Stop adding features to Bitcoin that don't facilitate its use as electronic cash

[we-btc]

Okay, so you want Bitcoin to be fast (low transactions latency), and have low transaction fees. Great.

I completely agree that these are barriers to Bitcoin (and decentralized cryptos generally) to be accepted as a means mainstream means of daily transactions.

In fact, I suspect people here in Bitcointalk are probably getting sick of hearing me say this.

Now let's talk about how this will never happen using the blockchain architecture.

The blockchain architecture--implemented as it was designed to be used, e.g. as a massively decentralized architecture--is directly at odds with both cost and latency. Indeed, you could say that Satoshi intentionally designed Bitcoin to be slow and expensive in order to make the decentralized paradigm work.

Insofar as cryptocurrencies have decreased their cost and latency, they have sacrificed decentralization. This is a trade-off that is based on the universal constant of the speed of light.

It will not be solved by optimizing some code.

It will not be solved by making a few changes to the usage paradigm (unless you sacrifice decentralization).

And while I am an experience software architect and I could have told you this shortly after reading the Bitcoin white paper for the first time, even if you aren't a technical person, you'd have to conclude that after 14 years of trying with no solution, the problem is never, ever, EVER going to be solved.

And no, increasing the block size isn't going to help. A mainstream currency would need to the tens of thousand of times faster, it would need to be hundreds of times cheaper, and it would need to handle tens of billions of transactions per day which is absolutely unthinkable with a public ledger.

Repeat after me:

Bitcoin was not designed to be a mainstream currency.

Bitcoin was not designed to be a mainstream currency.

Bitcoin was not designed to be a mainstream currency.

It just. plain. wasn't.

This was never Satoshi's goal. If it was his goal, he would have designed Bitcoin differently (e.g. not blockchain, not decentralized [e.g. he would have created something like Haypenny]).

Be content that Bitcoin does what it was designed to do (well, sorta does): it allows transactions that evade government subpoenas. Thousands of people all over the world need this.

And Bitcoin also does something it was never intended to do, but has become very popular: it works fine as a speculation instrument. Millions of people like this.

Having Bitcoin do any more than that will require that Bitcoin isn't Bitcoin anymore.

My opinion is that the hope of Bitcoin is financial sovereignty and financial freedom for anyone who has access to the internet. I see it as THE killer app of the edge network known as the Internet. I think edge is really critical because Bitcoin was also designed as an edge network.  This means that every user was to have a node.

You make a lot of good points but I have to disagree with one of them.  Bitcoin was designed to be a "digital form of electronic cash".  If you say this in the title and the first sentence of the white paper it is the intention.

I also understand why you would be concerned that we couldn't come up with a solution since one has not been identified to this point.  I think we can solve these problems. See my post above for some basic ideas.

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[we-btc]

It's an incremental process.  Every release effectively contains new building blocks that move us closer to the next step.  A load of people are obviously now complaining that someone found a way of using one of those building blocks in a manner that wasn't intended, to create a load of bloated crap on the chain, which is unfortunate.  But the fact remains, there was a goal in mind when that ingredient was added to the mix and there is still potential to be extracted from what it offers.

If you can't personally see the big picture, and people can tell that you can't, then those people aren't going to take you seriously when you declare it a failure.

I never declared Bitcoin a failure. Not even close. Bitcoin has accomplished what it set out to accomplish. And beyond that, it accomplished something else. That is in no way calling it a "failure".

If I say that it's architecturally impossible that Lionel Messi will ever become a top NBA basketball player, I am not calling him a "failure".

One of the primary goals is to remove financial institutions as the 3rd party in financial transactions.  If most transactions use 3rd party intermediaries and Bitcoins main use is as an investment for people with means then we can say that Bitcoin did not achieve what is set out to achieve.

What we as the custodians of this new technology should be fighting for is purely peer-to-peer transactions using the most amazing invention of our lifetime. Bitcoin!!

