No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users per month

Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by xiphias on Sunday October 08, 2017 @11:19AM (#15428514)

There are many things the author didn't think about. With Segregated Witness, the signatures don't need to be part of the 1MB block. Also for multi-sig we will be using aggregatable Schnorr signatures, so multi-sig won't take that much space. Still, the cost of an on-blockchain transaction will probably go up to $1000-10000 in current US dollars, so I believe even having an on-chain transaction will get too expensive for most people. For the short term lightning should be a relief though until the community can come up with the next scaling solutions (after implementing Mimblewimble as well)

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by sordidasset on Sunday October 08, 2017 @02:14PM (#15429246)

>Still, the cost of an on-blockchain transaction will probably go up to $1000-10000 in current US dollars

I have a btc holding in cold storage of ~$350. I value the security and control of controlling my private keys+being on the main, trustless, chain. I suspect many people have a similar situation. What are we to do when txn costs rise as you describe?

I know plenty about the Bitcoin protocol, but I havent had time to do DD on Segwit or LN.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by wereHamster on Sunday October 08, 2017 @03:24PM (#15429541)

The tx cost will rise in proportion to the value of BTC. By the time the tx cost is 10k USD, your roughly 0.08BTC will have a value of hundreds of thousands USD.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by sp527 on Sunday October 08, 2017 @03:54PM (#15429672)

Umm what? Did you stop and read over what you just wrote? If transaction costs hit $10K, 0.08 BTC will be worth the same as 21M BTC: $0.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by rothbardrand on Sunday October 08, 2017 @06:34PM (#15430398)

Don't worry. Transaction costs will not rise. If you aren't in a hurry, even old style transactions are free today... and 100sat/byte for next couple of blocks clearing.

The entire "transaction fees are high" narrative is a combination of profitable miner spamming the system (to support the big blocker takeover narrative) and wallets having terrible fee estimation programs so that the wallet makers don't have to deal with the tech support when a transaction isn't in the very next block.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by Steko on Sunday October 08, 2017 @07:33PM (#15430620)

> Transaction costs will not rise.

History does not support this claim.

> If you aren't in a hurry

Unfortunately almost all commerce is in a hurry.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by rothbardrand on Sunday October 08, 2017 @06:35PM (#15430409)

It's completely absurd to say that transactions will be $10,000 when they are currently free, and we are nowhere near capacity, and Segwit hasn't even fully been adopted yet.

The entire "high transaction fee" narrative is due to miners profitably spamming the network to drive up transaction fees -- which they could only do with ASICBOOST and pre-segwit.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by the_stc on Sunday October 08, 2017 @11:36AM (#15428580)

>short term lightning

Can you clarify what this means? Last I read, Lightning was 18 months out. But not really, that's just a number tossed to a crowd. The preview tech published a month ago is nowhere near being ready for use.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by xiphias on Sunday October 08, 2017 @12:34PM (#15428821)

As far as I see from the github activity, now that SegWit is activated, the developers are putting much more effort to finishing.

Anyways you're right that maybe I was a bit too optimistic. Bitcoin is getting popular as a store of value faster than it can handle the scale of being an easy-to-use currency. The blocksize drama will probably keep on going :(

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by the_stc on Sunday October 08, 2017 @01:03PM (#15428971)

What does SW activation have to do with it? Why not have it ready to go, wait for the flip, enable. Or deploy it on a testnet. Or on LTC?

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by AgentME on Sunday October 08, 2017 @01:39PM (#15429106)

People weren't even sure if SW was going to activate. Who wants to do a lot of work on a system (LN) that might not ever be usable?

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by rothbardrand on Sunday October 08, 2017 @06:36PM (#15430413)

LN is actively being worked on, looking pretty good, and is estimated to be about a year from production. And that's just simple LN.

Over the next 5 years LN has the potential to really explode in capability and capacity.

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Re:No Bitcoin-based protocol can handle more than 20M users ... by shazow on Sunday October 08, 2017 @12:39PM (#15428857)

Indeed. The "18 months out" timeline has been around since the first draft of the Lightning Network paper, well over two years ago.

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