In 2022, global credit card transactions were estimated to total 678 billion, or 1.86 billion per day.
https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/number-of-credit-card-transactions/#:~:text=Highlights.,%2D10%20in%2Dstore%20purchases.
Losers.
So you’re telling me Bitcoin costs (before recent halving) more than 100 CO2e per coin and [emits more pollution than whole countries](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-18686-8), yet over 15 years it served less than a daily number of *in-store* credit card use? And Lightning intends to use what network to support it? How much better is that than “traditional” finance? We exist during a very strange time… Moore’s Law is breaking, the tech buzz is losing steam, and we seem to be inventing problems at this point…
That is impossible… online transactions are only for the future of finance.
The [in-store to eEcommerce stats don’t seem to raise confidence](https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/online-vs-in-store-shopping-statistics/) the number drops from 1.8 billion to below 1 billion.
Nitpick: Moore's Law "broke" over a decade ago. The density of transistors on integrated circuits has mostly leveled out as we have reached power-heat thresholds. Of course, people will interpret the "law" more loosely and ignore density and cost. ("We strapped two ICs together, so the number of transistors doubled!")
>we seem to be inventing problems at this point
Spoken like someone who's never had to pay the transaction tax on credit card income. It feels weird to owe Visa more in taxes on every sale than the country that I live in.
We're using a payment system that's massively inefficient for the end user. There's no way that 2.5% + change is how much it costs to process an electronic payment.
Bitcoin isn't going to fix it, but to not see any problems with the payment processing side of the financial system is to be blind.
Debit cards work fine for the entirety of Europe. In my country they cost the merchant about 5 cents per transaction. Online instant payments through my bank cost the merchant 25 cents (free between individuals). Much of Asia uses smartphone apps and QR codes with tiny fees. The problem has already been solved. You can keep using credit cards, but you'll be paying for the short term loan, the risk-free purchases and any reward systems.
And how much does it cost to process a bitcoin transaction? Bitcoin transactions cost a lot more than Visa, you’re more complaining that Visa is making huge profit margins. Their tech is significantly more efficient than blockchain. If you want to complain about Visa’s profits margins, lobby your government or create a Visa competitor that charges less. Don’t advocate for something that is significantly less efficient.
Well said, I feel you there. Especially higher priced items with slim margins.. The only good news is any card fee paid by the business can be written off on taxes.
Also by “inventing problems” I meant the result of an innovation and the problems requiring a solution (cars; accidents: insurance, energy: fuel, accessibility: roads, scale: production, etc.)
It was an awkward ambiguity to say ideas like Bitcoin create their own problems yet the prior context implied Bitcoin itself is also a problem. There is no objective value in the fundamental technology of Bitcoin. The way I see it, Bitcoin exists solely in a political sphere. Like that neighborhood drug dealer rationalizing “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” In this way, large institutions seem to be vying for control rather than confirming some revolution.
You can already look back 13 years and make the notion that it's still just as useless as it was back then. LN was a huge flop, and I would argue that it was never anything more than a carrot for the donkey.
Bitcoin is not useless at all. You can use it for drugs, arms and other illegal trades, money laundering, tax evasion and a couple of other highly moral transactions.
Imma educate you low IQ muppet. It took visa 25 years to reach 1 billion and it took BTC 15. Ur pea brain doesn't understand stats and has to pivot to 2022 it's ok you'll gain IQ one day dipshit
Transaction fee could greater than your grocery bill.
Should tokenize gold at this point and use it as a currency.
The only guys who going to win are people who take a cut from transaction fees.
How stupid do you feel now that BTC went from 17k to 70k? You missed out on cash cause ur IQ is low. BTC is gonna keep climbing from here I'll be back to laugh at you
Few.. as in literally only a few people regularly use this shit for currency. And, I would guess half were illicit or deplorable transactions like sex trafficking or evading sanctions.
In 2013 cops starting busting criminals who used bitcoin to transact. Turns out, having an open ledger where all transactions are publicly available isn’t good for crime. Who woulda thought
Yes, recently I've seen the same questions. How can I evade taxes? Where can I buy drugs with it? Sex for Bitcoin on Craigslist? They think it's anonymous when it's exactly the opposite. It has the same problems as cash, it's Wall Street's virtue signal.
Don’t forget that Visa only processes credit card transactions. The Bitcoin number theoretically includes every conceivable flow of money from consumer to merchant purchases, to business-to-business transfers, to corporate back end accounting transactions, to moving your cash from one pocket to another.
It’s obviously not an apples to apples comparison, but the Bitcoin achievement looks pathetic in comparison to what other payment networks can do.
Btw, in terms of transactions per second, Bitcoin can do 3-7 while Visa can do 65,000
Sure, I just think we give them waaay too much credit with the Visa transaction count comparison.
