Bitcoin has no future as a payments network, says FTX chief

[NeuroticFish]

so stop trying to think of LN as bitcoin 2.0.. because its not, heck its not even bitcoin 0.00.01

You've picked the wrong guy. I don't think that LN is Bitcoin 2.0; LN is LN.

this is why LN is not bitcoin:
EMPHASIS
1. LN was not designed to fit bitcoin
2. LN is not a sole feature that only works/compatible with bitcoin
3. its a bridge between many coins. its not meant to be a 'bitcoin'

I don't care at all how it's called. And I don't care what was initially designed for.
It was improved, it seems to do well enough the L2 job for Bitcoin and it helps. Imho this is what matters at the end of the day.
You don't like it, don't use it.

[franky1]

You've picked the wrong guy. I don't think that LN is Bitcoin 2.0; LN is LN.
...
it seems to do well enough the L2 job for Bitcoin and it helps. Imho this is what matters at the end of the day.

gotta laugh. contradicts himself in the same post.
??L2 of bitcoin??.. (facepalm)
 
its not a bitcoin LAYER.. its a separate network.
you are still referring it as a second layer aka level of bitcoin..

its not like bitcoin is segments of an orange fruit and LN is the orange zesty skin that forms around bitcoin segmants (layer)
its not like LN is also some new tech 'quantum super position where it also is a citrus layer lemon fruit (LTC) at the same time..

LN is not about being layers/skins. version 2 of coins.
.. yes it pretends to be.. and you have fallen for that game. . but soon enough you will realise the game being played... but for now, seems your still stuck thinking of it as the skin of bitcoin.


LN is a hybrid tree which branches out to have different fruit. hooked to it
it is not the fruit itself
LN is a bridge between different cities. it is not the city or city street itself
LN is a boat between different continents. it is not the continent/country itself

LN is not a continents shoreline, thats physically part of that continent to give only that continents citizens somewhere nice to sunbathe
LN is not a ringroad owned/maintained by the city and only that city citizens can use
LN is not a skin of a fruit thats protects and useful only for that particular fruit

..
take the CBCD.
china have one. Switzerland have one, france have one, russia have one. but they can all connect to what is called an m-bridge.
the M-bridge is not a CBDC. its a type of 'new age world bank of SDR'
where by the SDR is not common "fiat"(fiat being old equivalent to CDBC)

LN wants to become the 'world bank' of crypto. 'world bank' is not 'dollar'
what they want to do is:
by locking crypto up where its main co-signer are elite services(megahubs). and then allow their customers to play with other denomination that are not as audited secure/valued as proper crypto.
(yep LN msats are not like digital gold LN msats are not btc)

so instead of concentrating on what other networks can do..
so instead of concentrating on trying to affix the bitcoin brand to other networks

.. maybe try to realise what is not bitcoin so that you can their reign in your support. and then put your support into what actually is bitcoin and what can actually be useful for BITCOIN

[NeuroticFish]

Yeah, keep interpreting everything in your own special manner in order to find "mistakes" everywhere and keep on with your odd narrative, you're doing great job polluting everything.

[franky1]

anyways.
due to dev politics (not any hardware/physical incapability) bitcoin has been prevented from evolving the bitcoin network to be useful for 'the unbanked'
if you want to have bitcoin continue to be useful. things need to be done to move bitcoin forward. passed the 7 year long 'stall' era we are in.. yep this stall era is designed to promote other networks. and needs to be dealt with

yes bitcoin can remain the main asset. because the mining cost dictates the underlying bottomline store of VALUE (yes i said value, separate from price.. because PRICE(volatile speculation of temparary measure) sits above the underlying store of value amount)
EG. when ethereum detonates to PoS. its SoV will drop by 1000x because the cost of mining(staking) will be only a couple dollars rather than a couple thousand dollars

so as long as bitcoin remains the main network people put the effort and cost into mining on. then bitcoin remains the most costly coin to acquire

as for being the dominant 'market cap' asset.
market cap is a meaningless measure.
its a silly kindergarden math stat.  it has no significance.

