Topic: Bitcoin will one day be superseded by a technically superior NuCoin. What then? (Read 7135 times)

Sunny King seems to believe that peercoin is a significant improvement over bitcoin. The genesis block for peercoin is less than 5 years younger than the genesis block for bitcoin, and he could have simply migrated the bitcoin blockchain rather than starting a new one from scratch. All adopters of bitcoin would have been included. However, he doesn't have an incentive to do that, and he acted rationally by starting from scratch, given his belief, because he and other early adopters of peercoin stood to gain more by starting a new blockchain. That is true regardless of whether Sunny King himself was an early adopter of bitcoin. He can still have his bitcoins, and get richer off peercoins. The same is true for other altcoins, regardless for whether they are pump-and-dump scams. Some altcoin developers might or might not have been early adopters of bitcoin, but that point isn't even relevent, because it doesn't change their incentives. If some altcoin replaces bitcoin as the dominant player, the process will be slow, giving early adopters of bitcoin plenty of time to jump ship and stay rich.

The "nucoin" that gets adopted won't have anything to do with its superiority.  It will prob get adopted when someone tries something stupid with bitcoin.   Trying to corner the bitcoin market or attacks on the network comes to mind.

I think:
1) For this "NuCoin" (or new-coin) to succeed it will have to be dramatically superior. No only better or only superior, but massively better. Otherwise the tradition and widespread adoption of Bitcoin would be Bitcoin's great advantage. (If you want to defeat an army you have to overpower it at least 2:1, if not more. If you want to steal a girl from another guy you have to be not "just a little bit better" mate but dramatically better.)
2) The switch will be gradual process, it won't happen overnight or in few weeks. (Technology has made things faster, but some processes in human society are still slow.)
3) If there is some substantial weakness discovered (or substantial feature missing) discovered  in Bitcoin such as possibly lading to overnight switch, it will probably be incorporated into Bitcoin.
4a) Those who will be among the first to recognize and adopt superior NuCoin will gain tremendously. Those who will join after that will gain much. Those who will go with the masses will neither gain nor loose and those sticking with dying Bitcoin will of course loose.
4b) There will be many seemingly superior concepts, many NuCoins claiming to be the case (4a). Most of them, if not 99% will be scams, failures, partial failures or coins only for limited niche adoption. Those who will wrongly believe those "big chances" and "marvelous new superior concepts" will loose when they hit dead end.
4c) Nevertheless, there is big space for another alt-coins coexisting with Bitcoin, serving some more specific applications (micro-transactions, anonymization, comune-like economics, speculation, specific markets, etc.)

Uhh... Litecoins/Feathercoins/Namecoins/Peercoins actually already outclass Bitcoin in every single category. Less energy used to verify transactions(currently Bitcoin takes 30 USD to 40 USD to verify, insane and stupid as hell)/faster transaction verifications/less fees/less miners required to do the work/larger quantities/ETC.

next 12 to 18 months ppl will be saying BTC ROFL.

Because of network effects, there will likely be only one dominant coin. Whether or not other coins disappear completely or limp along as someone's hobby doesn't matter much. This doesn't require universal agreement. I'm sure lots of people today disagree that facebook is better than myspace -- doesn't matter, facebook still won.


Early Bitcoin adopters, when they see that nucoin1 or nucoin2 will likely be the dominant coin, will back nucoin2 because they are heavily invested in the nucoin2 blockchain. The incentive comes from knowing that Bitcoin will be replaced, and realizing that they are much better off if it gets replaced by nucoin2 rather than nucoin1.


The creators and early investors in new coins haven't duplicated their new coin's blockchains because with their current block chain they are the early adopters and they stand to gain from pumping it. They know their target market for their new coin consists mostly of people who missed out on Bitcoin's early days, and are hoping to get rich off of an altcoin. These coin creators see that they don't need to create a coin that threatens Bitcoin to take advantage of their target market. It's easier to make money with an altcoin by starting a new chain and convincing other people that if they invest early in the new coin they'll be rich.