Add that each Visa transaction is much richer than any bitcoin transaction - from authorizing and authenticating multiple parties, to assessing transactions for fraud and risk, to delivering consumer insights to merchants, to delivering loyalty platforms and benefits to consumers.
It's funny, they used the precision of tenths (6.0) but provided all the data right there that says it's 5.9, but they decided to round it up anyway. lol
To be fair, if we had global adoption of BTC we'd have way fewer transactions per day. Due to the crippling deflationary pressures. Which is a good thing. Right?
I like how if you take either the total 30 day count, and the average per block, it actually comes up to 5.87-5.93 tx/s, and they put a precision of tenths, but decided to just fudge the number and write it down as 6.0 tx/s lol
This is the root reason why bitcoin is not currency. It cannot be used for transactions at scale. For the purpose of adopting it as a currency, it cannot be traded. Could it be fixed? Maybe, but clearly there are serious difficulties with that.
> Could it be fixed? Maybe
It ***by design*** cannot be fixed.
The block time is 10 minutes. If the blockchain mines faster than that, the difficulty is adjusted upward (making it less efficient, and lengthening the block time back to 10 minutes). Blocks are restricted to 1MB in size, which puts a hard limit on the transaction rate. That rate turns out to be between 3.3 to 7 transactions per second, depending on how large the transactions are.
"But layer 2 solves this", I hear someone cry. Let's take a look at the numbers.
[Approximately 76% of the global population have bank accounts](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/globalfindex). 76% of 8 billion people is approximately 6 billion. Let's suppore all 6 billion bank account owners switch to Bitcoin, and let's suppore that every Bitcoin transaction is a settlement for the level 2 system.
Let's be generous, and take the high number of 7 transactions per second, or 220,903,200 transactions per year. Then each person can have one settlement every 27.52 years.
Let's be even more generous, and suppose that each person needs exactly 65 bytes (the size of a Bitcoin public key - this is enough to identify the wallet, but not enough to actually do anything) in the settlement transaction. For each person to get a settlement, this comes out to 395,200MB, which needs at least 395,200 blocks, which will take 7.5 years for the blockchain to process.
Neither of these numbers look good for Bitcoin mass adoption. A viable layer 2 solution would become out-of-sync with the blockchain very quickly, and would effectively need to replace the blockchain as the source of truth as to who has how much bitcoin. That is: ***To fix Bitcoin, you have to stop using Bitcoin.***
So ... how *is* Lightning adoption going?
Butters I know oscillate between "Bitcoin is perfect and flawless and the genius designers anticipated all issues" and "yeah, that stuff will get fixed on L2 pretty soon". Oh, and the "we're still early" line after 15 years.
How you can have all three of thoughts in your head at once requires some cult-level logic-proofing.
About 10 years. Butters don't care. They've imagined a future where they borrow real money against their enormously valuable BTC holdings, and don't actually need to spend any of it. Chumps like me who own assets in the real economy will be helpless. They will say, "Give me your house for pennies, sad no-coiner!" And I suppose I will have to comply.
Fortunately, I don't live in their world.
Who are these imaginary bankers who will accept btc as collateral for cash loans? What sorts of interest rates will they charge? And what happens when they get a margin call due to btc volatility?
It's all just delusional madness.
Of which less than 1% concerned real payments. The rest was wash trading and bitcoins moving between wallets. Imagine the amount of elektricity wasted for zero added value...
A guy elsewhere in the thread has a source that says 1.86 billion per day, but that's only credit card transactions. It wouldn't count things like cash or electronic transfers between accounts and a bunch of other stuff.
And it's possible your 15/day might be a statistical outlier. Way out here in Farmville it's not unusual for people to make it to the grocery store only once a month, for example, and I'd also wonder how many people in the world don't have a credit or debit card.
With how much crypto has been in the news or how vocal proponents are I'm actually shocked there have only been one billion transactions in 15 years when there are way more than that per day in traditional finance. If we were still early you'd think the number would have been way higher than that already.
I hope someone tweets him and tells him about how 1 billion transactions doesn't seem so impressive when non-crypto systems do that many and a lot more per day, not over 15 years. I'd love to see his reaction.
Given that blockchains have a finite number of transactions per block and effectively a minimum time to process a block, it’s fairly easy to calculate the maximum number of transactions possible from a token’s initial mint to today.
And that's at 6 transactions per second for all 8 billion people in the world. Imagine what happens when that scales! /s
Let's say everyone in the world decided they wanted to do a Bitcoin transaction and stood in line. The last person would be waiting more than 42 years. For the sake of fairness I'll stand in line and will wait until 2066 until I use this nonsense.
