Bitcoin has a usability problem

https://twitter.com/abrkn/status/911179354381574145

by abrkn • 9 years ago

24 24 9 years ago

econner• 9 years ago

I don't really understand their tech yet but I believe Lightning is working on a solution to this problem: https://lightning.network/

MrBlue• 9 years ago

LN is years away.

flyingfences• 9 years ago

LN works; integration into mainstream wallets is months away.

slindz• 9 years ago

Isn't Lightning Network a layer to centralize what was intended to be a decentralized system?

grubles• 9 years ago

This is a silly submission and pretty deceiving. Someone sending me $10 in Bitcoin only spent $0.06 in fees. And it was via satellite [0].

[0]https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/899410638371524609

drcross• 9 years ago

It takes ~1 hour and $0.86 to send $1.00 from a SegWit account on @TREZOR.

The same fee will send a 1,000,000 amount which the user will be pretty happy about. Bitcoin can't be all things to all people. It doesn't really make sense to store coffee purchases on a global immutable blockchain. Use other coins to pay for coffee and let Bitcoin be a store of value.

corobo• 9 years ago

Can it be faster to people used to instant payments? I thought Bitcoin was supposed to be futuristic and fancy

Romanulus• 9 years ago

The cool part about this is that we are kind of going back a fantasy system with different coins like copper, silver, gold, and platinum.

simias• 9 years ago

You say that now but it wasn't always the narrative from the bitcoin community. It feels more like after-the-fact rationalization than a true objective. It just so happens that bitcoin's original architecture didn't scale and now people are trying to figure it out.

And that's perfectly fine but I feel like we're seeing the same thing now with segwit and the lightning network. It's all unicorns and rainbows until you realize that in practice it doesn't work as perfectly as you'd have hopped.

What annoys me is that all these issues could always be anticipated even using some rough "back of the envelope" calculations. But there's no place for constructive criticism of bitcoin in the community so the problems are only faced when you really can't ignore them anymore, and then everybody says "well duh, it's obvious that wouldn't work" like you just did.

I fully expect that we will see the same thing for segwit and the lightning network when it'll turn out that the pipe dream of "everybody opens channels left and right" will fail to materialize and some alternative, probably more centralized architecture will take its place. It's not necessarily a bad thing but I wish there was a place where this could be discussed without being immediately called a shill and a traitor to the cause.

zeroxfe2• 9 years ago

What annoys me is that all these issues could always be anticipated even using some rough "back of the envelope" calculations.

Hindsight is 20/20. Almost no one could have predicted that Bitcoin would be this big.

pavel_lishin3• 9 years ago

So Bitcoin's only useful to the rich?

pwinnski• 9 years ago

So Bitcoin is now a replacement for fiat currencies that shouldn't be used for a very common use case for fiat currencies?

What exactly is the reasonable cutoff for when I should use Bitcoin or not? How would I know? How frequently does that change?

sp527• 9 years ago

It's not even worth thinking of it as a currency until the volatility stabilizes, which may never happen. It's a store of value.

KasianFranks• 9 years ago

One of the most significant rises in cryptocurrency will come when the user experience, including on-boarding, is made close to frictionless for the average consumer.

mmjaa2• 9 years ago

What, do you think, is key to on-boarding in crypto?

I rate:

1. Basic, fundamental understanding. This is hard! 2. Representation - i.e. education of the user through the interface. 3. The Status-Quo'ers.

#1: The words are not commonly representable by modern human vernacular. Crypto's hard to explain, man! The basics have to be really, really virile.

#2: If I have to type in a longass number, you lost me. If I have to type in any number, its a losing game. See #1.

#3: Nothing beats cash in terms of usability.

On-boarding of ¥ € $ == ∄

On-boarding of web/app/&etc. == ?

pavel_lishin3• 9 years ago

What, do you think, is key to on-boarding in crypto?

Convincing someone they need bitcoin.

I have no idea how to buy bitcoins. I guess I could find an exchange, or I could also go to the Bitcoin ATM at my local Thai place. (Seriously. No idea why.) But I apparently have to provide my driver's license to exchange cash into crypto-currency.

What? I'm not putting that into a random machine. That's insane. I don't have to provide identification when I'm exchanging Euros into Dollars at the airport, why do I have to send off all this valuable information to a random person through an ATM over a god-knows-what-kind of connection?

Great. I've just jumped through hoops, and for what? What am I supposed to buy with it that I can't buy with cash or credit? It seems to me that about the only thing I can do with it that's useful is move a large sum of money, relatively cheaply - and if I happened to buy the bitcoins from a guy in a parking garage, I might even be able to do it with something approaching anonymity - assuming I never, ever, ever make a mistake.

So how do you convince, say, my mother or my grandfather that they need bitcoin?

joobus• 9 years ago

The other huge usability problem is the risk of getting hacked. Everybody, even programmers, didn't write 99+% of the code on the machines they are using. Even if you manage to go years and years without issue, that 1 time you get hacked and your coins get transferred out from under you will make you lose everything and there is no way to get it back. For normies, this is an even bigger issue.

zeroxfe2• 9 years ago

This is no different from early currency -- it was very difficult to protect from theft, and when you had lots of it, you were an easy target.

I suspect how this will go down is the masses will use banks, who will offer cryptocurrency accounts with interest and insurance, while the savvy will continue to manage their own private keys.

pavel_lishin3• 9 years ago

Isn't this only a problem if you paint a huge target on your back?

Cash has a huge usability problem in that if I carry ten thousand dollars' worth in a grocery sack, someone will eventually snatch and run.

So don't store a ludicrous amount in a single wallet.

jacek• 9 years ago

I would really like links to twitter posts not be common on HM. How can you have a good discussion on 140 characters?

nikcub• 9 years ago

This is in need of a disclaimer or at least a bit more transparency.

The poll is part of an argument being made for support of the recent Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Cash

The user submitting here is OP and he also paid to have the poll promoted on Twitter.

abrkn• 9 years ago

I am the submitter and author of the post. I run paid ads on Twitter to shill for cryptocurrency. Ask me anything! :-)

Bitcoin has a usability problem

Related Stories