I understand for the past years, Bitcoin has been the king of cryptos, but why is that so? I have been for several months now reading a lot about the whole crypto ecosystem, i even bought several bitcoins back in August (sold them all today, for 4x returns and am keeping all the money in the broker account, and maybe i'll buy BTC again just as soon as i manage to retrieve my belief in BTCs future viability -i am trying really hard).

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical. Will it ever be effectively implemented and integrated into BTC and its blockchain? We don't know. Will it be practical, and effectively reduce costs substantially? We don't know! When will it be ready? Sometime in 2018? With a measly small team of developers? 2018 maybe! If it ever becomes pratical. Right now it seems the WHOLE BTC ecosystem hopes that the LN will work and solve ALL of BTCs complex problems. This is a very big and risky assumption. If it doesn't, i sincerely don't see how the BTC is going to navigate ever higher demand and users. It will bottleneck even more and the result will not be pretty. Besides, the whole concept of creating off-chain direct channels between users doesn't seem very practical to me, but perhaps i am wrong.

4. Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong. Why isn't a solution to this DAMN OBVIOUS BOTTLENECK PROBLEM being chased with the urgency that i think the BTC community should have? Maybe i am missing something, or many things, i am by no means an advanced and very knowledgeable member of the community. But is the theory that major miner groups hijacking the BTC ecosystem in order to keep their high fees absurd? Maybe it is, but at my current understanding it seems like a possibility.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD! So the argument goes. Is this enough for the BTC? This isn't what i thought BTC was supposed to be. It SHOULD serve as a srote of value as well as a means for making fast and costless daily transactions. You see i am not against a system that serves solely as a store of value but i WONDER if it will be enough, will BTC present enough utility for people once they realize they can't use it for small transactions, but instead they should see BTC solely as something akin to a long term investment, that isn't useful for small transactions? The way i see it the more utility a crypto currency presents to its users, the ore value it will have, and right now there are a dozen CRYPTOS will a lot more utility than the Bitcoin.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

I understand for the past years, Bitcoin has been the king of cryptos, but why is that so? I have been for several months now reading a lot about the whole crypto ecosystem, i even bought several bitcoins back in August (sold them all today, for 4x returns and am keeping all the money in the broker account, and maybe i'll buy BTC again just as soon as i manage to retrieve my belief in BTCs future viability -i am trying really hard).

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical. Will it ever be effectively implemented and integrated into BTC and its blockchain? We don't know. Will it be practical, and effectively reduce costs substantially? We don't know! When will it be ready? Sometime in 2018? With a measly small team of developers? 2018 maybe! If it ever becomes pratical. Right now it seems the WHOLE BTC ecosystem hopes that the LN will work and solve ALL of BTCs complex problems. This is a very big and risky assumption. If it doesn't, i sincerely don't see how the BTC is going to navigate ever higher demand and users. It will bottleneck even more and the result will not be pretty. Besides, the whole concept of creating off-chain direct channels between users doesn't seem very practical to me, but perhaps i am wrong.

4. Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong. Why isn't a solution to this DAMN OBVIOUS BOTTLENECK PROBLEM being chased with the urgency that i think the BTC community should have? Maybe i am missing something, or many things, i am by no means an advanced and very knowledgeable member of the community. But is the theory that major miner groups hijacking the BTC ecosystem in order to keep their high fees absurd? Maybe it is, but at my current understanding it seems like a possibility.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD! So the argument goes. Is this enough for the BTC? This isn't what i thought BTC was supposed to be. It SHOULD serve as a srote of value as well as a means for making fast and costless daily transactions. You see i am not against a system that serves solely as a store of value but i WONDER if it will be enough, will BTC present enough utility for people once they realize they can't use it for small transactions, but instead they should see BTC solely as something akin to a long term investment, that isn't useful for small transactions? The way i see it the more utility a crypto currency presents to its users, the ore value it will have, and right now there are a dozen CRYPTOS will a lot more utility than the Bitcoin.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

Ah so this is it of course thanks for explaining. I thought that number was the number of transactions that had been confirmed per second. It must then be the number of transactions that have been sent.

I sometimes check the address

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions


To see current status of unconfirmed transactions in the BTC blockchain, and i currently see that the average (for the past 24 hours?) has been 29.6 transactions/second.

If the BTC network is limited to around 5 transactions/second how is this possible? I reckon there is some calculation error in the website, is this it?

I believe it is really hard to pin a value to bitcoin. One could argue that the more market cap it gains, the higher its value, because more people will take it seriously, like it will start attracting wealthier and wealthier people. In a sense that's exactly what's happening, it is getting ever more accepted as a store of value by an increasing amount of people.

After all, isn't this the definition of money? That people accept it as such, that people agree that it has value? Look at Bitcoin as a bank. When people buy Bitcoin, what they're really doing is they're buying a tiny space in the blockchain that says that the address that they own has X amount of value, that they're entitled to X amount of value. This is exactly what banks do. You deposit a $100 dollar bill in the bank, it vanishes with your piece of paper and at the same time it creates a record in their computer that you are entitled to $100 dollars.

As Bitcoin increases in valuer, its "credibility" is increasing in the eyes of many (it's what motivated me to get in and study the technology). Wealthy people won't put their money in the Bank of Zimbabwe, but they won't worry much about depositing it in Bank of America or some other fancy bank. What's better, the money one "deposits" in Bitcoin can't be found by governments and can't be taken away from you (if you take simple steps to secure it of course). This has tremendous value for many all over the world.



On a different note, this is my first post here, i have been following this website for a few months now and i just gotta say, what the hell with many posters here, it's like half of posters here seem like they're permanently stoned and drunk, writing meaningless ****, you gotta try so hard to understand what people are saying. I understand english may not be the first language (it isn't mine either) but do try a bit harder to pratice writing better instead of blindly using google translator to write ****. There, i had to vent this.