vulturalcptlst

well,that escalated quickly.

I appreciate the context.

Each bubble has popped and maitinted a price higher than last.

I recommend looking up the pareto distribution.

Nope, sorry.

You're missing the entire importance of balance. Unfortunately, I'm not sure you understand what makes Bitcoin valuable.

It's a balance between: Decentralization, Security, and Speed of Transaction but still doesn't compromised on the other two. Bitcoin is balanced with immaculate conception. There's no 'altcoin' that will be able to achieve this.

I'm sorry for your loss and inability to learn.

I don't know how many times people will just choose to not look at how block size increase is a throughout increase and nothing to do with scaling. Literally, it will do 'jack' to raise it to 8mb.. I’d love to see the Bcash network with our volume but it will never happen because it’s a joke and a clear sign that the devs aren’t CS centric for Bcash. You've been hoodwinked to sign up to a centralized coin that can be changed whenever necessary.

When will the increase stop? 10MB? 100MB? No more like 300-1000MB every 10 min. So the bloat to the blockchain for having visa level tps(2000-56,000+ tps) would be so massive there would be no full nodes to run the blockchain except for big players willing to add like 300MB every 10 min...centralizing the network to its death with the enormous packs of data.

This is a poor design decision because it WILL get FILLED almost instantly. Increasing the block size pulls the voting power out from the knowledgeable user in that it makes it near impossible for them to run a node (would be 20k to run a node if MB is increased too drastically) and 'vote' with what software they want for the protocol. If there are only companies running the nodes then they will determine what get's upgraded within the code, so, for example, they could raise the 21 million limit.

It's obvious we need second layer solutions like lightning network( which needs segwit to run well). There is no way in a million years it'll scale onchain. Bitcoin will work without 2nd layer solutions, but the 'cash' component will come with that adoption.

Let me explain why fees are important

The network involves an intrinsically scarce resource which is block space. This resource is intrinsically scarce in the same way that a boat has a load capacity. Go beyond that load capacity and the boat sinks. Likewise, go beyond a certain amount of data in the blockchain and the network sinks by losing its decentralization which is what gives it its security. Consequently, the amount of data that can be processed must remain limited and therefore users must compete over who gets to actually input data into the blockchain.

Users compete by essentially paying the miners a bribe, which we call a "fee." It is worth noting that in the very early days when bitcoin was unpopular, transactions were free. And transactions would still be free if there weren't so many people trying to get through the door at once. Miners are like bouncers who have to decide who to let in first. Naturally, the best way to get the bouncer to let you in first is to pay him, and that's what we are doing when we pay transaction fees. If fees were based on a fixed percentage, low value transactions with correspondingly low fees would never get confirmed because miners would always favor the higher value transactions with their juicier fees.

The blockchain is not designed for cheap low value transactions, it intrinsically favors high value transactions. This is because for high value transactions, the percentage the fee represents is small, whereas for low value transactions the fee quickly becomes a large percentage of the value of the transaction. That is, for high value transactions, fees are cheap, percentage wise. For low value transactions, on the other hand, they are expensive.

So it is important to understand that the blockchain is a value transfer layer, and as a value transfer layer it is by its nature designed to favor high value transfers over low value transfers.

The more payment networks come to be relied upon for small value transactions -- and the more people use them as opposed to trying to get every transaction into the blockchain directly -- the less people are fighting over the scarce resource known as block space, consequently the cheaper block space becomes. That is, payment networks not only offer a cheap way to transact for low value payments, but they also reduce the costs of high value transactions on the blockchain itself.

Roger Ver's confusion -- along with many who agree with him -- is that he thinks of the blockchain as an efficient payment network. It's not. Just look at the electricity expenses that are going into making transactions on the blockchain possible. Right now the network is consuming as much energy as the country Ireland? All that energy is not being spent on making transactions cheap or fast -- additional mining power has a negligible affect on the speed of bitcoin as the protocol always seeks to maintain 10 minute confirmation times, and additional mining power has a negligible affect on the price of fees as that is determined most principally by the fact that there is a limited supply of block space.

No. That energy is being spent entirely on securing the network. The blockchain is about security first, not cheap payments. Cheap payments will come with Lightning and other such payment networks, but the purpose of the blockchain is first and foremost about securing a global public ledger.

