Re:Not Being Bullish Enough on Bitcoin Is a Mistake
by Closi on Sunday December 27, 2020 @03:54PM
(#25554163)
Because a 30 minute transfer time, or $1 fee means you can’t do small and fast transactions (which are the vast majority of transactions for a traditional currency).
This means Bitcoin is simply not a good currency for most transactions.
Re:Not Being Bullish Enough on Bitcoin Is a Mistake
by alwillis on Sunday December 27, 2020 @08:20PM
(#25555831)
First, it usually doesn't make sense to buy coffee with bitcoin. Why would I do that if I had the choice to use depreciating fiat instead?
As a currency, the dollar is great for quick, low-cost transactions. But it's no longer a good store of value.
Besides, I can use my Cash App debit card or app and get cash back in bitcoin, which is rapidly appreciating in value [1].
As I already mentioned, lightning network provides fast (less than a few seconds) and cheap (fractions of pennies) off-chain bitcoin transactions—http://lightning.network/.
Not sure why bitcoin skeptics keep pointing to these transaction fees. As I write this, it takes 3 sats/byte to get into a block in 30 minutes and 1 sat/byte for 1 hour.
And as I write this, 1 sat = $0.00027210. A typical transaction is about 250 bytes, so to get a transaction into a block in 30 minutes costs about 7 cents. If it's more important, you could pay $1 or something.
Of course, Lightning Network is faster and cheaper than using bitcoin's blockchain for every transaction, which cost a fraction of a sat for every hop the transaction has to travel.