but for how long are we going to continue like this ?.

I spent several hours, roaming around the internet and trying to figure out every suggested plans in addressing the problem of scalability. I even read across few BIPs such as BIP101 and others that have all been rejected so far by the Bitcoin community, as they weren't satisfactory enough to address the issue of block sizes.


Even with this implementation, we haven't been able to say "Goodbye" to congestion.

With the inability for SegWit to address the issue of small block size, SegWit2x was introduced basically to increase the size of blocks to 2mb for more accommodation of transactions, but this idea wasn't enough to get approval from the community due to the absence of replay protection. Meaning, the absence of this protection could cause a replay attack. Lightning network on the other hand requires creating a payment channel between two individuals. This was suppose to address the issue, but it doesn't have a say in the size of blocks either. And also, the technicalities behind it has not carried everyone along in understanding it.

The issue of congestion is still very much on ground, though it has failed off as there are no current events or any rush to trigger such. Certain periods like halving, Bull run and Bear run are ideal times to witness such. Unarguably, congestion will come, which some of us must have prepared the LN as a backup plan, while others can save themselves with the extra tx fees, but what's now left for others like myself rather than to sit and wait on the queue along other transactions that are available on the mempool ?.

Just a simple but decision making question for both developers and none developers today:
1. What do you think is a possible solution to this problem?.

From a developing standpoint the only solution to energy consumption (regardless of it being "immense" or not as it is claimed) is to find an alternative mining algorithm that doesn't consume the same amount of energy but at the same time keeps the principles of Bitcoin such as decentralization intact.

So far the attempts made in the past with alternative algorithms (such as Proof of Stake) are introducing serious flaws into the system by changing the algorithm.

For the newbies, who might not know. Drivechain is a software side-chain project by Paul Sztorc, which may help Bitcoin in scaling, privacy, and other "short-comings" that altcoins are trying to "fix". With Drivechain, we wouldn't need altcoins. Everything will be a side-chain of Bitcoin.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's financial crimes arm is proposing to label crypto mixers as a "primary money laundering concern" in its effort to combat illicit crypto finance,

The lack of transparency surrounding international CVC mixing activity is an acute money laundering and national security risk, and increasing transparency in connection with this activity is a key component to denying illicit actors access to the U.S. and global financial systems.

Of course, I'm a bit exaggerating this but, here it is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o
So, we shouldn't increase the blocksize unless we manage to get quantum computers in our smartphones basically..

Be my guest to open a topic about increasing the capacity, I'm grabbing my popcorn!
Common, do it, I can't wait for it!

As for me, I was just this week shown how it's physically impossible to have blocks larger than 4MB because only nodes that own a Titan computer and their own private global fiber optic cables would be able to cope with larger blocks!

Kuwait the most affordable location to mine bitcoin (BTC) worldwide.
One roundup suggested the cost of mining in Kuwait was just $1,400 per BTC in 2022 compared to more than $18,000 in Texas
(bitcoin was worth more than $40,000 at the time).

Ninety-five percent of total electricity costs are subsidised by the government, meaning that end-users pay only 2 fills/kWh,

No one is arguing that the primary use case for Bitcoin was a method of peer-to-peer exchange for the last 14 years. If you alter the original coin to devalue that primary use case, it becomes generic and it will fade away like thousands of cryptos that came after it. Changes to support its primary use case should always be encouraged. That's why Segwit was eventually adopted, because although it may have temporarily reduced miner's fees, it improved the primary use case, adoption and value of Bitcoin.

There is obviously a major schism in the community, which I have not seen since Bitcoin Cash. I see this eventually resulting in a soft or hard fork. If the pro-BRC-20 bug people want to create monkey pics on a forked chain, that's fine with me.

I do think the Devs read Bitcointalk and I think it's important to keep this thread alive. I hope they focus on their technical discussion, instead of disrupting it with spam.

Isn't the ban on staking in the USA supposed to be bullish for bitcoin and other proof of work crypto projects? I only heard not to stake on centralized exchanges but not the same for mining in the USA, so if you are in America you are free to fire on your Asic miners.  All Hail to PoW algorithm.

Hello there,

As I was driving earlier, this thought came through my mind. I've been accumulating Bitcoin for quite some time now, and at some point eventually I'll have to withdraw it in fiat, at least some of it. I'm not sure when that time will come, and I'm definitely not selling for anything below $50,000, but that's another story. However, I've always kept my bitcoin away from exchanges, and I prefer that it stays that way for obvious reasons that have been discussed numerous times in the forum.

Not only do I want to avoid exchanges but also banks, which is currently the most convenient way to withdraw money, but if I were to move funds to a bank account, they'd get taxed at 24%, which is a huge percentage. I've also thought about Bitcoin ATMs, but the majority of them here require some sort of KYC and feature expensive fees, although they may still be a better option than bank transfers. Is there an actual, reliable way to exchange bitcoin for cash in hand? My best guess would be a P2P transaction in person, but that's quite unlikely.

I believe PoS is bad because you can rewrite the chain without having to invest the work again.
Meaming that if 51% doesn't like something they can go back and rewrite XX hours in a few seconds. Hence sending any amount of ETH to B instead of A (as A's original transaction won't be included and won't work as re-transmit as the original balance is gone).