[legiteum]

I never declared Bitcoin a failure. Not even close. Bitcoin has accomplished what it set out to accomplish. And beyond that, it accomplished something else. That is in no way calling it a "failure".

If I say that it's architecturally impossible that Lionel Messi will ever become a top NBA basketball player, I am not calling him a "failure".

One of the primary goals is to remove financial institutions as the 3rd party in financial transactions.  If most transactions use 3rd party intermediaries and Bitcoins main use is as an investment for people with means then we can say that Bitcoin did not achieve what is set out to achieve.

What we as the custodians of this new technology should be fighting for is purely peer-to-peer transactions using the most amazing invention of our lifetime. Bitcoin!!

Why would you say that? Bitcoin absolutely accomplished what it set out to accomplish, it's just that not very many people have that problem.

While a few people in the world need to keep their transactions out of the reach of a government subpoena, most don't.

Meanwhile, pretty much everybody likes to make money .

Now, are you are saying that those investors... annoy you? That could be, and maybe you even have a point, but without those investors using their apps and brokers and banks and ETFs, the price of Bitcoin would be back to the price it was before they all came, e.g. about $1 per Bitcoin.

I'm pretty sure nobody on the core dev team of Bitcoin would do something like that.

And then there's the broader context: Bitcoin's original purpose is far better served by other products today, e.g. Monera et. al.

So what you are asking the Bitcoin dev team to do is ignore their users and just solve your problem, even though your problem can be handled with another product just fine. Why would they do that?

[we-btc]

Why would you say that? Bitcoin absolutely accomplished what it set out to accomplish, it's just that not very many people have that problem.

While a few people in the world need to keep their transactions out of the reach of a government subpoena, most don't.

Meanwhile, pretty much everybody likes to make money .

Now, are you are saying that those investors... annoy you? That could be, and maybe you even have a point, but without those investors using their apps and brokers and banks and ETFs, the price of Bitcoin would be back to the price it was before they all came, e.g. about $1 per Bitcoin.

Investing in a currency is not the issue.  Anyone can do that by earning it or buying it.

Pricing Bitcoin in other fiat currencies is also not what I think is important.  What I do think is important is making a decentralized, peer-to-peer currency with a limited supply available to everyone to use as a way to transact. If we do this right goods and services will be priced in Bitcoin.

I'm pretty sure nobody on the core dev team of Bitcoin would do something like that.

And then there's the broader context: Bitcoin's original purpose is far better served by other products today, e.g. Monera et. al.

So what you are asking the Bitcoin dev team to do is ignore their users and just solve your problem, even though your problem can be handled with another product just fine. Why would they do that?

Bitcoin is the only decentralized option.  None of the others are decentralized, peer-to-peer and have a limited supply. That is why we should fight for Bitcoin!

[legiteum]

Why would you say that? Bitcoin absolutely accomplished what it set out to accomplish, it's just that not very many people have that problem.

While a few people in the world need to keep their transactions out of the reach of a government subpoena, most don't.

Meanwhile, pretty much everybody likes to make money .

Now, are you are saying that those investors... annoy you? That could be, and maybe you even have a point, but without those investors using their apps and brokers and banks and ETFs, the price of Bitcoin would be back to the price it was before they all came, e.g. about $1 per Bitcoin.

Investing in a currency is not the issue.  Anyone can do that by earning it or buying it.

Pricing Bitcoin in other fiat currencies is also not what I think is important.  What I do think is important is making a decentralized, peer-to-peer currency with a limited supply available to everyone to use as a way to transact. If we do this right goods and services will be priced in Bitcoin.

That would only happen if Bitcoin/blockchain was suitable for everyday (read: small) transactions for billions of people everyday, and... it's not. That's not the problem Bitcoin set out to solve, and the blockchain architecture makes that impossible.

I'm pretty sure nobody on the core dev team of Bitcoin would do something like that.

