# What are the capacity constraints, if any, of Bitcoin?



## Brendan Burgess (1 May 2018)

I moved this from the "Problems with Bitcoin" thread to get a better focus. 

Brendan 



Gus1970 said:


> 1) Have 1,000 times the number of transactions (resolved)





Hi Gus

Philip mentioned a maximum of 7 transactions per second compared to something like 7,000 per second using Visa.

Here is what Wikipedia says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem

"The transaction processing capacity maximum is estimated between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second.[3] There are various proposed and activated solutions to address this issue."

Not sure why they need proposed solutions if they have "activated solutions" or if it has been resolved as you suggest.

Brendan


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Hi Brendan, btc (bitcoin) are now using a second layer named lightning network that will resolve the problem.

Bch (bitcoin cash) are using the approach proposed initially by satoshi to make the blocks larger to resolve the problem

Bitcoin does not have the problem today but the engineers are future proofing it

Bitcoin won’t need 7,000 transaction per second for a good while and if you have appreciation for lean and lean startup you will know that priorities depend on customer needs not on things that might or might not happen in a few years.

HTH

Gus


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Also brendan, i know things from building and doing them myself, not from wikipedia


----------



## Leo (1 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> btc (bitcoin) are now using a second layer named lightning network that will resolve the problem.



That solution involves addressing the bitcoin scaling problem by moving transactions off the blockchain. Bitcoin itself is still limited to a theoretical max of 7 transactions per second. The lightning network has other fundamental issues discusses elsewhere that mean it is a long way from the holy grail in resolving bitcoin's issues.  Even if LN were to take off, the seeding transactions required to fund channels and retrieve funding from them would again hit that 7tps limitation.



Gus1970 said:


> 3) Give people privacy (this is outrageous, banks lose their customers data all the time and in bitcoin only with a private key you see data. Privacy perfected)



They lose it all the time? Really? Bitcoin privacy hasn't been true for quite some time. It's at least two years since convictions have started to be secured based on evidence obtained from the blockchain identifying individuals and linking them to illicit transactions. Researchers have also demonstrated how to out Tor users based on their bitcoin transactions, exposing their full transaction history for the world to see.



Gus1970 said:


> 5-6) block and revert ( this is exactly why bitcoin exists so that banks and governments cannot block, cannot freeze, cannot revert anything that is of a citizen’s possession)



Many criminals previously thought holding assets in bitcoin protected them from the authorities' grasp, but the multiple sales of seized coins proves that it not the case. 



Gus1970 said:


> 11) reduce price volatility (not sure i want that, for now)



If it's to be seen as anything other than purely a means of speculation, encouraging those who think they can outwit others in terms of timing to make a gain, that needs to be resolved.


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Leo said:


> Bitcoin itself is still limited to a theoretical max of 7 transactions per second.



WRONG: the limit can be changed by changing the block size. 1MB = 7 transactions; 2MB = 14 transactions etc. Theoretical what?



Leo said:


> They lose it all the time? Really? Bitcoin privacy hasn't been true for quite some time. It's at least two years since convictions have started to be secured based on evidence obtained from the blockchain identifying individuals and linking them to illicit transactions. Researchers have also demonstrated how to out Tor users based on their bitcoin transactions, exposing their full transaction history for the world to see.



You confuse anonymity with privacy, we were talking about privacy.Bitcoin is private not anonymous, bitcoin never claimed to be anonymous



Leo said:


> Many criminals previously thought holding assets in bitcoin protected them from the authorities' grasp, but the multiple sales of seized coins proves that it not the case.



Uhm, go find my bitcoin and seize them. If you find them they are yours



Leo said:


> If it's to be seen as anything other than purely a means of speculation, encouraging those who think they can outwit others in terms of timing to make a gain, that needs to be resolved.



Is it a problem? For whom? How is the volatility affecting you? If you come up with a strong enough case I can make a pull request on your behalf


----------



## Leo (1 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> WRONG: the limit can be changed by changing the block size. 1MB = 7 transactions; 2MB = 14 transactions etc. Theoretical what?



