Well, since I was directly asked, I will respond. No, I'm certainly not shilling other coins. I don't hate them other than the obvious scams (of which there are too many to count), I simply have no interest in them. The trivial amount of Litecoin I have is from trying out scrypt mining with a GPU way back when and the ETH is a similarly tiny amount bought on a whim. I had hoped that BCH would be able to address the capacity issue but for a variety of reasons, it was unable to take the crown and as its major attraction over other alts was that its fork nature meant that it had the potential to take the user base with it. As time has passed, it has moved more and more away from that and has basically reverted to just another alt. BSV is simply a joke because of the close association with the clown, CSW.

Here's the thing, love SOV as much as you like, not addressing the on-chain capacity restriction is going to have some effect on certain aspects of Bitcoin that were long considered to be important aspects of it. When those aspects are brought up in thread, the correct answer is simply the correct answer. Now, adding a different perspective on that answer "That is true but SOV/decentralization/what have you is more important" is fine but people go off on all sorts of tangents about what they think I'm saying. Not so many years ago, it was quite common to give away a little bit of bitcoin to get people interested. Not reasonable anymore. Bitcoin used to be viewed as for the world and now it's just for the rich. Now, whether that's OK or not is a discussion that could be had but people just don't want to admit it.

I don't really have much against second layer solutions either but we hit full blocks in 2016 and now it's 2021. LN was already in development at that stage and still is not delivering. Someone will quote me some number of LN nodes but that's a totally irrelevant stat if it is still not properly useful. It should also be noted that opening an LN channel requires one transaction and closing it another. Simply put, Bitcoin doesn't have the capacity for LN to be used by a meaningful number of people. The LN developers have even effectively stated this themselves. LN, although potentially an excellent solution for what it was designed for, micropayments, also has several shortcomings for use in the manner that second-layer proponents are advocating. Seriously, if you're a LN advocate and haven't read and comprehended LN's shortcomings, you're underinformed and in for a shock.

So yeah, in summary, while I've never been a hardline BTC maximalist, it's always been my favorite coin and I just wish we weren't still passing around blocks on these.

Top 10 at best. Probably top 5. With the caveat that some in the top 10 shouldn't even be there (looking at you, XRP) and there is always going to be a bit of churn and some coins will temporarily obtain high market caps due to shenanigans.

OK, now I have to reply to this accusation. I wasn't talking about shitcoins. Pay attention. Someone asked why Bitcoin was losing market dominance and I suggested it was capacity issues with Bitcoin. It's everyone else who jumps on with suggestions of using shitcoins for some reason.

If you do that when it's directly relevant to the discussion at hand, that's called being in denial. It's not a healthy way to approach the world in general but certainly not finance.

Personally I find these meta discussions much more annoying so I'm going to try and make this my last post on the subject today. Again, I suggest that those that can't deal with opinions different from their own use the ignore button or just learn to do what I do and roll their eyes and move on.  

(OK, going to sneak this bit in).


This whole discussion was initiated by someone asking why Bitcoin was losing marketshare so indeed, the point was that people are using them. We don't appear to be disagreeing on the details, just the framing.

So what I appear to be reading here is that you agree that there are implications from the capacity limitations of Bitcoin that encourage ownership and usage of alts and that make Bitcoin less useful as a currency. So I don't see what the issue is.

But that's the second-layer way.

Yeah, I thought he must be some kind of animatronic when I first saw it. I think he's not been turning off the supercollider when he sticks his head in.

Normally when claims of breaking the laws of physics are made, I'm very skeptical but when you're talking elementary particles, I think there's a whole lot more we need to know there. Of course, the laws will just need to be revised if anything comes of it.

All very nice stuff. Completely fails to address the arguments I made (which are not for altcoins or big blocks or anything like that, merely that if you restrict capacity, the thing complained about is merely an expected outcome), of course so I'm not going to bother addressing most of it. The idea that "We had the discussion about the tire being flat yesterday and I didn't do anything about it" in any way stops the tire from being flat today and still needing to be fixed is asinine.

However, if you continue to refuse to countenance discussion of factors which might be influencing price or adoption, I heartily recommend this link



I will, myself, continue to listen to many voices including those with whom I am not in agreement. Echo chambers are such a bore.

I have not said I am not a big blocker and indeed, I am one (though I am generally not going to be pushing it on this thread, I will bring it up when problems caused by restricted block size are discussed). It has just proven that a chain fork is not the solution. That doesn't mean the problem isn't still there.


And two weeks ago, I had a transaction that would have a fee of $20 equivalent for decent inclusion time. Fluctuating fees compound the problem, not alleviate it. I ended up disposing of some litecoin I had trashing up my Ledger instead.

Building the words into a story would probably be the way to go. Rote memorization of arbitrary things is difficult.


Segwit absolutely was being touted as a capacity increase, being as how, theoretically, it allows around 4 times the data. The truth is, however, with segwit, block sizes have plateaued at 1.3MB, a trivial 30% increase and it must be remembered that segwit transactions are bigger than traditional bitcoin transactions too.

I don't think it's pertinent to not mention the issue because, simply, it hasn't gone away, as much as it may make some uncomfortable and want to stick their fingers in their ears and shout "la la la", it's an ongoing problem. I regularly see old principles of Bitcoin touted here, fungibility, low friction, security and so on, but the truth is that the capacity issue restricts that and other potential advantages, just as the 56k modems we are currently flinging around images of would have crippled streaming if we hadn't moved beyond them. I'll also add that I'm not throwing this out there randomly but only mentioning it when it is relevant (in this case, in reference as to why alts have stolen so much of the market share).

Now, although I don't buy into it, the argument that increased block size would damage decentralization could be made but that doesn't mean that you get to ignore those other very real effects of limiting it. Listing pros and cons doesn't involve just throwing away things that don't go your way and pretending that very real things that are happening aren't is not a good way to have a good handle on reality. $20+ fees do not provide a good on-ramp to Bitcoin. Where do you think people are going to go?

No, you.
IDGAF and never did. I've been a member since 2012 and had to look up how merits worked last month because meaningless internet points don't mean anything.

Keep that head in the sand.

Yes. It was just annoying that it was being touted when it was clear it was not a solution and, indeed, has proven not to be.

The subtext, of course, is that LN also has issues (not least requiring on-chain capacity) that also make it not a solution and people need to pull their heads out of the sand about why Bitcoin is losing market share.

It's all well and good until you go to have a meeting and have to turf out Craig Wright in a sleeping bag.

Ideally you want an open-source wallet so you can at least have some hope that someone without vested interests has had a look.

I'll give you this, at least nobody is shilling Segwit as the answer anymore.

Alts are crap but Bitcoin continues to have a capacity issue.

I mean, this is the reason there are more than 7000 alts so why not?

Yes. Looks like it may be running out of steam already tho.

It's really not worth the effort IMO. It's like understanding pogs but with less real-world applicability.