# Reply to
# https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/58ri21/just_a_thought_and_request_for_stimulating/

# NOT POSTED

> I've literally sent $30,000 usd worth of bitcoin multiple times and at most it may cost me 30 cents usd..

You were lucky, of course.  If the price of bitcoin dropped 10% between purchase and sale (as it did between July 31 and August 02) the transfer would have cost you $3000 in "volatility fees".

And you must have paid some fees to convert "fiat" to bitcoins and vice-versa, no?

> I actually am starting to think that bitcoin as a settlement system with a 2nd layer to handle small tx's is perhaps an amazing idea

Of course iit is an amazing idea! It was Greg's idea, and it was so good that it justified bringing about the block size war and all its sequels in order to impose it on dumb bitcoiners.

</sarcasm>

The bitcoin network indeed cannot handle all coffee purchases of the world.  Maybe one can create another network to handle all those transactions; but it would be weird to consider that a solution to *bitcoin's* scaling problem.

You don't say that you "fixed" a system when the "fix" was to move all usage to another system.  It would be silly to describe the network of cars, trucks, buses, roads and highways as "the way that horses were improved to handle all ground transportation traffic of the modern world".

You are not stating the problem properly.

What you really want is not "a way to fix the bitcoin network so that it can handle all coffe purchases of the world."  There is no hope that it can ever do that in a way that is sufficiently convenient, safe, quick, and cheap.

You also do not want to "build a payment system that would handle all that traffic conveniently, safely, quickly and cheaply".  There are already good solutions for that, and better ones are coming out.

What you really want is "get the world to use bitcoin as a currency for buying coffe and such", so that the price goes to the moon.

Well, I don't think that will work either,  The bitcoin *payment system* is awful, but sort of works, and for a certain niche (illegal payments) it is the best option because it is the only option.   Whereas the bitcoin *currency* is an unmitigated failure: it is unsuitable for legal payments, and is  used for illegal payments only because it is what the network uses.