[HenryBemis]

I don't know munch about investing (I do), but 50$ on a 50k transaction that makes a 5k profit, is peanuts and never stopped anyone from investing. Investing is not a sport/hobby for teenagers that rely on the daily allowance.

[smacktoward]

The point is that Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, and nobody is ever going to use a currency that costs you $50 to process every transaction regardless of whether it’s for $50k or 50 cents.

[Terretta]

> nobody is ever going to use a currency that costs you $50 to process every transaction regardless of whether it’s for $50k or 50 cents

That's pretty much how USD wires work. It's markedly worse if going outside the border.

Even at these fees, on friction, fees, and settlement time, Bitcoin still compares favorably.

[perl4ever]

I haven't successfully used Bitcoin yet, but it was my impression that the $20 or $50 fee was for a reasonably fast transaction, and you could get slower performance for less. If I'm transferring a large amount of money between financial institutions then I expect to wait anywhere from 24 hours to 3 or more days for it to complete. So I'm wondering if a Bitcoin transaction would be significantly cheaper if you were perfectly happy to wait a day.

[gizmo686]

Space on the blockchain is essentially auctioned off. If you are willing to wait a day, the best you can do is wait until there is a block with little enough competition for you to run your transaction at your desired price. This is no cheaper then sending your transaction immidietly if you happen to do so when the price is cheep.

Bitcoin used to have a concept of "priority" transactions that would allow transactions to process regardless of fees if there inputs are old enough; however this is effectivly disabled in modern Bitcoin.

[sowbug]

Well yes, but Android was supposed to be an OS for digital cameras, and YouTube was supposed to be a dating site.

[stale2002]

Who is making these 50k transactions?

And for what purpose? Speculation? Day trading?

I really don't care about the wealthly wall street day traders who are throwing around hundreds of thousands of dollars. That "use case" is boring. "investment" is boring.

What I care about is the average person.

Bitcoin was originally supposed to be a peer to peer electronic cash system. As in, you buy things with it. It was not supposed to be a new wall steet.

[smokeyj]

But you can also pay $50 on a $5 transaction. LN existing on testnet has no bearing on the real world. Who wants to tie up $50 to open a channel and $50 to close it? Small blockers are kidding themselves.

[gizmo686]

The idea of LN is to reduce the demand for on chain transactions. If this happens, transaction fees will go down and opening a channel will not cost $50.

Fundamentally, Bitcoin needs some form of off-chain transaction. It is just not feasible to record every transaction in a permanent public ledger (let alone one that needs to be synced quickly enough to allow for ~10 minute block times)

[smokeyj]

> If this happens, transaction fees will go down and opening a channel will not cost $50

Bitcoin can process about ~3.5 tx's a second. The global population is about 7.6B. 1MB blocks are not sufficient..

Edit: For the record I think the obvious solution is both on and off chain scaling. Why it's even a debate I'm not really sure. I blame the illuminati.

[HenryBemis]

But why would someone pay $50 for a $5 transaction? A criminal perhaps to stay under the radar. A sensible person would go for the cash option and pay $5 for $5.

If on the other hand someone was to launder money ;) then still the fee is tooo large to launder petty cash (pay 55 dirty to get 5 clean). An efficient money laundering rate is anything north of 50% (100 dirty --> 50-70 clean).

[Fnoord]

> An efficient money laundering rate is anything north of 50% (100 dirty --> 50-70 clean).

That's supported by what I read in "Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground" by Kevin Poulsen. Book's about Max Butler alias Iceman who ended up as in the higher echelon as vital gear of a carding gang. They'd have people who'd shop and resell the items instantly, as if new. The shoppers also need to get paid, obviously.

Blockchain's entirely public, so Bitcoin is terrible for money laundering. Not any better than USD.

Monero is apparently anonymous though. Though I take the term anonymous with a huge grain of salt since its always a relative term, not an absolute binary flag.

[stale2002]

Money laundering is not the glorious vision that Satoshi sold to me or the world. I really don't care about that use case. If THAT is all that bitcoin is good for, then I hope it dies.

I got into bitcoin because I believed in a peer to peer electronic cash system.