Re:Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
by em3rgent0rdr on Saturday December 09, 2017 @03:35PM
(#15887961)
Lightning Network protocol has reached v1.0 and they have demonstrated transacting real bitcoins instantaneously on youtube.
Re:Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
by oarsinsync on Saturday December 09, 2017 @03:56PM
(#15888093)
That's a problem that hasn't been solved (yet).
That shouldn't diminish all the other things that BTC does successfully.
Re:Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?
by ben_w on Saturday December 09, 2017 @04:11PM
(#15888174)
When the correct answer is “bitcoin“, what is the question? I genuinely, genuinely, don’t see any task for which it is the best solution — not even for anonymous online payments or secret ways to store wealth.
"what is the most well tested and carefully developed payment system today that allows me to have complete control of my funds without having to trust any third party?"
I see your suggestion and raise you “precious metals”
a) Precious metals are not portable enough.
With Bitcoin someone can transfer any amount of value within a few minutes to the other side of the globe (and no-one can stop you from doing so).
b) Precious metals are too reliant on physical security. Someone can break into your house much easier than into i.e. your hardware wallet.
c) Besides these, precious metals are not a payment system, much less a programmable one. You can't code for example a logic that requires multiple untrusted parties to sign a transaction for it to complete.
That is nice. But can I, and everybody else in the USA successfully use Bitcoin on Black Friday? According to the National Retail Foundation, in 2016 over 101 million people went out on black friday to buy something. If Bitcoin could somehow 10x its transaction rate to even 40 transactions per second (which it can't and probably never will) it would take almost 30 days to process every order. At its current rate of 4tps, you are looking at about 292 days--during which, according to Wolfram Alpha, Venus will have made 1.3 trips around the sun.
So again, yeah, great job. Bitcoin solved some technical problem. Go team! But who gives a crap if some technical problem doesn't solve any real problem? Isn't that what we engineers exist to do? Solve real-world problems?