Topic: Bitcoin has no future as a payments network, says FTX chief (Read 945 times)

Its ranking do speaks for itself on how bitcoin had been trust up over a decade.It isnt surprising that those no coiners or haters would definitely be targeting about scability issues
that we've been seeing through ages and this one isnt really that surprising.

They could say and talk all they want yet bitcoin was never intended to replace fiat or something like that but rather focusing on that p2p decentralized payment system
which its creator do really talk about.

Expect that there  would really be always those criticisms and negative input and its not something very new and already been anticipated.

I think the lightning protocol is the perfect solution for the scalabilty issue. Even if Bitcoin does not get to become a currency used for day-to-day transactions, its existence is justified by being a great candidate for the best store-of-value instrument the humanity has ever had in terms of portability and security.

I assume that FTX plans to implement some sort of payments program similar to Coinbase to establish themselves as a “payment network” for Bitcoin, so it doesn’t surprise me that he would take that stance. I’m sure he also has plenty of developers aware of the drawbacks of using Bitcoin as a payment network with a substantially higher amount of users. I don’t think this is as controversial a statement as some might think and is instead to be expected from someone in his position.

maybe i should read this ftx founder chat in full. because lately many media have made fud subtly by cutting the words of pro-bitcoin figures as if they were made antagonists. But so whatever bitcoin is still bitcoin will be much more valuable in the future. Bitcoin can be used as a deposit asset such as gold and of course it can be used as a means of payment like money. that's the current fact about bitcoin. there are countless people who transact with bitcoin and of course there are also many who store it as a valuable asset like gold.

Can you stop spamming with poof.io links? is that your service that you're trying to push in here?
Open a new ANN and dedicate it to poof, and then you can write about as much as you want. is that ok for you?

FTX's Sam Bankman Fried became a hero when he saved Sushiswap and became the villain when everyone began to speculate that it was him through Alameda Research who was liquidating everyone. He is presently helping some of the largest cryptolending companies with their cashflow through providing USDC and Bitcoin revolvers hehehe. Will he become the hero again? The cryptospace has a memory of a goldfish.



NEW YORK, June 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Voyager Digital Ltd. ("Voyager" or the "Company") (TSX: VOYG) (OTCQX: VYGVF) (FRA: UCD2) today announced its subsidiary, Voyager Digital Holdings, Inc. ("VDH"), has entered into a definitive agreement with Alameda Ventures Ltd. ("Alameda") related to the previously disclosed credit facility, which is intended to help Voyager meet customer liquidity needs during this dynamic period.

VDH entered into a definitive agreement with Alameda for a US$200 million cash and USDC revolver and a 15,000 BTC revolver (the "Loan"). As previously disclosed, the proceeds of the credit facility are intended to be used to safeguard customer assets in light of current market volatility and only if such use is needed. In addition to this facility, as of June 20, 2022, Voyager has approximately US$152 million cash and owned crypto assets on hand, as well as approximately US$20 million of cash that is restricted for the purchase of USDC.

Source https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/voyager-digital-provides-market-update-301572971.html

I think the idea that "Bitcoin has no future as a payment's network" is an excuse for why 0xBitcoin on Ethereum was founded. They copied Bitcoin and convinced people to buy a fake Bitcoin on Ethereum and said that it was faster. IMO, the best way to scale Bitcoin is bigger blocks or integration with another chain like ICP or Flare.

to be honest i would aggree with this one and also we can take example of dogecoin that has been multiple shilling by elon musk, in my opinion there is two crytpo influencer
1. the get paid for shilling
2. they buy the coin before the shilling so they can sell later on

lets first deal with these few details..
you might want to check it out for yourself and not rely on what another LN lover has told you..
decentralised independence also applies to research. not blind trust of a peer to do the checks for you..

the keys used inside an LN channel are not ones derived from a bitcoin core node. they are made purposefully inside a LN node using a variant whereby the users can reveal their private keys(secrets/revokes) after each channel state change to the partner to be used as a 'penalty method'

2. you also find that the payments. the messages that make 'payments' are not in a bitcoin transaction format.
not only are the values measured in msat. but it has none of the typical in-out layout of a bitcoin raw transaction
your confused between a LN payment and a commitment that happens after. they are 2 separate events.

have a little read of this
https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/04-onion-routing.md#tlv_payload-format
and https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/11-payment-encoding.md#payer--payee-interactions

as you can see the messages are not typical bitcoin formats. nor is the value in a sat measure that the bitcoin network will accept.

you will also learn that channel partners do not ever actually send to each other a full bitcoin raw tx format to each other EVER
(there are many bugs and flaws that cause LN nodes to accidental build a raw tx on their side using bad data from the payload/invoice of partner, when trying to translate convert the payload/invoice data into a bitcoin raw transaction o then hold as a possible commitment)

3. el salvador dropped using LN within a couple months, last year.. and is now using a custodial exchange.. as its backend for its chivo wallet (research alphapoint)
so yea do some research beyond the hype media of what the LN lovers pass between each other.. as that hype media is outdated and full of flaws

funny part is.. you were the one saying the payments were made in bitcoin format..
.. you might want to do the research mentioned above about when your "simple math" occurs. and how there are many ways to break the 1000:1 deemed peg that is not actually a fixed unbreakable consensus rule..

as for your thoughts that you still believe LN is a layer of bitcoin like a zesty skin of an orange there to protect and only surround bitcoin.. please please do more research. realise LN is a separate network that bridges between many blockchain currency networks. and wants to be the defacto network everyone jumps into and avoids using the main nets of actual blockchain currency networks.
all offramps to the bridge want people to get away from the bitcoin network and litecoin network where everyone locks up value and only plays with msat in the LN network

by the way its not my theory. its the LN fans sales pitch

@LFC_Bitcoin. Agreed. I thought he would be one of the ethical founders in the cryptospace. However, he said this from an interview for a mainstream website. I am not certain what it implies, however, does he have an intention to bail out some of the cryptofunds and services in the cryptospace? He did this before when he helped save Sushiswap from failure on 2020.

If FTX and Alameda issues a public announcement of a bail out, this might cause a pump on much of the market hehehe.



"I do feel like we have a responsibility to seriously consider stepping in, even if it is at a loss to ourselves, to stem contagion," he said. "Even if we weren't the ones who caused it, or weren't involved in it. I think that's what's healthy for the ecosystem..."

