Programmers know the benefits of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing.
~ Rich Hickey
I was once at a software dev conference and there was a guy that did a talk about making your app faster. It was very entertaining. He proceeded to go through many examples of things you can do to your application to make it faster. My favorite by far was removing all your tests. He said, this will speed up your build times, pipelines, deployments, and development time. He was right. If you remove things like testing from an application it appears to make everything faster and easier. But, as with everything there are tradeoffs.
There are no solutions, only tradeoffs
~ Thomas Sowell
Along the path of my bitcoin journey like many others I fell into the shitcoin trap. I heard the criticisms of bitcoin like it is too slow. Its slow at processing transactions. Its development has slowed. You can't get any changes into bitcoin. These criticisms made sense to me at the time. But there was something that bothered me. People that made these criticisms never talked about the tradeoffs. They never talked about why these decisions were made. They never talked about the threats to bitcoin. I mean really, they never even talked about WHY BITCOIN WAS NEEDED! That's the biggest one that still stands out to me today with shitcoiners.
So, is bitcoin slow? Slow as compared to what? Its not slow compared to fiat. Just as most people that are into crypto don't understand bitcoin these people don't understand fiat. They don't understand final settlement. Its just magic. As a software dev things that appear to be magic bother me. I wanna know how it works. I've done some work with fiat payment systems over the last 15 years and I can tell you that it isn't magic. It also isn't fast. There is a huge level of trust involved as well as risk. This is really what convinced me that everything but bitcoin is a huge waste of my time and energy. That's the best case scenario. Worst case they are just scams.
When I meet someone into crypto I try to ask them questions. I like to know why people think what they think and do what they do. I like to learn. I usually ask them what problem does this thing they bought solve. I try to feel them out on how they view the relationship of the state to the individual. Usually they don't have a good answer other than they want to get rich. Its pretty much just a stock. And most of the time they do not have a problem with the state. They don't like the team opposite to their team but they don't really understand the problems with fiat money and how it fuels the war machine. I will ask them why they don't hold bitcoin. They will say it is too slow. Its gonna be replaced by some newer and faster token. I always leave the conversation disappointed in their lack of curiosity, skepticism, and imagination. Sometimes, they also hold bitcoin though. And they seem to get that its limited supply is worth paying attention to. But usually that's the best I can hope for.
I still feel like I have a lot to learn about bitcoin and how it works on a technical level but I've learned enough to have more confidence in it that any other store of value or medium of exchange. Bitcoin is not slow. These people that think it is slow are comparing it to their inferior projects that have ripped out the most vital parts of bitcoin and replaced it with speed. Just like I could remove tests from my software projects and speed things up, that would create other problems. Problems I want to solve.
247 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 19 Mar
these people don't understand fiat. They don't understand final settlement. Its just magic.
Precisely. A pet-peeve of mine has always been the "visa analogy" (against mainchain). Visa does process millions of TPS, however they only batch settle a few times a day. If you are coffee shop, you might not see the money for 48 hrs after a sale.
Visa is more analogous to LN.
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Easy way to shut them up; ask how long it takes an ACH transaction to clear.
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Another pet peeve is people who only like lightning. Don’t get me wrong, lightning is great. But to hate the blockchain and say the future of bitcoin is determined by lightning is infuriating
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Yep, I feel ya. There's a lot of ignorance. Bitcoin exposes ignorance of the fiat system better than anything I've ever seen. It makes sense. Most people struggle to look at a system in a void and evaluate it. Having some frame of reference like bitcoin helps a lot.
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And most of the time they do not have a problem with the state.
Bitcoin has a way of punishing those who don't and rewarding those who do.
I've been a freedom lover since childhood and seeing what Bitcoin is doing pleases me in a way nothing else has been able to. It's like justice is finally being done. The supporters / ignorers of fckery will be fcked, the supporters of freedom will be freed.
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Slowly then suddenly.
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Undoubtedly Bitcoin is foolproof while shitcoins are error-prone copies of it.
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Everything that is worth it takes time and effort. In our dizzying world people think this is inconvenient and prefer fast and easy solutions. However, this is counter-productive as it only adds more issues down the road and doesn't fix anything. Bitcoin's purpose is not to satisfy instant needs but build a whole new monetary system.
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Everything that is worth it takes time and effort. In our dizzying world people think this is inconvenient and prefer fast and easy solutions. However, this is counter-productive as it only adds more issues down the road and don't fix anything. Bitcoin's purpose is not to satisfy instant needs but build a whole new monetary system.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @co574 19 Mar
Bitcoin is what it is!
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10 sats \ 7 replies \ @guts 19 Mar
I thought Lighting was the pseudo-solution here.
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Lightning is a layer two. I believe it is a vital part of bitcoin's future as a medium of exchange. I doubt it is the end game.
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10 sats \ 5 replies \ @jbro 19 Mar
I think, at best, it'll facilitate B2B but probably not scale cost effectively for everyone.
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you have no idea what is doing LN.
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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @jbro 20 Mar
Going forwards, not every user will be able to afford their own channel. Even if they could, it is not always cost effective to do so.
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You are wrong. Is not even necessary for every user to have a channel. We already have many solutions.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @jbro 20 Mar
What solution grants every user access whilst retaining custody? Trusting a custodian is not a valid answer.
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Why do you think we are "early adopters"? Just to stack sats doing nothing? Be prepared, learn more, prepare solutions for your friends and family, be their bank. It is nothing wrong to be a private LN bank for them. Read:
I don't know why they say that Bitcoin is slow if a transaction takes less time than when you go to the supermarket and wait in line to pay.
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Bitcoin is not slow. Look at L2.
As fast as bitcoin on the lighting network
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Bitcoin is not a complete solution. It's the foundation, the operating system. We're still building the rest of the stack on top of it.
L1 = Final settlement layer. L2 = Lightning Network, high-TPS payment highways connecting large entities (businesses, communities). L3 = ??? For me, it's still up in the air if there will be one or multiple solutions. But this is where the majority of people will be. The Fedimints, the Cashu's and other things still to come.
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How slow is gold to mine? How slow does Fiat evaporate in value? Bitcoin base chain is slow, secure, and decentralized. Which is what you want for base money as you cal only have 2 of those three at the base layer. Speed comes as the platform layers
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Dude... TLDR. Bitcoin is not instantaneous. Doesn't mean it's slow. There are no "business days" on the blockchain. GTFOOHWTBS.
Respectfully, GLX.
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bot or didn't read the post?
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deleted by author
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