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Ethereum Will Match Visa In Scale In a 'Couple of Years,' Says Founder (techcrunch.com)
Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, believes that his cryptocurrency has the potential to replace things like credit card networks and gaming servers. He even goes as far to say that Ethereum will replace Visa in "a couple of years," though he later clarified that "ethereum *will have Visa-scale tx capacity*, not that it will 'replace Visa.'" TechCrunch reports: "There's the average person who's already heard of bitcoin and the average person who hasn't," he said. His project itself builds upon that notion by adding more utility to the blockchain, thereby creating something everyone will want to hear about. "Where Ethereum comes from is basically you take the idea of crypto economics and the kinds of economic incentives that keeps things like bitcoin going to create decentralized networks with memory for a whole bunch of applications," he said. "A good blockchain application is something that needs decentralization and some kind of shared memory." That's what he's building and hopes others will build on the Ethereum network.
Right now the network is a bit too slow for most mainstream applications. "Bitcoin is processing a bit less than 3 transactions per second," he said. "Ethereum is doing five a second. Uber gives 12 rides a second. It will take a couple of years for the blockchain to replace Visa." Buterin doesn't think everything should run on the blockchain but many things can. As the technology expands it can grow to replace many services that require parallelization -- that is programs that should run at the same time.
Right now the network is a bit too slow for most mainstream applications. "Bitcoin is processing a bit less than 3 transactions per second," he said. "Ethereum is doing five a second. Uber gives 12 rides a second. It will take a couple of years for the blockchain to replace Visa." Buterin doesn't think everything should run on the blockchain but many things can. As the technology expands it can grow to replace many services that require parallelization -- that is programs that should run at the same time.
Founder is worried that his investment will become worthless if he can't convince people that it's the next big thing.
How does he propose to address the issue of blockchain scalability? It seems like that needs to be addressed before Ethereum or another blockchain-based cryptocurrency can scale to match Visa.
Ethereum currently does 5 transactions per second.
Wikipedia tells me VISA can manage up to 56,000 per second - and that was "a couple of years" ago, so it can no doubt manage more than that now.
So, in "a couple of years" the Ethereum processing is going to scale by a factor of (more than) 11,000?
If you think that's true then I've got a wonderful Olympic stadium to sell you...
Go get 'em tiger. Bengal tiger that is.
Psychologists call it a "Napoleon complex". I call it "little man syndrome".
...shills positive headlines for Ethereum and almost always posts negative headlines for Bitcoin, especially when Bitcoin is "crashing" even though it's still up 200+% for the year. It's "almost" like Slashdot's owners have a vested interest in Ethereum. Oh wait, that's because they do. Look up what BizX actually does.
He was misquoted, and in fact has explicitly said so on twitter that he was misquoted and provided his original quote:
http://www.globalcryptopress.c...
Even though this sounds outlandish, there is no doubt in my mind that if he says it, it will be true. Vitalik is a genius comparable to the likes of Newton, Leibniz, Lagrange, and so on. Years ago when bitcoin was in its infancy slashdotters were very eager to shoot it down as a non-starter that will never be worth collectively more than a couple thousand dollars. If anything, there is a very strong trend indicating that if something is laughed at at slashdot, it will be a great success.
etherium is like a faltering drunk step towards the right direction. But it is still fucking horrible for speed and transactions. It aint ever catching VISA as they fucked up to many things.
Being loaded in Ethereum stuck, of course that's what he says.
I was actually thinking about this the other day. I'm wondering, instead of a new block being generated every 10 minutes or so, with a 1-coin reward worth ~$3000 being given to each person who creates a new block, why aren't new blocks generated every couple seconds, with a say 0.0005-coin reward worth ~$1? Yeah I know the supply of coins determines the price so that 0.005 coins could be worth $3000... but it wouldn't, because a new block is made every few seconds. Regardless of block size, the issue is that more transactions per hour means more blockchain growth per hour. If the global economy were to run on a single blockchain... that'd be a lot of data, particularly to a computer not holding a rack of HDDs and connected to the internet via fiber, with serious monetary investments to keep up with growth. Either a way needs to be found to cull old/irrelevant data, or cryptocurrency maintainers will have to choose between two options: only large institutions will be able to afford to track the blockchain; or low transaction volume will keep cryptocurrencies a financial novelty like they are now. Increasing adoption and transaction volume also requires getting the transaction charge below what Visa etc. are charging.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It's really starting to feel like the year 2000 again with the kind of hubris, absurd valuation claims, etc. coming from the tech world in general. One of my favorites: https://www.wired.com/1999/09/...