Source https://mobile.twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/1538518138685464577?s=12&t=iH_StnEokfjakkNbe0Tk3A

Disappointed in him but not unexpected. What do we think a fiat bro will say publicly, at least. He’s the owner of a shitcoin roulette casino, he profits from apes being over leveraged & getting liquidated. His honey is fiat money, I shouldn’t think he’s too bothered about bitcoin, he makes too much money other ways.

In my country, it is because of the regulation that bans Bitcoin as payment (although legal as commodity asset), because Bitcoin is decentralized so it cannot be controlled by the government and government is not responsible for any impact of Bitcoin.

I ma not sure about this, if this is so, there will be many more tokens created, it means that many more shit tokens created.

Assumptions can be sometimes great and positive but most of the time it was wrong and turn into FUD. He can be wrong or not, that was his prediction and market view based on what he observed in the past until today. Well, for us who are too optimistic about Bitcoin will certainly oppose his idea but yes, he got some point that the volatility of Bitcoins makes it hard to know where it will be going. In fact, some big and growing countries still declining crypto. This could be a factor that makes him think about it.

I know that a lot of brands start accept crypto as BTC and ETH! I am sure it will be use for payments!

The man is basing his comments with the way Bitcoin is in right now and yes we have to admit that as far as payments can be concerned Bitcoin is not what it is supposed to be and that is why many are questioning its viability on this aspect. Now, when we talk about payments maybe he can be referring to everyday small transactions because for big transactions like buying a car, a house or anything luxurious I think BTC has no problem in there. In case the challenges will never be addressed fully, then maybe we should be looking at Bitcoin really like a gold...and there is nothing wrong with that per se while still waiting for the appropriate infrastructure that can make BTC as good player in the payment industry.

Agreed. And being honest with everyone, I really thought Sam Bankman-Fried would be one of the ethical founders in the cryptospace. Through Alameda Research, he and his team might have been trading against the users much of the time since the beginning. There are rumors that he made a deal with Jump Capital involving a large percentage of Serum tokens to manipulate retail investors into losing in Luna and UST. I do not have the whole story, however, more details will be shared soon.

I read the headline as : Sam Bankman-Fried has no future as an influencial chief executive according to Bitcoin.

I mean seriously, anyone who is supposedly an influencial figure in crypto should at least understand what Bitcoin is becoming and that there is nothing standing in its way? Does he even take into consideration all the neverending upgrades that Bitcoin keeps going through or that Bitcoin can be scaled in two ways: the blockchain can be upgraded to enable greater throughput
and additional networks, called layers, can be created to allow bitcoin to be transferred without directly using the blockchain.

Which part of this is not scalable?

And the high environmental costs is the argument I hate most. The problem is not the fact that it uses electricity but rather that our current way of generating electricity is extremely dirty and would be just as environmentally damaging even if Bitcoin was never invented. The solution? Green resources and new energy technology.

This is why you can never trust a Bankman.

He is just spreading FUD so he can fill his own pockets like the other fudders with too much fiat.

LN is a protocol. It was built to work with Bitcoin. It can and does work with several altcoins because it is just a protocol so anything that can compatibly link into that protocol will be able to implement LN. Just as higher protocols of the internet stack work with various lower protocol layers of that stack. Doesn't change the fact that LN is literally a layer on top of Bitcoin. It directly uses Bitcoin addresses. LN payments are Bitcoin payments. LN is a 2nd layer for Bitcoin (and others but since Bitcoin is the only money in the crypto world nobody cares about using LN on other blockchains).

Now sure when you use Bitcoin over LN there are different tradeoffs as opposed to using L1. Instead of data, fees, speed being the bottleneck/tradeoff as on L1, on L2 you have liquidity/channel-direction, needing to be online to receive, and needing to not lose the channel data.

- The liquidity/channel-direction problem seems like it can be solved or mostly solved with good node implementations behind the scenes, and payments being split up to be routed I believe is already somewhat implemented or being implemented so that helps with the liquidity routing problem. - Needing to be online could get a little annoying in a world where the average person is running a LN node on their phone and they aren't connected, but it seems like most people keep their phones connected all the time anyway, and obviously for anyone who is running a business in which they are taking payments over LN they are going to have a quality setup so that wouldn't be a problem anymore than it is for any business that relies on the internet.
- Needing to keep an up to date record of the channel seems to be the main technical problem that needs working through. Obviously having a setup that makes regular backups helps alleviate this a lot, but LN should be foolproof on this to really be a first-rate mass payment network. I did hear in a podcast a solution to it that would eliminate any need for watchtowers and any risk of losing channel data, but the person talking about the solution also seemed to be saying this solution would be bad for the base chain, I don't know anything beyond that in terms of what is being done to deal with that tradeoff. Obviously watchtowers are the easy but not ideal solution for this.

I guess the main other thing is that you need to on-board to the LN, but I imagine that will get easier and easier as time goes on, considering it is as simple as a friend setting up a channel with a new user.

LN still has a lot of development to go until it is ready for primetime (I mean like, El Salvador adopting Bitcoin and using LN is extremely early to be using LN as a mass solution), but it is usable now and is a great payment network for Bitcoin. You just have to realize it is a technology that is being used as it is maturing. If LN was some corporate product it very likely would even be released for a few years. But by releasing LN into the wild at a very early stage the protocol and implementations are able to advance with lots of user feedback to make a better payment network for Bitcoin. Just as early users of Bitcoin took the risk of putting money into something that may end up failing leading to loss of money, early users of LN put money into something that has kinks in it that may lead to loss of money.

I'm no expert on LN but I'm pretty sure what i've put here is quite accurate. And obviously the LN is a 2nd layer Bitcoin network is plain enough to understand. I don't even know wth you're taking about when you go on about LN is a world bank lol, that's some funny conspiracy theory stuff you got going there. Get on your tinfoil hat the elites are coming to control you!!  . And the msats are not btc is way overblown. They are just fractions of a sat. The msats are just rounded down to the nearest sat when settling to the basechain - not a big deal, very simple math.

You appear to be making an effort not to understand what is being implied. Similar to Craig Scammer Wright, who I reckon is only acting like he is a stupid person, has a deeper agenda behind the act. Be careful of this and the community should not be so arrogant to underestimate these dumb people. Sam Bankman-Fried is filling his pockets, yes and he will fill them more to use and expand his power and influence not only in the cryptospace, being one of the largest donors in the Democratic National Convention.

