Topic: Is there really a limited supply of bitcoins? - page 2. (Read 4848 times)

Why do you think that less demand is the same as no demand? It is so obviously wrong to claim that Bitcoin has no demand, all you have to do is check mtgox.

Bitcoin was first with a new technology with several advantages of the the existing ones, and got kickstarted by the unwavering support of a bunch of libertarian hippies. If you try to start Bitcoin2 you won't have any of those advantages.

You should probably read the Ponzi FAQ.

tl;dr version: Bitcoin is a revolutionary currency. Because of its rapid adoption, its value increases and some people invest in it anticipating such increase. Bitcoin has so little in common with either pyramid or ponzi that I feel silly talking about the "differences", but the main difference is that Bitcoin is sustainable even after this growth spurt.

And for the original question, as was mentioned, any Bitcoin fork is highly unlikely to be adopted because anyone wishing to adopt a decentralized cryptocurrency will just adopt the more usable Bitcoin instead (and because everyone expects others to do this, there is no reason to anticipate future adoption).

It's always a Ponzi scheme to people who heard about it last week.  Bitcoin will hit critical mass whether you or whatever "humor" forum you came from think it's a scam or not.

No currency had demand or usefulness before it existed, and to most people in the world, bitcoin simply does not exist yet.  We will remedy that situation shortly.

That's like saying "come on and join us, that will make you closer to the top of the pyramid".

That's not an argument... 

Shall I take it that you agree that Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme then?

Bitcoin had advantages over all other currencies. Bitcoin2 has zero advantages and all disadvantages.

Yes what we are saying is that Bitcoin has more demand and vendors than Bitcoin2 would have.

And what I said then was that Bitcoin (the original one) have no demand and no vendors compared to traditional currencies. Yes I know that there is a list of places where you can use Bitsoins on this site, and I agree that the list is getting impressive. However, just in comparison there are several thousand places in the city where I live where they accept traditional currency but I haven't seen any accepting Bitcoin.

Back to the original discussion. So say that Bitcoin become a household name, and Bitcoin2 would be started by someone who has a lot of money to put into promoting Bitcoin2 as _the_ digital currency. Say that it was started by a big corporation, who would put millions of USD into promoting it, or by the US government, the Chinese government or by the IMF who would put billions or trillions. Take this to the extreme and say that each and every one of us would start our own digital currency and we would try to promote it as _the_ currency and there would be an exchange rate between our currencies. The exchange rate would settle at something depending on our ability to promote our own currency, and that ability would be equal to the amount of money or gold we had before it all started. So we are back where we started, right? What difference does bitcoin do?

You misread me. Bitcoin2 has no demand and no vendors.

edit:nm

One thing (probably the only thing) that limits competition at this point is that Bitcoin is very small in a very large market.  There are huge threats arrayed against it.  It is more profitable to cooperate rather than to compete.

No demand and no vendors? THIS again? That might have been true a year ago; it certainly is not true now.

So you are saying that the reason Bitcoin would work and not Bitcoin1,2,3 is that Bitcoin has more credibility and is more widely accepted?

Well, if that is the only thing it relies on then that is not much actually, because Bitcoin has no demand, no ventors, etc, compared to gold or traditional currencies. What is Bitcoin then more than a Ponzi scheme?

It's so easy to make Bitcoin2,3,4,5 that you could practically say they already exist. The problem is that they have no difficult, no demand, no vendors, etc. And they offer nothing to compensate compared to Bitcoin.

I know that there will only ever exist 21 million bitcoins, and I trust that there is reliable algorithms in place to ensure that there will never be any more.

However, say that I take the source for bitcoin and start up a new genesis block and call this bitcoin2 and get some people starting to use that as well. And then someone else starts up bitcoin3 and so on to infinity. Then we have an unlimited supply of limited supplies. Any reason that this would not happen if bitcoin really become a household name?

I really like the idea of bitcoin and I'm trying to spread the word as much as I can. A friend of mine who is knowledgeable in economics brought up the argument above and I didn't know what to answer really...