold, people use it to invest and to save but it's not used for day to day transactions and while it can and is used that way, it is incredibly inefficient compared to other competitors now.

Bitcoins price can not rise indefinitely, there is and will be a ceiling to how far the price can go, that may be $100,000 it may be a million or a billion, regardless, there is a ceiling, once that is reached, once people realise they can't 'make' any more money from Bitcoin and that as an investment it's kind of poor compared to other options, what then? There's only one direction I see it going and that's to the floor right back down with an almighty crash.

How does Bitcoin scale at those levels, the scaling issue has caused so many forks with people having difference of opinions, how do we maintain fees so that miners keep mining but users also keep using.

A lot would have to change to make Bitcoin a valid form of a digital payment system again and the community and devs maintaining Bitcoin seem to be wanting to go down the road of making it a store of value as opposed to a form of payment, not was Satoshi originally envisioned and not sustainable in my honest opinion.

I believe Bitcoin is starting to deviate from Satoshi's original vision in some specific areas, but not the same areas you have concern.


Sure, Satoshi created a currency but that's also a term for an asset that can be transacted...which is what Bitcoin is. He could never perceive how the market would use this asset and the fact that people are hodling it more than spending it is probably a testament to how bad the problem was he was trying to solve.

If he's trying to solve the inequity between the rich and the poor, then people who own bitcoin and are hodling it are doing so because it helps them resolve that inequity in wealth between the rich and the poor!

For me, Bitcoin is starting to deviate from the original vision in the following ways:

• Mining is for the wealthy, not for everybody
• As the cost of mining increases the currency's control becomes more centralized among fewer mining operations

In theory these concerns I list would be resolved once every coin is mined. But this is also why ideas like Pi coin are uniquely attractive as alternative ways to deliver mining to the people.

I like to think that Bitcoin is not only the beginnining of cryptocurrencies, but a bridge that will leads us to a greater online currency in the future. Right now we have thousands of cryptocurrency projects, but vast majority of them are 'shitcoins' which aren't contributing to the progress of digital money. I think that Bitcoin will someday die, but I hope it'll be replaced by something greater. Satoshi's vision is something truly beautiful but it's not feasible in our world. Some pieces of it liven up but it's just the start of a long journey.

Thank you for a mature reply and genuine discussion, it's much appreciated. I half expected to just got a torrent of abuse and hate for this.

I understand where you're coming from and I appreciate your view and opinion. I do think we're on different pages, I think Satoshi made it clear that super fast transactions, that could be sent across the world, at lightning speed, for incredibly cheap was what his passion about Bitcoin was about.

I remember the talk back then how it could be revolutionary for countries and how aid could be given as people could give tiny microtransactions that may not seem like much but added up and in a country where those small amounts could convert to bigger amounts, well that possibility was just inspiring and revolutionary.

I do get it, even as a store of value it still holds VALUE but I just don't think there's anything about it now that gets me fired up like it used to, when I first heard about Bitcoin, when it wasn't making huge % gains, my conversation to get people to invest was about how the technology was revolutionary, how it could totally disrupt the modern financial system. It was revolutionary.

Now, when I hear people convincing people to get some Bitcoin it's almost always followed by "I've earned X amount" or "You'll make so much money" it's literally become all about the gains and that's it. Which is sad. We'll hit a wall where that doesn't hold true anymore and then what?


Yea, I feel exactly the same way as you to be honest.

There is a lot of crap out there but there are also some diamonds and it's just about letting time do it's things and seeing which projects will survive.

When I compare NANO to Bitcoin it's more in line with Satoshi's original vision, but the best technology doesn't always win.

LTC and BCH are out performing and are more used than NANO, that being said NANO isn't without it's flaws and there's a lot it doesn't do or isn't designed to do.

But right now it's one of the few cryptocurencies that I know where people can send a fraction of a penny without losing a single sat, super fast, feeless, microtransactions are truly that, you can send as little as you want with no fee.

Do I think NANO will win and rule the day though? No, sadly not. It has it's flaws and like I said, it has it's flaws.

Time will tell, I'm sure there are many projects yet to come that we can't even imagine that will perform so well and be just as revolutionary as Bitcoin was. Blockchain - the possibilities are endless.

The core principal is trustless permissionless decentralised money with no third party required. That's still intact.

It's one thing to envision something but when you put it into practice and try to spread it across the globe while maintaining its integrity and security that gets a little more complex and there'll likely be some casualties and compromises made.

And ultimately It doesn't matter what Satoshi's vision is. What matters is what people do with the system he created. He sent it off out into the world and this is what the rest of us have made of it.

If he'd been hell bent on keeping things to the letter he would've stuck around and I'm pretty sure people would've continued to follow him.

That's actually a very VALID argument, what you have said is mostly correct.

Yes, the community are the ones that decide what happens now but it doesn't mean that is a positive thing....