Also, he who controls the markets, controls the world and the biggest powers behind the cryptospace are the largest centralized exchanges. This is why it is very important for the community to accept Defi as a development that can bring power back to the developers and the users.

I completely agree, if you are referring to the base layer BTC network. Regardless of the environmental cost or network speed, it will always be #1 because it has proven itself among many others, and I would be skeptical of ANYTHING now or in the future that claims to be better. It can be a means of payment later on if the sender and reciever is not in a hurry, but I understood thats why lightening was developed. Other than that, his (Sam) point is what? We knew this already, but why did he say it?

Yeah I was confused why he was saying this. Seems like a very bizarre statement from an industry executive who should know better. Yeah the base chain won't be useful for payments, at least not everyday payments, buying a car or a house or something and paying a $5 or $10 or even $50 fee is fine, but even the current $1 to $2 transaction fees are too much for nomrla daily one-digit or two-digit dollar purchases. But LN solves this.

You aren't going to get a better money solution in crypto than Bitcoin. And LN makes Bitcoin very cheap to spend. So it seems completely nonsensical to imply that some other crypto network will be better than Bitcoin for payments, considering that no other blockchain even comes remotely close to Bitcoin in all the ways that are important.

I believe the reason why people are not using it because only few sites or platforms are offering the LN payment method. Even exchanges are not offering LN services. If people will see the LN availability, I am sure they will utilize it because of the very cheap fees. But if they won't see platforms offering LN payment, I don't think they will patronize it.

LN is not a bad method to use but at the end if people are not moving there then I do not know what good it does. I get that it is definitely a great method and it is cheap and it is fast, I used it before as well so not like I never tried it and it was the best thing ever.

I literally paid a few satoshi as fee and then it went to the address just a few seconds later, so it is the ideal thing and there is nothing wrong with using it if we are talking about only the fee and the pace. However, it must be a bit limited if everyone is declining to use it, consider why would people not use that if it is such a great thing, it should be used by everyone if it was okay.

Again, this is just an opinion. It seems to me that if you believe all the opinions, the result will not be very positive.

It seems like you've jumped to a conclusion without properly understanding what he is saying. Why do you think that Bitcoin acting as a commodity somehow makes it impossible for it to keep the biggest market cap of all cryptocurrency? There is plenty of room for another currency to come along as surpass Bitcoin and he puts out some very good points as to why an improved cryptocurrency could do better. It seems like you're connecting dots in your own mind that were never implied. It's very valid to point out that the Bitcoin network does not scale at at an appropriate level to be able to handle the amount of transactions that existing network provides on an energy efficiency basis.

People who respond to questions like this do not represent the whole bitcoin owners and that is only assuming they didn't lie.

Wrong. PoW doesn't do that at all. The whole design and usage of a blockchain does.

People like Franky should propose their "better" solution instead of blindly attacking what others have proposed which is working.

Wrong. BSV and any other copycat is considered an altcoin because they are not bitcoin. Simple as that. They are considered shitcoin because they have nothing to offer and they just copied bitcoin, added some flaws to the protocol and are running with far less hashrate.

Bitcoin is already functioning as a currency. It is not perfect but the humanity has never been capable of building a perfect system ever. Expecting otherwise is naive. Bitcoin has reached a nice balance between decentralization (and all its benefits) while functioning as a currency.

up until now, bitcoin is not heavily used as payment method because most holders are treating this as an investment, where they can earn profits if they will just hold and not use it. aside from the expensive fees if you are using 3rd party wallets, the confirmation also takes time and that is not favourable to payment sector. he may have reasons why he said such statement. but he may change his mind once bitcoin and other crypto are well-accepted as payment method and people are using it.

Personally i think this is not a crucial thing cause bitcoin isn't the same cryptocurrencie and we have alot of other coins that can be used for payment so i don't think he is really attacking bitcoin but maybe he mean that we have better alternatives for that matter

Assuming that bitcoin is the only medium of exchange used by everyone in this world so millions of transactions will clog the network which is what he actually said if I am not wrong but why we only need bitcoin, this can be one of the way that people can use while combine with existing or upcoming medium of exchange. As of now bitcoin is cheaper to transact and the implementation of LN can solve most of the clog we all are talking.

PoW is not a scalability problem.. asics do not ever see transactions.. it doesnt matter if a block has 1 transaction or a million transactions an asic is still going to see the same length hash.. so scalability is not a PoW thing at all.. they are two separate things entirely that do not impact each other

there are thousands of people that dont use LN for many many reasons. they are just too shy to point out the flaws due to the absolute abuse they would get from the LN fans. i simply do not fear or care about the LN fans, so i dont fear speaking out about their flaws and fantasy dreams of utopia.

its not just about not running on a blockchain. its EVERYTHING about LN thats bad.
its the data packets that go between channels are not actually raw transactions that bitcoin would understand.
its that the channels are not audited.
its that the denomination LN uses is not sats or btc.
its the factor of requiring to lock(stake) up coins to then play with pegged different denominations on another network
its the liquidity issues bottlenecks
its the middlemen routing problem
its the lack of sovereign control due to co-signing and middlemen
its everything.

LN has not fixed anything because LN has MORE flaws than bitcoin.
the liquidity problem stops payments from being sent around for any useful amount.. yes great in utopian dream of wanting to spend 2cents. but useless if your locking up say $1.2k for a couple months and wanting to buy pizza every day for 2 months, i guarantee you, you will not successfully fulfil every pizza payment in 2 months. for many reasons


oh and LN is not more private. they literally have to publicly announce their channels just for routing to function in their current iteration of their bolts(facepalm).. just wait until regulates see which ones 'route' and then make them have to become registered MSB, simply for making payments on behalf of others for a commission(yep LN is ripe for regulators to get lots of licence fee's)

as for 'currency'
bitcoin IS recognised legally as internationally wide currency by many governments(but not common man in their daily lives) which is where governments managed to slide in their jurisdiction to then treat businesses swapping fiat for btc as currency exchanges rather than retail merchants buying selling product.

but you might mean treated as common currency by common man in their daily life where people have actual daily utility. there are many many ways to achieve this. (unlike the LN fangirls that pretend they are the only 'solution'(facepalm). and FALSELY pretend i am trying to push and enforce only one solution in the opposite direction to LN. sorry but there are many ways to help bitcoin grow. and i mean bitcoin. not other networks brand stealing, and no its not just a blocksize debate like the silly fangirls ignorantly think)

When I first the topic of this thread, i have a little smile inside me because there will always be an attack on Bitcoin by people who are after creating FUD in the market.

