{"id":180295,"date":"2017-05-30T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T01:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/30\/the-currency-of-the-future-isnt-current\/"},"modified":"2017-05-30T20:58:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T01:58:00","slug":"the-currency-of-the-future-isnt-current","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/30\/the-currency-of-the-future-isnt-current\/","title":{"rendered":"The Currency of the Future Isn’t Current"},"content":{"rendered":"

A primary characteristic of currency is that it is available for immediate use. (i.e. “current”)<\/p>\n

This means that unlike things like stocks, bonds, and derivatives, you can use it immediately to get stuff, and there is no one sitting astride that transaction taking a cut.<\/p>\n

It turns out that this is a major problem<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Anyone and everyone\u2019s attention in bitcoin is currently transfixed on a single number: the amount of unconfirmed transactions<\/a> building up on the bitcoin network.<\/span>

<\/span>Earlier on Wednesday, the number surpassed 200,000, an unprecedented level.<\/span>

<\/span>Professional bitcoin OTC traders FT Alphaville spoke with see this as an alarming development and one of the drivers of rival cryptocurrency ether\u2019s growing popularity. The views of one trader:<\/span><\/p>\n

It definitely tempts people into ether. This is the biggest problem with bitcoin, it\u2019s not just that it\u2019s expensive to transact, it\u2019s uncertain to transact. It\u2019s hard to know if you\u2019ve put enough of a fee. So if you significantly over pay to get in, even then it\u2019s not guaranteed. There are a lot of people who don\u2019t know how to set their fees, and it takes hours to confirm transactions. It\u2019s a bad system and no one has any solutions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Transactions which fail to get the attention of miners sit in limbo until they drop out. But the suspended state leaves payers entirely helpless. They can\u2019t risk resending the transaction, in case the original one does clear eventually. They can\u2019t recall the original one either. Our source says he\u2019s had a significant sized transaction waiting to be settled for two weeks.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>All of which proves bitcoin is anything but a cheap or competitive system. With great irony, it is turning into a premium service only cost effective for those who can\u2019t \u2014 for some reason, ahem \u2014 use the official system.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, Bitcoin has become, as Yves Smith so pithily notes, “Prosecution futures<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

At some point the authorities are going to use the block chain to track money in ways that they never could with cash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A primary characteristic of currency is that it is available for immediate use. (i.e. “current”) This means that unlike things like stocks, bonds, and derivatives, you can use it immediately to get stuff, and there is no one sitting astride that transaction taking a cut. It turns out that this is a major problem: Anyone …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[395,753,426,588,456],"class_list":["post-180295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-computer","tag-cryptography","tag-currency","tag-fail","tag-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}