TheBeastie said:
I bought a tiny bit of bitcoin to play with and I couldn't believe how crap it is.
If you just want to transfer $5 worth of bitcoin it can take like 30mins because the exchange miners priorities based on size, and to complete the transaction they take a massive bite out of that due to the electricity/mining costs so much for using to buy a cup of coffee etc as visioned in the future.
Bitcoin has shown how people are just suckers for buzzword technologies.
Its a fact that bitcoin after all these years of under the hood engineering and modifications still only does about 3transactions per second https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_scalability_problem This allows for around three transactions per second maximum capacity rate.
Yes, you do not want to make small transactions on the core chain. That's what bitcoin cash is intended for. Other cryptos have WAY lower transaction fees, and core still has a huge scaling problem due to it's huge adoption. The truth is that core bitcoin is 100% speculative / a store of value right now. There is also a lot of infighting about what/how to fix the scaling problem.
So yes, it has zero value as a useful currency. Bitcoin core is a game. I'm sorry you did not get the memo..
There are, however, several blockchain technologies that appear to be capable of handling insanely fast transaction rates. Nobody is talking about these in the media because the casino that is bitcoin values is more appealing. As with bitcoin in 2011.. these technologies ( called 'altcoins' ) are still nascent and have huge growth potential but also huge risk.. within one of these altcoins is another $1 to $5,000 value rise. Wanna play that game?
TheBeastie said:
and each transaction per second uses a massive 200KWh because all the miners are fighting it out looking to verify the block to complete the transaction and get the reward. This is no model for the future, Bitcoin is garbage, any other cryptocoin looks saner not that I am any more interested in them.
I wouldn't believe claims like that from large banks without further examination.
That's an estimate, and there is no research paper linked.. they can claim whatever they want. And banks have a conflict of interest.
What they are probably doing there is taking an estimate of all the energy bitcoin uses, and dividing it by how many transactions happen per second.. conveniently forgetting the fact that most of the computing power is actually mining new blocks instead of confirming transactions, and the fact that slow rate has not always been the case, but hey..
Actually, traditional banking uses shit-tons of energy. Think about all the ATMs, high rise towers, bank branches, shipping of documents, cash in armored trucks getting transported, customers driving cars back and forth to the bank, etc that the traditional financial system uses..
If you were ever able to do the math, i would bet that a fully digital economy would use far less energy.
If not, it could, and will do so.
Ethereum's proof of stake for mining is pretty promising as it would dramatically lower mining electricity requirements, for starters.
Anyway.. don't invest in anything you don't fully understand. Any investment will have a time overhead of researching and watching it beforehand. And if you've heard about it on the news, it's already too late..