Wow! A whole 14tps! An amazing 0.002% of what Visa alone can process, that certainly is progress.



Gus1970 said:


> You confuse anonymity with privacy, we were talking about privacy.Bitcoin is private not anonymous, bitcoin never claimed to be anonymous



If a user's complete transaction history can be laid bare for the world to see, how is that private?



Gus1970 said:


> Uhm, go find my bitcoin and seize them. If you find them they are yours



Well, I won't but I'm not in law enforcement, but let's not pretend it's impossible or not happening regularly as your point suggested



Gus1970 said:


> Is it a problem? For whom? How is the volatility affecting you? If you come up with a strong enough case I can make a pull request on your behalf



It doesn't affect me in any way as I don't see bitcoin adding any value to me in terms of a means of payment or store of value for as long as that volatility continues.


----------



## Firefly (1 May 2018)

Leo said:


> Bitcoin itself is still limited to a theoretical max of 7 transactions per second.



If that read "_Bitcoin itself is still limited to a theoretical max of 7 thousand transactions per second_." I would still be concerned about its ability to scale. 7 transactions per second reminds me of computing throughput and memory sizes during the Cold War!!


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> If that read "_Bitcoin itself is still limited to a theoretical max of 7 thousand transactions per second_." I would still be concerned about its ability to scale. 7 transactions per second reminds me of computing throughput and memory sizes during the Cold War!!



In fact it is not true, but you can choose to believe the reality you want to live it, I hope you enjoy it.


----------



## tecate (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> 7 transactions per second reminds me of computing throughput and memory sizes during the Cold War!!


Yes, 7tx/sec doesn't cut the mustard but that's where Lightning Network comes in.  Leo maintains LN is technically flawed.  Perhaps it is - I keep an open mind.  Would welcome more comprehensive discussion on that as I don't understand how it falls down.
As Gus1970 points out, block sizes can be increased to facilitate greater tx volumes but my understanding is that there is a downside to this approach also.
@Protocol: LN brings tx costs down to next to nothing.   There's another up n coming crypto with NO tx costs.
On volatility, that will take a much longer timeframe to overcome.


----------



## Firefly (1 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> In fact it is not true, but you can choose to believe the reality you want to live it, I hope you enjoy it.



Hi Gus1970,

I never said it was true, I said "If"...

However, as you seem to be better versed than I am, can you please confirm the max transactions per second and provide something to back that up such as a real-world test/benchmark?

tpc.org have well known benchmarks for these types of tests and the link below lists the transactions per minute achieved by the top database vendors:

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_results.asp?print=false&orderby=tpm&sortby=desc 

Both Oracle and IBM have multiple configurations reaching 3m+ transactions per minute or 500,000 per second...


----------



## tecate (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> you please confirm the max transactions per second and provide something to back that up such as a real-world test/benchmark?


Can't help you with benchmarking (perhaps that's available but not in a position to check right now).  However, check the scalability section here - https://lightning.network
- they give an indication of what's possible with LN.


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> Hi Gus1970,
> 
> I never said it was true, I said "If"...
> 
> ...



There is NO MAX transaction limit, the max transaction depends on parameters that can be adjusted. Bitcoin Unlimited node for example doesn't set a limit to the block size.

BCH on the 15th of May will have 32MB blocks that by inference will be 224 tps. There is no need for more transactions now, NONE. When they will be needed we will make changes. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/commen...utm_medium=hot&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=btc


The data is out there, everywhere, I am not your benchmark boy, you can decide not to believe me and I am fin e with it.
https://bitcoin.org/en/ BTC
https://www.bitcoin.com/ BCH


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> I am curious to get your opinion on why so many people think these things about Bitcoin? Given that Bitcoin is around for 7 years now surely if it was all fine and dandy people would know by now?


The fact that you are commenting on bitcoin topics, but don't know when bitcoin was created I think answers your questions.


