interesting analysis
i see the problems, i don’t agree with the results/probabilities (certainly not for ETH being used as e-cash, there are simpler/better coins out there for that).
XMR and XVC are way better E-cash options than ETH which has ZERO anonymity.
+1 for XVC
/20charsrequired
Interesting indeed.
I think that on the long term, BTC being overtaken by another crypto-currency could be a good thing. The network effect of the new #1 coin wouldn’t be as strong as BTC’s was, which would make market cap more about the technology than the network effect compared to before. The scene would be more competitive, if the #1 coin has been taken over before, it can happen again by an even better one.
More volatility and more confusion by new people on the short term, yes, but more diversity and competition as well. Besides, Bitcoin’s reputation is heavily tarnished already, maybe a new posterchild of crypto-currency would clean the slate a bit.
If it was more about the technology then bitcoin’s market cap would already be bigger than gold’s as it’s a vastly superior technology in just about every way.
Safecoin on the network by July (3 1/2 months)? That is probably pretty optimistic I’d think… Quite a goal to shoot for and a good reason to shoot for it perhaps.
True, I was considering inter-crypto market cap there.
Answer? Nothing. Bitcoin has been declared dead around 70-80 times already. People don’t realize that bitcoin is being used, daily, NOW. There are tens of thousands of people who get paid in bitcoin, make a living off of bitcoin etc. Its no longer just a speculative idea. That’s why its worth more than the stocks of most major corporations like IBM, etc. Will the solution adopted be optimal? Probably not, because its clear this issue was designed so as to hamper bitcoins growth. Nevertheless, bitcoin will continue to be the crypto of choice for some time to come so long as its usable. If it becomes obvious that someone is trying to sabotage the network by wringing their hands cough core cough cough then eventually everyone with a vested interest will fork and move to a version that is usable. While this is going on, altcoins that solve this problem will increase in value and NO ETHEREUM IS NOT ONE OF THEM. I’m still not quite sure what Eth is good for.But my money’s on maid.
Hah that may be true but you can’t fill the holes in your teeth with blockchains.
He points out that this time the threat is from the inside. And I think it is a valid point that when the network saturates people will need to look for alternatives simply because no one is gonna want to wait 1 day to close their payment for buying a bag of weed (I think the marketing people at ETH are trying their hardest to manipulate the media into manipulating people into thinking it should be Ether - right or wrong no other coin has that organization to engage media other than BTC and maybe DOGE).
BTW IBM stock market cap is 144 Billion. Bitcoin is significantly less than that.
Good reply. I don’t care about their market cap. Market cap in bitcoin is hampered by this false issue and thus is not truly reflective of its worth. In addition, IBM’s market cap is inflated above its value. Bitcoin is worth much more than IBM is even if the market cap doesn’t reflect this currently. If IBM disappeared tomorrow nobody would give two farthings of a darn except their underpaid/overworked employees. Bitcoin/crypto is the future and represents a grassroots pressure valve to escape from corporate tyranny/slavery, and as such if it were to disappear would represent a significant blow to humanity.
As to the threat being from the inside I agree that that is serious. But the other 80 times bitcoin has died, where has the threat come from? Notice that waiting 1 day for a weed payment to close is still significantly shorter than if you were to use a bank to close that payment (whaddya sterpid? 
) as you would most likely end up with some friendly, blue-clad visitors who would like to send you to the local extortioner I MEAN judge.
Its like people forgot that even with 10 minute, heck 3 hour, confirmation times, Bitcoin is still LIGHTYEARS ahead of the snail alternatives which have no choice but to remain snails. They’re whole business model depends on being the only game in town so they can softly extort as much money from you as possible. I mean, which would you prefer, 1-10hrs and FREE (1/10 of a cent) or 2-3 days and expensive? Not to mention the privacy risks that come along with that other option. Just because bitcoin isn’t at its best doesn’t mean the competition is any less ugly imo.
To be clear, I was referring to the fact that 1 bitcoin is worth more than 1 of the stock of most major companies like IBM, Microsoft etc. Market cap in in the stock market cannot be taken seriously as an indication of real world value. Just like a college degree does not indicate intelligence or education. The stock market is rigged and inflated by funny-money printed out of thin air by the fed. As such, any valuation from it will be overinflated as well leading you to think it is worth more than it is. But that funny money is just numbers, bits on a computer. I could write a ‘banking program’ and give myself 1 trillion ‘dollars’. But sadly, nobody would care.
the problem is that when these limits get hit and especially if the price goes down block times will slow down, so the queue will build and you wont be waiting 3 hours or so you will be waiting 24-48 hours and transactions may start getting dropped out of the mempool, and since btc is much more centralized now with less nodes that can relay unconfirmed tx that will create havoc and unreliability.
it is a much more serious issue imo.
btw no one is talking about using bank accounts here. the point is there are many other coins that can do the job faster and better with actually more anonymity than BTC because the BTC dev’s have been slacking off.
you mean inflated by the same funny money that inflates BTC’s price which is denominated in the same funny money
You honestly believe that bitcoin has trillions of dollars of value that come from nothing? Bitcoin is being used TODAY to pay people, to buy food, etc. It is being converted to fiat, but its value is being created by miners, not fiat. Certainly there is price manipulation, but its value does not come from its fiat price it comes from its demand and its usefulness. Which is why joe-altcoin doesn’t have more fiat value than 10-10000 satoshis despite being denominated in the same ‘funny money’.
And the funny money printers have no interest in a high bitcoin price because the more valuable bitcoin is the less they are needed. The only value they would see in a high price would be collapsing it later for manipulation.
What limits? As far as I can tell, correct me if I’m wrong, there is no issue with the ‘blocksize’ per se, it just means you have to pay more in fees. This was expected was it not? Eventually there will be no bitcoin reward and fees will be all that sustain the miners. It wasn’t expected this soon of course, but the fact is bitcoin still WORKS. I don’t posit for a second that bitcoin is the best out there, but most alts are just forks of bitcoin to begin with which is probably why they cannot get any adoption. Its not that the devs have slacked off idt, its because there are state actors who are leaning on them to prevent them from making the network a success. This blocksize debate is completely artificial. No dev in their right mind would release code like that (hard coded 1mb block size). That is ‘test code’ at best. Just like everything else, this issue is artificial and only serves to create a conflict which wouldn’t naturally arise had it been done correctly. Here’s to maidsafe fixing cryptos ‘mistakes’.
XMR is a better alternative to BTC in every way.
But there is some similar coin to XMR, XMR is just one of all the 2.0 cryptocurrencies
peercoin philosophy
good faith and a community volunteer
Just read this article and thought it was fitting to add to the conversation.
If pessimistic but not unrealistic projections hold, by 2020 Bitcoin could require more than 14 Gigawatts of electricity just to run.
I see this mistake more and more often lately, the idea that Bitcoin requires this power and more as it scales up. But it doesn’t, we just give it that power because doing so is profitable. So it’s not true that Bitcoin will collapse because at some point it will require more power than we can give. Bitcoin may be considered wasteful depending on your point of view, but it only consumes what we are willing to give it.
Except for its scalability, infrastructure, liquidity and pretty much everything else.