People forget that in the early days of the Internet and its predecessors, most computers were still bigger than a washing machine, mostly available only to universities and big or specialized corporations, and data lines were limited to bandwidths many orders of magnitudes narrower than today.
The Internet had an inherent hard limit on scale and availability simply by the technology that was available at the time. Not only did the Internet then grow with the available technology, filling it out, its very nature provided a great lever to all research and development, leading to the exponential advancement of information technology that we live in today.
There is no comparison, at all.
All technology is limited by what is available at the time. I am nowhere near as bullish as I used to be on “blockchain” but I still think it can have a huge impact. If the internet democratized informatiom the blockchain has the potential to democratize finance and some types of information. The internet had all kinds of crazy scammers during the dotcom era. I think there is still potential here and while the shape isn’t super obvious I think it’s not worth betting against. Im no koolaide drinking crypro cargo cultist but I am optimistic it will solve some problems and be a net positive.
What's your evidence for this?
Even major Bitcoin advocates say it's no longer useful as a payment system: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/
Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of users, has 100x that volume and is growing rapidly. [2]
So I'm entirely skeptical that it's better for any significant market than even legacy money transfer methods, let alone trying to compete with newer tech.
[1] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second
[2] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/money/news-money/m-pesa-reac...
I've used it for that. People use it on darknet markets for value transfer. I have seen many people claim to use it in Venezuela, though I can't confirm that (one of them posted in this thread [1]).
> Bitcoin's total TPS is circa 2-3. [1] And presumably a small fraction of that is actual money transfer. In contrast, M-Pesa, a digital money system that started about the same time and has millions of users, has 100x that volume and is growing rapidly. [2]
That's no longer true. The lightning network increases that to effectively infinite TPS. The infrastructure of nodes isn't that great yet, but it is now possible in principle for Bitcoin to scale to an essentially arbitrary throughput.
> So I'm entirely skeptical that it's better for any significant market than even legacy money transfer methods, let alone trying to compete with newer tech.
That's a fair skepticism. Though not due to slowness/throughput, as that problem is solved. And not due to environmental concerns, because that problem will be solved (in Ethereum, not Bitcoin). The legitimate objections to cryptos I see are:
1. It's not clear that decentralization, uncensorability, and irrevocability are really properties that people need. provides a value anyone really need.
2. Deflationary assets are subject to boom/bust cycles that can be toxic to modern economies. Crypto assets tend to be deflationary, and as such may not, over the longer term, serve effectively as global currencies.
I think those two points are the core of any serious objection to crypto. I believe that in the case of #1, the architectural change it would induce in our financial system is worthwhile, and consumers will feel the effects of that rather than the benefits currently stated for crypto. As for #2, it's a legitimate concern, and it may ultimately make them untenable, but we'll just have to see.
But you share one of the habits that makes these discussions so frustrating. You substitute marginal examples and handwaves at the future when asked for clear present evidence.
The Lightning network might possibly one day increase capacity to infinite TPS. It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig...
I am saying that based on the evidence I find, despite 10 years of enormous free advertising, approximately nobody uses it today for money transfer when compared with other money transfer options. Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?
Such is unfortunately the nature of all predictive discussion. I don't think i'm being any more speculative than anyone discussing say, autonomous cars, or similarly 'somewhere on the horizon' technologies.
> It doesn't yet, and reasonable people think it never will. E.g.: https://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/175418385308/why-the-lig....
There's a decent bit going on in that link, but point by point:
> 1. it doesn’t work. the software is absolute dogshit. buggy as hell.
This is just saying the current iteration is buggy. That's no counter-argument to the concept.
> 1.5. it can’t work. the mesh network problem
The difficulty of this problem depends on the number of relevant nodes, and the way you structure the network itself. He even cites a good example - BGP. He claims that BGP works because the nodes trust each other, but regardless of them trusting each other, they solve the mesh network problem. That trust is not integral to the solving of the mesh network problem.
> 2. the whole idea is dumb. nobody wants a network of prepaid channels.
Now this sounds like a decent argument. Except that, one could argue that your bank account and credit card are simply prepaid channels. If the LN gets up to scale, and if it achieves sufficient node liquidity that you can pay essentially anyone...then I don't see how this prepaid channel differs in any way from a traditional bank account.
> 3. the LN solves a problem that doesn’t exist. the idea is to make transactions fast again
The LN may or may not cause merchants to adopt Bitcoin for payments. But it definitely solves the more narrow "Bitcoin doesn't scale" problem.
> 4. the LN is coin-agnostic - so it isn’t an excuse for bitcoin’s unscalability
This doesn't even logically follow. It's just a complete non-sequitur. The LN is an excuse for Bitcoins not scaling yet. The LN can also be used to scale other coins. It may be that people prefer those other coins once they've achieved scale.
> Do you have clear evidence otherwise? Not anecdote, not what it possibly does, but actual evidence?
It's extremely hard to get data for something like that. But the clearest cut case is darknet markets. Cryptocurrencies are definitely actually used there for real commerce.
