Did SegWit Really Fix Anything?

When Bitcoin Cash came out as a fork of Bitcoin, I thought the former would work better, and for several years used it preferentially.

The debate that led to the fork was over how to speed up transaction times. The Bitcoin Cash solution was to double the block size. The Bitcoin "main" solution was something called "Segregated Witness," which separates signatures from transaction data so that more transactions fit into a block.

It's probably been at least a year or so since I did a Bitcoin Cash transaction, but they're quick. I don't think it's ever taken more than 5-10 minutes for the necessary confirmations.

During REALLY congested times, I've seen Bitcoin "main" take more than a day. Right now, I'm awaiting a transaction confirmation that's been sitting in mempool for more than an hour and has been saying "~30 minutes" away from confirmation for most of that hour. I could increase the miner payment to supposedly speed that up to "~12 minutes." For $62 worth of BTC. On a $300 transaction. No thanks.

I've had friends who do prefer SegWit to increased block size, and therefore BTC to BCH, explain why they consider the latter less reliable and/or more vulnerable, but really I just want speedy transactions unless there's some really severe problem with the BCH way of doing things. To me, the ideal is still being able to buy a soda at a convenience store with crypto.

I may start moving back toward Bitcoin Cash.

"If it's not a currency, it is nothing else"

That's Mark Edge (quote from memory, but I think I got it right) talking about the Bitcoin/Segwit/2x controversy on last night's Free Talk Live. Mark and Ian Freeman did their weekend broadcasts from the Texas Bitcoin Conference.

Mark's statement refers back to Saturday night's show, on which John Sacco defended the current track of Bitcoin, asserting that Bitcoin will never be able to scale up to handle the volume of e.g. Visa and that we might as well just accept that it's going to become and remain a low-transaction-volume, high-transaction-fee "settlement layer" and store of value.

Of course, Mark is saying exactly what I've been saying for some time as well. If Bitcoin is not an increasingly going concern as a cryptocurrency that normal people can buy normal things at normal places with, where's the real value in a large network of expensive graphics processors tossing around bits as "proof of work?"

Let's talk about scaling.

When I was in high school, I worked at a gas station. My guess is that 95% of customers paid cash for their gas.

When one of the 5% pulled out a credit card, I in turn pulled out a bulky analog machine, stuck the credit card on it, filled out two slips of paper (one original, the other one a copy made with a piece of carbon paper between the two slips) with the transaction details by hand with a pen, put the paper on top of the card, slid the machine (KA-CHUNK) to make an impression of the physical card, then went in the back room where I punched the transaction information into a little terminal that took over the phone line (MODEM NOISE) for about two minutes and then let me know whether or not the card was any good.

32 years later, most people use credit or debit cards for most transactions in most stores. There's little or no interaction required by store personnel. See the total, slide the card, hit OK (enter PIN if it's a debit transaction), wait a few seconds, done.

I wonder how many transactions per day Visa handles now versus in 1985?

Better computers, better networks, cheaper bandwidth, cheaper storage ... the wheels may come off Moore's Law at some point, but there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why the Bitcoin network can't scale up well into the future instead of pulling over to the side of the road like it has an empty gas tank and four flat tires as soon as it starts getting popular and its network starts getting congested. Increase the block size and keep on truckin'.

Which, of course, is what Bitcoin Cash is doing, just as envisioned in Satoshi Nakamoto's inaugural white paper. And that's why Bitcoin Cash is "real" Bitcoin and the impostor still calling itself "Bitcoin" and forking off into Segwit, 2x, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Silver, Bitcoin WTF is well on its way to becoming a has-been altcoin.

I do wish that my cloud mining service of choice, HashFlare.io (yes, that's a referral link -- buy some hashrate -- you can get in for single-digit USD, and use code Halloween holiday code HF17HLWN10ALL for 10% off!), would hurry up and start offering Bitcoin Cash mining. It hasn't yet, so for the nonce I'm mining Ethereum and Dash.