Would bitcion be able to handle 1000 tr/sec all of sudden.

[dandav101]

Nasdaq just released a story pondering whether bitcoin has replaced gold as the new safe haven.

These things tend to really stick in the mainstream mind(fear). This'll really help adoption. So when adoption comes, I think it'll come in spurts, and then grow exponentially, but could the network be able to handle these sudden spikes?

Please forgive the newbishness.

[Nicolas Dorier]

Food for thoughts : Moving 100 Tons of Gold is costlier than moving the equivalent in BTC.
However, moving the equivalent of 100,000,000 Grams of Gold, grams by grams in BTC is costlier than moving it in gold.

Short answer : No it can't, but it might not be a deal breaker since it can move big amount of money more efficiently.

That being said, this post does not belongs to Development & Tech discussion I think.

[TransaDox]

Food for thoughts : Moving 100 Tons of Gold is costlier than moving the equivalent in BTC.
However, moving the equivalent of 100,000,000 Grams of Gold, grams by grams in BTC is costlier than moving it in gold.

Short answer : No it can't, but it might not be a deal breaker since it can move big amount of money more efficiently.

That being said, this post does not belongs to Development & Tech discussion I think.

While true, gold isn't physically moved very often. Instead they allocate it to you and give you a receipt for a particular hunk of metal. Give you unallocated gold which is pretty much a promise to give you gold if you really want it and futures, which is gambling with gold without ever needing it. For all of those, there doesn't have to be any gold at all until someone wants delivery then they go and buy it if they must . Bitcoin certainly could replace those methods of dealing in gold and be far less open to manipulation and general skullduggery as they have been caught doing time and time again. IMO a bitcoin type ledger would be far superior.

[Nicolas Dorier]

Give you unallocated gold which is pretty much a promise to give you gold if you really want it and futures, which is gambling with gold without ever needing it

The problem is that it is not sure you will get your gold back. Which is why repatriation of gold happens often (Texas), why the France did it in 1963.
So that in 1971, US could not steal the gold of France when it stopped convertibility of gold to dollar.

Moving gold, is the only way to know you will get it. Paper gold is only a promise that will break at the first crisis.

That said, granted, paper gold is nice for gambling, but storing your wealth in it is reckless. (cash is better than paper gold on this aspect)

But in a nutshell, Bitcoin can't reach 1000 tx overnight. It might happen in the future but it will be a slow process.
Meanwhile, the business cases involving low value transaction will get kicked out of the blockchain.

Then maybe, we'll get the same thing than now with gold : Real Bitcoin for storing wealth, but paper Bitcoin for transacting it everyday. (coinbase Bitcoin)
The only thing that make me think the story will not repeat is that I think better, trustless way of transferring Real Bitcoin off chain will appear. (Micro Payment channel is an example)
And there are other way some devs are working on right now.

However, I don't think those methods will be used at all only until we hit the problem for good, and will be used, only IF usability is better than "Paper Bitcoin" services like coinbase.