The idea is that early investors in Bitcoin will be the ones to create a fork of RandomAltCoin, if they think RandomAltCoin has a legitimate shot of taking over. The reason this hasn't happened is that no altcoin currently offers any significant innovation over Bitcoin. Bitcoin early adopters know that they have nothing to worry about.

Duplicating the bitcoin block chain isn't likely to happen, and if it does, it will fail. A coin technically superior to bitcoin, in some people's opinion, won't be techically superior to others. Since there won't be universal agreement, bitcoin will not dissapear, but bitcoin holders will start out with equal amounts of bitcoin and nucoin2. There is no incentive to do that, because it doesn't reward early adopters. People will simply ignore nucoin2 and stay with nucoin1. There are already altcoins out there that some people think are better than bitcoin. Why haven't any of these coins duplicated the bitcoin blockchain? Because the incentive doesn't exist.

It is possible, even if unlikely, that a flaw is discovered in the block chain itself, rendering existing transactions untrustworthy.

The average user will follow suit with what the large Bitcoin holders steer them toward because they won't have a reason to care either way. They'll likely prefer the Bitcoin community because it has a track record of trustworthiness. People who speculate and trade on currencies are a very small % of the population, and don't really matter in terms of adoption.

Merchants will prefer something supported by the Bitcoin community because it has a reputation of being supported by serious devs who care about creating a currency for the long term, and it will have the most developer support (Bitcoin developers are generally invested in the Bitcoin blockchain).


I think it is likely to happen, but I don't think it will gain traction because the message from the Bitcoin community that Bitcoin is the "open" alternative free from corporate or government control is simple and appealing enough to the masses.

Not many merchants are likely to accept a new coin because it will have higher volatitity. You can see that by comparing the price fluctuations of bitcoin against fiat to those of altcoins. The altcoins have much higher volatility. This is still an obstacle for bitcoin, but a much bigger obstacle for altcoins. You also have a network effect: merchants won't accept a new coin because other merchants or customers aren't using it either. I see bitcoin eventually being displaced by another coin, but it will take much longer than you think. I can't predict how long, but the transition won't happen overnight.

Large Bitcoin holders may do that and of course they will want their "reborn Bitcoin" to remain the dominant currency.  But why would the rest of the rest world follow suit?  People who buy digital currencies only for trade will not care about tradition or the welfare of bitcoiners; they will consider any currency that the merchant is willing to accept, and choose the one that has the smallest spread, simpler/faster protocol, was recommended by Oprah, etc.

It is also possible that a big bank or a consortium of merchants (say Microsoft, Apple, Walmart, Virgin, ...) will launch their own crypto currency iCoin, initially offering a 5% discount for purchases made with it. Of couse they will start off with a large stash of pre-mined iCoins.  Why is this unlikely to happen?

We're seeing it now with Dogecoin

Good Point. This is very much likely to happen for today's internet. The biggest one with the most users is winning everything they want, just like what is happened on Chinese company Tencent, whatever new game becoming popular, Tencent just integrate a similar one into their QQ platform and easily surpass the original one.

Blah blah, Nucoin3, blah blah Nucoin4.

Truth. Let's say NuCoin comes out and is technically way better than Bitcoin, and starts a new blockchain. What will happen? People will fork NuCoin into NuCoin2, which is exactly like NuCoin except it preserves the original Bitcoin blockchain. Because the vast majority of crypto early adopters are heavily invested in the Bitcoin block chain, NuCoin2 will win out over NuCoin.

Here's a secret: there are no sudden drops in bitcoin price if you set sell orders at the price where it was at when you got them. These orders will get executed, just, in some very rare circumstances, a little bit later.

Better Integrity and Incorruptibility
Better Anonimity (ZeroCoin)
Better Security
Less Volatility
Less Incentive to Hoard
Better Transactional Speed
Future Proof (a coin that doesn't break down approaching 2040)
Etc...

