You really don't. People can buy BTC for dollars and then buy coffee.
You are kidding aren't you? So I pay a % in order to by BTC for dollars then I buy a coffee making my coffee actually more expensive (and it took me the time to first change my dollars into BTC which I could have instead just used to by my coffee saving me that wasted time). Note that if I had used by credit card I could just "tap to pay" but if I use BTC they'll have to find their person that knows how to do the tx (and many stories on this forum show that places that accept BTC only have one person that even knows how to do that) and muck around with QR codes (which will take at least 5x as long as tap and go does). And in order to get the BTC you would have most likely had to set up an account at an exchange (requiring all sorts of ID checks) or gone through an even more complicated procedure (risking being targeted as some sort of tax evader by using localbitcoins). Why on earth would anyone do that? It seems that a lot of people here are just living in some sort of "fantasy land" in which BTC is able to be acquired for zero fees or hassles.
and there you have it. the number one reason why people can't be bothered with Bitcoin for retail purchase: lazyness. |
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some poeple say bitcoin isn't useful for low value transactions, and at the same time they are saying low value tx are clogging up the blocks.
somehow low value TX using bitcoin are both not useful and popular?
Maybe take a look at what these "low value transactions" actually are. To help you out let's say "stupid ad-sig campaigns that pay people to post rubbish in this forum" and "idiotic gambling systems like Satoshi Dice" and then more recently simply "stress testing rubbish txs". So basically you're in favour of increasing the block size so we can have "more rubbish posts" and "more idiotic gambling systems" and "more useless stress tests". Did I miss anything (apart from the ridiculous coffees that no-one is buying)? If Bitcoin can't do remittance then basically it has failed (as that is the biggest 'low hanging fruit" in the entire financial system).
Someone's working on this www.goabra.com |
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of course let's not sure make sure that Bitcoin is resilient to attacks from totalitarian governments and handicapped internet grids in war-torn countries and other areas of geo-political instabilities. because fuck these people right, they can't have Bitcoin, just too bad they weren't born in cozy north america  much rather design it to work only in the la-la land of infinite growth where progress never stops and government are perfectly fine with Bitcoin challenging their monetary sovereignty have you guys ever opened an history book? do you not see the debacle unfolding before your very eyes on the international scene? do you really imagine that the next decade is going to be some kind of rosy economic prosperity where citizens of the world and their government hold hands and sing kumbaya!? In terms of resistance against government persecution there are different ways to look at it, I think that adoption is important because of how it relates to decentralization and security. If more people adopt Bitcoin it would by extension lead to more people running full nodes. It would also make Bitcoin more secure from suppression or persecution from governments or other entities. Since the more people that use Bitcoin the more difficult it will become to attack. In the history of file sharing for example, it was in part because of the shear number of people using it that prevented effective persecution, not because of anonymising technologies. More users and uses for Bitcoin gives Bitcoin more value, and therefore by extension more security because of the increased incentive for mining. How has that worked for the last 2 years and a half? Again you ignore reality and make arguments based on fantasies. Governments couldn't care less about file sharing, it has no impact on their ability to govern and only affects certain industries. If you really believe that more Bitcoin adoption and therefore more challenge to the monetary sovereignty will not bring about more attacks and incentive to destroy Bitcoin then you are quite simply utterly clueless. |
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I never said this. Here: that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility.
