> Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second.
The small scale of bitcoin increases the cost of transactions, making it less useful as a currency and more useful as an investiment. Perhaps it was made this way by design.
The creator actually suggested that it could scale fine if they increased the block size and mentioned future miner farms in 2010.
However, it would make sense that exchanges and credit-card-like institutions would want to keep bitcoin unscalable for the foreseeable future and stall scalable development.
Hal Finney, one of the main developers of PGP and Bitcoin's first user wrote in 2010:
> I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today.
That sort of view was well known and understood by others in early 2011 when (now former) Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen had recently started he wrote of the future:
> I bet there will be alternative, secure-and-trusted, very-high-speed network connections between major bitcoin transaction processors. Maybe it will just be bitcoin transactions flying across the existing Visa/MasterCard/etc networks (I have no idea what their transaction clearing/processing networks look like or how they work).
Or, look at other discussions early in Bitcoin's life-- and instead of quoting myself from back then, I'll show that these views were broadly understood:
> 2010-12-09 02:14:28 <gavinandresen> jgarzik: that seems like a bad idea; I have a niggling feeling in the back of my head that the optimal bitcoin-like system would have even smaller blocks/transactions than current bitcoin....
> 2011-07-15 03:42:22 <jgarzik> moa7: it is presumed by many that a future bitcoin (if successful) will involve a secondary layer that can handle higher volumes, microtransactions, etc.
> 2012-09-09 20:00:32 <jgarzik> gmaxwell: I am against changing block size, FWIW. I think the market will properly intervene, bitcoin will reach a steady state where all blocks are 1MB, and the best bidding gets block placement. SatoshiDICE and other data apps automatically
solve themselves, once 1MB is normal.
> 2012-09-09 20:00:48 <jgarzik> I think I will be overruled, but that is my position.
> 2012-09-09 20:03:24 <jgarzik> bitcoin exists _because_ of certain constrained limits. money creation is one of them. block space is another.
> 2012-09-09 20:03:35 <jgarzik> that is a fundamental constraint; messing with it massively changes the economics
There are plenty of tough trade-offs in Bitcoin and reasonable people can have no end of a disagreement about them. But these discussions, mostly from before any credit card company ever heard of Bitcoin-- show that a nuanced understanding existed all along.
Disagree if you like, but the conspiracy theories are an insult to everyone's intelligence borne out of a malicious and dishonest rewriting of Bitcoin's history pushed on by court decreed fraudsters like Craig Wright. You have plenty of alternatives-- if they're better then they should stand on their own without the abuse and deceptive FUD.
> Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.
He was talking about people like you. He didn't advocate for a centrally planned block limit. Stop trying to twist his words.
Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik are well known big blockers so stop trying to imply otherwise. At least here I won't get censored by theymos like on r\bitcoin and bitcointalk.
> He didn't advocate for a centrally planned block limit.
I don't know about 'centerally planned' but he hardcoded a limit into the consensus rules.
> Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik are well known big blockers so stop trying to imply otherwise.
That's the point. And I a pointing out that they said all these things in 2010-2014-- as you can see some of the quotes (esp from Jeff) are quite emphatic. I could quote a lot more.
The narrative a lot of people are transmitting about Bitcoin is untrue, and by showing the diversity of these views going WAY back from people who later tried to push through changes I think makes that point pretty well.
He "hardcoded" a spam protection measure at a time when it was legitimately expected an attacker would spend a few dollars and clog up the blockchain significantly.
This was always intended as a temporary measure and it was understood by the community at large that the limit would be removed as soon as it started hindering adoption. As an example, see this reddit thread of mine 86% upvoted: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/35hpkt/please_remi...
As history will remember, what happened then is that you decided you had missed out on the boat and you started raising money for your stupid little layer 2 solution while censoring everyone suggesting it had to coexist with a bigger block size.
I'm not going to mince words, you are the reason Bitcoin is a speculative scam instead of a real payments revolution as it was intended to be. It had one chance and thanks to you and your cronies the only people benefiting from it are the ones liquidating noobs on bitmex.
The counter argument to this is that the white paper refers to Bitcoin as “a peer to peer electronic cash system.” If high fees force users to centralized, custodial second layers, then it ceases to operate as peer to peer cash. It becomes Venmo.
It might be prudent to note that "cash" has meaning in the context of electronic payment research, going all the way back to DigiCash in the 90s. That system required a trusted third party to operate, but it was still cash in the sense that it is a transfer of value, not debt. The way most payment systems operate is that they are settled at a later date (in some cash equivalent). In that sense, credit card payments as well as Venmo are layer 2 solutions.