i can easily create a crap coin of 5trilllion pre-mined coins. sell just a single coin for $5 and instantly create a market cap of $25trillion
(remember when the 10,000 bitcoin pizza ($40 of pizza)) in 2010
that made each coin deemed valued at $0.004
meaning the 5mill coins in circulation had a market cap of $20k
all from that one pizza deal

[BlackHatCoiner]

so instead of concentrating on trying to affix the bitcoin brand to other networks

So instead of whining about Lightning, go and propose a better solution. Raising the block size has fallen on face. It's been perpetually proven that the users don't want to change that rule. Consensus has shown it. If you don't like it, fork off. That's the beauty of decentralized systems. Stop enforcing your obnoxious conspiracies to others, it doesn't work. You're just becoming even more abhorrent.

Back to ignore.

[franky1]

If you don't like it, fork off. That's the beauty of decentralized systems. Stop enforcing your obnoxious conspiracies to others, it doesn't work. You're just becoming even more abhorrent.

Back to ignore.

knew the bodyguard of the LN clan would turn up. aww, should i call you LN daddy?

its always the same half a dozen people that LOVE LN that say the same BS scripts.. you say nothing original.
your(and your pals) solution to everything 'fork off and start a new network'

you love other networks, you can only imagine other networks as solutions..
..very revealing
you want people that want more from bitcoin to move to other networks (facepalm)

you dont want the bitcoin network to change. because that means competition that pulls people away from other networks. you dont want bitcoin network to grow.

how about. because you know you love other networks. you go play with other networks and stop trying to get involved in bitcoin topics where people that want BITCOIN scaling and keeping bitcoin as the main useful network. where actual bitcoiners can actually talk about bitcoin without it being a subtle advert for your other networks.
.. basically. try and learn what is bitcoin. and understand you dont want to use bitcoin. because you are happy on another network. and then, YOU go play on your other network with your buddies.

there are thousands of topics talking about SCALING BITCOIN. hundred of thousands of topics about uses of bitcoin.... and only dozens of topics about LN.. so many thousands of people do want bitcoin(the actual bitcoin network) to scale and to be the main useful network.
so grow up and stop playing victim because i call out your crappy altnet.

..
heres a mega lesson in niche utility..
if YOU want a bitcoin L2.. how about YOU fork LN. and make a separate LN that only functions with bitcoin. which has its units of measure only in btc and sats. where there is a proper BOLTS rule all wallets have to follow to ensure all channels can be audited to protect value.
no htlc 'payment' messages, no 'turbo', no 'msat', no 'atomic swap' no need to even lock/peg value.

now you go FORK OFF

[dezoel]

The logic behind it is that, you do not spend gold to buy something, but you do that with bitcoin currently but it is getting lesser and lesser. So, he is saying that considering the energy used to create it, and send it, and transaction fee costs (and the mining power required to make it secure) and also the fee cost itself for the sender, etc etc all comes down to the fact that you can't buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin since the fee would be higher than the coffee itself.

But as an asset, just like gold, you could just buy it and hold it and make money. So bitcoins future may look a lot like gold currently, instead of being a currency, it could be an asset.

[jostorres]

In my opinion, there are many solutions for what said, maybe bitcoin cannot be a good payment system because of the costs and many other factors but still there are many solutions, for example, the lightning network, regardless of being a successful solution or not but I guess a year later there will be more and better solution and increasing the interest of using bitcoin as a payment system for people. But regardless of all that, many people do not use bitcoin as a payment system but they will save it and hold it as an investment option to be safe from the inflation rate. However, I'm not sure what's behind these speaks when they start attacking bitcoin sometimes periodically.

You are right with that. We have alternatives, coins. Lightning network is one of it like you said. They can also use natural sources of energy as they are more cheaper although the cost of miners (equipment) will still be the same which is expensive but they don't really need to buy one or to become a miner when the only thing that they want is to accept bitcoin as payment method to their business. Just let the miners handle the fees and hassle but bitcoin users can worry less.

You know when famous personalities starts attacking bitcoin, it could mean that they want the price of bitcoin to go down more evenly so that they can buy it cheaply by themselves or they do this things because they are supporting a different crypto and they want it to become a number one coin.

