Nothing says good investment like high demand and fixed supply.
Topic: Bitcoin: Some Issues - page 2. (Read 2217 times)
Nothing says good investment like high demand and fixed supply.
* Encryption. Yes its a long way off, but the SHA256 and other algorithms required for bitcoin will be broken at some time. If bitcoin ever survives this long, when any of these algorithms are broken it could cause irreversable problems.
These algorithms can be substituted for better algorithms in a hard fork.
We already have empirical evidence that bitcoin is able to survive a hard fork as long as there is broad consensus about it.
If these functions are broken, it's likely that they will be broken gradually and there will be enough time to react.
How long is your investment timescale? 30 years?
I just spent some time considering whether to invest more in bitcoin. I spent a lot of time thinking about it , was on the point of transacting, and decided not to. I thought I'd post my reasons here for general information. No doubt they will get hounded down by all those people who have an interest in more buying of bitcoin , well who cares. I think the 1 or 2 posts by people who can make useful comments on this post is worth 100 posts of angry speculators. I'm going to spare the reasons to invest because they are widely circulated here. I'm also declaring that I have an existing holding in bitcoins.
* Scalability. The block chain limit is 1MB per block. Until this limit is removed, there is a limit on the number of transactions that can be made per second. Right now it seems we are at an average transaction usage of 0.2MB per 1MB block. When this approaches 1MB , there will be problems on the network - transactions will take a long time to be moved into blocks, leading to increasing slippage, loss of transactions. At the current growth rate in usage, assuming a 10% monthly growth rate in transaction volume, this will happen at the end of 2014.
* Encryption. Yes its a long way off, but the SHA256 and other algorithms required for bitcoin will be broken at some time. If bitcoin ever survives this long, when any of these algorithms are broken it could cause irreversable problems.
* Community. These issues (mainly scalability) are being discussed at length on the technical forums. Yet no solution has been found. Or rather *agreed on* - at least as far as I can see in these forums. Assuming the issue with scalability can be addressed in the form of maybe expanding the block size limit, then good for bitcoin. However this just brings up a further issue of an ever increasing block chain size. However let's ignore this for the moment and assume that the (exponential) past increases in bandwidth and storage along with time will make continue into the future making this a non issue. There seem to be multiple technical issues that may/will arrive in the future that as far as I can see have not been addressed. AFAIK there is the Bitcoin Foundation, a collection of those people who are most invested in bitcoin, who will work towards addressing these issues. However if they are not addressed, bitcoin will not continue working. So a bet on bitcoin is betting that these issues will be solved and therefore the effectiveness of the Bitcoin Foundation. Well I'm not sure of how this Foundation works - Im sure that they will make good decisions regarding the architecture given that they are all involved in it so heavily. However the question is, will their decision making be good for them and the ordinary bitcoin investor who holds bitcoins, or just good for them.
Sorry to post this, I know its a negative outlook. I welcome your comments.
* Scalability. The block chain limit is 1MB per block. Until this limit is removed, there is a limit on the number of transactions that can be made per second. Right now it seems we are at an average transaction usage of 0.2MB per 1MB block. When this approaches 1MB , there will be problems on the network - transactions will take a long time to be moved into blocks, leading to increasing slippage, loss of transactions. At the current growth rate in usage, assuming a 10% monthly growth rate in transaction volume, this will happen at the end of 2014.
* Encryption. Yes its a long way off, but the SHA256 and other algorithms required for bitcoin will be broken at some time. If bitcoin ever survives this long, when any of these algorithms are broken it could cause irreversable problems.
* Community. These issues (mainly scalability) are being discussed at length on the technical forums. Yet no solution has been found. Or rather *agreed on* - at least as far as I can see in these forums. Assuming the issue with scalability can be addressed in the form of maybe expanding the block size limit, then good for bitcoin. However this just brings up a further issue of an ever increasing block chain size. However let's ignore this for the moment and assume that the (exponential) past increases in bandwidth and storage along with time will make continue into the future making this a non issue. There seem to be multiple technical issues that may/will arrive in the future that as far as I can see have not been addressed. AFAIK there is the Bitcoin Foundation, a collection of those people who are most invested in bitcoin, who will work towards addressing these issues. However if they are not addressed, bitcoin will not continue working. So a bet on bitcoin is betting that these issues will be solved and therefore the effectiveness of the Bitcoin Foundation. Well I'm not sure of how this Foundation works - Im sure that they will make good decisions regarding the architecture given that they are all involved in it so heavily. However the question is, will their decision making be good for them and the ordinary bitcoin investor who holds bitcoins, or just good for them.