----------



## Firefly (1 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> The fact that you are commenting on bitcoin topics, but don't know when bitcoin was created I think answers your questions.



Apologies. I was referencing your post above (93). Still, the question stands....why do so many people think these things about Bitcoin? If it was all fine and dandy wouldn't people know by now?


----------



## Firefly (1 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> There is NO MAX transaction limit
> There is no need for more transactions now, NONE. When they will be needed we will make changes.



But how can you expect Bitcoin to be used as a mainstream currency without the need for a higher transaction count than 224TPS? Amazon alone are processing upto 300 transactions per second and it is estimated than online purchases still only account for 9% of all transactions....

Finally, I am asking the questions out of interest so no need for CAPs


----------



## Leo (1 May 2018)

tecate said:


> Would welcome more comprehensive discussion on that as I don't understand how it falls down.



I've only read a few articles on the LN design, but my main concerns would be

Two bitcoin transactions required to set up a payment channel between two parties and further one or two to bring funds back to bitcoin if the users wish to cash out. Further funding would require more transactions. So a large scale adoption on LN would challenge the 7tps, or any similarly low limit. Of course, if there are many pre-existing channels available, then a path between the two parties may be discoverable without the need for a new channel to be set up and verified, but the challenge is getting adoption to that point. What's the benefit for early adopters that outweigh the additional hoops and risk to get us there? How many channels will each user require for the network to find routes between all users? How much funding needs to remain committed by each user to LN to keep it viable?


The reliance on people leaving these channels funded in order for payment paths to be established. Many on here quite sensibly endorse keeping any bitcoin or similar holdings offline to ensure they are secure, the same approach to LN would mean it is doomed to failure. So you want to send $100 to another user, you need to have $100 or more available in one of your existing channels between you and another party from where the network can establish a route to the payee. Say that takes 20 hops, all 20 the nodes along that route must have at least $100 available for the transaction to succeed. 


The potential for fraud (users prematurely closing channels and pocketing the funds therein) and the limited time the impacted user has to do anything about it. I believe the current limit for action is 24 hours after which point there is nothing that can be done to retrieve funds. There are some suggestions for the establishment of a Watchtower network to identify such activity and ban misbehaving nodes from the network to prevent them from trying the same trick again, but the suggestion is that infrastructure be funded through increased transaction fees. 

Maybe you or someone else here knows, but how long are the time-locks in place while payments are in the transmission process over multiple hops? Say I want to transfer a payment to another party, but the funds in my channel have already been committed to complete a route between two other parties? I can't use them until that time-lock is cleared whenever the payee confirms that they have received the payment or the transaction fails and is cancelled. Is there a time limit within which a user must acknowledge the transaction?

I'm not suggesting these issues are insurmountable, just that my reading to date suggests they're quite a way from finding solutions.


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> But how can you expect Bitcoin to be used as a mainstream currency without the need for a higher transaction count than 224TPS? Amazon alone are processing upto 300 transactions per second and it is estimated than online purchases still only account for 9% of all transactions....
> 
> Finally, I am asking the questions out of interest so no need for CAPs



As i said 224 tps is the limit for 32mb. I also said that tests on GB block size have been rub successfully, hence the scalability problem will be resolved when the system will need to scale. Is it clearer now? Any other questions?


----------



## Gus1970 (1 May 2018)

Firefly said:


> Finally, I am asking the questions out of interest so no need for CAPs



I am not sure what the acronym CAP stands for in this sentence. If you mean "cap" as maximum size of the blocks, then for clarity you can look at the work done by Andrew Stone on Bitcoin Unlimited, if other meaning please explain.


----------



## tecate (2 May 2018)

Firstly, thanks for taking the time for such a comprehensive response on Lightning Network.  Much appreciated.



Leo said:


> Maybe you or someone else here knows, but how long are the time-locks in place while payments are in the transmission process over multiple hops? Say I want to transfer a payment to another party, but the funds in my channel have already been committed to complete a route between two other parties? I can't use them until that time-lock is cleared whenever the payee confirms that they have received the payment or the transaction fails and is cancelled. Is there a time limit within which a user must acknowledge the transaction?


