186
I bought my first 0.1 btc before 2015 and I left it in Coinbase, for some reason I forgot my 2fa and I couldn't withdraw when the market was at the top in 2017, so COINBASE give me access to my old wallet months later and I was able to withdraw my funds, but in that they I end up cashing out around $1300, and my account with Coinbase was closed and until now I have not been able to open an account with them.
I do remember using Bitcoin before 2015 and transaction were really cheap, it felt like the future in those days, when I move my 0.12 out of Coinbase I had to pay around 0.0001 which to me that was rather odd, so I started researching what has changed since my first time uses and testing of Bitcoin, and realized the block size dilemma, I started posting on community forums trying to find out what was the issue, and I would get ban just for asking question from Bitcoin forums, or I would get really bad propaganda about altcoins and that Bitcoin is the only asset I should hold, so being myself I decided to just read what was available on post that have not been deleted, and I realize the war. Knowing the issues I decided to reinvest my initial money and to try new coins, I end up buying and selling many of them in some I lost in some I gain.
I was buying and selling, but also at the same time trying them, and testing and reading what was their mission of the project, I end up using Decred, monero, zcash, xrp, litecoin, dogecoin, bitcoinz, eth, x-cash, cardano, waves, bnb. I end up in the end of 2019 with 0.5 btc. Even when I bought those coins I never felt like holding them long term because when I did my research I found out many issues with them, so I just tried to buy low sell high, but I knew something was up because on each of those trades I had to pay high transactions fees, and even when I have accumulated much more btc I never felt like I was doing something right.
So an opportunity to leave for another city come to me and I decided to sell alll of my crypto for dollars to pay more my financial needs in the new city, was a great choice because here is much cheaper, and I also saved up some cash, which was a great decision because covid19 came and I lost my old job and it has been hard since that time to get a better job with a higher pay, because I saved up fiat and I moved from city, even without a job I made through 2020, and I think I had it best than most other people. But now my initial 0.1 is gone and I have used up all of my 0.5 from my previous trades. At to this point I have realized why btc fees are so high and the mission of Bitcoin Cash, so I decided to make some test on LN because they say that's their solution for high fees.
Well, opening and closing channels means you have to pay those high fess plus routing fess. I played with private channels, open channels, and custodian wallets. And I have realized that let say fess are $10 on-chain that means you need to have at least $30, plus more money for your channel to have liquidity, when opening channels you can choose low fees and just wait long times, but once your channel is open and you want to close it the closing tx will always be as high as the current priority fee because that's the way the protocol works, and even if you don't close the channel your funds for closing the channel will be unusable, so current fees are $10, around $20 will be put into reserve fee, so if you channel is open with a $100 liquirity, $20 won't be spendable.
If you route payments in the same node fees will actually be free or between 1 to 100 satoshis, but if you move funds from your channel that goes through many other nodes fees won't be cheap, as a matter of fact, I created many channels and test it LN to understand my single thing fees will never be cheap no matter the chain LN or SegWit. Once time I moved 0.0153 and I had to paid 0.00006, I have made many transactions like that. The Bitcoiners don't want you to move your coins or to use it because at that just like me you will realize Bitcoin fees will never come down.
I have also realized that as on-chain fees go up so do LN routing fees as well, as a matter of fact one of the big channels routing operator (LNBig) publish that he only made $20 out of $1m in lightning network as fees, so operators are risking their funds to provide liquidity for LN, and opening and closing channels get more expensive over time, eventually node operators will have to try to raise the routing fess to get some return out of their lock liquidity. to realize this it took me to open and using LN, you don't have to do the same.
Just realize that Bitcoin was supposed to be a peer to peer currency but with high fees you can't be that, and LN will not help you either, because you have to pay and reserve the funds to pay the opening and closing of channels, and because node operator provide liquidity, they are also paying high fees, so eventually both networks will be equally expensive, the only difference will be is that one will be expensive and slow, the other one will be much faster but it will be also more expensive, I predict that Bitcoin Core holders will justify LN high fees by saying that is much expensive because you are paying a premium for having fast transactions at a much higher rate than 3 tx for minute.
In 2021, after realizing all of the altcoins short coming that I have tried before, some of those short coming are, xrp you have to buy from a company, they make the money you hold a token that banks will never used because banks will use what the governments says, litecoin is just a test network for Bitcoin, with a founder that just sold, eth they say they are DeFi, so having everything in one single coin makes much easier for a hostile agent to takeover, after all one coin DeFi is better than all altcoins having many DeFi chains, zcash I don't like the idea of a tax for developers, monero I wonder if they don't have a inflation bug.
At the end of my analysis and previous experience using Bitcoin just before 2015 and after 2017, I have come to the realization that Bitcoin Cash works just like Bitcoin before the block size war and it is a threat for bitcoiners that's why they attack it so harshly, the forks that happened are just different views were both camps couldn't reconcile. I think Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC will have a room in the altcoin market but because of low fees and not crazy sizeblocks Bitcoin Cash will be use more in the future.
At 32MB for blocks and current hardware with internet connections the Bitcoin Cash network can take more users, eventually 1TB blocks could exist but with prices and hardware in the retail side 128MB blocks could be the next stop. Remember it is not just about increasing the block size you will also need to find a balance between blocks size, prices for hardware so that the network doesn't become centralized because too few nodes run full nodes. Today 100TB SSD exist for around $10k to $5k in price and 1GB internet connections with a price of $250, so at 32MB a normal desktop computer with a 100mbps internet connection can run a full node for 10 years with a 16TB hard drive, at 128MB blocks it will be pushing the normal house computer to the limit but currently and at least for the next 5 years blocks sizes that big may not be needed.
So don't let anyone scared you into selling your Bitcoin Cash with the node centralization lie because you have a clear idea of how much a desktop computer cost and you can run a full node for at least 10 years with just a couple of dollars more if you need a higher HDD.
I would say 2021 will be the year when the usage of Bitcoin Cash will grow, and so will the price eventually, SLP, memo.cash and many other websites that let you write on the blockchain will bring more users, not to mention that eventually people will find out the lies about bitcoin transactions, just like I figured out that transaction are been kept high by design in BTC, so many will as well, they will search for solutions and cheaper transaction fees, help me spread my story so that maybe others can learn from my experience and may be buy Bitcoin Cash before is too late.
I started my whole crypto journey just before 2015 with just 0.10 btc I hope others can learn from my experience and gain even more Bitcoin Cash so that they can get into the train where they can get more for their money, at today they can get 100 times more Bitcoin Cash than Bitcoin in terms of satoshis, but the more users realize the lies about 1mb blocks those satoshis will be much less and less.
https://read.cash/@francis105d1/my-little-story-using-bitcoin-ee7fdcd1
