Remove Mentions Of Low Fees And Instant Transactions

[harding]

Preview: http://dg4.dtrt.org/en/

The current site text makes repeated mention of Bitcoin providing low transaction fees and instant transactions, as well as strongly implying that any transaction paying a fee or having medium priority will be confirmed in the next block.

As instant transactions can be unsafe and the other things are less likely to be true in as available block space becomes fully utilized, this pull removes or clarifies those sections.

To keep this pull easy to review, preference was given to removing sections rather than replacing them with new sections. (In a few cases, this required commenting out adjacent text to keep page layouts balanced.) Clarifications were kept as minimal as possible also to make review as easy as possible.

I suggest that replacement sections or more comprehensive revisions be submitted as a separate pull request.

Removals

Screenshots below are from current Bitcoin.org with removals highlighted. Links are to the pages on the preview site with this commit applied.

Main page:

Bitcoin for individuals:

Bitcoin for businesses:

Bitcoin for developers:

FAQ:

(Note: many other non-removal changes were made; see the clarifications section below.)

Innovation:

Press:

Clarifications

Please see the diff for text changes.

[luke-jr]

I don't think this needs to go. Instant payments may not be secure, but they're just fine for getting money from friends and family (what "peer to peer" suggests to me here).

[harding]

"peer to peer" implied "from a stranger" to me because when I use other P2P protocols like BitTorrent, most of my peers are strangers.

We could rephrase to "Instant transactions from friends", but that sounds like weak marketing to me. It implies (correctly) that transactions from strangers aren't instant, so it comes off as a negative point.

I think it's better to remove it and replace it entirely with a completely different advantage of Bitcoin.

[luke-jr]

"Instant transfers" + "Irreversible in hours instead of days"?

[petertodd]

@luke-jr That kind of wording sounds reasonable.

Similarly, saying things like "payments in 10 minutes" is pretty close to the truth already - "irreversible payments in under an hour" for instance would be quite accurate.

[harding]

I should note that this is the 404 page and that it redirects to the home page for anyone with Javascript enabled, so we probably don't need to spend much time optimizing it. (Frankly, I think it should say "page not found" instead of being an old version of the index page.)

[Introshine]

Instant peer to peer transactions

I don't have the permissions to make edits, so I'm commenting here. I don't think this line is 100% false, it's just not good enough.

I suggest:

Directly verifiable digital cash payments - fast confirmation.

[Dave-Aiello]

I'd suggest adding "quickly" either before or after "transferred" as a compromise. Also, it now seems that using two specific countries sounds awkward as it's currently phrased. Maybe just replacing "from Africa to Canada" with "across borders" would be desirable.

[pdaian]

"transferred globally" also works.

[petertodd]

I'm happy to ACK as-is.

Better wording for parts can be argued about later, where simple removals could be changed to replacements.

[felipelalli]

ACK

[theymos]

It's long been known that Bitcoin itself would likely be incapable of handling zero-fee transactions and micropayments forever, but I don't think that it's accurate to say that low fees are just an accident of the current state of the network: Bitcoin does make possible technology like Lightning, which will likely allow all Bitcoin users to do cheap/fast transactions in the future. So while the removed text probably does promise too much, I don't think that references to low fees should be removed just because the technology for making this scale isn't quite there yet. And Bitcoin is way faster than other irreversible transaction systems in almost all cases.

[ghost1542]

FWIW, I agree that replacing "no fee" by "low fee", and "instant" by "fast" is probably the best solution at this point than dropping complete texts altogether (Bitcoin still has great qualities). If users indeed have no choice but to pay higher fees in the future, these texts can be revisited to match reality.

Note, although maybe for a separate pull request, it may be worth clarifying that 3+ confirmations is now preferable for lightweight wallets on the "You need to know" page.

[Ninkip2p]

@saivann FWIW, I agree that replacing "no fee" with "low fee", and "instant" by "fast" is probably the best solution at this point than dropping complete texts altogether (Bitcoin still has great qualities). If users indeed have no choice but to pay higher fees in the future, these texts can be revisited to match reality.

+1

[thesoftwarejedi]

I disagree with @petertodd and the quick to ACK crowd. I bought coffee today instantly using bitcoin. That is a fact. The transactions are instant. Why change this wording at all?

