Is Coinbase seriously celebrating 16 transactions per second?

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On August 9, Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) launched its layer-two blockchain Base, promoting it with the somewhat ironic marketing meme Onchain Summer.

After a strong start, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to social media platform X to celebrate the layer-two network hitting 16 transactions per second (15.88, to be exact).

As if this were some sort of massive breakthrough in the blockchain industry, Digital Currency Group (DCG) flagship publication CoinDesk promoted the ‘achievement’ by saying it had already surpassed Ethereum, Optimism, and Arbitrum in total transactions per second.

As usual, the cryptocurrency industry media is celebrating an achievement that only looks like one because of the inferior technical ability of the blockchains that were supposed to be an improvement on Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, on the original Bitcoin

I don’t know who needs to see this:

128,000,000 transactions per day
/ 24 hours
/ 60 minutes
/ 60 seconds

= ~1,500 transactions per second

— Zack Wins (@DevelopingZack) August 23, 2023

On August 8, the BSV blockchain showcased its muscle by processing more than 128 million transactions in a 24-hour period.

The original Bitcoin protocol handled these Internet of Things (IoT) based test transactions with ease. Given the throughput, it’s amazing that companies like Coinbase, who have played a large part in suppressing the original Bitcoin, would brag about 16 transactions per second in public.

Of course, Base transactions are largely driven by the hype around social-media platform friend.tech, while BSV blockchain’s transactions were part of a test, but the point remains: there’s nothing in the blockchain industry that comes close to what BSV blockchain is capable of, and there likely never will be.

Ever since BTC Core developers decided to fundamentally alter the Bitcoin protocol in 2017 to make their own new protocol, a proliferation of alternative, so-called advanced blockchains have popped up, claiming to fix the problems they created. However, to date, none of them can rival BSV blockchain for on-chain transaction processing capability.

As Satoshi Nakamoto said, there will be one global chain, and when all is said and done, it will be Bitcoin (BSV).

Why is the digital currency media complicit in these deceptions?

Those who have understood the above information have to then ask themselves a question: why is one of the biggest digital currency publications celebrating a piddly 16 transactions per second while ignoring a blockchain that processed close to 100 times that just days before?

The answer to that involves a long and meandering walk through the history of Bitcoin and a deep dive into the big-money players who have worked tirelessly to suppress it, which is beyond the scope of this article. However, those looking to dip their feet into this sordid story should read Kurt Wuckert Jr.’s excellent article, The Mastercard Bitcoin Conspiracy.

Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of group—from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream, ShapeShift, Coinbase, Ripple,
Ethereum, FTX and Tether—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.