P2P Cash or Settlement Layer?

[flix]

Actually.. thinking a bit more about this.. if Bitcoin can become good money... that is if it can perform effectively the 3 traditional functions of money (store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account) it will have to be as easy to exchange as cash and as hard to confiscate or devalue as gold.

[jonald_fyookball]

Cash is king.  Settlement implies its not trustless.

[Lauda]

-Open, permissionless system. If you have the token, you can use it.
-Mere Possession of the token is enough. No extra proof is required.
-Payments are simple, fast and have low transaction costs.
-Tokens are fungible.
-Payments are irreversible and final.

1) Correct. Bitcoin is censorship resistant.
2) Correct. Owning the private key is everything that is needed.
3) They current are (fees have an unknown/undecided future).
4) Somewhat fungible (unknown?).
5) Correct.

...and for it to be P2P:
-Only the voluntary interaction of the 2 parties to a transaction is required. No third party can block the transaction.

Correct.
Do you agree with my statements?

[flix]

-Open, permissionless system. If you have the token, you can use it.
-Mere Possession of the token is enough. No extra proof is required.
-Payments are simple, fast and have low transaction costs.
-Tokens are fungible.
-Payments are irreversible and final.

1) Correct. Bitcoin is censorship resistant.
2) Correct. Owning the private key is everything that is needed.
3) They current are (fees have an unknown/undecided future).
4) Somewhat fungible (unknown?).
5) Correct.

...and for it to be P2P:
-Only the voluntary interaction of the 2 parties to a transaction is required. No third party can block the transaction.

Correct.
Do you agree with my statements?

Of course I agree.

Bitcoin can currently be used as P2P Cash.

However as the network grows from 2 million users to 20 million... there are engineering choices to be made which could change some of these qualities. There will be trade-offs between speed, cost, simplicity, fungibility, etc...

That's what this thread is about.

[Lauda]

Of course I agree.
Bitcoin can currently be used as P2P Cash.

However as the network grows from 2 million users to 20 million... there are engineering choices to be made which could change some of these qualities. There will be trade-offs between speed, cost, simplicity, fungibility, etc...

That's what this thread is about.

I wanted to know if my view is correct; that's why I asked if you agreed. How about listing some features that are present in a settlement layer so that we can compare? As far as the trade-offs are concerned, I'm not sure. We might experience increased on-chain fees.

[VeritasSapere]

Bitcoin can be both a P2P Cash and a settlement layer, among many more things. Thinking that we must choose between these two is a false dichotomy. Though I do question what the point of a settlement layer even is when everyone can transact directly, cheaply, easily and quickly. It is almost as if the very idea of a settlement layer might even be antithetical to a world where cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency, rendered obsolete like many of the other functions that banks carry out today.

[Quickseller]

Bitcoin was designed to be a Peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and that is what it should be. I would note however that even if Bitcoin is used as a P2P electron cash system, it can also be used as a settlement layer, however there is little reason why anyone would want to do so.

As mentioned by ahpku above (see reply #3), the title of the Bitcoin white-paper by satoshi implied that satoshi designed Bitcoin to be a P2P cash system. The features of Bitcoin support a P2P cash system while they do not support a settlement layer.

For example, once confirmed, transactions are irreversible, this supports a P2P cash system because this alleivates the risk of a check bouncing, a PayPal payment being disputed, ect., it does not however support a settlement layer because if an employee of a financial institution were to make a mistake and send the wrong amount to an incorrect address then the financial institution will pretty much need to eat the loss verses generally being able to fix said mistake with current available settlement layers (SWIFT, ACH, FEDWIRE, ect.).

Another good example is the pseudonymity when using bitcoin. Note that in order to use Bitcoin correctly, one should not use the same address more then one time. This is something that would be attractive for a P2P cash system because neither a buyer nor a seller would have an advantage when negotiating a price on a trade, I can mask how much money I have/where I am spending my money/how much money I am making with my trading partners. With a settlement layer (system), current available options make it very easy to audit transactions, which is necessary for a settlement layer, and Bitcoin would make this more difficult. For example if Bank of America needed to send $1,000,000 to US Bank, they could use the FEDWIRE system and deposit said amount into US Bank's account at the FEDWIRE system which will not change and is established, however if Bank of America were to use Bitcoin to send this transaction, they would need to get a Bitcoin address from US Bank (via a GPG signed message?), then send $1,000,000 worth of bitcoin to said address, and Bank of America would then need to keep/store said GPG signed message indefinitely for audit purposes. 

