Bitcoin Forum

In his presentations Antonopoulos said frequently that bitcoiners shouldn't worry about competition from altcoins because if an altcoin get some useful feature that gives its competitive advantage over bitcoin, bitcoin developers would just copy&paste this feature to the bitcoin code. It did make sense at the time.

However, I suspect that those times have gone. The whole agony of block size limit change shows that bitcoin code and bitcoin development infrastructure have already hardened and solidified to the point where any change, even as trivial, as block size limit, becomes difficult on the border of impossible. From now on we can assume that bitcoin code cannot be changed in any substantial way. No non-trivial feature, however important or competitive, cannot be added/modified anymore. Which means, chances of an altcoin replacing bitcoin becomes much more real. Which is bad news for everybody who invested in bitcoin heavily (financially, career-wise etc).

It's not trolling, I'm really concerned and I'll be happy if you can prove me wrong.

Well, we can only hope that something bad happens that shines some light and wakes them up from the current paraliysis analysis and take action, it's better than such thing happens now than later, but I still have faith. When TCP/IP came out it was a struggle too trying to make it scale up but it caught on.

He's got some weird ideas. His ongoing idea that schoolkids will each have their own currency has me scratching my head somewhat.

I'd say the blocksize thing is probably the least trivial issue out there. I can see why they're playing it so safe but they're not inspiring outside observers. I'm sure no one wants it to be that way but any alt that did supersede BTC would have the exact same issue.

If an alt did pop up I'd want to see years and years of solidity before even dreaming of putting my trust into it. A fork is nothing when the coin's whole purpose is playtime on Cryptsy. It becomes serious shit if there's actual commerce involved.

A lot of features can happen with layers. The integrity of the blockchain will always be paramount.

What's keeping a BTC developer from thinking "I have been in BTC from early on... I have 1500 btc which is cool...... buuuut..... if I started with another coin... maybe 'thoughtcoin' or whatever.... then I could get 5% of those coins or more... and then screw up or slow the deelopment of BTC to the point where people will use my other coin"...

I guess the main issue is that he/she could not be sure the other coin will beat all the other altcoins...

I agree that rigidity of core is important if serious money are involved. Hovewer, flexibility is an equally important. It seems that sidechains let us to combine these incompartible requirements. I just hope the sidechains will be integrated to the bitcoin core before it hardens completely.

The comment he did with "each schoolkid will have their own alt" was just an example, not to be taken literally. He just said that potentially could be done, but not necessarly would happen. But in the future maybe its cool to have your own currency, just like its cool now to have your own youtube channel and social media for the kids, they consider it cool. Imagine if PewDiePie launched his own currency. He gets hundreds of millions of views daily in Youtube. I could actually develop into a solid currency used by their fans.

Blockchain as a technology has endless avenues for growth.  Will BTC replace fiat?  Most likely not.  Will banks build on top of the blockchain technology for integration?  Again, most likely not.  Will BTC finds its niche in the monetary world we participate in daily?  Absolutely.  It will take time, there will be trial and error, but adoption will grow and as it does natural economies of scale will as well.  We are in a new world where money and technology are becoming one and the same and Andreas is a perfect example of an ambassador of ideas and new possibilities. 

No doubt re no changes.
In addition:
1. NO "killer" apps (yet)
2. Endless blocksize debate. Sometimes it resembles the discussion on how many angels can dance on the needle's head.
3. A possibility that blockchains without tokens might be the next intermediate step before it will come back to a token-based non-bitcoin blockchain that would incorporate all learnings of the multitude of blockchains that many people would work on in the interim.
4. Lately, it is not really permission-less innovation-isn't it?

I wish i could be smart enough to figure out what might win and hedge a little, but ethereum is too esoteric, and monero is too small to bet a lot.

I still think this is true. If an altcoin has a well tested and implemented feature that is going to benefit Bitcoin, it will be easier to reach a consensus among the devs. The blocksize limit is difficult because the devs are unsure which is a long term solution (excluding personal agendas) and they have to gain support from miners who are a powerful group in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

That's it. That boy has over 38 million subscribers. If he would launch his own coin which could be used to buy merchandize stuff presented by him, or games he is giving his name for or whatever would definitely have some serious value.My nieces laugh him and his girlfriend which is quite successful too.

No way can Bitcoin devs copy paste Monero's inherently private nature into BTC

For where things matter most of all I would say he is right but other things he may be wrong with.

Evidently my old brain isn't futuristic enough to wrap itself around this. Wouldn't it have the same problem BTC does now? Why buy something just so you can buy something?

It's entirely achievable but doesn't seem to address a problem that needs solving.

Because after you buy this 'something' the government can't track what you do with it (if used properly).
When some members think of these features they obviously do not factor in regulation. I doubt that Bitcoin would be legal in so many places if it was 100% anonymous. This is why nobody is going to paste any code that helps with that.

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No, it is not. Monero isn't going anywhere without regulation.

So it means, Monero is the only competitor to Bitcoin. When noobs are enlightened enough that Bitcoin is worse at privacy than cash, the outcome will be clear

You widly underestimate how "trival" a block size increase is...

Andreas Antonoupolos is one of the most brilliant minds, and the best spokesman in the crypto-currency space.
It doesn't mean that he is always right, but what he say's should be always taken into consideration.

Well you pretty much described everything, we had a real life test with the block size debate,  and how did it finish we all know. Still no consensus. It's hard to belive that some bigger changes would be made easier. This is the big problem when you grow too big, not just with Bitcoin but with the governments and etc, you become rigid and things do not change easily.

Only problem that I see here is that I always thought Bitcoin is still in the beginning and now it turns that Bitcoin is so big that we can't change anything.
Somewhat confused!!

I think what we've learned is it's not as easy as that to change bitcoin, but that can also be a good thing. However, if an alt comes along that is revolutionary and has something that makes it far superior to bitcoin then I think they would be forced or hastened into implementing it because the alt would be in danger of surpassing bitcoin eventually and that's something nobody wants to happen. I do hope bickering between devs and interested parties wont cause damage in the future.

You're absolutely right. This is a kind of confusing. But especially in the world of gaming or online content in general some creators like to build their kind of universe/ecosystem. And having an own currency then gives you a lot of control and if successful this currency might gain an increndible amount of monetary value.
For instance in lots of free to play games you can either upgrade your character/tools/weapon by playing long and hardcore or you can buy all those stuff. But to buy it very often you don't have to use dollars or euros but instead an own created currency.
For instance sony games had "station cash" which you first had to buy with dollars or euros and just after that you were able to buy ingame stuff.

I guess we'll see what pans out but I would've thought content and game creators would be far more turned on by sticking with BTC. That means their internal transactions are plugged in to a real global economy that's instantly accessible everywhere.

The internal virtual currencies that exist now exist only because there's no wider internet equivalent. Now there is. If they want stability then they can stick with what they have now that's pegged to the dollar. 

in some years we cant make anymore big changes, i guess you are right. that is a good thing. by that time, we will have bigger blocks, sidechains and other stuff which will do the improvements.

That's what I hope to see in the near future.
Even if they have their own coin like "pewdiepiecoin" for instance, as long as this is tied to Bitcoin I would be happy.  :)

I was afraid of this bitcoin will end like this. Decentralization is great feature when everything works fine and there is no need for any changes.
Bitcoin must change in the future, changes to core protocol are inevitable, with this democracy style of making decisions we are really at disadvantage here.

As time changes software tends to get solidified (as described by Antonopolous himself). So it means its unavoidable that as time passes, making changes to the core is harder and harder, so we'll have to make changes on top of it and deal with it.