Thanks for the kind words. It can take me awhile to write an in-depth reply; and I keep adding to this in pieces, as new replies accrue. Apologies that the result came out somewhat disjointed and rambling.
I would do well to take more time with formatting and review, taking example from your lead.
you yourself create them by hooking your gold storage wallet into a payment channel.
They require no trust, and impose no counterparty risk.
They are mathematically verifiable to represent actual gold; they are not promises to pay gold;
they can be magically transformed back into gold at any time, whenever you wish to do so.
These claims are the exact issue I need to research to gain technical understanding. Specifically, trustlessness and mathematically verifiable.
That would be an approximate description of golds version of the Lightning Network. Now, tell me: In your opinion, would you really be using [gold] with such a system?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C Clarke
As I noted earlier, I think if the difference between the gold and the paper can be made sufficiently indecipherable, this is a very attractive solution. With the caveats that little to none of golds intrinsic properties are risked in the process, or overstated on the paper version.
In your opinion, are people who use these exchanges right now really [using] Bitcoin? My opinion is, not reallynot in the fullest sense; though they can still transact in actual Bitcoin with people who really use Bitcoin per the motto, be your own bank. At least they can, if the bank deigns to so permit. I hear that Coinbase closes the accounts of people who send to or receive from addresses disliked by Coinbase.
We agree that these people are not REALLY using bitcoin. Are they doing so because they are noobs and not up to speed on best practices in crypto? Are they aware of Mt. Gox but simply trust coinbase because they are FDIC insured on the USD side? Maybe they are just in it for the speculative gains and not for the underlying tech. Or perhaps they are sensitive to the friction of on chain transaction and require more liquidity. Either way, they will need a good alternative. Perhaps the alternative is off-chain scaling.
Sort of. Literally, I am saying, We cant scale on-chain capacity because that would increase on-chain Bitcoin usage (to the point of overloading nodes).
But that is a non-problem. Why is it desirable to have widespread consumer use of on chain bitcoin transactions? Emphasis added.
The general intent of this thread is to find out. Looks like I need to do a deep dive into off-chain scaling solutions.
I realize here that, as you stated, we are moving from the technical discussion to its inseparable nontechnical counterpart.
But first briefly, on the technical side, it must be understood what an awe-inspiring achievement was Satoshis creation of a Byzantine fault-tolerant decentralized database, and his application thereof to solve the double-spend problem for a new form of money. Very smart people had been breaking their heads over these problems, for about two decades. Now, very smart people have been trying to outdo Satoshi for the past nine years. Perhaps someday, an ingenious new invention will obsolete Bitcoins way of doing things. But thus far, nobody has proposed a replacement which improves performance and capacity
without compromising on decentralization and trustlessness.I find myself linking
this ACM Queue article quite oft of late. It provides a good birds-eye view of not only the technical problems solved by Bitcoin, but also the academic history of those problems. That will provide much necessary context for this discussion.
In fairness this is an underlying goal of this discussion. Once the technical realities are objectively stated, the branding/non-technical decisions can be discussed.
Specifically, the notion that the original white paper was a concept. A brilliant concept that requires iteration. The store of value vs peer to peer cash identity issue is largely a matter of branding. If we continue to brand Bitcoin as both, we are forced to deliver a solution to the cup of coffee problem that exhibits virtually all characteristics of on chain transacting. If we establish that Bitcoin as it was designed, is truly a settlement layer, we can brand the new layers accordingly.
If you could propose a sound reason for the importance of on-chain scaling, I would be curious to see that. Ive never seen such a reason given, other than handwaving and emotionalist argumentation. For my part, to answer your question, yes! I would love to use Bitcoin off-chain.
I don't yet have enough information to answer this accurately. From an un-informed perspective, its hard to wrap my brain around the idea of "using bitcoins off the Bitcoin blockchain" because the security, utility, and novelty of the token comes from the chain itself. The concept of transacting off-chain seems like you might as well brand it as another layer, or symbiotic alt-coin. Largely this stems from lack of technical understanding.
0. To keep on-chain transaction processing decentralized, outside the control of any person, entity, corporation, cartel, clique, or government. This in turn requires that any person of modest means must be able to run a full node. It is unimportant that the little people be able to use on-chain transactions to buy cups of coffee. It is an imperative absolute rule of Bitcoin that the little people must be empowered to run full nodes. If a full node were to require more resources than can be provided with an ordinary PC and a residential Internet connection, then that would not be Bitcoin anymore.
This is another issue I have yet to fully understand. How much security does a full node truly offer with no hashing power behind it?