Bitcoin has decentralized non-custodial second layers.
But if they didn't-- which would be sad-- your logic doesn't follow: Is the USD not cash because paypal exists and is widely used?
Venmo is venmo. Venmo adoption Bitcoin as a currency on their platform would not turn Bitcoin into venmo. It would just create another option for using Bitcoin-- one with it's own positive and negative trade-offs.
There is a balance. The system is not very valuable at the extremes of resource usage or limited capacity, like many other systems.
> Is the USD not cash because paypal exists and is widely used?
It would be very easy to argue that it would not be if the present mechanics of the cash system were restricted to a maximum global throughput of 3 transactions a second. But no other monetary system would actually pursue such an asinine goal on purpose except as a means of sabotage.
Don't worry Greg, we will get to you in due time. It's always interesting how you love to cherry pick and take things out of context. Then this was always your motive.
The reference you like to quote about my wanting to limit the size of the blockchain is of course completely out of context. The creation of overlay networks allows bitcoin to act as a single reference source while also having different quorum systems that act independently. You will note that I did not say I would get increasingly piratical regarding the block size. Rather, I note in December 2010 just before I left the public development of bitcoin fact that users of bitcoin were getting rather tyrannical. I do understand that you failed to complete your education, but to help increase your erudition, this is a reference to others seeking to objectively restrict something that should not be restricted in the way that you're proposing.
Eric Vorhees, Garzik and others like you wanted a system that could not be controlled. Unfortunately for you, you chose a project, bitcoin, that is highly resistant as it scales to your type of shenanigans.
Yes, I do understand that having a system outside of government control helps with your side projects such as selling malware, ransomware and other projects that have are generally tainted feel. However, you will find that bitcoin isn't good for this.
I do wonder if you pointed out to anyone that the entire purpose of having a Merkel tree is scaling. In fact, if you take the basic structure of bitcoin and limited to 1 MB blocks, the entire need for a Merkel tree is obfuscated. Where you have limited numbers of transactions, a simple index would do. But then, you are not seeking to educate people about bitcoin are you...
Unfortunately for you, lots of things have been happening in the background. You never understood a single percent of what bitcoin was about. I don't blame you for this, I don't think you're smart enough to understand why I created bitcoin or even the origins of any of the parts or components. You're a great troll. You're also a useful idiot. In separating out the fools you have allowed me to finally manage to take bitcoin to where it needed to be. It was never EGold or any of the other anarchist systems that you wished to create.
Did you forget that I said the protocol was set in stone? No, I don't think you did. But then, you have a habit of taking things out of context, twisting them, outright lying. The problem you seem to not understand is that you haven't stopped anything. The time you figure it out I will have a patent on everything needed to scale blockchains. Then again, you will bitch and complain and say it's not fair. But a public yet but we have it a target of 1,000 patents (in total) this month and the pipeline will take me to 2,500 papers this year.
It is a real shame, well not really, that you're going to have to watch is all you have tried to corrupt falls apart around you this year. Have a nice life Greg, I wonder what rock you're going to crawl under next time ?
You might be asking a bit much of him, this technology stuff isn't super easy for everyone.
In two easy steps:
$ ./bitcoin-cli signmessage 1GMaxweLLbo8mdXvnnC19Wt2wigiYUKgEB "Digital signatures are to scammers as garlic is to vampires. I am hn user nullc, but you are not Bitcoin's creator."
$ ./bitcoin-cli verifymessage 1GMaxweLLbo8mdXvnnC19Wt2wigiYUKgEB "HJ0VgbIY9BAud6MiZ4Qh0KSwhmA7gwkFm07tjPJeHsYNcj5oIAVlVR2JnKTF7EjqTWEaD9QbAPzk8QII8QJxW4s=" "Digital signatures are to scammers as garlic is to vampires. I am hn user nullc, but you are not Bitcoin's creator."
No, Satoshi is enjoying privacy right now. But everyone claiming to be Satoshi isn't looking for privacy. If they want to convince tech audiences, proving their claims is the easiest way forward.
