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Comment by kylebenzle | Hacker News Reader

Seeing more and more Bitcoin stories and HN these days, is something "happening" in that space finally?

As someone who's followed the space closely for years: No major events, just gradual improvements to the tech, tooling, and adoption surrounding Bitcoin, blockchains, and everything related to them.

Not nearly as entertaining as recent international affairs that may be driving more interest to the space.

As someone who's also followed the space closely I feel like we're watching two different shows? Where are you seeing these improvements?

-CheckLockTimeVerify (CLTV)

-CheckSequenceVerify (CSV)

-Replace-By-Fee (RBF) -> See Peter Todd and https://medium.com/@bramcohen/how-wallets-can-handle-transac...

-compact blocks

-segwit (already been released, waiting to be activated by miners)

-good progress by the 5 implementations (alpha-versions) of the Lightning-protocol (hughe improvement on scalability and even privacy by using TOR). See Rusty Russell: https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/the-bitcoin-lightning-sp...

CLTV is over a year old at this point. Segwit doesn't look like it's going to reach consensus anytime soon which means lightning implementations are doa.

Compact blocks are definitely an improvement for the network though.

Mostly centered on Ethereum. Though the signal/noise ratio isn't that good.

gradual improvements.

more access, better tech, fewer scams. Where do you see that we are the same as we were a few years ago?

2 years of community infighting. I don't see any better tech that is relevant to most users just edge cases. I don't actually see fewer scams at all. The whole ICO market is basically a giant set of scams for one example and they are exploding. We've had multiple large exchange thefts this year as well.

The price is at its highest point since 2014. The last time it was this high was an obvious bubble, whereas the current price is after a sustained rally.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-trading-highest-level-...

Simply crypto is eating finance. Very slowly but it's happening.

Is there any evidence it's making any progress into traditional finance? There were a number of projects announced over the past few years but they all seem to have sizzled out or been outright cancelled. Where are you seeing it "eating finance"?

Synthetic USD/CNY/JPY bonds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XehDfHTa8Sg

This stuff is brilliant.

I feel like I'm missing a lot here. Why would anyone go through all that trouble just to create an asset that follows the price of USD? Why not just use USD?

Untaxed and black market trading. It's worth a lot of money, until it gains serious traction at which point the government will simply outlaw it.

> at which point the government will simply outlaw it

If you are using it for tax avoidance or money laundering, it is already illegal.

I think many people see crypto currencies, until they are regulated, somehow, as legal ways to not pay tax. Obviously they are not and when the gov catches up, they might get you anyway. They are very patient.

Ofcourse things are easier to hide if you want to for a while, but how would you turn it into actual money if we are talking large amounts?

I think "outlaw" upthread means "take notice of the particular mechanism, and sufficient steps to make it untenable for most use".

It's no more "eating finance" than SQL servers or hadoop are eating finance. It is a tool that may or may not be used by large financial institutions.

In Bitcoin SegWit is a hope for change. In the whole scene ICOs seem to be a killer application, this is what Bitcoin smart assets/colored coins envisioned years ago. The USV and A16Z funding of Polychain Capital signals a new kind of experiment.

In the other hand private "blockchains" are waiting for a killer and real implementation.

There's been a rally up to almost $800 in the last month or so.

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