Bitcoin is just a store of value now, once it's hit a ceiling and investors don't get the returns they were hoping for, what then?

Once it's ceased to be a store of value and valid investment, what happens then? What does Bitcoin then become? Because it's broken as a form of peer to peer digital cash.

The stock markets work a very simple way, stocks rise and give dividends because a company continues to innovate and be profitable, those that don't die a hard death, what innovation is Bitcoin offering? What's it bringing to the table that is new or market leading now?

Like I said, it may not be in my lifetime but Bitcoin will undoubtedly die if it does not drastically adapt, right now it wont adapt in the way it needs to because the financial incentive is to keep Bitcoin expensive and as a digital asset and store of value. That can't and wont last forever.

People have the whole progression of this badly mixed up in my opinion.

You have to become a store of value first. Then you become a currency. You don't put your day to day financial needs into something as weedy and volatile as Bitcoin currently is. And layer two stuff may well solve the cash aspect. We'll have to see .

And once it becomes 'boring' and those returns stop exploding there's one other rather handy feature - deflation vs fiat currencies. That is eternal and what most of the world is looking for. Most people do not speculate. They want to preserve and grow their wealth, not bet it.

This is still the wildest and earliest phase. There's a lot more ground to cover. 'Cash' is the final progression, not the first.

Your two main arguments seem to be that fees are high, and people are only here because of speculation.

First of all, if you paid 25% fee, then you overpaid A 1-input-2-output transaction can be made for 140 sats, which would work out at less than 1p in GBP. I make 1 sat/byte transactions pretty much daily. The longest I've waited over the last 2 weeks is an hour. Most of the time I'm waiting only a couple of blocks. Bitcoin is faster and cheaper than fiat methods. You've mentioned contactless cards - these have a huge fee associated with them, its just that the merchant eats the fee rather than the consumer, so you never see it.

I can't disagree with the point that there are plenty of people in the space who are only here to try to make some easy money. They frequently only use bitcoin as a stepping stone to buy alts, though, and often leave the space after losing out on alts as they frequently do. The people who are here long-term are still passionate about the future of bitcoin, and bitcoin's development is still going strong, with plenty of new features in development and on the horizon: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5207455.0.

You also seem to be big on shilling NANO. NANO isn't anything at all like Satoshi's original vision given that it is centralized.

You know I am from India. Our constitution makers way back in 1950 made our constitution to make India Republic they dreamt of a visionary India with low corruption and no caste system due to reservations but here India is standing in front of you after 70 years facing much bigger issues of caste system and in altogether different way that our makers thought but does this mean we aren't justified?

What I want to Convey is that it hardly matters that how the creator visioned things the vision needs to be updated with time due to circumstances not prevalant at the time. No one thought that btc could become so valuable one day even if it gains so much popularity. I think it's really interesting to see that how will Crypto evolve over the upcoming years. So you could really forget about what satoshi thought of bitcoin. Satoshi might be the creator but after all he is not the owner.

Bitcoin is still going through lots of phases of doubt. With only a decade of experience, any circumstance brings in a mixture of FUD and FOMO. Halving, war, pandemic, recession, elections, gold price soaring etc. Be it whatever event you wish, people still do not know what to do about Bitcoin during certain events. That shows how young this market is. Look a minute through the Bitcoin Discussion and Speculation boards and see for yourself how many are in doubt. Questions like "What happens after the third halving?", "Does BTC price follow gold's?", "Would Bitcoin rise during a pandemic?" etc are exactly what I mean. Doubt.

I think the focus is spreading out too many ways at the moment in the market. We're switching focus from Bitcoin to scams like X10, then when Bitcoin soars we're switching back to where we were before. Too many markets, too many coins, too many scams. We need a cleanup and a start-over. There's absolutely 0 utility in having a total of 3k coins & tokens with different features if they're all on different exchanges, some with close to 0 volume. These need to go away, too many have learned that cryptocurrency means joining bounties and supporting shitcoins to get rich.

BTC might be open-source and all, but that does not equal continuous revolutionary updates. I think just the fact that you can cross borders with a billion dollar in your pocket sitting inside the code written with your own hands on a piece of paper is mindblowing and revolutionary enough. Then we have the entire Blockchain structure and all. It was revolutionary enough to bring big names in the game. But it's still too early to know if BTC actually has the future Satoshi envisioned or not. We need to go through a few phases, like @gentlemand said.

I do get your point OP, and the more the price soars, the higher the fees will probably be, right? If we had a $100k price per BTC like many speculate, that turns the fees you've mentioned in the OP into +$2. That's 200% fees for a $1 transaction and remember, the higher the price is, the less a dollar is worth in BTC. So we're looking at a price of 1000sats for $1. Think about $1M/BTC and that turns your fee into a whopping $20. This is where my suggestion comes in, one that I have mentioned in a post from a few days ago (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5220629.msg53701510#msg53701510): adding more digits to BTC (like ETH) so the fees would be pushed back by a few digits. I might say nonsense right now but wouldn't this be possible through a BTC update or second layer? Nobody's answered me on the other thread so I'm reviving the same idea now.

