Bitcoin think tank rejects science behind ‘limited adoption problem’ paper

A squad of researchers from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a non-profit deliberation tank, person roundly rejected the conclusions reached successful a 2022 insubstantial claiming that Bitcoin (BTC) has an intrinsic scaling occupation that volition pb to constricted adoption successful the future.

According to the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s researchers, the archetypal paper, dubbed “Bitcoin’s Limited Adoption Problem,” is predicated connected 3 faulty assumptions.

First, the authors of the archetypal insubstantial assertion that payments connected the Bitcoin web necessitate afloat web statement for settlement. Second, they asseverate that the summation of miners to the web prolongs clip to colony by “delaying web consensus.” Third, they assertion there’s an precocious bounds connected Bitcoin payments owed to the architecture of bitcoin’s blockchain.

The Bitcoin Policy Institute researchers cull each premise successful a recently-published insubstantial cheekily-titled “Bitcoin works successful practice, but does it enactment successful theory?”

The institute researchers, who hail from six antithetic prestigious U.S. universities, assertion that the alleged “limited adoption problem” is theoretical and counterintuitive to the world of however bitcoin operates:

“Hinzen, John, and Salah reason that the plan of the Bitcoin protocol results successful a antagonistic web effect […] this is an absorbing theoretical result, but rests connected faulty assumptions astir however bitcoin really works.”

In rebuking the archetypal paper’s assertions, the institute researchers reason that its authors “fundamentally misunderstand however Bitcoin achieves statement and however the introduction and exit of miners affects the timing of caller transaction blocks,” and that their probe ignores “existing, widely-implemented scaling solutions.”

While the institute probe insubstantial does reason that the enactment being criticized comes to a dependable decision — namely, that “Bitcoin’s blockchain does not standard good for on-chain payments,” it besides points retired that these scaling issues person been known since Bitcoin’s inception and person frankincense been decently mitigated successful the clip since.

Ultimately, the institute squad observes that the archetypal paper’s authors are “tilting astatine windmills” due to the fact that “bitcoin scales done off-chain payments, not by expanding throughput astatine the basal layer. Off-chain protocols spend much scalability precisely due to the fact that they bash not necessitate statement of the full network.”

Related: Bitcoin deliberation tank: Reject CBDCs and look to BTC and stablecoins instead