Topic: BTC 1.0 vs BTC 2.0: bullish perspective (Read 1732 times)

If only I were preaching "hodl" nonsense to the actual salesmen, perhaps your diatribe would be valid. Now go on, paddle your product to the next moron on the street, nothing to see here 

And why do you believe so? What does the society gain from financial privacy?
As I see it, crime and deception are the things that have most to gain from financial privacy.


I agree, that an anonymous leech is just as much as an leech as an known leech. Anonymity brings forward new problems tho.  It brings forward lack of responsibility and it demands it's investors to depend on blind luck, that some former drug dealer/criminal won't use their 1mil.BTC+ holdings to attack the entire economy that's dependent on BTC. It would be universally stupid to ignore this risk of possible harmful ownership.

Exactly, and that's why it's hard to convince more serious investors to get into BTC. The hype revolving around bitcoin is mainly made through deception. Like the deception that bitcoin would solve problems like wealth concentration and corruption in the monetary system.



The bitcoin software code may be called a protocol, but bitcoin itself is as much of an protocol, as gmail is an protocol for e-mail. The specific trademark product "bitcoin", with including it's blockchain, is a specific kind of product, not an protocol.
I would rather say that there are sub-groups inside the bitcoin community without cultish attributes. The majority are showing strong signs of cultish behavior, by often trying very hard to either ignore or ridicule the critique of serious flaws. Keep in mind that you also ignored the threat of criminal ownership in your reply.


In this context, fair means less concentrated wealth and better rewarding for those who have earned it with their education, skills and experience. More developed societies tend to be more fair in the general understanding, while the less developed societies tend to be the opposite. For instance in Switzerland, your success is mostly dependent on your education, your ability to apply yourself and your past work experience. In Somalia, in another hand, you are mostly dependent on personal connections or just luck with being in a right place at the right time. Knowledge and experience isn't highly valued in less developed societies, and that can be considered as unfair, when luck, not natural selection, will decide everyones success.
It would be just like that when bitcoin would hit big. The ones who would get rich would be mainly uneducated and inexperienced people who just happened to stumble on a right thing at the right time.
This could have been fixed with a more even coin supply, but it seems that Satoshi valued a quick and strong starting momentum more, then bitcoin's long term probability of success.


I find it a little hard to believe. Adding PoS mining to the equation, is already an advancement in the technology, but bitcoin won't ever adopt it. As I sayd, it's flaws are beyond repair. The cultish behavior that leads the majority, is a major drag to the general development. The cultists tend to think that the core properties of bitcoin, like PoW mining or fixed supply, are perfect, and so no developments are needed.
I would be more interested in a coin, that's community sees how imperfect everything currently are, and how this is just a tip of the iceberg for future developments.



Bitcoin is far from being the best payment system. As an payment system, it is inconvenient and also rather expensive. And even most of the altcoins, with shorter transaction times, could be called better for payment then bitcoin.
As I said before, bitcoin seems unable to assimilate new developments. I also think that it could, only if the cultish majority wouldn't slow down the development. They treat the bitcoin original mechanisms as holy as Christians value the bible. They also see that the original writing is holy and nothing should be changed.


Half of the bitcoins were released during times when it was mainly used for illegal trade, so calling it "the most legitimate ledger" is kind of weird to read.


This won't be considered as panic trading, but as natural movement of wealth that is decided by fair competition.


In this new age of finance, the holders won't be rewarded for doing nothing. Mostly those will be rewarded, who have the skills and experience needed to actually help build the infrastructure. Rewarding holders is the way of the old world, where people could leech riches from others by themselves doing nothing. Bitcoin is a technical innovation, but it has nothing innovative financially. Still the same game built on the greed of the leeches, just with promises of wealth redistribution from one leeches to another.