At the moment and on a scale of 10 i would rate it as 4/10 because bitcoin is being used by most people as a store of value other than spending it in their daily transactions. Also, there are some factors that are also hindering the fulfillment of Satoshi's vision. Some Governments have made strict rules concerning the use of bitcoin and this is really making global usage of bitcoin very delayed. Let's not give up hope yet!

NANO is not centralised, don't talk utter nonsense please. That's like saying Bitcoin was centralised when it first started out because there wasn't a diverse range of miners yet. There are multiple nodes which users can use and have voting power, just like ANY cryptocurrency, the more people that use it the more decentralised it becomes, every project is faced with this.

People in crypto really need to grow up in general, you praise or say anything slightly positive about a coin you're called a SHILLER say anything slightly negative and you're called a hater or accused of shilling for a competitor.

How can I be shilling when I said that I can't see NANO succeeding in the long run, the better technology doesn't always win, currently BCH/LTC are beating it and seeing more daily use regardless of NANO being cheaper (as it's free) and much faster (as it's near instant) yet it still can't beat these two.

I also pointed out NANO has it's flaws, such as the lack of privacy as well as a wide ranger of other issues. I'm not shilling, I'm just stating a fact, the original concept of Bitcoin that was set out in it's whitepaper, Bitcoin is doing it better, had NANO and Bitcoin been released at the same time, which do you think would be the market winner?

Am I suggesting others invest in it? Am I saying it will flip many of the other coins? Hell no! But I will give it praise where it deserves. Anything can happen in this space but if NANO has not succeeded after a couple of years of trying, it's not going to now as there's not much in terms of innovation and development, like I said it has it's issues.

Let's stop with the petty insults calling people a shill just because they have something positive to say, you're putting words into my mouth. I'm not encouraging anyone here to pickup NANO, they can do what they want, I'm making simple observations and drawn on one of many good and inspiring projects!

Also, I loved the way you used the fact the longest you've had to wait for a payment to clear is an hour, as some sort of redeeming factor! Let's see how people would feel if they had to wait 1 hour for a PayPal transaction to clear or 1 hour for their payment for coffee at Starbucks to clear etc etc.

As for the fees on cards being passed on to merchants, what's your point? We accept these across the bored, as a business owner myself I accept them, they're practically insignificant for the most part. Not to mention with crypto it's just the reverse, now the sender is paying a fee to the miners so the merchant / receiver may not get the fee but flipping roles doesn't make it any better!

Not to mention the fees (if you want a fast payment) can be extortionate and much more expensive than any CC processor.


What's your point? OK, let's re-envision what Bitcoin is, it's now a store of value, great, but what's the value in, it's based in pure speculation, when it hits a ceiling and fails to make the % gains people want then what? What direction is it destined to go in?

Your right, it is a people powered project, that's the point of decentralisation. That doesn't mean people always make the right decisions, in fact, you only have to look through history and see where democracy has often got it wrong or disastrous events occur, Hitler wasn't a dictator you know, he got to where he was through a democratic process.

It's obvious from all the changes made to Bitcoin over the years that profit and ensuring it's success as a store of value is prioritised over everything else, which is fine, the people decide that and it's clear people will put their personal profits and gains before anything else.

The issue is, that can't last forever, the analogy I gave previously about the stock market still stands and I've not heard one single valid rebuttal. You can have something infinitely increase in value, companies that stop providing innovation, that stop bringing new things to the table, that stop offering a service, they crash and burn. Bitcoin can't just be a 'hold it forever and it will keep increasing in value infinitely' asset, there will be a ceiling and without adaption and change it will eventually crash and burn.

We will see who ends up being right, history will tell.

Do I ever think Bitcoin will go to 0? No, very unlikely, do I ever think it will still be as valuable as it is now? Not a chance.


This is my point though, even IF people wanted to actually USE it as a form of PAYMENT it's incredibly ENEFICENT, if people were actually trying to use it to pay for stuff they'd wake up and realise that they're holding onto something that's basically useless, the only use it has is it's VALUE which is incredibly volatile, you may be able to make a good % profit from it but that's about it and how long does that really last. Nothing is infinitely scaleable when it comes to price, no stock or commodity is infinately scaling, when it levels out or when gains become the same or less than what you get from average stocks and it stays like that for a number of years, watch the price decrease and then once that starts it will plummet.

There's just no actual USE for it, when you try and USE Bitcoin you realise it's incredibly ineffective. I don't want to wait silly amount of times for a purchase to go through, look at digital purchases now in the market section, got and purchase an instant delivery, digital product and pay with Bitcoin. You will be waiting forever and a day unless you pay extremely high fees to have near instant confirmation, why would anyone use that when you can pay with PayPal or an alt and have it basically instantly.