When I learn that the man was named the biggest bitcoin antagonist in the crypto space I was surprised because his FTX supported BTC. What he said about Bitcoin didn't surprise me but I hope a lot of people that are into crypto investment understand the purpose of this people because most of them did join the BTC boat when it was $6K because they underestimated it and now that the price is in $29K they want to do something that could make the price go dip more so they could accumulate it before the major bullish market start.
They are playing a political scam game guys.

Remove Bitcoin as number 1?
For your information, Bitcoin has been the number 1 through it concept ever since people understand being beneficial and this is not Sam Bankman-Fried doing but the community support doing. In addition, it's the same concept that makes people see BTC as the best payment system for cross border payment.

I understand why he made those comments. Bitcoin, in its current state, doesn't scale effectively to be used as a global payments network. Also, even though a lot of the comments in here direct their statements toward a bitcoin that is used for payments, only a handful are really using their bitcoins to pay for things they purchase. Most will surely just keep their bitcoin for the long run, in hopes of netting a lot more from what they initially invested. Being realistic isn't being antagonistic, it is actually the opposite of that—it helps things improve and the gears turning for future development.

Those statements in Op is very correct. Though Op wanted to throw him out of context but I surely understand the man.
Though Satoshi proposed bitcoin as a currency, and as long as we are maintaining the legacy and living upto the expectations of bitcoin, we must first call bitcoin a currency before an investment assets.
To buttress what the man said, if you conduct a questionnaire in this forum, you will understand that almost 90% of people using btc in this forum are holders instead of spenders, and so it is outside the forum.

The PoW system posses some kind of scalability issues on bitcoin and we all know it. The LN has come to augment this flaw if bitcoin. Yet, some persons like Franky1 believes that LN is not bitcoin and not exclusively for bitcoin because it doesn't run on blockchain. With the privacy concern about Bitcoin, anything that isn't bitcoin would always be treated with care and that is why BSV of btc hard fork is not seen as bitcoin.
What I am sure of is that bitcoin will unanimously undergo some kind of reforms if it's to serve as a complete currency.

Call me skeptical, but when I see that instead of arrests and prison sentences, there is mention of punishment for possible tax evasion when it comes to Kwon - I wonder if this is happening in South Korea or some highly corrupt third world country. The person behind it all says publicly that he enjoys watching companies die, and there is a saying that whoever rejoices in another's misfortune will have an even greater misfortune - I hope he will receive appropriate punishment.

Not small mate but the number of people that owns bitcoin are too much. Just see how many countries legalized the use of it and also if there's only small amount of people who own bitcoins, why would the value of bitcoin grow like this? There will always be mass adoption that will takes place because many people or countries are already starting to recognize bitcoin and its benefits.

There are still btc owners out there that uses their bitcoins on different purposes and this includes paying or sending money. Maybe the guy that said btc has no future for payment network, doesn't use his btc on this purpose because he is afraid to pay a little higher fee and he is afraid that his transaction will get delayed.

               We shouldn't hate on the guy though for expressing his views. Just like any other person out there, he is just stating what he currently sees in Bitcoin. Besides, the guy has a bit of a point too. But even if these issues that he mentioned get fixed, I still think that bitcoin would most likely be still widely utilized more as a store of value rather than a means of payment. Simply because people are greedy and its potential to increase in price over the years is the real culprit behind the issue of more people holding it rather than spending it.

You are right with that. We have alternatives, coins. Lightning network is one of it like you said. They can also use natural sources of energy as they are more cheaper although the cost of miners (equipment) will still be the same which is expensive but they don't really need to buy one or to become a miner when the only thing that they want is to accept bitcoin as payment method to their business. Just let the miners handle the fees and hassle but bitcoin users can worry less.

You know when famous personalities starts attacking bitcoin, it could mean that they want the price of bitcoin to go down more evenly so that they can buy it cheaply by themselves or they do this things because they are supporting a different crypto and they want it to become a number one coin.

The logic behind it is that, you do not spend gold to buy something, but you do that with bitcoin currently but it is getting lesser and lesser. So, he is saying that considering the energy used to create it, and send it, and transaction fee costs (and the mining power required to make it secure) and also the fee cost itself for the sender, etc etc all comes down to the fact that you can't buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin since the fee would be higher than the coffee itself.

But as an asset, just like gold, you could just buy it and hold it and make money. So bitcoins future may look a lot like gold currently, instead of being a currency, it could be an asset.

knew the bodyguard of the LN clan would turn up. aww, should i call you LN daddy?

its always the same half a dozen people that LOVE LN that say the same BS scripts.. you say nothing original.
your(and your pals) solution to everything 'fork off and start a new network'

you love other networks, you can only imagine other networks as solutions..
..very revealing
you want people that want more from bitcoin to move to other networks (facepalm)

you dont want the bitcoin network to change. because that means competition that pulls people away from other networks. you dont want bitcoin network to grow.

how about. because you know you love other networks. you go play with other networks and stop trying to get involved in bitcoin topics where people that want BITCOIN scaling and keeping bitcoin as the main useful network. where actual bitcoiners can actually talk about bitcoin without it being a subtle advert for your other networks.
.. basically. try and learn what is bitcoin. and understand you dont want to use bitcoin. because you are happy on another network. and then, YOU go play on your other network with your buddies.

there are thousands of topics talking about SCALING BITCOIN. hundred of thousands of topics about uses of bitcoin.... and only dozens of topics about LN.. so many thousands of people do want bitcoin(the actual bitcoin network) to scale and to be the main useful network.
so grow up and stop playing victim because i call out your crappy altnet.

..
heres a mega lesson in niche utility..
if YOU want a bitcoin L2.. how about YOU fork LN. and make a separate LN that only functions with bitcoin. which has its units of measure only in btc and sats. where there is a proper BOLTS rule all wallets have to follow to ensure all channels can be audited to protect value.
no htlc 'payment' messages, no 'turbo', no 'msat', no 'atomic swap' no need to even lock/peg value.

now you go FORK OFF

So instead of whining about Lightning, go and propose a better solution. Raising the block size has fallen on face. It's been perpetually proven that the users don't want to change that rule. Consensus has shown it. If you don't like it, fork off. That's the beauty of decentralized systems. Stop enforcing your obnoxious conspiracies to others, it doesn't work. You're just becoming even more abhorrent.