Anyway, I want to say that I understand why most of the people here are so fanatical about bitcoins success, and why they don't want anything changed. They are mostly guys who aren't educated or trained to work in these kinds of investment environments. They stumbled upon bitcoin out of boredom and random google surfing, and they want things to be as easy as they have been. How they can just buy and 4 years after they are a lot richer. When wealth would start to migrate from one crypto to another, then more skills are needed to actually succeed in gaining wealth. Most of the people here aren't equipped to handle these scenarios and they want to remain in their bitcoin comfort zone.
You can believe that bitcoin will be the currency of the future and people will somehow find, that bitcoins blockchain is the most trustworthy account for wealth. I believe more in the success of natural selection, and I find bitcoin too primitive to make the cut. So, I think that we would both save time, if we just agreed to disagree.

If you cannot figure out how to use the blockchain for alternative things without actually changing Bitcoin itself, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

I recommend new-bitcoin salesmen; they're less tainted.  




But I've heard good things about used-Auroracoin salesmen too; they're always lowering the price. 

Yes you will make an excellent salesman!

You are either badly informed or bad at math. Take a look at this site once in a while. Consider the relationship between interest and the exponential function. Fiat collapse is inevitable, just a question of how long the banks and politicians will kick the can down the road. And the longer it takes the worse it will be.

How can bitcoin 2.0 be developed when bitcoin 1.0 does not even exist? Bitcoin in it's current state is a glorified hack. Ethereum is something that would work with a fully developed, standardized bitcoin. Why are people jumping so ahead into the future already?

Yesterday I downloaded the new armory client and it took about an hour running the laptop at maximum load for it to compile whatever it was doing. The computer got so hot I thought it would begin melting. This is 5 years in.

Monetary mechanisms should be transparent, but I believe financial privacy is important.


I agree that leeches and crime are a drain of society's wealth.  However, I think your use of the word "anonymous" is spurious, as non-anonymous leeches are also a drain.  


If information is easy to spread and difficult to stifle, deception is hard to practice.  


Bitcoin is a global network, a transparent protocol, and a public ledger.  Perhaps there are sub-groups in the bitcoin community with cultish attributes, but there are sub-groups in all communities with cultish attributes.  


It appears fair is the new f-word.  It seems to me that most people's definition of the word fair is "more for them and less for those other people."  I don't find it a particularly useful concept.  


Bitcoin can assimilate any useful technical quality, should one emerge in the future.  I'm not sure you've identified any useful technical or financial qualities beyond some vague concept you have that bitcoin is somehow unfair.


Bitcoin is a presently the best payment system and the most legitimate ledger.  In the unlikely event that a better payment system appeared, why would people panic trade out of the bitcoin ledger when bitcoin could just assimilate the new technology?


Once again, if new "better" technology emerged, why would people trade out of the most legitimate ledger?  Why wouldn't the economic majority favour simply adding the new technology to the current ledger?    


Do you think it would increase or decrease trust in cryptocurrency by regularly panic trading in and out of various ledgers?


If the price of bitcoin continues to increase, how does this benefit early adopters more than current adopters?  You cannot make wealthy early adopters unrich by not adopting bitcoin, and increased bitcoin adoption benefits all holders equally from this day forward (whether they acquired their first coin in 2010 or 2014).  

I think that this entire idea of financial (r)evolution, is about making monetary mechanisms and ownership more transparent. This won't be the age of anonymous leeches, who are highly rewarded for doing crime or just generally contribution very little to society. It's the age of information, not the age of deception.

That is the main paradox in the "cult of bitcoin". It's ideology is largely built on talks about fair and transparent money, while bitcoin's practical aspects are far from being fair and transparent.

Bitcoin will be replaced when a currency emerges, that has better qualities, both technical and financial. If an good enough alternative appears, then the transfer of value will be quite rapid. The biggest cultists will of course remain loyal to bitcoin, and they will pay the price for that. And this new coin won't also be the ultimate coin that will be used for hundreds of years. It will also have a relatively short lifespan, after the biggest part of the value is again transferred to some new and better coin. This will be the mechanism that will move the wealth around, till only those, who have the sharpest vision of this future, will be rewarded for moving their wealth at the right time to the right place. The rest will be spread out by the general population evenly enough to increase the general trust.
I think that those are mistaken who think that they can just buy bitcoin and after that GAME OVER, YOU WIN!
This game will be a lot longer then bitcoin.