Maybe Bitcoin can hold it's value just being a digital version of gold, possibly, but I just feel when it gets to the levels of regular stocks / commodities or drops below them levels, people will start to leave in favour of safer and more tangible assets.

I admit, I could be wrong about everything, who knows, time and history will tell guys. Like others have said, Bitcoin is powered by the people so maybe the community that maintain it wont let it come to that and maybe in the future changes will come into play that make it like it originally was in the early days and maybe that will revive it.

If I was a gambling man though, I'd put Bitcoin on the same road as MySpace was on, far too confident that nothing could come along and defeat it and while MySpace still exists it's nothing compared to it's former glory days, I feel Bitcoin faces the same fate.

I agree with this statement. Bitcoin has a lot of things to do and to catch up for it to become even at par with the modern ways of sending money anywhere. However, it does not mean that Bitcoin generally is getting to be worthless. While we have to accept that as of now it has had deviated from the most original vision of its founder, we have to understand the way things are and the challenges that it has gone through. Certainly, the journey of Bitcoin has not ended here and I would say that from the world perspective it has just even started. Bitcoin has become popular maybe for just one side of it and that is for speculative purposes and I see nothing really wrong with that because this is an asset albeit in digital form and therefore can be traded just like any other commodities. The main challenge right now is on the currency side and though things are slow I am still in a big faith that ultimately Bitcoin will be a big winner on this aspect, though I don't expect for it to become the prime or the foremost global currency as being the best alternative can be enough.

you are just redefining "satoshi's vision" with your own interpretation to match your topic otherwise what you are saying here was not it. i wanted to discuss more about your subject but you ruined it by the following:

ETH is literary the shittiest altcoin that has ever been created and if anything it is in complete contradiction of all you explained here as "satoshi's vision"
- it is centralized
- it is not immutable
- it has high fees
- it is slow
- it is not safe
- it is inflationary
- it is not even a currency
you can't even run an ethereum node since the blockchain size is around 4 TB. all people are doing is running light clients or using web wallets insecurely. saying you hold a lot of ETH only proves that you don't care about any of the things you posted here regarding bitcoin.

I wonder for where did you extracted the so called satoshi's original vision.

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Here's the original paper from satoshi himself and most of the statements made in the post are nowhere to be found in this original vision.
I haven't read everything satoshi has stated but I'm really suspicious when I see the phrase satoshi vision as satoshi have said less and his thoughts are interpreted and manipulated largely.

Well to be fair, it's the most secure and stable (in a sense where it would be the absolute last to lose people's trust) crypto out there. Sure you can keep money in LTC or BCH, but I'm not as certain they would still be around tomorrow as I am with BTC -- something which is often overlooked when talking about currencies. You do have valid concerns with the transactions, but like majority of the community I don't think it will be this way forever; if it stays like this, then you're absolutely correct that it's going to have very limited use cases, and that perhaps it shouldn't be valued as it should. Only time will really tell, but for now you can't deny that its massive ecosystem sets it apart from other crypto.

As for Satoshi's vision, it's still a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, so there's that. Beyond that, he has left development in the hands of the community, so I'm sure he would be at peace however it turns out. If he absolutely wanted things to have gone a specific way, he would have left a strict road map.

I shouldn't even be bothering to reply since you're a NANO shill, but to answer your questions (while that isn't even 'Satoshi's original vision').

1. Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized and secure cryptocurrency.
2. You can send Bitcoin anywhere in the world.
3. You can send on-chain transactions with a 1 sat/b fee or you can use the Lightning Network for smaller payments.
4. Lightning payments are instant.
5. See 4. It makes no sense since Bitcoin never had 'selling points' and Satoshi never mentioned this.

Bitcoin is electronic cash. Cash doesn't meant it should simply be cheap and instant to send. Read the Cypherpunk Manifesto (https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html) if you want to understand what is truely meant by 'electronic cash'. I doubt you'll read it since you've obviously here to shill shitcoins.

I work on contract in some third world countries and I can tell you from first hand experience that these remittance companies in some of these countries are definitely a lot more expensive than Bitcoin. I introduced Bitcoin to some people in these countries and subsequently put between 10% to 30% money back into their pockets by doing this.  ;)

When last have you done any global transfers of money? Some of these transfers takes up to 3 days to be processed. Bitcoin might not be instantaneous like Credit card payments, but the affect on your balance is evident within a couple of minutes. I have done credit card payments at some retailers and the transaction only shown after 1 or 2 days in my account.

Also, have you heard of the Lightning Network? You might be surprised to see almost instantaneous transactions on the Lightning Network being done at a fraction of the fees being charged for on-chain transactions.  

