> The key difference is that BTC and all cryptocurrencies in general are not getting better about being scalable to many total transactions and transactions/second - they're getting worse.

> This is true for all blockchain-based currencies, and it's fundamental to the technology. There is no "fix". It's not just a case of poorly written code or limited infrastructure, it's the core premise of the idea that's rotten.

You are very confident for someone who seemingly hasn't researched much about optimistic and zero knowledge rollups. These systems inherit the security of Ethereum while providing exponentially greater transaction throughout which means scale improves and these networks cannot steal your money or do anything nefarious.

Honestly, that someone can be this confidently incorrect is really fascinating to me, both in theory and practice.

Even setting aside the fact that you're wrong in practice (i.e. there are already far more efficient cryptocurrencies in existence today) it's just very weird that the sort of person who goes to a site like this will confidently say something that's roughly equivalent to "We've reached the maximum speed of CPUs, they cannot get faster than this."

This sums up how I feel about so many crypto related comments on HN. Just look at this thread. It's full of people confidently presenting 100% false statements as facts. Several of the comments contain something like "I looked into crypto years ago and then I saw problem X and discarded it." My guess is remorse because they could have been "early" compounded with confirmation bias.

To anyone who spent a few hours, days, weeks looking into crypto a few years ago and thinks you have any idea what's been going on in research in the field since then you're sorely mistaken.

Most people did not have a car in the early 1900s. Not everyone can go into space today, it doesn't scale. BTC may have a maximum number of transactions today but many are using bitcoin and the big advantage is it doesn't matter how much you move you pay the same transaction fee. It is not ready for micro payments but works great for larger payments.

What size transaction do you think it helps with? My transaction fees are usually zero, even internationally, with the only exception being trivial costs when I visited the USA. Conversely, when I bought a flat I was legally required to add the much larger in-all-but-name transaction fee of having a lawyer sign off that I and my money and my payment of it and the flat itself and the seller I was buying it from were all legit, and still would have had that even if I'd used BTC.

I think the argument for this would be that things like smart contracts could do away with lawyers and such.

Except who vets the smart contracts? How does the customer execute the transaction in a fool proof way?

You've perfectly hit why "Smart Contracts" are perhaps literally the worst named thing in tech. They're not smart, and they're not contracts.

In real life, the things we "Contracts" are not the the execution of the transaction itself, they are the written statement that attempts to describe the intent of the parties and most importantly -- what you do if things go wrong.

Despite what I've said above, I will definitely go full Luddite and say we are not remotely close to a world in which the lawyers are not needed.

They're definitely contracts, just programming ones, not legal.

While I'm generally not a language prescriptivist, I gotta say no here. In real life, up until now, AFAIK we have NEVER used the word "contract" to refer to the underlying act that the contract is about. We've ALWAYS used it to refer to the associated documentation/statements of intent about the humans involved.

"Building a house" is not a contract. It's an act.

They're NOT CONTRACTS. They're automated transaction robots.

> up until now

I gave up telling people not to call cryptocurrency "crypto" — I would suggest suggesting a better term, or expect to be disappointed/it to continue.

Again, different -- This isn't a mere choice of word thing. It's that uninformed people are making harmful, and perhaps even stupid, choices because they are relying on an effectively false phrase -- where the "real version" of the thing is essentially a safety mechanism, and overzealous tech bro types absolutely incorrectly believe that their thing can replace the real thing.

Now, as a lawyer, I could just sit back and wait for the f**ups to happen and get paid cleaning them up -- and I might -- but also, I like the idea of warning people as well.

In a world where people think the phrase "autopilot" means the pilot of the plane can take a nap, I think we're doomed to disappointment.

Your transaction fees are zero. Most people sending money through western union don't share that rate and western union requires id and travel to a pickup place.

That sounds like a problem with Western Union, not a problem with e.g. USD.