
Announcing SegWit support - tluthra
https://blog.coinbase.com/announcing-segwit-support-on-coinbase-4e51117857c7
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firasd
I'm glad to see the adoption of such changes. The 'hodl' crowd have changed
their talking points to 'Bitcoin is an asset, not a currency' but as far as
I'm concerned, if that's how it ends up--if you can't pragmatically buy a $2
cup of coffee with BTC--it would really puncture the immense promise of
decentralized financial tech.

~~~
sova
You can't buy a cup of coffee with a slice of a gold bar either!

~~~
onoffswitch
That was kind of his point.

Crypto sounds less like a revolution if markets treat it as an asset; as
opposed to treating it as a currency.

~~~
mrep
With all the crypto hacks which can cause you to lose everything,
cryptocurrencies are the last place I would want to redistribute any of my
current assets.

~~~
Hippocrates
If you protect your private keys properly (and therefore actually own your
bitcoin) it is not feasible for someone to steal it. At least it through a
hack. The hacks you hear about are about stealing an exchange’s private keys
which are are not adequately protected and are holding BTC on the users
behalf.

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loeg
This is good to see for Coinbase users.

> A common piece of feedback from customers is transaction fees for sending
> Bitcoin on Coinbase are too high.

For example, around $2.50 for a 1:1 send last week or so. This is on top of
the cut they take for purchases.

Clients that implemented SegWit were able to charge much lower transaction
fees (~$0.15 for confirmation in 20 minutes -- less for longer waits) for the
same kind of transaction.

~~~
kuschku
Sadly still nowhere close to the free transaction up to €15'000 within of 10
seconds that’s being rolled out across the European banks right now.

Bitcoin was supposed to be an improvement upon existing payment methods, so
far, it’s not quite there yet.

~~~
tekproxy
Lol. It's advantages are that it's sound money and uncensorable, not faster
than visa.

Layer one will never scale to superior global currency. It's an immutable,
append only database. DCS is a trade-off.

~~~
mrep
> it's sound money

Can you explain what you mean by that?

> and uncensorable

With all the hacks, that is literally the last place people want to hold their
money

~~~
arianvanp
With sound he means it's verifyable. All currency is accounted for

~~~
mrep
That sounds good until fraud/hacks/mistakes happen and your are the customer
that needs them to modify the account.

Example: I got my bank routing/account numbers from a bank in a state in which
I had not set up my checking account in but the bank teller put the routing
number as if I had creating the account in that state. Thus, my first paycheck
went to an empty account and I went to the bank that day and they fixed it for
me.

Putting any of my money in a place that is irreversibly is the last place I
would put it.

~~~
nicky0
As long as you can trust your banks and your nation's government then that is
fine. You probably live in a stable western country. Nice for you.

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VMG
Nice to see them being more resourceful. Coinbase was wasting thousands each
day for a while by overpaying in bitcoin transaction fees - effectively
donating customers funds to miners.

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skybrian
Why is it that sending the wrong kind of coin to an address results in the
money being lost? It seems like a rather severe UI bug to inflict on users.

~~~
AgentME
Bitcoin Cash has a separate blockchain (and peer-to-peer swarm, etc) but uses
the same address format and checksum as Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash did that on
purpose so people's addresses from before the fork would continue to work if
they moved to BCH at the fork. Personally I think they (BCH) like the
confusion because it keeps people talking about them where Bitcoin is talked
about (never mind the confusingly-similar name).

Coinbase technically could make the addresses they show be able to receive
both BTC and BCH funds, but it would be more complexity on their end as their
BTC and BCH support would no longer be separate systems.

There is a plan for Bitcoin to get a new type of address format eventually
(BIP 173, "Bech32"), built specifically for Segwit addresses, so this problem
will eventually be addressed. Well, it will be fixed until the next _Bitcoin
Cash Gold Deluxe Whatever_ fork shows up...

~~~
makomk
Not with SegWit addresses they couldn't, because the entire point of carrying
out the Bitcoin Cash fork was to create something Bitcoin-like that didn't
have Segwit and that its well-funded proponents could insist was the real
Bitcoin. (They like to call Bitcoin "SegwitCoin".)

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bitL
Centralization of BTC in progress? Could anyone knowledgeable chime in?

~~~
wyager
Segwit is simply a new transaction format where the txid can be calculated
before signing. It has nothing to do with centralization.

~~~
yorby
segwit will indirectly lead to centralization... when lightning network gets
fully implemented

~~~
shard972
Care to explain that? I don't see how segwit makes it any easier for lightning
to be brought into the fold.

~~~
nodja
Not parent but AFAIK Lightning Network requires transactions to be non
malleable, i.e. the txid needs be signed together with the rest of the
transaction.

Without a solution like segwit, miners can change the transaction ID and
undermine layer 2 like the Lightning Network.

