Bitcoin Myths

[thinair]

Six myths about blockchain and Bitcoin: Debunking the effectiveness of the technology
https://www.kaspersky.co.za/blog/bitcoin-blockchain-issues/17705/

We are told only what they like us to hear, but never the weaknesses.
Myths: No one "authority" controls bit coin.

False. Some human manages and therefore controls bitcoin. Here mainly the miners. When the
miners collude, then they are fully in control of bitcoin.

If we say the miners (and the developers) cannot control and manipulate bitcoin, it is like saying no one
can control the direction of a country's politics and who gets to be the government.

Bitcoin is only as safe as the people behind it.

[patt0]

I have nothing against that article but I'm not sure it's that accurate as well.

First it starts by saying "Bitcoin has been used for criminal activities far too often". I think we should all move pass that argument against bitcoin. The majority of people using bitcoin aren't criminals, and really believe that fiat is used way more often by criminals than bitcoin. But even if criminals wanted to use crypto, they have far better solutions for that, like monero or zcash. He is perpetuating a myth himself by saying that.

He also says later in the same article "Alternatively, if I paid back my friend for some lemonade, I would thus let him know everything about my finances". This doesn't look like something like criminals would like to use.

As for the electricity problem, he is correct. Bitcoin's network spends 40 times more electricity than the entire visa network. Apparently it costs around the equivalent of 20 barrels of oil to create a single coin. That is not good, but that is a problem that could be solved or minimized with the use of renewable energy, or mining in cold places, since it will there would be no need to spent electricity for cooling purposes.

As for the scalability problem, there are some coins that can already perform more transactions that visa, and bitcoin will also be able to do it once the lightning network get implemented. That's why the segwit was implemented for. To bypass this blockchain issue. You can get more information about this on this article: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-sharding-based-blockchains-could-handle-more-transactions-than-visa

It's a good article, and I agree with him when he says that it's important to look at the upside and downsides of the technology, but the network is still evolving, and most o the problems he mentioned are being worked on.

[thinair]

Myths: The blockchain is public and anyone can examine it. Therefore no one can cheat and
everything is transparent.

False.

The accounts are all anonymous. You may not know if Warren Buffet is holding now 20% of all
bitcoins. So anonymity is a double edge sword. 

Because the blockchain is public, it is very, very bad. I have the blockchain in my computer and I
can have a fork of it adding whatever blocks of data to it as I wish transferring all your coins to my
account. This is one fork up. There could be N forks and N= 100!

Of course, you say I am silly. Yes, but there are very, very powerful groups of people in this world
whose forks matter very much.  A hypothetical situation may be created. Tomorrow, the miners
divided themselves into 5 groups and the trading exchanges also divide into 5 groups playing with
5 different folks. Now, when I download "blockchain" - which fork do I can? There are 5 markets
with 5 running quotes. Which is the "official" bitcoin? These are things we are not told.

It is better to be ruled by a benevolent king then a parliament of crooks.
 
Myths: bitcoin is the best money and medium of exchange.

False.

Bitcoin can surely serve as a medium of exchange - caveat if we have infinite computing power.
Bitcoin as we know it now will never, never be "money" - money that we can use to pay after a meal
at a restaurant  with our smartphone. Bitcoin processes 7 transaction/sec while Visa does
at 100,000 transaction/sec. It is only bitcoin marketing that sells such a notion. 

[thinair]

I have nothing against that article but I'm not sure it's that accurate as well.
....

As for the scalability problem, there are some coins that can already perform more transactions that visa, and bitcoin will also be able to do it once the lightning network get implemented. That's why the segwit was implemented for. To bypass this blockchain issue. You can get more information about this on this article: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-sharding-based-blockchains-could-handle-more-transactions-than-visa

It's a good article, and I agree with him when he says that it's important to look at the upside and downsides of the technology, but the network is still evolving, and most o the problems he mentioned are being worked on.

Can you elaborate on how some other crypto (or lightning bitcoin) already can transact as fast as visa. I
have great doubts about this claim.

