Bitcoin Forum

Newbie here. This is my biggest concern with converting some of my fiat to BTC. I'm worried that a better/more highly evolved coin (which may not even be here yet) will ultimately become the most widely used cryptocurrency. I would hate to jump on the bandwagon only to see Bitcoin become the "Myspace" of cryptocurrencies.

On the other hand, Bitcoin does seem to have a pretty good network effect and it seems like adoption of Bitcoin is increasing every day. Not only that, it seems that Bitcoin just has a massive lead over all the other alt coins. I put my vote at less than 25% that it becomes the "Myspace" of cryptocurrencies, but what does everyone else think and why?


Thanks :)

Bitcoin is the democratization of money. The internet of money. The blockchain is without a doubt the most important innovation since the internet itself.

Myspace was a stupid fad.

hmm I think in maybe 5 years... a shit load of percent.. not surw what that equates to in numbers tho..

The "Myspace" / "Facebook" analogy breaks down because of the economic concept of opportunity cost.

There is essentially nothing preventing a person from reaping as much utility as they're going to get out of both Myspace and Facebook simultaneously. Having a Myspace account in no way inhibited you from just going and signing up for Facebook when it became available. In fact it's probably the opposite, the kind of person that even cared about Myspace would also like Facebook.

With Bitcoin versus some unspecified future altcoin, there is a serious barrier. You don't have infinite money.

In a world full of chaos, greed, manipulation, and ignorance, anything is possible, however for the time being Bitcoin is the gold of this industry and it seems Litecoin is the silver. they both seem to follow the same patterns much like Gold and Silver do in the real world. The difference I do see is there are many other coins comping up on litecoin, much faster than real metals come up on silver. As a forex trader it is hard for me not to associate these currencies I deal with in the crypto world to the ones I trade daily with on forex. I honeslty find them to be much like the commodities I trade daily. What i like about the crypto world is there is no paper contracts that can be sold by the big bankers that can cost you thousands of dollars within seconds herein the crypto world.

I like the fact these currencies are not controlled by the big rich bankers, and I hope to see it stay that way. because to be honest I am watching as the big bankers are hanging themselves and bringing the countries down with them as they force their countries into depressions over stupid mistakes that fill their pockets with endless amounts of cash at the expense of the countrys people they are working for.

Bitcoin can only get better with time, the more transactions we make the stronger it becomes, I personally think it would be a very complex task for another currency to step up to the plate face to face with bitcoin, but anything is possible. It would take a lot of work and an even bigger amount of cooperation, but thats not to say it would not happen. just like in forex, just ride that train to profits and step off before it falls, thats all we can do right now.

First, bitcoin isn't going anywhere short of an EMP.

And even then it's probably not going anywhere for areas unaffected.

That said, let's pretend some coinX shows up and kicks all kinds of ass in the crypto world. You've sunk countless thousands into bitcoin...omg what do you do?

If coinX looks like it's going to overtake bitcoin, then cash out and invest in coinx down the road. Don't scare yourself from the wealth ride up just because you're overthinking the future. What happens if you wait for coinX and miss bitcoin all together?

People bought stock in myspace...then facebook and twitter came along. If those people were smart, they moved on. If not, they left it all with myspace...which is still around, but it's not facebook.

Second, the better analogy is fiat = myspace. bitcoin = fuck those guys...:D (btc would be facebook, if I just have to do this one...but it makes me feel dirty)

I don't think it is very likely to be surpassed anytime in the near future. Too much worldwide support for BTC for everyone to jump on another coin. There may be one that comes out at some point that is all around better than BTC, but even then I think it will have a hard time filling the original's shoes

I think there is a pretty good chance, but that doesn't mean that you can't be using bitcoin until bitcoin 2.0 starts to take off. You can always put some of your holdings in new technologies that seem promising. And move more and more of your btc in to the one that really starts to take hold.

You'll be alright as long as you keep your ear to the ground and keep an open mind. Your big advantage here is that most bitcoiners are die hards who would never even consider another crypto, even if it was an objectively better technology. So you'll very likely be able to get in relatively cheap.

Yes but the infrastructure and development support for BTC is very easy to change to any blockchain-based coin... the mining may not be, but you don't NEED a lot of hash rate being thrown at a network for it to work; just helps keep it more secure (which is valuable but isn't the only thing that makes BTC valuable).