Regrettably, I don't.  In the first instance, I'm not a techie - have an interest and skirt around the edges but struggle to keep up.  Secondly, despite having a year free, I don't have enough time to check stuff out as thoroughly as I'd like. I intend to spend some time on studying crypto & conventional  trading in the coming weeks (thank you BTC!).
It would be great if some of the others here could chime in on this if they have the knowledge.



Leo said:


> I'm not suggesting these issues are insurmountable, just that my reading to date suggests they're quite a way from finding solutions.



BTC has faced a mountain of problems over the guts of 10 years.  I hope it can overcome this too as scalability is essential.  Folks on here will know me as a crypto enthusiast but I'm not so blind as not to recognise an issue highlighted by a sceptic.


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Leo said:


> Maybe you or someone else here knows



It seems like a non trivial question, I am not a supporter of lightning network and don't know enough to give you an answer that doesn't include my assumptions, but I can point you to an extremely rich documentation set where you can probably find it by yourself by either reading or asking the question directly. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7pwna9/lightning_network_megathread/

Thanks,

Gus


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

tecate said:


> Regrettably, I don't. In the first instance, I'm not a techie - have an interest and skirt around the edges but struggle to keep up. Secondly, despite having a year free, I don't have enough time to check stuff out as thoroughly as I'd like. I intend to spend some time on studying crypto & conventional trading in the coming weeks (thank you BTC!).



It's the technical challenges that intrigue me more, how they are proposing to address some of these problems and how near or far away they are from a solution that can live up to lot of the hype that surrounds cryptos.  

Reading through the whitepaper, looks like the suggested timeout is 3 days. I have been unable to find any discussion or more recent developments that would suggest it has changed since as LN continues to evolve.


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

Brendan Burgess said:


> Philip mentioned a maximum of 7 transactions per second compared to something like 7,000 per second using Visa.



Just to clarify one point, Visa achieved 47,000 transactions per second in busy holiday spending back in 2013, we don't know what the maximum capacity is. Current technology / bandwidth constraints can not handle the data volumes that would be required to increase the bitcoin blocksize to achieve anything close to this, hence the focus on layer 2 protocols such as the Lightning Network.


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Hi Leo, with renewed enthusiasm, for the benefit of the Irish bitcoin community, see my answers below



Leo said:


> Wow! A whole 14tps! An amazing 0.002% of what Visa alone can process, that certainly is progress.



In the message you responded to I said "1MB = 7 transactions; 2MB = 14 transactions etc." I would have expected the readers to understand that you can do that with 3MB, 4MB etc. There have been tests run ob the BCH testnet with xGiga Blocks and they worked. 1GB equals to 1,000 MB. 

Why don't we enable 20k transaction per second now? Because we barely get 5 transaction per second today. I can expand if you need more details, but I would really like to make sure we are clear on this point because it seems pivotal to our conversation.




Leo said:


> If a user's complete transaction history can be laid bare for the world to see, how is that private?



I would agree with you if you knew who the person transacting is. And that's what the banks have access to today. They know you, they know what you bought at any time you use your cards.

With bitcoin the situation is different. Everybody (even me and you) know about every transaction that has ever happened from day one.
With bitcoin come some responsibility, in fact you become your own bank and it is up to you to defend your privacy. There are some very good suggestions in this document: https://bitcoin.org/en/protect-your-privacy

Please let me know if you have any further question on bitcoin privacy.



Leo said:


> Well, I won't but I'm not in law enforcement, but let's not pretend it's impossible or not happening regularly as your point suggested



In the case of criminal convictions, I think governments might apply force to get the keys out of the criminals, I am not sure what the rights of citizens are in this case but if the person refuses law enforcement cannot take the keys out of his brain. They are not a physical thing that can be seized, do you understand? What i am led to believe is that the prosecutors might offer the criminals a deal with the caveat that they share the keys, in that case the decision is of the criminal to take or not take the deal, but the keys cannot be seized. 

