Bitcoin is very powerful, yet even if at some points in the future, there might be long periods of time in which it is costing $1k or more to settle transactions on the main chain
If that ever happens bitcoin is begging for somebody to create an alternative currency.
I am fairly confident that there are going to be points in which spikes to $1k will happen and so then there could be some questions regarding how long such spikes last, and I am not merely referring to the debasement of the dollar's value, since that is an issue too, especially when we are making evaluations of relative costliness. When projecting into the future, I prefer to presume that we are talking about the valuation of today's dollars, even though it is becoming more and more of a fantasy to suggest that the dollar's debasement is not happening at relatively high rates (just like other fiat currencies)- so then we have options to valuate in terms of commodities and/or in goods and services?
Just take the recent history of BTC transactions, and yeah if you ONLY had one input UTXO, then there were many hours at a time and even leading into several days at a time that we could not transact with fees below 100 sats per vbyte (around $6), even for the slowest of transactions, and around that time, the most rapid would have been getting close to 300 sats per vbyte ($18), and so then there were also spike periods in which more than 400 or 500 sats per vbyte ($24 to $30) might have had been needed.. and so yeah that would be with the cleaner transactions that only involve 1 input UTXO, and even if the combination of UTXOs is not doubling the fees it does add on something close to doubling of fees each time the number of inputs double, and surely some folks have learned ways to engage in coin control and abilities to select UTXOs, but some folks have created a bunch of small UTXOs over the years..
So maybe we are still a long ways from $1k transaction fees, but the problem seems to be relative and surely the higher the fees, the more that bitcoin developers are inspired to figure out various possible solutions that do not completely cuck us into using custodial solutions.. even though sometimes custodial solutions might be some temporary measures... which I suppose might also be considered as a kind of layered transaction rather than on the base chain, and yeah also your point about the higher the transaction fees, the more likely that we are going to experience more and more competition from other products trying to reduce transaction fees and perhaps trying to offer some kind of semblance towards being as good as or better than BTC, but they would still need to establish that they are actually offering a competitive product (something like POW rather than POS, since POS is more likely a kind of custodial solution as compared to on chain bitcoin).
So far all the altcoins failed because bitcoin is just to good to be replaced.
That seems to support the point about competing away a protocol level product, such as bitcoin, there is going to be some likelihood that there is going to need to be something in the ballpark of a 10x improvement from some competition to obsolete bitcoin, that is even if we might give some benefit of the doubt that there might be some coin that might be in the ballpark of competing with bitcoin and offering better services. .not merely transaction fees but also is that a place that any of us would want to keep our value or to feel that we are able to achieve transactions without an intermediary.
But at this point there are going to be so many people that can not use bitcoin at all, that you will make the effort to change to another coin.
Surely, I am not unsympathetic to some of the fee matters, and I doubt that there are any real easy solutions.
I also have my doubt that actual physical block size increases would be a meaningful solution at this time, because there seems to be very reasonable concerns that fees likely need to both inspire development and to replace the block size subsidy into the future, so the raising of fees is not in itself an intolerable thing, even though there likely are needs to inspire the development of various low fee products that may well be connected to bitcoin without devolving too much into third party custodians. are some people might need to change their practices too, and if we are not sure about the future, then on an individual level we should also be attempting to make our UTXOs more resilient in times that fees might be higher than they are now.
What will happen is that if bitcoin really has a 1k USD transaction fee the price will be so high that all the old bitcoiners will not care anymore. But it will lock up bitcoin for new people to come in.
It is not just OLD bitcoiners, it is also very wealthy bitcoiners, since if someone is sending $100k or more and even in the millions or billions dollars of value, then bitcoin still would serve as a settlement layer that is better than any current settlement layer that is available. Also, maybe such high fees would not be persistent, but we should be attempting to prepare ourselves for those kinds of possibilities rather than just going forward and considering those kinds of environments not to develop from time to time.... and yeah right now, we might not have very many options to still peg our transactions to the main chain, but there are ongonig development of options that hopefully will continue to improved and to be inspired by the onchain fees sometimes being high.
And, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I am not completely convinced that shenanigans are not contributing to our current relatively higher fee environment, that relate to outside of band payments that contribute to some miners selecting transactions outside of the normal bitcoin process.. and I am not sure what can be done to incentivize that miners do not receive outside of band payments.. seems not easy to stop and surely there could be some miners that are purposefully (or maybe inadvertently) engaging in behaviors that are a kind of attack on bitcoin.
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Ethereum and Monero haven't "failed" bud. For the rest, the ones that are not money grabs obviously, then yes, the loogic applies that Bitcoin is (so far) too good to be replace.
I am not going to disagree with you that there can be a variety of shitcoins, including the two that you mentioned that can be used for the purpose of transacting during periods of high transaction fees on bitcoin, so that various shitcoins can serve as forms of second layers, but it would not necessarily mean that any of us should be keeping very large amounts of value on those coins or necessarily trying to promote some of them as if they were less shitty than others... In other words, we can concede that various shitcoins do exist and likely can continue to serve some purposes.... unless we are able to figure out some ways to still be able to transact and to have a bit more connection to bitcoin and its backing, on second and/or third layers that might be more connected with bitcoin.