I disagree, I even personally have ideological reasons for why I prefer using cryptocurrency over traditional payment and monetary systems. If I can no longer do this on the Bitcoin blockchain I will simply move to another blockchain that does allow me to do this. Which relates to my point about competition as well. I don't care if you disagree "for personal reasons". It is still absolutely true. Bitcoin has an absolutely poor value proposition from a consumer standpoint. If you propose the opposite then you are simply not being honest. I disagree, I prefer Bitcoin. If I could use it for everything I would. You are part of an microscopic minority. 99% of the world's population will side with me on this I do care. I don't care that you do care. Again, you are a minority and your decision will not move the needle one bit. I am not advocating for pushing dangerous changes to Bitcoin, I actually think that we should not increase the blocksize beyond conservative projected estimates of the technical limitations for running a full node, mainly bandwidth actually. A guideline could be that most people should be able to run a full node from their homes if they live in the developed world. So please do not mischaracterize my views as dangerous unless you do think that what I have just described is actually dangerous. You have dangerous views because you attempt to politicize everything and are absolutely ignorant of some critical technical details. It is not a case of either or, Bitcoin can have notable transactional utility and have a sound monetary theory while remaining decentralized and censorship resistant. These properties are not mutually exclusive, they are actually synergistic. It is a false dichotomy to think that we must choose. Increasing the utility of Bitcoin allows it to be a better store of value. Being a better store of value in turn also allows Bitcoin to function more effectively as payment system. Bitcoin can be many things simultaneously and be different things to different people at the same time, we should not try and restrict Bitcoin. You're fighting a strawman here. You didn't address my point that Bitcoin as a store-of-value has been the driver of economic growth so far and this is absolutely undisputable. It will take more time for Bitcoin to be more commonly be accepted as a means of exchange, for some people there are certain psychological barriers to overcome considering some of the anarchistic aspects of Bitcoin, currency without centralized authority. For me Bitcoin is much more then currency, it is trust without centralized authority which can be applied to many applications, including currency. For me the political benefits of using Bitcoin as a currency, as well as a store of value, would have profound effects on global economics and political power. Money is power, Bitcoin changes the fundamental nature of power. The benifits of this are not as easily measured because the true cost of the current financial system is borne through externalities like quantitative easing, regulatory capture, inefficiencies, corruption ect. The currency and means-of-exchange utility will come in due time, but not before Bitcoin has asserted itself as a dominant economic store of wealth. By that I mean that before we can truly enjoy the promises of Bitcoin as a transactional currency we need to increase its market cap by several orders of magnitude It seems like you are implying that a conservative blocksize increase would compromise monetary freedom when that is not the case. Again you are setting up a false dichotomy, a false choice. Increasing the block size does not compromise monetary freedom. Yes, blocksize increase under mostly all of the current propositions paraded by their proponents would absolutely lead to the slow death of Bitcoin as a tool for monetary freedom. I am not making the generalization of what a user is Yes you are. You argue that without increase in the transaction throughput (block size) Bitcoin cannot attract more users. This is wrong. You pretend that those looking for cheap alternatives will turn to another cryptocurrency and that this is a danger for Bitcoin. This is wrong. I think that we should account for many different users of Bitcoin not just the "bankers, lawyers, accountants, government officials" whom you however are saying who the users should be which is a much worse generalization to make, furthermore I would consider that "prohibitive" for most people, myself included. You are misrepresenting what I said. My comment was that the only alternatives for some people or generally capital worldwide to escape capital control is to pay astronomical fees to "bankers, lawyers, accountants, government officials". In contrast, a 20$ transaction fee to transact on the Bitcoin blockchain is negligible, especially when referring to transactions worth millions of dollars. If the fee market determines that this the price for transacting on the Bitcoin network based on the technical limitations of the time then it would be justified and I would use an altcoin instead. Your altcoin will be worthless and will likely have no liquidity. You will therefore use an alternative that seeks to leverage the network effect and value of Bitcoin: LN, voting pools, off-chain. However that would not be the case if we left the limit at one megabyte since that does not presently represent the median of our current technical limitations, since it is just an arbitrary limit after all. Every limit in Bitcoin is arbitrary, this argument is absolutely worthless. You also ignore that the resources to run a full node are already pushing the limits of some typical household computer and internet connection. Again you show you technical ineptitude by suggesting we use "the median". What we need to target is lower bound. This is a security-critical system whose main property needs to be resiliency, not efficiency. Therefore we plan and design for worst case scenarios. Gold was used as a currency for millennia and it has been a good store of value for most of its history simultaneously, these concepts are not incompatible and historically has been how human society has operated for the vast majority of recorded history.
Gold was scarcely used as a currency by the common man. They were typically too poor and would use silver or copper. |
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 you two make a nice couple. of course let's not sure make sure that Bitcoin is resilient to attacks from totalitarian governments and handicapped internet grids in war-torn countries and other areas of geo-political instabilities. because fuck these people right, they can't have Bitcoin, just too bad they weren't born in cozy north america much rather design it to work only in the la-la land of infinite growth where progress never stops and government are perfectly fine with Bitcoin challenging their monetary sovereignty have you guys ever opened an history book? do you not see the debacle unfolding before your very eyes on the international scene? do you really imagine that the next decade is going to be some kind of rosy economic prosperity where citizens of the world and their government hold hands and sing kumbaya!? do you still believe in the tooth fairy?
