Bitcoin Forum

There are quite a lot of them in e.g. project development.

Isn't MasterCoin built on top of Bitcoin?  Maybe there needs to be a section for stuff like that, because altcoins seems like the wrong place.

Like "Alternative Blockchain Uses".

I would be all for that. But a single Project IMO isn't enough to justify a separate Board.

Namecoin is partially built on top of Bitcoin. Does that make it not an alt coin?

I would argue that separate blockchain = altcoin.  I honestly know very little about MasterCoin, but it is built on top of the Bitcoin protocol and not a new blockchain, right?

None of us care about mastercoin and have very little idea what it is, elaborate please, and why it isn't relevant to bitcoin. Keep in mind there's really only...3, maybe 4 people (including me) who can/will do anything about it.


This is about the extent of my knowledge of it as well, beyond that I have no clue what it is, or what it does, or why I should care, or not care about it. This isn't the first complaint though, so I'd like to see this get hashed out one way or another, so we can be fair. Nobody has cared enough to do that up to this point, and nothing will change until that changes.

I'll give my quick impression of it here and why I've left the threads so far. My impression of it is that mastercoin is like a service that uses the bitcoin blockchain, like ripple is to xrp?  It seems relevant enough for the bitcoin forum based on that, though my impression is likely flawed.

7 out of 40 topics on the first page in Project Development are in some way related to Mastercoin. Is that too many many? Maybe there should be a sticky similar to the one in the Gambling section (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39621.0)?

Mastercoin is more like Colored Coins or Bitshares (less centralized) than Ripple though it's in its early stages and anything can change. Should they decide to move away from the Bitcoin blockchain and start their own one (it is a possibility) then I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have Mastercoin topics moved to Alternate cryptocurrencies.

Absolutely, there's an ongoing discussion about this here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=341882).

I don't think technical details really matter. MasterCoin tries to embed its own data into the bitcoin block chain, a rather controversial approach, but it is definitely an alt coin and not bitcoin - as the name implies.

The amounts/balances/syntaxes/etc are no way related to the ones in bitcoin
Seems enough for me to define it as an alternative coin

Would you talk about a dog flea (its characteristics, digestive system, sub-species) on a dog forum?

I'll just quote myself from the other thread (I'm lazy ;D)

+1
That would be perfect imo. Also moving the topics to the altcoin forum will possibly lead to confusion between SHA256 mastercoin (MSC) build on top of the blockchain and the scrypt mastercoin (MST).

That's their problem, this should not influence the decision

The Mastercoin project is an experiment in crowdfunding.

Mastercoins themselves are just an instance of colored coins created in a particular way.

The business model:

1) Programmers create some mastercoins for themselves in a process that isn't quite premining since the public is allow to participate as well.

2) Speculators bid up the price of mastercoins, allowing the programmers to fund the development of new services by selling their mastercoins.

3) The new services will all be paid for in mastercoins, not bitcoins.

4) Users will flock to these services, which means they have to buy mastercoins from the speculators.

5) Since these services are so wonderful and useful, the price of mastercoin relative to bitcoin will reach some stable value.

Note that nothing about these services inherently require special colored coins - that's a feature built into them for the benefit of developers and speculators.

In fact, any of these services which are open source could be trivially modified to not require mastercoins at all.

The Mastercoin promoters believe that the Mastercoin developers will have stronger incentives so will always be able to compete successfully with services which work directly with Bitcoin.

The entire premise of Mastercoin rests on whether or not Mastercoin developers can create services so good, and which nobody else can replicate, that users will be willing to buy an entirely different currency just to get access to them.

If that doesn't happen, the entire experiment falls apart.

That pretty much sums it up.
Or, even shorter, it's commercial software for colored coins.

Perhaps Mastercoin threads that are mostly about the Mastercoin currency should be in alt cryptocurrencies, but Mastercoin threads mostly about other Mastercoin-managed assets should be elsewhere.

No, that might make sense from a "technical" point of view.
From the users' perspective, though, it's pretty much "I want to read about Mastercoin" or "I don't".

With one Mastercoin-subforum, people could simply ignore that one.

I would appreciate some guidelines on how to deal with Mastercoin threads. The confusion has showed itself lately, indeed...

We really want our own subforum, although it need not be mastercoin-specific - just an area for projects using the bitcoin block-chain for interesting stuff.