Before people start claiming that Lightning Network is unusable, here is a great example how you can onboard a new user within 30 seconds (this includes downloading a wallet, installing it, creating an invoice and receiving a payment): https://twitter.com/therealjokoono/status/1218582503356805120

A PayPal transaction takes 180 days to "clear". It easier to reverse a PayPal transaction than it is to reverse a zero-confirmation bitcoin transaction. It takes bitcoin 10 minutes (on average) to confirm; it takes PayPal 6 months. And if you need instant payments, such as to buy a coffee, then you use Lightning.

Credit card fees can be up to 3%. If I'm buying something expensive then that can easily turn in to hundreds of dollars. With bitcoin, I can make the same on-chain transaction with a fee of 2 cents or less.

Damn, I guess the Lightning transaction I made to Bitrefill yesterday, where my payment was confirmed on the website before my wallet even gave me the "Transaction complete" notification, was all in my imagination. ::)

I use it to pay for stuff almost daily. It's far from useless. I'm afraid that the arguments you are making suggest that you have made one or two poorly configured transactions where you overpaid on fees, and have therefore decided that bitcoin is uniformly terrible.

You're wrong actually, you've taken what I've said, took it out of context, made assumptions and put words in my mouth.

I NEVER said, at any point, that ETH was a better version of BTC or that it should be used as a form of Currency, you're comparing apples to oranges here, they're two totally different things, created for different reasons and purposes.

Do I care that a project is more centralised than Bitcoin NO do I care if it is/isn't an effective currency NO! I was comparing Bitcoin to its original vision not ETH, ETH was never set up to do what Bitcoin does.

XRP for example is said to be very centralised, do I think it's a worthless investment? NO!

To bash on me because I hold ETH is the absolute pinnacle of immaturity and shows your total lack of understanding and your very CLEAR bias for Bitcoin. Ethereum whether you like it or not is #2 and is one of the most utilised blockchains in the space, it doesn't really care whether you like it or not or accept it. It will succeed regardless, it will continue to make waves.

Does EVERY project have to be all the things I was bashing on Bitcoin for not being? HELL FUCKING NO! I based on Bitcoin because it was setup to be these things and no longer does ANY of them.

If your argument is literally just "I'LL HATE ON YOU BECAUSE YOU HOLD X TOKEN OR COIN" then you're stupid, what sensible investor does that, unless you're investing in a very CLEAR scam such as Bitconnect when that was around, then yea, but for a credible project that has weathered the storms and is still here making waves, if you're going to judge me for that then you're not someone I want to have mature discussion with anyway.
What are you using for fees like that? Yea, people can still screw themselves over by using Western Union, there are always alternatives. You totally missed the point anyway, why WOULD you pay ANY fee at all when there are Crypto's out there like NANO, STEEM etc etc that are near instant and have ZERO fees.

Stellar, Ripple all alternative assets that are easy to liquidate and cost significantly less than BTC and are significantly cheaper.

People on here are a complete joke saying I'm shilling, you can't literally point out the positive feature of any project without being called a shill, it's a form of bullying just ganging up and name calling all because someone has a different opinion than you and dares to point out the facts.

A shill would be someone telling someone else BUY NANO BUY STELLAR BUY XRP BUY STEEM, I'm not recommending anyone do any of these things, each project has its flaws and faults, Bitcoin has some benefits over each of those, I'm not shilling just simply stating a FACT.

Give me a valid rebuttal and tell me how NANO, STEEM, XRP and XLM aren't faster and cheaper than Bitcoin.

Total joke guys, at least attempt to have a mature discussion as opposed to name calling, you don't see me sat here calling you Bitcoin shills, that's just immature, I accept that my views are just an OPINION and I very well could be WRONG, to sit there and just call me a shill and deny that there may be credit/weight/merit in anything I'm saying, well that just shows who has a clear bias here.

1) NO It bloody well does not, let's be honest here, PayPal 99.9% of the time will work just fine, be instant and without any issues. You're talking about chargebacks and suspicious payments which YES Bitcoin does not have but there's a pros and cons to having this. Sell something with Bitcoin and get screwed over, good luck on getting those funds back.

They both have pros and cons but lets not pretend here that for all payments you're waiting 6 months, that's bloody well not true and you know it. Talking about totally misleading...

2) Oh the poorly configured argument, well if you're going to go down that route that it's 'my fault' and 'poorly configured' then I'd love to hear you argue how this is going to become globally adopted and something my Granny can use and is going to take the world by storm. It's easy to pin the blame on others to hide the GLARING flaws with Bitcoin. Get a grip man!

And bitcoin 99.9% of the time will work just fine. This doesn't change the fact that PayPal transaction can be reversed for months after it has been sent, and can be done by literally sending one email. It is much harder to reverse a zero confirmation bitcoin transaction, and essentially impossible to reverse after an hour or two.

This betrays your entire mindset. You see decentralization and immutability as a negative, rather than the positive it is.

I never said you were waiting 6 months, but similarly, lets not pretend that what you say about waiting days for every bitcoin transaction is true either.

