Nice rant, rolling, loaded with bait-and-switch rhetorical chicanery, bold inversions of the truth, and some smug attempts to intimidate by bluster a nobody who is not thereby impressed.
What it boils down to, in translation: Banks and financial manipulators rule the world, whether you like it or not
nyah, nyah!
First, the bait and switchI replied to this point, which I will quote at some length so as to make obvious the obvious:
how do you determine on-chain transations to
cost so much?
He cant. His post is just a roundabout way of saying, Bitcoin cannot scale, and will thus become a bankers toy as bone-crushing transaction fees force everybody into the next generation of Paypal. Baloney.
[...]
The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.
I could see perhaps something on the order of magnitude of $100 (in todays current value) on-chain transaction costs, but $1000+?
Smells like FUD.[...]
The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.
That would turn Bitcoin into a bankers wet dream: The totally controlled, centralized, regulated basis for a cashless dystopia in which everybody can be tracked, traced, and forced to ask permission to use money.
That is not a new allegation, and its not true.
The fact is, whether
you the bankers like it or not, cryptographic cleverness will continue to enable technologies that
put the individual in direct control of his own money.
Whereupon you ignore what I said (just as you pointedly omitted Lightning from your list of off-chain transaction media), and jump from quote-unquote the transaction costs
alone will
ensure it to:
99% of people don't have the mental ability to deal with private keys, wallets or anything of the sort. They want a bank account and a debit card. Their attention span is about 3 seconds. There is no way they will ever grasp crypto. They may want to invest in crypto or hold it but it will be at a bank or brokerage and governments will impose their restrictions on those accounts just like they are doing now.
So, which is it, rolling?
Is your argument that most people are passive, ovine meat-robots? I would not argue with that. I did not argue with your brief mention of that point in your prior postwhich was tossed off seemingly
obiter dictum, amidst your vehement insistence on the primacy of transaction costs. Actually, mass stupidity is the principal point of a plurality of my recent writings.
Or is your argument that transaction costs alone will ensure that
individuals who want financial freedom will be
unable to control their own money unless they are rich?
Sounds like the kind of rant the bigblockers went on just prior to forking off. You are welcome to get out now and go chase another shitcoin dream. Bitcoin will be just fine without you.
You are the one throwing bigblocker Bitcoin wont scale!!! arguments, only with the twist that you think thats a good thing. Or at least, a hah hah, little guy, youre just totally fucked
bow down to your masters! thing.
Is your binning me with the bigblockers intentional irony, whereas you seem
afraid to mention the
Lightning Network? You knowthe thing the bigblockers dont believe in, which makes scalable, decentralized, private, trustless, permissionless off-chain transaction costs negligible.
Boldface is rollings; highlighting is mine:The free market will decide what Bitcoin becomes, not an opinion of what it should be. For better or for worse, those with all the money now, will largely be the ones with all the money in the future. Bitcoin is open to everyone including the banks, governments, and billionaires. This will push out the little guy, just like in every other industry in history.
= STFU and kneel in awe of the free market,
i.e. the slavemarket owned by banks, governments, and billionaires.
That is
your opinion.
Of course,
Bitcoin is open to everyone. As I recently noted,
I myself tend to distrust institutional corporate holders; but there is nothing that I can do to stop them. Bitcoin being open to everyone is
my point. Whereas I suggest that you contemplate your blatant self-contradiction that I have highlighted.
On-chain will be for the big boys. If you don't like it, become one of the big boys by filling your bags now while BTC is still dirt cheap.
It is the bluster of a typical proletarianthe type who probably believes that $10 million is a
lot of money.
In substantial essence, you are a worshipper of plutocracy. Too bad for you that the big boys wont pat you on the head for wanting so very much to be one of them. Anyway, Bitcoin
doesnt care for your opinions. It will scale, whether you like it or not.
(Aside to Jay: As you may have surmised, I am not your typical prole in terms of contact with actual wealth. And I have a pretty good idea of how the world actually works. I am much less idealistic about Bitcoin than I tend to let on: It is a tool. It is an excellent tool, and timely at this moment in history; but it is just that.)
I almost quoted that myself, in my prior reply to rollingin anticipation that some people may object to my discussion of potential fees on the order of $100 value (which was explicitly admitted handwaving in the absence of the crystal ball that none of us has). No, transactions cannot remain cup-of-coffee cheap
cannot, as Bitcoin slowly transitions to what is effectually a fee-based security model. The amount of fees produced by the fee market set a practical upper bound on hashrate as block rewards fall toward the point of economic irrelevance. In the long term, on-chain fees that are
too low would cause Bitcoin to failwherefore the champagne.
Maxwell made that statement at a time when on-chain transaction fees were close to bank wire transfer rates.
Somehow, I seriously doubt that Maxwell, of all people, was arguing that the future of Bitcoin belongs to banks (!). He
is probably the single most out-of-context quoted personage in the Bitcoin worldother than Satoshi.
For my part, I think that Bitcoin will converge on optimal feesneither too high, nor too lowas on-chain improvements pack more transactions into a block (
e.g., forthcoming Segwit v1 will make much more efficient use of block space for certain types of transactions), and layering developments move most transactions off-chain.