[evilgreed]

               We shouldn't hate on the guy though for expressing his views. Just like any other person out there, he is just stating what he currently sees in Bitcoin. Besides, the guy has a bit of a point too. But even if these issues that he mentioned get fixed, I still think that bitcoin would most likely be still widely utilized more as a store of value rather than a means of payment. Simply because people are greedy and its potential to increase in price over the years is the real culprit behind the issue of more people holding it rather than spending it.

[jostorres]

Are we witnessing the emergence of the biggest bitcoin antagonist in the cryptospace? I think Sam Bankman-Fried is one of the most intelligent founders in the cryptospace, however, I am starting to be more skeptical about his agenda. In the article, he mentioned that bitcoin may have a future as an asset, a commodity or a store of value.

I mean looking at the current bitcoin's history for sure he's not wrong, people prefer to hodl because the hope (know?) it'll go up in value again in the future, but also let's not forget that a very small amount of people own bitcoin. If and when there would be a mass adoption, and that's a big if, things will probably change.

Not small mate but the number of people that owns bitcoin are too much. Just see how many countries legalized the use of it and also if there's only small amount of people who own bitcoins, why would the value of bitcoin grow like this? There will always be mass adoption that will takes place because many people or countries are already starting to recognize bitcoin and its benefits.

There are still btc owners out there that uses their bitcoins on different purposes and this includes paying or sending money. Maybe the guy that said btc has no future for payment network, doesn't use his btc on this purpose because he is afraid to pay a little higher fee and he is afraid that his transaction will get delayed.

[Lucius]

One good news about the other scam you mentioned, seems like South Korea's authorities are on the move. The original article mentions also something about investigating the way customers were attracted with a high annual interest rate that might get jail time, and in Korea, you can get 40 years for just lying to investors about where you put their money.

Call me skeptical, but when I see that instead of arrests and prison sentences, there is mention of punishment for possible tax evasion when it comes to Kwon - I wonder if this is happening in South Korea or some highly corrupt third world country. The person behind it all says publicly that he enjoys watching companies die, and there is a saying that whoever rejoices in another's misfortune will have an even greater misfortune - I hope he will receive appropriate punishment.

[KingsDen]

It’s was confusing on this statement. Because the bitcoin was the future currency,people think about the crypto currency by the mean of the bitcoin. So how the crypto will be survived without the crypto currency.Not at all the possibilities for this.All the crypto currency based on the bitcoin,he should consider before a statement.

Those statements in Op is very correct. Though Op wanted to throw him out of context but I surely understand the man.
Though Satoshi proposed bitcoin as a currency, and as long as we are maintaining the legacy and living upto the expectations of bitcoin, we must first call bitcoin a currency before an investment assets.
To buttress what the man said, if you conduct a questionnaire in this forum, you will understand that almost 90% of people using btc in this forum are holders instead of spenders, and so it is outside the forum.

The PoW system posses some kind of scalability issues on bitcoin and we all know it. The LN has come to augment this flaw if bitcoin. Yet, some persons like Franky1 believes that LN is not bitcoin and not exclusively for bitcoin because it doesn't run on blockchain. With the privacy concern about Bitcoin, anything that isn't bitcoin would always be treated with care and that is why BSV of btc hard fork is not seen as bitcoin.
What I am sure of is that bitcoin will unanimously undergo some kind of reforms if it's to serve as a complete currency.

[dothebeats]

I understand why he made those comments. Bitcoin, in its current state, doesn't scale effectively to be used as a global payments network. Also, even though a lot of the comments in here direct their statements toward a bitcoin that is used for payments, only a handful are really using their bitcoins to pay for things they purchase. Most will surely just keep their bitcoin for the long run, in hopes of netting a lot more from what they initially invested. Being realistic isn't being antagonistic, it is actually the opposite of that—it helps things improve and the gears turning for future development.

[suzanne5223]

When I first the topic of this thread, i have a little smile inside me because there will always be an attack on Bitcoin by people who are after creating FUD in the market.

