Topic: Long-term sustainability of Bitcoin (Read 3527 times)

I agree with Chronos.

First, Peercoin has no more rewards to early adopters than any other crypto - with the exception that Peercoin is designed for long term success, enduring and succeeding in time after other cryptos have failed.  Only in this respect, it is more favorable to early adopters.

Second, it is true that Bitcoin is unlikely to change much from here on forward. But unlike Chronos I don't think this is because "Too many players would have to agree..." rather, I believe Bitcoin will not change because of a couple of less big reasons and one very big reason:
     1) Bitcoin has a market cap now of 8 Billion dollars. What paid or unpaid developer wants to risk screwing that up?  If the price rises or falls dramatically the fear and paralysis of core developers will become even greater. 
     2) Bitcoin core developers are under a constant noisey harangue by countless clueless fan boys and others who have little idea of what they are all shouting about. Mike Hearn, a core developer says for this reason and the above reason the core developers have quit developing;
     3) This is the big reason that pretty much dominates all other factors: The power and control in Bitcoin is in the few hands not of core developers nor Bitcoin holders but of the most important actors in Bitcoin - those who verify transactions - the shrinking number of miners and even smaller number of mining pool managers. These are the very small number of people who have total veto power on any change to Bitcoin and they have tens of millions of dollars invested so they would never allow a change or improvement such as Proof-of-Stake which would be better for Bitcoin holders but would devastate the power and wealth of the small handful of centralized miners and their mining pools.

I think this isn't true. Some purposes of Peercoin are covered in the video in the OP. However, in a general sense, all cryptocurrency benefits early adopters.

This is extremely, extremely unlikely. Bitcoin is quickly reaching the point where it will never be "changed" again. Too many players would have to agree to update their software, which simply wouldn't happen unless there were some emergency.

How would you change it? I saw a proposal for a non-outsourceable PoW "challenge", but I'm not sure about its implementability as part of Bitcoin with a hardfork.

Why would you think that POS is the future !?
POS is made for one purpuse only, and that is getting early adopters rich.

I agree that there are some negative issues on POW, but it can be fixed/changed/whatever.
POS - not even once

POS is the future.  See the light people

This does not seem like a great point or even a good point to me.  No matter what your ownership percentage it will not increase nor decrease only because of Proof-of-Stake design.

Proof-of-Stake is inherently decentralizing by design. In contrast Proof-of-Work design is inherently centralizing.

This is amazing!
Easy to watch and listen, great information, smooth voice. Thank you everyone involved! Wish I could contribute at the same level.
Perfect introduction for new people

This is exactly the kind of mindset that we need to change if bitcoin is ever going to reach that high. It's demand as a payment tool, merchants accpeting it as payment, and employers paying their people in BTC is what will get it to skyrocket. Not speculation.

This is actually a good analogy to current state of bitcoin.

Most people I know owning bitcoin are hoping it will go to over 10k some days.

What is sustainability of a lottery ticket? The same would be for the BTC. Because most use it as a speculative asset. Not as a payment tool.

I tend to not both thinking about the sustainability of Bitcoin; it's simply best to have some just in case the price per BTC in currency skyrockets - no interest in it as a form of payment.

Not if too many miners stop mining all at once.

The difficulty is set so that with the current hashrate, miners will find, on average 1 block every 10 minutes, but if 50% of miners stop mining all at once, then for the rest of the difficulty period it will take 20 minutes, on average to find each block. If 90% of miners stop mining then it will take 100 minutes to find each block. If 99% of the miners stop mining then it would take ~16 2/3 hours to find each block. This would be a problem, although the risk of this happening is very low as miners have an incentive to continue mining (the revenue they receive)

Network will be vulnerable to attack if hash rate go down too drastically.

if 99% of miners stopped mining.. this would NOT mean that instead of 25 coins per block only 0.25 btc will be produced.. no matter how many miners mine, or dont mine, there will always be 25btc per 10 minute average, 150btc an hour, 3600 bitcoins a day... no matter what!

.. and what you will find is that instead of 10,000 sharing bitcoins. only 100 people will share the bitcoins. meaning that instead of average of 0.36btc per day per person for the 10k miners.. there would be 36bitcoins per person.

so instead of average person mining for $200 a day,
100 lucky people will be receiving $21600 a day.

and guess what.. those 100 would sell their coins to get their $21600 pay-day. meaning a price crash of 3600 coins.

at the moment, if we bring the scenario back to 10k miners example. for every 0.36btc they only sell off a portion once a week/month to pay their electric bill that arrives in their mailbox. meaning, NO PRICE CRASH, as these smart miners are hoarding th majority for when bitcoin does get into the thousands so that they can selll off and get a nice few thousand pay day

How would a halt in mining raise the price? Do you mean what if only a few miners are left mining?

bitcoin is a mirage.

Thoroughly enjoyed the video! A nice introduction to POS. You're very easy to watch and have good 'stage presence'. Nice work.

I'm the person who produced this video -- I just created an account to match the new Youtube channel name.

Hm, you're right. I had misread this thread as anti-bitcoin: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/just-over-228000-per-day-required-to-maintain-current-bitcoin-price-45977 However, it's clearly not. Opinions were mixed in late 2011, but there were no strong arguments that "bitcoin was dead." I stand corrected.

I consider this to be a fair review. The video really is very pro-Peercoin, because it focuses on the potential risks in Bitcoin, but only briefly touches on the potential risks in Peercoin. If you are interested in other aspects of Proof of Stake, I recommend subscribing to the channel, as more videos are planned.

Thanks for watching!

I don't recall any convincing arguments that Bitcoin was dead back then. The media, focusing only on the price, may have declared it dead.

I searched, and only came up with these topics:

• At what pricepoint is bitcoin dead?
  October 9, 2011 (It is not, it works at any price)
  
• Bitcoin is dead & I predictied it - let's channel our discontent into OWS!
  October 18, 2011 niemivh: See, it died just like I predicted! Everbody else: Huh?
  
• Poll Question:    Is bitcoin dead?
  October 18, 2011 Yes: 18 No: 37 Huh?: 28 (I voted none of the above to reveal poll)
  

This is a reasonable accusation. However, if I were bagholding, I would just sell, and buy up a coin I believed in. I recommend for anyone who holds Peercoins, but thinks that Peercoin has no future, to just sell their coins.

Anyway, I wouldn't put all the effort into making this video if I thought the coin was dying. If you search the internet, you will find a LOT of people in late 2011 announcing the death of Bitcoin after it crashed from $35 to below $3. The arguments were quite convincing, yet they were wrong. I think Peercoin is currently going through a similar phase.