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In a test of Bitcoin's ability to adapt to its own growing popularity, the Bitcoin community is facing a dilemma: how to change Bitcoin's core software so that the growing volume of transactions doesn't overwhelm the network. Some fear that the network, as it's currently designed, could become overwhelmed as early as next year.
The answer will help determine the form Bitcoin's network takes as it matures. But the loose-knit community of Bitcoin users is not in agreement over how it should proceed, and the nature of Bitcoin, a technology neither owned nor controlled by any one person or entity, could make the impending decision-making process challenging. At the very least it represents a cloud of uncertainty hanging over Bitcoin's long-term future.
The technical problem, which most agree is solvable, is that Bitcoin's network now has a fixed capacity for transactions. Before he or she disappeared, Bitcoin's mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, limited the size of a "block," or group of transactions, to one megabyte.
Under the one-megabyte-per-block limit, the network can process only about three transactions per second. If Bitcoin becomes a mainstream payment system, or even a platform for all kinds of other online business besides payments (see "Why Bitcoin Could Be Much More Than a Currency"), it's going to have to process a lot more. Visa, by comparison, says its network can process more than 24,000 transactions per second.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:57AM
The scandals and scams have nothing to do with Bitcoin. There are plenty of cash-based scandals and scams, and we still use cash. Mt. Gox is not Bitcoin any more than Charles Ponzi is the dollar. The only event that I could see percieving as a black mark against Bitcoin itself was a single accidental fork, [wikipedia.org] which lasted for a few hours before being corrected.
If you want to know why people are excited about Bitcoin, I would suggest reading the white paper [bitcoin.org] from start to finish. It's only nine pages. If you read the white paper you'll see why the blockchain is a novel distributed system that has implications way beyond currency. The blockchain is the real innovation here, and it may be as revolutionary as the internet itself.
(Score: 5, Funny) by BasilBrush on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:44AM
It's as revolutionary as the Segway.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday May 21 2015, @01:36AM
$10 says whoever modded you Insightful didn't read the whitepaper :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @03:00PM
Id've modded him insightful and I just did read the white paper.
The Segway is actually pretty apt comparison.
The most innovative and revolutionary concept is useless without mainstream acceptance, and in both cases the revolution has failed to occur from the revolutionary concept.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @03:32PM
So you say the Segway is not revolutionary? Well, it does have wheels, right? And what do those wheels do during operation? Well, they revolve. So you have lots of revolutions every time you use the Segway. How is this not revolutionary?