
BitPay Will Process Payments on Multiple Blockchains, Starting with Bitcoin Cash - bitjson
https://blog.bitpay.com/multiple-blockchains/
======
nextstep
Every time there is something mentioning Bitcoin Cash or the scaling issues
with Bitcoin Core, the same people show up in these threads attacking everyone
and spamming the comments with the same arguments over and over. (I’m not
going to name names but look through these comments and see some of the
posters calling Bitcoin Cash “bcash” and posting 30+ comments.)

Can we please not turn this forum ito the childish name calling of r/Bitcoin?
There are good arguments for and against the two main Bitcoin forks and I’d
like HN to be a place where these can be discussed without name calling and
personal attacks.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
I agree. They should be immediately closed. The problem with them is that
crypto is a collision between tech and money. It, unfortunately, brings out
the worst part of people wanting to get rich. I like yc because it isn't like
that, but it just gets brigaded these days.

I would completely respect a complete ban of all crypto discussion on yc. I
like the fact that it isn't that.

~~~
pmorici
The op is talking about accounts like yours Frogolocalypse. You only comment
on crypto related articles on HN and it's always the same talking points over
and over.

Edit: I see further down the page someone even called you out for spamming
this thread and others with identical comments over and over.

------
modeless
This was foreseeable when Bitcoin Core rejected Segwit2x. BitPay's business
model simply fails unless the blockchain can scale much more than Segwit alone
achieves, very soon.

~~~
davej
While I agree that Segwit2x would have been good for BTC, it ultimately only
kicks the can down the road a little bit. If BTC (or BCH) is going to be used
at Visa/Mastercard scale then the transactions need to happen off-chain. The
Lightning Network is the answer here, a lot of work still needs to be done
though, particularly on the software side.

~~~
hrrsn
This is the major (technical - plenty of political issues) problem I have with
Bcash. It’s cheap and fast because transaction volumes, and price, are 10% of
BTC, yet blocks are 1.5x the size (roughly, looking at a block explorer). As
soon as they fill up, they’ll have the exact same problems down the line.
Increasing the block size doesn’t scale long term and is a bandaid solution at
best.

BTC was fast and cheap when adoption was low.

~~~
asciimo
Why do some people call Bitcoin Cash "Bcash?" It seems to accompany critical
statements. I'll assume you're not doing it to save 6 letters, because later
you refer to Bitcoin as BTC. You could have saved more letters by referring to
Bitcion Cash at BCH. Is this a campaign to rebrand Bitcoin Cash as something
other than a Bitcoin fork?

~~~
ryebit
It's more a reaction to Bitcoin Cash officially insisting that it's the "real"
bitcoin, and trying to actively misleading users by referring to BTC as
"Bitcoin Core", creating a false parity to make it seem like they're both
equal "forks" that bitcoin split into.

I've tried to refer to them using the less loaded "BTC" and "BCH" symbols
instead; but it's kindof getting tiring, hearing people insist "Bitcoin Cash
is Satoshi's True Vision". It's like somebody starting a "Apple Phone LLC" and
saying it's Steve Jobs' true vision, ignore that other "Apple" company.

~~~
anonymous5133
The difference is that you have to look at the attributes of each coin and see
which one most likely reflects the white paper that satoshi himself wrote. He
is talking about a P2P cash system, not a P2P gold system.

Just because the first generation of bitcoin was the beginning doesn't mean it
still reflects the original vision.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
A peer, in bitcoin, is a node. If you don't run a node, or indeed if you can't
run a node because of its resource requirements, you aren't a peer.

Bitcoin : Peer-to-peer cash.

You went right over the first part, and only talk about the second part, even
though in the first part, the word 'peer' is used twice.

~~~
theadamp
"The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended
configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their
own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more
burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes
will be big server farms. The rest will be client nodes that only do
transactions and don't generate." \- Satoshi Nakamoto

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306)

~~~
Frogolocalypse
160,000 nodes have a different view than your selective quote, and they
control consensus.

------
dahdum
Just this May their CEO was singing a different tune:

"We have carefully studied the most significant alternatives to the Bitcoin
Blockchain and have concluded that none of them are compelling" [1]

He's been a bitcoin maximalist for a while, so it's notable to see him finally
cave due to the mining fees.

[1] [https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitpay-ceo-we-studied-
bitcoin...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitpay-ceo-we-studied-bitcoin-
blockchain-alternatives-none-are-compelling)

~~~
Frogolocalypse
He 'caved in' because bitpay was bought by bitmain, the largest centralized
chinese miner.

