Author: Raystonn . 2015-07-29 21:28:43
Published on: 2015-07-29T21:28:43+00:00
In a conversation on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, Gregory Maxwell addressed several points regarding Bitcoin's future. When asked about whether he believes that Bitcoin's future is as a high-value settlement network or not, he stated that it's much more than just a payment system and pointed out that its attributes include sound money, censorship resistance, personal control over money, programmable money, and more. Thus, there is no reason to believe that the marginal cost of a transaction can't far surpass that of a PayPal or bank transfer. Regarding the implementation of an artificial limit to the transaction rate, perhaps with a maximum block size limit, Maxwell noted that if transaction fees on the Bitcoin network are pushed artificially high, such as with an artificial limit to transaction rate only applicable to Bitcoin, this will create a condition where some other blockchains will have lower fees. He suggested that modern economic study has shown that liquidity moves to the location of least friction.Maxwell was also asked about how much value loss would be considered acceptable if alternative blockchains were allowed to leech some of Bitcoin's value. He said there was no clear answer to this question, but that most of the time, addressing them via a less direct but more focused solution rather than ignoring them completely may be the best approach. Additionally, he discussed how this would affect Bitcoin miners whose large investments in hardware do not transfer to other blockchains and the investors and holders of Bitcoin in general. Finally, he emphasized that if Bitcoin's security properties are maintained and enhanced, it could be used to build secure systems that also accommodate various applications.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T04:13:42.018613+00:00