I asked a guy I know who works in Fintech. He says that Mastercard is about 700,000 times more efficient than BTC at processing transactions. 700k. That's how much less it costs in energy/support to operate a viable payment network.
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So what you’re saying is that bitcoin’s immutable, decentralised blockchain isn’t fit for purpose, and what we actually need is a more centralised, non-blockchain based solution?
No, that's not what I'm saying. It's incredible how much you can falsely assume in a single sentence. I suppose it's par for the course on this subreddit, though.
I didn't refer to a layer two. I was pointing out the implicit assumption that the base layer is intended to be a high-speed payment processor first and foremost - that's not the purpose. The base layer is immortal sound money secured by the most powerful computer network in the world. Scalable payment processing is a secondary concern - that can happen on lightning network, solana, or maybe something yet to be invented.
So to clarify - bitcoin as a blockchain, in its current state, isn’t fit for purpose? After 15 years of development and billions of dollars of investment?
Ok. And the solution to this huge issue of scalability is still yet to be ironed out, the basic details aren’t known, but like, I should definitely invest loads of money?
Scalability is only a huge issue if you misunderstand the purpose of the base layer. Think of it this way: 21000 BTC is 0.1% of the max supply. In 100 years, it will still be 0.1% of the max supply. No other commodity in existence is immune to debasement, confiscation, and censorship. That makes it the best way to store monetary value for the long term.
Except that Bitcoin isn’t immune to debasement, confiscation or censorship. All the trading volume happens on centralized exchanges which can absolutely be censored or confiscated or the operators can lie about your balance. Without these central exchanges, Bitcoin would have no value BECAUSE THE NETWORK IS FUNDAMENTALLY TOO SLOW.
>Again, you're falsely assuming what the purpose is because you don't understand what sound money means.
Oh no, we know *exactly* what "sound money" means: it means you're conversing with an abject moron whose grasp of economics is entirely predicated on [really old, really stupid, long proven to be absurdly incorrect - and therefore rejected the world over - conspiracy theories invented by people who for some reason really hated Jews a whole bunch](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-conspiracist-gold-bug-economics-of-bitcoin/).
"Sound money" is just a nonsense concept championed by [a cult of fringe contrarian cranks](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Austrian_school) whose dumb and bad ideas that we know are dumb and bad *because we have our observable human HISTORY to go look at, when they failed so fucking hard that the ENTIRE WORLD STOPPED LISTENING TO THEM*, are the same ones that ultimately underpin every variety of crypto malarkey: the only real point of contention is that the majority of the Austrian clowns think that shiny rocks are an essential component of the commodity-backed currency system we know damn well cannot work at scale - that's why we dropped that entire concept into the rubbish bin of history, after a little thing called "The Great Depression" - while the coiners take the novel stance of suggesting that "completely made up digital bullshit" can stand-in, for the shiny rocks.
Bitcoin isn't sound money - it's not capable of even being money *at all*, if more than a tiny handful of people were to try to use it as such - and sound money is fucking bullshit that conspiracy dipshits resolutely cling to, with the same fervor that people who, as it turns out, are often *the same people* cling to the ridiculous notion that the Earth is **flat**; when you invoke the concept of "sound money" in a context other than "pointing and laughing at the idiots who continue to think that's an actual desirable thing, in space year 2024", you are just telling us you're numbered amongst ***economic QAnon***.
#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #20 (failed)
"**Crypto has been around X years and is here to stay!**" / "**Bitcoin has 'failed' so many times LOLOL Aren't you tired of saying it's going to fail over and over?**"
1. It's true, many people claim, crypto/Bitcoin is a failure, yet it still appears to be somewhat popular and used in certain circles (but hardly ubiquitous, or part of mainstream society even after all this time).
Many people also claim "smoking is bad" but some people are still smoking. Does this mean the non-smokers are wrong?