~~~
dahdum
Bought or invested in? Bitpay was shooting themselves in the foot by not
branching out into other digital assets while fees and transaction time
skyrocketed. If it took Bitmain to force the issue congrats to them.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
The chinese government wanted a crypto they could track, because they want to
own all of the mining infrastructure, all of the nodes, all of the code base
and the payment gateway to it. So that's what they got. Bcash.

~~~
r1ch
Who mines a block or where the nodes are etc is irrelevant, the ledger is open
and public for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. This isn't the place for wild
anti-Chinese conspiracy theories.

------
LyndsySimon
It seems clear to me at this point that the cryptocurrency revolution is now
bigger than Bitcoin itself.

Years ago, I saw three long-term outcomes: Bitcoin being king and altcoins
dying on the vine, Bitcoin being one of innumerable blockchains in use, and
cryptocurrencies in general failing to gain adoption. I'm scratching the first
outcome off the list, and my pen is hovering over the last outcome.

~~~
lawn
The first version of new and revolutionary technology rarely (if ever?)
becomes the dominant one. Obvious examples are search (Altavista -> Google)
and social networks (MySpace -> Facebook).

~~~
Frogolocalypse
Where is your second internet?

~~~
lawn
There's always the chance that you can evolve and improve upon the technology
instead of something else coming to replace it.

For bitpay's usecase Bitcoin is being replaced by other coins because it fails
to embrace on-chain scaling in favor of off-chain scaling which is far from
ready. This is exactly as predicted.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
Yep. If you want to get your transactions tracked by the chinese government,
it is cheap. Like PayPal. If you want your transactions to be private, you use
a decentralized blockchain like bitcoin.

~~~
lawn
I'm sorry but your continued comments in this thread are just play wrong.

> If you want to get your transactions tracked by the chinese government

That's such a stupid thing to say as with an open ledger everyone can track
your transactions.

> If you want your transactions to be private, you use a decentralized
> blockchain like bitcoin.

You don't even know what a private transaction is. Bitcoin has an open ledger
and all transactions are exactly as traceable.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
If you don't run your own node, which is the aim of bcash, your ip address is
tied to your payment. You have the payment processor, and the node, and the
miner, all sharing the same information.

The chinese government appreciates your compliance with its crypto
implementation.

------
anonymous5133
Finally. I think the bigger companies are starting to realize that bitcoin
cash is taking over the smaller payments. Payments on bitcoin cash right now
are under 1 penny and confirm in less than 10 minutes. Try it out for
yourself, it is pretty amazing really.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
bcash handles a fraction of the transactions of either bitcoin or litecoin. If
you want a cheap option, litecoin is great. It's been around for years, and
isn't controlled by the chinese government. In bcash, the nodes, the
developers, the miners, and now the payment processor, are all owned by the
same chinese company.

Currently litecoin is processing about four times the transaction count of
bcash. They also have a block creation time of 1/4 of the time (2.5 minutes)
to bcash or bitcoin (10 minutes), so if speed of confirmation is an issue for
you, then they might meet your use-case. It obviously doesn't have the
decentralization of bitcoin, but at least it isn't controlled by a single
chinese company.

~~~
anonymous5133
bcash still has lower fees. I am using exodus and I am getting quoted 2 cents
for bcash. Litecoin I am getting quote of 22 cents while bitocin is like 5
bucks.

Though I would agree that litecoin is better than the original bitcoin.
However, litecoin does not beat bcash, IMO.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
There are lots of altcoins that have low fees. When you are getting a single
company to process your payments, it is always likely to be at a lower cost.
The only question is why they're even bothering to store the information in a
blockchain. It would just be easier if they used an SQL database. Without the
decentralization, it is the same risk profile. They know who you are, what
you're spending your money on, and they can black-list your spending addresses
with trivial ease. Like paypal. Just less efficient.

~~~
anonymous5133
Those altcoins don't have the userbase that bcash has. Bcash actually has an
active community that is pushing to integrate bcash into mainstream commerce
and that's what I like. Store of value is nice but medium of exchange is what
really appeals to me personally.

~~~
Frogolocalypse
> the userbase that bcash has

The number of transactions on the bcash blockchain gives a different
impression of the 'user base'. If you want a faster blockchain with a larger
user base, use litecoin. It isn't as secure as bitcoin, because it isn't as
decentralized as bitcoin, but at least you don't have all of your purchases
recorded (who you are, what you buy, who you buy it from, when you buy it,
etc.) by the chinese government. Oh, and you don't have to worry about the
chinese government blacklisting your wallet so that they can never be spent
either.

~~~
michaelmrose
Can you please explicate the means by which the chinese government could
effectively trap your cash in your wallet. Couldn't you give money to any
number of intermediaries?

