Conversation about the long term Bitcoin problemssteemCreated with Sketch.

in bitcoin •  7 years ago 

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So we crypto heads love Bitcoin to one extent or another; it brought a fortune to some early believers, to others it opened the world to the new possibilities through this technology, and some love it for decentralizing the financial system. Bitcoin has been the revolution leader and we could call the father of all cryptos. Yet there are still some questions that I would like to bring to your attention.

As the price of bitcoin on the chart has been rising exponentially since its creation so have the fees and transaction times.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/19/big-transactions-fees-are-a-problem-for-bitcoin.html
Fees vary around $25 per transaction and the average wait time is 1-3 hours, this isn't the largest problem and the community is hard at work with finding a solution for this. One such solution is the Lightning Network which would create separate channels between people and does not get listed on the main blockchain, which would decrease the pressure on the network. We should only have to wait and see how this will be implemented.

But this leads to another related problem with the mining process; Energy consumption.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-energy-consumption-explained/
Currently bitcoin mining uses 32Twh annually and many predict that by 2020 it would reach 50% of the entire energy consumption in the world. If our goal with cryptos is to maximize efficiency of our current systems, then the energy needed for simple financial transactions is highly absurd. I want to bring attention to a crypto called Golem (GNT) the act of mining Golem brings real value to the table. When you mine Golem you are lending your computing power to consumers who require it for rendering videos, and not for a simple transaction. They are creating a world wide supercomputer which is capable of solving real value problems. Many other alt coins similar to Bitcoin do bring fast transactions speeds and fees that are a fraction of a dollar to the table. A globally accepted currency should bring the world a little more then wasteful energy consumption and slow transactions.

The last problem is not really a problem with the Bitcoin network but more with our current financial system. Many people embrace Bitcoin for the fact that it is decentralized and is not controlled by an institution. People yearn to stray away from our current financial system which as we all know is controlled by the banks and to be precise the FED or the Federal Reserve of the United States of America. Let me ask you this question who really owns the current financial system? The people that bring the currency into existence? Or the people that hold majority of the so called currency? If you put the US dollar on the spot then that question does not matter because the same people make the money and control the money, but if you the Bitcoin under the spot light then things change somewhat but not completely. Miners create the currency, but the incentive to mine is to sell Bitcoin for USD in order to profit. And who still controls USD? The banks and no matter how high the price of Bitcoin gets the banks would always have a chance to buy up any remaining Bitcoins on the market because whether we like it or not it is tied to the USD. So if the banks can print as much USD as they want then the shortage or high price of Bitcoin wont matter. As the majority of world currencies are tied to the American dollar and thus controlled by it, so is Bitcoin. And when the time comes for supposed Bitcoin mainstream addoption all the banks would have to do is simply transfer all their dollars into Bitcoin. The only solution I would see to this problem is the USD losing all its value before mainstream addoption, so when the banks do finally decide to buy into Bitcoin, they wont be able to print infinite dollars in order to buy in.

-GenCrypto

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