With PoW same group would have to re-mine the blocks which means this is practically impossible as the original chain is progressing too.

You can try to avoid rolling back too many blocks, but that is an artificial and only locally enforcable rule. As far as I know there is no such rule today on ETH.

there is a reason satoshi ignored those ideas and went for PoW instead

satoshi chose PoW instead of PoS because

On April 23, 2011, he sent a farewell email to a fellow Bitcoin developer. “I’ve moved on to other things,”]

Proof of Stake (PoS) was first introduced in a paper by Sunny King and Scott Nadal in 2012 and intended to solve the problem of Bitcoin mining’s high energy consumption.

This unrelenting demand for electricity was one reason China banned cryptocurrency,
touching off a virtual gold rush from Appalachia to New York’s Finger Lakes.
Crypto miners began putting down stakes in places where power is cheap and affordable, and if land use or noise regulations even exist, enforcement is weak.
The mine in Murphy is just one of a dozen in Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina owned by a San Francisco-based company called PrimeBlock, which recently announced $300 million in equity financing and plans to scale up and go public.

But a year and a half after crypto came to this ruby red pocket of Republican retirees and Libertarian life-timers,
anger over the mine helped flip the balance of local power and forced the Board of Commissioners
to officially ask their state and federal officials to
“introduce and champion legislation through the US Congress that would ban
and/or regulate crypto mining operations in the United States of America.”

Bitcoin-only broker, Bitcoin Reserve, now allows its users to purchase L-BTC.
L-BTC is a Liquid Asset used in Blockstream’s layer two application for Bitcoin.
The asset allows users to interact with the app for little-to-no fees, enhanced privacy, and more extensive features than found on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Bitcoin Reserve, an Estonia-based bitcoin-only brokerage belonging to the Liquid Federation, now allows the purchase of Liquid Bitcoin (L-BTC) on its platform, per a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

L-BTC is a Liquid Asset, or a token issued on Blockstream’s Liquid Network, which is a sidechain of Bitcoin. This sidechain is a layer two solution for Bitcoin – it temporarily takes transactions off chain to avoid high fees and wait times –

Why is Bitcoin So popular?

I believe US treats profit from any cryptocurrency acquired through mining as income tax and the percentages in US go from 10% to 37% which isn't really that low!

Bitcoin is not the only project using POW so far, but the only thing the government is targeting is bitcoin, it shows that they know they can't control it, and they don't want to see it grow to threaten their power, not because POW is a waste of energy and a major cause of global warming.
Indeed, we cannot know the future of bitcoin if the government really wants to get rid of POW completely to secure their power, but let's hope it can last and will not be changed.

the way it worked was celcious was paying the monthly electric. via monthly contract payments. so that CORZ could accumilate coin and not sell at a loss. waiting for the price to rise cor the coin next year
or giving coin to celcius per quarter as their reward for contract

however when celcius stopped paying because corz were asking for too much in its contracts. and obviously celcius had issues with its own money.. thus unwilling to pay.
corz was not then paying its electric bill and then needed to sell coin at a loss to then pump fiat into the electric company to keep going a few more months.

you gave a very simplistic answer.
the real reason is corz didnt take the opportunity to relocate or upgrade to be more efficient. nor seek out new customers to replace celcius gap
 they just plodded along and asked for a loan multiple months back from their other existing customers(blackrock).. rather than asking blackrock to just buy more contracts
(obviously blackrock wouldnt just buy new contracts at higher prices so yea blackrock done a loan instead.. corz stupidly accepted that deal)

you are proclaiming "all mining" yet using a case scenario of one mining farm example of a inefficient farm that was not business savvi
i fully agree greedy companies that demand too much from customers will lose customers. i agree dumb companies that are not business savvi will lose money.

but that does not make the whole industry non-profitable. it just means too many dummies in the babies basket where all you can hear is the crying due to the dummies that get lost

i personally live in a nuclear power region... thank you, enjoy,
many mining pool locate themselves within 20 miles of a hydro or nuclear power plant and do deals with the power plant direct

(hobby miners using residential rate cant do those deals becasue they are bill payers that use billing agents, that are one step power from the producers)


no its not.
if you calculate the validators at a 300w PSU of a normal PC . vs coins.
and compare that the the old PoW mining. its about 95%

there 99.95% WAS a projection thinking there would only be like a dozen validators(they were only counting the main custodians, like coinbase and a dozen others)

in short ethereum PoW was about $900 underlying cost value with a $1.4k market (1.5x speculation) and now ethereum PoS about $45 cost value with a $1.2k market(26x speculation) if you add up all the asics vs validators respectively (and compare it to market price respectively)

A new report from CCRI (Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute), commissioned by ConsenSys, reveals that the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake has reduced the electricity consumption and carbon footprint of the Ethereum network by over 99.988 % and 99.992%, respectively.

We estimate that an average modern desktop PC will use approximately 100 watts of power,

The Bitcoin miner is looking into a variety of strategic solutions for raising money.

According to Core Scientific, if the potential capital raise strategies fail, the company might have to seek bankruptcy protection.