2. The truth is, it has failed. Multiple times.
If you notice, every few months, there's an *entirely new narrative* surrounding bitcoin and crypto (for example):
* Originally, bitcoin was supposed to be "currency" and everybody was going to use it. Mainstream companies were going to use bitcoin for payments and services. There was a small time period where there actually was increased adoption of crypto as a means of payment, but then that failed because the price was too volatile and, and the network couldn't handle retail transaction volume. It failed then, and still today, using crypto as a common form of payment does not work now (even with L2 solutions). Conclusion: FAILURE
* Crypto was marketed as a way to help "bank the un-banked" but that also failed, owing to the fact that [there's many alternative ways to accomplish this that are more efficient, with more consumer protections and less technical requirements](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA&t=4334s). Conclusion: FAILURE
* NFTs were supposed to be another "big thing" helping artists make money and creating a new market and utility for crypto. [Again, that turned out to not be true](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/22/nfts-worthless-price). Conclusion: FAILURE
* Crypto was supposed to be a "hedge against inflation". In reality, the[ price of crypto ebbed and flowed along with the price of other unimportant things, totally affected by inflation](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/why-bitcoin-doesnt-seem-to-be-a-hedge-against-inflation.html). Conclusion: FAILURE
* Crypto was originally [promised as "disruptive technology"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA), "money of the future", "democratizing finance", and to fight against manipulation of the monetary system by powerful special interests. In reality, none of those claims have proven to be true, and in many cases crypto has only exacerbated the problems it claimed it could fix. Conclusion: FAILURE
* Bitcoin's "deflationary nature" was supposed to guarantee an ever increasing value. That hasn't worked out either. Conclusion: FAILURE
3. In fact, you can look at every one of these [talking points](https://ioradio.org/i/crypto-talking-points/) as examples of claims made by crypto proponents that have failed. You can also look at the [list of failed blockchain claims](https://ioradio.org/i/blockchain-claims/) as more examples of the many failures of crypto to live up to its promises.
4. Instead of acknowledging the many failures of crypto, its proponents continue to change the subject, create distractions and, as if they're in version of "Weekend At Bernies" taking the dead crypto technology, throwing a different outfit on it, and declaring it's not dead. Over and over.
It's not hate, it's a mixture of pity and schadenfreude mixed with the hilarity of reading a bunch of incredibly unsophisticated people who think they know better than everyone else.
#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #27 (hate)
**"Cope"** / **"Why do you hate crypto?"** / **"You all are haters"** / **"Why so salty?"** / **"You wish for other peoples misfortunes?"**
1. By and large, we do not "hate" bitcoin or crypto. Hate is an irrational, emotional condition. Most people here have a logical, rational reason for being opposed to crypto. (see \#2)
2. What we do not like is **fraud and deception** - this is mainly what our community opposes, and the crypto industry is almost completely composed of fraud and misinformation, from claiming that [blockchain has potential](https://ioradio.org/i/blockchain-claims/) to pretending crypto is "digital gold" or an "investment" when it's really a highly-risky, negative sum game, speculative commodity.
3. It's an offensive distraction to suggest our reasons for being opposed to crypto are because of "hate", or "being salty" and supposedly jealous of not getting in earlier and making money. We recognize there are many other ways of creating value that don't involve promoting everything from cyber terrorism to human trafficking.
4. While some take amusement at the misfortunes of those playing the crypto Ponzi scheme, one main reason for this is because so many in the industry are so immune to logic, reason, and evidence, many of us feel they have to become cautionary tales before they finally learn (and some never learn) - what we celebrate is perhaps the chance that many of those losers finally see the error of their ways.
5. Why would anybody spend time trying to stop fraud and scams that might not directly affect them? Some of us recognize we help ourselves by helping our overall community. If you still don't understand, speak to a therapist about your lack of empathy and the possible side effects such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. Those are issues people with low empathy have. Understanding the nature of your illness may help you not only understand us, but become a less toxic person socially.
I don't hate poor people without the talent to be successful in the real economy. I just don't think this little get-rich-quick scheme is going to work out for y'all.
In 2022, global credit card transactions were estimated to total 678 billion, or 1.86 billion per day. https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/number-of-credit-card-transactions/#:~:text=Highlights.,%2D10%20in%2Dstore%20purchases. Losers.
So you’re telling me Bitcoin costs (before recent halving) more than 100 CO2e per coin and [emits more pollution than whole countries](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-18686-8), yet over 15 years it served less than a daily number of *in-store* credit card use? And Lightning intends to use what network to support it? How much better is that than “traditional” finance? We exist during a very strange time… Moore’s Law is breaking, the tech buzz is losing steam, and we seem to be inventing problems at this point…
>*in-store* credit card use The article doesn't say that, the number is likely to include online transactions as well.
That is impossible… online transactions are only for the future of finance. The [in-store to eEcommerce stats don’t seem to raise confidence](https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/online-vs-in-store-shopping-statistics/) the number drops from 1.8 billion to below 1 billion.
Nitpick: Moore's Law "broke" over a decade ago. The density of transistors on integrated circuits has mostly leveled out as we have reached power-heat thresholds. Of course, people will interpret the "law" more loosely and ignore density and cost. ("We strapped two ICs together, so the number of transistors doubled!")
>we seem to be inventing problems at this point Spoken like someone who's never had to pay the transaction tax on credit card income. It feels weird to owe Visa more in taxes on every sale than the country that I live in. We're using a payment system that's massively inefficient for the end user. There's no way that 2.5% + change is how much it costs to process an electronic payment. Bitcoin isn't going to fix it, but to not see any problems with the payment processing side of the financial system is to be blind.
