Topic: Can Bitcoin scale to become a major payment network? (Read 273 times)

Bitcoin has high chance to become a major payment network. Currently, many people are blaming Bitcoin for slow transactions and high transaction fees. While this is true, the solution for the problem has been already developed. Lightning Network was designed to handle small transactions. It isn't perfect but it doesn't require any modifications to the Bitcoin consensus (SegWit has been already activated). It works as a second layer so nobody is forced to use it.

If they improve the transfer speed, that obviously can happen!!!
Now, the new technology so the transaction price had been decreased a lot. Hope to see a bright future of BTC

I find it sooo unlikely. We will probably have a major payment network based on cryptocurrencies in the future, but it will not be Bitcoin. I will be designed to perfectly fit all the needs of such a huge infrastructure.

We are heading in that way but considering the current issues, I think it will need some more years. Bitcoin will be one of the major player in the fund transfer/payment processing industry. However, we need to find the concrete and sustainable solution for the issues like high transaction fees and confirmation time. These issues are like a barrier for micro transactions and proper action plan must be there in order to resolve these issues.

Changes to even national systems take decades to slowly take hold and transform the finance systems of a country.

Western Union, in 1914, began issuing purchase cards to select customers. Then, in the 20’s a number of oil companies began issuing out proprietary cards that were designed to create customer loyalty. These cards were accepted at the merchant that issued them and only in certain locations. Gas stations started issuing cards that could be used to make fuel purchases; some gas stations even started accepting competitor’s cards.

Department stores were next to jump on the credit card bandwagon. Department store cards were originally a marketing device, designed to increase the number of customers the store had. It turned out that customers really appreciated the “buy now pay later” aspect of the cards; the stores liked that there were limits to the repayment period. Department store credit cards gave rise to what’s today known as credit history as good customers that paid on time gained a reputation.

The 1930’s and 40’s saw the rise of revolving credit. This began when stores started to let customers pay debt off over months, getting rid of repayment periods by requiring that all debt be completely paid before any new purchases could be made. Customers could now actually carry a balanc eon their cards that wasn’t due within a specific period of time. This is also when credit card companies really began to make money from interest and fees associated with cards.

In 1946 the first bank card was introduced by a banker named John Biggins: this card was called the Charg-It. When a customer used their Charg-It card for a purchase the bill was forwarded to Biggins bank. Next, the bank reimbursed the store. Transactions could only occur locally and cardholders were required to have an account at Biggins bank. The first bank credit card came five years later, showing up in New York’s Franklin National Bank.

It took roughly 80 years for credit card systems to become what they are today. Not just because of technological advances but because users need time to accept the new systems and integrate them into their lives. Bitcoin is totally foreign to today’s banking citizens. It will be necessary for overlays to be built on top of the bitcoin network (like BitPay) to increase adoption. It will also be necessary to have professional developers (not the ragtag group of volunteers and corporate shills we have as devs now) to begin working on blocksize increases and chain pruning.

The short and sweet answer: it’s gonna take a long fucking time dude. You aren’t going to be around to see the end of it.

Maybe yes but time transactions could be very very long. Many people arguing about bitcoin scalability issue but there is still no the right solution to solve this problem.

Yes this is like trying to play Farcry 5 on a DX2-66MHz ... there is evolution everywhere. Lightning will take care of Microtransactions and the Blocksize was never intended to be 1MB. Satoshi implemented it and left a paper how to lift this. Why it was not done yet on mainnet is what? Politics? Strategy? The future miners will bring more cpu capacity to the network while saving energy - Internetspeed doubles and SDD cost nothing. So there is no reason to be worried about "decades". When DX2-66Mhz and then DX4-100 came out nobody was aware that computer speed will double each year ... so let us wait and see ..

Now that the network fees are getting cheaper I think that Bitcoin has the potential to rival other online payment methods like Paypal or Credit Cards as it can be a good alternative for people who don't want to be linking their bank account to a payment system. But speaking at a payment system for actual stores I don't think that it will be a success as I would rather reach out to my pocket and get my wallet to pay cash rather than spending my Bitcoin which I need to pay extra for the network fees. Bitcoin as an online payment method would be ideal for Bitcoin users in the future.

Probably yes, this may become a major payment network in the future years to come and for some countries, it is already operational. Considering bitcoin's accomplishments, more and more large corporations are taking consideration of what bitcoin can do for their business especially for monetary transactions that are fast and efficient to the users.I think the potential of btcoin is huge. So, it can happen. But it takes a lot of time for it to become a global network because it is experiencing some difficulties such as slow transactions and huge costs and it is limited in some countries. In the future it will overcome difficulties and it will become the international payment network
Yes its possible but it would take time especially now there's a lot of issue on bitcoin that I think should be fix first. The technology of crypto currencies are really good and can surely helps the economy to grow further but since bitcoin is decentralize government find it hard to support it but I am hoping that time will come and bitcoin will become a major payment network.

