01-07-2018, 02:08 PM
Hi crimsong,
Re the delays in txn, yes they are frustrating currently. The current state of technology in Bitcoin blockchain only allows for 4 transactions per second...which is not very practical for worldwide adoption. This is because addressed by building a second layer on top of bitcoin using something called the Lightning Network, which uses SegWit. This should allow the blockchain to start scaling things to a much higher level.
Ethereum is a bit better. They just crossed 1M transactions per day (which comes to about 11 txns per second) and this is without any layer-2. They are working on new layer 2 solutions codenamed Plasma (theres also something called Casper, which I think is related, but I havent researched that one much), which will address the scalability issues.
Re mining...depends on what you want to mine. For the most part, CPU mining is not efficient and most calculations in blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum have gotten harder for make CPU mining pointless - you will burn a lot of electricity and get nothing out in trying to find the numbers. Ethereum is better done with GPUs, and for Bitcoin -- you need ASICs. So, unless you are willing to invest more into hardware, these coins are out of reach for home running. Im sure there are some altcoins which you can still mine with CPUs.
Re the delays in txn, yes they are frustrating currently. The current state of technology in Bitcoin blockchain only allows for 4 transactions per second...which is not very practical for worldwide adoption. This is because addressed by building a second layer on top of bitcoin using something called the Lightning Network, which uses SegWit. This should allow the blockchain to start scaling things to a much higher level.
Ethereum is a bit better. They just crossed 1M transactions per day (which comes to about 11 txns per second) and this is without any layer-2. They are working on new layer 2 solutions codenamed Plasma (theres also something called Casper, which I think is related, but I havent researched that one much), which will address the scalability issues.
Re mining...depends on what you want to mine. For the most part, CPU mining is not efficient and most calculations in blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum have gotten harder for make CPU mining pointless - you will burn a lot of electricity and get nothing out in trying to find the numbers. Ethereum is better done with GPUs, and for Bitcoin -- you need ASICs. So, unless you are willing to invest more into hardware, these coins are out of reach for home running. Im sure there are some altcoins which you can still mine with CPUs.