On Bitcoin, when I last paid attention it was around the split between BTC and BCH. To me, it seems like the original Bitcoin project was plagued with issues, was not going to evolve and the Reddit community turned poisonous. I'm quite skeptical of Lightning-based solutions. BCH is closer to the original Bitcoin vision and where I see far more activity on Reddit of local hobby groups and businesses trying it out. I don't see that for BTC.
Just a point on the 'original vision' - as it comes up quite a bit. If what appeals to you is a solution for remittances/payments, etc - then that's cool. I get that. It would make sense to seek out a solution that optimises for this. However, it's entirely logical that as technology develops, it can take various twists and turns technically and in terms of use cases. Even so, we know from Satoshi's musings on the Bitcointalk discussion board back in the day that he/she acknowledged the likelihood of bitcoin developing such that it would act as a store of value.
Here's a few of his/her quotes that feeds into that ->
“Bitcoin [is] more like a collectible or commodity."
"In this sense, it's more typical of a precious metal. Instead of the supply changing to keep the value the same, the supply is predetermined and the value changes. As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases”
“As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties: [not useful/no utility]. And one special, magical property: can be transported over a communications channel”
“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.”
BCH is closer to the original Bitcoin vision and where I see far more activity on Reddit of local hobby groups and businesses trying it out. I don't see that for BTC.
Well, see above on the original vision. One other thing to bear in mind - ref. all of these projects and the choices they make, they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea where tradeoffs are concerned. BCH went with bigger blocks - but bigger blocks also have consequences in terms of centralisation.
When the chain forked in 2017, I was erring towards the original chain side of the debate but I wasn't entirely confident. I kept both sets of coins until early January 2018 and at that point, I had made up my mind (because the community had also made up its mind - the results were in). I sold the lot off. In terms of brand, network effect, etc. BTC has won out vs. BCH. BCH went on to split again - weakening it further. I honestly have no earthly idea whats going on with that project now - I don't pay it any attention. The one thing I do is watch its position very very slowly (but consistently) move down the rankings in terms of market capitalisation - relative to BTC (and other crypto projects).
As regards not seeing that with BTC, you can correct me if I'm wrong but you're referring to activity around that timeframe and not now? In 2017/8 it was totally undeniable that Bitcoin was challenged in a everyday payments use case. What happened back then was some folks used it in that role - it started to garner a modest amount of use/interest - and it hit the 7 transactions/second limitation - and its utility in that use case fell apart.
There were only a handful of people working on Lightning Network at the time - and it wasn't anywhere near a workable solution. It is today - albeit that it has still got many challenges to overcome.
I'm quite skeptical of Lightning-based solutions. . . I will check out Muun though.
For sure - try
Muun Wallet. DM me once you have it installed and I'll send you a few sats - so you can test speed of transaction/cost of transaction/ease of use, etc. It has definitely moved from the conceptual to real world use.
You say that you are skeptical of lightning - but don't list the reasons. I'll trot out the criticisms it usually seems to come in for...
I've seen lots of commentary from coders that it's a nightmare to build on. I'm not a coder - so I've no idea. I don't think there's any reason to doubt that commentary. However, developers are finding ways to build on it and we are seeing results coming through in terms of different services. Here's a
recent example.
The biggest criticism is that it's centralised. To begin with, nothing is ideally decentralised - it's a world full of tradeoffs. However, if we're talking about the bulk of funds being kept on main net and lightning network largely to be used for walk around money, then the same level of decentralisation is not required to my mind. Secondly, you can choose which node you want to connect to.
Other than that, there are still question marks as regards how it will perform if it comes under much heavier use and certain vulnerabilities that could allow it to be attacked. On this, I've no idea. In reality, there's only one way to find out.
Also, I'm not sure either are the long-term solution as the ideal solution wouldn't be so criminally wasteful of energy.