Yeah but the thing is if BTC is used a currency people only really care about it's ease of use and it's name (much less so than it's utility).  The only hindrance I can see is the block time.  Maybe by that time BTC wallets will use a backend coin to relay payments.   Hmm, backend coin.....oh that sounds wrong.  ;D

Perhaps a better question is:
"What's the chance that your local fiat currency will be worth more in the future than it is today?  I'd hate to sit on the bandwagon of keeping my spare cash sitting around in a currency that is intentionally designed to be guaranteed to lose value over time.  I can move my cash out of my local currency into a much better storage of bitcoins.  Then if I notice that something better comes along, I can move from bitcoin to the new replacement.

maybe there will be a successor of BTC but it will only have slight differences

I think you mean "Facebook" or "twitter" of cryptos.

Brother, just give time some time, to see BTC approved in every where is the world.

Apple is in the way of approving it in the store apps, PayPal is surveying about it, and so on.

If you look at history, you will see that currencies tend to last for hundreds of years before being replaced.  Comparing currencies to social networks makes no sense.

He was not comparing, he wanted to know whatever if bitcoin is a hype that will die soon, or not.

Exactly. I know the Myspace analogy technically isn't that great of one. I'm speaking more in terms of Bitcoin being over-hyped and there potentially being a better successor to come along.

You have to understand the context of "better successor". Bitcoin was not an incremental improvement on prior attempts at digital cash. It was a large breakthrough in computer science (specifically solving global consensus; the "byzantine generals problem"). The problem stood unsolved for decades. The network-effect surrounding the solution to this problem as applied to digital money, as you can see with bitcoin's success, is huge.

Possible incremental improvements over the current implementation details of bitcoin are nowhere near interesting enough to unseat bitcoin's dominance. It's not proper to compare bitcoin to specific companies (FB, Myspace); a far better analogy is core internet protocols.

Bitcoin is the first viable protocol for trustless exchange of value. It's more analogous to things like SMTP or IP. Did improvements to those protocols exist? Of course... But when we're talking about things that are a large break from the past, "good enough" plus first usually wins over incompatible alternative approaches.

It's also worth noting that these protocols evolve and incorporate new ideas. Bitcoin has the same properties; if new ideas come along that are indeed very beneficial, it's likely they'll be incorporated into bitcoin.

For me to get worried about successors, I'd have to see fundamental new solutions to the problem of achieving trustless global consensus over an insecure network. No alt does that. And even if one did come along, I'm not sure quite how it would do it massively better. The fact is, bitcoin's consensus solution works, and that's all it takes to launch the virus of digital money.

I advice you to read more and more about bitcoin.

Everyday, I'm loving this this.

It will change the world and how we are paying for your daily products and subscriptions, etc.

It won't die, what could die is the alternative coins like litecoin, doge coin, .. etc.

The OP was basically asking if Bitcoin will fall by the wayside while a better crypto currency would come in and replace it.

Personally I would doubt this as there are many alt-coins out there today and none of them bring anything that Bitcoin does not provide and their networks are all much less secure then that of Bitcoin.

I don't think you will ever be able to compare MySpace to Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin will always be used the next 10-30 years. I do think that a new coin will be developed which is easier to use for the typical layman and that coin will be bigger than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is here to stay though.

bitcoin is not myspace, mainly because myspace was never as dominant as bitcoin. btc's infrastructure is way,  way more supported than myspace was.

51%

Hear hear

In addition to this, network effects are stronger for currencies than social networks.

Content on a social network depreciates rapidly. Currency does not (absent limitless issuance of more units).

Bitcoin:

Not anonymous, not even really pseudonymous.  More centralization year over year.  I am hopeful that something better can come along, or that programmers have the wherewithal to make it better instead of leaving it at status quo.

a 100%  (or at least =>) BTC

secure
anon
and well distributed POS

would kill BTC as it would avoid the whole mining tax/drama which is like flying into the head wind.

Its sorta like figuring out flight, and BTC is about a 3rd generation Flyer. NXT is a prop plane ww1 but it has a tether attached to a crane, and the fuel supply is a bit suspect.

Nothing will be truly anonymous since you still need to relay a connection to someone else via your IP. Or, it will be anonymous but then it won't be a public ledger or user-friendly enough to go mainstream...

It's not like Myspace died overnight - any early investor made bags of money off it and it was going up for practically 8 years. .

that may be the case.. but i don't know how a new crypto is going to solve the issue of centralization. imo the only way a new cryptocurrency could supplant bitcoin is to provide it.

eh there will be technical solutions ot this.