Back to ignore.

anyways.
due to dev politics (not any hardware/physical incapability) bitcoin has been prevented from evolving the bitcoin network to be useful for 'the unbanked'
if you want to have bitcoin continue to be useful. things need to be done to move bitcoin forward. passed the 7 year long 'stall' era we are in.. yep this stall era is designed to promote other networks. and needs to be dealt with

yes bitcoin can remain the main asset. because the mining cost dictates the underlying bottomline store of VALUE (yes i said value, separate from price.. because PRICE(volatile speculation of temparary measure) sits above the underlying store of value amount)
EG. when ethereum detonates to PoS. its SoV will drop by 1000x because the cost of mining(staking) will be only a couple dollars rather than a couple thousand dollars

so as long as bitcoin remains the main network people put the effort and cost into mining on. then bitcoin remains the most costly coin to acquire

as for being the dominant 'market cap' asset.
market cap is a meaningless measure.
its a silly kindergarden math stat.  it has no significance.

i can easily create a crap coin of 5trilllion pre-mined coins. sell just a single coin for $5 and instantly create a market cap of $25trillion
(remember when the 10,000 bitcoin pizza ($40 of pizza)) in 2010
that made each coin deemed valued at $0.004
meaning the 5mill coins in circulation had a market cap of $20k
all from that one pizza deal

Yeah, keep interpreting everything in your own special manner in order to find "mistakes" everywhere and keep on with your odd narrative, you're doing great job polluting everything.

gotta laugh. contradicts himself in the same post.
??L2 of bitcoin??.. (facepalm)
 
its not a bitcoin LAYER.. its a separate network.
you are still referring it as a second layer aka level of bitcoin..

its not like bitcoin is segments of an orange fruit and LN is the orange zesty skin that forms around bitcoin segmants (layer)
its not like LN is also some new tech 'quantum super position where it also is a citrus layer lemon fruit (LTC) at the same time..

LN is not about being layers/skins. version 2 of coins.
.. yes it pretends to be.. and you have fallen for that game. . but soon enough you will realise the game being played... but for now, seems your still stuck thinking of it as the skin of bitcoin.


LN is a hybrid tree which branches out to have different fruit. hooked to it
it is not the fruit itself
LN is a bridge between different cities. it is not the city or city street itself
LN is a boat between different continents. it is not the continent/country itself

LN is not a continents shoreline, thats physically part of that continent to give only that continents citizens somewhere nice to sunbathe
LN is not a ringroad owned/maintained by the city and only that city citizens can use
LN is not a skin of a fruit thats protects and useful only for that particular fruit

..
take the CBCD.
china have one. Switzerland have one, france have one, russia have one. but they can all connect to what is called an m-bridge.
the M-bridge is not a CBDC. its a type of 'new age world bank of SDR'
where by the SDR is not common "fiat"(fiat being old equivalent to CDBC)

LN wants to become the 'world bank' of crypto. 'world bank' is not 'dollar'
what they want to do is:
by locking crypto up where its main co-signer are elite services(megahubs). and then allow their customers to play with other denomination that are not as audited secure/valued as proper crypto.
(yep LN msats are not like digital gold LN msats are not btc)

so instead of concentrating on what other networks can do..
so instead of concentrating on trying to affix the bitcoin brand to other networks

.. maybe try to realise what is not bitcoin so that you can their reign in your support. and then put your support into what actually is bitcoin and what can actually be useful for BITCOIN

You've picked the wrong guy. I don't think that LN is Bitcoin 2.0; LN is LN.


I don't care at all how it's called. And I don't care what was initially designed for.
It was improved, it seems to do well enough the L2 job for Bitcoin and it helps. Imho this is what matters at the end of the day.
You don't like it, don't use it.

Every single one of them is the same, they use Bitcoin as a launch base and then they start throwing shit as it since they need to sell the world their more spectacular project, another altcoin that will turn to dust. And the ones that are calling themselves true believers and so are just about the money, I remember on a similar discussion you brought up Michael Saylor's old tweets, the miraculous change in his opinion wasn't because of the technology or the fundamentals, those were the same, it was simply because he smelled the money!

That's why I totally dislike having some random guy worshipped like he's some kind of leader of the bitcoin world, sooner or later it will turn bad, really really bad!

One good news about the other scam you mentioned, seems like South Korea's authorities are on the move. The original article mentions also something about investigating the way customers were attracted with a high annual interest rate that might get jail time, and in Korea, you can get 40 years for just lying to investors about where you put their money.

bitcoin has been in the last 7 years stifled in its evolution of onchain growth.
stifled on purpose. hoping people LIKE YOU flip over to other networks.

LN is not a bitcoin thing. its a network of its own. in 2015-17 LN existed but not in a form bitcoin could recognise.

MANY coins adapted to meet LN compatibility (shame really it should have been other networks like LN that should have done the editing to meet bitcoin format.. not the other way round)

this is why LN is not bitcoin:
EMPHASIS
1. LN was not designed to fit bitcoin (but for advertising purposes it wanted to steal the name/brand fame/trust of bitcoin fans)
2. LN is not a sole feature that only works/compatible with bitcoin
3. its a bridge between many coins. its not meant to be a 'bitcoin'

so stop trying to think of LN as bitcoin 2.0.. because its not, heck its not even bitcoin 0.00.01

..
with that said. if you want BITCOIN(emphasis*1000) to evolve. that means actually getting the devs to drop their politics and get them to actually evolve the bitcoin ONCHAIN scaling
we are not in dial-up days of PC's that only have 100gb hard drives.
those days passed a decade ago, its time we moved forward

Does anyone with a little common sense believe that any of these famous people in the cryptocurrency world really believe in Bitcoin? They use it as a base to build various companies through which they will sooner or later try to sell some of their ideas on how there is something better than Bitcoin.

Just look at the list of those who have been shilling that scam from South Korea for months, and have done damage of some say as much as $80 billion - all of them have in common that they believe in only one thing, and that is profit. It means nothing to them that will deceive millions of people, that some may commit suicide and that will kill people's hopes for a better tomorrow.

