Bitcoin Forum

I'm a noob, I admit that. But when I get interested in something, I immerse myself into it and catch on pretty quickly.
I have a fundamental problem in theory, which I cannot work out.
When I think about the long-term success or failure of Bitcoin, it seems to me that other cryptocurrencies are hurting that possible success.
Now the mainstream is starting to accept Bitcoin. The branding is showing up everywhere. There are bitcoin ATMs, etc.
And then another coin, a better coin, maybe, in quality, but not a popular coin with the mainstream, starts to rise in value and overcome bitcoin.
Then what? Most people are just getting used to the idea of Bitcoin, then they are going to have the rug pulled from under them, when Bitcoin is beat out by another coin...with a different look, different branding, and maybe not as acceptable to the mainstream as bitcoin.
Now are the going to have redesign all their ATM machines for this new coin? Take down all the Bitcoin symbols and put up the branding for the new coin? How is that going to work exactly?

Seems that bitcoin has to stay number one to be accepted on a wide scale, or everything else is lost. Any feedback?

Most altcoins are just failed experiments in digital currency, Namecoin, LiteCoin and Dogecoin are the only three that have any real marketable strength.

All of those coins are not in competition with Bitcoin in any stretch of the imagination, each holding their own their own niche.

Saying "Altcoins hurt Bitcoin" is like saying the Machinists Union, Voodoo, and Football hurt the Medical profession.

You come to a supermarket and you see different brands of meat. You don't mind that, do you? Same applies here.

I wrote a poem about it:

Bitcoins are it
Shitcoins are shit

I think alt coins are a good thing. They are a way to innovate and experiment without messing with the bit coin protocol. If someone comes up with a great idea it can always be incorporated down the road.

Yeah, I keep hearing this. But I don't think it works in practise.

Just one example: someone came up with a good idea to run a few independent mining algos in a coin (Myriadcoin does this) to get rid of 51% attack concerns. There is no way Bitcoin miners who invested millions into ASICs will agree to switch to a hard fork even if bitcoin developers release the new bitcoin code with a few independent mining algos. So basically, miners control what they think is a good idea or not, not users.

Monopoly is bad and all coins are competing with each other.

It is still to early to say bitcoin will be the "coin" that dominate the market.

Not it is not.  Watch me:  "Bitcoin is the 'coin' that is dominating the market."  See how easy that was and how true it is.

Opinions vary inside the form. Currently, the market share of all alt coins (yes, including piggycoin and all other weird coins) together is about 10% of the bitcoin market share. Litecoin is the only other currency with a market cap of more than 100 million.


Society does not move so fast. Many people do not own bitcoin as of yet, we are early adaptors. The average joe does not have bitcoin as of yet. Anyway, this is just speculation, nobody knows the future. But at the moment, bitcoin has the biggest market share and the most 'commercial' in news etc;

Simple, they will stick with bitcoin  :)

Altcoins make anonymity easier. Go to an exchange, get an altcoin, send them to another exchange, then change back to bitcoins. They will be part of the tool box of techniques to keep our privacy.

Yes but in special cases the exchange can always match the deposit / withdraw amounts from determined account.. i think you have to use an anonimizer thing to be 100% anonimous.

Why is anonymity (did I spell that right?) so important? If you're not doing anything illegal or some kind of perv, then why would you care if people can track your purchases?

Privacy is critical for the proper operation of the Bitcoin system because all account balances are public.  If we cannot maintain privacy then Bitcoin will fail.  Would you keep your money in a bank where anyone in the world can simply look up your balance online?  Would anyone run a business using a bank where anyone, even competitors, can look up their current balance and see all of their income and expenses anytime they want to?

Nobody will use Bitcoin without privacy protections.

Anonymity is a different but related concept.

Yes. The new wave of coin come with anonymity.

Taxes.

Paying taxes is immoral.

Taxes (and fiat currency) are used to support war and the murder/imprisonment of innocent civilians.

Using Bitcoin takes away part of that power.

Of course not, the miners also secure the network and spend a lot of money to do it. Free people in free markets will always act in their own self interest. That is the nature of commerce. To expect a group of people to agree to destroy their own investment is not logical or rational. 

I think its great because these new coins result in innovation, like Curecoin which uses the hashing power to do something useful, curing diseases.

