Topic: Why I am now not enthused about increasing the block size - page 3. (Read 2444 times)

There are times I want to buy a cheap piece of equipment from China from the very cheapest supplier, which is often a site like bestofferbuy or banggood. I wouldn't trust those sites with my credit card details, but I would be prepared to risk buying from them using Bitcoin because they are often the cheapest choices. The equipment they sell is often cheaper than a cup of coffee. If they started accepting payment in Bitcoin it could boost their sales and possibly increase Bitcoin's transaction volume above the point where it needs bigger blocks.

I don't know anyone that uses cash for internet transactions.

The "mainstream" crowd everyone apparently targets has exactly zero incentive to use irreversible payments over the internet.

Regarding the masses not wanting a payment option that is irreversible: What about cash? That is just as irriversible as bitcoin and we use it every day.

I don't think it will be a big problem, and feedback will play an even bigger role for webshops.

Lightning network, voting pools, open source payment systems (Strawpay). It doesn't need to be a miracle. These tools are there already, technologists doing what they do, they will find solution to these problems.

You mean Bitcoin lightning network and sidechains, right?

Like I said, I hope some miracle solutions will be derived so we can have the best of both worlds!

This is a false dichotomy. The mass payment feature will not be "dropped", it will be served by second-level open-source payment layers.

I've read throughly your post and I have noticed that you have stated at least 5 strong use cases for Bitcoin. You have also stated the one pessimistic use case and that is the mass payments for buying a cup of coffee for example.

I am happy about the other 5 use cases that have a lot of potential according to you. If we would be able to win some market cap in some of those 5 use cases, there is no doubt in my mind that Bitcoin would be huge.

Now about mass payment. More I read about the block size increase problem, more I came to a conclusion that the right, perfect solution is very hard to find. Might be that in the end, because we can't find a perfect solution, we will have to opt out for the best possible solution. I see it here that we might drop the mass payment system as you have advised. Especially if we will have to choose between performance (more TPS) and security. Of course if we don't find some miracle solution that will make both worlds happy.

I repeat, even if we drop the mass payment feature, I think that Bitcoin still could have amazing future.

There has been quite a bit of bad news lately in regards to Bitcoin as a payment system and frankly I'm not at all surprised (I've always thought that Satoshi really hadn't quite thought this aspect through very well).

Although the blockchain invention is perhaps the most significant thing since HTTPS for the internet, Bitcoin as a payment system really doesn't work very well (and I was trying to use it myself for this purpose over the last few years but have basically given up now).

Apart from the slow confirmation times and the low TPS issues - for any average consumer what is the benefit of making an irreversible payment?

Adding to that the complexity of merchants having to deal with txs that may never confirm due to minimum fees with full blocks you simply don't see anything even vaguely threatening to the likes of VISA or Mastercard.

I've already stated that Bitcoin should be focused on the remittance market and as a potential replacement for SWIFT (as it is a very good fit for both of those) but still some people just seem to think that Bitcoin won't have "made it" until they can buy a coffee with it (and most of the people who are saying this are people who probably don't even have enough BTC to buy much more than one coffee).

Now I've thought about it more I think that those pushing for very large block sizes really are rather confused as to what they think this will achieve. If you can't reverse your payment (due to say not getting something delivered) then why would any online purchaser prefer to use Bitcoin (and talking about escrows is just silly as people don't use escrows when normally purchasing things with credit cards as they don't need to - you can generally just complain to your credit card provider and the merchant will lose out which is what most consumers prefer).

What Bitcoin can do *now* is act as a store of value (and is about the most superior such thing apart from the volatility which in recent months seems to be a lot less which is appealing to those wishing to use it for this purpose) so I think that it is far more important for the project to focus on this strength (and its potential to disrupt the remittance market) than on replacing existing payment systems (other than as a person to person payment system which is another great strength that it has).