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that 
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...". 
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

[HeRetiK]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.

Myth #1: The blockchain is a giant, distributed computer

Yeah, that's a myth. But one I've honestly never heard of before. I don't think anyone with knowledge of Bitcoin ever referred to it as a "giant, distributed computer".

Myth #2: The blockchain is everlasting. Everything that is recorded into a blockchain will remain there forever

Ramblig about HDD capacity without actually going into detail why this statement is a "myth".

Myth #3: The blockchain is effective and scalable. Conventional money will soon disappear

Yeah, that is indeed a common misconception. It unfortunately also lead to a lot of silly, buzzwordy ICOs. I think that this is one of the most dangerous misconceptions.

However I've rarely heard crypto-enthusiasts genuinely arguing that Bitcoin will replace fiat money in earnest. Bitcoin doesn't even need to replace conventional money to be useful.

But either way we might still see 2nd layer solutions on top of blockchains solve the scalability issue.

Myth #4: Miners provide network security

Starts off good with the first paragraph, then turns into rambling about electricity cost without actual substance on why "miners providing network security" is a myth.

Of course miners prevent the network from other miners. That's the whole point. Don't make the network safe despite of brute force attacks, make it safe because of brute force attacks.

Traditional payment systems are immune to such an attack.

That's because in traditional payment systems that's called "fractional reserve".

And then there's gems like this: https://www.bankinfosecurity.asia/swift-hack-lessons-for-india-a-9095

Myth #5: The blockchain is decentralized, therefore it is indestructible

Decentralization is important, that's true, but...

Gaining access to just four controlling computers would gain someone the ability to double spend bitcoins.

wut.

Myth #6: The anonymous and open character of the blockchain is a good thing

That's not a myth, that's an opinion.

For example I have the opinion...

Some disclosure may be tolerable for individuals, but it is deadly for companies. All of their contracting parties, sales, customers, account amounts, and every other little, petty detail would all become public.

...that that's actually a good thing. Oh heavens beware if cooperations would be forced to run transparently. How would you keep your investors in the dark? How would you cook your books?

Oh lordy.

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

[thinair]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.
...

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

Just give me a simple tweak to the bitcoin protocol that will enable transactions to 100,000 per sec. and retailer can have their payments confirmed immediately.

Without immediate confirmation, bitcoin can never be medium of exchange.   

[eckmar]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.
...

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that 
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...". 
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

Just give me a simple tweak to the bitcoin protocol that will enable transactions to 100,000 per sec. and retailer can have their payments confirmed immediately.

Without immediate confirmation, bitcoin can never be medium of exchange.   

Increasing block size to some ridiculous amount is not a solution here. If there was safe, long term solution developers would push the code already

[A1exander]

Some disclosure may be tolerable for individuals, but it is deadly for companies. All of their contracting parties, sales, customers, account amounts, and every other little, petty detail would all become public.

...that that's actually a good thing. Oh heavens beware if cooperations would be forced to run transparently. How would you keep your investors in the dark? How would you cook your books?

Oh lordy.

Yes, that's a good thing. The idea of companies that are completely financially transparent (including banks and other financial institutions) came to my mind a few times. it would be great for most people.

[jseverson]

I consider the Bitcoin technology itself revolutionary. Unfortunately, Bitcoin has been used for criminal activities far too often, and as an information security specialist, I strongly dislike that practice.

I feel that the criminal nature of Bitcoin is often overstated. We have no statistics to back anything up, but everything, even that pen in your bag can be used for crime. That doesn't make it inherently bad though. And just because someone some time ago used the same type of pen to stab another man in the neck does not mean you should dislike it.

Hence, the blockchain’s life span is limited by a decade under current circumstances. The growth of HDD capacity definitely lags behind.

I don't know about this. 500gb used to be the standard a few years ago, eventually replaced by 1TB, and today even 1TB is considered small, and is really cheap. Most laptops above the $300 range should have at least 1TB, which is more than enough for 8 years' worth of transactions.