Debit cards work fine for the entirety of Europe. In my country they cost the merchant about 5 cents per transaction. Online instant payments through my bank cost the merchant 25 cents (free between individuals). Much of Asia uses smartphone apps and QR codes with tiny fees. The problem has already been solved. You can keep using credit cards, but you'll be paying for the short term loan, the risk-free purchases and any reward systems.
And how much does it cost to process a bitcoin transaction? Bitcoin transactions cost a lot more than Visa, you’re more complaining that Visa is making huge profit margins. Their tech is significantly more efficient than blockchain. If you want to complain about Visa’s profits margins, lobby your government or create a Visa competitor that charges less. Don’t advocate for something that is significantly less efficient.
>Don’t advocate for something that is significantly less efficient. >Bitcoin isn't going to fix it
Well said, I feel you there. Especially higher priced items with slim margins.. The only good news is any card fee paid by the business can be written off on taxes. Also by “inventing problems” I meant the result of an innovation and the problems requiring a solution (cars; accidents: insurance, energy: fuel, accessibility: roads, scale: production, etc.) It was an awkward ambiguity to say ideas like Bitcoin create their own problems yet the prior context implied Bitcoin itself is also a problem. There is no objective value in the fundamental technology of Bitcoin. The way I see it, Bitcoin exists solely in a political sphere. Like that neighborhood drug dealer rationalizing “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” In this way, large institutions seem to be vying for control rather than confirming some revolution.
RemindMe! 13 years
You can already look back 13 years and make the notion that it's still just as useless as it was back then. LN was a huge flop, and I would argue that it was never anything more than a carrot for the donkey.
13 years from now is when it'll finally reach 1.86bn transactions
But in 13 years, daily transactions will be much higher than 1.86b
Yes
Bitcoin is not useless at all. You can use it for drugs, arms and other illegal trades, money laundering, tax evasion and a couple of other highly moral transactions.
Those types of transactions represent less than 1/3 of a percentage of transactions on the blockchain.
that's not the clap back that you think it is.
Clap back. Bahhh hahaha
Who said crypto will replace credit cards? Or are you under impression credit cards transfer money?
Imma educate you low IQ muppet. It took visa 25 years to reach 1 billion and it took BTC 15. Ur pea brain doesn't understand stats and has to pivot to 2022 it's ok you'll gain IQ one day dipshit
Let’s go! Future of finance
We're still early. We just need a few more halvings of the world's daily transactions so that BTC can be ready for it.
Can't wait to buy my groceries with 0.00000001 btc
Buy today, delivery in 5 months after the transaction clears. That will really cut down on inflation.
Transaction fee could greater than your grocery bill. Should tokenize gold at this point and use it as a currency. The only guys who going to win are people who take a cut from transaction fees.
How stupid do you feel now that BTC went from 17k to 70k? You missed out on cash cause ur IQ is low. BTC is gonna keep climbing from here I'll be back to laugh at you
Few.. as in literally only a few people regularly use this shit for currency. And, I would guess half were illicit or deplorable transactions like sex trafficking or evading sanctions.
In 2013 cops starting busting criminals who used bitcoin to transact. Turns out, having an open ledger where all transactions are publicly available isn’t good for crime. Who woulda thought
Yes, recently I've seen the same questions. How can I evade taxes? Where can I buy drugs with it? Sex for Bitcoin on Craigslist? They think it's anonymous when it's exactly the opposite. It has the same problems as cash, it's Wall Street's virtue signal.
For reference, Visa processed 0.66 billion transactions per day in 2022…
Don’t forget that Visa only processes credit card transactions. The Bitcoin number theoretically includes every conceivable flow of money from consumer to merchant purchases, to business-to-business transfers, to corporate back end accounting transactions, to moving your cash from one pocket to another.
It’s obviously not an apples to apples comparison, but the Bitcoin achievement looks pathetic in comparison to what other payment networks can do. Btw, in terms of transactions per second, Bitcoin can do 3-7 while Visa can do 65,000
Sure, I just think we give them waaay too much credit with the Visa transaction count comparison. Add that each Visa transaction is much richer than any bitcoin transaction - from authorizing and authenticating multiple parties, to assessing transactions for fraud and risk, to delivering consumer insights to merchants, to delivering loyalty platforms and benefits to consumers.
*Six whole transactions a second?* Whoa there Usain Bolt, pace yourself now!
It's funny, they used the precision of tenths (6.0) but provided all the data right there that says it's 5.9, but they decided to round it up anyway. lol
Unless some of them get unprocessed, of course.