Plus whatever technical advances and novel ideas people will come up with as time goes on.

Name one?

While maintaining the integrity and incorruptibility that has made btc what it has become. All the alt coins are basically copies of btc anyway.

Bitcoin is a true currency. However its relevance has nothing to do with it's fundamental qualities - that is instead derived entirely from the utility it offers over existing currencies.

There are many ways an altcoin can improve on this utility and ultimately become the dominant currency.

This is the free-rider problem. An individual gains much by holding BTC and nothing by spending it. You can't expect a currency to survive on altruism.

Bitcoin may become the global de facto benchmark currency against which all regional "lesser" currencies are measured. I can envisage that.

I see it more like this... BitCoin is a big "heavy" crypto due to how large the chain will become AND the large value.

I don't see why it cannot be used for BIG transactions and stick around for a long time.

"Lighter" crypto currencies could be used for day-to-day transaction... LiteCoin or any number of other currencies.

Just a thought about a possibility.

I disagree, it may need to evolve slightly but there are only so many fundamental qualities required for a true currency. Bitcoin ticks pretty much all the boxes.

Now that said, there is one issue that it hasn't and cannot address. The world is run entirely by power, privilege and corruption. The big question remains, how on earth will something so incorruptible and democratic like bitcoin ever make its presence felt in such a world. There may be a lot of talk about bitcoin but it is still something of an irrelevance globally though obviously sites like this tend to give a different impression.

the internet analogy seems best here. I also like the craigslist example. Bitcoin is a protocol for exchanging value, just as tcp/ip is for information. It is also fueled by self-interest. The big holders have a vested interest in bitcoin's success, and as the network grows, so will their purchasing/hiring power. They will then utilize this power to protect bitcoins status. Remember all those conspiracy theories about oil companies buying up hydrogen car prototypes and cold fusion reactors and scrapping them to keep the price of oil high? Who knows, soon some of the big bitcoiners could get big enough to manipulate currencies of countries like Zimbabwe and make cheap bitcoin enabled smartphones readily available, thereby inflating further the value of their stash of bitcoin by causing the adoption of an entire country. Take Zimbabwe, for example. With a bitcoin market cap of two trillion $, 1 btc would be worth $200k. The GDP of Zimbabwe is about 10 billion. If Zimbabwe would adopt bitcoin, it would raise the market cap and value by half of a percent. Supposing it costs $200 million to buy/bribe the whole government of Zimbabwe and cause mass bitcoin adoption, it would be worthwhile for any individual or group of individuals with a stake of more than 200,000 btc to go ahead and invest the 1000 btc in the Zimbabwe project. With 300,000 coin, you would invest the equivalent of $200 million, and now that the price would be at $201k, up .5 percent, the coin that were worth $60 billion before the investment would now be worth 60.1 billion, with a tidy profit of $100 million. Now move to Angola and repeat.
    This is the true refutation to the deflationary hypothesis. People will not hold their coins just because they will grow in value because they are smart enough to know that the bitcoin economy grows by spending, and that the value gained through the adoption that comes with spending will outweigh the losses incurred by purchasing items for far more coins than they will be worth in a few months. Luckily, the people who have the most bitcoin are also the smartest... Except maybe the FBI...
      One poster on this forum compared Bitcoin to the printing press. I agree, insofar that it represents a paradigm shift through increased distribution of knowledge. The printing press led to the Reformation and centuries of war. Bitcoin could do the same by redistributing the power not only of private banks, but of central banks. And then something else will come along.

     Since the development of technology is accelerating, the frequency of paradigm shifts may increase, so bit coin may indeed be dethroned very quickly. I don't think a nucoin will do it, I would guess more likely some kind of peer to peer Facebook like credit system after people start getting google glass-esque implants, with your purchasing power being reflected by the color of the aura projected by your neural net through the system. Or maybe there will be a zombie/plague/nuclear Armageddon/alien invasion/mega drought/earthquakes tsunami/mass enlightenment/meteor/contact with alien race with far superior technology/plant rebellion apocalypse and we won't have to worry about bitcoin or driverless cars.... God only knows...

