[waytogo]

OT: From my perspective, HN is the reference regarding tech content. The upvoted stories, the comments, the discussions are of such a high quality. It's just the best resource to stay informed and educated in tech.

Surprisingly this is not true with Blockchain topics. Upvoted Blockchain stories feel ok but not that relevant or often random. Comments, discussions are sometimes constuctive (like this one) but often anti-blockchain or of low quality.

[sbierwagen]

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

When it's in the topic of your domain expertise, you perceive HN to be incorrect, but in all other domains, to be right?

[waytogo]

Maybe most of the tech fields covered by HN are also of my domain expertise.

[dmitriid]

> but often anti-blockchain

This is precisely because of: "The upvoted stories, the comments, the discussion are of such a high quality. It's just the best resource to stay informed and educated in tech."

If the best, the brightest, the most educated are anti-blockchain, there are definitely reasons for them to be.

---

BTW. Is this true what the article is saying: it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to clear in bitcoin?

[modeless]

Yes, it takes 10 minutes on average for a transaction to be included in a block. Potentially much longer if you are unlucky or didn't pay a high enough fee. On top of that most places won't accept just one block. The standard is 6 blocks, so 1 hour on average. That's the price you pay for a truly trustless distributed system. Still (much) faster than ACH or wire transfers or securities trade settlement.

[bkor]

SEPA instant will settle transactions 10 seconds. Drawbacks: banks can opt to participate, initially limited to 15k EUR, plus not obvious what the cost is. Banks are charged 1 EUR per transaction, so it'll be at least 1 EUR charged to customers.

The price of a transaction is as important as the speed, IMO.

[dmitriid]

Swish in Sweden [1]

Private transfers: instant transactions between individuals, no transaction fees. (Though I suspect internally they do the usual reconciliation between banks at the end of the day).

Business: instant transactions to your account from your customers. Yearly fee: 500 SEK ($61), price per transaction: 2 SEK ($0.24), price per reimbursed transaction: 2 SEK ($0.24)

There are also limits on how much money you can send in one go, but it's usually more than enough for individual transactions and for small businesses.

[1] https://www.getswish.se, https://medium.com/@etiennebr/swish-the-secret-swedish-finte...

[pjc50]

.. but slower than contactless or other card transactions, and (usually) slower than Faster Payments.

(Comparing to securities settlement is interesting, because cryptocurrency exchanges use off-blockchain "settlement" within themselves. Trades execute near-instantly because they're just updating a database. However, settling your money out of an exchange can take a lot longer)

[modeless]

> settling your money out of an exchange can take a lot longer

Usually only if there's something wrong, like a technical or KYC issue. In many cases it is possible to execute a trade and withdraw as fast as the blockchain (or your bank) will allow.

[ttsda]

10 minutes in near optimal conditions. Realistically it takes a lot longer and you pay a ton of fees.

[GenericsMotors]

> Surprisingly this is not true with Blockchain topics. Upvoted Blockchain stories feel ok but not that relevant or often random. Comments, discussions are sometimes constuctive (like this one) but often anti-blockchain or of low quality.

This is due to most blockchain projects being overhyped garbage.

The tech itself is also of questionable practical value.