Bitcoin Forum

There are a lot of flaws with bitcoins, and it pioneered cryptocurrency. But do we still dial up to BBSes today? Use gopher? No, it has being replaced by the world wide web. Bitcoins will be replaced, don't put your life savings in.

Why would it be replaced instead of just updated/extended/patched?

So what has replaced the internet (TCP and IP protocols)?  They have a ton of flaws & shortcomings.  There are lots of things which could be done better if you replaced everything from the ground up with a new set of protocols.  The internet looks nothing like the internet of the early 1980s but the low level protocols are still there. They have been extended and upgraded but not replaced with a brand new system.

Did I miss the memo where we just ripped up the entire internet and replaced it with something new?

The World Wide Web as we know it today is the product of layers upon layers of protocols added over time to address various problems, so, you know, you don't always just toss out the base and start over.

Can't it not be patched?  Like it runs itself to the extent that it would never be able to be modified.  If it could, couldn't someone modify the protocol to send 10% of all transactions to themselves? :P I only know of 1 bitcoin client so technically the author controls what it does but still, bad things would happen if they didn't follow the protocol.  If anyone could write a client to do whatever they wanted, we'd have 3rd parties writing crooked versions that steal money from the block chain at will.  It just wouldn't work, right?

Newbie thinks he sees the light.

Its open source, of course everyone can write his own client. But if someone changes the protocol in a way like "send 10% of all transactions to themselves" 51% of all miners would have to agree to use that protocol, too.

Technically there is nothing which can't be changed in Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is what a consensus of users say it is.  That being said there are many thing which will likely never acheive the necessary consensus for a change.  

Bitcoin will probably never:
a) be reversable
b) support a proof of stake
c) have an incompatible mining rate
d) implement some mechanism of recovering "lost" coins.

While in theory these could be changed they are simply too controversial to generate a consensus.

IMHO there are very few limitations of Bitcoin which can't be overcome with:
a) third party services.
b) extension of bitcoin protocol.
c) extension via higher level protocols which are built on top of bitcoin infrastructure.

Actually we DeVCoiners already get 90% of the generated coins sent to ourselves, so bitcoin is already obsolete for that kind of grabbing, if you want (a share of) 90% of the coins just use devcoin instead of bitcoin and you're done! :P

(Apart from a few minor technicalities such as developing open source stuff, of course, but everyone already does that anyway, right? ;))

-MarkM-

That isn't exactly correct.

Any breaking change must be supported by EVERYONE.  Users, miners, exchanges, merchants, etc.

So if 51% of miners implemented that change those who disagreed could continue to use the "old/existing" Bitcoin where miners can't steal 10% of all coins.   The 51% of miners would simply be mining worthless blocks which have no value.

As long as some users and miners continue to support the current protocol it will exist.  What gets kinda meta is what is Bitcoin.

Say some miners decide to fork the protocol to keep the block reward at 50 BTC.  Since this is a breaking change it doesn't really matter if 20% of miners support it, or 80%.  The "51% check as in 51% attack" doesn't apply since each version of the protocol sees the other as completely invalid regardless of how much mining power supports it.  Now lets make it extra confusing. Lets say roughly half of the users support this change and upgrade their nodes but roughly half don't.  Some merchants support the "old" coins, some the "new" coins, and some support both (by implementing both nodes).  The same applies to exchanges.

Essentially at this point you have to completely independent protocols.  Which one is Bitcoin? ;)  Obviously both camps will claim they are the real Bitcoin.

THIS is why i gave you that Bull!  :D

would the OP care to defend his supposition please?

I cannot wait until the new product that our competitor, the Federal Reserve, comes out with to compete.

It should be awesome!

The fork to always generate 50 coins per block instead of halving the number of coins from time to time has already been done.

It is not a big hassle change with miners breaking each way since it can be merged-mined.

There is not even the big hassle of which chain your coins are on since you can very inexpensively spend coins of the old, original "bitcoin" chain to join this particular member of the group of bitcoin-like currencies.

It is known as GRouPcoin.

It is obviously far, far superior to the original old bitcoin if you are among those who believe not halving coin generation is far, far superior to the old original bitcoin's periodic halving.

-MarkM-

No, because the OP isn't in the business of debating logical positions. Like so many others, he's in the business of dropping little bombs, then scurrying away while the answers come raining down.

trolled by a drunk

FYI, in case you haven't noticed: people are beginning to use ipv6 now.

Will the idea of anonymous, irreversible, indestructable, instant cyber money will be replaced by some better concept serving the needs of users?
A: Probably, some time in the far future.

Will the technology of cryptocurrencies make way for some better technology implementing the above idea?
A: Most certainly it will be rivaled, let the better technology come out on top!

