Transaction fees and confirmation times
I've been on Steem for over 20 months now, when I first got around to read the whitepaper it felt like I was reading something that sounded "too good to be true". The fact that I stayed and didn't listen to FUD'ers was primarely cause I had happened to read upon Proof-of-Stake coin earlier in time when many were saying that they were "too experimental" and "unsafe" since they didn't require miners on the network but stakeholders. I had recently also been involved with Lisk so I was aware of how DPoS worked too.
Over time I've fallen in love with the currency more and more and to this day I don't understand how not more people are aware of its technological advantages, it reminds me a bit about the early days of blockchain when I felt the same. How can people not understand that you can send Bitcoin for no fees worldwide within a few hours and how different it is from banks or other transaction services such as Western Union. It took the world some time to get around it, when they did I had already moved on to Ethereum because Bitcoin started feeling like I was playing on a Game Boy when there was a Playstation I could spend time on instead. Now I'm here, again, getting bored of the Playstation but have just found out that there is another currency that let's me do so much more and at the same time earn more of it for my time playing with it. Compared to the Game Boy and Playstation it feels as if I've upgraded to the latest PC hardware with a 4k screen and unlimited frames per second. #pcmasterrace
Yet I am confused why most others are still throwing so much money at the old machines and don't seem to want to play on the new ones even though it offers them to try it out for free and if you spend enough time playing it you get one yourself.
It seems weird looking back that Bitcoin used to be known about its low transaction costs and how much better it was compared to older middlemen services. It thrived on it. Even today on Bitcoin.org you still see this on the front-page.
Yet only one of those stays true to this day which you can probably guess which one it is.
Some of you might know I may not be a fan of Blockstream and their future plans of a Lightning Network but its so early to be able to tell what really is going down so I don't want to misguide readers or that my words convince them to some trading actions they might later regret. For all I know these things I keep hearing lately could just be FUD attacks for another clone which could end up being worse than Bitcoin.
So please take the next video with a grain of Salt, the good thing about these hardforks is that if you haven't touched your Bitcoin which have been secure in cold wallets it probably means you still have an equal amount of your Bitcoin Cash too. Being on a platform that thrives on its censorship resistance though and knowing a lot of places where discussions about these would instantly get silenced or never even see the light of day - I think its important for us to try and look from all perspectives at things and how they are evolving.
For disclosure, I own neither BTC nor BCH and won't touch them unless I'm actively trading something else with them. I don't really understand why else they would on purpose leave blocks at 1 megabyte and make the confirmation times so slow, there are currently over 130,000 unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain and the recipients have no certainty in knowing when they will confirm to be usable. Even Ethereum has unconfirmed transactions now even though its over 50x faster than Bitcoin and can fit in more transactions per blocks, all because of some kitties.
Looking at blockchain.info this is a chart of the average cost per transaction in USD for Bitcoin right now.
It just feels so silly to me that a currency that marketed low transaction costs is becoming worse than the services it wanted to eliminate. It feels even more silly considering as Steemians we pay absolutely zero transaction fees and in the inner market don't even have to pay for trading fees which is what is making all these exchanges around us rich.
Are we just really really early adopters of a technologically advanced blockchain and the rest of the world hasn't caught up to us yet? Or are they just hearing about Bitcoin and it will take some time for them to find out about alternatives? For all we know the next pump in Steem price could be a few unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions away.
Any way I don't have any Bitcoin and similar ones.
Totally agree with you.
Steem will be the next winner
I got into steem april 2016 and still waiting for it to moon.. next year a guess
How did you discover sir ? I think you re so lucky . I was too late to discover it
I would say that people who discover Steem and Steemit these days are still early adopters, and you most likely have a decent amount of time to collect tokens now while they are cheap.
I bet it will be a nice rise when SMTs are released. Think of the wait as a good opportunity to collect even more tokens before it takes off :)
Thanks for your illuminating comment :)
The only point more or less valid that I could agree of normal POW blockchain against DPOS based blockchain is the "semi-centralization" of DPOS with the witnesses but minning Bitcoin at the moment is not so "decentralized" as people would like to believe.
Beyond that, the Blockchain of Steem (DPOS) is superior thousands of times. You can see on the Blocktivity website the Tx number of each Blockchain https://www.blocktivity.info/. Steem and Bitshares use less than 1% capacity with the same or more amount of Txs sometimes than Ethereum and Bitcoin ... and without fees.
I am also surprised that it is still so little known when everyone can see how good it is.. Well, the market is crazy and people are stranger.
blockivity.info. I need to bookmark that puppy
Done
For a while I ought it was me. Glad to know I’m stil kinda an early adopter.
I think it is the second, that people just havent discovered steem or are thinking if they do know it (but not to much) that it wont take off. Time will be a crucial factor here. Give it a few years and we'll see more and more alts becoming adopted to buy/sell stuff with just like bitcoin did. Also 1year and 9 months is still young right? let it grow out to the beautiful strong horse it will become. Soon enough they will discover it by people spreading the word on all kinds of media. The world is just discovering the cryptoworld. Give it some time :)
Sadly many people can only jump on a bandwagon. They don't really know how to go out and explore for themselves. Certainly there is room for improvement on the platform and user retention is probably a bit of an issue but if anyone sticks around theycdiscover they actually have an influence on the direction of the platform and want to stick around.
I think it's only weeks before steemit catches on though. With all the people starting crypto portfolios from nothing and crypto finally going mainstream, it won't be long before we don't know what to do with all the new users.
Great post, really important considerations.
Personally I believe that using bitcoin as money will continue to became harder day by day, considering that as bitcoin grows we are observing in last days
Last week steam announced that it will no long accept Bitcoin as payment system and other similar announcements from other companyes will probably follow.
Consider also that another bitcoin difficulty retarget at 18-19 december will worse BTC network situation.( https://fork.lol/pow/retarget)
So fees aren't a problem: fees are THE problem that can kill bitcoin
What's your take on Lightning? The three major competing implementations have just proved compatibility, and small tests are live on the main network already. Timing seems rather perfect actually, for this to come online just as transaction fees and wait times are getting absurd.
Lighting network massive and user-friendly applications are forecasted for the early months of 2019, maybe Christmas 2018 in the best scenario.
Interesting, but out of time. At the moment, lightning is working only on a testnet and it is still in developement phase... Significative adoption is still really, really distant
Forecasted by whom? Just curious.
When I move money form one exchange to another I use bitcoin cash because it's cheaper than bitcoin and litecoin and i seem to enjoy it. But looking ahead, I don't see how bitcoin cash will solve the problem. It is just a matter of time until bitcoin cash starts facing the same problem. Steam on the other hand is truly underestimated.
Bitcoin has become a bit of a joke. It's lost its way and the mainstream and institutional investors are piling in without understanding it but they're going to get burnt.
Sooner the better I reckon as it'll actually cause less devastation than letting it go on like this because if this mania continues it will just drag more suckers in and the crash will be harder.
great metaphors for cryptos, totally agree
I got into steemit not quite long. I love in here, you are given chance to express your mind and even get paid for it. I really love it in here. I also love their registration style they confirm people before getting them registered and it's cool. I love steemit. I am @popson the blockchain blogger.