Cash transactions are instant too, but the risk exists that the cashier will be robbed before they get that money into a bank. We don't therefore say that cash transactions aren't instant.

As engineers, we have a tendency to try and be as literal and careful with this wording because with don't want to have to explain double spends and mining. We don't have to explain these things - they are robberies of the future and many companies are already in the business of addressing them, and educating merchants.

Bitcoin DOES allow instant transactions, the only exception being the definition of "instant", for me it took about a second. Period.

[carnesen]

I suggest that replacement sections or more comprehensive revisions be submitted as a separate pull request.

The content that's there is all pretty good and accurate. Why is it better to cut it out wholesale like that and then have people rewrite it from scratch instead of just tweaking the existing wording?

Besides that Bitcoin does in fact offer low fees and instant transactions. So I largely disagree with these edits in either case.

[harding]

@theymos and @saivann (quoting from Saïvann)

If users indeed have no choice but to pay higher fees in the future, these texts can be revisited to match reality.

This site's marketing text is read by people who are deciding whether they want to start using Bitcoin. If we tell them that fees are low without any additional qualifiers, they will assume that low fees are part of the system. They may even assume, the way some people on Reddit seem to have assumed, that "low fees" mean "the current low fees" (which are extremely low, so that any fee rise looks big in comparison).

I worry that by advertising low fees, we're advertising something that isn't under our control, and which could make people feel like we misled them should fees rise significantly. We're selling Bitcoin as a system, and I think we should be careful to only promise what we know we can deliver.

I think a similar situation applies to "fast". Bitcoin is fast, but only when it comes to preventing chargebacks. That's not typically a concern for consumers, and with Bitcoin and one-or-more confirmation requirements from merchants, Bitcoin can seem like a pretty slow payment method. This is even more so if a user's transaction isn't confirmed in the next block or two, likely to become a more frequent occurrence if the queue of legitimate transactions grows.

In this case, I feel like we're advertising a best-case scenario that will disappoint the user when things don't go perfectly.

There are other good things about Bitcoin that we can reliably promise that are also appealing. Perhaps more importantly, "low cost" and "fast" are not competitive with centralized payment systems that say "free" (for spenders) and which are so implicitly instant (sans chargebacks) that they don't even bother to mention it on their home page. (I'm looking at the PayPal homepage as I write this.)

I'm happy to discuss this further, but I still feel like removing these texts now (and replacing them with something else later) is the best course of action.

[kanzure]

I bought coffee today instantly using bitcoin. That is a fact. The transactions are instant. Why change this wording at all?

Well, primarily because that's technically impossible. There are fundamental laws of physics that you'd have to break. You'll win a bunch of prizes in physics for doing so! You should feel honored or something? Word games aside, whether your merchant chooses to take zero-confirmation off-chain transactions is not something that can be enforced by the design of the system anyway.

[Introshine]

NACK

While most of the highlighted text is a bit misleading, I don't think they should be deleted. It would be better to re-write them to better match reality. Mainly change refereces "Instant" to "Instantly verifiable" and "Free" to "Free (as in speech), Low - negotiable fees" as the miners decide and up to the latest block fees are still low (cents to move hundreds of dollars).

[davout]

@thesoftwarejedi

I bought coffee today using bitcoin and it wasn't instant. That is a fact. Thanks to this anecdotal evidence I can safely conclude that the transactions can not be and are never instant.

[ghost1542]

If we tell them that fees are low without any additional qualifiers, they will assume that low fees are part of the system.

Re additional qualifiers: That's the reason why I suggest we use the "You need to know" page for that purpose (it is linked prominently on all key pages), so the website can present current Bitcoin's qualities while also explaining it's risks and uncertainties. I wouldn't be against a short text here to summarize that fees are hardly predictable over the long term, and could rise significantly, either temporarily or permanently, depending on how the system scales up.

To quote a relevant text already on that page:

Bitcoin is an experimental new currency that is in active development.
Although it becomes less experimental as usage grows, you should
keep in mind that Bitcoin is a new invention that is exploring ideas that
have never been attempted before. As such, its future cannot be predicted by anyone.