I'm not going to go through the whole thing again - as a lot of time has been spent on it already. However, this is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. People are going to utilise energy. The focus should be on the production end of things rather than vilifying what people use energy for. The Europeans have screwed up royally on this - and are now scrambling to put coal-fired plants back in operation. People get animated about Bitcoin's energy use and don't get animated at all - at the abundance of energy that is wasted at power plants every day (which Bitcoin can and will use - as power companies begin to co-locate BTC mining rigs at power plants). The whole thing is moot anyway as the energy debate is not going to stop the Bitcoin network. The only ones that may face-off on this are the Europeans - and lets see how that goes for them.
Proof of Stake is a good start but that has its own problems.
Everything has its place. Proof of Stake may be fine for what Ethereum will go on to achieve - but I don't believe it's the right solution for Bitcoin. European policymakers recently tried to suggest that Proof of Work and Proof of Stake are akin to combustion engines and EVs. This is nonsense. There are various trade offs making for imperfect decentralisation but Bitcoin is still far more decentralised than Proof of Stake-based projects. Central planners are either A. not going to get this or B. not going to want to get this - as they come from a mindset where decentralisation isn't a feature and benefit.
There was a good post recently from Bruce Scheier on crypto referencing articles by Nicholas Weaver and David Rosenthal, it's worth a read to see if you feel BTC stands up to their criticisms.
I had a few of those guys that were behind that 'letter' that they distributed to various people in US government on my Twitter feed. Criticism is healthy - albeit I really start to second guess those criticisms where the complainants can't find one single positive or upside in an entire technology. That's not credible to me.
One of the best points iirc was that there is zero recourse for fraud in crypto. If your funds are gone, they're gone, something which traditional banking does help with e.g. credit card companies will refund stolen funds. I don't know if there's a good solution except not carrying too much in one wallet. Won't be too popular with the public if users are regularly ripped off with no recourse.
Well, I don't see why this is in any way surprising. BTC is peer to peer money. A feature and benefit is that it can be self-custodied. However, that comes with great responsibility. What fraud protection does cash have? zero. I could simply take it off you. I could pass you fake cash. My point is that we've been using money that has no fraud protection for an age already.
It's also a case of optionality. The fraud protection that exists via credit cards is a service that you pay for. I'm quite happy to accept that there may be cases where you'd opt for that over a peer to peer payment. It goes back to my main point all along - who in their right mind would have a problem with ordinary people having various options? The ability to choose can't be anything other than good. There are also hybrid approaches - look at the product
@CuriousGeorge11 is using - funding in BTC, spend output with a conversion in real time to fiat at the point of sale - and he gets that fraud protection. Someone could criticise that product and say that's not what decentralised money is supposed to be about. I would say that there's merit/demerit in everything - and sometimes, a product like that can be useful.
Time and time again, we see legacy companies fail to respond to a new reality (eg. Blockbuster) and they end up being toast. Visa has been very proactive in embracing the change that's coming. We have people here saying that nothing can be bought with crypto - products like theirs mean that
everything can be bought with crypto. They cry that this is cheating - but it makes no difference. Ask a better quality question. Does a product like this facilitate someone like me - who is paid monthly in BTC to do so feasibly on a day to day basis? Yes, it does. If that's the case, then it will also mean that more native BTC payments will be facilitated in tandem with that - as more people opt to take the option I'm taking.
Different levels of security are required. Self custody is difficult- but you can have BTC in cold storage and BTC in a hot wallet. I have $200 worth of BTC in a Muun Wallet right now. Presumably, if someone can hack my phone, they can steal it (although today, I saw this NFT card
'tapsigner' that would make that practically impossible also). I'm happy enough to play the percentages on that. I have substantially more BTC - but it's in cold storage - with a completely different level of security.
There is work that needs to be done here to make this more user friendly and safe for ordinary people though. I believe that will come through solutions that involve
multi-signatures. For those that don't want to take on full responsibility for custodying their own funds, it will be possible to use a third party service to assist with this...BUT...through multi-signature, that third party will never be able to take full control of your funds. They will be able to help you if you lose one of the keys to those funds - but they won't be able to take control of the funds themselves. There's a lot more work to be done to make this user friendly. But for walk around money in a hot wallet, I think the likes of Muun wallet is already there.