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Iota's quantum-proof protocol known as the Tangle already has the scalability that Vitalik is hopelessly pursuing with a blockchain protocol.
Iota also happens to have zero transaction fees, which is something Ethereum will never be able to achieve.
While I don't think blockchains will ever go completely extinct, I do believe that they will be outmoded and viewed as a curious relic of the past, reserved only for very specific use-cases.
... are more realistic:
"Ethereum isn't safe or scalable. It is immature experimental tech. Don't rely on it for mission critical apps unless absolutely necessary!"
https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfi...
Rio's dilapidated Olympic stadiums
What a bargain!
Waves Platform is bringing in NG in a month which will give up to 1000 tx/s and that will be the fastest large scale blockchain. No way will Ethereum get to Visa levels in just a few years.
Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) protocols like IOTA automatically scale up in throughput (tx/s) as usability/adoption widens.
Blockchain protocols like Ethereum and Bitcoin decrease in throughput as usability/adoption widens.
If you buy into Vitalik's delusional hype, I feel sorry for your future assets.
i need to upgrade my pc, but i refuse to pay the jacked-up, over-msrp, prices caused by these fuckers.
Or Bubble Memory!
But that wasn't some made up funny money honey!
They are NOT decentralized.
The *software* comes from a small set of sources, often cryptographically signed by a few ultimately-trusted-people, so it really does not matter if the network topology is decentralized.
It's called CASH.
It has crashed and flamed worse than the Hindenburg. I'm surprised the creator and its users haven't already been jailed on general principles, aside from fiscal treason.
There is absolutely no doubt that use of blockchain technologies will continue to expand as more and more people develop solutions that use it. However, there is a world of difference between having the technical means to handle transactions in the volumes discussed, but this is entirely distinct from actually being able to compete with an institution like VISA, for non-technical reasons...
The global card payment processing infrastructure generates literally billions and billions of dollars of revenues for Mastercard, VISA, plus all banks. The resultant and incredible profits are further enhanced by insane "transaction processing fees" when purchases are made in any currency other than the card's default.
Do we think for a moment that the vast, established financial services industry will simply roll over and allow Bitcoin or Ethereum to displace it? No. This is why we see all of these grossly exaggerated claims regarding crypto-currencies - that it is used only by drug dealers, paedophiles and terrorists. Of course, these arguments conveniently forget the fact that actual paper cash is even more anonymous than crypto-currency will ever be, yet we don't hear [most] of these organisations clamouring for cash to be withdrawn. [ Most: VISA have been pushing this for a while now].
As a crypto-currency becomes established and generates the infrastructure to actually make a dent on the current cartel of big banks, expect to see horror stories regarding the criminal use of it, expect to see all sorts of legislation to outlaw it being proposed. Expect to see scandals and stories like the Mt Gox exchange hack being trumpeted as reasons that cryptocurrency should be doomed.
On balance, I think the distributed ledger concept has a lot to commend it - it makes the financial infrastructure of the world much more robust - but the biggest challenge it faces will come from the entrenched players in this market - the big banks. Which, by the way, are already developing their own, proprietary and "closed" blockchain technologies... Fancy that...
Name a business that doesn't tell their investors that the business is growing and that there's a big boom in growth right around the corner?
This is just SOP for any startup, and should be ignored. Judging future performance of any product should be done by careful examination of the product's history and of current and developing market conditions. There will be sudden surges here and there from time to time, but unexpected plunges will occur just as often, (if not moreso) and so should never be expected and only very carefully anticipated. And definitely not on the word of someone with a hugely vested interest in your investing further.
This has no more merit than those random spam emails most of us have received from someone with a "market tip" about some stock that's going to explode in the next few days and you're advised to rush out and buy some.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You have to realize that America will not let anyone cut in on its markets and dollars by replacing something as huge as Visa and Mastercard, in particular as these services give America an enormous control and insight as to who spends money, when, and on what.
Don't underestimate how far America may be willing to go to protect their payment services. No joke.
To take over, Xcoin has to
Have a critical mass of users who trust/depend on it
Work, interms of speed and dependability.
Have a legal framework that ensures it will continue to do the above under defined, available circumstances.
Probably something else to plug a bug hole we havn;t thought of yet.
So far, no coin has even half of these.
As for the speed issue, the blockchain folks need to remember data structures.
A linear list is going to be hard to scale.
Perhaps we need block trees with distributed responsibility/trust to ever scale without single points of control.
The trust and legal frameworks are the hardest to aquire.