Bitcoin has the great potential to become a major payment network. But due to high transaction fee it may take a long time.

Maybe one day. But not anywhere near. I'd say less than 50% of the people know and have the knowledge in bitcoin. And these people use bitcoin as a payment network. But being a major payment network means that like real money, you can use it spontaneously anywhere, anytime. And by anywhere i mean across the globe(which is impossible for bitcoin) since not every country likes the idea of it. And just like what every body say, the transaction takes time.

If we compare Bitcoin to the early beginnings of the Internet, there were 9600Baud Modems (the ones where you put the phone-receiver in) - sometimes emails needed hours to go through due to using the same protocol like websites and i remember downloading Diablo I Beta for 36hours for about 120USD total. So compared to fees and speed and congestion this is basically the same ... give it some time to mature and look what we have today. SMTP / POP / IMAP and sometimes HTTP for Emails - so consider Bitcoin Core 0.15 (Not even 1.0RC) as a very early stage and wait for the development ... mass adoption is happening 300.000 new accounts per day on coinbase do not lie

                     I do agree with you, perhaps it can be consider as a second or alternate way of payment system but as far as i can see it could not be the main currency. Considering those several countries that doesn't accept bitcoin as their payment, it only shows that there could be lot more of things to come, it may also change when the time comes, but there is no guarantee that it will really be exactly as we think about.

No. I think with expensive transaction fees and slow delivery times, Bitcoin will not be a major for payment. And again, there are still many countries that have not legalized Bitcoin. And there are many other reasons that Bitcoin is not yet suitable to be a major payment.

If you follow what real core developers are saying like Van der Laan (don’t listen to Gavin “Wright is Satoshi”  Andresen), it will take many years, likely decades, for bitcoin to scale to anywhere near a major payment network.

In order for bitcoin to compete with just the ACH Network it would need to move $43 trillion and 25 billion electronic financial transactions each year. That’s roughly 125 times more transactions than bitcoin is currently doing very poorly. There is a backlog in the mempool so it can’t even keep up with what it’s currently doing.

If you look at the transactions processed by the major credit brands (Visa, MC, Discover, etc.), it appears to be around 100 billion transactions. That’s 500 times more than bitcoin is currently processing poorly. Now we’re up to 625 times increase in transaction volume for bitcoin.

Pure EFT transactions (debit card) is around 50 billion per year. That adds another 250 times more transactions worldwide than bitcoin is currently doing poorly. We are now at 875 x current number of transactions that bitcoin is now doing horribly at keeping up.

It’s safe to say that at minimum it will take many decades before bitcoin can be made to effectively scale enough to just replace the ACH Network. It could possibly take the entire lifetime of the youngest bitcoiner on this forum before to could scale enough to take over all major worldwide financial transactions. If it could be made to handle that kind of volume, bitcoin would need to change from its current 5 or less transactions a second to 56,000 transactions a second and the blockchain would fill up the New York public library.

Of course it is possible, there is already an implemented scaling proposal which is segwit and lightning network is on its way but the real problem here is people don't see Bitcoin as it must be which is payment method, instead people are taking advantage of Bitcoin's volatility and use it as an investment. But what I think is if lightning network will be the solution to scaling problem of Bitcoin, at can be a good start for merchants or online shops to start accepting Bitcoin as payment method and also those who stop accepting it will resume it even even if it is highly volatile.

Yes its possible but it would take time especially now there's a lot of issue on bitcoin that I think should be fix first. The technology of crypto currencies are really good and can surely helps the economy to grow further but since bitcoin is decentralize government find it hard to support it but I am hoping that time will come and bitcoin will become a major payment network.

Yes definitely it is one of the major payment method used by today's generation of people . Bitcoin will reach many people in last year it is one of the best achievement from online crypto currencies and it has the highest value when comparing to all other currencies used by people in the world .

I think it's possible in the future, but not now.
Because BTC now there are still many problems, such as block congestion and transfer speed is slow, the problem of high transfer fees, if lightning network solves these problems, so it's possible.

Probably yes, this may become a major payment network in the future years to come and for some countries, it is already operational. Considering bitcoin's accomplishments, more and more large corporations are taking consideration of what bitcoin can do for their business especially for monetary transactions that are fast and efficient to the users.