A better example. Say i am a criminal and I am under investigation, they have seized all my assets but I haven't given them the keys to my crypto. I die. The crypto dies with me, nobody can access it.

I am neither interested in being a criminal nor to protect them. On the other hand, if i believe i have not committed a crime, I cannot be forced to reveal my keys. I am the only responsible for them, if i decide to give them to somebody it is my decision. Is this more clear now?

Do you have cases, not related to crime where people have been forced to share their keys? If you do, please by any means share, I would be extremely interested.



Leo said:


> It doesn't affect me in any way as I don't see bitcoin adding any value to me in terms of a means of payment or store of value for as long as that volatility continues.



Volatility is a property of an asset. Bitcoin is a new asset and has different rules, simple, if you don't like it don't use it as a currency.

I hope I clarified your doubts, but by any mean, feel free to answer any questions.

Best,

Gus


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Leo said:


> we don't know what the maximum capacity is. Current technology / bandwidth constraints can not handle the data volumes that would be required to increase the bitcoin blocksize to achieve anything close to this, hence the focus on layer 2 protocols such as the Lightning Network.



BCH is scaling increasing block size - GB tests have been run in the BCH testnet and it worked. 
BTC is scaling with second layer - I know how it works but I am not able to get into the nitty gritty of 2nd layers, maybe somebody else in here can

Other crypto are using other approaches, it's the normal evolution of science, experiments are happening until the problem is not resolved then the best approach generally prevails. 

Look at the motor industry for example, could you travel in comfort from Dublin to Cork with the first model car? No. Probably the roads were not good enough.  People didn't say "allright, cars don't work" they built better cars and improved the ecosystem. That's how science evolution works, no different from bitcoin.


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> In the message you responded to I said "1MB = 7 transactions; 2MB = 14 transactions etc." I would have expected the readers to understand that you can do that with 3MB, 4MB etc. There have been tests run ob the BCH testnet with xGiga Blocks and they worked. 1GB equals to 1,000 MB.



That is indeed true, and I'm not aware of anyone arguing with that, but your tone suggest this is a trivial matter, and block sizes will naturally increase as demand for volumes increases. The debate on increasing the block size has been going on for more than 7 years now with no sign of consensus within the bitcoin community, and as I'm sure you appreciate, consensus will be required to make any such change. BTC was formed as a result of the frustration of some members of the community on lack of movement on this topic. So while theoretically possible, how likely is it to happen any time soon? How likely would any adopted change be to getting us into the thousands of tps?



Gus1970 said:


> Why don't we enable 20k transaction per second now? Because we barely get 5 transaction per second today. I can expand if you need more details, but I would really like to make sure we are clear on this point because it seems pivotal to our conversation.



Well, the block size required to deliver 20k tps is also a challenge. But there are also vested interests within the bitcoin community that like the higher fees that the current low transaction volume limits attract.



Gus1970 said:


> Please let me know if you have any further question on bitcoin privacy.



You're fine, I understand it well, as do a number of the criminals who were previously using bitcoin on Silk Road only to have that public ledger or all their activity expose their activities to authorities. They thought they had complete privacy.



Gus1970 said:


> In the case of criminal convictions, I think governments might apply force to get the keys out of the criminals, I am not sure what the rights of citizens are in this case but if the person refuses law enforcement cannot take the keys out of his brain.
> 
> They are not a physical thing that can be seized, do you understand?



Thanks, I work in IT security, in understand cryptography. As part of the search/arrest warrants in such cases the authorities in many developed nations are entitled to demand handover of cryptographic keys. Failure to cooperate will lead to further charges and tougher sentencing, so it seems in many cases, those accused of crime are cooperating and handing over their keys. Mandatory Key Disclosure is incorporated into Irish law under the Criminal Justice act, failure to comply is considered an obstruction of justice.

As I said earlier also, it's still not clear how the Feds managed to obtain Ulbricht's keys when he clearly wasn't cooperating or making any kind of deal.