It solves the issue of centralization of not having the question of who controls/owns the coins be determined by a central authority

It's probably a better (but nowhere near perfect) analogy to compare bitcoin with linux than with myspace/facebook. Linux is sometimes clunky and inefficient and could have been replaced by something more sexy. But it's ubiquitous and people have invested serious time, love and money into it. Plus it's based on code that has been around for half a century.

and how does that get solved? because someone somewhere would have to provide hashing power for the blockchain.

Be careful what you wish for. A completely anon coin (Zerocoin in theory?) would get aggressively attacked by governments. All govs have to do to keep a coin's use (and value) limited is to make it illegal for any *merchant* to accept it without aggressive KYC/AML. The openness of the bitcoin blockchain has played a large role in there not being aggressive anti-cryptocoin legislation. I suspect that once things like Zerocoin emerge and start to gain traction, we're going to see aggressive moves by regulatory bodies against such coins. Sidenote: that'll be bullish for bitcoin; govs will choose their poison and will likely actively support bitcoin over alternatives that bake anonymity in for every transaction/user.

The beauty of bitcoin is that the level of anonymity is effectively user-selectable. With enough effort, you can remain pretty private. It's just not idiot proof... As noted, I think that plays a large role in why govs haven't been super aggressive towards it.

You realize that giving us your opinion gives a bias to the entire survey, right? You basically told people how you expect a rational person to vote, and so they are all inclined to have their opinion slightly more in favor of the option you chose than if you hadn't suggested that as the best option. This is really basic stuff. How could you not know this?

That one thing, the bias that you introduced, makes every single answer that everybody on here gave absolutely useless.

None of the polls are anything close to scientific anyway

All first generation tech gives way to 2nd generation.  Bitcoin is really awesome, but is not without its issues.  These issues can be addressed for a next generation coins.

See page-1 of this thread for numerous reasons why protocols that demonstrate strong network effects, such as bitcoin, tend to be upgraded instead of replaced. Many of the core internet protocols (IP, SMTP, HTTP, etc) are decent examples of similar phenomena.

Isn't Darkwallet quite anonymous? Or is the anonymity of say, Darkcoin, higher?

Anyone who voted "Greater than 75%" missed the boat and is an alt coin hopeful.

-B-

A more accurate comparison will (probably) be .com domains vs all other extensions, with Bitcoin always remaining #1 in most countries of the world and no alt coin ever coming close.

For the non-technical person, think of it this way:  The Bitcoin protocol is analogous to the English system of measurement.  Do we have a better system of measurement?  Of course.  The metric system is better because it is based on a factor of 10.  However, the English system is still predominantly used in many countries because it would require an enormous amount of effort for society to change to the metric system.  We would have to change mile marker signs on roads, change the the tools that we use to measure length and quantities, change the game of baseball, basketball, football.  These changes would not be worth undertaking when the English system is "good enough."

Protocols are similar to systems of measurement.  IPv6 is better than IPv4 but we still use IPv4 because in order to change solely to IPv6 we would have to change existing routers, switches, servers, NICs, OS, ect.  IPv6 has been in existence for 15 years but has yet to be used as the primary Internet Protocol. 

Bitcoin is a wealth transfer protocol.  For society to switch to another protocol as the primary currency and payments system, mining operations would have to be changed, exchanges and wallet services would have to switch to the new protocol, hardware wallets such as the trezor would have to be redone, ect.  While bitcoin is still young, the possibility exists that a better currency could take its place, but I believe we are near the point of no return and society will choose not to change existing infrastructure because a coin is slightly better.  Myspace and Facebook are just applications on the internet that users can switch back and forth between willy nilly without any repercussions or changes in infrastructure.


And this:

We all have to understand that bitcoin not gonna last forever and one day new better substitutes will appear...

While I don't ever see Bitcoin dying off totally like Myspace, without a doubt it will have some serious competition in the coming years. Another crypto could easily surpass Bitcoin's marketcap.

It's not about coins, it's all about people, users, and devs.

From this perspective, I've yet to see a real threat to btc in this space.

I dont see BTC going away like myspace did to a bigger community like it did with FAcebook

First coin that comes out with solution to preventing 51% attacks and better network decentralization will become Facebook and BTC will become MySpace if it doesnt adapt. But, as far as i know solution is not as easy as everyone thinks so we might wait for some time untill that happens. It's possible that BTC devs find solution like that which would set BTC's no1 place in stone and noone could touch it for quiet some time.