[thesoftwarejedi]

whether your merchant chooses to take zero-confirmation off-chain transactions is not something that can be enforced by the design of the system anyway

You're right. So why not market through this site what a user will experience? Currently, the experience is instant, low cost transactions in a vast majority of cases. Why not just put an asterisk after "instant" and "low cost" and link out to the technical details? Currently the market meets my families expectations, and I have demanding teens buying a lot of steam games, Amazon shipments, Microsoft Xbox games, etc. they have not once complained about speed or cost.

My point that I'm trying to make is that somehow we are feeling ethically responsible to disclose risk. Risks that exist with all currency. PayPal says instant. It is most of the time, until they freeze your bank accounts. They don't advertise those little nuances of the system because they're a PITA to explain.

[felipelalli]

Less is more. The text promises too much.

[pbreit]

I think low/no-cost and fast should continue to be highlighted as Bitcoin transaction advantages.

[wamatt]

@Introshine "negational"?

that does not seem to fit the context. Perhaps you were after a different word?

[harding]

@saivann I like the idea of adding a sentence about fees to the Experimental section on the You Need To Know page. I'll see if I can think of something now and put it in a separate PR. I'll also add the note about SPV wallets requiring extra confirmations at the same time. Thanks!

But I don't feel like that ameliorates my concern that we're promising something that we can't be sure we can deliver. Even if we assume everyone reads the You Need To Know page (unlikely), we're just moving the time when the user feels like they've been misled from months or years in the future to just a few minutes after they read some other page on the site that promises low fees and fast payments.

Admittedly, sooner is better for the user in the long run---but wouldn't it be better still to only make claims we can be highly confident about? If low fees and fast payments are the only reason people would consider using Bitcoin, we're in trouble---centralized payment systems already provide consumers with zero spend fees and millisecond payment processing (plus lots of other features Bitcoin doesn't currently do well).

[theymos]

@harding IMO if the fees for an end-user are especially high, then there's something wrong with Bitcoin, and that needs to be fixed somehow (probably via higher-layer protocols) as long as the fix doesn't compromise more important things like decentralization. Low fees aren't a guaranteed property of Bitcoin, but they're an important goal. This is true of many aspects of Bitcoin; for example, censorship-resistance and the ability to pay people worldwide aren't guaranteed properties of Bitcoin, but they should exist.

Instant transactions are possible if the recipient is willing to accept the fraud risk, which they often are. It's similar to credit card fraud risk, but disappears much more quickly.

I think that it's fair to advertise positive points about Bitcoin (the currency, not the base protocol) that exist now and that we can reasonably expect to still exist in 5-10 years, even if there might be some rough patches along the way.

I agree with this PR -- most of the removed stuff is awfully inaccurate/misleading -- but I think that a lot of this should be reintroduced with more careful language. For example, maybe replace the three points with something like "Fast (sometimes instant) peer-to-peer transactions | Worldwide payments | Be your own bank"

[harding]

@theymos

I agree with this PR -- most of the removed stuff is awfully inaccurate/misleading -- but I think that a lot of this should be reintroduced with more careful language.

Are you requesting that be done in this PR, or are you fine with my proposal of submitting replacement marketing in a separate PR?

[pbreit]

@harding one massive use case is cross-border transfers in which case speed and cost are two of the most important attributes. I don't see why you'd want to down-play or hide that.

[theymos]

@harding A separate PR is fine with me.

[btcdrak]

I generally agree with the sentiment of this PR, we should not be falsely advertising however, some of the deletions are a bit much. For example while small denomination microtransactions might be becoming less feasible fee wise on-chain, bitcoin still provides these using micropayment channels, that technology already exists today and is implemented and will continue to get better as OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY is deployed along with OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY which together will empower Lightning payments. Even some argue LN is far away, micropayment are here today and there are already several implementations, Strawpay, Streamium, BlockCypher to name a few.

Equally, bitcoin is fast, but not instant. Dropping instant is OK, but fast is overkill. Credit card settlement takes 3 business days (T3). Bitcoin settlement takes approximately 1 hour. Bitcoin is better than T0 settlement.

[paulperegud]

NACK

Bitcoin transactions are the fastest out there. They are as close to instant and irreversible as it gets. There were no major cases of double spends AFAIK. Removing major selling point from the site just because of theoretical threat - this feels like pedantic zealotry.