I have my own thread here where any discussion on economical matters and related questions is welcomed. By the way, gold (and why it was finally abandoned as a means of exchange) has been thoroughly debated over in that thread too. If you are interested, you could at least read that part there...

No I am interested in the discussion just thinking perhaps we should move into another thread.

Your example is very interesting. It does not at all sit comfortably that this can be applied to a cryptocurrency but I don't have a real rebuttal and I'd like to think more about it.

Gold ultimately failed as a medium of exchange because it was heavy, cumbersome, easily counterfeited and defaced as well as subject to tear and wear. Since those times it has only gained as a store of value while no longer being a medium of exchange. Though if you think this is going off-topic, then you can just skip my reply...

This is going a bit off thread I think. A medium of exchange that fails as a medium of exchange is definitely not a good store of value.

To supersede Bitcoin new cryptocurrency would have to combine mutually exclusive properties. It should serve as a good store of value (at which Bitcoin is not bad) and at the same time also be a good medium of exchange (at which Bitcoin fails). A good store of value should be appreciating with time while a good medium of exchange should be depreciating...

Will it ever be possible to combine these qualities in just one currency?

There is so much catastrophic thinking here. Bitcoin is far from a perfect medium of exchange. It will eventually be superseded by something that offers much greater utility. This is a good thing and not something to fear.

Any coin that is going to supersede BTC will need to prove itself as a worthy successor. It's initial value will be virtually nothing and will gradually increase as confidence/recognition/infrastructure grows. Their will be ample opportunity to invest into the new coin especially if you can pick the right horse early.

No new coin, no matter how useful, is going to cause BTC to crash overnight.

Anything that would be true superior to bitcoin also should be very different from bitcoin (otherwise bitcoin would already be there), so taking the improvements and just adding them to bitcoin would actually turn it into that new superior currency...

People forget that if anything superior arises to bitcoin, bitcoin will simply just take the improvements and add it to itself. It is open source after all, a dynamic evolving project. If someone creates something even cooler, we will just steal the idea. :-)

"NuCoin" would certainly be an altcoin, not a modified bitcoin because modifications are dangerous even after extensive testing, and bitcoin has too much to lose due to the fact that it has the highest market capitalization. Remember the fork earlier this year? If an altcoin with a small capitalization fails, no big deal, but not so for bitcoin.

There are ethical problems if bitcoin adopts different fundamental parameters associated with "nucoin" which would have bad economic consequences.

Finally, it the vast majority of the bitcoin community would not likely agree to nucoin's changes, while a nucoin community would buy into the changes from the onset, by definition. Even if nucoin were truly an improvement, likely most people wouldn't agree that it was better because they are stuck in an old paradigm.

Oh, and what will happen to the Internet when the technically superior Internet2.0 will come?

Answer: Not everything has to be just replaced. Don't think of Bitcoin as if it was the MySpace of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin doesn't have to be replaced by incoming innovations, instead it can incorporate them when needed. The protocol is already constantly getting upgrades, for example unlocking the block size cap or the 'm of n' transactions, or the incoming 'flexible fees' update.

Even the underlying encryption can be replaced if at some point in the future the current one becomes weak. It would introduce new kinds of addresses and users would simply transfer their BTC from old 1xxxxx addresses to new 2xxxxx addresses. It would happen on the same blockchain and wouldn't have any negative effect on the value of coins.

If something will replace Bitcoin in the future it won't just be another crypto-coin. It will have to be a completely new and groundbreaking invention.

I believe that the change over would happen just as if we were switching to another altcoin now.  Those who saw the need early would jump ship while BTC price was still high and the NuCoin's price was still low, making the most money in exchange for being early.

If BTC really became unfeasible only because of some limitation on trade volume, for example, its market cap and volume would likely stall, then decline in velocity and therefore value.  If widely accepted, it would likely take some time before it the house of cards fell.

