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Carl B. Latro ([personal profile] birguslatro) wrote2016-01-17 04:54 am
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Bitcoin 'failed'?

I've not kept up with bitcoin of late, but this article by Mike Hearn caught my eye today...

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.8u9gpast9

"From the start, I’ve always said the same thing: Bitcoin is an experiment and like all experiments, it can fail. So don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. I’ve said this in interviews, on stage at conferences, and over email. So have other well known developers like Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik.

But despite knowing that Bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly. The fundamentals are broken and whatever happens to the price in the short term, the long term trend should probably be downwards. I will no longer be taking part in Bitcoin development and have sold all my coins."

The reason given is: "The block chain is full. You may wonder how it is possible for what is essentially a series of files to be 'full'. The answer is that an entirely artificial capacity cap of one megabyte per block, put in place as a temporary kludge a long time ago, has not been removed and as a result the network’s capacity is now almost completely exhausted." and that the current core developers are not willing to fix that.

Bitcoin had been rising in price of late...

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg730ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

so it should be interesting to see what Hearn's comments do to its value.

Regardless though, bitcoin has shown that cryptocurrencies can work, so they're here to stay if there's a real need for them.