Will bitcoin be replaced by a better implementation of the thechnology of cryptocurrencies?
A: Quite possibly, there are many competing implementations out there already, still many to come, time will tell.

Its the same thing with any idea and the technologies invented to materialize it. Just think of the ideas of filesharing or telecommunication itself.
How many technologies have been created to transform those ideas into reality to bloom in mass use while becoming marginal use cases once better technologies arose? Think of the humble beginnings of file sharing technology: BBS, Usenet, Napster, Gnutella, BitTorrent, DDLs,.. only to name a few. Same goes for telecommunication (Tincan-wire phones, Telephone, mobile communication, VoIP,.. you get the idea) or any other technology.
Bitcoin is open scource with provides it whitch an advantage of innovation over proprietary technology, but not with an everlasting guarantee to always stay ahead of competitors.

Come on.  8)

Do we still use "Visa" cards or "American Express"?

Those are so old school...

Oh ya...and remember the "Federal Reserve Note"?

I get the feeling the OP started this thread just to spur some discussion so that the thread's title will have a prominent place on the main forum, possibly to scare away newcomers.

List me the flaws, and I'll refute them.

Any I can't refute, will be fixed either by an upgrade to Bitcoin software, or an entrepreneur who fills in the gap.

I am not one of those people. There is no value in allowing coins to be generated forever, not even for the miners.

It is very unlikely that a merchant would support both coins because all the old coins would exist in both chains and could be double spent: once as old bitcoins and once a new bitcoins.

Bitcoin isn't software, it's a protocol like email.
Google didn't invent their own email protocol when they developed gmail - infact gmail would be useless if it used it's own protocol because you would only be able to communicate with other gmail users. The BBC would not be able to send an email to a gmail user from an @BBC.com email address.
Protocols are very resilient - even when they become outdated because they are just protocols without a hidden agenda.

Precisely... and the original protocols are still alive. It's quite possible to improve upon them, when necessary... with Bitcoin, it ain't necessary.

Which doesn't matter because that should be accounted in the value of each coin.

Example (using USD to show the value):
1BTC today equals 10$

Now theres a split and 20% of the people continue using bitcoinA and 80% continue using bitcoinB.
1BTCA then equals about 2$
1BTCB then equals about 8$

It's only a rough example but it should be pretty much like that in reality. As you can see there's actually no disadvantage for a merchant accepting both bitcoin versions. At a chain fork the value doesn't simply double because of being able to spend the same coin 2 times. The 2 coins aren't equal and they can have different exchange rates.
 

I have always been amazed by the resiliency of IRC.

IRC ops, you mean.  IRC itself is easy to DoS.

DDoS on networks is handled manually.  Most ISPs refuse to host IRC servers.  etc.

... in technology, the first decent implementation of almost any standard that is adopted by a majority will always succeed.

That's what I don't get.  If anyone could arbitrarily alter the protocol, they could rewrite it to route 10% of all transactions to themselves :P So can't the protocol never be altered ever without shutting down bitcoin and starting over with a new chain?  Who could alter the protocol and how?

The way I understand it, the writers of the bitcoin client software could just rewrite the code to say whatever they want and say that is the new protocol.  As long as it doesn't contradict existing blocks, it would technically "work."  But if there were 3 bitcoin clients and 1 decided to do things differently, their data would get rejected by everyone who has the other 2 and thus the network as a whole.  That's why I'm a little concerned that the entire network is in the hands of a couple people who wrote the one and only client software.  Didn't they publicly release the code too?!?!  There should be as many bitcoin clients as torrent clients at this point.  For safety reasons, someone write another one! lol.

(of course then if there were 100 clients, any one of them could be rigged to steal your wallet so if you want to use an alternative client, you have no idea if it's legit or not)

think about like this
bitcoin protocol 1.1.0 - works fine everyone loves it
bitcoin protocol 1.1.1 - works even better everyone loves it
bitcoin protocol 2.0.0 - not everyone agrees to this change... buttcoin protocol 1.0.0 is created! some stay with bitcoin and other move to buttcoin.

the protocol can be altered, but everyone has to agree on it, if anyone disagrees then a fork can be created.

so far the forks we've seen have nothing to do with a disagreement in protocol change, its just some guys looking to make money by starting a bitcoin fork.

I do not think the protocol will ever be changed so much so that people start to disagree and create forks.
honestly i dont give a @#$& how it works as long as it keeps its core properties.

I say dont be afraid of protocol changes, embrace them for what they are; Improvements.

 

All posts of this type are part of this highly clever money making scheme...

Step 1: Sell bitcoins
Step 2: Go on forum, and "discredit" bitcoins
Step 3: Observe massive price crash
Step 4: Buy back bitcoins
Step 5: Profit!?!?