I'm partial to Gnucoin.

Is there a NuCoin? I did not now, sorry, should have picked some other name.

If this magic "NuCoin" (seriously why nu coin, why not say New Coin, you promoting Tee nucoin?) were to replace bitcoin it wouldnt happen overnight and make bitcoin suddenly worthless.
Bitcoin will always have a value. It had one way back when it first started (although it was tiny, ie 10,000 coins being worth around $40 in 2009) and it will continue to do say way into the foreseeable future.

Maybe the fact that bitcoin is NOT legal tender will actually protect it from being destroyed so easily, as it is backed by people from all over the world, no matter their race or (geo-)political ideologies.

Legal tender quickly loses value when the empire that backs them loses their position as the 'supreme world leaders' and vice versa. America is quickly losing their position and the petrodollar is quickly losing value, you can't deny those facts and both of them go hand in hand.

Bitcoin does not back a country or nation and is not backed by one, so there is no empire that will enivatibly fall and take bitcoin with it. Likewise the fall of bitcoin (if and when it will happen) will not bring down any nation. Therefore it's a good thing bitcoin is not legal tender.

There are plenty of entities that allow swapping of one crypto currency with another.  I imagine if in the future a "NuCoin" was judged as far superior to bitcoin it would compete with it on the marketplace and grow while bitcoin shrank as people sold their BTC for NuCoins.  It would be up to each individual to make the decision to use one over another and not be centrally planned like fiat currencies.  I think you're stuck on the idea of something "replacing" bitcoin when in fact they would both exist with one gaining popularity while the other declined.

And of course this would mean that the people that identified this trend the earliest and swapped their BTC for NuCoin would gain more wealth than the bag-holders of BTC that waited until much later.

That is my guess too.

Say, 5 years from now, you own 1 BTC that you bought a week earlier for 100,000 USD.  Then you (and everybody else) learn that NuCoin already accounts for 5% of world cryptocurrency payments, and its share is increasing 1% per week at the expense of Bitcoin's share. Its market price is still only 1000 USD but is rising fast.

Presumably you will want to convert your BTC to NUCs, directly or through USD.  Will you find buyers, and at what price?

Yes Bitcoin is based on solid math principles. Yes it is constantly adapting and changing. Yes it has first mover advantage and a powerful network effect. Yes a sophisticated infrastructure is being built around it. There is no denying that Bitcoin is in a very advantageous position.

But Bitcoin is still also an implementation, and implementations can be better and they can be worse. While the idea of a decentralized anonymous currency will never die, the way we achieve that will continue to progress. There may come a time when the recommended updates are so fundamental that the only option is to start over. Or there may be disagreement on the right direction to go.

If that happened, the migration to NuCoin would start out slow, then gradually increase at an accelerated pace as the network proved itself. When a critical momentum is reached, people will begin to realize that it could become the dominant coin, and a large and rapid transfer of value between coins will occur. There will be winners, and there will be losers. It would be up to the individual to foresee the changes.

My point about stabilizing the value is that, if moderate swings in daily demand (less than a few million) can affect the price by a factor of two, then the number of people putting their earnings--and their trust--into bitcoin is likely to be less.

As important, the other crypto-currencies on the exchanges tend to largely be Bitcoin clones that simply rise and fall with BTC's current market price.  Stock exchanges only work if a variety of investment options (index funds, money market funds, derivatives, futures, securities, etc) are available to put a portfolio together.  Some of those investment options have to be built for stability, rather than get-rich-quick opportunities.

Oh man, I feel bad now.  But I sort of think you guys are just getting my goat.  All my friends around here make fun of me for reading those books.  (I still think they were excellent and recommend reading them, BTW!).  

I'll spoil the BTC trilogy too: it ends at $100,000+ !!

You frickin' bastard!  Now there's no point in reading those damned books.  My friend just gave me the first one. 