[kanazawa]

I'm wait for all of the options. But to me, Smart Contracts are the most powerful tool that a currency could have. It makes the whole world different. 'm crazy about that. Since lsat november I've been thinking too much about that. 

[Lauda]

Bitcoin was designed to be a Peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and that is what it should be. I would note however that even if Bitcoin is used as a P2P electron cash system, it can also be used as a settlement layer, however there is little reason why anyone would want to do so.

That depends. There is a difference between what it can be and what it should be. As we can see there are limitations that currently would prevent a lot of people using Bitcoin everyday (even if we increased the block size limit tenfold).

It is almost as if the very idea of a settlement layer might even be antithetical to a world where cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency, rendered obsolete like many of the other functions that banks carry out today.

Everyone keeps talking about it yet nobody mentions the differences between P2P Cash and a settlement layer.

[VeritasSapere]

It is almost as if the very idea of a settlement layer might even be antithetical to a world where cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency, rendered obsolete like many of the other functions that banks carry out today.

Everyone keeps talking about it yet nobody mentions the differences between P2P Cash and a settlement layer.

Cash is money for the people, a currency that everyone can use cheaply, directly, easily and quickly. A settlement layer is what large financial institutions use to settle balances between them. It is exclusive, elitist and reinforces or recreates the power structures we have today. Settlement networks would become obsolete if people chose to use cryptocurrencies on mass as currency.

By attempting to turn Bitcoin into a settlement layer you are turning it into the very financial systems Bitcoin was meant to counter. I find the entire idea to be unrealistic however, the large banks and financial institutions would be much better off if they designed their own systems for this purpose, even Ripple is a better settlement network then Bitcoin, I do not think these large financial institutions would even adopt Bitcoin because it is not in their interests to do so, the only way I see that happening is because they are "forced" to do so in order to stay relevant, and that could only happen because of mass adoption of Bitcoin as a currency. Not increasing the blocksize undermines Bitcoins ability to be a currency as was always intended, the whitepaper even describes this in its title, Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System.

[pereira4]

It is almost as if the very idea of a settlement layer might even be antithetical to a world where cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency, rendered obsolete like many of the other functions that banks carry out today.

Everyone keeps talking about it yet nobody mentions the differences between P2P Cash and a settlement layer.

Cash is money for the people, a currency that everyone can use cheaply, directly, easily and quickly. A settlement layer is what large financial institutions use to settle balances between them. It is exclusive, elitist and reinforces or recreates the power structures we have today. Settlement networks would become obsolete if people chose to use cryptocurrencies on mass as currency.

By attempting to turn Bitcoin into a settlement layer you are turning it into the very financial systems Bitcoin was meant to counter. I find the entire idea to be unrealistic however, the large banks and financial institutions would be much better off if they designed their own systems for this purpose, even Ripple is a better settlement network then Bitcoin, I do not think these large financial institutions would even adopt Bitcoin because it is not in their interests to do so, the only way I see that happening is because they are "forced" to do so in order to stay relevant, and that could only happen because of mass adoption of Bitcoin as a currency. Not increasing the blocksize undermines Bitcoins ability to be a currency as was always intended, the whitepaper even describes this in its title, Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System.

Increasing the blocksize goes against the idea of decentralized peer to peer cash because it centralizes the nodes, so we need additinal layers like LN.

If the core of Bitcoin is centralized (and it's impossible to not end up with massive centralization if you want to scale everything on chain) we will end up a paypal 2.0 (not cash)

Increasing the blocksize by hard forking every now and then because the blocks keep getting full is the dumbest thing I've heard. We need additional layers like LN, the sooner you understand this reality the better.

[VeritasSapere]

It is almost as if the very idea of a settlement layer might even be antithetical to a world where cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency, rendered obsolete like many of the other functions that banks carry out today.

Everyone keeps talking about it yet nobody mentions the differences between P2P Cash and a settlement layer.

Cash is money for the people, a currency that everyone can use cheaply, directly, easily and quickly. A settlement layer is what large financial institutions use to settle balances between them. It is exclusive, elitist and reinforces or recreates the power structures we have today. Settlement networks would become obsolete if people chose to use cryptocurrencies on mass as currency.