~~~
Frogolocalypse
It can be trivially done by the existing miners not committing transactions to
the blockchain that they control. Because a single company, bitmain, controls
more than 50% of the hashing power of bcash, they would only build on blocks
that don't contain transactions from their blacklist.

That is what bcash is right now. A captured blockchain. You transact on it at
the sufferance of the chinese government. If you think they won't exert that
power, if they think it suits their interests, I'm not sure understanding this
will convince you.

~~~
sireat
How does bitmain control over 50% of Bitcoin cash?

[https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/today](https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/today)

Doesn't look like any pool is dominating unless Bitmain controls many smaller
pools.

However, I'd argue that any domination is a side effect of Bitmain being the
1000pound gorilla in BTC to start with. THeir BTC pool is at 20%. (there are a
LOT of people unhappy with Bitmain's business practices).

I mean there is no cost effective hash/kw alternative to Bitmain S9s.

The scary thing is that my friends and colleagues are buying S9s because no
real alternative exists if you want to mine BTC(and I suppose Bitcoin Cash
too)

------
gtrubetskoy
Fascinating how all the comments explaining that for fast and cheap
transactions there is Litecoin (which has SegWit and Lightning) and pointing
out BCash (still vulnerable to transaction malleability because it does not
have SegWit) technical and governance problems immediately got downvoted into
oblivion.

Edit: including this comment.

~~~
wmf
Fascinating how all the "just use Litecoin" comments don't count the value of
continuity of the UTXO set, etc.

~~~
ryebit
What _is_ the value of maintaining continuity of the UTXO set?

Pretty much any BTC spinoff can and has forked the chain, auto-airdropping
their coin to all BTC holders. You don't even have to go that far though, a
coin could easily have a smart-contract style method of signing a message with
your BTC private key, and get granted an equivalent in free starter coins.

Coins are also becoming increasingly fungible ... there's more exchanges every
day, shapeshift/changelly style portals, and lightning adding atomic swaps
across chains.

More importantly though, whether this is the end of the early adopter phase,
or just a "late end of early adoption" phase... most people coming in _won 't_
want a coin with a lot of baggage and most of the value hoarded into a few
accounts (inheriting BTC's chain could be seen as a _negative_ there; and
BCH's speedmining run didn't help it out).

------
empyrical
I wonder if "BitPay Card" will end up supporting BCH?

------
paul7986
Newbie ... what apps turn BitCoin into cash .... I assume Coinbase can when
you sell a BitCoin or a portion of BitCoin to a third party? What other ways
and or apps are people using to turn BitCoin into cash/USD?

~~~
pmorici
If you are in the USA you have numerous options including; Coinbase, GDAX,
Gemini, itbit, and Kraken among others.

~~~
paul7986
Thanks, yet how do you find buyers .. do these marketplaces connect you with
buyers?

As a newbie i went ahead and bought a tiny portion of a Bitcoin recently from
say GDAX. So, since I bought it from them I can also sell it back them at a
profit or I have to find another interested buyer like a friend?

~~~
pmorici
They all work just like stock markets

------
wyldfire
Is Bitcoin Cash fast because of greater capacity or with low competition to
get into blocks?

Better options for cheap + fast transactions: Litecoin or Raiblocks. Litecoin
has a great history and community is ready and willing to innovate. Raiblocks
has a good story too: doesn't waste the currency's OPEX on proof-of-work,
accounts don't face contention on serialized resources like a linear
blockchain and delivers no-fee transactions. No crazy experimental-and-
vulnerable-to-differential-cryptanalysis like IOTA.

~~~
babaganoosh89
Both, they have much less transactions and their block size is 8x larger so
they can do 8x more transactions/sec. But still pales in comparison to Visa’s
throughput.

------
Frogolocalypse
Bitpay is owned by bitmain, the miner that controls bcash. You will have every
one of your transactions tracked if you use this alt. I'm sure the chinese
government will appreciate your compliance.

This is nothing more than self promotional spam.

~~~
arkona
> You will have every one of your transactions tracked if you use this alt

I don’t think you understand the concept of a blockchain.

~~~
jcranmer
Actually, I think that it's he doesn't understand that trying to uncover
anonymous identities in financial transactions is a problem that governments
have been solving for decades (I'd say centuries, but I'm not sure the problem
is that old). Pretty much the only difference with a blockchain is that you
can no longer rely on banks cooking their books to protect you.