When I learn that the man was named the biggest bitcoin antagonist in the crypto space I was surprised because his FTX supported BTC. What he said about Bitcoin didn't surprise me but I hope a lot of people that are into crypto investment understand the purpose of this people because most of them did join the BTC boat when it was $6K because they underestimated it and now that the price is in $29K they want to do something that could make the price go dip more so they could accumulate it before the major bullish market start.
They are playing a political scam game guys.

Skeptical. I do not know if he is making an honest assessment on bitcoin or if this is the beginning of their new agenda to remove bitcoin from being no.1.

Remove Bitcoin as number 1?
For your information, Bitcoin has been the number 1 through it concept ever since people understand being beneficial and this is not Sam Bankman-Fried doing but the community support doing. In addition, it's the same concept that makes people see BTC as the best payment system for cross border payment.

[franky1]

The PoW system posses some kind of scalability issues on bitcoin and we all know it.

PoW is not a scalability problem.. asics do not ever see transactions.. it doesnt matter if a block has 1 transaction or a million transactions an asic is still going to see the same length hash.. so scalability is not a PoW thing at all.. they are two separate things entirely that do not impact each other

The LN has come to augment this flaw if bitcoin. Yet, some persons like Franky1 believes that LN is not bitcoin and not exclusively for bitcoin because it doesn't run on blockchain.

there are thousands of people that dont use LN for many many reasons. they are just too shy to point out the flaws due to the absolute abuse they would get from the LN fans. i simply do not fear or care about the LN fans, so i dont fear speaking out about their flaws and fantasy dreams of utopia.

its not just about not running on a blockchain. its EVERYTHING about LN thats bad.
its the data packets that go between channels are not actually raw transactions that bitcoin would understand.
its that the channels are not audited.
its that the denomination LN uses is not sats or btc.
its the factor of requiring to lock(stake) up coins to then play with pegged different denominations on another network
its the liquidity issues bottlenecks
its the middlemen routing problem
its the lack of sovereign control due to co-signing and middlemen
its everything.

LN has not fixed anything because LN has MORE flaws than bitcoin.
the liquidity problem stops payments from being sent around for any useful amount.. yes great in utopian dream of wanting to spend 2cents. but useless if your locking up say $1.2k for a couple months and wanting to buy pizza every day for 2 months, i guarantee you, you will not successfully fulfil every pizza payment in 2 months. for many reasons

With the privacy concern about Bitcoin, anything that isn't bitcoin would always be treated with care and that is why BSV of btc hard fork is not seen as bitcoin.
What I am sure of is that bitcoin will unanimously undergo some kind of reforms if it's to serve as a complete currency.

oh and LN is not more private. they literally have to publicly announce their channels just for routing to function in their current iteration of their bolts(facepalm).. just wait until regulates see which ones 'route' and then make them have to become registered MSB, simply for making payments on behalf of others for a commission(yep LN is ripe for regulators to get lots of licence fee's)

as for 'currency'
bitcoin IS recognised legally as internationally wide currency by many governments(but not common man in their daily lives) which is where governments managed to slide in their jurisdiction to then treat businesses swapping fiat for btc as currency exchanges rather than retail merchants buying selling product.

but you might mean treated as common currency by common man in their daily life where people have actual daily utility. there are many many ways to achieve this. (unlike the LN fangirls that pretend they are the only 'solution'(facepalm). and FALSELY pretend i am trying to push and enforce only one solution in the opposite direction to LN. sorry but there are many ways to help bitcoin grow. and i mean bitcoin. not other networks brand stealing, and no its not just a blocksize debate like the silly fangirls ignorantly think)

[jrrsparkles]

Assuming that bitcoin is the only medium of exchange used by everyone in this world so millions of transactions will clog the network which is what he actually said if I am not wrong but why we only need bitcoin, this can be one of the way that people can use while combine with existing or upcoming medium of exchange. As of now bitcoin is cheaper to transact and the implementation of LN can solve most of the clog we all are talking.