What you want is the security layer to be secure, and the payment layer to be fast and cheap. The two combined (along with so much more) is what will eventually be considered Bitcoin (much like people ceased to differentiate the internet from the web). What you don't want is to try to use the security layer as the payment network so that it isn't secure. And since the blockchain, the security layer as it were, isn't particularly fast or cheap, any network that attempts to use the blockchain as a payment network to compete with networks specifically designed to be payment networks, like Lightning, will in the long run fail.

Ponzi schemes give an INCOME RETURN

Bitcoin gives a PRICE APPRECIATION RETURN

One could call this then a “greater fool” play except it has algorithmic reduction in supply which repairs “greater fool” aspect.

No, this is the incorrect way of thinking of it.

It's more like TCP/IP than businesses built on top of the protocol.

are we resorting to ad hominem attacks now?

Bitcoin fails to satisfactorily answer von Mises' regression theorem. Nope It also has no scarcity since it can face competition by an infinite number of similar This is syntactically identical to the following argument; Gold has no scarcity because it can face competition from an infinite number of other physical materials. once it is perceived as more than just a nuisance by some major government it will be shut down in a heartbeat. This is syntactically identical to the following argument; Once asteroids are perceived as more than just a nuisance by dinosaurs, they will erect an asteroid defense system in a heartbeat. Future generations will laugh at our incredulity just like we make fun of the Tulip mania (which had more substance to boot). Because you don't understand the above, it's perfectly reasonable that you would think this. But given that such a currency will antagonize major governments This needs to be re-stated because you seem convinced with quite some certainty about the relevance of this. Bitcoin specifically, and modern peer to peer distributed cryptocurrencies in general, were constructed with the understanding that the infrastructure that they consist of would be an existential threat to the state, and the state may well respond accordingly. Armies employing firearms are similarly unphased by the idea that they may attract the opprobrium of armoured heavy cavalry due to their unsportsmanlike conduct and the fact that the latter precipitates the obsolescence of the former, but they were designed with that understanding in mind. The very fact that you acknowledge there is insatiable global demand for a currency should be a good indicator to you that this is just a decisive blow in an extremely long war, not as you assume, a relic of the political naivety of the designers of, and the community stewarding, Bitcoin and other peer to peer distributed cryptocurrencies. Dinosaurs were killed by asteroids because they had no model for understanding the threat with which they were faced, and no mechanism for defense against such a threat even if they did so understand it. Heavy cavalry was obsoleted by modern firearms regardless of their understanding, because when you charge a fortified cheap and low maintenance machine gun emplacement with your expensive and high maintenance heavy cavalry, it will be annihilated. The state will be obsoleted by distributed peer to peer cryptocurrencies, because regardless of their understanding, they are unable to enforce a mechanism to prohibit the performance of the mathematical equations constituting the necessary cryptography backing these peer to peer cryptocurrencies, and this exsanguinates their economic parasitism, subjecting them to the full force of free market competition as a consequence, and thus their annihilation, because everyone well knows that they cannot compete in such circumstances, and have only endured until this point by violent coercion masquerading as benevolent social stewardship. it will likely not be a crypto-currency but rather a currency backed by some sufficiently powerful country. There is simply no need for such a beast when a purely free market invulnerable infrastructure for the transmission of value between anonymous actors in a trustworthy fashion already exists. am actually expecting the Russians or Chinese to launch a 100% gold-backed currency within the next 5 years Which would actually be a final surrender, as a gold backed currency is once again something that they are unable to infinitely parasite from through central bank manipulation. I agree with your analysis on this front and see it as a positive thing. It has no bearing on the success of cryptocurrencies, nor the nature of them dealing a killer blow to any fiat currency which a state would otherwise be able to infinitely parasite from by manipulation. A world in which gold backed currencies exist alongside cryptocurrencies is perfectly reasonable. Failing that, when the EU breaks up the new Deutsche mark will be a good alternative Unless it's backed by a suitable commodity, it's not going to win, for all of the aforementioned reasons, and if it is backed by a suitable commodity, it's not a problem for cryptocurrencies.