[repomies69]

Bitcoin has worked for me all right for 10+ years. What is exactly wrong with it? At times fees have been a bit higher, but overall I would see the protocol as "good enough". For smaller transactions I have been using Lightning Network and it seems to work all right. The fact that Bitcoin hasn't hard forked for whatever reasons is a positive feature, that outweighs the negatives.

You can consider for example Ethereum, which has hard forked numerous times and changed the monetary policy as well multiple times. It just feels quite centralized and controlled by Vitalik. Harder to trust that crap.

[ErikBjare]

Vitalik is basically only a thought leader these days, he has taken many steps back (as you can read about on his blog). He doesn't "control" anything.

The guiding principle for the monetary policy of Ethereum has not changed: minimum viable issuance. Thanks to the economic efficiency of PoS + fee burn, it enabled what amounts to frontrunning every "halving" and having ~net zero issuance, it's simply good for holders.

If Bitcoin had a way to be secure without further issuance (huge can of worms, halvings are slowly ticking time bombs in the long-run, unless fees rise significantly), it'd be good for holders to fork and scrap it too. There'd be no need to pay billions for security through issuance.

Calling Ethereum centralized at this point is ridiculous. The fact that core devs from multiple client teams can manage to agree on and implement forks to keep developing the protocol (unlike Bitcoin) is a major accomplishment, not a failure.

[hggh]

> I have been using Lightning Network and it seems to work all right

That won't last. As stated in the Lightning Network whitepaper [0], it will need much bigger blocks (it mentions up to 133MB) to scale.

[0] https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf

[npoc]

Nah, channel factories solve that problem.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/67158/what-are-c...

[hggh]

A new layer between the layer 1 and layer 2, sure...

[npoc]

Why don't you think it's possible?

[hggh]

It is possible, but absurd. Why more layers if layer 1 works fine just increasing the maximum block size? Bitcoin Cash did it and works flawlessly. Just try it.

[npoc]

It's called the blockchain trilemma.

Bitcoin cash pays the price through centralisation. It can still only manage 100 transactions/second so certainly isn't flawless.

Far better to make the base layer slow but very robust, and then add layers to scale.

[yardstick]

> Bitcoin has worked for me all right for 10+ years. What is exactly wrong with it?

How much of your Bitcoin usage is associated with crypto investments, vs a replacement for traditional bank transfers and expense payments?

I think it has worked well for a lot of people as an investment. Not so much as a replacement to normal money.

[earnesti]

> I think it has worked well for a lot of people as an investment. Not so much as a replacement to normal money.

Replacing normal money altogether would anyway be an huge goal. Personally I believe, long-term Bitcoin is getting there. I've been using it for payments, now and then, for about 10 years. Mostly as an experiment, but sometimes it also is more convenient to pay with BTC. In general there has been slow, but increasing acceptance of BTC as a payment method. For some things it makes more sense than others. The biggest issue was the early misconception of it being good for microtransactions. I would say that it is more for macropayments.

[lawn]

> The biggest issue was the early misconception of it being good for microtransactions.

It used to be fantastic for regular transactions, such as paying on Steam or to Stripe.

But alas both Steam and Stripe dropped support for Bitcoin due to high fees and long waiting times due to blocks being backlogged.

Adoption for Bitcoin payments peaked years ago.

[tromp]

Bitcoin was designed as an investment vehicle by its choice of capped supply. Use as a currency would have vastly benefitted from a fixed block subsidy, which also would have avoided much of its current wealth concentration [1].

[1] https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...

[sph]

Use as currency is possible with Layer 2 systems like Lightning. The issues I believe are both technological, political and philosophical: apart from the ease of use (or lack thereof), people prefer the currency they need to pay taxes with, and will always prefer the depreciating one, until it stops having any useful value. See the arguments put forth by Saifedean Ammous in his book.

For me the main ledger is equivalent to inter-bank settlement payments. It is not for people to use directly, it is to settle the large amount between "market makers", so $10+ transaction fees are not a problem when the amounts transferred would be in the millions. These settlements are few and far between, they do not require immediate execution. In Bitcoin parlance, these market makers would be Lightning nodes, which I imagine in the long run would not be operated by your Average Joe.

[hggh]

> Bitcoin was designed as an investment vehicle

Please read the whitepaper [0], at least its title

[0] https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf

[scotty79]

I guess it was lucky that it was designed quite badly for the stated purpose and it was actually designed as investment vessel.

[hggh]

Bitcoin (BTC) worked perfectly as currency in the beginning, until Blockstream took over the development team, and they decided to keep the temporary anti-spam 1MB block limit, making 0-confirmation transactions (instant payments) very risky by implementing return-by-fee (which make transactions reversible before getting confirmed), etc.

[scotty79]

It's the miners and users who ultimately decided if the 1MB block limit should be kept.

[scotty79]

Fixed block subsidy would have a risk of supply outpacing the demand. Then the price would drop structurally which could cause "run on bank" and wholesale abandonment.

Decreasing amount of bitcoin supply means that eventually the supply would fall below demand, which ensures rising price.

Every 4 years when supply and the demand reach equilibrium, the supply is halved which triggers new price rise and renewed interest. The entire crypto ecosystem follows.

Bitcoin halvings are THE reason crypto is a thing. Not just a curiosity for some techies.

We have maybe two cycles left ahead of us. Then crypto will become just digital gold randomly fluctuating with interest from the asset holders.

[lawn]

> At times fees have been a bit higher

Fees at $50 per traction is "a bit" higher to you?

[TarasBob]

Ethereum is not controlled by Vitalik. Have you actually looked in to how decisions in Ethereum are made?