One big hole in his (and Moldbug's) "there can only be one" theory, is that if a merchant only accepts BTC and I have only an altcoin, then assuming liquid exchange markets between the altcoin and BTC along with clever programming, I can pay with my altcoin at that merchant with one click. So there isn't any cost in terms of market mass to being not first in the market.
Just going to take a stab at this one thing here but, doesn't this imply that
1) someone has to use the resources to run such an exchange, when the alternative is to not waste those resourses and use Bitcoin
2) there must be enough other users to make the exchange liquid
3) one of you, probably you, has to go through the trouble of setting up an account on such an exchange, and software on your wallet, when it is easier to simply use Bitcoin
Essentially, while yes, the system can be patched to work, there is still the issue of fighting against the established system (using extra energy and resources) instead of simply capitulating to the lower energy-state system that doesn't have the extra friction.
Appreciate that stab.
True, but if the cost is insignificant relative to the positive benefits to using the altcoin, then my point remains valid.
Specifically (as we have discussed over
at the Mini-blockchain design), Bitcoin simply can't scale without mining going to cartels like Amazon, because for one reason the blockchain is becoming too large to be handled by normal computers and net connection bandwidth. Yet net bandwidth will scale fine to transaction volume otherwise, so it is the incorrect blockchain design which forces this outcome, as well as the loss of debasement to fund mining (because tx fees can be 0 or even refunded if we made them mandatory see linked thread for more detailed explanation).
Satoshi said this is what he expected.
And another extremely important feature from my expectation, is lack of anonymity in Bitcoin. The G20 is going to be hunting down all private wealth and nationalizing it, because the western nations are far beyond bankrupt. For example, the UK has a 550% total debt-to-GDP ratio, ditto for all western nations including newly industrialized such as China (study
the numbers as I have!), not including that most unfunded social system promises future liabilities are kept off balance sheet, and we have up to another $quadrillion in credit-swap derivatives at the TBTF banks guaranteeing that interest rates won't rise (we wouldn't have had ZIRP without them), and recent official government plans (see the .gov websites) for the G7 indicate that bail-ins will fall on depositers and the cost of derivatives failure will be fall on deposits.
This means a total wipeout of private wealth.
So of course what is private wealth going to do? It is going to try to hide and what better place to hide than an anonymous decentralized coin.
The anonymity of using Tor with Bitcoin isn't anonymous because Tor is basically already cracked by the NSA, because for one thing all such low-latency mix-nets (including IP2 darknet, etc) are subject to timing attacks (discovery) when the entity can see all the traffic between peers. They don't need to be able to decrypt the onion routing, they just need to see the timing of when packets are relayed. Research has shown this. Also the NSA has other attacks against Tor.
Coin tumblrs (aka laundries) don't really help, because the probability of your identity not being knowable (is not dependent on what you do, rather) is proportional to the number of tumblr users (in the same time period you used it) who do not reveal their identity downstream 50 to 100 transactions hence. Which is basically none of them, because there is no IP address anonymity built-in to Bitcoin. So those who are relying on these coin mixers to protect them, are blissfully ignorant fools. They haven't thought it out.
Bitcoin is a honeypot where all the libertarians are putting their "illegal activity" (
everything will be illegal, remember what POTUS Bush Jr. said, "you are either with us, or against us") in the public ledger including implicitly their identities. The governments have not yet ruled on whether each Bitcoin transaction is a taxable capital gain event, so later say 2020 as the world descends into Madmax implosion, they hunt all of us down with huge tax and penalties for not reporting (and recent proposed legislation is they can cancel your USA passport if the IRS rules you owe $50,000+ and you don't pay). And don't think Europe will be any better. France is already pushing the EU to implement under the EU federalization such as a unified wealth tax, and as that can basically go to 75% or more as the crisis unfolds.
As a Treasury official said some decade ago about the time he also said, "we will burn the fingers of the goldbugs up to their armpits", it has always been the plan to
go after the millionaires and steal back all their gains to the elite (skip to
36:35 min of the linked video) who run the fiat system. And Bitcoin is an amazingly great tracking tool to aid them in this coming global confiscation via taxation of the rich process. Note the elite super rich are always excluded from such gestapos.
The government doesn't want to shut down Bitcoin nor the internet, they are wonderful steps towards a one-world, digital tracking system money. The mining will be owned by the corporations, thus the often claimed concept of decentralized control is thus nonsense. We've already lost it, we can't even hard-fork Bitcoin because the pools already own such decisions about changes to Bitcoin.
If you love everything good about Bitcoin, you will love even more an altcoin which fixes these issues. And believe me, it is coming...
Of course those who are already rich in Bitcoins, e.g. my internet friend who has 10,000 BTC, might fight against the superior coin, yet I think they will be opportunists and place some bets on diversification.
And so there will be another chance for those who missed the boat on Bitcoin to get in early. And this is will provide some dilution against those who got insanely rich off of Bitcoin and not consumerate with the level of risk and effort they applied to bettering the world.
Competition is a good thing! And one of the benefits of decentralized digital currencies is the big hole I have explained in the theory that "there can only be one".
Although I believe that "there can only be one" if there are not huge weaknesses in that coin, I also believe Bitcoin has such weakness and they can never be fixed in Bitcoin. For example, there is no way you will get Bitcoin to adopt a Mini-blockchain, because then the cartlized pools lose their control.
However, once the dumb masses are in the main coin, it will become much more difficult to compete with that coin. Because the dumb masses don't care about decentralization, anonymity, and the benefit of mining on PCs can be offset with palm-scanning ATM machines for Bitcoin (the dumb masses will blissfully scan their palm). We are not yet there, but the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.