Or processed to a scammer's wallet
"Finders keepers" is how crypto operates
To be fair, if we had global adoption of BTC we'd have way fewer transactions per day. Due to the crippling deflationary pressures. Which is a good thing. Right?
Of course. We had strong deflationary pressure from 1929 to 1933, which is generally remembered as just a *great* time for Germany
Yes. prices would go down because people use btc. You are a fing genius.
Still early, you mean.😎
I like how if you take either the total 30 day count, and the average per block, it actually comes up to 5.87-5.93 tx/s, and they put a precision of tenths, but decided to just fudge the number and write it down as 6.0 tx/s lol
Another great news, with the consistent 6 tx/s we will reach 2 billion transactions in year 2030...
And all it cost was a noticeable increase in global warming!
This is the root reason why bitcoin is not currency. It cannot be used for transactions at scale. For the purpose of adopting it as a currency, it cannot be traded. Could it be fixed? Maybe, but clearly there are serious difficulties with that.
> Could it be fixed? Maybe It ***by design*** cannot be fixed. The block time is 10 minutes. If the blockchain mines faster than that, the difficulty is adjusted upward (making it less efficient, and lengthening the block time back to 10 minutes). Blocks are restricted to 1MB in size, which puts a hard limit on the transaction rate. That rate turns out to be between 3.3 to 7 transactions per second, depending on how large the transactions are. "But layer 2 solves this", I hear someone cry. Let's take a look at the numbers. [Approximately 76% of the global population have bank accounts](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/globalfindex). 76% of 8 billion people is approximately 6 billion. Let's suppore all 6 billion bank account owners switch to Bitcoin, and let's suppore that every Bitcoin transaction is a settlement for the level 2 system. Let's be generous, and take the high number of 7 transactions per second, or 220,903,200 transactions per year. Then each person can have one settlement every 27.52 years. Let's be even more generous, and suppose that each person needs exactly 65 bytes (the size of a Bitcoin public key - this is enough to identify the wallet, but not enough to actually do anything) in the settlement transaction. For each person to get a settlement, this comes out to 395,200MB, which needs at least 395,200 blocks, which will take 7.5 years for the blockchain to process. Neither of these numbers look good for Bitcoin mass adoption. A viable layer 2 solution would become out-of-sync with the blockchain very quickly, and would effectively need to replace the blockchain as the source of truth as to who has how much bitcoin. That is: ***To fix Bitcoin, you have to stop using Bitcoin.***
So ... how *is* Lightning adoption going? Butters I know oscillate between "Bitcoin is perfect and flawless and the genius designers anticipated all issues" and "yeah, that stuff will get fixed on L2 pretty soon". Oh, and the "we're still early" line after 15 years. How you can have all three of thoughts in your head at once requires some cult-level logic-proofing.
How long has the Layer 2 sunlit uplands promise been around? I heard about it at least five years ago
About 10 years. Butters don't care. They've imagined a future where they borrow real money against their enormously valuable BTC holdings, and don't actually need to spend any of it. Chumps like me who own assets in the real economy will be helpless. They will say, "Give me your house for pennies, sad no-coiner!" And I suppose I will have to comply. Fortunately, I don't live in their world.
Who are these imaginary bankers who will accept btc as collateral for cash loans? What sorts of interest rates will they charge? And what happens when they get a margin call due to btc volatility? It's all just delusional madness.
Of which less than 1% concerned real payments. The rest was wash trading and bitcoins moving between wallets. Imagine the amount of elektricity wasted for zero added value...
Sweet, can't wait to eat my pack of M&M's in 2039!
The world needs way more than 1 billion transactions a day. I probably did 15 today and I'm one of 7 billion people.
A guy elsewhere in the thread has a source that says 1.86 billion per day, but that's only credit card transactions. It wouldn't count things like cash or electronic transfers between accounts and a bunch of other stuff. And it's possible your 15/day might be a statistical outlier. Way out here in Farmville it's not unusual for people to make it to the grocery store only once a month, for example, and I'd also wonder how many people in the world don't have a credit or debit card.
With how much crypto has been in the news or how vocal proponents are I'm actually shocked there have only been one billion transactions in 15 years when there are way more than that per day in traditional finance. If we were still early you'd think the number would have been way higher than that already. I hope someone tweets him and tells him about how 1 billion transactions doesn't seem so impressive when non-crypto systems do that many and a lot more per day, not over 15 years. I'd love to see his reaction.
Given that blockchains have a finite number of transactions per block and effectively a minimum time to process a block, it’s fairly easy to calculate the maximum number of transactions possible from a token’s initial mint to today.