By attempting to turn Bitcoin into a settlement layer you are turning it into the very financial systems Bitcoin was meant to counter. I find the entire idea to be unrealistic however, the large banks and financial institutions would be much better off if they designed their own systems for this purpose, even Ripple is a better settlement network then Bitcoin, I do not think these large financial institutions would even adopt Bitcoin because it is not in their interests to do so, the only way I see that happening is because they are "forced" to do so in order to stay relevant, and that could only happen because of mass adoption of Bitcoin as a currency. Not increasing the blocksize undermines Bitcoins ability to be a currency as was always intended, the whitepaper even describes this in its title, Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System.

Increasing the blocksize goes against the idea of decentralized peer to peer cash because it centralizes the nodes, so we need additinal layers like LN.

If the core of Bitcoin is centralized (and it's impossible to not end up with massive centralization if you want to scale everything on chain) we will end up a paypal 2.0 (not cash)

Increasing the blocksize by hard forking every now and then because the blocks keep getting full is the dumbest thing I've heard. We need additional layers like LN, the sooner you understand this reality the better.

The blocksize limit can be increased as our technology increases, using off chain solutions to scaling Bitcoin is not a solution to scaling Bitcoin directly at all. If Bitcoin does not scale its blockchain directly then it will simply just be out competed by alternative cryptocurrencies that can and are willing to scale. Using off chain solutions also adds another layer of abstraction that is not good for the user experiance compared to just transacting on the Bitcoin blockchain directly. Furthermore decentralized off chain solutions do not even exists, so far we only have federated side chains and the lighting network does not have a decentralized solution to routing yet. To restrict the growth of Bitcoin because you think we should use these other off chain solutions instead, which do not even exist yet is crippling Bitcoin. If this continues I would expect Bitcoin to lose its dominant positions to cryptocurrencies that are willing to implement Satoshi's original vision.

You should question your rhetoric a bit here, increasing the blocksize to two megabyte would not turn Bitcoin into paypal 2.0, that is a completely unqualified statement, such propaganda is not helping your case. It might scare people that do not know better, but if you have access to any decent computer equipment and internet connections you should know that two megabyte blocks are not a big deal and most people in the developed world will still be able to run full nodes out of their homes. Not to mention that the node count has been rising over the last year disproving some of the theories around node centralization.

[pereira4]

It is almost as if the very idea of a settlement layer might even be antithetical to a world where cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency, rendered obsolete like many of the other functions that banks carry out today.

Everyone keeps talking about it yet nobody mentions the differences between P2P Cash and a settlement layer.

Cash is money for the people, a currency that everyone can use cheaply, directly, easily and quickly. A settlement layer is what large financial institutions use to settle balances between them. It is exclusive, elitist and reinforces or recreates the power structures we have today. Settlement networks would become obsolete if people chose to use cryptocurrencies on mass as currency.

By attempting to turn Bitcoin into a settlement layer you are turning it into the very financial systems Bitcoin was meant to counter. I find the entire idea to be unrealistic however, the large banks and financial institutions would be much better off if they designed their own systems for this purpose, even Ripple is a better settlement network then Bitcoin, I do not think these large financial institutions would even adopt Bitcoin because it is not in their interests to do so, the only way I see that happening is because they are "forced" to do so in order to stay relevant, and that could only happen because of mass adoption of Bitcoin as a currency. Not increasing the blocksize undermines Bitcoins ability to be a currency as was always intended, the whitepaper even describes this in its title, Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer Electronic Cash System.

Increasing the blocksize goes against the idea of decentralized peer to peer cash because it centralizes the nodes, so we need additinal layers like LN.

If the core of Bitcoin is centralized (and it's impossible to not end up with massive centralization if you want to scale everything on chain) we will end up a paypal 2.0 (not cash)

Increasing the blocksize by hard forking every now and then because the blocks keep getting full is the dumbest thing I've heard. We need additional layers like LN, the sooner you understand this reality the better.

