Topic: Biggest issue needed to be resolved? (Read 1714 times)

Well... education about security, maybe. 

i.e.  It's not very secure if you give it to a complete stranger on the internet to look after it for you.  Stop leaving your money in exchanges and web wallets and you'll find "security" isn't actually that big a problem at all.

Security. Seriously, that's the biggest issue.

We have a "Trustless" escrow at https://anark.it based on the open source "Casascius Escrow" written by Mike Caldwell. Is this what you mean?

The biggest issue facing bitcoin is its small market cap.  The greater bitcoin's market cap becomes, the more useful it is as a store of value.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/another-reason-bitcoin-will-succeed-us-to-target-putins-40-billion-stash-578286

First is too hard for non-tech people to store safely and spend, second is slow confirmations on transactions (ok for websites and cheap stuff when nobody cares, but for high value stuff over the counter it's too slow)

+1000

Security of the network and protocol should be reviewed by experts. May a hakaton. 

thought about daniel larimers idea of lending into existence yesterday for a long time. Even though I do not like his worldview that much, this is by far the best idea for mass adoption. Kudos to him.

Just imagine every bitcoin would behave like a small overly-collateralized (central) bank and could lend digital dollars (or every other asset) into existence. From an economics perspective it is quite complicated to invent a mechanism which would lead to parity between digital dollars and "real" dollars.

I assume with sidechains we see this mechanism become reality. It is like the best of both worlds.

+100

The 1MB block size limit.

No links, saw it in a shoutbox on other forum.

Would still need real 3rd party middle-man to hold and release funds.

Escrow transaction and details enter blockchain.

Basically miners could place bids on escrow jobs, escrow amount they can handle proportional to their total hashrate and rating.

Miners doing this escrow work get rated by buyers/sellers.

Many jobs will not need miner to get involved, because the recipient of the items purchased for coin also have ability to release the coin.

If buyer/seller disagree then the contracted miner gets involved; and then needs to work as current escrow agents do; talking with both sides, check proof of delivery etc. before releasing coin to seller.

Basically coins can be "locked" into the blockchain, the buyer of the goods and a contracted miner both have the key to release the coins to the seller, after which the transaction is written properly into a new block and appears as a new transaction.

I don't know the nitty gritty of what needs to be altered/added in bitcoin code.

It would be cool, but how would it work? Any links to further info?

That would be cool, and I've read elsewhere it's perfectly possible.

Not so great when they continue to lose value on the back of every whiff of bad news.

Why? They are a great source of cheap coins 

In general. What future developements could bitcoin benefit from regards to the mainstream. I mean more what hands on could be developed by bitcoin team and other providers. It could be integration to the blockchain, add ons or other third parties services. Some mention creditcard services, and other. But this is a new currency, is it possible that there would be new "services" that not the off-line world currency market not has yet.

no.

well i hope panic sellers lose out so many times by panicking everyday, that their wealth becomes less then 1BTC each. then future panics by these naive people wont put a dent in the price as much. so i am glad they are panicking and losing bitcoins. as it dilutes the "power" they have to move markets in the future.

Do panic sellers count as an 'issue'?

+1

Centralization of mining.  Our current network is easily at the mercy of a government 51% attack.  It would take some global coordination, but it could probably be accomplished solely by seizing a handful of data centers.  Of course bitcoin would be forked in such a scenario and the concept of cryptocurrencies in general would live on, so I don't think the governments have a reason to do such a thing.  But if we accept that they could, then you have to ask yourself what is all the mining good for?  A high difficulty provides an easy way to verify that blocks came from the one and only bitcoin network, so some proof of work is essential.  But the cost of all the mining equipment is paid for by all bitcoin users and holders, so it is a reasonable question to ask ourselves how much hash power is enough?  Over 3 million new coins will come on to the network over the next 3 years.  At $1,000 per coin, that would be $3 billion of new value, so it would be reasonable to expect miners to spend, in aggregate, $3 billion to capture those coins.

Keeping in mind that with centralized mining, no amount of hash power will protect us from the government, is spending $3 billion necessary to protect the network from hackers?  Maybe, $3b does not seem totally unreasonable.  But lets say bitcoin goes to $5,000 per coin before this year is over.  Then we are talking about a $15 billion investment in mining equipment.  If our network's structure calls for an unnecessarily large investment in security, bitcoin would become vulnerable to a coin with a more economically efficient design.

Scalability.  I actually see this as more of a political issue.  The cost of transmitting, processing and storing bits will continue to fall as time goes on.  That should mean the number of transactions the bitcoin network can process per minute should increase as well, at least for a given cost.  Or put another way, the real costs per transaction should continually fall.  Eventually, micro transactions should be able happen on-chain.  Off-chain solutions will continue to exist, but those aren't really bitcoin offering a solution.  The more powerful off-chain systems become, the less reliant on bitcoin they will be.  As a bitcoin investor and holder, I want people to find use of bitcoin itself easy, cheap and irresistible.  If off-chain solutions come to dominate usage of bitcoin, not only will btc become less valuable, but there is even a greater risk that those off-chain providers switch to some other chain entirely.

I say it's a political issue because of the blocksize limit.