Bitcoin Forum

It's the classic philosopher's dilemma, the chicken and egg. Which came first? And how do you make sense of being stuck in that unknowing middle?

For the media and the general public, debates in the bitcoin space are often muddled in the same confusion – 'Can you have the blockchain without bitcoin?' 'Is the protocol safe even if bitcoin businesses are not?' and 'Who made this thing anyway and why can't we ask them?'

Such is the struggle of making sense of a technology that seems to have emerged as a fully formed chicken in the financial barnyard.

But, while it's natural that the media are out for their answers to these questions, this week's reporting illustrates how the search for answers is often betrayed by life's complexity.

source: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-in-the-headlines-the-chicken-and-egg-debate/

It's not really a chicken and egg debate, what came first doesn't matter one bit.

A better analogy would be "the motorcar and petrol"  - One can't fulfill its potential without the other.

bitcoins are not database entries.. they are not stored value.. they are simply list of transactions..

what i mean by this is there is not database that says fred owns 26btc, dierdre owns 24btc.. what bitcoin is, is simply a list of transactions of movements. thus the blockchain (chain of blocks of transactions) IS bitcoin

the blockchain is the secured ledger. there is no bitcoin without it

but there is blockchain without bitcoin, that's the point i guess, you can always replace bitcoin with something else, this is the reason for some bank starting the adoption of blockchain technolgy, they are not interestd in bitcoin, because they know that the fulcrum is not that but the decentralized ledger

i still think that the egg come first because it is a cell, we know that the life originated from a cell

Such debate is totally nonsense, it's not the relationship like chicken and eggs. Blockchain and bitcoin can't be separated.

Blockchain is a technology and can easily be separated and used for some other purposes too.
I have seen some companies adopting blockchain itself rather than going for Bitcoins.

This is not a classic dilemma at all.  All chickens must come from eggs.  So the egg had to of come first.

The egg that hatched the first chicken was laid by an animal that wasn't a chicken.  Evolution happens all the time.

Well my initial though was that it must have the blockchain in place first and then only the bitcoin comes later part right? But the more I think about it, it gets more and more complicated. I guess at this stage it doesn't matter whether the blockchain or bitcoin comes first right?

"Contrary to popular belief, there is indeed a definite answer [to the Chicken and Egg debate]"
Read: http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Which.html (http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Which.html)

It's not really a "motorcar and petrol" debate, since many modern cars can run without gasoline.  :D
Why did the Bitcoin cross the road....?

well. maybe it is a motorcar and petrol debate.. bitcoin being the diesel.. litecoin being unleaded petrol and banks want to make the hyro-electric....

Are not the bitcoins the incentive for managing and confirming transactions on the blockchain?

Otherwise don't you just have nodes managed by a centralized authority confirming transactions.

When I first heard the name bitcoin I assumed it was something like a normal coin. It was only later that I realized it was more complicated than that. Bitcoin is a very clever name that hides the complexity behind the concept for first time users. If bitcoins are transactions, then I would say the first 50 were mined and entered into the blockchain at exactly the same time the blockchain was created. You cannot have a blockchain without transactions in it, and the first 50 bitcoins were the first transaction.

Bitcoins decentralized nature is a myth perpetuated by people for reasons unknown. I think sometimes folks get transparency confused with autonomy.

If the ruler of the united states wanted to eradicate cash circulating in the supply, he would not have the power. The core developer(s) of bitcoin have that power.