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Yes sure people were buying Bitcoin because they were expecting banks and corporations to compromise it and so knight22 and his hobos could buy their Doritos with it  My sides.  Poe's law aside, if endlessly entertaining idiots like knight22 didn't exist, we would have to pick up the fail-gauntlet and emulate them ourselves. Care to explain how you think a useless thing will retain any value jackass? Then consider Bitcoin is much more useful then gold  |
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I'm not so sure that altcoins have a lot more throughput than Bitcoin after reading this summary of testnet limitations of BitShare 2.0, which is claiming it an reach 100k TPS in the real-world:
Bitshares full nodes are very different to Bitcoin. Bitshares is delegated proof of stake, as far as I understand it there are only 100 full nodes which are incentivized and voted into position by the users based on the amount they hold. Other examples would be Dash which has fully incentivized full nodes implemented in a more decentralized fashion compared to Bitcoin. Ethereum also has some interesting solutions to scalability as well. Yes, and that is sort of my point. You can throw out PoW, relieving a lot of CPU/GPU/ASIC intensive work (without getting into security implications), and, like Bitcoin, the primary bottlenck is still networking. I am not referring to PoW in these examples, I was referring to full nodes which are dealing with the primary bottleneck of networking. At the cost of sacrificing decentralization. This is just trying to find a happy place between Bitcoin and Visa. Yet, it is clear that they acknowledge, that the primary issue is networking. We agree on the primary point. So, let's apply that to the discussions on this thread. Does XT solve the primary scalability issue facing Bitcoin today... networking load and latency? Right Exactly! the block size debate is kinda besides the point, block should be as big as they need too, period the end. and we should be focused on solving this core issue. the scalability debate should be more about,figuring out what the "max load" or "min requirements" we expect from full node users ( 15MBPS + reasonable computer?? ) and reducing the load to accommodate as much traffic as possible. The min requirement is simple: being able to run a node over an anonymous low-bandwidth connection I’d ignore mundane expenses like hardware and power. Instead, recall that, if a full node cannot be run anonymously, “the network” (full node entry) is effectively controlled by law enforcement, a central entity. Therefore, my view is that the current largest “cost” (and current bottleneck to Bitcoin scalability) is therefore the threat of persecution. |
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Trace Mayer: "He who holds the gold makes the rules  |
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Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.  Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world? If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it. I agree with @molecular. The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system. This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax). What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way. It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients. Here again: What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins. The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview: Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.
I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use it. Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure. So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money? Where does your delusion stops  A cheaper proposition doesn't need to be sponsored by anybody. Do you know how cheap it is to copy open code and tweak it? The economics and incentives at play will just work by itself. Do you know how many altcoins are there waiting to catch some spectrum of the market bitcoin would miss? http://coinmarketcap.com/Bitcoin is not alone and will never be. It needs to compete in terms of value proposition in all. possible. ways. or it will just lose that market share. That is precisely why you are abjectly wrong. A ton of altcoin exists right now with enormously more transaction throughput yet not one of them is challenging Bitcoin. I'm starting to figure you will never understand this but the people who give Bitcoin its value, the holders, the "bitcoin rich list", could not careless about the transaction throughput or higher transaction fees. They will not be driven away from their investment because some noobs complain that they have to pay more than a penny for their transactions to go through. Without these people it doesn't matter if you altcoin can do 1 trillion transactions a second because it is worthless as no serious investors has any interest holding it on the long term. No altcoin is actually challenging bitcoin simply because bitcoin already offers everything users and businesses needs at a competitive cost but the day the price of conducting transactions will rise, things will change. There will be an economic incentive to use another system that is simply cheaper, faster that has less friction. Why use bitcoin then as money then? Because it has a 21M limit herp derp? Holding a useless thing does not make that thing valuable or tulips and Bernie babies would still be on the moon. You can continue to think so and ignore the reality though but the reality won't ignore you. Read this post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg12506336#msg12506336 let it sink in and until you can present a cogent reply to it then I am not wasting my time with you anymore. |
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It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way. But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads. This is part of the reason the dictator created XT. Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.
If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative. Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin. Let's hope it stays that way.
I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion. Seriously? Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845That is funny, it seems like we have both reached very different conclusions from reading that thread. lol The issue is not whether the "DDos protection" is a blacklist or not. The concern is this feature introduces a centrally managed aspect into Bitcoin code. Considering Bitcoin is all about minimizing trust this implementation strikes at the heart of Bitcoin ethos by attempting to plug a trust-dependent function into the protocol. No matter how you look at it this is bad and should be avoided at all cost. You can simply just turn it off within the client itself, or even just run a BIP101 only version of XT or even Core instead. It does not add a trust-dependent function into the protocol because it is not implemented on the protocol level. https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/tree/only-bigblocksI don't care. The intent is there and this is in line with a long history of Mike Hearn pushing very dangerous and disturbing ideas. Certainly enough for me to never, ever support anything he gravitates around. In fact, if there is one great thing about Bitcoin XT it's that it has hopefully marked the beginning of the end for any influence he might've had over Bitcoin development. |
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It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way. But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads. This is part of the reason the dictator created XT. Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.
