[SkyMarshal]

It’s a complex socio-economic-technical system, which probably can’t be perfectly quantified. Same as with the weather or the larger economy. We can understand it to some degree, but lack of perfectly predictive models does not invalidate these concerns, as you imply.

“Everyone must run a full node” is aspirational but not realistic. It’s nevertheless extremely valuable to continue working on ways of reducing the expense of running full nodes. MimbleWimble, Coda and others are doing a good job of exploring that problem space, as are some projects in Bitcoin that may take longer deploy.

When HN first started discussing Bitcoin almost a decade ago, the smartest skeptics here main objection was the obvious one that a distributed database where all the data is replicated across every node and which grows infinitely is likely not viable. They were right then and right now, it’s a hard problem and arguably the main existential risk to Bitcoin.

Throwing caution to wind so Bitcoin can have fast payments Now at the expense of failing at sound money later is short-sighted and irresponsible.

[lawn]

> It’s nevertheless extremely valuable to continue working on ways of reducing the expense of running full nodes.

And nobody will claim otherwise. But there's always a trade-off, and focusing only on reducing the expense is severely misguided.

> Throwing caution to wind so Bitcoin can have fast payments Now at the expense of failing at sound money later is short-sighted and irresponsible.

The funny thing is, the inaction of the Bitcoin devs have made it fail at one of the core features of money. You cannot consider it to be acceptable, as fees are so expensive they price out a lot of people. Money should be easy to move around, and you should be able to buy large and small things with it.

Yet this is somehow preferable, because doing otherwise would make Bitcoin "fail at sound money", whatever that means.

[SkyMarshal]

>And nobody will claim otherwise. But there's always a trade-off, and focusing only on reducing the expense is severely misguided.

That's conventional wisdom and applicable in lots of other places, but not in cryptosystem design. People have to accept that cryptosystems in general and cryptocurrency in particular are different domain from most other software engineering they're used to.

Any single error or bug can result in the complete compromise and failure of the entire system. The old rules of calculating acceptability of risk and errors based on whether they enable more value creation than they put at risk, no longer apply, because any/every error can result in total loss.

I believe different world views on this issue is one of the root causes of the schism in Bitcoin.

>The funny thing is, the inaction of the Bitcoin devs have made it fail at one of the core features of money. You cannot consider it to be acceptable, as fees are so expensive they price out a lot of people. Money should be easy to move around, and you should be able to buy large and small things with it.

That's a "nice to have" for sure, but not at the risk of a Global Financial Crisis style event happening to Bitcoin itself. The prudence of the Bitcoin devs has made it succeed at avoiding that so far.

>Yet this is somehow preferable, because doing otherwise would make Bitcoin "fail at sound money", whatever that means.

There's no need to be confused about that term, it has a simple, clear and easy to understand meaning. Sound money is money whose supply and value is both transparent and un-manipulatable.

When you choose to store savings in that currency, you know how it works, and you know it can't be changed in the future (to either your detriment or benefit). Sound money is a social contract that can't be broken or reneged.

By way of counter-example, in the GFC, the US Fed pumped up the money supply to prevent the failure of the banking system, risking devaluation of dollar-based savings and hyperinflation to the detriment of everyone else.

For another counter-example, the US Govt's inability to control its deficit and debt may one day result in it having to monetize the debt (print more dollars to pay for it), devaluing the dollar and dollar-based savings, and harming global confidence in the dollar as a reserve asset.

Cryptocurrency as sound money is a hedge against that, and that's the ultimate killer app. But if you lose enough decentralization, you lose this characteristic of it. Then its worthless, regardless how good of a payment system it makes.

And it will never be better than Paypal and other centralized payments services at merely transferring money quickly and cheaply, so if it has no other value proposition like sound money then its worthless.