NuCoin WILL be technically superior, because it won't spoil and entire frickin' trilogy on some random argu-forum!

lol sorry beetcoin!  But research does show that you actually enjoy a story more if you know the plot line beforehand.  Shakespeare always told the audience what would happen before you got to see it.   

dude, why did you have to spoil it for us?! now it's time to play the anger games, with you..

Have you read the Hunger Games?  At the end of the 3rd book, the rebels overthrow the elite.  The woman leading the rebels wants to have "just one more hunger games" where only the old elite and their children participate (and then the hunger games will be over, "we promise"). 

Katniss Everdeen shoots an arrow through her heart. 

why are you comparing bitcoin to currencies? there is no precedent for anything like bitcoins. i've yet to hear any solid reasons as to why nucoin or any other cryptocurrency could take BTC's place. if bitcoin becomes ubiquitous, there will be more room for another cryptocurrency, but you have not brought up any real reason why you think bitcoin can't succeed, and new cryptocurrency will take its place.

I do marketing, where everything is possible.  Software people work on code, where nothing new is possible until it's so well established in the marketplace that they have no hope of winning the argument.

To maintain a stable, less volatile value, one must establish a track record and mechanism as clear and convincing proof of U.S. Dollar-like stability.  How is that done?  One mechanism is to create a foundation (like the Bitcoin Foundation) that gets a parallel mine large enough both to provide a reserve and to market the new currency.  Mining difficulty (or reward amount) is adjusted daily, reduced only after there is an increase in price/demand.  The Altcoin Foundation establishes a clear, realistic target price and sets buy orders 2% below that price, and sell orders 5% over it.  This prevents those price spikes that draw in speculators and drive away those interested in a good long term investment.

There are several other techniques, like adjusting the final mining quantity to match market demand automatically.  Of course, most of these things have to be done when the altcoin is created, because they cannot be retrofit into the software after the fact.

I am skeptic about Bitcoin as investment, in case you haven't noticed    (Are skeptics welcome in this forum?)

It seems I am not expressing myself clearly.  When European countries junked their currencies for the Euro, each State took care to swap the old (soon to be worthless) currencies for Euros so that owners would not suffer any loss.  Other countries did the same when they replaced hyperinflated currencies for new money.

But there is no entity that would offer to do that service for Bitcoin, if (OK, let's say it is onlly a possibility) and when it is replaced by something else.  Sure, Bitcoin owners would want NuCoin to be just an evolution of Bitcoin, preserving its blockchains and hence the value of their coins; but why would the NuCoin community want to do that? 

And there are still many seats left on this train.  Bitcoin gives everyone a second chance. 

i'm thinking the OP missed the gravy train and wants to make up for it now.

Great points. Absolutely, but I see the power being in the hands of the miners and not just the investors(ones with most btc) but I would hope they would have reason to preserve the blockchain. Also our current ASICs would not work if this NuCoin is running a on a different encryption type correct? So it may actually be a problem depending on some variables.

Can this new alt-coin also vacuum my floors and cook me dinner?  That would make it the superiorest.  

Sorry, just having fun with you  .  But, isn't this impossible?  You either legislate its value by fiat (and live with the problems of fiat money) or you let the free-market figure it out (with a series of booms and busts).  

If we all *know* the value will just go up and can't come down, then we'd all throw everything we have into it right?  Then we'd have one big super bubble!

To be far superior, a currency would only need to have a feature that stopped the sudden drops that make holding on to it over the long haul such a scary prospect.  Long haul holding is exactly what's needed for a high market cap.

In most cases, Bitcoin can, with near unanimous support, implement a change that is proven effective by some new altcoin.  That is, in fact, one of the reasons that altcoins are so interesting to many Bitcoiners.

+0.5

TL/DR: The blockchain will be preserved.

There is also the possibility of jump starting nucoin by importing unspent btc from the bitcoin blockchain. So nucoin wouldn't necessarily destroy bitcoin. It might be more like moving from ounces of gold to grams of gold. Everyone would still keep the value of their money.