[Prince Malik]

Personally i think this is not a crucial thing cause bitcoin isn't the same cryptocurrencie and we have alot of other coins that can be used for payment so i don't think he is really attacking bitcoin but maybe he mean that we have better alternatives for that matter

[AmoreJaz]

I understand why he made those comments. Bitcoin, in its current state, doesn't scale effectively to be used as a global payments network. Also, even though a lot of the comments in here direct their statements toward a bitcoin that is used for payments, only a handful are really using their bitcoins to pay for things they purchase. Most will surely just keep their bitcoin for the long run, in hopes of netting a lot more from what they initially invested. Being realistic isn't being antagonistic, it is actually the opposite of that—it helps things improve and the gears turning for future development.

up until now, bitcoin is not heavily used as payment method because most holders are treating this as an investment, where they can earn profits if they will just hold and not use it. aside from the expensive fees if you are using 3rd party wallets, the confirmation also takes time and that is not favourable to payment sector. he may have reasons why he said such statement. but he may change his mind once bitcoin and other crypto are well-accepted as payment method and people are using it.

[pooya87]

To buttress what the man said, if you conduct a questionnaire in this forum, you will understand that almost 90% of people using btc in this forum are holders instead of spenders, and so it is outside the forum.

People who respond to questions like this do not represent the whole bitcoin owners and that is only assuming they didn't lie.

The PoW system posses some kind of scalability issues on bitcoin and we all know it.

Wrong. PoW doesn't do that at all. The whole design and usage of a blockchain does.

Yet, some persons like Franky1 believes that LN is not bitcoin and not exclusively for bitcoin because it doesn't run on blockchain.

People like Franky should propose their "better" solution instead of blindly attacking what others have proposed which is working.

With the privacy concern about Bitcoin, anything that isn't bitcoin would always be treated with care and that is why BSV of btc hard fork is not seen as bitcoin.

Wrong. BSV and any other copycat is considered an altcoin because they are not bitcoin. Simple as that. They are considered shitcoin because they have nothing to offer and they just copied bitcoin, added some flaws to the protocol and are running with far less hashrate.

What I am sure of is that bitcoin will unanimously undergo some kind of reforms if it's to serve as a complete currency.

Bitcoin is already functioning as a currency. It is not perfect but the humanity has never been capable of building a perfect system ever. Expecting otherwise is naive. Bitcoin has reached a nice balance between decentralization (and all its benefits) while functioning as a currency.

[Fortify]

Are we witnessing the emergence of the biggest bitcoin antagonist in the cryptospace? I think Sam Bankman-Fried is one of the most intelligent founders in the cryptospace, however, I am starting to be more skeptical about his agenda. In the article, he mentioned that bitcoin may have a future as an asset, a commodity or a store of value. I am scratching my head on what he might be implying in his statement. Is he telling us that bitcoin will not forever be no.1 in market capitalization?

Skeptical. I do not know if he is making an honest assessment on bitcoin or if this is the beginning of their new agenda to remove bitcoin from being no.1.

Bitcoin has no future as a payments network because of its inefficiency and high environmental costs, according to one of crypto’s most influential chief executives.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the digital asset exchange FTX, said the proof of work system of validating blockchain transactions, which underpins bitcoin, was not capable of scaling up to cope with the millions of transactions that would be needed to make the cryptocurrency an effective means of payment.

“The bitcoin network is not a payments network and it is not a scaling network,” said Bankman-Fried.

But despite his views on bitcoin, Bankman-Fried said he still believed the world’s biggest digital asset had a place in the crypto market.

“I don’t think that means bitcoin has to go,” he said, adding that the token may still have a future as “an asset, a commodity and a store of value” akin to gold.

Read in full https://www.ft.com/content/02cad9b8-e2eb-43d4-8c18-2e9d34b443fe

It seems like you've jumped to a conclusion without properly understanding what he is saying. Why do you think that Bitcoin acting as a commodity somehow makes it impossible for it to keep the biggest market cap of all cryptocurrency? There is plenty of room for another currency to come along as surpass Bitcoin and he puts out some very good points as to why an improved cryptocurrency could do better. It seems like you're connecting dots in your own mind that were never implied. It's very valid to point out that the Bitcoin network does not scale at at an appropriate level to be able to handle the amount of transactions that existing network provides on an energy efficiency basis.