Topic: Bitcoin vs. All Other Coins, are they hurting Bitcoin? - page 2. (Read 2488 times)

I pay for my electricity, no taxes needed.

Streets are supported by user fees. I have no problem with those.
 
I have lived in undeveloped areas of Philippines and Kenya, roads are usually built by locals without resorting to taxes. When I was young kid and part of some dumb religious cult up in the mountains, some of them got tired of there being no road. So a couple of them got together, pooled some money, hired a bulldozer, and guess what? We had a road without taxes or coercion.

As for the war on terrorism, I am more likely to get killed in a car accident than by a terrorist. A long time back, I went into the mountains with some girl I was planning to marry on Mindanao Island in the Philippines to meet her family. Discovered that her brother was in the MILF, he even let me shoot his AK-47 for fun. I never felt safer.

As for innocent people killed, I will just post a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

As for condoms, I refuse to use them. Did make my Kenyan wife take an HIV test though.

Doge needs to stop issuing more coins or at least slow it down alot.   The market cap might go up maybe but the price isnt likely to
If you are asking if altcoins do harm, I think most harm is done between each other.   So they promote competition and innovation and at little cost in theory unlike btc where the hardware has become specialised, these are coins trying out all sorts.  No doubt the success of one altcoin is to the detriment of another as the market is quite small in comparison to the main brand BTC

Two main coins I can think of are darkcoin and blackcoin, both are trying to advance features or dynamics bitcoin does not have.   I dont think they'll replace but in a years time they could have grown more depending on if they are then providing greater utility then plain bitcoin

The answer to that is people often belong to more then one pool.   The pools are quite central, blocks come from only 100 IP apparently but the miners themselves are still distributed.   If you told me 60% of the network is at 100 factories/farms and so could be occupied and taken down, then I would be worried.  
    I dont think thats the case but I wonder if btc is heading towards that flawed overly centralised situation.   Economies of scale are great and all but its easily a flaw here

Ok, Dogecoin, NXT and Myriadcoin. Hopefully I don't forget this thread next year around this time. If I do and you don't please give me a friendly reminder

Of course they would, they always do, and that would be fantastic.  That is what we old farts call a "buying op".

No, in fact, I know you are wrong.

I am betting on it and have put my money where my mouth is.  I am heavily invested in Bitcoin and do not own a single alt coin.  Talk to me next year at this time and we will see who was right.  I expect I will have made a tidy profit and, assuming you are investing in these fly-by-night coins, you will have lost.

List all the coins you are heavily invested in here:

Well, if this is all accompanied by the press that other crypto currencies are doing ok and Bitcoin is flawed by design, don't you think people would start dumping their Bitcoins and joining other cryptos, because they have those 2 issues sorted unlike Bitcoin? I mean the worst case scenario (which can be worse than half the hash rate by the way), can turn even worse, as when the price drops due to investors leaving, miners would be leaving too, hence hash rate drops even more, that'd be a vicious circle. I am not spreading fud here, just trying to raise awareness that without flexibility of miners and developers this is an accident waiting to happen. You can put your heads in the sand as long as you want, but you know I am right.

lol... that was classic. All these alt-coins must be officially renamed to shitcoins. That said, I don't know why people are using these copycat coins. What is the advantage in using them?

This is not a hard question to think through.

Assume we lose 1/2 of all our hashing power - let's call this the "worst case scenario"
The average confirmation time would double from 10 minutes to 20 minutes.
The adjustment period would go from about 10-14 days to 20-28 days.
The network would adjust in about 20-28 days and we would be back to 10 minute confirmations.

Although a bit of a PITA for maybe a month this is certainly not anything I worry about and remember this is the worst case scenario. 

If it needs to be changed it will be. There is no reason to change stuff when it's not needed. Getting more then 51% to agree on a small, currently irrelevant, change costs way to much effort. And even if the network gets attacked, I know that they will add something that contradicts that. I dare to bet that they already have something ready in case it goes wrong. Pushing something that might be handy is just not worth the effort it takes and how much it helps.

I mean look at the Heartbleed problem, they fixed it in no-time, pushed it to the network and everyone adapted it. It's a great example on how things would go if Bitcoins does go to shit, because of a 51% attack.

Imagine a scenario where the biggest 3-4 easily identifiable mining pools/large mining farms are targeted by a large enough power. What happens then? The network is crippled and can't function properly or at all. This would not be possible if there were more than one independent mining algo.

How about the difficulty adjusting not every 10 days but after each block. That's another good idea. Will they implement and accept it? Probably not. If half or more of the hash rate is down for some reason, how long would it take to find blocks with such a slow adjusting difficulty?

Changing mining algorithms is not necessary for Bitcoin. The network hashing power is way to big right now for a quick 51% attack. There are other ways to prevent that from happening, so why would we change the mining algo and destroy a large part of our hashing power? I believe that they will implement great idea's, just not new mining algo's.

I would think so they're all related whether they like it or not.

Right. That's why I don't expect great ideas to be easily or at all incorporated into Bitcoin code.

Paying taxes is immoral - yeah - because you've never used roads before, or streetlights, or electricity, or not have to deal with terrorist attacks. What do you think your taxes go to? Taxes support war to protect YOU, and the murder/imprisonment of innocent civilians does happen but is extremely rare and is getting rarer and is much better than the alternative of keeping all criminals on the street. Please use a condom.

I think its great because these new coins result in innovation, like Curecoin which uses the hashing power to do something useful, curing diseases.

Of course not, the miners also secure the network and spend a lot of money to do it. Free people in free markets will always act in their own self interest. That is the nature of commerce. To expect a group of people to agree to destroy their own investment is not logical or rational. 

Taxes.

Paying taxes is immoral.

Taxes (and fiat currency) are used to support war and the murder/imprisonment of innocent civilians.

Using Bitcoin takes away part of that power.

Yes. The new wave of coin come with anonymity.

Privacy is critical for the proper operation of the Bitcoin system because all account balances are public.  If we cannot maintain privacy then Bitcoin will fail.  Would you keep your money in a bank where anyone in the world can simply look up your balance online?  Would anyone run a business using a bank where anyone, even competitors, can look up their current balance and see all of their income and expenses anytime they want to?

Nobody will use Bitcoin without privacy protections.

Anonymity is a different but related concept.

Why is anonymity (did I spell that right?) so important? If you're not doing anything illegal or some kind of perv, then why would you care if people can track your purchases?