Gus1970 said:


> On the other hand, if i believe i have not committed a crime, I cannot be forced to reveal my keys. I am the only responsible for them, if i decide to give them to somebody it is my decision. Is this more clear now?



It's not a matter of what you believe, but what authorities such as the Gardai believe and what they can convince a judge of. If they obtain the appropriate warrant, you are obliged to hand them over.



Gus1970 said:


> Do you have cases, not related to crime where people have been forced to share their keys? If you do, please by any means share, I would be extremely interested.



I don't but to go back to your original point that I responded to, you stated:


Gus1970 said:


> bitcoin exists so that banks and governments cannot block, cannot freeze, cannot revert anything that is of a citizen’s possession



Do you now see how this is not the case, and governments are actively seizing these assets?



Gus1970 said:


> Volatility is a property of an asset. Bitcoin is a new asset and has different rules, simple, if you don't like it don't use it as a currency.



I fully understand that, but surely you understand that high-volatility assets are really only suitable for speculation, and it would be ill-advised to place a significant amount of any portfolio into such assets?


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> Look at the motor industry for example, could you travel in comfort from Dublin to Cork with the first model car? No. Probably the roads were not good enough.  People didn't say "allright, cars don't work" they built better cars and improved the ecosystem. That's how science evolution works, no different from bitcoin.



The first cars were obviously a long way off what we have today, but also a massive improvement over the existing alternatives. That is the real nature of successful disruptors.

My argument is that in this analogy, bitcoin in particular due to its technical limitations would be a car with one wheel that kind of gets you to the same place, but takes longer and costs more.


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Leo said:


> The first cars were obviously a long way off what we have today, but also a massive improvement over the existing alternatives. That is the real nature of successful disruptors.



We were talking about transaction rate, the parallel was for transaction rate. Can I ask you to stay in topic?


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> We were talking about transaction rate, the parallel was for transaction rate. Can I ask you to stay in topic?



Well, firstly, you introduced the example of the first car travelling from Cork to Dublin in comfort, can you explain how a measure of comfort relates to transaction volumes? You went on to suggest the issue preventing comform was that the roads were not good enough, in your analogy, do the roads represent the network and its bandwidth, and if so, perhaps you might explain the relevance to current transaction volume limits?

Secondly, the title of the thread is 'the problems with bitcoin'. If you wish to limit discussion just to the transaction volume challenge, you may be better starting your own thread rather than dictating the course of someone else's.


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Leo said:


> your tone suggest this is a trivial matter



As a software engineer of more than 25 years experience, it''s not trivial, but I have no doubts in my mind that with the incentives that exist and with the amount of smart people working on it it will be resolved. 100%. The BCH solution works on testnet already BTW, I'm sure you'll find the result of the study they have done if you dig a bit.

Whether it is 2nd layer, bigger blocks it will be resolved. And let's not forget that IT IS NOT A PROBLEM YET. It will be, if ever a problem when we will require a different order of magnitude of tps. We are now future-proofing, not resolving a problem, it is a very important distinction for an engineer and for users. 



Leo said:


> The debate on increasing the block size has been going on for more than 7



It started in 2015 but not really different, it has been a very taxing period for anybody involved in crypto. But the great thing in my opinion is that the crypto ecosystem demonstrated a form of antifragility (as in Taleb's Antifragile), in fact the more the infighting and lack of consensus, the more the ecosystem grew with BCH being born. 



Leo said:


> How likely would any adopted change be to getting us into the thousands of tps?



To me 100%, but that's only my opinion based on my experience as a software engineer and my knowledge of the architecture and codebase.



Leo said:


> Well, the block size required to deliver 20k tps is also a challenge. But there are also vested interests within the bitcoin community that like the higher fees that the current low transaction volume limits attract.