Even if the designers of nucoin didn't like this idea, it still might happen. The people with a big investment in Bitcoin could just create an alt of nucoin using the cool new algorithm that gives nucoin it's advantage. But they would also incorporate the btc blockchain in this nucoin 2.0, maybe even allowing you to create nucoin2.0 coins by sending btc to an unspendable address with a message that includes your nucoin2.0 address.

The point being: Any new algorithm can be either added to the bitcoin protocol or, in worst case, will probably allow bitcoins to be migrated to the new protocol.

I'm sure there are dozens of forums superior to Craigslist from a technical perspective. Yet Craigslist is the website with the 11th greatest traffic in the US, so it remains on top. Craigslist is a stupidly simple website... yet it has lots of traffic, and that perpetuates it's popularity. Furthermore, Craigslist's users are not financially bound to support it-- anyone who owns a significant amount of Bitcoin is.

Of course Bitcoin cannot claim "divine perfection," but it does have a first to market advantage. And given the type of painful transition a major switch would be, there would have to be a far superior replacement currency.

I'm curious (no sarcasm intended):

What new, superior quality will this new money have?

Note: I believe the "swap" you speak of would dictate a centralized authority (automatically making the new currency inferior), unless it was built off the existing Bitcoin blockchain.

Great post Peter R.

Bitcoin will be eclipsed one day by a different form of currency I can guarantee that...its just a matter of when.

It shouldn't be any surprise that the two most highly capitalized altcoins (Bitcoin and Litecoin) have both developed entirely from the community itself with no premine and a wide opportunity for the average computer user to enter.

If some "NuCoin" is going to overtake either one, I believe that it will have to do so with a very long nearly-free period of widespread mining by true believers.  Even making use of all of the new technology for improving performance, security, and efficiency, a competitor must be an order of magnitude better in one way, or noticeably better in several ways.

For my part, I've been working on built in mechanisms to reduce the volatility and uncertainty in a new altcoin.  Even with that improvement, it would be difficult to get the new currency established.

We will find out in our lifetimes. 

Very long, since ancient times indeed. But gold has qualities that are valued by most people throughout the world. Does bitcoin have that level of appeal, glamor and magnetism that would attract to it as many people even without being a legal tender?

Bitcoin is more than a computer technology.  It is a rapidly-growing network that guards a shared transactions ledger.  It can adapt as needed, and it obeys strict mathematical rules.  

The core bitcoin protocol is more "mathematical" than "computer technology."  Concepts from mathematics are deep and far-reaching.  For instance, the mathematics for X-ray computed tomography (CT) were discovered in 1917 by the Austrian mathematician Johann Radon.  We still use this today because it works.  The core bitcoin mathematics will be robust for the foreseeable future.  

Sure it's *possible* that someone breaks SHA256 and ECDSA, but it is also *possible* that someone finds a way to cheaply fuse lighter elements into gold.  I think both have the same probability: essentially nil.  


Confirmation times are not a problem, I think people misunderstand how bitcoin works.  Here in Vancouver, several brick-and-mortar businesses accept bitcoin payments via BitPay.  It is standard practice for the vendor to consider the invoice paid as soon as the transaction is picked up by the network (typically within a fraction of a second).  The only way to attempt a "double spend" at a brick-and-mortar is to have a custom "double spend" app for your phone.  And if you actually attempt to double spend, the network sees both transactions and it is obvious that you've double-spent and the invoice will not be considered paid.  You'll also look like a thief in front of everybody in the store.  If you "double spend" 3 minutes after leaving the store, your fraudulent transaction would not make it into a block.  

You can actually test this by creating raw transactions at brainwallet.org.  Create two different raw transactions using the same coins.  Send the second transaction 3 minutes after the first, and it will be the first transaction that makes it into a block.


This is highly-unlikely except over the long term.  But if it did happen, bitcoin would adopt the necessary changes.  There is great value in the blockchain; it will be protected.
 

