Topic: Is competition healthy for Bitcoin? - page 8. (Read 11351 times)

I'll take competition over a monopoly any day.  If a technology such as Bitcoin is as good as we all think it is, it will stand up to the competition just fine.  If it fails to something superior, that's the way it should be.

Altcoin *are* co-operation, or at least attempts at making something that can be co-operated alongside bitcoin, especially the merged-mined chains that co-operate in doing more with the same hashing-power.

Blockchain based currencies can be traded among much more conveniently than trading any of them with fiat, in fact at any point where you touch fiat you tend to run into all kinds of problems, so really it is the proliferation of fiats that the altcoins are competing against, fiat users already use something other than bitcoin, altcoins just give them something other than fiat to use if they persist in not using bitcoins.

Trading can be fun, the more altcoins there are the more interesting trading scenarios forex games can present without resorting to fiat and with the currencies they trade being usable across platforms just like bitcoins.

-MarkM-

??  Stuff are made cheaper and cheaper, year after year.. I dont call it "Tends toward awesome"..

The broad organization of society today is based on multi-level human competition: nation-states compete against each other for economic/physical resources; corporate market entities compete for profit/market-share; and average workers compete for wage providing occupations and hence personal survival itself.

Under the surface of this competitive social ethic is a basic psychological disregard for the well- being of others and the habitat. The very nature of competition is about having advantage over others for personal gain and hence, needless to say, division & exploitation (of both human and environment) are fundamental attributes of the current social order. Virtually all so-called “corruptions” which we define as “crime” in the world today are based upon the very same mentality assumed to guide “progress” in the world through the competitive value.

Scientific study proves otherwise..

Your call is the result of the capitalist minset that has been pushed to us for generations !

It's been proven that cooperation is always better than competition.
If ressources (hardware, poeples, etc) applied to LiteCoin were applied to Bitcoin instead, Bitcoin would be stronger !

bitcoin does not already own the world. so alt currencies are not taking a slice of the bitcoin pie and they are not diluting its userbase. bitcoin is a crumb of the 7billion population which already use multiple different currencies. saying bitcoin is the one and only currency is not really grasping the whole picture.

it's like the ancient egyptians saying they are the only thing of importance in the world and no other country will succeed and prosper. and anyone found not following egyptian rule will die. hmmm and look what happened to ancient egypt after its glory days. people moved away as their freedoms and choices were limited, leaving with their own principles and idea's for a better life and thus, new cultures were born.

the general thoughts of bitcoiners is with one hand they want freedom away from government control and they want freedom of trade, and choice which is great.
...but then saying bitcoin is the only other choice.. [facepalm]

treat each currency like their own country. some flourish, some die out, some go to war with each other, some form life long trading partners.

in short competition helps. competition is only bad if your on the losing side and you have no benefit/nothing of value to give to win back and succeed. in the end winners don't fight. they learn to respect each other and work together, sharing idea's and learning from mistakes.

So an alt. coin is simply taking the cryptocurrency pie and slicing it up into a smaller portion stealing thunder fom Bitcoin and it's value diluting its user base. Competing standards are always a bad thing. and in no way would a rival alt. coin and user base generate greater awareness of cryptocurrency and draw an even greater number towards both ultimately benefiting both.

Jesus H Christ, the stupidity in this thread is fucking astounding. Competition between businesses in a market is healthy. Competing standards ARE NOT. Lets look at the web as an example - would we benefit from N incompatible versions of HTTP?

Decentralized cryptocurrencies are not businesses (DUH). We don't benefit by having many of them. We do benefit from competition among the goods and services built on top of it. Sure, we should have multiple competing exchanges. We definitely want competing solo and pool miners.

If anything, having a single cryptocurrency benefits us through the Network Effect (where the intrinsic value of the currency goes up as more people use it).

But Litecoin, et. al. along with all the people who promote them can kiss my taint.

I'll stop if you pay me to stop, in BTC.

The possibility of an alternate cryptocurrency is very healthy for Bitcoin. It makes sure nobody gets complacent.

If another cryptocurrency actually sees significant adoption I think that should be treated as a failure. Bitcoin should work well enough that nobody needs to switch to an alternative.

First, anyone comparing crypto-currency competition to business competition is making a false analogy.

Second, no. It's not healthy.  LTC really doesn't do anything different than BTC except offer desperate miners another chance at printing their own money.  LTC discourages adoption as people think "Oh, I see. This is all a chance for people to try and get me to buy in X currency and then, when it is convenient, switch to Y currency and tell me to use that. Yeah, no thanks."

Just stop, ok?

Thanks to Vladimir for a very informative post!

I think it is, and the different set-ups can have different advantages too, namecoin for example.

Also, people will be able to start their own currencies at will, for projects, cities etc.

You are exactly right.  We should shut down testnet.

If I recompile bitcoin right now to start a new block chain with a new genesis block, using all the same rules as bitcoin, the worth of my new "Walter coins" will still not be equal to the worth of bitcoins, even though they are "identical" in the sense of using the same rules.  In fact, I'll bet a "Walter coin" wouldn't even be worth a Satoshi.

