[burade]

No, that's not the argument. That argument is that the global bitcoin network is slow as shit, and it would take 5 entire months just to process 140 million US citizens' taxes. Meaning that it's not really viable, unless some technological breakthrough happens.

[bhupy]

But that's sort of a straw-man representation of what (most) Bitcoin adherents see as the future of Bitcoin / crypto. I don't think anyone serious expects the raw blockchain to power every single transaction in real time, rather it's seen as a mechanism to supplant clearing houses. Consider that every night, banks submit batch files to a network of clearing houses in order to electronically transact US dollars (credit cards, Venmo, etc are all just abstractions on top of this ultimate step). The slow, asynchronous blockchain transaction is meant to be a replacement for that step.

The steel-man version of the Bitcoin/crypto future is that most people would use trust-based institutions to perform instant transactions (like credit cards and Venmo), just that the ultimate step involves an hour long blockchain transaction rather than a days-long ACH batch file. The fact that the Blockchain also enables individual point-to-point payments (albeit slowly) in a trust-less way is more of a replacement to having to mail somebody an envelope/briefcase full of cash, which is currently the only way one can transact if one is blacklisted by the centralized institutions. And depending on your political leanings, you might still prefer to use centralized payments on top of Bitcoin/crypto instead of on top of USD because with the former, there's little room for funny business by central bank reserve messing with the supply of money.

[elliekelly]

> rather than a days-long ACH batch file

Same-day ACH exists today. Even for international transactions. Most ACH batch files can be processed in as little as an hour. To the extent there's anything preventing "instant transactions" its (1) AML regulations and (2) internal/contractual (Visa, etc.) fraud prevention, not the ACH process.

[erehweb]

I think I'm missing something. If the system doesn't have that much capacity for transactions, wouldn't that still be a problem, even if you do the Venmo-like stuff instantly and batch the reconciliation overnight?

[googlryas]

It needs a social/political breakthrough, not technological. You could just make block sizes 1000x larger and be done with it. Literally just a configuration variable if everyone would get on board.

[mr_woozy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqNEQS80-h4 - Luke Dashjr "Briefly, Why Block Sizes Shouldn't Be Too Big"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92AYj_9W7x0 - Why is Block Size 1MB Andreas Antonopoulos

There's simple trade-off between decentralized and bandwidth requirements. If you raise the limit you reduce the pool of those that run full nodes thereby centralizing the network at which point you're undermining the point of a decentralized ledger.

[throw0101a]

> Literally just a configuration variable if everyone would get on board.

If.

[jeffreyrogers]

So many problems are like this though and they don't get solved. I doubt bitcoin will be any different.

[reidjs]

Why would the US Gov want people to pay their taxes in BTC instead of USD?