Also, "people use cryptocurrency for value transfer" is not a forward-looking statement. It's a statement of what people do now. And this comes out of you saying, "blockchains are useful now".
You're handwaving right now. You can't know which part of the distribution you're in until it's over. I've provided quite a bit of evidence, as well. There are some forward looking statements for which there is no hard evidence, but only because there cannot yet be any.
> Also, "people use cryptocurrency for value transfer" is not a forward-looking statement. It's a statement of what people do now. And this comes out of you saying, "blockchains are useful now".
They do use it for value transfer right now.
> They do use it for value transfer right now.
Money launderers do. KGB agents do. A variety of other criminals do. But I have yet to see evidence that a significant portion of ordinary people use it for value transfer in preference to either traditional means or modern, non-blockchain digital ones.
So yes, you are technically correct on a narrow interpretation of a single sentence. But you are so far wrong in terms of the meaning of that sentence in the broader discussion. For the purposes of evaluating Bitcoin's commercial utility, effectively nobody uses it. If you have data otherwise, let's see it.
The same applies for comparisons with the early Internet. Pre-web, lots of non-technical people used it for practical purposes because it provided superior utility over other options. That doesn't appear to be true for money transfer for Bitcoin. Even prominent Bitcoin advocates have given up on that. E.g.: http://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/
Soooo, buying drugs and illegal gambling? Sure, I'll give you that one.
My argument rephrased: "Because cryptocurrency investors have repeatedly made claims that don't pan out, we can be reasonably skeptical and concerned about their energy consumption until they actually fix it or at the very least provide peer-reviewed scientific analysis on how it will be fixed."
Yes, although also remittance payments, and some usage in places with unstable currencies like Venezuela. Hard to gauge how much, though.
> My argument rephrased: "Because cryptocurrency investors have repeatedly made claims that don't pan out, we can be reasonably skeptical and concerned about their energy consumption until they actually fix it or at the very least provide peer-reviewed scientific analysis on how it will be fixed."
While that is, in the abstract, a fair argument I don't think there are actually that many examples of it in practice. Vitalik didn't claim Ethereum would be a world computer right away. He's always been clear and explicit about the scaling roadmap. I don't think the promises of the core devs of Ethereum or Bitcoin have been overstated or unmet. If you believe otherwise though, i'd be happy to listen to your argument.
"Authorities have .. permitted trading of bitcoin in Venezuela, though they have heavily fined and detained people who use computers to earn bitcoins by auditing online cryptocurrency transactions. Such “mining” operations use immense amounts of electricity, which is heavily subsidised in Venezuela — meaning the state essentially winds up paying for the process."
"few businesses openly advertise that they accept cryptocurrency out of concern they will be extorted. It’s still difficult to make many purchases in Venezuela with bitcoin"
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/venezuelans-seeing...
Bitcoin not only thrives here and allows you to bypass the whole craziness with the economy by using exchanges like localbitcoins.com where somebody would deposit the amount of bitcoin you sold to your local bank account. This way you just keep your money in bitcoins if you want. This is specially true with miners.
Meanwhile, no doubt some are using crypto to supplement their incomes/savings as well.
No,“can” and “are legally allowed to” don't, technically, mean the same thing.
The other part is that we Venezuelans never walk anywhere. Going somewhere without a car feels dangerous. Oh and in big cities, if the car is armored the better. Plenty of shops now to convert your SUVs.
Furthermore how does that allow you to pay for food, water, utilities, or even fuel for your car?
Shipping Fedex/DHL in Venezuela isn't nearly as reliable as shipping in the United States. Nor is it cheap.
Energy and gas are super cheap in Venezuela (38 cents a gallon). I'm not sure where you're going with your argument there.
You can hold crypto as a hedge against the Bolivares, convert to fiat as needed, just like any other fungible asset.
Well, why is this so easy for you to brush aside?
If indeed blockchain tech can successfully subvert bad public policy, isn't that pretty remarkable in its own right?
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1011
There you go. Read it then make your arguments against it. If not, then shut-up.
"I'll believe it when I see it"
People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer, and to a more limited extent, for dapps like Augur. You seem to be criticizing the delta between the lofty hopes for it and it's actual usage. The early internet did not have such lofty hopes, so its growth was more organic. If you take away the pipe dreams from crypto, you have a remnant skeleton that i'd argue very much resembles the early internet.
> Of course the effect on the environment will continue to be pointed out: Ethereum's energy consumption is growing and the use cases are nowhere to be seen. So far, "plans" in the cryptocurrency space never go as expected. Satoshi didn't expect persistent forks and altcoins, for example. Vitalik advertised Ethereum as a "world computer" but it can barely stand when only 14k users are trading cartoon kitties on it. He also said Ethereum's "code is law", until he changed his mind and forked the network due to a hack. Please excuse skeptics for holding accountable those that do not have a history of consistent and successful results.
So, I said there are plans for solving the energy consumption issue. And your counter-argument is what, exactly? That sometimes people didn't foresee everything that might evolve? Help me understand the argument that you're making here.