As soon as a bitcoin transaction is broadcast, before it has any confirmations, I will still see it show up in my wallet, and I can still send those funds on to someone else. Can it be reversed and therefore cancel my ongoing transaction? Yes, for around 10 minutes, on average. As soon as a PayPal transaction is made, I will see it show up in my account, and I can send those funds on to someone else. Can it be reversed and leave me out of pocket? Yes, for around 6 months.

Please point out where I ever said it was your fault. All I said was that your transaction were poorly configured, and if you paid 25% of your transaction value in fees as you state, then that is simply a statement of fact. I agree that there is plenty of work to be done to make bitcoin as simple as possible for everyone to use, but using it poorly is hardly an argument against its entire existence.

Remittance Centers in my country are a commodity. They saw the opportunity to make mad bucks ok it and are now charging more than the usual charge or fee they impose. It's true that bitcoin might've strated away from what Satoshi initially wanted it to be. But this is only happening because the technology we have right now is insufficient to support bitcoin in it's utmost capabilities. It's imperative for bitcoin to stay as an asset right now, at the very least it's alive and well. Provided we have enough technology and support, bitcoin will be more than ready to take on being a bonafide currency.

Bitcoin was originally made to eliminate 3rd party which is succeed, but the one thing that make it not accepted widely is the fee just too high especially for small transaction, user should pay higher fee in order to get faster confirmation. While in some countries people are now using payment Apps backed by the bank which is cheaper and simple. So far for big transaction bitcoin doesn't have any issue, sending million dollars with cheaper fee, anytime, anywhere.

Considering the current state of the crypto ecosystem and the Bitcoin market, Bitcoin is actually not living up to Satoshi's original vision and purpose for it. Bitcoin is seen as a digital asset rather than a digital currency. In as much that people use Bitcoin for their transactions  like currency, majority of people who own bitcoins consider it as an asset than a currency. 

Curious point of fact, unless the forum's search function is failing me, satoshi never actually uttered the word "microtransaction" on this board.  And the word "micropayment" was only used on two separate occasions.  A number of utterances in this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287.msg7524#msg7524) in direct response to a person asking about sending a single satoshi (and I assume that's not quite what you meant by "microtransactions").  And again in this post quoted below, but only in regard to custodial wallets:

And (getting slightly off-topic), given what we know about custodial wallets now, it's a little surprising to read those words from satoshi, heh.  Still, those were the very early days and hindsight is always 20/20, etc.

So, with all respect, are you sure you aren't conflating satoshi's original vision with the vision of some early adopters who perhaps got a little carried away with the potential and subsequently raised your expectations higher than they otherwise would be?  Not everything lives up to baseless hype and there certainly was a lot of that back in the day.  People just naturally assumed that sending tiny amounts was viable and started shouting it from the rooftops.



It's also worth bearing in mind that when satoshi was still around, a fraction of a penny was a vastly different sum of BTC to what it is today.

Just to give a confirmation of your statement - it can be said we see the same with BTC. On the Pacific Ocean, there is one small state - called Vanuatu. Their traditional currency (and even you can find it on the flag)...is a boar tusk.

For many people, a boar's tusk has a very small value. But some of the locals found it very valuable and instead of breeding boars for food, they started breeding them for tusks and kept feeding them (any analogies between mining and "wasting electricity"?).
The older the boar, the more circles its tusks had been making and the more problematic, costly and time-consuming it was to feed it (halving, rising mining difficulty and effect on the price of BTC).
Finally, the boar tusks became something more just mere store of value - became a local currency, a symbol of wealth with great reputation (now BTC is a store of value thing, right?)

But anyway, it is nothing but a piece of bone, just as BTC is just a piece of code, right?

This is something alt fans seem to find impossible to wrap their heads around. Most of them are code with nominal value that could vapourise any second. Anyone can come up with some bells, whistles and 'partnerships'. Anything can be faster than Bitcoin if no one's using it and you cut whatever corners to manage it, or don't even check there are corners.

Building education, acceptance and trust is the absolute monster task and I'm not convinced anything other than BTC will manage it.

You're right, maybe it was the early community getting carried away BUT Satoshi never stopped this or corrected these people, the vision of what the technology could be and bring to the world was inspiring, right now it's a digital version of god, for the wealthy an asset and store of value.

I'd rather stick to gold.


Stop talking total rubbish, I've seen that EVERYONE is ignoring the fact that I've said NANO is unlikely to succeed or make ground, I simply complicated a few technical aspects of the project that it does well and people like yourself have got their knickers in a right twist about it and start with the childish name calling.

People like yourself have an attitude that everything but Bitcoin is a 'shitcoin' that's just stupid and immature and an uneducated VERY CLEAR biased view. There's many good coins and projects and many companies utilising the blockchain in new, innovative and interesting ways.

You can't just call every coin you don't like a 'shitcoin', to say there's NOTHING NANO does well is just stupid.