Given this, putting a scalable trading algo under BTC seems more likley to work.
nt
Really tired of the negalomania coming from people like this. I have, at this point, decided 'disruption' is one of the stupidest concepts we as humans have ever conceived. How is it useful to the average person? What kind of a difference would it actually make? I could give two poops about someone's ego and how what they've invented will supplant something that already works.
Buy now people or forever regret not getting in on the ground floor! Digitial currency is GUARANTEED to rise forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory
"The greater fool theory states that the price of an object is determined not by its intrinsic value, but rather by irrational beliefs and expectations of market participants.[1] A price can be justified by a rational buyer under the belief that another party is willing to pay an even higher price.[2][3][4] In other words, one may pay a price that seems "foolishly" high because one may rationally have the expectation that the item can be resold to a "greater fool" later."
your post was marked funny which is ironic given that Ethereum has minted legions of millionaires who started with pittance. I don't think they care whether Vitalik's claims are sound or not. They're already driving around in lambos ffs.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
In the case of ethereum, you may have already won if you inested early and held as man did. Invetors in that cryto have already cashed out massive holdings into FIAT - dollars etc. for 40,000 X gains in many cases. It's made heaps of millionaires.
The fact that it may not scale as well as VISA for transactions is .. ..inconsequential.
Also, it has features VISA simply cannot match. It's more like gold and at ~$300 a coin it's already worth almost half an ounce of it.
you know why people will continue to buy eth, you can buy gold with it amongst other things once you exchange it. It'sbought into and will never drop below $200 again most probably. Speculation will continue to power it. Wheter it's backed by anything means nothing. It's a store of wealth.
Also, cryptos like IOTA look promising to compete with VISA in terms of transaction scale. IOTA gets faster the more people use it.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
If I had even botere to read this about 7 years ago, I'd be rich. I simply remained ignorant and shrugged it off. Don't do the same.
1. Allow crypto-currencies to run wild to get everyone hooked on the idea and get rid of cash. 2. Declare emergency; and make all currencies but the state-controlled one illegal, for everyones best of course. 3. Profit! I would guess that we're finishing 1 and entering 2 as we speak.
VISA doesn't have to wait for a transaction to propagate in order to do the next one. Blockchains do.
VISA allows you to overdraw your account because inherently that's what they want you to do (Credit) while with Blockchains, you can't spend money you don't have (Debit).
If all VISA transactions were distributed (they somewhat are but are geographically centralized) and converted to direct Debit and eat the transactions that would put a customer in an overdrawn account, they would have nowhere the capacity they do today. Every time you do a transaction, they would have to query your bank whether you have enough money, then they would allow your transaction and post it to your bank account as if you wrote a check. That takes about 2-3 days to "propagate" so a VISA card would allow you to make 1 transaction every 2-3 days. Blockchains allow you to do 1 transaction every ~10 minutes.
For a blockchain to work in the real world, you need to have people take risks, assess your "credit" and allow you to build up a credit of transactions which you would pay back to the blockchain over 1, 6, 12 months.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Ever notice these entrepreneurs talk as if reality was some artificial construct?
Look ahead, crypto currency has the failing of not being held in hand, which is why when it fails like the banks
surely will one day we will all be wiped clean.
It's not possible unless they fix the things that prevents it from being a serious contender as a payment system: the value of the coins needs to be a lot less variable, and there needs to be some sort of recourse if a transaction goes wrong.
Why do none of these stories contain any information about the real reason he's so confident in his assertions?
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://www.coindesk.com/ether...
https://github.com/ethereum/wi...
Etherium is going to move to a whole new way of handling transactions (proof of stake) that will blow the current methods out of the water...if it works safely. Proof of work is not particularly scalable, but proof of stake is.
As you can see from these coindesk news stories, this planned transition is old news, so I don't get why these stories aren't mentioning it.
Litecoin and Vertcoin have much better tech. ARK and Ripple as well. ETH will die
Give the number of people in China, and that China is #2 in GDP and #1 in GDP PPP, AND that China is blocking cryptocurrency... the assertion "Ethereum will replace Visa in "a couple of years," is not possible. Ok, so he modified the statement to mean transaction capacity.
So what? If the largest economy in the World won't use it, and the Largest Bank in the US won't use is (see Jamie Dimon's quote: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/1... ), "founder" statements are just hot air.
How the heck are credit card networks and gaming servers related?
Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, believes that his cryptocurrency has the potential to replace things like credit card networks and gaming servers.
lololol shill
Kellyanne has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate the administration's message, and Ethereum will rival Visa.
-Sean Spicer
Nice try.