So yes, we could in effect have infinite coins, but they would not all have the worth of bitcoin.  Over time, some might become more valuable, and some coin might even take the crown from bitcoin.  But they will not dilute bitcoin (or it successor/s) down to being valueless.

BTC have already too much competiton from other fiat currencies and it has not gained enough ground yet

Yep. Do it like Larry Ellison http://www.cnbc.com/id/49194482/How_Larry_Ellison_Actually_Funds_His_Lavish_Lifestyle and unlike all the shipple selling themselves into debt slavery by taking out mortgages.

This is a smart way to "monetize" bitcoin fortunes for those marathon runners among bitcoiners.

However, nothing new here. Google "stock loan" or "securities based credit line" or "stock backed lending". This is actually the smart way of buying high value property as opposed to various mortgage products.

The idea is that instead of having a mortgage AKA "buying one house for yourself and two houses for the bank"  you borrow money using your stock portfolio as a collateral.

A typical "stock loan" is readily available for amounts above 100k$, you pledge your portfolio as collateral in exchange for some amount of money, you keep whatever dividends your stocks brings, you pay whatever interest rate is agreed until the loan is repaid. Usually such loans are not callable by the lender but debtor can walk away from the deal at any time and stop paying any interest without repaying any capital but sacrificing the portfolio. The creditor usually hedges all risks associated with such a deal using options. Think about it, dividends are (hopefully) paying lion share of interest, you keep your stocks and get back control of them after you will have paid out the loan. If stock drops to 0 or to some other low value you can walk away from the deal at any time without any further liabilities.

I would say this is the way to buy a house for those who have 100k$ in liquid assets. Of course this could be combined with traditional mortgage (at lower interest rates due to large LTV) if "top up" is needed.

Just to illustrate here is a simplified example.

You buy 430k$ worth of Realty Income Corp (NYSE:O), 10000 shares, 43$ each. It pays 5% dividend. You use this portfolio to get 400k$ loan at a fixed 3% interest. You buy yourself 400k$ house outright without any further lending. eventually dividends pay off the loan and you get your stock back. Or at any time (if stock tanks big time, for example) you just walk away and keep your house and have no any debts. Alternatively, if your stock rises significantly you can settle the loan for a portion of your portfolio and walk away with the rest of it.

Essentially, this way one turns the power of compound interest from one's enemy to one's friend, offsets interest with dividend, offsets inflation with stock price appreciation, lets lender to offset risks of stock depreciation.

Now enters Bitcoin. Imagine that a few years down the road Bitcoin trades on various financial exchanges just like all other currencies, there are liquid bitcoin ETF's which are optionable and these options are rather liquid with about the same liquidity as a typical S&P 500 stock (or simply liquid Bitcoin options).

Once the above conditions are in place it is likely that Bitcoin's market cap is around 1 billion USD (I use today's dollars i.e. ignoring fiat inflation for simplicity). Let's assume that 1 BTC worth about 1000$, for simplicity again.

I guess a typical deflationary Bitcoin loan in 4-8 years time (for Bitcoin owners) would be like the following:

You own 430 Bitcoins. You pledge it as a collateral for 400k$ at 3% interest. You buy a house outright. Every month the lender sells 0.1-1 BTC and/or you pony up some cash to pay the interest. Few years down the road your loan is paid up, you keep the house and , say, 430-N BTC that worth about the same amount of USD as your 430 BTC when you have bought the house.

So just have 1000 BTC and in a few years you will be able to use such or a similar scheme to buy yourself a house outright and keep most of your bitcoins in the process.

All you need for this to be a realistic scenario is a bunch of BTC and 1000$ exchange rate. At this point options on BTC and therefore "BTC collateralized lending" will be available.

Here is a bit of my wisdom for you: keep your bitcoins until you can buy a house (or an yacht or whatever) like that. Also note how no tax event is triggered in described above scenario. Note how one could become a tax exile for a year or so and move out his bitcoins out of a punitive taxable jurisdiction. Estate planning opportunities will be great for those who can keep their bitcoins untouched for a while.

 

That is a very simplistic statement. The real world doesn't always function like a capitalist cartoon.

I don't actually think that competition (from other cryptocurrencies) is healthy for bitcoin during the embryonic stage of the project. 

Here is why: There is a limited number of people in the world who are able to donate their time and energy to grow the bitcoin project, AND who are believers in cryptocurrencies.   If we have several competing cryptocurrencies, some of the talented people working on bitcoin right now will be diverted to alt-currencies.  This will increase the risk of ALL cryptocurrencies failing, for example through an attack by a bitcoin enemy.

We are more likely to succeed if we all pull in the same direction.

Once bitcoin becomes widely adopted, by all means, bring on the competition.

But right now, this community is still too small, bitcoin is still too vulnerable, to be able to afford divisiveness.

You may want to reword your original statement. It is misleading.

Absolutely. I don't mean that it's a bad thing that competition eventually kills everything. That means that the stuff that currently exists always tends toward awesome because of competition.