If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative. Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin. Let's hope it stays that way.
I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion. Seriously? Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845That is funny, it seems like we have both reached very different conclusions from reading that thread. lol The issue is not whether the "DDos protection" is a blacklist or not. The concern is this feature introduces a centrally managed aspect into Bitcoin code. Considering Bitcoin is all about minimizing trust this implementation strikes at the heart of Bitcoin ethos by attempting to plug a trust-dependent function into the protocol. No matter how you look at it this is bad and should be avoided at all cost. |
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It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility. This in my opinion is not correct, people do care about the cost of the transaction and the present holders of Bitcoin is not all that matters. For Bitcoin to grow and survive it needs to attract more users, when better and cheaper alternatives exists people will choose those instead of Bitcoin. Bitcoin should be able to compete with other cryptocurrencies and I believe that it can as long as we do not allow the Bitcoin network to become overloaded which would lead to transactions becoming unreliable and over the long term prohibitively expensive.
It is seemingly a disease for you to make arguments on the premise of assumptions that do not hold true. One that you propose here is that without large transaction throughput and high velocity Bitcoin has no utility. Well "this in my opinion is not correct". While regular retail consumers may care about the cost of transactions, Bitcoin offers little to no advantage in that regard compared to traditional payment and monetary systems. Aside from certain niche use cases (remittances or conventional international money transfer) most people are perfectly fine using credit cards and fiat for their daily purchases. These systems provide consumer protection and security that is hardly possible using Bitcoin. While these might be costly and put enormous weight on the financial system as well as shift enormous responsibility & trust toward the institutions running these networks most people could not care less. So essentially what you are doing is pushing for dangerous changes to Bitcoin so that it attempts to compete with systems that are inherently more efficient and scalable given their centralized arrangements. This, to me, is asinine and totally misses the point of what Bitcoin's true value proposition is. Bitcoin has grown from nothing to a 3.5B$ market cap largely without notable "transactional" utility except for some special uses cases. The reasons for this are obvious to anyone who has been paying attention: its sound monetary theory & its decentralized, censorship-resistant property. Since then, a trove of entrepreneurs and venture capitalist have tried to shape Bitcoin into the second coming of Paypal, riding the coattails of its novelty features and permissionless aspects. Remember when 2014 was supposed to be the "year of the merchant"? Expedia, Microsoft, Dell, Overstock, Newegg, etc. Somehow you would think all this "utility" would lead to more adoption right? After all people cant wait to spend their bitcoins and use them to shop online....right..right? Well it turns out that no, they don't. It simply doesn't make sense, other than maybe temporarily as a novelty, to purchase bitcoins to make purchases. It is not convenient or economically desirable. Imagine the amount of money that was wasted trying to sell this "utility" to mainstream customers. Just thinking of the giant fail that was the "Bitpay Bitcoin Bowl" says all that needs to be said. The "customer" is simply not buying it. Bitcoin is still looked at as a freak show by most of the general public, they simply don't care for it. So what are we left with? Should we bother continue on this path or go back to square one and consider what makes Bitcoin great in the first place? To reiterate Trace Mayer's point: who are the users that are willing to hire Bitcoin and pay for its services? What are the use cases that are absolutely impossible without Bitcoin existing? As we consider the different avenues we could take it is seemingly clear to me that we always end up at the same point: monetary freedom. Monetary freedom implies the protection of one's wealth from government inflation, taxes, confiscation or general destructive economic policies. Trace speaks of economic interests in Venezuela and Switzerland using Bitcoin to the tune of millions of dollars to circumvent some of their countries restrictive economic policies. By all account this is what Bitcoin excels at: being a safe haven for one's wealth, an accessible and comparatively cheap way to escape capital controls. The generalization that you make of what a user is, as if it only relates to transactional interest, is misguided and to some extent downright disingenuous. On the other hand the users I refer to are not some imaginary "mass adoption" fantasy. They are real and are using Bitcoin as we speak. They are not deterred by high transaction fees because they literally have no other options or if they have, they involve costs that are on a whole different level than what you would refer to as "prohibitive" (bankers, lawyers, accountants, government officials). I think it's time for some of ya'll to get back down to earth, your head as been in the cloud seemingly too long your brain is lacking oxygen. No one's disregarding Bitcoin's competition. If someone is it is you as you conveniently ignore readily available and very dominant fiat alternatives for the purpose of "transactional utility". As far as cryptocurrency is concerned there are a multitude of reasons why Bitcoin has little to no competition. If you wish to understand why I suggest this excellent article from Mencius Moldbug about monetary history. While it may not be factually accurate on all points, it certainly is in regard to inherent network effects and how powerful they are in the context of money: Once Nitropia is on rhodium, anyone who buys palladium is no different from anyone who is trying to manipulate any commodities market. In a free market, if you want to buy up a bunch of palladium - or wheat or oil or FCOJ - and by so doing raise the price, you may do so. But if you want to actually realize your profits, you have to sell at some point, and there is no reason to think you'll have any luck getting out at a higher price than you got in at. This is called the "burying the corpse" problem, and a thing of beauty it is.