I'd be happy with a Mastercoin subforum in either "Service Discussion" or "Alt Cryptocurrencies"

I'd define an Alt Coin as something on a different block chain. In the Alt Coin section, there is a Sticky by Gavin from 2011 saying, "Alternate Block Chains: Be Safe!" I'm pretty sure that is about the time that Alt Coins became a thing, so I feel that anything that is on its own chain is an alt coin.

However, I could also reasonably say, that anything with its own name, is a different coin as well. Mastercoin is not Bitcoin, if it was just an addon to the Bitcoin protocol, it wouldn't be called Mastercoin, it would be called a patch, or a Bitcoin update, or something of the sort.

I still think it would be better to have a generic sub forum in which things like Mastercoin fit, than a dedicated sub forum.

If Bitcoin reaches wider adoption we can be sure that more things that will use the Bitcoin Blockchain will pop up. Just imagine the first altcoin would have gotten it's own board, we would now have about 100 altcoin boards.

Also a dedicated Mastercoin board would just spark an endless discussion with altcoiners.

That outcome would not bother me, since I'd just ignore all of them, but I can see how it would suck for whoever was roped into moderating that mess.

Things look pretty dire for mastercoin if that's the case.

+ 1

I'd argue this "Mastercoin/msc" is not Mastercoin(MST) and needs a new name !  :o

Let's look at it from a top-down perspective.
There are 17 top-level forums on bitcointalk.
None of these is called "Bitcoin", so, obviously, there can't be a top-level forum "Mastercoin" either.
Mastercoin has to either fit in one of these categories or have a new category where other project, e.g. colored coins, bitshares, hop, etc. might fit as well. All Mastercoin discussion should be in one place, not spread all over the forum, like, trading in Marketplace and development elsewhere. Simply because Mastercoin is small.

---

Here's the list of top-level forums, I'll cross out any that obviously don't fit:

• Bitcoin Discussion
• Development & Technical Discussion
• Mining
• Technical Support
• Project Development
• Economy
• Economics
• Marketplace
• Trading Discussion
• Other
• Meta
• Newbies
• Politics & Society
• Off-topic
• Alternate cryptocurrencies
• Archival
• Local

---

That leaves us with 5 options plus the option of adding a new forum:

• Development & Technical Discussion
  
  Quote
  Technical discussion about Satoshi's Bitcoin client and the Bitcoin network in general. No third-party sites/clients
• Project Development
  
  Quote
  Organization of Bitcoin and related projects
• Other
• Off-topic
• Alternate cryptocurrencies
  
  Quote
  Discussion of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. Note that discussion of how these currencies *relate to* Bitcoin may fit in other categories.

---

I'd rule out Development & Technical Discussion, Other and Off-topic.
So it's basically either
or a new top-level forum.


If it's a new top-level forum, I suggest to define it to encompass things like colored coins as well.

*also maybe add >> FLO, TAG, PTS,etc etc..in there too; as they are essentially implementing the same kinda thing into their projects?   8) ~ what makes MSC so different?

A 'Protocol' _{forum.
For things built on the BTC protocol.}

After reading the responses to this thread and consulting with some experts, I've decided that Mastercoin is an alt cryptocurrency. Mastercoin attempts to be similar to Ripple, which everyone agrees is an alt cryptocurrency. Just because your system can handle assets other than its own currency doesn't prevent if from being an altcoin. And the underlying protocol doesn't matter.

An alt cryptocurrency can be defined in this way: Any system other than exactly Bitcoin which contains its own currency, but which operates in a more complicated way than something like Pecunix.

You might want to put that definition into the board description:

Why was mastercoin buying and selling thread moved from Currency exchange?

I guess you should also update the description for that forum too as it currently says: Buying/selling bitcoins using other currencies

The mastercoin thread was doing exactly this.

You could say the same thing about any altcoin. If bitcoin is a currency, so is litecoin, so why not allow trading of it there too?

Answer, bitcointalk.org

What I meant was that if someone wants to buy or sell bitcoins in exchange for litecoin or mastercoin it would fit in the scope of that forum, going from the description anyway.

I thought it would just be people exchanging altcoins for something other than bitcoin (eg. LTC/USD or MSC for LTC) which would not be allowed.

Anyway it seems you guys have made your decision, which seems to be that bitcoin can only be traded for fiat currencies in the Currency exchange forum and not traded for 'altcoin' currencies.

Correct!

Mastercoin threads should, in the spirit of Mastercoin, be parasitic in its nature and just bloat the threads here.

Interesting that you didn't use this approach for creating your own blockchain.