Posts tagged as cryptocurrency

Bandwidth Caps Will Not Be The Death Of Cryptocurrencies. Rather, The Opposite.

2018-11-04 by HowToPhil, tagged as bandwidth caps, bitcoin, crypto, cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, ether, ethereum

You're finally ready to dive into the cryptocurrency stream, but a few days in, your capped bandwidth is exhausted, even on your landline, be it DSL or Cable. The frustration you're feeling at this point is a warning signal for a major bottleneck to the spread of cryptocurrencies.

Keeping a distributed blockchain in sync takes bandwidth and in the future, it will take uncapped end-user internet access services. A constant transfer of data is required to keep the cryptocurrency ecosystem healthy.

The current arbitrarily imposed bandwidth caps, which have no technical reason only being used to increase profit margins, will not, however, break the spread of cryptocurrencies. It is far more likely that as cryptocurrencies (and streaming services) increase in variety and use, the calls for truly unlimited bandwidth from ISPs will grow until the companies respond by releasing the stranglehold they currently have on internet access.

The bandwidth caps will fade into history as much from the needs of an increase in the number of people using cryptocurrencies as from the increase of users of streaming video services.

The changes that cryptocurrency will make to the world are not simply limited to systems of barter and trade, but also to the system those new currencies exist on. As with most revolutionary technology, the landscape is changed along with its ubiquitous adoption.

Hospitals, schools, stores, and an ever-increasing number of places have "charging stations" for the smartphones everyone carries. A restaurant or cafe without free WiFi is about as unthinkable as either of these places without public restrooms. Widely adopted cryptocurrencies will bring about changes just as surely.

While changes to the physical world may take a little longer for cryptocurrencies to effect, it seems clear that changes to internet services will come sooner. Customers will simply expect to be able to sync their various blockchains and keep connected to the systems of barter they've chosen to trust and invest themselves in.

The current barriers in the form of bandwidth caps, hard or soft, will not be tolerated when it means interrupting the flow of various digital economies which the customer bases of these ISPs require ready access to.

It is likely that a wide adoption of cryptocurrencies will bring with it a much-improved internet, as a matter of the basic technical requirements of that wide adoption. Just as DSL made its way out to rural areas with the advent of streaming services, it is likely that fiber optics, high-speed wireless, and uncapped data plans will spread outward as people attach their assets to whatever cryptocurrencies they choose to adopt.