Topic: Handle the 21M Limit - page 4. (Read 10378 times)

Nothing of the sort was ever expressed or implied.

This has been discussed many times here on the forums, search around.  Once "a bitcoin" becomes expensive, and people are using 0.00001 bitcoins to purchase a coffee, some user friendly moniker such as "mBTC" or "nanocoins" will be used to save people from having to type all those zeroes after the decimal point.  Your coffee will cost 10 nanocoins.

And I wouldn't be here, if I didn't think bitcoin had a good chance of being successful, or at least, making a useful, positive impact on the world.

tom;

Deflation is a "money trick" not quite connected to production. It's a nightmare due specially to its social consequences, obviously BTC is somewhat safe of this due to not be "currency" anywhere. How could you explain to someone you'll pay him less? Will he understand? And if don't, you will bankrupt to pay him the same he's already getting... to the end it causes massive bankruptcy and spikes unemployment. A normal reaction of a government would be to change currency, or its name.
Again... it may not apply to BTC, at least just yet.

xf2_org,

So you imply the whole BTC concept is faulty, as the maximum amount will force people into tiny decimals of an overwhelming expensive currency...

Raulo,

I think those "secondary" bitcoins should be within BTC and not separated, to not spread within several block chains, nor to surpass the actual bitcoin (let's call it Gold Bitcoin for this essay purposes). To "split" we already have namecoin, for an instance.

So the client would look something like this:



Another surplus of this is to get people into bitcoin, as newcomers will be able to generate a few silver coins, much lower in value than gold but enough to get them interested.
From an outside point of view I understand some of my friends when they look at me as sort of a "freeloader" for my early generated coins and their current value...

Exactly, which is why it is so damn volatile to begin with.  There is no way to accurately value it, so that's why it's so much speculation.  And because of this "flaw", you want to *increase* it?  This is like saying a one-legged man runs slow, therefore we should cut off his other leg.

Yes, but making it more volatile won't make it more stable.  It's a small market.  Making it smaller won't help.


You don't earn less.  Deflation only occurs when the economy is growing.  If you are producing the same amount as before, your purchasing power stays the same.  If you are producing less, your purchasing power drops.  If you are producing more, you get more purchasing power.  What's the problem?

Did you expect it to replace the USD this fast?  If so, that's flawed thinking.  This is not going to happen quickly (if at all!).

And rather than entertain that notion, we should just continue on, if they are scared to use it, let them stick with their inflationary money.

Your implied premise is faulty.

Any brand new block chain will be just as volatile as bitcoin, if not more so, once people take an active interest in it...  and it will not have the chain strength of the bitcoin main chain.

Welcome to the real world, where a tiny market can rocket 1000% once a big player or two enters the market.

Indeed I think the metal analogy is better than the geographic one.

BCEmporium,

If you want to get rid of this awful deflationary BTC, I can exchange them for testnet coins for you. You will have a part of an alternative blockchain right now. Exchange rate: 500 testcoins for 1 BTC. 10000 testcoins available. You can call it BTC/silver (or bronze).

"People gambling on which takes off"... people is already gambling on it with Bitcoin alone.
Also you "need" USD (if you're on US that is, here it would help you much, as everything goes on Euros) for buy and sell stuff, whatever currency doesn't make you able to buy and sell stuff is an useless currency.
And up to this point, I've to give credit to that guy with carrots, taken you can't buy anything on BTC and you would actually be a foul to attempt to run a business in this currency as you can't know how much it worths - up to last week 1,xx USD, in the week before 0,6x/0,7x USD, now 3.xx USD, some months ago 1.xx, tomorrow ? USD. It's not quite "trending up", it's bumping wildly without consistency. Fiat currencies goes a few pips up, a few pips down, this one bumps from gold to rubbish.
And see here an issue? Everything goes around USD, most (rather say ALL) of us think on USD or EUR or a fiat and stable currency, nobody thinks on BTC.

Deflation ain't never a good thing, unless the currency causing deflation isn't in use at all. Hey! Now you can buy more stuff with less currency. Right... but so you will earn less of that currency. Again, it just doesn't quite "hurt" in BTC because nobody is trading nothing on BTC, everybody is "thinking" on USD.
And I'm speaking somewhat against myself, as I'm one of the BTC "pioneers", I generated several thousands of coins in the beginning.