Sorry to post this, I know its a negative outlook. I welcome your comments.
Interesting points which are beyond me.... anyone have anything to offer?
I just spent some time considering whether to invest more in bitcoin. I spent a lot of time thinking about it , was on the point of transacting, and decided not to. I thought I'd post my reasons here for general information. No doubt they will get hounded down by all those people who have an interest in more buying of bitcoin , well who cares. I think the 1 or 2 posts by people who can make useful comments on this post is worth 100 posts of angry speculators. I'm going to spare the reasons to invest because they are widely circulated here. I'm also declaring that I have an existing holding in bitcoins.
* Scalability. The block chain limit is 1MB per block. Until this limit is removed, there is a limit on the number of transactions that can be made per second. Right now it seems we are at an average transaction usage of 0.2MB per 1MB block. When this approaches 1MB , there will be problems on the network - transactions will take a long time to be moved into blocks, leading to increasing slippage, loss of transactions. At the current growth rate in usage, assuming a 10% monthly growth rate in transaction volume, this will happen at the end of 2014.
* Encryption. Yes its a long way off, but the SHA256 and other algorithms required for bitcoin will be broken at some time. If bitcoin ever survives this long, when any of these algorithms are broken it could cause irreversable problems.
* Community. These issues (mainly scalability) are being discussed at length on the technical forums. Yet no solution has been found. Or rather *agreed on* - at least as far as I can see in these forums. Assuming the issue with scalability can be addressed in the form of maybe expanding the block size limit, then good for bitcoin. However this just brings up a further issue of an ever increasing block chain size. However let's ignore this for the moment and assume that the (exponential) past increases in bandwidth and storage along with time will make continue into the future making this a non issue. There seem to be multiple technical issues that may/will arrive in the future that as far as I can see have not been addressed. AFAIK there is the Bitcoin Foundation, a collection of those people who are most invested in bitcoin, who will work towards addressing these issues. However if they are not addressed, bitcoin will not continue working. So a bet on bitcoin is betting that these issues will be solved and therefore the effectiveness of the Bitcoin Foundation. Well I'm not sure of how this Foundation works - Im sure that they will make good decisions regarding the architecture given that they are all involved in it so heavily. However the question is, will their decision making be good for them and the ordinary bitcoin investor who holds bitcoins, or just good for them.
Sorry to post this, I know its a negative outlook. I welcome your comments.
* Scalability. The block chain limit is 1MB per block. Until this limit is removed, there is a limit on the number of transactions that can be made per second. Right now it seems we are at an average transaction usage of 0.2MB per 1MB block. When this approaches 1MB , there will be problems on the network - transactions will take a long time to be moved into blocks, leading to increasing slippage, loss of transactions. At the current growth rate in usage, assuming a 10% monthly growth rate in transaction volume, this will happen at the end of 2014.
* Encryption. Yes its a long way off, but the SHA256 and other algorithms required for bitcoin will be broken at some time. If bitcoin ever survives this long, when any of these algorithms are broken it could cause irreversable problems.
* Community. These issues (mainly scalability) are being discussed at length on the technical forums. Yet no solution has been found. Or rather *agreed on* - at least as far as I can see in these forums. Assuming the issue with scalability can be addressed in the form of maybe expanding the block size limit, then good for bitcoin. However this just brings up a further issue of an ever increasing block chain size. However let's ignore this for the moment and assume that the (exponential) past increases in bandwidth and storage along with time will make continue into the future making this a non issue. There seem to be multiple technical issues that may/will arrive in the future that as far as I can see have not been addressed. AFAIK there is the Bitcoin Foundation, a collection of those people who are most invested in bitcoin, who will work towards addressing these issues. However if they are not addressed, bitcoin will not continue working. So a bet on bitcoin is betting that these issues will be solved and therefore the effectiveness of the Bitcoin Foundation. Well I'm not sure of how this Foundation works - Im sure that they will make good decisions regarding the architecture given that they are all involved in it so heavily. However the question is, will their decision making be good for them and the ordinary bitcoin investor who holds bitcoins, or just good for them.
Sorry to post this, I know its a negative outlook. I welcome your comments.
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