Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: What's going on with Bitcoin????
by
DannyHamilton
on 29/12/2017, 22:58:45 UTC
Don't you think the miners are choosing to mine bitcoin because of the value of the coin?

Yes. Or more specifically, they are choosing it because of the value of a block.  (Remember the part where I suggested that block space is very valuable and that transaction fees are purchasing block space?)

what's going to happen if the value of bitcoin cash raises?

Not much reason for it to do so.

The block space isn't very valuable considering there is more of it than anyone is wanting to use.

If it does somehow become the cryptocurrency that is most in demand, then it will experience the exact same situation as Bitcoin has today (high fees and slow confirmations for transactions with low fees).  The alternative is to destroy decentralization by allowing arbitrarily large blocks, but the loss of decentralization would destroy the value of the protocol.

and still, I haven't heard a convincing motivation to not to improve a system that cannot support the number of transactions that needs to support

It can support the number of transactions that is needs to support.

It can't support the number of transactions that you want it to support.

The motivation to be careful about changes is to not inadvertently destroy what is clearly and provably very valuable.  No sense in killing the goose.

If you have a suggestion for an improvement that is well thought out, and that isn't going to have an adverse effect on other aspects of Bitcoins very carefully balance incentives then I'd like to hear it.  Bitcoin is constantly adding improvements.  Users and developers are not against improvements.  I'm certainly not against improvements.

You started out by stating a bunch of things that weren't true, and then you asked how we can "get it back on track" with the whitepaper.  I responded to that.

You've asked about improvements, and I've pointed out some recent improvements (SegWit and Lightning).

You want more improvements, and so do we all.  For example, I'd like to see more wallets and more merchants supporting SegWit addresses.  I'd like to see more fee estimators reporting in fee per weight unit rather than fee per byte.  I'd like to see more people involved in developing and testing Lightning Network.

Improvements will continue to come as people figure them out.  Do you have any improvements to suggest? Or are you just here to complain about something you don't understand?