But back to the beginning, instead of Euro/Amero/Asian... it could be silver BTC/bronze BTC/iron BTC...

Doesn't matter as long as you can exchange cryptocurrencies quickly on a global market.

But I admit this would deserve a more thourough thinking.


Yeah I know but we keep hearing about it all the time as an argument against bitcoin.

Of course they devalue each other.  If you NEED dollars to buy something, and it is not for sale in any other currency, that will make dollars more valuable.  And I'm talking exclusively about having prices be unstable.  As demand for each currency changes in relation to each other, the value relationship between each also changes.  Some will eventually become unused and worthless.  Some will have flaws and become worthless.  Some might take off.



Choosing one works, until you find somewhere you'd like to spend it that doesn't accept it and only accepts a different one.

Deflationary spiral is also a myth.  Oh noes, the prices be falling when the economy grows!  How horrible is it that you can now buy more free stuff!  Better give money to the politically connected so that we don't have that happen!

I also had this concern for some time.  I'm not sure however it is a serious problem.  Currencies don't devaluate one another.  Printing sterlings doesn't hurt dollars.   Gold is not threatened by silver.  Etc.

The fact that there are many cryptocurrencies on the market might confuse some people.  But once they make their mind and chose one, everything goes fine.  Just let the market adjust prices between them and, if the economy wants it, one particular currency will emerge.

I actually think that the fact that people can create a new block chain at will is a good thing.  If they do so, it will mean that bitcoin has reached a point where too few people have hoarded bitcoins, so that it makes bitcoins less usefull for the economy.  People then need more money to do their business, and there is nothing wrong for them to create some.

It might be the free market solution for the "bitcoin will create a deflationnary spiral" mantra.

You could make alternatives to BTC.  It would have to actually be improved in some way, rather than being a clone.  But the more cryptocurrencies that exist, the more instability you will see in each of their prices as people have to gamble about which ones take off.

Not exactly.  You also only consider block chains whose first block is the one that is hard coded in the code.

I wonder if we could not rewrite bitcoin without this hard coded genesis block.

Instead, the software would listen to any blocks, and would create the largest block chain it can, whatever the first block is.

Having more World currencies gives us diversity and choice. Have just one renders a monopoly, as now Mt. Gox have for an instance on BTC.
If BTC becomes as bad deal you've no alternative, equivalent to BTC, at the moment, do you?
Stability will be in the interest of those holding or investing in the coins if more BTC-like currencies are available.

Like anything else, currencies also work by the rules of the market and concurrence.

Why would they build up more demand?  Having more world currencies makes more volatility, not more stability.  It's good we have lots of currencies, since that volatility is not a bad thing since people can get out of bad currency and get into good ones.

So, tom, with 6 parallel block chains you would end up with 5 times more BTC available, with different values between them is true, as they hadn't start at the same time, but will be more able to be up to BTC demand and therefore stabilization. A bit like what you've on the real world with different currencies.
As things develop, people will tend to stick with the most stable block chain for real life trade and use the more trended up as bullion or investment. Eventually some block chains will fall into darkness as happens to some currencies around, such as Indonesian Rupiah.

Stabilizing is not the problem.  We live in the internet age.  We can price things every second.  For the large scale user, fees are negligible, especially compared to PayPal and credit cards.  Trading can be automated to make sure you aren't vulnerable to swings.

The only way we stabilize is if the exchange market grows tremendously.  Right now there is <20k BTC for sale on the exchange.  Anyone with medium pockets can buy them all up at any time, doubling the price.  Anyone with a decent amount of bitcoins could sell them and would lower the price tremendously.  We just need a bigger market.  It will happen with time (or it won't).

Join IRC channel #bitcoin-otc on Freenode.

There you should find a bot named NickelBot. It has info obtainable by the IRC command

/msg NickelBot help

Unfortunately I think it currently thinks a BitCoin is worth less than a CDN...

If you learn of others besides those NickelBot already knows about, do tell.

-MarkM-

Where can i learn about the parallel blockchains avaiable out there?