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Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Technology
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What does it mean for bitcoin to double in value?
Has bitcon's utility or usefulness doubled?
Or has bitcoin behaved as a highly volatile speculative asset?
It means that despite being fifteen years old, it still takes more electricity for a single bitcoin transaction than to drive an electric SUV from Florida to California, cost per single transaction has still spiked over 50 USD twice in the last six months, and it remains too prone to wild inflation and deflation for any serious business to actually price anything in.
In other words, it has the same inherent value it always has, none at all.
Why not both?
zero usefuless x 2 = zero usefulness
What is the inherent value of 50 USD?
Transactions on Bitcoin's lightning network are still worth pennies, who cares about what some millionaires pay to settle them quickly.
Yes lightning, the network of centralized trusted third party banks that are needed to make bitcoin useable so long as you deposit all the bitcoin you want to use into one of these centralized banks first, at which point they can make bank to bank transfers without having any involvement with the actual bitcoin network at all.
Or you could do basically the same process with an actual Debit card, which does the same thing but can be used in actual stores.
You also need to note that for something posturing itself as a currency, the fact that you either have to wait hours or days for the price per transaction to come down or spend an even more absurd transaction fee on you’re cup of coffee before you can check out is actually a rather fundamental problem.
Lightning Network is not centralized, anyone can run a node with their own wallet. Not everyone will want to, since there are management and safety tasks involved, but that's up to each one.
Funds are stored in your own wallet... but again, you can use some bank's wallet if you want to, up to each one.
Transactions are almost instantaneous, no need to wait for the channels to settle. You only need to wait when moving Bitcoin between non-LN and LN wallets or, if running your own node, when a channel closes.
You can find a list of physical stores accepting LN... mostly in El Salvador, but still.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network