Transaction time on Bitcoin is an issue as long as you're willing to ignore the Lightning Network, which has become the go-to fix. While it's not used at scale yet, and needs some time to mature and grow, it solves the problem of slow transaction times, without giving up the trust that Blockchain provides.
Price/Value volatility is also not an issue worth thinking about. While Bitcoin and its competitors are incredibly volatile at the moment, it would be shortsighted to think that won't change as adoption increases and regulations become available, volatility will seize to be an issue.
On the topic of Smart Contracts, there's a lot you're ignoring too. While the current design of Smart Contracts might be sub optimal, that doesn't mean there isn't a solution or design that solves those issues. The tech is incredibly young and proper standards have yet to find their way into that market.
I fundamentally disagree with the way you're coming at some of these issues, as I think you're looking at them in a "nothing will change" kind of view. Crypto is incredibly young and underdeveloped. If there wasn't so much money to be made from it, it wouldn't be a technology most of us would've heard about yet. It's going to need years to develop and be regulated before it becomes something we use every day. Most of the issues plaguing the Crypto market today will become irrelevant in the next couple years and some of them have been fixed already. Consensus just needs to be reached on which solutions we want to use and which will fall by the wayside.
That's fair, omitting the work being done on the lightning network is a big hole. I'm aware of it, but it didn't come to mind while I was writing this. I'll add a mention of it since that's a serious effort to address this problem.
I agree volatility will decrease as a usage increases, but to me, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: volatility is a major impediment to increased adoption. I'm sure it will settle down once some of the bad actors are removed via regulation and once some of the pending investigations settle down, but I also think there will be a major downswing associated with those events.
The tech is very young, but standards are insufficient to address the problems I see with Solidity as a language. ERC20 is a standard, but there are still poorly implemented tokens. I see it as the same reason you wouldn't want to write, e.g., aircraft control software in JS—you can't verify the code in advance due to language limitations. Formal verification is an area of research in language design, and it's definitely possible for Eth/other smart contract platforms to improve in that area, but it'd be a drastic change and I don't see it being a priority any time soon.
It is young, and I expect it will stick around in some form, I just don't anticipate that these two examples will be the technology that remains at the forefront.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Transaction time on Bitcoin is an issue as long as you're willing to ignore the Lightning Network, which has become the go-to fix. While it's not used at scale yet, and needs some time to mature and grow, it solves the problem of slow transaction times, without giving up the trust that Blockchain provides.
Price/Value volatility is also not an issue worth thinking about. While Bitcoin and its competitors are incredibly volatile at the moment, it would be shortsighted to think that won't change as adoption increases and regulations become available, volatility will seize to be an issue.
On the topic of Smart Contracts, there's a lot you're ignoring too. While the current design of Smart Contracts might be sub optimal, that doesn't mean there isn't a solution or design that solves those issues. The tech is incredibly young and proper standards have yet to find their way into that market.
I fundamentally disagree with the way you're coming at some of these issues, as I think you're looking at them in a "nothing will change" kind of view. Crypto is incredibly young and underdeveloped. If there wasn't so much money to be made from it, it wouldn't be a technology most of us would've heard about yet. It's going to need years to develop and be regulated before it becomes something we use every day. Most of the issues plaguing the Crypto market today will become irrelevant in the next couple years and some of them have been fixed already. Consensus just needs to be reached on which solutions we want to use and which will fall by the wayside.
That's fair, omitting the work being done on the lightning network is a big hole. I'm aware of it, but it didn't come to mind while I was writing this. I'll add a mention of it since that's a serious effort to address this problem.
I agree volatility will decrease as a usage increases, but to me, it's a chicken-and-egg problem: volatility is a major impediment to increased adoption. I'm sure it will settle down once some of the bad actors are removed via regulation and once some of the pending investigations settle down, but I also think there will be a major downswing associated with those events.
The tech is very young, but standards are insufficient to address the problems I see with Solidity as a language. ERC20 is a standard, but there are still poorly implemented tokens. I see it as the same reason you wouldn't want to write, e.g., aircraft control software in JS—you can't verify the code in advance due to language limitations. Formal verification is an area of research in language design, and it's definitely possible for Eth/other smart contract platforms to improve in that area, but it'd be a drastic change and I don't see it being a priority any time soon.
It is young, and I expect it will stick around in some form, I just don't anticipate that these two examples will be the technology that remains at the forefront.