The 'all or nothing' fallacy - page 3.

anu

legendary

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Merit: 1001

RepuX - Enterprise Blockchain Protocol

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Don't think it will be 'all or nothing' either, imho it will slowly gain popularity and in about 7 years will be the default internet payment system.

It seems to me that if Bitcoin passes a certain threshold of user adoption, it will be like the WWW. There have been alternatives in the early days, but they are all gone.

But then, Bitcoin may be scalable to one Million TX/s, but what if you have e-butlers, doing many fully automated micro payments for you? Bitcoin may have to scale 2 orders of magnitude higher. If Bitcoin is not up to that, it obviously can't be the only game in town.

Similar if Bitcoin is outlawed. It will not go away - it may even grow faster. But if outlawed, it will stay underground.

[EDIT]: The only "nothing" scenario I see is if the Net is locked down to unprecedented levels. Like every computer comes shipped with spyware, every payment must be processed through the government and violations of law carry really harsh punishments - in short, a HiTech North Korea.

Mageant

legendary

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Merit: 1001

Because both currencies and payment systems (Bitcoin is both) become more useful when more people use them. In other words, the more people you can potentially pay with the system the better it gets.

So over time the one system that people prefer to use becomes ever more dominant and the others ever more marginal. This is also called the 'Network Effect'.

That is why you have so few credit cards other than VISA/Mastercard and only Paypal is the relevant payment processor of its kind. Also you basically currently have only one worldwide used currency, which is the US Dollar. A totally different example is online social networks (Facebook).

If Bitcoin becomes really useful and dominant in those niche markets then because of the positive feedback loop it will spread from there to other markets.

niko

hero member

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There is more to Bitcoin than bitcoins.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no counter-argument I could offer.

dissipate

sr. member

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Merit: 250

A number of times I have seen people say: with Bitcoin it is going to be 'all or nothing'. In other words, Bitcoin is either going to displace and put out of business all fiat currencies or it is going to 0. However, when people say this they don't really give any support for the statement. I think this is wrong right off the bat. Bitcoin could easily have a market cap of billions of USD on 3 use cases alone: black market/grey market products (e.g. Silk Road), gaming tokens (e.g online Bitcoin casinos), and international transfers (e.g. all the Bitcoin exchanges across the world). Another use case would emerge after Bitcoin had a large market cap and stable price from those 3 markets: long term wealth storage. Wealthy individuals who want to stash away a significant amount of wealth that can't be confiscated by governments or otherwise stolen could put BTC into cold storage for as long as they wanted. They could travel the world and sell their coins to local Bitcoin dealers for the local fiat currency.

In any event, I would like to hear some arguments from people who believe Bitcoin is going to either be 'all or nothing'. Perhaps there is a good argument that I have not heard yet.

Topic: The 'all or nothing' fallacy - page 3. (Read 5673 times)