Bitcoin Forum

 With all the renewed media attention on the negative aspects of bitcoin's history, brought about by Mark Karpeles' recent arrest in Japan (http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-ceo-mark-karpeles-arrested-in-japan/), critics haven't missed a chance to reiterate with vehemence all the reasons why bitcoin - or any cryptocurrency, for that matter - is doomed as a medium of exchange.

 It can't be denied that cryptomarkets' price manipulations, causing extreme value appreciations followed by severe crashes throughout 2014 and as recently as January this year, have left a lot of adopters feeling burned and cheated, and have fueled the mainstream media's portrayal of cryptocurrencies as a ponzi scheme to stay away from, a perspective the general public have taken up as gospel.

 What certainly merits consideration however, is the question of whether it would've been possible at all, for cryptocurrency - and blockchain technology as a whole - to emerge from whitepaper conceptualization stages in 2008, through to reach the towering scales of usage it sees today, powering Series-A-funded hundred-million-dollar-capitalized business ventures & being indirectly used or acknowledged by the largest globalized financial institutions, were it not for the single, simple icon, 'Bitcoin', that cryptocurrency technology was able to leverage as a rallying banner in the tumultuous half-decade of rollercoaster price valuations..?

 In other words, even if Bitcoin itself would not prove to be a resilient currency reaching wide adoption, even if all cryptocurrencies were to fail as mediums of exchange - has it not been proven by now that it is actually the myriad potential applications of blockchain technology itself (http://www.coindesk.com/8-banking-giants-bitcoin-blockchain/) that has been Satoshi Nakamoto's true heritage to mankind, via the launch & wide popularization of Bitcoin..?

 And so if BTC's network and/or price were to crash & burn more critically than it has - We'd still be left with the most disruptive financial innovation in several centuries..??

The market manipulation from some CryptExchanges sure is something that needs to stop. We all suffered with MT.Gox. Sure some eyebrows are raised when exchanges like Bitfinex has "technical difficulties" when price crashes occur. They all care about their own money and the general population gets screw.

i don't really know, synchronisation  is easy.
data synchronisation (like blockchain) is just a piece of cake even though if it was not bitcoin technology.

The mechanism of transferring value is an integral part of "block chain technology", so you can't have "block chain technology" without Bitcoin (or some other alt-coin). Bitcoin was necessarily the first application of "block chain technology".

BTW, nearly all of the "block chain technology" promoted in the media involves use of the Bitcoin block chain (or something similar). I would love to see an example of "block chain technology" that doesn't use Bitcoin (or some other alt-coin).

The question is perhaps not if we would have discovered blockchain technology, but rather if there would have been a reason to develop a practical (or in-practice) use of the technology. The problem it solves is an easy one, right? But creating a system that has the ability to employ such a community-driven process is really amazing. Most things that exist in the world are controlled (so the people with control can gain money or power or fame). Bitcoin, to a large extent, isn't like that.

We can leave the control of the decision to move to XT for all the discussions on the Bitcoin board...

Yes we would, there already exists a big decentralized information sharing network called bittorrent.

It would eventually be invented either way, due to all the censorship and capital controls we face. And the Liberty dollar /e-gold thing already provoked the existence of a decentralized money.

So Bitcoin would have been invented either way, if not by satoshi, then by somebody else, but probably a few years later.

i think that every innovation would come eventually even without their creator, their creators only appear to be at the right place and at the right time, if it wasn't for him/her, another one would have taken his/her place for sure

those heavy tech are bound to happen no matter who have created them, with bitcoin would have been the same

And do you think that financial innovation of bitcoin and blockchain would be possible without prerequisites? Do you think blockchain or bitcoin can exists without internet?
Blockchain is part of bitcoin but bitcoin alone is just a service. Just like www, video and music streaming are part of the internet.

Exactly the inventor is only the symptom, but its not the cause.

The demand is the cause for an invention, and eventually somebody will manifest itself as being it's inventor.


Would the lightbulb be invented if Edison would not be born? Of course it would, several people already tried to build it with little success. Edison was the first person who got it right. But if not him, then the other guys would have tried hard until they would have succeeded.

We all need to understand how hard is to develop a decentralized blockchain application. One that we can really trust to. Well that's what Bitcoin is today. Now, if somebody was to try and copy just a blockchain technology and to deploy it, but a ream decentralized blockchain technology, they would need many resources for something like this. Wallets, software development, miners, payment processors, etc., huge resources are needed. Bitcoin has all of this today and that why I believe so much into it.

Banks will for example launch their versions of the Blockchain in the near future, I am sure of it, but this blockchain won't be decentralized and the whole catch of the blockchain technology is in decentralization.

So to answer your question, I don't think that without Bitcoin we would have known a real, decentralized blockchain technology.

I agree with this sentiment, as we know there were several people working on projects similar to Bitcoin around the time Satoshi published his paper. Nick Sazbo was working on Bit Gold prior, and Hal Finney was also very influential. I believe the idea was already in the works by several individuals, it was just a matter of time before someone was able to put it all together and make it work, much like your Edison and the light bulb analogy.

History has shown us that many inventions were being worked on simultaneously from different individuals/groups with slightly different approaches, and the credit comes down to who introduced it first to the public or patented it first. But most invention does not happen in a vacuum, but the ideas of others are often incorporated in a unique way so the result seems to be on its own revolutionary, where in reality it was just a co-mingling of existing technologies already present.

The idea can be philosophically analyzed too. If we suppose that the multiverse theory is correct then it may not have been invented in other universes, although the trend of evolution follows a median line, due to the variance and unlikely events not fitting together, in other universes we might not have a bitcoin at all.

Although I don't believe in the multiverse theory but rather in a cyclical universe theory, I could have been possible for bitcoin to not exist in the same time or same spot, but if the universe follows a median line of evolution, then its a necessity for bitcoin to exist eventually, its only the variance that will dictate when will that happen.

So the inventor actually doesn't even matter, because it is a evolutionary guarantee for bitcoin to come into existence, it's just a question of when, due to variance.

So let me give a few examples

HUGE VARIANCE:

Earth gets hit by a meteorite in january 1 2009 just before satoshi launching bitcoin and falls into pieces. Earth gets destroyed, so we need to wait 5 billion years before another Earth gets formed, and another 300 million before new humans get formed, and another 50,000 years before another human society gets formed, and another 2009 years before somebody else tries again with bitcoin. But eventually bitcoin gets invented.

BIG VARIANCE:

Humanity gets wiped out by a plague before january 3 2009, thus we need another 200-300 year before we rebuild civilization and start again with our electronic projects. In 200 years we get bitcoin.

MEDIUM VARIANCE:

Satoshi dies in a car crash in 2007 so he doesnt even start to work on bitcoin. Somebody else gets interested, but he is not as bright as satoshi, but he manages to invent bitcoin by 2020.

SMALL VARIANCE:

Satoshi dies in a car crash in 2009 january 2, he already publicized his idea, but he didnt started the network yet, so another guy picks it up, while it make take him a half year to set it up and familiarize itself with the project. Bitcoin is born in August 2009.


So you see, all of these outcomes would have been probable, but eventually bitcoin would have been born, so its not about the inventor but the invention :)