You are only partly right imho. Yes, Bitcoin has to grow. But increasing block space doesn't solve this properly, only move the problem for a bit later.
Since 2023, the problem moved the other way: there's much less blockspace being used for normal transactions.
On the other hand, innovation tends to come when there's a need for it. And we do need innovation, for a proper scalability solution.
If it would be easy, we'd have it by now.
we start getting used to use on-chain transactions only when it's meaningful (hence worth paying even 50$+ for it). For the rest, for small amounts like for example the signature campaigns or paying for VPN, sorry, but LN, no matter how imperfect it is, is the solution we should really consider.
Who's going to open a LN channel if it costs $50? And another $50 or more to close the channel? If something goes wrong (which has happened to me opening a channel), you're down $100 without any results.
In the past year, how many payments have you made that are worth $50 in fees? I can't think of anything.
If blocks are ten times larger (and still full), just 1 sat/vbyte is enough to double that.
That's a bold hypothesis. We're 15 years after the creation of Bitcoin, and how many users actually do "legitimate" transactions? Like, transactions where they don't just store trash using tapscript. 'Cause I remember before Ordinals, I was paying 1 sat/vb and had it confirmed within the next few
minutes.
I remember the end of 2017: blocks were full, and fees were crazy. Even back then, I felt like Bitcoin can't grow if it's too expensive to use. I'd
like to make much more transactions than I do now, but the price is too high. Who's going to accept Bitcoin as a payment if it costs too much to transfer it again? I just paid my VPN, which I could have done with Bitcoin, but I used Monero.
You're saying there may not be enough demand to fill 10 MB blocks. I'm saying the lack of demand may be because it's currently impractical to use. As they say: "fix the money, fix the world"!
And as I already said, I'm not arguing that a subtle block size increase will destroy the fee market competition completely. It's just not going to resolve the scalability issue.
Agreed. It's not a permanent fix. But it may give Bitcoin some space to grow until there's a better solution.
My concerns are more about what will happen in 20, 50, or 100 years from now.
How do you see Bitcoin in 20 years, if the majority of users can only "own" Bitcoin on a CEX or ETF?
This may sound a bit anti-Bitcoin, but after four years of exploring Bitcoin, I've come to an important conclusion: Bitcoin is not meant for buying coffee or conducting other low-value transactions, at least not on-chain. It represents the best monetary standard we can have, and using it for such purposes undervalues its true potential.
My worry goes deeper: can it be a monetary standard if it can't be used by normal people?
If you want a peer-to-peer cash system with low on-chain fees, excellent privacy, and a similar level of decentralization, then Monero is the ideal choice. It functions exactly as desired. Its dynamic block size is superior to any fixed size if your sole goal is to maximize the number of on-chain transactions.
I synced Monero's full blockchain a while back, and it's much more demanding on the system than Bitcoin's IBD, even though Monero is much smaller. If Monero would have more transactions than Bitcoin, I expect it to become impossible for home users to run their own node. I like Monero, but I don't think it can scale to many more transactions.
There is a more problematic math at work here, every time Bitcoin grows the amount guarded grows, with Bitcoin at 1 million there is 19 trillion in wealth there
The only "worry" is for the amount being transfered. That's the part that can be replaced in a 51% attack. There's no moment all 19 trillion is at risk at the same time.
Show Posts
One large difference is that in Bitcoin, you can choose your own denomination. I've seen altcoins (BlackBytes) that have fixed denominations (like banknotes). In Bitcoin, unlike banknotes, your change is always one input.
It almost feels like cheating, she's about a million times better at this than I am.