 I think the success of Bitcoin is dependent entirely on the aggressiveness of used-Bitcoin salesmen. There needs to be constant brain washing of new people to embrace bitcoin otherwise it is not going many places and there will be stagnation. Those who say Hold/don't sell in order to create artificial scarcity and increase in prices are good salesmen and we need more of them. A good way to convince is to spread FUD that the dollar will collapse anyday eventhough it is never going to happen.

It sounds like you are in favour of redistribution of wealth from the bitcoin blockchain.  Given the mechanism I described above that would deter redistribution (whether you think it is fair or not), what counter mechanism would you propose to fight this?

There would be no point in keeping bitcoin's blockchain, because one big problem is in the blockchain and it's history. If you want an transparent system to work, then ownership and usage has to transparent also, or else it will never gain the necessary trust for wider acceptance.
There are about 12,7mil.BTC in the circulation. Very little of it's ownership is publicly claimed, with also proclaiming their intentions on future coin usage. The rest is in the hands of anonymous figures, who could very well be criminals from the days when BTC was mainly used for the Tor markets.
If an serious financial tool emerges, then it has to be transparent and clean from the start, and without an colourful criminal history.

 

What do you say to the proposal that any "better technology"¹ could simply be launched as a bitcoin spin-off, preserving the ledger of value recorded in the bitcoin blockchain?  I addressed the mechanics of how this could play out in my post right above yours.  

BTW, in what specific ways do you believe "the core of bitcoin is flawed beyond repairs"?

¹Although in my opinion bitcoin is ideal as is.

I agree that cyrptocurrency, or as I call it open-sourced monetary system, has a lot of potential for further growth. It's a logical outcome, that developments in information technology, will also give a strong boost in information dependent fields like finance.
But, to me, the core of bitcoin is flawed beyond repairs. Meaning, I don't have much faith that bitcoin will be able to overcome certain thresholds, in becoming an useful tool for practical finance. So, I'm keeping my eyes out for something better, and sadly, I just don't find bitcoin very interesting anymore.

I would go even further BTCtrader71 and say that bitcoin is not at risk even in the unlikely event that something "better" is discovered.  This is a post I recently wrote that shows how the community is economically incentivized to preserve the bitcoin blockchain:

Bitcoin functions as both a means of exchange and a store of value.  What I think many people fail to realize is that these are two seperate things: bitcoin as the network of nodes, miners and associated source code is the "means of exchange," whereas bitcoin as the entries in the unforgeable global ledger known as the blockchain is the "store of value."

The free market will naturally choose the best payment network (means of exchange) run from the most legitimate ledger (store of value)¹.  I expect that for the forseeable future, the market will decide:

     best payment network = bitcoin's network
     most legitimate ledger = bitcoin's blockchain

But now let's perform a thought experiment by considering a future where the community no longer perceives that the bitcoin network is the best payment network.  My intent here is to show that it does not logically follow that the community will abandon the most legitimate ledger at the same time--in fact, the economic majority will strongly favour retaining the same ledger as it is already perceived as legitimate and that is where their wealth and records are stored.  

For our thought experiment, consider a proof-of-stake system like NXT.  Image somehow that one of these systems demonstrates to the cryptocurrency community that PoS is both highly robust and useful².  So how would this play out?

The community will be overflowing with clones and spin-offs, several of them trying to redistribute value from the blockchain ledger in a way that they perceive to be "more fair."  There will be a great deal of confusion and the market cap of NXT and the clones will be small.  

Let's assume that Satoshi is (a) alive, (b) has all his keys, (c) is a rational individual that works for his enlightened self-interest.  What could he do?

