Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017 Record

Re:Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017... by arcticbull on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:20PM (#25257015)

> The first is that scaling Bitcoin up to the size of visa is not particularly possible.

That’s no mistake, folks are suggesting that on a per transaction basis - today - Bitcoin is cheaper or more efficient if you take into account hand wavey externalities not captured in the classical transaction cost model of a payment processor like visa.

What I’ve done is invalidate that argument not by scaling visa down to a single transaction (as that doesn’t capture externalities, per the argument posited) but scale BTC up as the argument is BTC captures all externalities. By then showing that it’s physically impossible I’ve disproved the thesis.

You’re making a different argument about avenues for scaling and that deserves its own conversation.

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Re:Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017... by brian_cloutier on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:27PM (#25257109)

You haven't shown that it's physically impossible though. Scaling doesn't work that way, not even in the physical world does it work that way. As the side length of a cube increases the surface area increases with the square of the side length, and volume increases with the cube of the side length. When considering the effects of scaling a system it makes no sense to just multiply all numbers by some constant. The question of how much energy Bitcoin would consume if you scaled it up cannot be solved, even in approximation, by blindly multipling it's current energy usage by a constant.

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Re:Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017... by arcticbull on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:29PM (#25257130)

You misunderstand. I’m not saying it’s physically impossible for Bitcoin to scale (which I do believe, separately), but that it’s physically impossible for Bitcoin to be more efficient on a per transaction basis as specced today even if you take into account all externalities.

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Re:Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High of $19,786, Topping 2017... by brian_cloutier on Monday November 30, 2020 @02:04PM (#25257512)

Okay, I might be misunderstanding you. What is your argument though? I can't find anywhere in this thread where you showed it's impossible for bitcoin to be more efficient on a per-txn basis.

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