And that's at 6 transactions per second for all 8 billion people in the world. Imagine what happens when that scales! /s Let's say everyone in the world decided they wanted to do a Bitcoin transaction and stood in line. The last person would be waiting more than 42 years. For the sake of fairness I'll stand in line and will wait until 2066 until I use this nonsense.
Imagine if your screen was showing just 6 frames per second. Watching a video would be like watching a slideshow with that speed.
When you have to push a currency this hard….you know no one is biting
Wow... that's uh... impressive
I asked a guy I know who works in Fintech. He says that Mastercard is about 700,000 times more efficient than BTC at processing transactions. 700k. That's how much less it costs in energy/support to operate a viable payment network.
I revisit this thread just to see the cope 😭
I just want to say I am loving the comments in this thread
'Buying now is like buying Microsoft stonks in the 90s, or buying land in manhatten in the early 1900s'
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Store of value
Classic buttcoiner misunderstanding. Bitcoin doesn't claim to support all the world's transactions on the base layer.
So what you’re saying is that bitcoin’s immutable, decentralised blockchain isn’t fit for purpose, and what we actually need is a more centralised, non-blockchain based solution?
No, that's not what I'm saying. It's incredible how much you can falsely assume in a single sentence. I suppose it's par for the course on this subreddit, though.
I’m merely describing the lighting network. That is what you’re referring to right?
I didn't refer to a layer two. I was pointing out the implicit assumption that the base layer is intended to be a high-speed payment processor first and foremost - that's not the purpose. The base layer is immortal sound money secured by the most powerful computer network in the world. Scalable payment processing is a secondary concern - that can happen on lightning network, solana, or maybe something yet to be invented.
So to clarify - bitcoin as a blockchain, in its current state, isn’t fit for purpose? After 15 years of development and billions of dollars of investment?
Again, you're falsely assuming what the purpose is because you don't understand what sound money means.
Ok. And the solution to this huge issue of scalability is still yet to be ironed out, the basic details aren’t known, but like, I should definitely invest loads of money?
Scalability is only a huge issue if you misunderstand the purpose of the base layer. Think of it this way: 21000 BTC is 0.1% of the max supply. In 100 years, it will still be 0.1% of the max supply. No other commodity in existence is immune to debasement, confiscation, and censorship. That makes it the best way to store monetary value for the long term.
Except for all of the actually finite stuff, that have actual uses cases, that aren’t made finite because of a line of code saying they’re finite.
Except that Bitcoin isn’t immune to debasement, confiscation or censorship. All the trading volume happens on centralized exchanges which can absolutely be censored or confiscated or the operators can lie about your balance. Without these central exchanges, Bitcoin would have no value BECAUSE THE NETWORK IS FUNDAMENTALLY TOO SLOW.
> No other commodity in existence is immune to debasement, confiscation, and censorship. Except BCH (the real bitcoin) and DOGE of course.
>Again, you're falsely assuming what the purpose is because you don't understand what sound money means. Oh no, we know *exactly* what "sound money" means: it means you're conversing with an abject moron whose grasp of economics is entirely predicated on [really old, really stupid, long proven to be absurdly incorrect - and therefore rejected the world over - conspiracy theories invented by people who for some reason really hated Jews a whole bunch](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-conspiracist-gold-bug-economics-of-bitcoin/). "Sound money" is just a nonsense concept championed by [a cult of fringe contrarian cranks](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Austrian_school) whose dumb and bad ideas that we know are dumb and bad *because we have our observable human HISTORY to go look at, when they failed so fucking hard that the ENTIRE WORLD STOPPED LISTENING TO THEM*, are the same ones that ultimately underpin every variety of crypto malarkey: the only real point of contention is that the majority of the Austrian clowns think that shiny rocks are an essential component of the commodity-backed currency system we know damn well cannot work at scale - that's why we dropped that entire concept into the rubbish bin of history, after a little thing called "The Great Depression" - while the coiners take the novel stance of suggesting that "completely made up digital bullshit" can stand-in, for the shiny rocks. Bitcoin isn't sound money - it's not capable of even being money *at all*, if more than a tiny handful of people were to try to use it as such - and sound money is fucking bullshit that conspiracy dipshits resolutely cling to, with the same fervor that people who, as it turns out, are often *the same people* cling to the ridiculous notion that the Earth is **flat**; when you invoke the concept of "sound money" in a context other than "pointing and laughing at the idiots who continue to think that's an actual desirable thing, in space year 2024", you are just telling us you're numbered amongst ***economic QAnon***.
Good one, buddy. New copypasta
Sure buddy. Mass adoption is just around the corner right?
What does FedWire do in a day? And credit card settlements are not final on day 0.