In other words, money is the bubble that doesn't pop. Once rhodium feels the Quickening, any other potential monetary standard is at an incurable disadvantage, because its adherents are mere manipulators. Sooner or later they will get tired and let their guard down, and rhodium will take their heads. But rhodium itself cannot pop - there can be only one, but there has to be at least one. And that's money. |
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Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy. Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world? If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it. I agree with @molecular. The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system. This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax). What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way. It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients. Here again: What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins. The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview: Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.
I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use it. Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure. So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money? Where does your delusion stops A cheaper proposition doesn't need to be sponsored by anybody. Do you know how cheap it is to copy open code and tweak it? The economics and incentives at play will just work by itself. Do you know how many altcoins are there waiting to catch some spectrum of the market bitcoin would miss? http://coinmarketcap.com/Bitcoin is not alone and will never be. It needs to compete in terms of value proposition in all. possible. ways. or it will just lose that market share. That is precisely why you are abjectly wrong. A ton of altcoin exists right now with enormously more transaction throughput yet not one of them is challenging Bitcoin. I'm starting to figure you will never understand this but the people who give Bitcoin its value, the holders, the "bitcoin rich list", could not careless about the transaction throughput or higher transaction fees. They will not be driven away from their investment because some noobs complain that they have to pay more than a penny for their transactions to go through. Without these people it doesn't matter if you altcoin can do 1 trillion transactions a second because it is worthless as no serious investors has any interest holding it on the long term. |
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I will put the summary here again.
Bitcoin can leverage its network effect gained from the first mover advantage in order to play it safe with regards to its limit on block size as the cost to switch would be the highest, but other systems would need to stay within the confines of the home networks in order to provide the same core value proposition to compete with Bitcoin properly.
Bitcoin needs to move only when it absolutely has to, there is no reason to do this at the moment.
It is more imminent than you might think. I'm guessing you're seeing this in your crystal ball ? |
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Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy. Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world? If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it. I agree with @molecular. The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system. This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax). What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way. It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients. Here again: What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins. The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview: Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.
I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use it. Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure. So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money? Where does your delusion stops |
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For anyone that has done this you know it takes FOREVER to sync (think days). That information is completely out of date and misleading. https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-blockchain-initial-sync-time-dramatically-reduced-headers-first-sync/"With this new feature, new users can be fully synced with Bitcoin Core closer to 4 hours, as opposed to 2 days on an average internet connection" Next he wants to try out his magic service but wait he needs some Bitcoin, he won't need much, just a few cents to pay transaction fees. In the US he would probably find his way to Coinbase. After giving them access to his bank account, probably a copy of his ID, social security number, and waiting for days (and praying it doesn't get "cancelled"). Secondly, if you want tiny amounts of bitcoin for experimenting with micropayemnts without dealing with an exchange you can buy a cheap USB miner for $50, not $400, but it really isn't clear you actually need Bitcoins to experiment because you can use testnet coins, or if the idea is to sell things online as a source of ("hundreds of dollars" or more of) income, you get other people to send the Bitcoins to you. http://www.amazon.com/Bitmain-AntMiner-Bitcoin-Miner-Version/dp/B00TWK9208Again, all kind of stuff crypto-wiz and general Bitcoin vet is aware of but amateurs might not. Now you're suggesting people gather all necessary parts for 125$ less than 21inc's device and set the miner up themselves (another obstacles for casual enthusiasts). After doing all of that they still don't have the whole software stack integrated and support that comes with 21inc's all-in-one package. Don't you think you're underestimating a bit the value of a device that just does all of this "out of the box"? It seems to me you're really just trying to pick apart anything just for the sake of argument at this point. |
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Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy. Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world? If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it. I agree with @molecular. The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system. This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax). What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way. It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients. Here again: What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins. The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview: Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.
I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use it. |
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Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy. Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world? If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it. I agree with @molecular. The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system. This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax). What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way. It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients. |
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Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy. Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world? If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it. I agree with @molecular. The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system. This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax). What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax! If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees. It most certainly isn't. Bitcoin offers a unique value proposition and whatever the block supply will be there will be competition for it and lesser economic interests might be driven away but there is an enormous amount of capital that will bid for this service. |
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