For those who know who is Mike Novogratz, it will be hard to believe that he did such nonsense - will Sam SOLman tattoo his favorite alt too?

Craig Scammer Wright is also a college graduate and has a PhD but that doesn't make him smart nor his statements right. Same with creating a website and a service that makes you more money!

In my experience they always want to push a "better" solution that ends up filling their pockets.

In other words a picture with an old dude who used to be somebody cost him a lot of money

and like the other said that bitcoin can still be using as payment using lightning network or using layer 2 if possible

In my opinion bitcoin wont ever go  is the mother of crypto

I would agree on most occassions, however, not in this interview because what Sam Bankman-Fried is implying agrees with mainstream media's agenda against cryptocoins like bitcoin. Those clarification statements Sam tweeted were made after the backlash from the community. However, I agree with what he said about bitcoin, but I am skeptical of his agenda in why and in the way he said them.

There was an interview with Sam Bankman-Fried before where he said that the next Bitcoin will be Solana. This man is one of the most intelligent people in the cryptospace. He knows the difference between bitcoin and proof of stake altcoins but he declares Solana will become the next Bitcoin because it can make thousands of transactions per second? What is the agenda hehehehe.



The next Bitcoin has to be a blockchain with the potential to process thousands of transactions per second. Since the Solana blockchain can process 50,000 transactions per second, Sam Bankman-Fried sees potential in SOL becoming the next Bitcoin.

Influential investors are bullish on Solana, contributing to a rise in the altcoin’s adoption. In a recent interview with Kitco, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) lauded Solana for the protocol’s ability to scale to millions of transactions per second. The FTX CEO said that it makes Solana an integral part of cryptocurrency adoption and the next Bitcoin.

Source https://www.fxstreet.com/cryptocurrencies/news/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-believes-that-solana-can-be-the-next-bitcoin-202111270618

Lightning is advancing so fast that it's hard to keep up with the latest.

Right now you can setup a card to make tap payments using only Bitcoin, no legacy financial institutions required.

Here's a post I made about this: https://stacker.news/items/29647

So basically there's already a payment network based on Bitcoin that can be used with the same convenience as credit cards today.

There's no future for these institutions that want to keep charging huge fees for moving money around.

I think the journalist took his comment out of context and they used that to spread FUD.    How nice will it be for these journalists with a hidden agenda to steer a conversation in a direction, where you are forced to say something that might be used against you.  

When you want to take down an organization or a movement, you start from the top and you take down their leaders. This might have been planned or it is just some people with a hidden agenda that are nitpicking certain statements to push their agenda.  

Example : Journalist : Do you think Bitcoin use a lot of electricity..
              Guest : Yes...... bla bla bla
              Journalist : Does the high electrical use of Bitcoin mining, influence it's future ......

The guest must navigate a minefield to say or respond to the question that has limited exits ....because it was a loaded question. 

Maybe he is just trying to implicate that the functionality of BTC compared to the newest cryptocurrencies that are out there is outdated. It doesn't mean that it's going to be obsolete or something, but it would be different and lose in terms of function. If you look at it now, somewhere in any country, someone will use BTC to receive or send payments; you would need minutes to wait for it to be confirmed. In the real world, that's not ideal.

So I see other cryptocurrencies stepping up to the payments network. I hope that Lightning would be widespread already, but until that is user-friendly and could be quickly done, I think it's other cryptocurrencies first.

Don't get me wrong in my comment; I love BTC, but it's being realistic, and compared with the other crypto, BTC lacks in it. So that's why he said it's just going to be a store in value asset.

Whatever mistake he might have said in describing proof of work, he still is one of the smartest founders in the cryptospace. He graduated in MIT, he created his own exchange from nothing and he is presently one of the biggest names.

This is why despite being one of the smartest, what is his agenda behind his statements? He is one of the biggest donors in the Democratic National Convention and look at the picture, he is with Bill Clinton hehehe. Also, after the backlash from the interview, his PR team did very well in creating his statements for him to clear his stance. He should pay them more Solana and FTT hehehehe.

I wouldn't say you can't.
If we look at history, only a handful of developers tried to come up with more efficient solutions so we can say that nobody is really trying to come up with better coins so we can't conclusively say "we can't".
For example they tried PoS and other alternative algorithms and they failed. Another thing I liked was DAG but that didn't look promising at all. The rest, from litecoin, namecoin, etc. all the way to ETH are shitcoins that have been copying bitcoin in all aspects while changing small things in the protocol.

I mean looking at the current bitcoin's history for sure he's not wrong, people prefer to hodl because the hope (know?) it'll go up in value again in the future, but also let's not forget that a very small amount of people own bitcoin. If and when there would be a mass adoption, and that's a big if, things will probably change.

What we need to question is the flow of journalist writing itself. Because what he wrote could be an agenda for his interests. A journalist can twist the facts in an instant. Turning the facts is their paid duty for a particular interest. I wouldn't really believe a statement written by a journalist. Because we can still look for credible sources by listening to live video conversations and watching them in full. For me, the original source is still catchable, so referring journalists is the second option. The first one we can still reach by looking for full videos, not full articles.

For sure, Sam Bankman-Fried knows about Lightning Network (LN) too. He is just for sure telling his belief or opinion about Bitcoin this time.
In the beginning, I didn't expect that Sam Bankman-Fried will release a statement about this because some people, will accept it as FUD or bad news for Bitcoin, but for me, I don't find anything FUD for this kind of statement from a billionaire in the cryptocurrency industry.

the language of journalists sometimes corners the object that is being discussed, so in this case we must read the original information, not the piecemeal news.
but here I don't have a conclusion in the future on whether or not bitcoin can be used as a means of payment where as we know fiat is the main thing in terms of payment, but if as an investment tool bitcoin cs can be said to be the best investment if we buy it at the right time

I personally disagree with him.  I think anyone who’s states right now that bitcoin will never have a future as a payment system is ignoring the fact that bitcoin can always be improved/updated (despite those who are against this sentiment). There still is some hope with lightning network, so I don’t think we can write it off just yet.

Disappointed in him but not unexpected. What do we think a fiat bro will say publicly, at least. He’s the owner of a shitcoin roulette casino, he profits from apes being over leveraged & getting liquidated. His honey is fiat money, I shouldn’t think he’s too bothered about bitcoin, he makes too much money other ways.

