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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.
...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.
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.
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.
In theory, you are correct. In practice, keeping a private key that controls access to real money secret is very difficult and with most such systems if you have access to someone's private key then you have complete and permanent control over their accounts. If I steal your credit card and make some fraudulent transactions, the Visa (or whoever) can reverse those transactions and won't be able to take the money from me. This is guaranteed by law in a lot of places (even for debit cards though not, I believe, in the USA). In contrast, if I steal your private key (or the card that it's embedded in), then I can immediately transfer all of your money to another account over which you have no control. There is a public ledger saying where that account went, but there's no mechanism for retrieving the money and it can be accessed from any jurisdiction in the world, so I can take it to a market in any country in the world to convert it into local currency and then take that money to another exchange and convert it back into the cryptocurrency, at which point it's untraceable. I may pay a big transaction fee, but I don't care, because it's your money.
To stop me from doing this, you must keep your private key secure. For most people, this probably means having a bank store it in their vault and carrying around the private key for a smaller wallet that doesn't have access to most of your money.
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