Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 1138. (Read 2032266 times)

no, Bitcoin is not just about understanding the technical aspects which he clearly does.

it's about understanding Bitcoin as a whole; the technical aspects plus the economic incentives involved.  if he fails to understand either one of those, he fails to understand Bitcoin.

FTFY.

If there was any question that Vitalik Buterin  doesn't understand Bitcoin economics, here it is:

The reason why having a fixed never-growing supply is undesirable is obvious: it encourages wealth concentration and creates a static community of holders without an effective way for new people to get in, and it means that the coin has no way to incentive any specific kind of activity in the long term.

http://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/24/on-long-term-cryptocurrency-distribution-models/

Kinda sad really.  

...
I had it all arranged with Melbustus.

LMAO for non-monetary coins.

Namecoin isn't a monetary coin.

Namecoin has had enough time to prove that it is not going anywhere.

You may also be interested in Namecoin.  IMHO, it also satisfies both your criteria.  It was launched already in 2011 (and was actually the first altcoin ever, I think), so not too much hype.  And it implements real technical additions over Bitcoin, unlikely to be added to Bitcoin.  (Even more unlikely than Bitcoin gaining strong anonymity, IMHO.)

There has to be two things for an alt to have a snowball's chance to succeed:
- A real benefit over BTC, which is not implementable in BTC
- Slow public launch with no premine to distribute the coins fairly and widely, while keeping the network secure for years to come

MRO is the almost only altcoin ever to have a launch that qualifies. What a luck that it is one of only a few coins that fulfil the tech criterion also.

But would you have still taken a speculative position in MRO if you could freely claim a share of a spin-off clone of Monero in proportion to your bitcoin holdings?

=> I bought MRO

Sorry to derail the thread even further, but this seems just like darkcoin? What is the benefit of this over it?

Sorry to derail the thread even further, but this seems just like darkcoin? What is the benefit of this over it?

Monero is an example of a coin that is trying to do exactly that. The devs don't hold a privileged position, there is no premine, the coin hit exchanges last week when less than 5% were mined. It takes forever to mine the rest of the coins (80% in 4 years but exponential decay).

The ways to build a monster position are - mining with multiple CPUs, - buying in the exchanges, - making markets. All these are beneficial activities for the coin. Due to high inflation, pumping is difficult/impossible (new mining alone acts as a dampener on pumps). All in all a nice coin, aiming to have real anonymity with CryptoNote coin mixing, and my first altcoin investment ever

but only as testing grounds.  anything worthwhile should be assimilated into Bitcoin when possible. 

the larger issue, as indicated by impulse above, is how do any of the alts implement a distribution mechanism that comes close to what Satoshi did?  he set a very high standard of what are now considered best practices in this new virtual currency world.  i'm thinking it's impossible unless you're willing to do the entire development model for free and somehow keep yourself anonymous.  but then at that point why wouldn't you just develop/enhance the market leader itself, Bitcoin, which stands to be the ultimate winner?

this has been a bad weekend for news on Bitcoin 2.0 projects.  we all know about Ripple now.  Mastercoin allegedly has problems with Willett selling out (not confirmed by me), and now we have Bitshares:

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/beyond-bitcoin-1-nxt-asset-exchange-and-bitshares-technical-update

listen carefully to Larimer describe how, just last week, he's had to redo the entire implementation of how tx's are handled within his protocol.  simple inputs and outputs structure like in Bitcoin have been discarded for database tables which will be required for every asset tracked by the Bitshare protocol.  blocks require "delegate" (read centralized) nodes to sign off and approve tx's.  apparently he had severe forking problems with his original code and lack of a mechanism to develop consensus.  

while listening to the podcast it dawned on me how centralized these Bitcoin 2.0 projects have become in the sense of depending on a core group of known devs who have a vested interest.  he even says that if something happened to him while the protocol had a problem there would be no one to really fix it.  that's bad.

Satoshi was wise to remain anonymous.  by leaving and turning the code management over to a distributed group of devs who don't have a vested interest in Bitcoin, other than whatever BTC they may have bought on the free market, he fortified the Bitcoin dev process from gov't pressure.  all the Bitcoin 2.0 projects have dev teams whose personal financial success depends on the success of their product.  if the devs themselves ever get attacked by gov't their project would be finished by the mere fact that most of them have awarded themselves an upfront disproportionate share of the equity.

i am beginning to believe that blockchain technology may only ever be applicable to Bitcoin as money.  you heard it here first.  i know what Satoshi said about scripting language and the potential to do more things like smart contracts et al but he said those things in a forum post and almost as an afterthought.  he also could be wrong about growing these products out from the blockchain from an economic and technical standpoint.  the masses don't care about these things, at least right now.  i think they just want their money to be safe.  here in the US, the arguably wealthiest country in the world, only a small % own things like stocks or bonds let alone assurance contracts or derivatives.

i think it's an interesting thought that blockchain technology may only ever be used to protect Bitcoin as money.  if i'm right, all that money directed at alt projects has yet to flow back to Bitcoin.

this has been a bad weekend for news on Bitcoin 2.0 projects.  we all know about Ripple now.  Mastercoin allegedly has problems with Willett selling out (not confirmed by me), and now we have Bitshares:

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/beyond-bitcoin-1-nxt-asset-exchange-and-bitshares-technical-update

listen carefully to Larimer describe how, just last week, he's had to redo the entire implementation of how tx's are handled within his protocol.  simple inputs and outputs structure like in Bitcoin have been discarded for database tables which will be required for every asset tracked by the Bitshare protocol.  blocks require "delegate" (read centralized) nodes to sign off and approve tx's.  apparently he had severe forking problems with his original code and lack of a mechanism to develop consensus.  

while listening to the podcast it dawned on me how centralized these Bitcoin 2.0 projects have become in the sense of depending on a core group of known devs who have a vested interest.  he even says that if something happened to him while the protocol had a problem there would be no one to really fix it.  that's bad.

Satoshi was wise to remain anonymous.  by leaving and turning the code management over to a distributed group of devs who don't have a vested interest in Bitcoin, other than whatever BTC they may have bought on the free market, he fortified the Bitcoin dev process from gov't pressure.  all the Bitcoin 2.0 projects have dev teams whose personal financial success depends on the success of their product.  if the devs themselves ever get attacked by gov't their project would be finished by the mere fact that most of them have awarded themselves an upfront disproportionate share of the equity.

i am beginning to believe that blockchain technology may only ever be applicable to Bitcoin as money.  you heard it here first.  i know what Satoshi said about scripting language and the potential to do more things like smart contracts et al but he said those things in a forum post and almost as an afterthought.  he also could be wrong about growing these products out from the blockchain from an economic and technical standpoint.  the masses don't care about these things, at least right now.  i think they just want their money to be safe.  here in the US, the arguably wealthiest country in the world, only a small % own things like stocks or bonds let alone assurance contracts or derivatives.

i think it's an interesting thought that blockchain technology may only ever be used to protect Bitcoin as money.  if i'm right, all that money directed at alt projects has yet to flow back to Bitcoin.