And then there's the broader context: Bitcoin's original purpose is far better served by other products today, e.g. Monera et. al.

So what you are asking the Bitcoin dev team to do is ignore their users and just solve your problem, even though your problem can be handled with another product just fine. Why would they do that?

Bitcoin is the only decentralized option.  None of the others are decentralized, peer-to-peer and have a limited supply. That is why we should fight for Bitcoin!

And Bitcoin already works just fine. Why do you want to change it?

If you are saying it's too slow/expensive, then I think you are not understanding what you are buying. As you said (and I'll correct you here), other blockchain-based currencies are not as centralized, and you like your currency to be more decentralized. Fine. But decentralization costs money and time. You don't get that for free. Bitcoin costs what it costs to transact for very good reason. You can do it cheaper, but you will sacrifice decentralization.

Maybe I should ask more directly: why do you want this? What is your goal?

[Antotena]

One of the primary goals is to remove financial institutions as the 3rd party in financial transactions.  If most transactions use 3rd party intermediaries and Bitcoins main use is as an investment for people with means then we can say that Bitcoin did not achieve what is set out to achieve.

What we as the custodians of this new technology should be fighting for is purely peer-to-peer transactions using the most amazing invention of our lifetime. Bitcoin!!

If you look at it, don't you think that third party has succeeded in doing what we don't want to see. Look around today, ask people tyt bought Bitcoin between last year and last 2 years, they bought their Bitcoin through the exchange, including me because I wasn't here at first but when I later joined the forum was when I started to read about the negative side of using third parties.m; ask some of them if they even know about the dangers of using third parties and they will tell you know because they have no idea.

Another reason why we have these increase in number of people in centralized exchanges is because scammers has destroy the usefulness of decentralization. Buying Bitcoin from outside centralized exchanges means you not far from been scam unless you know about reputable decentralized exchange where you can buy Bitcoin and of course limited to Bitcoin, they can't buy there favorite memes coins, this is the why centralized exchanges are winning. Centralized exchanges also promote their exchanges than even the decentralized ones.

[umbara ardian]

High transaction fees have plagued Bitcoin for a while, predating recent developments.  This undermines its initial vision as a seamless electronic payment system. However, dismissing Bitcoin solely as a payment system might be shortsighted.  The "wake up" call highlights the ongoing debate about Bitcoin's true purpose.  Is it a digital currency for everyday transactions, or has it evolved into a valuable investment asset?

Observation about current buying trends is interesting.  Most people seem to be buying Bitcoin for investment purposes, holding onto it for potential future gains.  This creates a paradox – a currency people are hesitant to spend. The existence of businesses accepting Bitcoin while customers still prefer fiat underscores this point.  People are willing to hold Bitcoin as a potential store of value, but everyday transactions remain dominated by traditional currencies.

[wiss19]

I do not want to get involved with anything of that sort, but I have to say it is not going to be all that easy to handle the rest neither without getting into argument. I agree that these ordinals stuff, or just trying to put bitcoin into altcoin levels, is not a smart move.

I get that alts had that for a while now and devs wanted to add in the same thing to Bitcoin as well, to show that they are improving bitcoin some way, but that just hurt bitcoin and not help it, that's just my opinion. Nobody "needed" ordinals, I am not saying they should be banned or anything because it is already too late, but it wasn't a must, and the result is that some people who would like to have it, caused the fee structure to be completely bombed all together.

[inashed]

Bitcoin was designed to be "electronic cash".  Nothing should be changed in core that does not support this mission.

The title of the Bitcoin white paper - "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".

The main idea of bitcoin is that it doenst believe at the "print enough money and spend it to make sure we are always 100% sure price inflation is happening" OR "make a tax everyone must pay to make sure they always lose money (instead of value like the previous idea) if they save it", that makes society shitty by not allowing people to save (unless they are ultra rich)

Without that bitcoin is bullshit, the idea was not electronic cash, its just a thing needed to make the previous happen.