DrCraigWright has had his account blocked, he states (Why!?), so he asks this to be posted:
---
Yes, I know you love to run around going “Craig’s not Satoshi, don't listen to him”. However, all of that is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that I've taken the original protocol that I designed and implemented it and it scales and it works. Not the way that people like James A. Donald desired (and yes, he is a child pornography and paedophile and that is part of why he wanted an anonymous coin, something I didn't realise in 2008). Rather, it is a micropayments system that changes the entire nature of the Internet. It allows companies like Google and Facebook, or rather the ones that will replace them to create systems that earn through micropayments and at the same time allow individuals to earn the money to pay for this. It's not the concept that people in the cryptocurrency space think about, but then the people in the cryptocurrency space are rarely those who will take this forward.
Don't worry, you can still play. I do know how to fix lightning; I have patents on it. Likewise, I have patents that would fix Ethereum but then I don't need to, bitcoin doesn't need Ethereum.
It surprises me how little people bother to learn. The entire cryptocurrency space is premised on ideas that have gone before. The only true innovation that I added to bitcoin was an economic system that linked to a traceable pseudonymous series of transactions. Proof of work-based Cryptocurrencies existed 20 years ago. Distributed Cryptocurrencies existed 20 years ago. The entire technical and corporate space 20 years ago was larger than the entire bitcoin space and in fact cryptocurrency space at the peak a couple years ago. But then, few bother to actually do the research. Few and then fewer even bother to understand that the concept of a blockchain, of hashing a block of information into next block was not new. It was published 25 years ago.
Yet none of you seem to have bothered to take the time to read the source documents. I shouldn't be surprised at this sort of attitude, I sought in students all the time. People are becoming lazy, not all of us but many.
It's interesting in a way that people believe that bitcoin acts outside of government and law. In the Whitepaper I stated that bitcoin nodes, miners enforce the rules. I didn't say that they create the rules. I said that the rules were set in stone. The incentive system allows miners to act in a manner that keeps them honest. You see, in law, the definitions of used in the Whitepaper have meaning. In particular, the term attacker has meaning.
Bitcoin is an economic system. Miners always end in data centres. It doesn't matter how you change the proof of work protocol. If an ASIC device was never created, it would still be more efficient for miners to end running many many computers in a data centre. In scale there is efficiency.
The problem is that you guys think you can beat me. You don't even realise you've already lost. Then, commenting on information that I know when you don't and some of you will say this informational asymmetry is an unfair advantage. I'm sorry if you're a snowflake and I don't care.
This collectivist, socialist mindset that has infiltrated what people call libertarian thought is rather despicable. You seem to actually believe, surprising as that seems that you have a right and that I have an obligation to give you information. That when I'm not seeking anything from you, what am not asking you to help, where in fact I don't actually care two damns about your existence that I should do something to obtain your gratification or even some respect from you. I'm sorry, I don't care about the respect that some people seem to garnish and gather from social media sites to their pseudonymous identities. It is funny to watch however.
Enjoy. 2020 is going to be an interesting year and some of you are going to find out how interesting very shortly.
that you want to use the _Dread Pirate Roberts_ defense - I was only just handed these keys... But that will never be. It does not matter at all what you say. You shall learn just how far gone you are this year and just how many people see you as the fool.
Enjoy failure... It has been your life and it shall remain so.
You suffer from the misapprehension that your opinion matters. I'm sorry it doesn't. HN does little for the real-world contrary to what many in Silicon Valley culture seem to think.
A large reason for the creation of bitcoin stems from the promise of micropayments. Therefore Google and Facebook collapsed into the shit show that they are, they couldn't solve it. Your belief is not needed nor warranted. I'm not seeking money or investment from you and nor do I really care about you or even know you. We have companies coming to use my technology, and I'm not talking about ICO pumpers or other scammers seeking to replicate the frauds of the 90s. I'm also not talking about the bucket shops that pose as pink sheet scam markets under a new name.
We have companies such as Nike now getting into blockchain. Basically, the idea being to save data. Interestingly, the focused concept in the Nike patent is covered by my 2016 filings placing me two years ahead of them. Which is fine, they now have a choice. They can use BSV freely or they can pay my company royalties.
So why is it you think that I need to convince you?
Why do you think that it matters that I have you believe me or come on board as my disciple?
I hate to tell you that you're a little bit deluded if you believe that. You see, people will build on my platform whether you like me or not. I have a technical solution that works, I have solutions that scale, and mostly I've had the time to patent every aspect of how bitcoin works. You see, while other people have been trying to understand my protocol, I found that the best way of stopping people hijacking it further was to start building what some people call a patent fortress. You can't scale without SPV. Unfortunately, people didn't understand what it was. So much of bitcoin was not understood even though was common.