[ywecur]

@paulperegud Agreed

[OmniEdge]

@paulperegud https://github.com/paulperegud Agreed

On 24/07/15 05:31, ywecur wrote:

@paulperegud https://github.com/paulperegud Agreed

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#972 (comment).

[czr5014]

i wish bitcoin stayed awesome, it is slowly losing its awesomeness.

[instagibbs]

Sorry you have to put up with all this noise.

ACK, but I do think that this is a bit overkill. It's fast relative to some things, slow relative to others. Obviously nuance is hard on a newbie website, but I'd rather it not promise to be a floor cleaner and ice cream topping when it isn't.

[jayd3e]

NACK

I'm really not sure why this is even necessary. Bitcoin's transactions are faster and cheaper than anything else out there. "Instant" is a marketing term used by all of the major payment processors and banks. Don't take it too literally, it just means something is so fast it's indistinguishable from instant. I've never used a wallet that didn't mask the confirmation process with an immediate success message of some kind, so I would say that the transactions ARE in fact instant. It's impossible for anything to take 0 seconds, so why would we go to the added measure of being so overly literal?

Bitcoin does have "low to zero fees". My zero fee transactions are stilling going through today. It's premature to take out mentions of "low" and "zero" fees. The more troubling thing, is that we DO in fact want to market Bitcoin as such. B/c that's the vision that so many of us have invested tons of our time and energy into promoting and maintaining this ecosystem. The idea that Bitcoin will be a global, fast, and low/zero feed payment system. If you take away two of those things, Bitcoin becomes a lot less interesting. I realize that we're not removing that functionality from Bitcoin as a technology, but by removing it from the marketing documentation, we're in fact removing that functionality from public awareness.

This doesn't represent the vision of Bitcoin so many of us want to see succeed.

[instagibbs]

@jayd3e You are projecting your own vision onto the project. This is fine by itself, but you are requiring bitcoin.org to "toe the line" on your beliefs, rather than be neutral. There is no replacement text suggesting "high" fees, or anything of the like.

What makes this text problematic is clearly shown by the e-mail list discussions involving Jeff Garzik. He finds it irresponsible to change the economic reality away from what many had been sold on without plenty of advanced warning. If we are not allowed to even remove text promising to future HOLDers what we can't promise, that's a catch-22 for anyone who doesn't share your vision or reasonable expectation of the future.

There is room to discuss what to replace it with, but the text is clearly not neutral as it is.

[jayd3e]

@instagibbs How am I projecting my vision? Bitcoin right this instant can support low fees(only a few pennies and even zero sometimes), and we have companies that are doing zero-confirmation(indistinguishable from instant) transactions. If anything, changing this text would be disingenuous and would be representative of someone's future vision. I would also argue that those two aspects of Bitcoin are the only two that the general public is really going to care about, as privacy and anonymity are something that most people will collectively yawn about.

Also what makes the text problematic? Do we have droves of people coming to the mailing lists and forums asking for this change? I can safely say that this has never been a concern before, by a large percentage of the user base. In my experience, it's far better to fix problems that exist due to large amounts of user feedback, as opposed to creating problems to fix.

[ghost1542]

@harding I think describing current qualities of the system is not the same as making promises for the future. Nothing is garanteed in life, in particular when speaking about fees and new technologies.

There is reasonable doubt about the validity of "free / instant transactions" claims. However, it's worth thinking about where is the line. If we really start thinking of possible outcomes, we'd easily end up not saying much about security, decentralization, privacy, worldwide availability, freedom of transaction, because all of those things can be threatened by events we can't predict or control.

To me the best option remains to avoid making predictions, and not be afraid of displaying Bitcoin's features and potential, to the extent that these claims are reasonable and accurate, while also be straightforward about risks and uncertainties (by introducing and linking to the "You need to know / Secure your wallet / Protect your privacy" pages prominently and contextually).

This way I think we get a balanced website that is also a good introduction for newcomers.

[instagibbs]

@jayd3e

The more troubling thing, is that we DO in fact want to market Bitcoin as such. B/c that's the vision that so many of us have invested tons of our time and energy into promoting and maintaining this ecosystem. The idea that Bitcoin will be a global, fast, and low/zero feed payment system. If you take away two of those things, Bitcoin becomes a lot less interesting.