Will it be the next big thing, will it be the #1 digital form of crypto cash? No, probably not. People have a habbit here for putting words in my mouth and taking things out of context and rather than mature discussion and calid rebuttals it resorts to childish name calling and accusation of shilling.

Some people need to grow up and learn to accept that there's a wide variety of opinions on here and yours doesn't always have to be the right one.

But the difference between Bitcoin and almost everything else is that Bitcoin does what it does despite having the shit kicked out of it 24/7 for years on end and maxed out much of the time too. It's also managed to do that while still doing its best to uphold its principles and fighting off endless attempts to hijack it.

That's the bit that counts and that's what decides its value and position. That also overrules potential usability shortcomings. It motivates people to improve the strongest chain, not start from scratch with something effectively unproven.

The only thing that's come close is ETH in terms of usage and scrutiny and that has its own problems too.

If any other projects rose to similar prominence they'd experience the same agitation, intrigues, meddling and attempts to game and break them. Since we have no idea how most will fare most people won't bother volunteering to be the test subjects.

So you lost a fortune by selling something that became even more valuable later. I see where your grudge is coming from...

TODAY i made a small transaction to an exchange to use fiat, as always, i used 1 sat/B. It took ONE HOUR to get confirmed.

How do you even DARE to say this is "extremely long time"? Do you think we are stupid or what? Give me a break. It was about 144 satoshis for a single hour, have you ever done bank wire transfers? Probably not, or else you are a liar.

Say what you want but Bitcoin is working as intended, and that is the reason it keeps growing in value, albeit slower and slower, exactly as designed, but still preserves its purchasing power after a decade. What you want in a coin is not "Satoshi's vision", it is YOUR vision. Go ahead, copy Bitcoin's code and execute it again, you then have your own blockchain Go make your altcoin, and hope you don't end up like BTG...

In the UK our bank to bank payments take a matter of seconds, wire transfers abroad take a small amount of time, it's not a lie, look up Faster Payment Service in the UK. Most bank transactions take a mater of seconds now.

Yes, transfers abroad, especially for large amounts are silly and can take awhile BUT with PayPal that rules that out, transferwise, so many options.

Even if we're looking at crypto, Bitcoin is so stupidly inefficent, use NANO, STEEM, XLM, XRP, all easily liquidated for many other tradings pairs and they do what Bitcoin does better. Am I saying these will ever beat Bitcoin and slip the rankings, No. Am I saying people should hold these as an investment? No.

I'm saying, you're giving Bitcoin praise for doing something in an hour over banks when there are dozens of projects out there, that are credible, that can do it better, faster, cheaper or free.

Do I care that a project is more centralised than Bitcoin NO do I care if it is/isn't an effective currency NO! I was comparing Bitcoin to its original vision not ETH, ETH was never set up to do what Bitcoin does.
XRP for example is said to be very centralised, do I think it's a worthless investment? NO!
[/quote]
you first criticize bitcoin, then follow it up by saying you believe in the "technology" and "revolution" then follow that up with saying you hold a lot of ETH, a coin that is in contradiction of all you said before. the conclusion i made was the only possible conclusion.

it is not #2, it has a huge market cap because of its huge supply and a gigantic 72 million premine.
and it is not utilized at all. all i have seen in the past 5 years has been pump and dumps and ICO scams. that is not utility.
and i don't define success as being pumped and dumped. sure i also make profit from ETH and all other shitcoins that get pumped but i never "invest" in any of them because dump comes after a pump. and being pumped doesn't mean they have any utilities.

Op, I agree that Bitcoin is not living up to Satoshi's vision. Bitcoin was supposed to be money, but mainly people use it as an asset or trade it as stock. Bitcoin was supposed to be used for direct transactions between people with no intermediaries, but we use exchanges and some wallets which are intermediaries. Bitcoin micro-transactions are a disaster. At the same time, it's not all that bad. Bitcoin has shown what is possible. Bitcoin is still very cheap and fast for big transactions. Projects like The Lightning Network are looking into the problem of small transactions. I think Bitcoin still deserves respect and even though it's not living up to Satoshi's vision in some aspects, I bet Satoshi could not even imagine how huge of a thing Bitcoin would become.

Yea, I do agree with you, it's still functional and not bad if you're sending LARGE amounts, however even for that there are now better, cheaper, faster alternatives. It's like, why would someone use a rotatry dial phone when we now have smartphones, are there still people who will use old tech, FOR SURE! The issue is, the community had the chance to move it in a direction that was revolutionary and stuck it it's original goal and vision, in my opinion they failed.

Now, say what you want about BCH (Bitcoin Cash), I know I'm going to get tons of hate for this, and even I, as much as the next person, hate how they took Bitcoin's name and branding to potentially confuse people. Putting that aside, everything they are doing and have done, is much more in line with the direction I thought Bitcoin would go.

