Topic: Mike Hearn Leaves Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 1226 times)

With Bitcoin being marketed as "digital Gold", we can never expect it to replace Fiat. Can we? Most people nowadays only invest in BTC with the hopes of becoming rich quick. It's seen as an investment tool rather than a currency. Besides, BTC's limited transaction capacity prevents it from being used as such. True digital cash needs to be scalable enough to handle high network load on a daily basis. It needs to serve the needs of people all around the world.

Bitcoin is decentralized, but it lacks convenience. On the other hand, "shitcoins" are convenient but they lack decentralization. Then there's the issue of governments putting "obstacles" to help prevent people from using BTC on top of Fiat. With this in mind, Bitcoin will always remain an alternative currency (instead of a direct replacement of Fiat). Perhaps, that's the reason why Mike Hearn left Bitcoin?

bitcoin already is/was a global currency, it has no geo-location coded boundaries.. however due to the dev politics that is inspiring the DUMB mindset that bitcoin should have less transactions(due to bloat) and more fee's per transaction.(done purely to promote other networks) bitcoin has become out-priced to be useful for some 3rd world countries to transact
.. within bitcoin code there is no protocol that uses geo-location information grabbing to prevent people around the world from using it, however the economic games played by devs to incite the games of fee wars has economically deterred certain countries from desiring bitcoin


when the onion packets of LN payments get transmitted via the channel routers, when deducting fee's and other stuff. the data of value/amounts are measured in msats(unknown unit to bitcoin) which are pegged to sats at a certain rate. this rate can change..
channels can also say they are locking a funding amount to then create false 'commitments'(IOU's) but then use the same UTXO on another channel thus allowing double spending or not allowing the recipient(inbound balance user) from ever actually getting the amount they are supposedly promised.. so there are many flaws in LN where it can allow alot of fake payments and not guaranteeing settled funds, etc etc

wrapped coins are a whole landscape different again, they are even further not truly attached to the supposed mainnet they peg to
...when using wrapped or inbound balance msats, just remember #not-your-key-not-your-coin. be cautious, be aware, be careful and try to avoid getting stuck with the junk whilst someone else holds the true key to control the utxo

I don't recall seeing anyone in the last few years who would be deluded enough to believe BTC will replace fiat entirely and become the global currency. Many bitcoiners would not even see that as a desired outcome.
The best I could hope for is for Bitcoin to become a widely and actively used currency that exists as an alternative to fiat currencies, in parallel to them. I'm not cheering for a state-mandated use of Bitcoin.

But as for the usage of Bitcoin for everyday transactions - the biggest problem, aside from network congestion and associated high fees, is that only a very few people earn income in bitcoins. And nobody will be buying btc for fiat just to spend it on goods.

Did not Bitcoin already a global currency?  It can be used as payment for purchases in different countries.  I believe network congestion and global adoption are related but different at the same time.


Technology is improving so is the Bitcoin scalability if the developer really is seeking out a true solution for the problem.  Remember there is no permanent in this world but change, scalability for Bitcoin is just a script away.  If developer find out and created a script that will make Bitcoin scale, then it can refute the statement of never reaching the adoption level because of what it is today.  Remember before the e-wallets and international bank transfers, it was a tangible coins and papers which is very impossible to transact international transfer without peddlers physically moving in every part of the world.  How many decades or century it takes for tangible things to become digital?  Bitcoin is still in early years of development compared to the existing financial system so we can expect a lot more development in the future if developers keep on searching and researching improvements for Bitcoin specifically the scalability feature.

Bitcoin will not reach that adoption level in future, never.

Now, there are 642,420 transactions last 24 hours that shows Bitcoin is used for daily transactions, globally. Difference is there are always opposite people in a same society or a planet, there are people who will use Bitcoin for transactions and there are people who don't use it.

You can imagine it like there are people who read paper books but others read e-books, same examples with cash and digital bank transfers or through e-wallets.

So...

Am I just wading through religious zeal or is there a valid argument for how BTC is supposed to become a global currency used in everyday transactions globally in a self-custodial way?

Mike Hearn has contributions for Bitcoin and he deserves with a solid position in Bitcoin history.