The blocksize limit can be increased as our technology increases, using off chain solutions to scaling Bitcoin is not a solution to scaling Bitcoin directly at all. If Bitcoin does not scale its blockchain directly then it will simply just be out competed by alternative cryptocurrencies that can and are willing to scale. Using off chain solutions also adds another layer of abstraction that is not good for the user experiance compared to just transacting on the Bitcoin blockchain directly. Furthermore decentralized off chain solutions do not even exists, so far we only have federated side chains and the lighting network does not have a decentralized solution to routing yet. To restrict the growth of Bitcoin because you think we should use these other off chain solutions instead, which do not even exist yet is crippling Bitcoin. If this continues I would expect Bitcoin to lose its dominant positions to cryptocurrencies that are willing to implement Satoshi's original vision.

You should question your rhetoric a bit here, increasing the blocksize to two megabyte would not turn Bitcoin into paypal 2.0, that is a completely unqualified statement, such propaganda is not helping your case. It might scare people that do not know better, but if you have access to any decent computer equipment and internet connections you should know that two megabyte blocks are not a big deal and most people in the developed world will still be able to run full nodes out of their homes. Not to mention that the node count has been rising over the last year disproving some of the theories around node centralization.

You are delusional by thinking just because Moore's law say that X technology will be cheaper by X year, we can indefinitely be hard forking all the time.

You also don't realize that it's not about the total count of nodes, but how widespread they are across the globe. There's a lot of people struggling to run nodes on their countries, if you double the blockchain size now it's over for them, this will increasingly centralize nodes.
The node count has decreased, most of those nodes that raise the total count are the fake VPS Classic nodes.

You can't have security encryption backed by tons of power (the biggest network on the planet) in a decentralized way if you want to scale everything on-chain and pretend to ever compete against centralized solutions like VISA

The end user will not have any problems, this can be easily solved with a good and clear layout. Dealing with banks it's way more complex than Bitcoin will ever be (

1 opening up a bank account,
2 signing up into a website,
3 typing user and password,
4 typing the code in your physical card that the bank gave to you (and typing it by clicking on a virtual keyboard, and this code changes every time)
5 do the former again quickly enough because your login session was automatically closed for security measures
6 waiting for the transaction to be processed...)

This is bullshit compared to what we'll have with Bitcoin. LN will be more decentralized, cheaper and faster than any other alternatives.

If you are waiting for a coin to ever have the level of encryption Bitcoin has, backed by the hashing power Bitcoin network has, have the transactions per second VISA has, and have nodes decentralized...  take a seat and keep waiting, because that just means you don't understand physics.

[Quickseller]

Bitcoin was designed to be a Peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and that is what it should be. I would note however that even if Bitcoin is used as a P2P electron cash system, it can also be used as a settlement layer, however there is little reason why anyone would want to do so.

That depends. There is a difference between what it can be and what it should be. As we can see there are limitations that currently would prevent a lot of people using Bitcoin everyday (even if we increased the block size limit tenfold).

A lot of people are not using bitcoin every day currently to the point that 10MB blocks will not be enough today. If we increase the maximum block size today then there will be excess capacity in found blocks that will allow for future growth in transaction volume until we need to raise the maximum block size again. As long as Moores law allows us to increase the maximum block size at a rate that is faster then the transaction growth rate then block size increases will be sufficient to allow Bitcoin to scale. Around 20 years ago a significant number of households did not have internet access and those that did had connections that allowed them to download at speeds that max out at roughly 28.8kbps, and now broadband internet is widely available throughout the US and internet connections are available with download speeds as high as 18mbps for roughly the same price, and the US is generally behind the curve in terms of broadband internet access when compared with the rest of the world.

This is what was so good about BIP101 in that the block size would automatically increase every 2 years, so there would not be this contentious debate that is making Bitcoin look very bad to the outside world all the time. Granted the doubling of the max block size every two years might have had a higher growth rate that Moores law would be able to support over the long term, but this could have easily been fixed by say slowing the growth rate to something like doubling the max block size every 2.5 years, or increasing the maximum block size by 75% every 2 years, or increasing the maximum block size by 75% every 2.5 years, or some other variation thereof.

[CIYAM]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/moores-law-really-is-dead-this-time/

Moore's Law is dead and has been so for some time already (so anyone using that as a basis for anything to do with science must be clearly hoping for miracles).

Perhaps Santa Klaus will also be a key factor in the future?

[4by2]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/moores-law-really-is-dead-this-time/

Moore's Law is dead and has been so for some time already (so anyone using that as a basis for anything to do with science must be clearly hoping for miracles).

Perhaps Santa Klaus will also be a key factor in the future?