Paying taxes is immoral - yeah - because you've never used roads before, or streetlights, or electricity, or not have to deal with terrorist attacks. What do you think your taxes go to? Taxes support war to protect YOU, and the murder/imprisonment of innocent civilians does happen but is extremely rare and is getting rarer and is much better than the alternative of keeping all criminals on the street. Please use a condom.

Right. That's why I don't expect great ideas to be easily or at all incorporated into Bitcoin code.

I would think so they're all related whether they like it or not.

Changing mining algorithms is not necessary for Bitcoin. The network hashing power is way to big right now for a quick 51% attack. There are other ways to prevent that from happening, so why would we change the mining algo and destroy a large part of our hashing power? I believe that they will implement great idea's, just not new mining algo's.

Imagine a scenario where the biggest 3-4 easily identifiable mining pools/large mining farms are targeted by a large enough power. What happens then? The network is crippled and can't function properly or at all. This would not be possible if there were more than one independent mining algo.

How about the difficulty adjusting not every 10 days but after each block. That's another good idea. Will they implement and accept it? Probably not. If half or more of the hash rate is down for some reason, how long would it take to find blocks with such a slow adjusting difficulty?

If it needs to be changed it will be. There is no reason to change stuff when it's not needed. Getting more then 51% to agree on a small, currently irrelevant, change costs way to much effort. And even if the network gets attacked, I know that they will add something that contradicts that. I dare to bet that they already have something ready in case it goes wrong. Pushing something that might be handy is just not worth the effort it takes and how much it helps.

I mean look at the Heartbleed problem, they fixed it in no-time, pushed it to the network and everyone adapted it. It's a great example on how things would go if Bitcoins does go to shit, because of a 51% attack.

This is not a hard question to think through.

Assume we lose 1/2 of all our hashing power - let's call this the "worst case scenario"
The average confirmation time would double from 10 minutes to 20 minutes.
The adjustment period would go from about 10-14 days to 20-28 days.
The network would adjust in about 20-28 days and we would be back to 10 minute confirmations.

Although a bit of a PITA for maybe a month this is certainly not anything I worry about and remember this is the worst case scenario. 

lol... that was classic. All these alt-coins must be officially renamed to shitcoins. That said, I don't know why people are using these copycat coins. What is the advantage in using them?

Well, if this is all accompanied by the press that other crypto currencies are doing ok and Bitcoin is flawed by design, don't you think people would start dumping their Bitcoins and joining other cryptos, because they have those 2 issues sorted unlike Bitcoin? I mean the worst case scenario (which can be worse than half the hash rate by the way), can turn even worse, as when the price drops due to investors leaving, miners would be leaving too, hence hash rate drops even more, that'd be a vicious circle. I am not spreading fud here, just trying to raise awareness that without flexibility of miners and developers this is an accident waiting to happen. You can put your heads in the sand as long as you want, but you know I am right.

No, in fact, I know you are wrong.

I am betting on it and have put my money where my mouth is.  I am heavily invested in Bitcoin and do not own a single alt coin.  Talk to me next year at this time and we will see who was right.  I expect I will have made a tidy profit and, assuming you are investing in these fly-by-night coins, you will have lost.

List all the coins you are heavily invested in here:

Of course they would, they always do, and that would be fantastic.  That is what we old farts call a "buying op".

Ok, Dogecoin, NXT and Myriadcoin. Hopefully I don't forget this thread next year around this time. If I do and you don't please give me a friendly reminder :)

Doge needs to stop issuing more coins or at least slow it down alot.   The market cap might go up maybe but the price isnt likely to
If you are asking if altcoins do harm, I think most harm is done between each other.   So they promote competition and innovation and at little cost in theory unlike btc where the hardware has become specialised, these are coins trying out all sorts.  No doubt the success of one altcoin is to the detriment of another as the market is quite small in comparison to the main brand BTC

Two main coins I can think of are darkcoin and blackcoin, both are trying to advance features or dynamics bitcoin does not have.   I dont think they'll replace but in a years time they could have grown more depending on if they are then providing greater utility then plain bitcoin

The answer to that is people often belong to more then one pool.   The pools are quite central, blocks come from only 100 IP apparently but the miners themselves are still distributed.   If you told me 60% of the network is at 100 factories/farms and so could be occupied and taken down, then I would be worried.  
    I dont think thats the case but I wonder if btc is heading towards that flawed overly centralised situation.   Economies of scale are great and all but its easily a flaw here

I pay for my electricity, no taxes needed.