There is an archive page with 17 messages of Mike Hearn's questions and discussions directly with Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.
https://plan99.net/~mike/satoshi-emails/thread1.html
https://www.bitcoin.com/satoshi-archive/emails/mike-hearn/
Mike Hearn forwarded Satoshi emails to Charles Hoskinson Help me Archive Satoshi's Emails

Bitcoin is definitely thriving in terms of price, i.e. as a speculative financial instrument, and who knows, maybe it will become some sort of alternative reserve currency, but it's hard to deny that we departed from the original idea of it being a currency that people would actually use as money (aka a peer-to-peer electronic cash system).
I've come across this meme sometime ago and I think there's a lot of truth to it:



This was especially evident when everyone was cheering for the spot ETFs approval, which did pump the price up but could turn out harmful to Bitcoin long term.

Man when I first read the title, I assumed someone replied to an almost decade old topic. I was around when he left in 2016 and it was all over the news. At the time, many people also followed in his foot steps and just quit crypto all together.

In hindsight he left at the worst time. I have a feeling it had something to do with the dead activity of 2015 where bitcoin pretty much went nowhere. It brings back nostalgia just hearing his name Mike Hearn. Pretty sure most of the people replying in this topic have no idea that he left 8 years ago.

What's the difference between lightning and wrapped bitcoin tokens on eth? They both promise 1btc for your 1 wrapped btc or 1 lightning btc. LN is like a stable coin but it is backed by BTC instead of USDT. WBTC is the same thing. They operate on different networks but that's essentially what they do.

Tbh I'd rather use a well established alt like ltc or doge when btc is slow and expensive. It worked for me till now.

So when/how does BTC become a global currency?

Are we saying that was never the goal? Are we saying that it was all a part of the plan to only be a store of value and that people will always use something else for daily transactions at scale?

when you realise lightning is a completely different network you then realise that your statement makes no sense
EG
the future of cars is to only ride bikes

there will be subnetworks for small niche utility, but..
when you realise lightning is buggy with issues even LN devs wont/cant fix*, you realise that for small niche subnetwork utility, LN wont be it.. devs will have to start again using a different network model for subnetwork niche utility

(*the more popular LN gets the more issues it will have with liquidity)

So the only route for bitcoin to become the global p2p network is lightning?

Fees are only there to help protect the BTC blockchain against transaction spamming. They will increase according to network activity. If the attacker keeps pushing transactions on the Blockchain, fees will rise until they become too expensive for such attacker to continue. People like you and me would need to wait until fees decline to get back in the game. You can always set a low fee when making a transaction. The only downside is that you will have to wait longer for it to go through. It can take from a few hours to a few days.

If you're still in a hurry, you could try switching to an altcoin with lower network congestion. Or you can open a channel on the Lightning Network while on-chain fees are low to take advantage of its benefits. When on-chain fees rise, you won't be affected because you'll have BTC "parked" in the LN. Fees will stay dirt-cheap, while transactions will confirm almost instantly. A pity that Mike Hearn missed out all of the fun. Bitcoin is doing well without him. I wonder who will leave the development team next? Will it be Luke Dash Jr. (a staunch Ordinals critic)? Only time will tell.

It was temporary because it couldn't continue. The demand couldn't handle the cost.

So how does this scale again?

I feel bad for Mike Hearn because he sold his Bitcoin holding at cheap rates but there's no space for weak hands in Bitcoin Hodlers club and he's not an OG anymore. Although as a developer he should not lose hope but his poor observation skills made him sell his Bitcoin holdings and that was his own poor decision. I believe he'll regret for his decision for long term.

BTC is still a great option for p2p payments and tx's, especially for cross-border payments and sending money to people on the other side of the world, with just their BTC address. It is true that fees can go high, like it happened when ordinals and runes tx's were filling up the BTC blocks, but things like that can only be temporary. The thing is, we cannot change the way the network is designed, if there is a demand for block space, tx fee is going to go up and miners will prioritize tx's that pay the higher fee.

with his departure it does not affect the development of bitcoin, because bitcoin never relies on several individuals in its development, so when these people leave the bitcoin scope, it has no effect whatsoever. and moreover what they develop is actually not that significant an impact on bitcoin, for example like the lightning network, it still has several problems which make it still not a solution to the scalability of bitcoin.

Wait... so when demand for blockspace goes up, fees go up is a part of the design. I get that.

But so high that it can't scale to support a global p2p economy?

That is not going to be possible Sir, Bitcoin scalability can never rely on LN rather it will be better with COREDAO or Satoshi Core which requires Bitcoin miners to delegate the BTC hash power to the network for the betterment of the both L1 network of which may even solve the trilima problem in crypto currency in future and another way is to introduce a L2 network and run off chain transactions on L2 before bringing it to BTC L1 network which LN can not handle. See reference below

https://coredao.org/explore/blog/59