You are absolutely right. The ecosystem is evolving. Governance is a challenge. What authority do the developers have? What about the miners? etc. We are discovering the impacts of this as we speak and the ecosystem is reacting creating the antibodies to survive. Look at how when the transaction fees went up, the developers didn't want to use bigger blocks and BCH was born. That's a sign of antifragility, not of one single coin but the crypto ecosystem. 



Leo said:


> It's not a matter of what you believe, but what authorities such as the Gardai believe and what they can convince a judge of. If they obtain the appropriate warrant, you are obliged to hand them over.



What if I have lost them? Or I had them memorised and I have forgot them. What do we do? Please explain, this is important.
Again, I would like to restate that i am not a criminal and i have no interest in protecting criminals interests



Leo said:


> As I said earlier also, it's still not clear how the Feds managed to obtain Ulbricht's keys when he clearly wasn't cooperating or making any kind of deal.



There just about a million other ways they could have done it, being infosec you should know very well about it.



Leo said:


> Do you now see how this is not the case, and governments are actively seizing these assets?



No I don't, I lost my keys. Or I never had them. pick one



Leo said:


> I fully understand that, but surely you understand that high-volatility assets are really only suitable for speculation, and it would be ill-advised to place a significant amount of any portfolio into such assets?



Did I ever mention people should invest a significant amount of their portfolio in bitcoin? I didn't hear myself say that. So why are you telling me this now?


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Look, if you reread my answer you will see that it is under YOUR question on tps, I staid in topic and answered that.

I have answered every question you've thrown at me and accusing me of not wanting to talk about the problems is not correct.
Come on man, let's be civil


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> Look, if you reread my answer you will see that it is under YOUR question on tps, I staid in topic and answered that.
> 
> I have answered every question you've thrown at me and accusing me of not wanting to talk about the problems is not correct.
> Come on man, let's be civil



So it's OK for you to go off topic and introduce car analogies in answer to my question, but then you tell me I need to stay on topic if I respond directly to a point you made? 

Where did I accuse you of not wanting to talk about the problem?

I am trying to be civil, you need to be fair.


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Leo said:


> So it's OK for you to go off topic and introduce car analogies in answer to my question, but then you tell me I need to stay on topic if I respond directly to a point you made?



The analogy was perfectly on topic and it describes how technology removes obstacles through experimentation, same experimentation that has been done as we speak on numerous crypto that want to scale up.



Leo said:


> Where did I accuse you of not wanting to talk about the problem?



Here: 



Leo said:


> Secondly, the title of the thread is 'the problems with bitcoin'. If you wish to limit discussion just to the transaction volume challenge, you may be better starting your own thread rather than dictating the course of someone else's.



I mean, you said it. I don't know if I am going mad or if my command of the English language is not good enough for this conversation.



Leo said:


> I am trying to be civil, you need to be fair.



Likewise


----------



## Leo (2 May 2018)

Gus1970 said:


> I mean, you said it. I don't know if I am going mad or if my command of the English language is not good enough for this conversation.



Perhaps. It was you who initially suggested that I limit the discussion to transaction rates:



Gus1970 said:


> We were talking about transaction rate, the parallel was for transaction rate. Can I ask you to stay in topic?



My response that you quoted above clearly indicates that this thread should remain open to discussion of any and all challenges. The suggestion is clear that if *you* wish to limit discussion to a single element, you should open a new thread to specifically focus on transaction rates and that issue alone so as not to limit the broader focus of this thread. It's patently clear from the above and my other posts that I'm open to discussing any or all challenges to the best of my knowledge (which I'll readily admit is far from comprehensive). My 30 years in computer hardware design, software engineering, networking and security, and my more limited knowledge of bitcoin and the lightning network in particular suggest bitcoin will not succeed and the crypto world will move forward with an alternative and completely separate solution.




Gus1970 said:


> We were talking about transaction rate, the parallel was for transaction rate. Can I ask you to stay in topic?



Still no explanation on how a measure of comfort, or road quality relates to transaction rates?


----------



## Gus1970 (2 May 2018)

Best of luck Leo, I am out of this thread. Like they say you can bring the horse to the water...


----------