Streets are supported by user fees. I have no problem with those.
 
I have lived in undeveloped areas of Philippines and Kenya, roads are usually built by locals without resorting to taxes. When I was young kid and part of some dumb religious cult up in the mountains, some of them got tired of there being no road. So a couple of them got together, pooled some money, hired a bulldozer, and guess what? We had a road without taxes or coercion.

As for the war on terrorism, I am more likely to get killed in a car accident than by a terrorist. A long time back, I went into the mountains with some girl I was planning to marry on Mindanao Island in the Philippines to meet her family. Discovered that her brother was in the MILF, he even let me shoot his AK-47 for fun. I never felt safer.

As for innocent people killed, I will just post a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War)

As for condoms, I refuse to use them. Did make my Kenyan wife take an HIV test though.

Ooops, you meant her mother not her brother, right?

I believe her brother would be a BILF, not sure because I am not into that sort of thing.

IMO maybe it's hurt bitcoin but it doesn't hurt cryptocurrency world. If there's no competition than there won't be step forward.

Other coins help to attract more attention into the crypto currency world seemingly to a vacuum.
Even if we don't believe into other currencies, one thing is clear for me : they don't eat bitcoin's pie, they are cooking a bigger cake.

Right now I'm in Bitcoin and DarkCoin.  I believe in hedging. I think we are simply too early in the technology cycle to claim a victor, and some of the altcoins have potential. Sure, it's most likely that Bitcoin will end up on top, but remember:

Vinyl => Tape => CD => MP3 => Streaming

Friendster => Myspace => Facebook

Who knows what a year will bring.

Haha, I guess MILF has more than one meaning.

In this case: Moro Islamic Liberation Front

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_Islamic_Liberation_Front (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_Islamic_Liberation_Front)

The alternative cryptocurrencies helps bitcoin promotion. A lot of people cames to the cryptocoins world thanks of the difution of alt coins.

Most altcoins can provide very little value over what Bitcoin can provide.

These coins are much less secure then the Bitcoin network as 51% attacks are not uncommon on smaller altcoins.

I think not
but like litecoin and dogecoin like ny enough coins pupoler

Dogecoins have involved thousands of people in cryptocurrencies and have built up a nice community, I don't think they are hurting Bitcoin at all.

Beyond parody

Alts that are traded for USD on significant volume somewhat hurt bitcoin's market cap. Only litecoin has achieved this status so far. All the other crapcoins are rather irrelevant to bitcoin's market cap as you need BTC to purchase them and they have no liquid fiat markets.

In my opinion it kind of slows bitcoin, trades forus on trading altcurrencies instread into trading bitcoin even thought most altcoins are binded to btc exchange.

It hurts only if people loose their trust in bitcoin, that they can pay with it.

In the real world dollards are not influenced by the trading of other goods. You can basically use every good as a currency as long as people trust in its characteristic to be accepted as a currency (i.e.you could use cigarettes as a currency).

No at all, some saturation is good.

So is some non-sense...

I even seen Anti-Keiser Coin lol

Those little known coins help spread the news that may have not been otherwise shared.

Other coins will rise, others will fall...

All new coins are niche based, like IsraCoin (IsraelCoin)

They are also helping bitcoin.
I planed to buy Monero, and to do that i first had to buy bitcoin. since Bitcoin is only currency with which i can buy Moneros on exchange.

Free competition is good for everyone.

Alts are really just a waste of money. They do not add anything that bitcoin cannot do.

Several people would argue that alt-coins are hurting the value of bitcoin by reducing the market cap of bitcoin by the market cap of all of the alts

No since they are not duplication.    Even if true have you seen how tiny the coins are, nobody comes close to btc



Thats nonsense since most are faster to process.   Some are adding features, perhaps one day btc will add these itself if they are that useful and practical.
Faster is good but nothing is altering that btc is the longest most secure mainstream crypto so I dont see how this argument comes close to true.   If I had a million to place its the only choice as the market depth elsewhere is not sufficient to make sure Im liquid at any point

If by faster to process you mean shorter confirmation time then this is not necessarily a good thing. A lot of alt-coins with short confirmation times have a number of orphans because miners keep propagating blocks at the same time. This makes the coin more vulnerable to a double spend attack.