Looks like the flaws are:
1. "overstatement of activity"
2. 7 transactions/second
3. constrained currency supply (21 M)
4. fraud in exchanges
Odd that only one of these points (2, scaling) relates to Bitcoin the protocol itself. And that scaling issue has raged from Bitcoin's first public disclosure. This clock has been stuck at noon forever.
The remaining three points have little to do with Bitcoin the technology and more to do with how Bitcoin is being used. All can be viewed as either a feature or bug, depending on your worldview. Consider the counterpoints:
- Nobody knows exactly how often Bitcoin is used for payments or what it's used to buy. As such, its users can enjoy much more privacy than they can with other payment methods.
- Constrained supply means protection against inflationist central banks.
- A currency that isn't used to commit fraud isn't very useful. Therefore, to say that Bitcoin has failed because of fraud is dishonest at best.
The article does to mention Lightning Network, but doesn't give enough context to make anything of. It's operational now and there's been a flurry of development activity in the last year. LN has the potential to:
- increase transaction throughput well beyond 7 transactions/second
- increase user privacy
- increase usability
I don't expect journalists reporting on Bitcoin to go very deep. But it would be nice if they changed the playbook every once in awhile.
1. "overstatement of activity"
2. 7 transactions/second
3. constrained currency supply (21 M)
4. fraud in exchanges
Odd that only one of these points (2, scaling) relates to Bitcoin the protocol itself. And that scaling issue has raged from Bitcoin's first public disclosure. This clock has been stuck at noon forever.
The remaining three points have little to do with Bitcoin the technology and more to do with how Bitcoin is being used. All can be viewed as either a feature or bug, depending on your worldview. Consider the counterpoints:
- Nobody knows exactly how often Bitcoin is used for payments or what it's used to buy. As such, its users can enjoy much more privacy than they can with other payment methods.
- Constrained supply means protection against inflationist central banks.
- A currency that isn't used to commit fraud isn't very useful. Therefore, to say that Bitcoin has failed because of fraud is dishonest at best.
The article does to mention Lightning Network, but doesn't give enough context to make anything of. It's operational now and there's been a flurry of development activity in the last year. LN has the potential to:
- increase transaction throughput well beyond 7 transactions/second
- increase user privacy
- increase usability
I don't expect journalists reporting on Bitcoin to go very deep. But it would be nice if they changed the playbook every once in awhile.