A while ago it was being touted as a means of making money transfers for people from the Global South. I have no idea how much that has taken off. As monkeygrinder said, it's not the easiest thing to use - there are much easier ways to transfer money.
It's interesting that although the most basic financial concepts (including debt and debt forgiveness) seem to have been current in ancient Sumeria soon after the invention of writing, it's not until the rise of Egyptian civilisation that we have evidence for pyramid schemes.
Yep. Many in East Africa bypassed normal mom and pop banking to start on phone transfers
We've seen it on this thread, with posters asserting that the value of bitcoin is somehow a 'store' of the energy used in the mining. It makes no sense whatever, but this false logic has clearly seduced some.
I don't think you need to look past the spiralling energy waste that goes into the mining to see that it's something that shouldn't exist.
Yep. If the algorithm that needs solving served a purpose, did something useful, it could make some sense to see bitcoin as a symbolic store of that value. But it doesn't, so it isn't.
The idea of a proof of work crypto currency using the computation power for something useful seems, superficially, attractive. The issue is that it would be extremely difficult to enable that while maintaining a decentralised system.
The massive irony of this bit, of course, is that, while you don't need permission to open a block, merely proof of useless work, you do need the permission of the particular miner to have your transaction placed on that block.
And the very decentralised nature of the thing is its limiting factor - only 1 mb of information per block, so per 10 minutes. That's a very small and strict limit on its potential use value.
Bitcoin is a very poor transaction system. If it ever works properly, the bitcoin Blockchain would have to be a settlement layer with distributed layers managing transactions. After all there is no need to have a Starbucks purchase recorded and kept on a global immutable ledger.The massive irony of this bit, of course, is that, while you don't need permission to open a block, merely proof of useless work, you do need the permission of the particular miner to have your transaction placed on that block.
Here's a short guide to transaction fees. Basically bung a bit on and hope for the best. It is then out of your hands.
Explaining bitcoin transaction fees
Priority fee means it will be confirmed in an hour. That's the more expensive, 'fast' option. Meanwhile, when I buy things using Visa, it's confirmed in, what, three seconds?
Aside from the traceability issues for illegal activity, I still fail to see why anyone would choose to use something like bitcoin to make transactions.
Yep. For some reason, this 'third party' involvement is the thing that bitcoiners object to, which I can see sense in if what you're doing is illegal. But a third party is still involved in a bitcoin transaction - namely the miner.
Not sure that is particularly ironic. Miners can decide which transactions to include in their blocks - likely favouring those with the highest fees or perhaps their own transactions. But any particular miner is extremely unlikely to be the one processing the next block. If all miners that were currently mining decided to censor particular transactions, then you would have censorship, but there is nothing to stop another miner switching on and processing these particular transactions.
sure. But you're relying on the goodwill of the miners to keep the thing functioning, and the nature of the mechanism has led to the escalating fees system. It is in the miners' interests to keep the thing functioning as well as it can, so you have that in your favour, but the fate of your transaction is still in the hands of random strangers who have no obligation towards you. It's ironic, imo, because of the bleating by bitcoin enthusiasts about third party involvement.
Bitcoin is not a great choice for illegal transactions. At least not until someone addresses the lack of privacy and the potential lack of fungibility.
Yes, sure, you're right, the miner isn't checking anything about you. But you still rely on them to complete your transaction. I don't know how many times transactions have been 'lost' in the system. I'd be amazed if it were zero times. And you'd have no comeback.
You are relying on their economic imperatives. It's actually quite a hard business I believe. You have a limited shelf life for your processors and there is increasingly pressure from states about energy use. I think any miner that tries to get too fancy and not just process the highest paying transactions will be in trouble.
The original intention was to create an independent money supply that had a mathematically predictable rate of monetary inflation. The inventor was obsessed by central bank monetary debasement. In his/her/their eyes, it will be a success or failure if conventional money, fiat, suffers significant inflation and bitcoin does not.
One of the many pieces of utter bullshit that surrounds it, this crap about inflation. It's nonsense on stilts.