I agree that it is dead, but I kind of wish we were still in a golden age of computing, per say. I personally believe that it is slightly under doubling, but it is nowhere near stagnant yet.

Am I just being too hopeful?

[CIYAM]

Am I just being too hopeful?

Far too hopeful (did you read what I linked to?).

Basically the only thing growing at anywhere near that sort of rate now is storage (and yet people whinge about the size of blockchain which is actually the least serious problem).

The two things that are not increasing in a way that will allow massive scaling (through simple increases in block sizes) are bandwidth and processing power.

This is why smart ways of reworking the Bitcoin implementation (such as SegWit) are essential to allowing the system to provide the kind of P2P Cash that many are hoping (or expecting) it to provide.

As a settlement layer it is already perfectly functional as is.

[exstasie]

Bitcoin was designed to be a Peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and that is what it should be. I would note however that even if Bitcoin is used as a P2P electron cash system, it can also be used as a settlement layer, however there is little reason why anyone would want to do so.

That depends. There is a difference between what it can be and what it should be. As we can see there are limitations that currently would prevent a lot of people using Bitcoin everyday (even if we increased the block size limit tenfold).

A lot of people are not using bitcoin every day currently to the point that 10MB blocks will not be enough today. If we increase the maximum block size today then there will be excess capacity in found blocks that will allow for future growth in transaction volume until we need to raise the maximum block size again. As long as Moores law allows us to increase the maximum block size at a rate that is faster then the transaction growth rate then block size increases will be sufficient to allow Bitcoin to scale. Around 20 years ago a significant number of households did not have internet access and those that did had connections that allowed them to download at speeds that max out at roughly 28.8kbps, and now broadband internet is widely available throughout the US and internet connections are available with download speeds as high as 18mbps for roughly the same price, and the US is generally behind the curve in terms of broadband internet access when compared with the rest of the world.

Reality check. Moore's Law is bullshit, proven false (as if it were ever scientific). LOL try again. Do you realize that Moore's Law didn't actually apply to bandwidth? It regarded processor speeds, or overall processing power. And again, it's dead, finished, irrelevant so the point is moot. Take your "technology gets better, don't worry!" talk to the kindergarten class.

This is what was so good about BIP101 in that the block size would automatically increase every 2 years, so there would not be this contentious debate that is making Bitcoin look very bad to the outside world all the time. Granted the doubling of the max block size every two years might have had a higher growth rate that Moores law would be able to support over the long term, but this could have easily been fixed by say slowing the growth rate to something like doubling the max block size every 2.5 years, or increasing the maximum block size by 75% every 2 years, or increasing the maximum block size by 75% every 2.5 years, or some other variation thereof.

Any numbers to back up your claims, given that Moore's Law is dead, and didn't apply to bandwidth/broadband, anyway?

Contentious debate is good -- contentious forks, not. Learn the difference, and therefore where the real problem is coming from. Or just fork off, I don't care.

[Lauda]

This is what was so good about BIP101 in that the block size would automatically increase every 2 years, so there would not be this contentious debate that is making Bitcoin look very bad to the outside world all the time. Granted the doubling of the max block size every two years might have had a higher growth rate that Moores law would be able to support over the long term, but this could have easily been fixed by say slowing the growth rate to something like doubling the max block size every 2.5 years, or increasing the maximum block size by 75% every 2 years, or increasing the maximum block size by 75% every 2.5 years, or some other variation thereof.

BIP101 was horrible because of many reasons. I have no idea why you would say that it was good. Additionally, Moore's law is not a law in the traditional sense but rather an observation based on nothing. Even Moore himself confirmed this. Relying on something like that for scaling would be a very bad idea.

Cash is money for the people, a currency that everyone can use cheaply, directly, easily and quickly. A settlement layer is what large financial institutions use to settle balances between them. It is exclusive, elitist and reinforces or recreates the power structures we have today. Settlement networks would become obsolete if people chose to use cryptocurrencies on mass as currency.

Fair enough, however you don't seem to list any features in comparison to the other list (about P2P Cash). How would Bitcoin as a settlement layer even look like?

[Herbert2020]

bitcoin has been both for me so far. i used it both as a settlement layer to invest and take profit and also as a payment system (p2p cash) and i love both of them so far.

AFAIK bitcoin was created as a p2p cash in the first place and i hope in the future it gets closer to this purpose, and i think it can get there too if the number of users increase and the volatility decreases.