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by atoav
1462 days ago
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The weird thing with this whole crypto thing is, that it is so driven by hype there is no flesh, no muscle, no bones and yet the whole plunges itself forward like a undead body. I like cryptography, there is so much clever constructs in there, that allow to solve information-theoretical problems in really elegant ways. The blockchain certainly is one of those clever constructs. The thing is: it solves a very specific set of problems with the grace of a sledgehammer. And somehow everybody wants to have those problems. In fact even if they don't have these problems they do their best to squeeze their eyes very hard in order to pretend they do — and they take the weight of the whole sledgehammer with them. Most problems people throw blockchains at can be solved mich better and way .ore reliable and efficient by a data base, or a certificate authority. And even in those places where it fits like a glove the true practicality of the resulting solutions is questionable at best. Imagine paying at the supermarket with bitcoin and waiting 15 minutes till the transaction is through. |
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We don't have to imagine or make up situations.
When Steam experimented with BTC a few years ago, it was a complete disaster. BTC can only handle so many transactions per 10 minutes because of the blockchain limit. The influx of purchases caused the BTC transaction fees to skyrocket from $1 / transaction to $10/transaction or $20/transaction, which for a $10 to $60 game is just unworkable.
Furthermore, when returns happened, you have to deal with the ridiculous price changes of BTC. For example, a 30-day return policy means that a user could have bought a $50 game for 1.7 mBTC on May 21st 2022, but if the user hits the "return" button... what do you return?
* Do you return 2.4 mBTC (representing today's $50 value?)
* Do you return 1.7 mBTC (representing the original purchase price of 1.7 mBTC?)
If BTC goes up, or down, during the traditional 30-day return window of retailers, the entire process is completely screwy. There's no good solution.
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The general answer is to "transact everything in terms of dollars", in that the 1.7 mBTC is converted into $50 back then. When you return the game, its $50 is returned and you get 2.4 mBTC back.
Except you just paid 2x BTC Transaction fees for this purchase and then return-order. And transaction fees are a market that varies in price severely. Or really, 8x BTC Transaction fees, because you went User -> dollars-to-BTC exchange -> User's Wallet -> Steam's wallet -> exchange -> Steam's bank account... then the return path of Steam's Bank account -> exchange -> Steam's wallet -> user's wallet -> exchange -> user's bank account.
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This is why the BTC community started yelling "store of value" for years, because the Steam purchases / BTC purchase experiment was a colossal failure. The BTC network simply cannot handle real-world transactions in a way that satisfies Steam gamers or the Steam store.
And here we are, a few years later, and it seems like no one actually tries to answer these questions or fix these problems in Bitcoin. Instead, we get Bored Apes, NFTs, and Stablecoins as the major sources of "innovation" over the past few years.
I'm all for the experimentation of money. But experimentation is only useful if you try to fix the problems that have come out of these experiments!! The BTC / Cryptocoin community has stopped innovating where it matters.