Blockchain is open, and everyone sees everything. Thus, blockchain has no real anonymity. It offers pseudonymity instead.

That's all well and good, but Bitcoin wasn't exactly built with complete anonymity in mind.

I do see where he's coming from, and he does make some good points, but a person who's completely biased against Bitcoin shouldn't be writing about its disadvantages because he will tend to blow them out of proportion. Which he did.

[HeRetiK]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.
...

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

Just give me a simple tweak to the bitcoin protocol that will enable transactions to 100,000 per sec. and retailer can have their payments confirmed immediately.

Without immediate confirmation, bitcoin can never be medium of exchange.   

Simple tweaks to the Bitcoin protocol have been happening for years and have spawned literally hundreds of alts. If it were that simple we'd already have an alt capable of processing that amount of transactions. If you believe such an alt already exists, buy it.

Linear scaling only gets us so far. I'm not sure how you'd expect to get from 7 to 100,000 via linear scaling. Just imagine if in the 1960's research institutions would have concluded: "why would we need a computer machine if we could just hire more people to do the calculations?"

[thinair]

...

Hence, the blockchain’s life span is limited by a decade under current circumstances. The growth of HDD capacity definitely lags behind.

I don't know about this. 500gb used to be the standard a few years ago, eventually replaced by 1TB, and today even 1TB is considered small, and is really cheap. Most laptops above the $300 range should have at least 1TB, which is more than enough for 8 years' worth of transactions.

If bitcoin is to be used as a true payment money, the concept of keeping the whole blockchain intact generally is unfeasible - it relies always  on unlimited storage and CPU power - that's not a given.  Micro payments would blow up the blockchain.

[jseverson]

...

Hence, the blockchain’s life span is limited by a decade under current circumstances. The growth of HDD capacity definitely lags behind.

I don't know about this. 500gb used to be the standard a few years ago, eventually replaced by 1TB, and today even 1TB is considered small, and is really cheap. Most laptops above the $300 range should have at least 1TB, which is more than enough for 8 years' worth of transactions.

If bitcoin is to be used as a true payment money, the concept of keeping the whole blockchain intact generally is unfeasible - it relies always  on unlimited storage and CPU power - that's not a given.  Micro payments would blow up the blockchain.

I was actually more focused on disputing this:

The growth of HDD capacity definitely lags behind.

But yeah, I do agree, but the way things currently are, Bitcoin should be able to run smoothly for a while. These disadvantages are real, but I seriously doubt Bitcoin will remain the way it currently is forever. Issues will be addressed one way or another. It's not going to be easy, because we're seeing that there are lots of opposing ideas from within the community, but for as long as the end goal is to improve Bitcoin, it will happen.

[asep samsudin]

It's all good and good, but Bitcoin is not built completely.

I do not know where the bitcoin comes from, and bitcoin really makes good points, but the person who actually fights Bitcoin should not write about the lack of bitcoin, because it will tend to blow it off the proportion in the bitcoin.

[Colorblind]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.
...

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

Just give me a simple tweak to the bitcoin protocol that will enable transactions to 100,000 per sec. and retailer can have their payments confirmed immediately.

Without immediate confirmation, bitcoin can never be medium of exchange.   

Lightning network is the solution you seek for.

[thinair]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.
...

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

Just give me a simple tweak to the bitcoin protocol that will enable transactions to 100,000 per sec. and retailer can have their payments confirmed immediately.

Without immediate confirmation, bitcoin can never be medium of exchange.   

Lightning network is the solution you seek for.

I do believe there should be solutions.I have not examined Lightning network; if it truely can make immediate  transactions and is as good as bitcoin, then "that's it". But those who have examined it should know if it is not a scam.

[HeRetiK]

Holy shit that article is a straw man slaughterhouse. At least when applied to Bitcoin.
...

[...]

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

PoW is not what's restricting transaction throughput. Blocktime, blocksize, etc is. Neither which will prevent us from running a more scalable transaction solution on top of Bitcoin, while using PoW to secure settlements.