This is the "vision" of which bitcoin.org really has no business perpetrating as it is not intrinsic to the system. Nothing about the system guarantees low fees. Certainly not free. And nearly 100% of developers have doubts it will be the case in as little as a year unless radical, controversial changes are made. Things like "secure" and "be your own bank" ARE part of the system, and should be trumpeted from the rooftops above all else.

If we leave this text in, 6 months later we could be inviting yet more bag-holders to feel like they've been cheated because they were promised this vision.

That's all I have to say on this.

edit:

I can safely say that this has never been a concern before, by a large percentage of the user base.

Well I can safely say I spend way too much time on reddit and see it is a concern. Garzik is upset, bag-holders are upset. Many people, when confronted with the specter of paying 50 cents a transaction in fees, point to this website and claim they've been duped.

[harding]

@saivann

To me the best option remains to avoid making predictions

That feels fundamentally opposed to the objective of this PR (as stated in the second paragraph of the OP text), so that feels like a NACK to me. Can you confirm that your intention here is to NACK, and that I'm not just misreading a less serious objection?

[ghost1542]

If we leave this text in, 6 months later we could be inviting yet more bag-holders to feel like they've been cheated because they were promised this vision.

@instagibbs This kind of thing has been a recurrent concern of mine for years. I think we'd likely have to drop any text / page that describe anything appealing about Bitcoin in order to completely address that issue, but this would be at the cost of making the website a much less useful resource for introducing newcomers IMO, but that is a possibility.

@harding I don't want to be too blocking here :) , especially if you really feel strongly about it. But I personally think most of these texts should be rewritten first and it'd be easier to ACK. But otherwise, it's not the end of the world and I agree that in the absence of a more accurate replacement, it's better to drop them for now. A simple 's/Instant/Fast' 's/Zero or low/Low' would be fine for the front page IMO.

[jayd3e]

@instagibbs once again you're using a lot of remarks with the word "could" in them. I would say it's in our best interest to avoid predicting the future and solve problems that exist today.

[instagibbs]

@saivann Can you point to other parts that are expected to not be true anymore in the near-ish future, assuming the core Bitcoin security model isn't broken?

I'd be fine with a re-write instead. But status quo is bad and misleading to newcomers.

[ghost]

Love the bikeshed, but may I suggest a fresh coat of mauve? It would really brighten up the neighborhood.

[chriswheeler]

@instagibbs I pointed out a couple here #972 (comment) and I'm sure there are more.

If no solution to scaling is agreed upon, or developed, we very quickly get to a point where there is fierce competition for the available block space and only the wealthiest of users can afford to use the system, so most of the current use cases are no longer viable.

I'm sure that is not going to actually happen, because I'm sure a solution will be found (be it block size increases or something else). I think the problem is the the changes in the PR are based on the prediction that blocks will soon be full, and nothing will be done about it, so fees will increase.

[ghost1542]

I'd be fine with a re-write instead. But status quo is bad and misleading to newcomers.

Agreed

[davout]

I think the problem is the the changes in the PR are based on the prediction that blocks will soon be full, and nothing will be done about it, so fees will increase.

That's the case if nothing is done, which is the (sensible) default, so that doesn't sound like a stretch.

[harding]

@saivann

I personally think most of these texts should be rewritten first and it'd be easier to ACK.

That seems to be a very popular opinion, so I'm going to close this PR in favor of making separate PRs with the suggested more surgical revisions.

Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions. There are some good ideas here, particularly in the diff comments, that I plan on using.

[ABISprotocol]

Just saw this literally some five minutes ago and wish to add two points:

1. You need to keep these pull requests open longer.
2. Apparently bitcoin developers were pushing for this which I think is problematic

I haven't read the reddit post(s) which developed on this, but apparently some cropped up on this matter, which I noticed because somebody mentioned it in the e-mail threads referring to this github issue.

In sum, total NACK on this or on any pull request which has the intention of removal of mentions of "zero or low fees", "fast international payments", and "instant peer-to-peer transactions."

Thank you.

[ghost1542]

@ABISprotocol David closed his own pull request without merging anything, while preparing an alternative based on feedback he received. I think this cannot be criticized. If the other pull request is unsatisfactory, nothing prevents reopening this one. In other words, we still are in a WIP.