Visa network crash

[marjil]

Visa network crashes and sparks card payment chaos.

Millions left unable to pay in shops, petrol stations and railway stations across UK and Europe.

Would this ever happen with bitcoin?

[dothebeats]

IMO, the network wouldn't crash like what happened to Visa, but there would be some form of delay if ever a huge backlog in the mempool occurred. Just like what happened on the previous months wherein a huge backlog in the mempool rendered a lot of low-fee tx stuck, while the rest of high-paying tx managed to get through. With the recent scaling solutions proposed by the devs, I think it would be highly unlikely that the bitcoin network would ever encounter such crashes or downtimes, just slow confirmation times if there's a spam attack or a huge volume of transactions occur at once.

[eternalgloom]

Well, it has (kinda) happened with Bitcoin, though I would argue that the effects weren't as big.

Remember when the fees skyrocketed and very few blocks were found (like 1 or 2 per hour), causing people to have to wait hours or days in order to get their transactions processed (in rare cases).
That's at least somewhat comparable, I'd say.

Yeah you would still be able to pay, but only when adding a high fee. Even then you could still be waiting for almost an hour to get your transaction processed.

Edit: Sorry, my reply is basically the same one as dothebeats's reply. I'll just add that these issues should be a thing of the past, now that we have segwit and LN

[franky1]

if you imagine bitcoin as the bank account(private key) wire transfer(bank branch cash transfer)
and you imagine bitpay/coinbase merchant tools as visa merchant network

then yes it can happen.

as for would it ever happen in bitcoin (the core network)
it has happened.
in 2013 there was the leveldb bug which was the most notable one.

and if everyone keeps sheep following cores software, and does not diversify by having an equal playing field of multiple software of multiple languages all running on one network (real decentralisation).. by only trusting core as the reference/core software. then if core had a bug, everyones affected

[lionheart78]

What had happened? Whiy did it crash by the way. You didnt put details and source of your statements if it indeed happened. I dont think visa cards will crash, if it will, it will just be the system and not the company. Same with bitcoin i think, bitcoin will not crash, if so, maybe the system.

[lulutika]

I think Bitcoin will never happen like that, you should understand it is a very fast liquidity thing