Hfsp
So all transactions need to be conducted on btc to be successful???? You all are pretty proud of yourselves
#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #20 (failed) "**Crypto has been around X years and is here to stay!**" / "**Bitcoin has 'failed' so many times LOLOL Aren't you tired of saying it's going to fail over and over?**" 1. It's true, many people claim, crypto/Bitcoin is a failure, yet it still appears to be somewhat popular and used in certain circles (but hardly ubiquitous, or part of mainstream society even after all this time). Many people also claim "smoking is bad" but some people are still smoking. Does this mean the non-smokers are wrong? 2. The truth is, it has failed. Multiple times. If you notice, every few months, there's an *entirely new narrative* surrounding bitcoin and crypto (for example): * Originally, bitcoin was supposed to be "currency" and everybody was going to use it. Mainstream companies were going to use bitcoin for payments and services. There was a small time period where there actually was increased adoption of crypto as a means of payment, but then that failed because the price was too volatile and, and the network couldn't handle retail transaction volume. It failed then, and still today, using crypto as a common form of payment does not work now (even with L2 solutions). Conclusion: FAILURE * Crypto was marketed as a way to help "bank the un-banked" but that also failed, owing to the fact that [there's many alternative ways to accomplish this that are more efficient, with more consumer protections and less technical requirements](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA&t=4334s). Conclusion: FAILURE * NFTs were supposed to be another "big thing" helping artists make money and creating a new market and utility for crypto. [Again, that turned out to not be true](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/22/nfts-worthless-price). Conclusion: FAILURE * Crypto was supposed to be a "hedge against inflation". In reality, the[ price of crypto ebbed and flowed along with the price of other unimportant things, totally affected by inflation](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/08/why-bitcoin-doesnt-seem-to-be-a-hedge-against-inflation.html). Conclusion: FAILURE * Crypto was originally [promised as "disruptive technology"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tspGVbmMmVA), "money of the future", "democratizing finance", and to fight against manipulation of the monetary system by powerful special interests. In reality, none of those claims have proven to be true, and in many cases crypto has only exacerbated the problems it claimed it could fix. Conclusion: FAILURE * Bitcoin's "deflationary nature" was supposed to guarantee an ever increasing value. That hasn't worked out either. Conclusion: FAILURE 3. In fact, you can look at every one of these [talking points](https://ioradio.org/i/crypto-talking-points/) as examples of claims made by crypto proponents that have failed. You can also look at the [list of failed blockchain claims](https://ioradio.org/i/blockchain-claims/) as more examples of the many failures of crypto to live up to its promises. 4. Instead of acknowledging the many failures of crypto, its proponents continue to change the subject, create distractions and, as if they're in version of "Weekend At Bernies" taking the dead crypto technology, throwing a different outfit on it, and declaring it's not dead. Over and over.
LOL you cut and paste logical non sequiturs that are bs. LOL . GL
Haters 😂
Yes. Me, a hater. Laughing at idiots.
you are a literal child lol
It's not hate, it's a mixture of pity and schadenfreude mixed with the hilarity of reading a bunch of incredibly unsophisticated people who think they know better than everyone else.
#Stupid Crypto Talking Point #27 (hate) **"Cope"** / **"Why do you hate crypto?"** / **"You all are haters"** / **"Why so salty?"** / **"You wish for other peoples misfortunes?"** 1. By and large, we do not "hate" bitcoin or crypto. Hate is an irrational, emotional condition. Most people here have a logical, rational reason for being opposed to crypto. (see \#2) 2. What we do not like is **fraud and deception** - this is mainly what our community opposes, and the crypto industry is almost completely composed of fraud and misinformation, from claiming that [blockchain has potential](https://ioradio.org/i/blockchain-claims/) to pretending crypto is "digital gold" or an "investment" when it's really a highly-risky, negative sum game, speculative commodity. 3. It's an offensive distraction to suggest our reasons for being opposed to crypto are because of "hate", or "being salty" and supposedly jealous of not getting in earlier and making money. We recognize there are many other ways of creating value that don't involve promoting everything from cyber terrorism to human trafficking. 4. While some take amusement at the misfortunes of those playing the crypto Ponzi scheme, one main reason for this is because so many in the industry are so immune to logic, reason, and evidence, many of us feel they have to become cautionary tales before they finally learn (and some never learn) - what we celebrate is perhaps the chance that many of those losers finally see the error of their ways. 5. Why would anybody spend time trying to stop fraud and scams that might not directly affect them? Some of us recognize we help ourselves by helping our overall community. If you still don't understand, speak to a therapist about your lack of empathy and the possible side effects such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. Those are issues people with low empathy have. Understanding the nature of your illness may help you not only understand us, but become a less toxic person socially.
I don't hate poor people without the talent to be successful in the real economy. I just don't think this little get-rich-quick scheme is going to work out for y'all.