Surely, I am not totally opposed to holding onto some shitcoins for the very purpose in which there might be times in which it is not very practical to transact on bitcoin. and perhaps more likely coming up in the smaller transaction situations - or when bitcoin onchain fees are at higher than preferred rates.
I don't think we are going to reach $1k transaction fees, but if that ever happens, then Lightning Network is standing ready.
You might be correct that $1k would be exaggerated and maybe would not last very long, even if there might be some short-term congestion, but I still stand by my point that the bitcoin is still valuable in those kinds of cases that it largely being used by BIGGER players and smaller players are more dependent on second and third layers and/or maybe participating in various other ways to share UTXOs.
Lightning has some problems with opening and closing channels and also with force closing channels, but it still might work if the channels are set up in advance.. oh and it also seems to have some problems if you initially set up the channel with a relatively small amount, so that could be problematic for poor people to set up a channel that might not be reasonable for them to even set $100 or $200 into a channel when they are living in ways in which they are wanting/needing to spend regularly and they might not have a lot of extra value that they can just keep in a lighting channel..
So you think that if you buy a $2 coffee in Starbucks this transaction should be registered in all computers running bitcoin in the world? Inegociable?
This is what makes zero sense to me.
Weird, so Satoshi was wrong now:
Forgot to add the good part about micropayments. While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall. If Bitcoin catches on on a big scale, it may already be the case by that time. Another way they can become more practical is if I implement client-only mode and the number of network nodes consolidates into a smaller number of professional server farms. Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical. I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.
There you have it. You provided evidence, so yes, it does seem that Satoshi was wrong.
The moment your 5$ has a priority over my 2$ then you have turned Bitcoin into a Fico Score machine!
And who decides what's the "importance limit" in it?
Who decides what's "important" enough to mandate space in the blockchain?
It seems that fees should help to establish whose transaction should end up getting processed first, but if transactions are being taken outside of the built-in on chain processing systems, then I am not going to claim to know how those kinds of behaviors can be fixed.
Many of us already likely realize that there are a lot of things in the world that are not fair, so I think that it is correct to suggest that bitcoin tries to have built in incentive mechanisms that would attempt to cause it to be as fair as is feasible.. which seems to be partially based on the payment of fees to have transactions processed.
Should consolidations be allowed, since they are obviously useless in terms of space used?
Should conjoins be allowed since they are just eating up space?
Bitcoin already allows for this.
Should we put a $100 limit on each output to prevent dust?
Sure dust limits are going to continue to evolve, and your suggestion seems impractical, even if you were to try to frame it in terms of satoshis rather than dollar values.
Or how about this, we should recreate all the blocks that keep satoshidice records, why should those spam tx be held there for decades when it's just useless back an forth movement of coins?
I have heard those kinds of proposals previously, and the size of those satoshi dice transactions seem like peanuts compared to the size of the transactions that seem to be happening in more recent times, but yeah of course it all adds up in terms of both storage and also in terms of bandwidth for initial syncs..
And use second layer (like LN or other)for small tx
And what was Satoshi's opinion about LN?
He would have loved it.
I don't think we are going to reach $1k transaction fees, but if that ever happens, then Lightning Network is standing ready.
If fees reach $1k, then nobody apart from millionaires will open lightning channels.
Of course, we are getting into very large levels of speculation, but just on the economic level, you are really exaggerating and even seeming to lack imagination.
Let's just say hypothetically that on chain transaction fees were consistently $1k, so of course, it would not seem correct to suggest that you need $1 million to create a lightning channel.
Even $10k would only cause fees of 10% and $100k would only be 1%. and if there was some kind of set up that the lighting channel was reliable for extended purposes, then maybe there could be a lot of transactions that make up for the initially high fees to open.. and yeah, sure we would likely have fees on the closing side too.... but still even if such high fees cause usage of the block chain to be for the wealthy, I really doubt that bitcoin would be millionaires only, even assuming a world with persistent $1k onchain fees... maybe we are also a long way from getting to some kind of a status of persistent $1k onchain fees, too?
Anyway, Satoshi opnion 15 years ago doesn't matters anymore. Bitcoin is much bigger than him. It is not centralized in his old posts.
First you say that Satoshi never planned the increase of the block size. If you are shown written proof that he did plan to increase block size you simply say that Satoshi is not relevant for todays bitcoin. Seems like you just dont want a bigger block size but dont have any arguments that support it.
This makes me wonder what you intentions are that you are not willing to support a larger block size?
Similar to 2017, anyone arguing for BIGGER blocks has the burden to show both evidence (burden of production) and logic (burden of persuasion) regarding why BIGGER blocks are needed at this time rather than the status quo situation, which means that they have some kind of obligation to present their facts regarding some thing that is broken and that their proposed solution would resolve the matter they believe to be broken without causing more damages than it fixes.
In other words, anyone who is suggesting that we need BIGGER blocks right now needs to provide such evidence and logic to such an extent that it is convincing others that such a change is justified.
Even our bad situation from the past 3 months or even if we go back the last year, these incidents of high fees and even erratic fees and even perhaps some other shenanigans going on that cause out of band processing of transactions, these do not seem to justify BIGGER blocks as being a current reasonable and/or prudent solution, but who cares what I think. you have to convince the node runners to switch to your new hard-forked software, or whatever is going to be your supposed transition into BIGGER blocks, if you are proclaiming that such a solution is currently justified.
