1 Level
14 Review
5 Karma
Review on Bitcoin by Sharron Robertson
Bitcoin Review
Bitcoin seeks to provide a Decentralized and Trustless means to Securely transfer value Anonymously between users in an OPEN ledger where validated transactions are Irreversible.
Decentralization at risk – The mechanism for validating transactions in Bitcoin, referred to as mining, is predominantly controlled by large concentrated consortiums, which risk the decentralization of the ecosystem.
High environmental impact – The mining process utilizes increasingly massive amounts of energy, which challenge the adoption of Bitcoin to the growing socially conscious segment of the public concerned with environmental impact.
Hard to Scale – Based on the current details of the Bitcoin protocol it’s utility and scalability as a currency is limited since the amount of transactions that can be processed in a given amount of time is constrained. In times of high network volume there can be long delays to validate transactions unless higher transaction fees are included.
High transaction fees – As noted above, additional transaction fees may be needed to ensure quick processing of a payment, thereby limiting the use of Bitcoin for small value transactions.
Fun but Real Fact - BTC can be lost if the holder stores the coins in a wallet then subsequently loses that wallet and the recovery passphrase. Analysts from Chainalysis, via Fortune, estimate the amount of BTC lost in this way to be between 1.7 and 2.7 million BTC.
Pros
- Best in class liquidity (easiest to trade)
- Well established technology and public interest
- Provides access to other crypto (common trading pair)
Cons
- During times of high activity transaction fees can be relatively high
- Scaling challenges (transactions/second)
- Consumes a significant amount of energy during mining