Yeah , seems about right that bitcoin will be superseded , but not any time soon.
There are coins with a 30 second block time instead of the 600 seconds of Bitcoin , but they do not seem to obtain popularity.
Bitcoin is still growing and seems that it will be superseded , only long after its growth is over and it becomes a dominant currency.
Don't hold your breath waiting.


So ?
Many people join just to make a specific post on the forums and are aware of bitcoin and its workings before joining the forums.
This may be of concern if he was asking for you to trust him with your BTC or so.

I agree OP. Those claiming that current altcoins not gaining substantial tracking are missing the part that none of them are a radical improvement in any way.

Standards evolve, and when they do old standards depreciate. No idea when it will happen, but my guess is Bitcoin will slowly decrease in value as the NuCoin increases in popularity. I don't ever see it going away overnight, it will be just another technology shift.

Bitcoins first-to-market network effect certianly buys it a lot of time, and the longer its the defacto standard the more impressive the NuCoin will have to be.

Or its life may actually turn out to be very long.  Gold was around before the phrase "legal tender" had meaning.  How long has mankind used gold?

Activity: 6

But Bitcoin is not just a brand name, or a network of users; it is a specific computer technology.

It is hard to name a computer technology that has not become obsolete in a few years.  Punched cards, magtapes, floppies, CDs were all "universal" information interchange media that were quickly and completely superseded by better technologies,  Encryption standards are replaced every few years.  IPv4 is being replaced by IPv6, FTP by BitTorrent, and so on.  

Currently it takes over 5 minutes to confirm a Bitcoin transaction.  If a NuCoin transaction could be confirmed in 5 seconds, would it not become more attractive than Bitcoin?

So one must at least admit the possibility of Bitcoin being superseded by some other system in the medium term.  What would happen then?

Yes, but bitcoin is not legal tender unlike money in the monetary systems you described in your post, so its life may actually turn out to be very short. Why should a government which money system lasted for more than a century give in?

Aren't we still using 80s technology for bank wires?  Haven't we had "dollars" since 1792?

The lifecycle of each new credible monetary system is looooonnnngggg.  Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act on 30 January 1934, nationalizing all the US citizens' gold.  (The next day F. D. Roosevelt changed the value of the dollar from $20.67 to the troy ounce to $35 to the troy ounce.)  We lasted on this monetary system for 37.5 years!  It wasn't until August 15, 1971, that R. Nixon ended convertibility of the dollar to gold.  Our new "unbacked" dollar has lasted 42 more years, bringing us to today.  After excessive money printing and debt accumulation, there is now incredible pressure to adopt a new monetary system!

In 15 years, bitcoin will still be young.  If bitcoin grows to become a dominant currency, it will last for generations.

Bitcoin WILL become obsolete one day, like punched cards and floppy disks; whether it is next year or 15 years from now, I do not know.

Litecoin and other crypto-currencies are already being used as means of payment, and the existence or success of Bitcoin does not seem to hamper that; on the contrary they are learly riding on Bitcoin's success.


I don't see why, but in any case it does not answer the question.  WHEN Bitcoin is superseded by a NuCoin, how will Bitcoin owners swap them for NuCoins?

People are constantly making new cryptocurrencys but the only one that has come close to bitcoins are litecoins. It's unlikely that another cryptocurrency (which is what I assume you mean by something with the same properties) will arise to overthrow bitcoins as they were the first to really get huge and all of the big non-cryptocurrency entities and the media are all focused on them. But Bitcoin needs to first be a competitive form of internet commerce before a new currency could take its place.

Bitcoin cannot claim eternal divine perfection, so inevitably there will arise a "NuCoin" that has the same nice properties but is technically better in some respect -- and will therefore replace Bitcoin as  the preferred medium of payment for internet commerce.   

What will happen to the Bitcoin then? Owners of course would like to swap them for equal worth of NuCoins.  But who will agree to the swap?