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From: Wladimir <laanwj@gmail.com>
To: Nick Simpson <imsaguy@gmail.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Is there a way to estimate the maximum number of transactions per minute Bitcoin can handle as it is today?
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 14:11:42 +0100 (CET)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.10.1501311341580.21504@nzrgulfg.ivfhpber.pbz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAOiKAtox1qmOEO6m9_ZjjR9QSqAGZv5s6YcBHq7oRnmNirdM=Q@mail.gmail.com>

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On Fri, 30 Jan 2015, Nick Simpson wrote:

> This has been discussed before. I believe most people don't expect Bitcoin to replace all of the various methods of payment.  Scalability is
> always a concern, just not to the level of  Alipay this year (or the next or the next for that matter.)

Yes, that about summarizes it.

The block chain is a single channel broadcasted over the entire 
world, and I don't believe it will ever be possible nor desirable to broadcast all the 
world's transactions over one channel.

The everyone-validates-everything approach doesn't scale. It is however
useful to settle larger transactions in an irreversible, zero-trust way. 
That's what makes the bitcoin system, as it is now, valuable.

But it is absurd for the whole world to have to validate every purchase of 
a cup of coffee or a bus ticket by six billion others.

Naively scaling up the block size will get some leeway in the short term, 
but I believe a future scalable payment system based on bitcoin will be 
mostly based on off-blockchain transactions (in some form) or that there 
will be a hierarchical or subdivided system (e.g. temporary or per-locale 
sidechains).

Wladimir

  reply	other threads:[~2015-01-31 13:11 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-01-31  0:48 [Bitcoin-development] Is there a way to estimate the maximum number of transactions per minute Bitcoin can handle as it is today? Angel Leon
2015-01-31  2:58 ` Nick Simpson
2015-01-31 13:11   ` Wladimir [this message]
2015-02-01  6:50     ` Tom Harding
2015-01-31  2:58 ` Allen Piscitello
2015-01-31 17:04 ` Mike Hearn
2015-01-31 20:08   ` Angel Leon

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