[jstanley]

> 1) Surely we can come up with a less wasteful solution to this

10 years ago people would have told you there is no possible solution to this.

Proof-of-work cryptocurrency is a tremendous breakthrough. It will certainly be surpassed one day, but it's currently our best available option for a system of money.

[canoebuilder]

What? Why isn't everyone using "our best available option"?

What are the benefits of thousands of different systems keeping a record of every single transaction, and how is this not a hindrance to widespread use of our best available option?

Crypto-currencies have utility and uses but they are rather niche and specialized. Crypto-currencies aren't a mass market system. And they're not structured in a way that they can be.

[ebcode]

One benefit of having a distributed ledger (your thousands of different systems) is that it decentralizes trust. With fiat currency, you have to trust the government (or private company, in the case of the U.S.A.) that issues it, not to print so much that they debase it. I have no trust in my government, or fellow private corporations, given what I've been through. Bitcoin, on the other hand, well, at least I can read the source code and compile the executable myself.

Given a choice between trusting a person/corporation and trusting a mathematical equation, I would rather place my trust in the mathematics.

The internet is a mass market system, and it was designed with biological growth in mind. Bitcoin is built on top of the internet. So I don't see why you would think it couldn't see widespread adoption. It's just another program.

[kahnpro]

It's incredibly foolish to think you're only trusting mathematics.

All you've done is shift your trust to the authoring process of the Bitcoin clients and to the majority of the miners. Authoring and distributing the clients, and determining the majority of clients and the majority of mining power, is still a social and political problem driven by human greed.

[ebcode]

>It's incredibly foolish to think you're only trusting mathematics.

Thanks for pointing that out. I suppose I'm guilty of "idealizing" my argument. Still, if the Bitcoin client could somehow be "written in stone", and everyone knew the protocols and source code could not be modified, I think it would be a safer bet to place my trust in a globally distributed network of selfish individuals, than to place it in a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires.

[nodamage]

> Given a choice between trusting a person/corporation and trusting a mathematical equation, I would rather place my trust in the mathematics.

This comes across as incredibly naive. Just consider the whole Segwit2x controversy and think about exactly who controls the future of Bitcoin. You've just shifted your trust to a different group of people.

[tigershark]

Trusting bitcoin you are trusting the Chinese miners that have the majority of the hashing power. Bitcoin won't EVER be widespread if his whole network can process a mere 7 transactions per second (Wasting a huge amount of energy).