Is Bitcoin Cash the Hallucigenia of Crypto? Do big blocks make sense?
Hello my fellow Steemians and Crypto Investors,
As you likely heard by now Bitcoin Cash will be forking again on May 15. There will be several changes introduced but the most notable one will be an increase of the maximum blocksize to 32 Megabytes.
In the meantime, the Lightning Network, Bitcoin's second layer scalability solution, continues to grow and mature
These developments beg the question: Which of these solutions will win in the long run? Billions, possibly trillions of dollars of investors’ money, some of those yours, are depending on the answer to this question.
Crypto is evolutionary
I very much like Andreas Antonopoulos’s way of thinking about crypto developments. He compares them to biological evolution, which makes a lot of sense because, after all, crypto developers are human, essentially biological machines that continuously try to improve on their creations by branching out different solutions to the problems the real world throws at them.
Most of these solutions die out, never make it in the real world (see this process in action at Github), but the good ones remain, they get attacked and become stronger, just like it has been happening with biological evolution for billions of years on earth.
Is Bitcoin Cash (Big Block solution) an evolutionary dead-end?
I believe so and here’s the simple, fundamental reason why:
Handling 24,000 transactions per second, like the Visa network does today, through a big blocks solution would require huge 3.4 Gigabyte blocks to be transmitted over slow internet connections, such as those behind China's firewall, or in the rural locations close to cheap electricity where most mining happens, in much less than 10 minutes. That's simply not possible...
Hallucigenia, an evolutionary dead end. A prehistoric worm with a shape so incredible that scientists named it after an acid induced hallucination. It played in interesting part in the history of life on earth but it's no longer around...
See the problem? The blockchain would become so bloated and big that only big companies would be able to store it and transmit blocks in time via superfast and ultra-expensive fiber optic connections. For this, they would need very costly, highly centralized datacenters, easy to take down by governments or other bad actors. Mining from space, one of Bitcoin’s greatest survival strengths, would also become impossible with such big blocks.
Why I believe second layer solutions such as Lightning Network are the answer
It has already happened before! Remember when the internet was running out of ip addresses and many reputable computer scientists were predicting it couldn’t possibly scale? Well, Network Address Translation (NAT), a second layer solution you are using on your home router right now, came to the rescue.
Also, the fact that most of the other big blockchains, such as Ethereum, Litecoin and even Ripple, are introducing similar solutions, rather than increasing their block sizes, tells me Second Layer is the future.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos speaking about another evolutionary battle happening in Crypto: Bitcoins vs Ethereum - The Lion and the Shark: Divergent Evolution in Cryptocurrency
I would love to be proven wrong and learn!
I've been wrong so many times in my life I couldn't possibly count them! Every time I have learned a lot from those mistakes. Maybe there's something I'm not seeing in this equation and you can prove me wrong.
I would love that to be the case so that we all learn. Please do share your arguments on favor of Bitcoin Cash in the comments below. I would love to hear them.
Hope you like and resteem this post! Also, please share your experiences with LN.
Meme generated at imgflip.com/memegenerator
Meme generated at imgflip.com/memegenerator
So, where do you stand on this debate? Do you believe in Second Layer or Big Blocks? Why?
Feel free to share your thoughts on this post with the Steemit community in the comments below!
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Accumulating patiently like a professional hodler.
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72
I use steem for social media, golem to share my computing power, waves platform to issue coins for my accounting firm, Cardano to store value on the very secure Daedalus wallet. I don't hold much bitcoin, bitcoin cash is just another BTC clone in my view.
Yes, BTC will go up in value, but I see better value elsewhere for my investments.
BTC is almost 10 years old, that's ancient in crypto terms. Trying to turn BTC into the day to day currency is like trying to add WiFi capabilities to an Atari Computer. Sometimes you just need to start over to do it better.
@kabir88
Play it safe and own both!!
You bet I do ;) I just have more into Bitcoin. Regards
Great post sir
It's too early to judge cryptos now. I guess let's try to give it a few more years to see if crypto is really valuable. Right now, it's a good money making machine.
Agreed.
All we can do is watch the crypto space evolve and hope we are betting on the right ones. I also believe that many coins will be top and that our universal wallets will automatically trade between different coins, ultimately giving value to any traded coin.
I do have to admit something while i dislike bitcoin cash i don't hate it. The big block is a legit scaling idea. It works but that is....
Bitcoin will increase it big blocks at the last moment. We still have schoor,Mast to go. Segwit is not at 80%. I agree with you second layer is the future. LN and sidechains is the future.
I have always been skeptical of Bitcoin Cash. I don't know why I don't like it it just seems 'fishy' to me. I honestly don't know why no other crypto have made me feel that way, I usually understand every other crypto in some way but I just can't get myself to like Bitcoin Cash...
thanks for your valuable and informative post.
We can take out a lot of information by your post.
By dint of we can increase our skill that is beneficial for all steemians.
I will always visit your site & wait for your upcoming post.
Thanks .
@Resteem & follow has done.
There is always logic in your post. and I think maybe the true winner has yet to present themselves.
Resteemed This post to make people know
Thank you.
BCash is trying to stay hard in news. Bringing back dynamic smart contract code which satoshi nakamoto removed himself doesnt make sense
Thanks for the vote. Resteemed your post. I think my followers will love this post. My goal os all about saving people from investing in bad/scam projects.
IDK why people "hate" BCH? It trades faster and cheaper than BTC. It solves 2 major problems that BitCoin has: it's more economical with both time and money. IMHO, the use cases for BCH are much stronger than for BTC. My bottom line has been greatly improved over the last 3 weeks of trading by preferring BCH over BTC. It doesn't get any more simple than that.
That video blew my mind! That guy is a freakin' "smart person." However, Dan Larimer is even smarter. I don't really think that BTC or BCH or ETH are going to matter for much longer.
EOS finally launches its' own network on June 1st. I think it combines all of the best of both BTC & ETH, it was designed to do so, and it's going to blow everything out of the water in about 1 month. Simply put, I can not get enough of it because I already know it's going to the moon and in 2 years time it will create more millionaires than the launch of Microsofts' initial stock offering.
That's my take on the crypto situation right now. But, I could be wrong - so I'm still HODLing some BTC and ETH. Whatever happens, I'm going to be just fine. My stack of physical silver ensures it. If cryptos end up being some failed experiment, precious metals will do a moonshot. Maybe I'll get lucky and all 4 will simultaneously get a moonshot. IDK. The world is changing, FAST!!! I'm trying to be ready to adapt to whatever then future environment becomes. I think I will be all right.
Upvoted and Resteemed.
I don't "hate" BCH, I actually hold some. With this post I just wanted to point out why big block solutions are not going to work in the long term.