Good luck buddy, you're gonna need it.

I meant its 2012 and irc still exists.

Nothing has improved upon IRC yet as far as I know, except maybe MUDs with channels between them if you like MUDs.

(Sure a MUD adds a whole bunch of crap many users might not have use for, but at least it does that at the server end not, like browsers, hogging the user's resources.)

-MarkM-

Maybe you should learn a bit more about Bitcoin. There are quite a few clients around now. That doesn't really matter because it's the protocol that is important. If a client tries to generate transactions not accepted by other clients or by miners the transactions don't get accepted into blocks. They get dropped. All the clients I'm aware of are open source software and you can get the source and read it yourself. Most of them are on GitHub, easy to checkout, fork and modify. You can create your own client if you want. But it has to work according to what others will accept or - as we've been talking about here, you end up forking with some group of users using your own new protocol. See DevCoin, NameCoin, LiteCoin, BkkCoin, etcCoin.

Bitcoin is not just software. Bitcoin happens to be a protocol, and as it becomes more popular and entrenched as the de facto cryptocurrency, it will be near impossible to replace it with a new cryptocurrency. It's called the network effect. If people can't be bothered to try a different social network than Facebook, they sure as heck are not going to be bothered to switch to a new cryptocurrency (and certainly not on a whim).

Browsers actually include gopher still don't they? Wasn't one of the selling points of the early browsers that they did all the usual stuff like gopher and ftp plus also had this newfangled web thing too? Did they ever drop gopher support?

-MarkM-

yes, but things like "extensions" or "plugins" save those, who really need gopher.

google told me this: http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/

Because facebook was the first social network ::)



I don't remember netscape ever supporting gopher natively. Lynx probably did, but lynx was text-based so ehhh

I think there must be a new "Bitcoin 2.0" thread every couple of months. Fact is, there are already several alternate cryptocurrencies to enjoy and many in development. Find the one you like and support it.

@Desolator

here again you start ranting and raving without either of the following things:

- the slightest technical competency
- having read any of the documentation

...which is AWESOME, keep it up bro!

You must have missed the part where I'm right so feel free to shut the fuck up, you clueless moron.  I know more than 99% of the people here.  I have 1 degree in web design and web programming and the other in .NET software programming.  Oh yeah, and I'm head IT manager at a medium sized company part time and own my own repair and custom builds company the rest of the time.  And what do you do...at McDonalds?

I don't read every last little thing about the bitcoin protocol and software because I'm busy doing work at work. But I was correct in that a small group of people can randomly change "the protocol" because it doesn't really exist.  This isn't some protocol that hard wired into hardware.

No, it wasn't, but my point still stands. The OP has completely neglected the Network Effect. Yes, there could be technologically superior cryptocurrencies created, and there is indeed still a window of opportunity for such a cryptocurrency to displace Bitcoin, but that window is probably closing fairly rapidly. The OP makes it sound as if immediately upon the arrival of a technologically superior cryptocurrency, Bitcoin will be toast. Sorry, the real world doesn't work like that.

before I sold my rig and took a multi-month break from BTC, there were like 10 competing currencies.  I can't imagine what fresh hell it's been dragged into since then.  There was some kind of coin related to DNS which to this day makes 0 sense to me despite reading everything about it on a wiki.  Then that one mining pool made their own and it crashed in like 3 weeks.  Now I hear references to lightcoin and some other coin and all this other crap.  So I think we're already there, lol.

Seriously, people! Stop damaging bitcoin by trying to get in on the bottom of a new currency.  That's dishonest and totally BS.  They're taking away focus and mining and making us look like idiots as they all fail.

A lot of those spinoff cryptocurrencies seem to be targeted at miners who want to get in early and mine a ton of coins. Of course, the economic reality of that situation is that their coins will be worthless if there is no actual demand for them (speculative or otherwise). In my opinion, the best chance for a competing P2P cryptocurrency would be one that was backed by a corporation with significant resources that could hire full time developers. They could open source the cryptocurrency and bake it into their products and allow it to be redeemed for such products/services. If the currency was popular enough, exchanges and secondary markets for it would pop up (as what happened with SLLs). What is not clear to me is what exactly the business model for this scheme would be, however.

Most of them are not taking away mining but, rather, adding more side-rewards for miners, since they can be merged-mined right alongside bitcoin. So they are extra little perks like when you happen upon a bunch of other minerals or metals while mining a mineral or metal.

-MarkM-

Correct.  Once the initial merged mining pool server setup is created and tested, it is very easy to add new merge-mined alt-chains.  Pool users get extra rewards, with no extra work on their own part.

This does not detract from the earlier poster's point that alt-chains are generally worthless or scammy or both.