Flaws in Bitcoin make a lasting revival unlikely
Looks like the flaws are:<p>1. &quot;overstatement of activity&quot;<p>2. 7 transactions&#x2F;second<p>3. constrained currency supply (21 M)<p>4. fraud in exchanges<p>Odd that only one of these points (2, scaling) relates to Bitcoin the protocol itself. And that scaling issue has raged from Bitcoin&#x27;s first public disclosure. This clock has been stuck at noon forever.<p>The remaining three points have little to do with Bitcoin the technology and more to do with how Bitcoin is being used. All can be viewed as either a feature or bug, depending on your worldview. Consider the counterpoints:<p>- Nobody knows exactly how often Bitcoin is used for payments or what it&#x27;s used to buy. As such, its users can enjoy much more privacy than they can with other payment methods.<p>- Constrained supply means protection against inflationist central banks.<p>- A currency that isn&#x27;t used to commit fraud isn&#x27;t very useful. Therefore, to say that Bitcoin has failed because of fraud is dishonest at best.<p>The article does to mention Lightning Network, but doesn&#x27;t give enough context to make anything of. It&#x27;s operational now and there&#x27;s been a flurry of development activity in the last year. LN has the potential to:<p>- increase transaction throughput well beyond 7 transactions&#x2F;second<p>- increase user privacy<p>- increase usability<p>I don&#x27;t expect journalists reporting on Bitcoin to go very deep. But it would be nice if they changed the playbook every once in awhile.