I think it's going to be around much longer. In the same way that IRC is used today, even though that protocol was introduced in 1988. Sure, other protocols will come - as happend with chat protocols.  IRC didn't get replaced by say Skype, and I think with Bitcoin it will be the same story. Different uses;

I think in the short term, we will see that a lot of the alt coins get dumped - leaving only a few coins in use. When shopping online, you may have a choice between three crypto-currencies in addition to creditcard payment methods. I don't think we'll see shops where you can pay with 1000s of different coins, that's simply impractical.

If another "better crypto" than Bitcoin comes to appear, its economy will be sustained by the Bitcoin itself.

Bitcoin is the gold of cryptos, i think from now on it will never fade.

I tend to be of the view that something would have to go seriously wrong with Bitcoin before a competitor even comes close to surpassing it.  We've had hundreds of alts come along and none of them have done anything drastically amazing that allows it to start gaining ground on Bitcoin's head start.  In fact, the vast number of indistinguishable clone-coins is likely a contributing factor that helps secure BTC in the top spot.  An alt would have to break the mold from it's contemporaries before it can take on Bitcoin and most of them can't even manage that.

If it does happen, it's either going to take something truly impressive and groundbreaking from some incredibly talented developers, or Bitcoin taking a wrong turn and imploding in upon itself.

100% ! ... When cryptos and 3D printers merge. :o

If you're worried, diversify into altcoins.

What prevents 51% attacks from taking place today are the block subsidies. By giving miners 25 BTC (as of today) the miners have little to no incentive to execute a 51% attack as they would likely earn more by simply continuing to mine as usual even if they had 51% of the network.

Up until a few weeks ago I would have been in the under 25% group, but the recent success of Ghash.io in getting such a large hashing share and the resulting mischief they can cause suggests there is room for real improvement in the bitcoin protocol. 

it's going to be hard to build a community that competes with BTC in terms of merchants, infrastructure, dedicated miners and developers. it's possible, but unlikely.

Oh, no! Bitcoin will lead to a deflationary spiral! If only someone could've thought of this before!
SELL ALL YOUR BITCOINS!!!

If you've been under the rock recently, there are at least 2 such coins more or less known and with a few months of track record:

PoW: Myriadcoin
PoS: NXT

Thats simply impossible, because MySpace got competition from Facebook
Bitcoin don't have competition :) its one of a kind

People call Myspace a failure, but they made a shitload of money before they became irrelevant. No business lasts forever.

Another voice from under the rock, you guys really should learn new things from time to time not to make such stupid statements.

less than 25% :)

I would suggest you wait until you know the answer for yourself, to convert your fiat money into btc.

To me, your question suggests you do not understand bitcoin yet.
From which I further deduce and assume that you probably wouldn't know how to safe guard them against loss.


I suggest you read this;
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html
Note the date it was written.

Read that and you won't need to ask whether bitcoin will be "myspace".



And for when you finally have the answer for yourself....

Welcome to the fold & HODL!!!

I acknowledge LTC and NMC which are two crypto currencies that have bigger market caps then most/all other alt coins.

With that being said I would still agree with the statement that bitcoin does not have any real competition.

For the most part there is not even a way to trade other alt's into fiat without first going through bitcoin.

Theres always a chance that bitcoin wont be "the one" but Im betting the farm that it will be. Myspace may have been the first, but they werent the best, where as bitcoin was built very well from the get go, not perfect, but good enough..

I do believe there's a need for a crypto currency, but perhaps bitcoin is just the first. Maybe there will be better ones.
I'm not talking about alts that bring nothing new to the table, I'm talking about a different protocol alltogether. Bitcoin 2.0 if you will.

Very unlikely. There would need to be a new cryptocurrency which is a lot better than bitcoin, and I don't think that will happen. How exactly could it? I think the myspace example doesn't fit here, cryptocurrency as with any currency is a functional thing. There is little room for style or anything like that.

the difference is that with myspace no one really had anything to lose by leaving myspace.

With bitcoin many parties will lose a lot when they ignore bitcoin and join an altcoin.

there has to be a VERY good reason for people to leave bitcoin for something else.

25%
bitcoin has such an advance in term of support, it won't happen in the coming two years.
Design and front end is also not part of bitcoin and can be adjusted, so it wont be the cause of demise.
For BTC be MySpaced, we would need to see some real breakthrough, not just altcoins...

I agree with this. Primarily the issue of anonymization - if someone had a Bitcoin clone that was completely anonymous (perhaps integrated Tor, along with making it impossible to track the flow of money from one address to another via the blockchain) it would take over. Even more so if mining of that currency was most efficiently performed on a standard computer processor, which would avoid mining centralization.