And herein lies the other thing I think many people fail to realize: Satoshi has more economic power than any of us.  

It is in Satoshi's best interest to get behind one of the spin-offs that uses the bitcoin ledger, because he will retain the same % of wealth and the ledger is already perceived as legitimate by the economic majority.  If a certain spin-off looks like it already has a head start, he can get behind that, or he could simply launch his own.  But at some point, there will be discussion in the community that Spin-off Y based on Block XXXXX is preferable.  

Satoshi puts up a bid-wall at say, 1 : 10,000 and a few people dump to him (perhaps those in favour of deleting Satoshi's coins).  He then moves the bid-wall up to 1 : 1,000 and a few more people dump to him (those who favour deleting Satoshi's coins go "all in.")  The rest of us start to realize the dynamics at play.  Spin-off Y is about to become legitimate.

Now every one who didn't dump has a risk-free way to try an increase their percentage of the pie.  Speculators scramble to purchase coins of Spin-off Y and very quickly Spin-off Y becomes legitimized.  

The only re-distribution of wealth was as follows: those who tried to redistribute wealth from "bitcoin whales" by dumping the spin-off the economic majority supported would lose.  Those that realized what was happening and purchased spin-offs from those in favor of re-distribution would gain.  And very importantly, the vast majority of the community who remained impartial and did nothing retain the exact same % of wealth.  

Remember, Satoshi has a lot of coins.  If the "stampede" into Spin-off Y doesn't occur at 1 : 1,000, Satoshi can keep moving up the "peg" until it does.  The longer this process takes, the richer Satoshi becomes and the poorer become those who fought the process in favour of re-distribution.    

Also note that just the fact that Satoshi could do this means that he may not even have to.  We will all do it for him.

TL/DR: The blockchain will be preserved.

¹My definition of the terms "best payment network" and "most legitimate ledger" are not subjective or ambiguous.   I am defining the term "best payment network" to mean the one most adopted by the community, and the term "most legitimate ledger" to be the ledger that actually gets used by the economic majority.

²Something I personally doubt will ever happen as I believe bitcoin is ideal as is.

Over the last 6 months or so I have become gradually convinced of the following: cryptocurrency is sufficiently well established that the greatest threat to bitcoin from an investor perspective would be if something better comes along -- Ethereum, some altcoin, whatever. IOW, bitcoin is going to continue its exponential rise in value until the world market is saturated, UNLESS some version of Bitcoin 2.0 comes in to replace it. So far, nothing on the horizon seems poised to do this. Interest in sidechain technology is an example of core crypto technologists working not to attack, but to solidify bitcoin's first-mover advantage and protect bitcoin's long term economic viability. Why would an altcoin compete against bitcoin when it can join it as a sidechain?

The thought occurred to me today that this is very unlikely to happen, at least not in the near term. Think about the people who have been and are being innovators in the crypto space. These people have two characteristics:

1) Philosophical motivation: They love everything about bitcoin and they want to see it succeed. This means they do not want, at an emotional level, to see bitcoin replaced by some variant of bitcoin 2.0; this would be a tremendous setback in terms of world adoption of crypto technology, and they understand that -- probably better than anyone. Indeed, they are in a position to understand the economic fundamentals of crypto much better than anyone else in the world (with the very notable exception of their peers - a small albeit rapidly growing group of people).

2) Economic motivation: They love the ideas of liberty and personal autonomy. Even though money is probably not their primary motive, these are not the type of people to feel guilty about making money off an investment in bitcoin. They are therefore likely to have a substantial financial investment in bitcoin. (Even a tiny investment "just for fun" in the early days quickly becomes a substantial investment.)

Therefore: The only people on this planet with the ability to derail the bitcoin choo-choo train to the stars have very strong philosophical as well as economic motivations to see that this does not happen.

Any comments on the above, very bullish line of reasoning?