Without LN, I too think that bitcoin doesn't have a future as a payment network. Except LN, bank transactions are much cheaper and easier to manage. There is one innovation solution that my country has started called - UPI, has revolutionized the payment infrastructure totally. People don't have to carry anything except their mobile phone. So with such innovations in place, bitcoin doesn't really have a chance!

But with LN, bitcoin may be able to capture a little bit of share in this trillion dollar payment processing industry as the time goes.

Everything related with decentralized coin minting is inefficient. You can't have a blockchain if you don't have decentralization, and you can't have decentralization if you don't have inefficiency. However, nobody said that bitcoin should be the default payment network. In my opinion, bitcoin is the hard money, re-invented, but, Lightning is the key to efficient payments.

For dinner? The ever-inflating currency. For anything in the web that I can't pay with cash? Bitcoin. Simply because I want to pay in cash, whether that's USD, EUR, BTC or gold.

Sure you do. If nSequence is lower than 0xffffffff - 1, it allows replacement. If they're using RBF, you can ask them to broadcast a new non-RBF transaction, where they spend the RBF's outputs.

You cannot ensure some will not try to be smartass and use RBF.
And then I'm sure you won't be pleased to wait in line for maybe hours until the transaction gets confirmed.
And, again, if many people would do that on the daily basis the mempool will be overly crowded. And then "setting a fee that can make confirmed fast" can get easily unreasonably expensive.

Bitcoin transaction fee can be cheaper on Saturdays and Sundays if the mempool is congested. I send during weekdays and the fee is low. The last time I remember the fee to increase was when whales were moving their coins to exchanges to sell recently, that was when bitcoin price fell below $30000 recently. After that, the meepool is not congested again. The mempool congestion did not even surpass 20 to 30 sat/vbyte and it was not for long time.

I checked the mempool now and this is weekday, the fee is very low.

https://mempool.space/

1 sat/vbyte, $0.04 for transaction fee, that should be for 1 input and 2 outputs transaction.

The fee is not big, memory pool congestion does not happen often.

It is possible, it depends on the approach used, setting a fee that can make confirmation fast and making the transaction not to be RBF.

The fact that you or me may send transactions mostly Saturdays with lowest tx fee is not the topic here.
The fact that in most days tx fees are far from big is not the topic here.
The fact the exchanges steal people's money as withdrawal fees and claim it's tx fee is also not the topic here.

The topic is, imho, that if we want to have half of the world pay in the supermarket with Bitcoin, on-chain, it's not possible, because the next block may come in a minute or in an hour and because if so many people would transact so much the fees would go over the roof.

LN is off-chain and, as I said, it's easily seen as a plugin to Bitcoin, not Bitcoin itself, hence the statements is not about LN.
I see his statement like "LN can be the payment channel and Bitcoin itself can be the store of value". Better?


Edit: I can agree though that he could have better skills in telling the things in order to not scare off the average Joe.

Eh. He has a point in at least part of that statement.

While the environmental factor is by no means an inhibitor of Bitcoin's becoming a payment network - most mining farms are on renewable energy (especially hydroelectric) and that particular concern only exists in the minds of industrialists and environmental concerns - there is some truth to the scalability question.

Of course, you cannot increase scalability by increasing the block size - people tried that 5 years ago, has never worked out.

But there is a future in a L2 network (most likely LN) being the primary form of payment and, exactly *how* the mass-adoption of such a network is to be executed still remains an open question. At any rate, L1 will be reserved for batching these several transactions. This will cause tx fees to soar, which in turn will push people to L2 (the tx fees will be paid from the profits of the LN relays).

Of course, the prevalence of LN cannot occur if there are two or more competing implementations of it. There must be only one dominant implementation, like bitcoind is for L1.

I read this news few days ago and it made me laughed, but what I am just disappointed at is that I did not believe someone that created one of the leading exchanges can say such trash and mislead people. Bitcoin fee is still cheap than thought and there is lightning network which has low fee and help mempool to maintain not being congested to some level.

If bitcoin withdrawal fee on FTX is huge, then another means to let people to think it is bitcoin fee that is costly, not knowing it is the exchange withdrawal fee.

All I know is that he is absolutely wrong and one of the people that is misleading people about bitcoin transaction fee. Exchanges are the idiots that is making people to think bitcoin fee is high. When many exchanges are supporting lightning network now, FTX has not yet supoort it. I have begin to dislike this FTX exchange, we do not want criticism but to support lightning network and reduce bitcoin withdrawal fee.

While I do believe that the journalist has probably nitpicked/twisted the words, it's pretty much common knowledge that on-chain transactions are somewhat limited and slow. So I don't know what's the news here.
And LN is seen by many as not being Bitcoin (maybe a plug-in for Bitcoin, but not bitcoin itself). So again, nothing spectacular here.

I don't want to take his side, he may be only after profits and not a believer in bitcoin, but it doesn't matter here, he is not as wrong as some see it.

In my opinion, there are many solutions for what said, maybe bitcoin cannot be a good payment system because of the costs and many other factors but still there are many solutions, for example, the lightning network, regardless of being a successful solution or not but I guess a year later there will be more and better solution and increasing the interest of using bitcoin as a payment system for people. But regardless of all that, many people do not use bitcoin as a payment system but they will save it and hold it as an investment option to be safe from the inflation rate. However, I'm not sure what's behind these speaks when they start attacking bitcoin sometimes periodically.

This very "intelligent" person doesn't still know that proof of work has nothing to do with validating transactions

In any case I'm very curious about what alternative he is supporting and whether his centralized exchange is introducing yet another centralized shitcoin like their counterparts that is supposedly "better than bitcoin"...

Stop right there.  When do we stop giving attention to and caring about these people?  Global warming becomes trendy, we are all of a sudden supportive for it.  Bitcoin crashes, we were suddenly right all along that it may or may not have a future even if we have always been publicly bullish about it.  Bitcoin's price goes for an All Time High?  We were always bullish to begin with!

I have a particular disgrace for those who always keep up with trends even if they most of the time simply contradict themselves by doing so.  Just stop caring about them.  Of course there will always be bullish and bearish voices.  I do not say the voices that do not align with my vision shall be silenced.  I just think there is no point in caring about someone who just repeats a narrative that has been proven wrong multiple times.  Bitcoin is scalable for a reason.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

The antagonist and the agenda are came from the media, as it always has been to keep spreading FUD. As already been addressed above, SBF has given a clarification regarding that news, which actually is just simply he being misrepresented.

