What Is Cryptocurrency: Everything You Need to Know

Re:What Is Cryptocurrency: Everything You Need to Know by cobbzilla on Monday November 14, 2016 @03:46PM (#12953180)

I understand the smallest denomination, 0.00000001 (did I get the right number of zeros?) is called a satoshi, after the creator of Bitcoin. Correct me if I'm wrong here, with 21 millions coins and 8 decimal places, you have about 2 quadrillion [1] satoshis, which does seems to be quite a bit to last for a while. I'm guessing we hit the 2038 problem [2] first.

Of note, the US money supply, even including 2 decimal places, creates a space of 331 trillion units [3], as of 2016 [4].

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(21+million)+*+(10%5E8) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem [3] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3317+billion+*+10%5E2 [4] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m...

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Re:What Is Cryptocurrency: Everything You Need to Know by mirimir on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @04:02AM (#12956621)

Yes, that generally comports with my understanding.

The hard part will be handling enough transactions without becoming centralized. Currently, the blockchain is ~90GB. With most users on mobile devices, very few will be running full clients, because syncing the blockchain will move too much data.

So increasing block size is very contentious. One camp is OK with centralization. The other basically wants to make Bitcoin like gold, and create currencies based on it.

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