As many have pointed out, it's not Satoshi's project, he left it to the community, I fully understand and get that. The issue is, the community are motivated by greed and profit as much as the next man, so a lot of decisions are being made to benefit miners and hodlrs of Bitcoin as opposed to actually progressing and making the tech useful again.

Like I said though, people need to stop getting their knickers in a twist (not you personally op) but in general, people get far to offended at me having an opinion. I'm not saying I'm 100% right, I could be wrong, I'm not willing Bitcoin to fail, hopefully it returns to the usefulness of it's former days. Too many people in here are just here for the gains, just look at the counter arguments, none have them have been productive and nobody has addressed the valid rebuttals I've given, they just come back posting the same thing like @pooya87 above who goes on about ETH when I've already addressed and answered this, but he's just choosing to ignore it as opposed to telling me why my reasoning was wrong or why he disagrees with it.

I can see why the concept of BCH is popular with its believers. I absolutely cannot understand how any rational person can believe its actual implementation is anything other than a squirt of diarrhoea in Satoshi's face, let alone BSV which shoves him straight up its ruined guts.

It's massively centralised, has been 51% attacked, had incredibly amateurish features like emergency difficulty adjustment shoehorned in and an unknown corporation proposed taxing miners to pay for development. If you don't pay the tax your blocks get orphaned. It looks like that idea at least is now on the scrapheap.

Once again, they're sacrificing the stuff that really counts in pursuit of bells and whistles. If BTC could be cash without setting itself on fire it would. Right now that's not achievable while remaining intact. It has to remain intact to be developed further which is what's happening.

The first things to go in pursuit of flashiness are decentralisation and prudence. If you don't preserve them then everything that comes after winds up ultimately worthless. You may as well go back to Paypal.

Entirely your prerogative, but many would argue that physical precious metals are definitely harder to spend than BTC is.  BTC is easily divisible and highly portable.  You generally don't "spend" gold, you redeem it for fiat and then spend the fiat instead.  In your original post, you said:
Please attempt to make such a transaction using physical gold and let me know how you get on.   ;)

BTC may not be the perfect currency, but it's much closer to being a currency than gold is.

Satoshi did naively hope that miners would always allow some free transactions, but I don't think he envisioned that all Bitcoin transactions would be "cheap." He encouraged the use of mandatory fees early on, even when there was room for free transactions:


Also, take a moment to recognize what minimum fees used to mean in Satoshi's day: 0.01 BTC vs. the 1 satoshi/byte minimum we generally pay today.

Satoshi also encouraged a fee market, just like we have now:


The narrative of perpetually infinite cheap/free transactions that Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik promoted was never "Satoshi's vision" and I think the above quotes convey that.

In any case, bitcoin still has something to work on. While he is far from perfect and this must be agreed. Its main purpose, to be an alternative means of payment, still works very poorly.
Now bitcoin is in most cases used as a speculative means of storing value. As long as people have hope that in the future it will grow significantly in price, this will work. However, in general, a financial asset with high price volatility cannot be a good means of storing value. Well, cryptocurrency is developing and developing very quickly. This is a good guarantee of her success. Only the strongest will remain in this market.

And part of Bitcoin remaining the strongest will mean not compromising the parts that make it strong in the hope of making it more conducive to use as a currency.  Some forkcoins have already proven that's not a viable path.  We need to find ways to make it more usable as a currency without sacrificing the existing qualities people believe in and rely on.

To be sincere, Bitcoin has really changed from what it used to be. I can remember for sure that there was a time when Bitcoin used to as you have said and even better, but now it is totally different and my friend had to pay up to $7 on Blockchain wallet for a transaction that would take up to one hour, although he later told me that it was because he received lots of small coins, but I don’t know that for sure. Even the person that referred me to Bitcoin is no longer into it, he decided to quit after the last bull run, he withdrew all his money, a huge amount and he quit.

When I asked him why he decided to quit since he’s the one that once advised me to be investing in Bitcoin, he told me that’s because everything has changed and Bitcoin is no longer what it used to be. Well, I am not quitting anytime soon, I still like Bitcoin and I will continue making use of it and one day there might be change.

Satoshi is not the God, he can not foresee everything. And the market has put bitcoin to use in mainly cross boarder transactions and store of value, those two usages are not fee sensitive yet

Unless it is totally broken for those two purposes, it still serve those demand and attract more people. Other coins in principle can provide better user experience and low fee, but lack of liquidity and awareness

The bitcoin today took a lot of changes because we all know that the bitcoin is just a single coin that ignored by the other people because the price of it is just no more than a one-dollar but still there are some people trust then worth of this coin to make a lot of profit someday by the time goes by the price of the bitcoin goes up and from the year of 2017 the bitcoin shows it's the largest amount that reaches for over 14k dollars and that was a huge profit by that time many people getting curious about this coin and now they are making some investment and trading and hoping to earn more and help them to make more money. Now the price of the bitcoin falls and recovered from last year and now we are hoping again the price of it beat the previous record to earn more income.