Tether and Bitfinex are the cryptosphere central bank and lender of last resort. At least that's what they are trying to be. USD/USDT pairing is now up and running.
I think this article makes a valuable point that is overlooked by Coinbase users and I agree with the crux of the argument. The general ethos of Bitcoin is "not your keys, not your coins". Users of Coinbase are making a tradeoff between ownership/possibility of fractional reserve and ease of custody.
This calculus however is incorrect: "At the Bitcoin blockchain’s current speed of 4.6 transactions per second, it would take 141 days to return depositors' funds even if no other Bitcoin transactions were taking place." You assume that 1 transaction = 1 payment. Exchanges have strarted using a technique called batching which enables 1 transaction to output many UTXOs and thus perform many payments at once. An extra large transaction can have around 40 outputs. This would bring down the 141 days quoted down to 3.5 days. A long time nonetheless but not bad considering this would occur during bankruptcy proceedings.
More information on batching can be found on this (now somewhat outdated) article https://coinmetrics.io/batching/. While the data is stale the explanation of batching accurate. Shout out Nic Carter and Hasu for producing quality content.
Tether and Bitfinex are the cryptosphere central bank and lender of last resort. At least that's what they are trying to be. USD/USDT pairing is now up and running.
I think he is the real Satoshi. Thanks for creating the Bitcoin as a valuable asset for us Satoshi!
I think this article makes a valuable point that is overlooked by Coinbase users and I agree with the crux of the argument. The general ethos of Bitcoin is "not your keys, not your coins". Users of Coinbase are making a tradeoff between ownership/possibility of fractional reserve and ease of custody.
This calculus however is incorrect: "At the Bitcoin blockchain’s current speed of 4.6 transactions per second, it would take 141 days to return depositors' funds even if no other Bitcoin transactions were taking place." You assume that 1 transaction = 1 payment. Exchanges have strarted using a technique called batching which enables 1 transaction to output many UTXOs and thus perform many payments at once. An extra large transaction can have around 40 outputs. This would bring down the 141 days quoted down to 3.5 days. A long time nonetheless but not bad considering this would occur during bankruptcy proceedings.
More information on batching can be found on this (now somewhat outdated) article https://coinmetrics.io/batching/. While the data is stale the explanation of batching accurate. Shout out Nic Carter and Hasu for producing quality content.