BTC has the layer 2 lighting network that can process more transactions than Visa and MC combined with very cheap fees. I guess HN knowledge of Bitcoin does not go further than 2015
Also, everything on level 2 needs to be ultimately balanced on level 1; BTC doesn't have enough throughput to balance all the banks in the world, and lo Lightning appears to be consolidating into fewer nodes.
Also also, everything level 2 (including Lightning) necessarily takes away at least one of the selling points used for BTC, and replaces them with something functionally equivalent to 50% of a bank but worse.
> Current actual throughput is significantly lower, estimated at around 300 TPS, because the network is still growing. However, Lightning's architecture scales horizontally: as more nodes and channels are added, capacity increases without any protocol changes. The network's total value locked has grown past $500 million, with over 15,000 active nodes and 50,000+ payment channels.
The layer 2 has been predicted by one of the first adopter in 2010 so it was always the plan
SpaceX the company has done and is doing amazing feats of technology.
SpaceX the stock is only in a very small part about rockets and space. In their filing they talk about their total addressable market being $28.5 trillion, of which $26.5 trillion are AI.
That means that they believe the SpaceX stock is 93% about AI.
It's open to argument whether xAI or BTC is crazier - I just wanted to say that when talking about SpaceX stock, it's not really about rockets.
neither of them are sane. BTC is useless, unless your trying to buy child porn, buy illicit drugs on the internet, or someone who bought it before the value exploded. eventually, the world will come around and it will go to zero, if quantum doesnt kill it first. im looking forward to that day.
Sure, if there were a stable enough market in which I can fetch twice that amount for that tulip, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you?
The point being: BTC is a an abstract good, of no practical use except that of being transacted. Has whatever value the people are willing to pay for it, and has had a value in the tens of thousands for long enough that buying one with the intent of keeping it for a while is not such a stupid idea. I don't currently own any but there is a price at which I would buy one, and that price is many thousands of dollars... For an alphanumeric code in a distributed ledger.
Being transacted is the least usable thing for BTC. He you tried to transact on it? Its so slow its funny people claim it a use case for it... I know of only one use case, and its to anonymously bribe politicians who have their own coins.
True, it's very useful for scammers, grifters, international terrorists and authoritarian governments to funnel monetary value around without having to rely on the traditional financial system where they may be blocked and their money confiscated.
It costs 150 usd to send 5k usd between two countries I live in.
It costs the same amount of money to literally go there by plane and bring it as cash. This is not fair obviously. So traditional finance is a scam itself.
It takes 10 seconds and no fees to make the same transfer via blockchain.
I am pretty sure you know basically nothing about those crimes or the people that do crimes or how they actually transfer money. Just doing casual newspaper intellectualism while talking about things you never interacted with
> funnel monetary value around without having to rely on the traditional financial system where they may be blocked and their money confiscated.
Yes. Unfortunately the traditional financial system is governed by a country which has been behaving increasingly erratically, threatening its long-term allies with invasions and committing obvious war crimes. This is not a "good guys vs bad guys" scenario.
I think SpaceX is definitely overpriced but saying that BTC is more sane is completely delusional.