You can always try using an archival website to browse paywalled news: https://archive.ph/zsJjb.

Why not if people can use very cheap fee at 1 satoshi/ vbyte. To have it, they must use non custodial wallet, not exchange wallet (custodial).

In addition, they can use Lightning network that can help them to make transactions with fees are in peny.

The growth of Lightning Network since 2020 is a good signal for Bitcoin as a payment method. Important to note, fee is not what most important, secured, health of a network is most important. With Bitcoin, you have it, not with altcoins.

Which parts do you disagree with? what he says is true, it's simple history;

Gresham's law

People think that the transaction fee and the block time are the only reason why isn't bitcoin being used for daily payments like Visa or Cash, but that is not exactly true, even if you had an instant and free transaction, would you rather pay for dinner using bitcoin or using your ever-inflating currency? unless you think Bitcoin will magically cancel every other payment method - then BTC can't be the largest payments network for centuries to come.

It really doesn't matter what Satoshi called it in the white paper, the consensus surrounding BTC is that it's a store of value more than electronic cash, it turns out that people needed a decentralized, autonomous, pseudonymous store of value asset more than a payment system to use for their daily purchase.

Although I was not able to read the full article in Financial Times because I am not not a subscriber, but his points are well highlighted in this post. Sam Bankman-Fried is well grounded in the crypto space and has a lot of experience. His concerns might be genuine but his predictions is too harsh and stereotyped.

He should understand that Bitcoin operations can be upgraded or redesigned to overcome these challenges he mentioned. His concerned about high environmental costs is being tackled by Bitcoiners. It is important to not that energy usage is not equivalent to carbon emissions. The amount of energy consumed can be easily determined but it is more difficult to determine its carbon emissions. Hence, analysts always publish how much energy Bitcoin consumes but less has been said of how much carbon the operations emit. But generally, the Bitcoin market is pushing North American energy sources to get greener because Bitcoin mining in the U.S. is more than 50% powered by renewables.https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/20/bitcoin-mining-environmental-impact-new-study.html

But I see his observations and predictions as a wakeup call for the Bitcoin community to study his reservations and make necessary amends.

He already cleared his stance via Twitter, claiming that the journalist just nitpicked a specific quote (which is typical with journalists).

His stance: https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1526098754163687424

^I suggest reading his conversation with Jack Dorsey.

Well, about the future I do not dare to predict, but what he says I think it is not only because of the problem of scalability, but also because Bitcoin is a deflationary scarce resource and, if people buy it expecting it to be more valuable as time goes by, as it is logical due to its nature, it is normal that it will not be used massively for payments and other systems will be used.

I only see it being used massively for payments if all fiat and shitcoins disappear, and that is not going to happen.

Being one of the richest in crypto, he obviously sounded like what most rentseekers do. He could be saying the truth but with the layers being developed on top of Bitcoin, its very possible.  He just have to look at lightning network and taro and whats coming.

But he must have been banking of some altcoins he invested. Its crazy times though so anything to say for weak hands to sell is something.

That's a crazy assessment in my opinion and no one has been able to remove bitcoin from the first order because so far bitcoin has remained the main coin among other altcoins.
And talking about bitcoin having no future is impossible because there are a lot of changes in people that we see after they introduced bitcoin.
Even though bitcoin is considered to have no future as a payment, we can still use it as an exchange with others so that we can continue to feel the results of bitcoin.

Bitcoin should be attacked for its lack of dynamic scalability protocols. Whether it needs them or not in the immediate term, it doesn't actually have any way to adapt to a high throughput of transactions if that's necessary (and I don't think the community has goals on making that possible - I don't think many coins can adapt well to this yet though either and fully prevent spam attacks).

Saying you can use the lightning network for enabling more transactions is starting to feel a bit like saying you can use litecoin and doge for them (you can, for sure use those, but you're going to have to do something different still - maybe open a channel). The lightning network has a gain in being backed by bitcoin's blockchain but it relies on trust, not naively but not elliquently either from what I understand of it.

Not sure if he has some narrative behind by attacking bitcoin as a payment network. Of all the people, he should understand that bitcoin can still be a good payment scheme if big retailers are going to used it.

But what will be the best crypto payment network now? Doge? ETH? doubt that as well. We still need to give LN some time to developed and mature and then we will see how it goes.

I don’t want to make a mountain out of this mole hill. In the first place, the FTX chief is not the only person who has been frank about Bitcoin’s potential as a payment network. There have been issues about it. As a matter of fact, even the supposed solution which is the Lightning Network is not even as welcomed as Bitcoin itself. There are definitely fans of Bitcoin who are not fans of this different protocol.

However, saying that it doesn’t have a future as a payment network is a little bit too much. It will, of course, not replace fiat but it will certainly remain as a better alternative to fiat in certain respects.

Finally, it is a misnomer to call Sam the biggest Bitcoin antagonist; he is pro-Bitcoin.

Are we witnessing the emergence of the biggest bitcoin antagonist in the cryptospace? I think Sam Bankman-Fried is one of the most intelligent founders in the cryptospace, however, I am starting to be more skeptical about his agenda. In the article, he mentioned that bitcoin may have a future as an asset, a commodity or a store of value. I am scratching my head on what he might be implying in his statement. Is he telling us that bitcoin will not forever be no.1 in market capitalization?

Skeptical. I do not know if he is making an honest assessment on bitcoin or if this is the beginning of their new agenda to remove bitcoin from being no.1.



Bitcoin has no future as a payments network because of its inefficiency and high environmental costs, according to one of crypto’s most influential chief executives.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the digital asset exchange FTX, said the proof of work system of validating blockchain transactions, which underpins bitcoin, was not capable of scaling up to cope with the millions of transactions that would be needed to make the cryptocurrency an effective means of payment.

“The bitcoin network is not a payments network and it is not a scaling network,” said Bankman-Fried.

But despite his views on bitcoin, Bankman-Fried said he still believed the world’s biggest digital asset had a place in the crypto market.

“I don’t think that means bitcoin has to go,” he said, adding that the token may still have a future as “an asset, a commodity and a store of value” akin to gold.

Read in full https://www.ft.com/content/02cad9b8-e2eb-43d4-8c18-2e9d34b443fe