Topic: Someone will solve our problem. We won't like it. - page 2. (Read 2335 times)

What the hell is point of this thread??? I don't get it.

You ultimately say that bitcoin(and all cryptos as we know them today) isn't perfect and won't stay forever - yes everyone agrees with this and everyone knows that since the beginning. But what's the problem?? This is one evolution step forward - we will learn about good and bad of current paradigm and take a lesson from it in the future. Probably states will emit their own cryptos in future after current cryptos proof themself as stable(i don't mean price now) and secure. I am thinking since the beginning, that even hobby communities will make their own cryptos - example: fishermen will make their own currency so you can buy equip, buy trips to go fishing to some exotic place with local pros + you can win them on fish catching tournaments + hundreds of other possibilities.

But today is today! Bitcoin enables worldwide payment even when some idiotic bank says: "I won't send YOUR money today - what you think? Its saturday! I will send them monday and they will get to your friend on other side of planet in 7 working days." Or: "You know, we don't like business you do - we cancel your account and keep your money until goverment or some other 'legal terrorists' tells you your money are officially confiscated". etc.

So yes - bitcoin isn't perfect as anything in universe except universe itself, but it's great leap forward - don't invest all your value into cryptos and you are fine

I hope i made myself clear (no offense against anyone)

I see what you're doing, it's a good way to think of it.

The inherent flaw in the comparison is purely that the currency you describe is just like what we have already. It brings nothing to the table, other than scarcity, which alone does not provide value. I'm the only one alive with my DNA, but everyone else has their own too. I'm sure if they had a niche use they may gain value. But in the state you describe they have nothing to offer other than being paper. I find it bad enough we value paper (ie USD, AUD etc) as much as we do now, but unfortunately that is what the governments that rule us dictate as currency, so that is why that paper is worth what your paper is not besides being very similar.

The fact is the hypothetical bills don't have the desirable advantages BTC and alts provide. Digital currencies have that advantage of being digital. They can't be stolen as easily as the bills. You can't move those bills across the globe and back in hours. These are undeniable advantages over any physical currency. I personally see value for the reasons that a govt cannot intervene, that there is a limited supply, and all the advantages of being digital. Reasons vary, but crypto is desirable (not necessarily the value quantified by $$$) because of the traits they possess. At the same time, it's safe to say most people holding gold wouldn't want it for it's industrial uses, and that is definitely not where it's value comes from.

That being said I do agree about the altcoin scenario. I find it highly unlikely that BTC will be at the top purely because it was first and is now most popular. When has the first version of any software or the first innovation ever remained as king? BTC has plenty of flaws, namely the sustainability of it's network (both hashrate and power usage), moving away from decentralized nature as more and more are forced out of mining and so on and it becomes a monopoly between companies who can afford to do so. There will be updated coins that address this issue, I believe personally will take over BTC eventually. I think we have seen scrypt, which will make the next wave and is in the process of doing so, then we will see CPU coins make an impact, which they have also already started to. I think an ASIC resistant CPU-only coin will remain to be more decentralised given that it has a much lower barrier to entry and much harder to monopolise.

Responses to this should be interesting.  Bitcoin scarcity argument depends on denying this premise.  This also means any large bitcoin holder almost has to keep diversifying into alt coins continuously since it would be hard to predict which coin wins out in the end or even simply gets popular.

Satoshi's invention combines a printing press capable of producing tokens that can be easily verified real and can't be forged, an international courier service that can take these tokens anywhere in just a few minutes, and 'brakes' on the printing press that guarantee that no more than a given number of tokens will ever be produced from that printing press. 

And now anyone can set up one of these printing presses, each with its own international courier service and its own supply of unforgeable, easily-verified tokens.

I've been trying to identify a reason why one of them should become (or remain) dominant in the long run, and I don't think there is one.  Some will die off as their developers give up or their innovations lead to security failures or whatever, and some will become more popular because of good technical innovations, responsive devs, good interface design, or good support.... but I just can't identify a reason why any of them should ever achieve lasting dominance.  They are competitors in a market with little or no barrier to entry, and many of them are more or less suited to particular commercial niches, so there are incentives to choose one over another that vary from one task to another. 

In the physical world, on paper, anybody can set up a printing press (or a laser printer) and print his own money.  But most of the time nobody cares.  If I show somebody my freshly-designed $4 bill with Guy Fawkes on the front, they'll look at me funny and treat it as a joke.  Or a crime, although some folks can't tell the difference. I can promise I'll never print more than a few million of them, and they'll wonder why the hell that's relevant.  I can demonstrate that nobody else can make them exactly the same, and show how you can tell mine from any attempted copies -- and by this time they'll be getting mad at me for standing around talking uselessly so much and kick me out.  If I happened to drop any of those $4 bills, they go in the trash once I'm gone.

What would I need to get my paper $4 bills taken seriously?  And is it something that any of these cryptocurrencies have?

This is our unacknowleged problem.  Altcoins didn't cause it; they just exposed it.

Sooner or later someone is going to issue a cryptocurrency with a promise that you can use it to buy a certain amount of a particular thing from the issuer.  And other things being as equal as possible,  and most folks being unconcerned with privacy, I think people are going to appreciate that more, and be more confident about it, than they appreciate and are confident in abstractions like privacy and decentralization.