Just give me a simple tweak to the bitcoin protocol that will enable transactions to 100,000 per sec. and retailer can have their payments confirmed immediately.

Without immediate confirmation, bitcoin can never be medium of exchange.   

Lightning network is the solution you seek for.

I do believe there should be solutions.I have not examined Lightning network; if it truely can make immediate  transactions and is as good as bitcoin, then "that's it". But those who have examined it should know if it is not a scam.

Oh boy do I have some reading material for you!

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791/

This 3-part introduction explains lightning network fairly well. Read it, let it sink in a bit and come to your own conclusions.

[thinair]

Oh boy do I have some reading material for you!

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-building-a-bidirectional-payment-channel-1464710791/

This 3-part introduction explains lightning network fairly well. Read it, let it sink in a bit and come to your own conclusions.

In the end, only two transactions will have been broadcast over the Bitcoin network and included in a block: the opening and the closing transactions. That will hold true even if Alice and Bob transact a million times in between, therefore unloading a huge burden away from the blockchain.

Quote from article. I assume the experts have verified that all's proper; then it's OK with millions of micro payments made from just  two classic  bitcoin payments.

[patt0]

I have nothing against that article but I'm not sure it's that accurate as well.
....

As for the scalability problem, there are some coins that can already perform more transactions that visa, and bitcoin will also be able to do it once the lightning network get implemented. That's why the segwit was implemented for. To bypass this blockchain issue. You can get more information about this on this article: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-sharding-based-blockchains-could-handle-more-transactions-than-visa

It's a good article, and I agree with him when he says that it's important to look at the upside and downsides of the technology, but the network is still evolving, and most o the problems he mentioned are being worked on.

Can you elaborate on how some other crypto (or lightning bitcoin) already can transact as fast as visa. I
have great doubts about this claim.

If bitcoin could be made to work as fast as Visa, then I think it would not be the same "bitcoin" that  
has been marketed to us... ".. the best thing brought to us ...since the Ten Commandments...".  
The "proof_of_ work" technology which everyone is now is hyping about now will ensure that bitcoin will
never be daily money for payments.

I didn't said that bitcoin could do it. It will be able to do it, when the lightning network gets developed, but as stated in the article I linked, there are some coins that can do it already, or are very close to it. Visa has around 2000 tps, and as stated in the article, you already have "IOTA with 500-800 tps", you have "NEO with 1000 tps", and apparently "the Blockchain platform Zilliqa demonstrated the capacity of processing 2488 tps" (as stated in the article).

So yes there are solutions for the scalability problem out there, and some more on the way.
So since the article the OP posted was intended to debunk myths, we can't really allow for new ones to arise. We can't just look the the upside, but we cant' just look to the downside as well. We need to stay informed in order to get the whole picture.

[Notcalculator]

I do agree with him with most of his points and i do find the article quite insightful.

Myth #5: The blockchain is decentralized, therefore it is indestructible

It's true that decentralization is not equal to invincibility. However it's much harder to corrupt multiple establishments rather than one. According to the article, the top 4 miners hold control over bitcoin. This might be true for now, but as the popularity of bitcoin increases, more and more miners will try to compete with each other. Thus bitcoin will be more secure.

In the conclusion he referred to bitcoin as a pyramid scheme. This might be true for some people who see bitcoin only an an investment. But there are groups of people who see bitcoin as actual currency. Big companies started recognizing it, from amazon to pay pal. Maybe bitcoin would not be used as everyday money, in the future but it can still be the internet's money.

[leonair]

You are right with your point but I think miners has no full control over Bitcoin instead they just have a big influence regarding the future upgrades of scaling with Bitcoin and that is why it needs a consensus before the developers does something with the code of Bitcoin. If someone think they are in control of Bitcoin then they aren't, most people think that there is in control of Bitcoin then they are right because that is what they think and even if there is someone that is controlling Bitcoin, just in case, then we can't do about it because we will gonna still use it if we want to.