It is interesting how people think that I invented the concept of blockchain. It was published in the mid-90s. However, it was a set theoretic mathematical construct and not as simple as it was resented in the paper.
And I know, bad Aussie man. Scary bad man doesn't want our form of Internet anonymous money. You seem to think that it matters all that get funding because you run round saying that I'm nasty and mean and I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry to tell you but none of that actually matters. I'm sorry to tell you that bitcoin is not anonymous and cannot be made such. It is a concept known as traceable pseudonymous transactions. If you look you will find a number of papers dating to around 1994 on this concept.
And whether you like the fact that I created bitcoin are not or whether you believe me is irrelevant. You see, when I file a patent it is independently verified and passed and granted without reference to who I may have been and what I've done in the past. I know that's a difficult concept to some of you, but every time I create something it is tested based on the merits of what I've created that time and not the laurels that I wear.
You seem to think that I'm creating another shit coin. No, I'm just freeing up bitcoin do what was meant to do. The way designed it. Not so that you can speculate, so that businesses will be able to use low fee transactions that are fast and cheap. See, in the next five years we will have transactions that process for under 1/10000 of a cent. And yes that is the correct number of zeros. It's not about a political circle jerk that comes from this fallacy of code is law (which was discredited in 2001 by Prof Timothy Wu). It is about the technology. In this is the point, while you guys circle jerk talking about how you're going to change the world with anonymous money that helps drug dealers and terrorists...
We are building something that will actually help the world.
And no, your liking me, your wanting to be aligned with me, your care as to what I'm doing matters to less extent than you could imagine.
BSV is the future, if all goes well. Code is not law. It is as clear as dawn.
Results are what matter in this space. Let the results speak for themselves. Blockstream with LN, Nchain with big block scaling.
Blockstream (Which funds Core developers) was funded by AXA Strategic Ventures with about $80Million in two rounds.
Digital Currency Group, which has investment in a lot of Bitcoin companies has a controlling interest from MasterCard.
That alone does not prove anything, but Bitcoin (BTC) failed to scale. When fees hit $50/transaction, with weeks long confirmation times, most companies backed by DGC failed to switch to the upgraded version of Bitcoin (BCH). This was despite BCH being a drop-in replacement, while Segregated Witness (the BTC upgrade) was not.
Part of the reason nobody switched to BCH was a major marketing push to strip Bitcoin Cash of the name "Bitcoin", and to frame it as a "scam" with "air-dropped tokens" you can "claim". (It was just a direct blockchain copy at fork time).
The truth is that BCH forked from BTC after 4 years of obstructionism. We forked just in time: because the huge transaction backlog on BTC happened within months of the fork. The result was an entirely predictable result of failing to scale.
> When fees hit $50/transaction, with weeks long confirmation times, most companies backed by DGC failed to switch to the upgraded version of Bitcoin (BCH). This was despite BCH being a drop-in replacement, while Segregated Witness (the BTC upgrade) was not.
The upgraded version of Bitcoin is the version that holds consensus among its users. Bitcoin Cash never held that position, and probably never will. Calling it "Bitcoin (BCH)" shows your bias.
> Part of the reason nobody switched to BCH was a major marketing push to strip Bitcoin Cash of the name "Bitcoin", and to frame it as a "scam" with "air-dropped tokens" you can "claim". (It was just a direct blockchain copy at fork time).
If I were to run a direct blockchain copy of Bitcoin and change some arbitrary rule (such as making the difficulty readjust every 2000 blocks), that does not a bitcoin make. I would be running a dead chain nobody uses. If I were to argue the change and everyone follows my chain and runs my code, only then would it be Bitcoin, since it carries consensus.
> The truth is that BCH forked from BTC
Correct. You forked off, and aren't bitcoin. The 2017Q4 spike in transaction fees was probably due to a number of separate issues and misconfigurations, such as wallet fee estimation being mostly broken, users feeling FOMO and wanting in at any price, and transactions not optimally filling the space alotted to them (which SegWit partially fixed, as designed).
BCH forked off to reject the SegWit+RBF add-on that ain't Bitcoin. Replace by Fee has caused ATM hacks and breaks trust in 0-conf. BCH upgraded version holds consensus among its users & fees are low as P2P Electronic Cash System was designed to have had.
https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/corporate/media/visan...
> Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second.
The small scale of bitcoin increases the cost of transactions, making it less useful as a currency and more useful as an investiment. Perhaps it was made this way by design.