Bitcoin Forum

Let's seriously discuss if this argument has any validity, because it sounds more like a biased idea with only a grain of truth to it. My personal opinion is if Bitcoin fails, this can have short-term effects for the adoption of cryptos, but the concept will survive. As well it's not quite clear what proponents of that idea mean exactly. What is failure? As long as someone mines and uses a crypto, it's not failed. Suppose, no encryption is broken, as then obviously I wouldn't ask this question.

Can we define failure of Bitcoin as "market cap below 50% of total market cap of the crypto industry"? It still wouldn't be a failure though, but we need a starting point of sorts to be able to tell that it's started to decline. Anyway, let me know what you think on these two points: what "Bitcoin failed" means for you and why if that technically happens would it be fatal for other cryptos if indeed you think it would be fatal for other cryptos?

Please refrain from pumping your favorite altcoin in this thread. Thank you.

My opinion isn't popular.  I think a crypto has a bright future.  But it's not going to be bitcoin or any others that have a limited number of coins with inevitable extremely high transaction fees.

Not many (ethereum as far as I know is the only ... maybe doge?) That have this economic philosophy.  Making a currency a pyramid scheme is as bad as the way things work in fiat.  Rich get richer off the backs of new blood.

Just my 02

Means nobody "buying to the moon", no more mining at homes (which is the mass market out there. 1 monster collocation located somewhere in china ain't be the same), nor any useage at let's say "Silkroad" which is quite true right now.

Naturally not. Take a look at the huuge amount of Doge traded at Bter. Or LTC at BTC-E. Those are inflationary (due to insane mining amounts each day) currencies that nobody in a right state of mind would HODL. But they are traded in the millions, so why?

Because they cross the political barriers. I think there will always be a use like that, for even the shittiest crapcoin. It just means you cannot "invest" into that very shittiest crapcoin, without breaking your neck.

edit: but you could still mine that coin

I dont think at current stage Bitcoin [1] can not fail anymore, so I won't discuss your question.

[1] = We have end 2014: Just look at this strong support of influential people of Silicon Valley and Wall Street that are committed now to Bitcoin. Or look at this: just about any technology expert, futurologist or innovation researcher has made VERY positive statements about Bitcoin, they cant be all wrong out of the sudden.

Naturally (here) people would see Bitcoin fail if the price dropped to $1 for example.
Realistically speaking, Bitcoin can't fail. It's not like all the services and all merchants adopting it would stop doing so in a second. Bitcoin has gone too far to fail now.

In a case (I don't think that it is possible, unless a major flaw destroys it) where Bitcoin would fall, it is most likely that all cryptos would be proclaimed as unsafe and fall. The whole system would collapse.

Why? That was my question. Suppose it's not an encryption/algorithm failure.

Once they start "buying to the moon" I'm interested again. Until that we should settle upon averaging down, down into oblivion.

yeah, i share this

a major flaw seems also impossible to me [1], because its software, it will be fixed and it will be fixed very fast (because of the vetted intrests)

[1] = even when quantum cryptography is finally broken, we have Post-quantum cryptography ready, PQ crypto is already 20 years old

We're not talking about major flaws of encryption algos, etc. I have updated the OP to clarify that.

100% yes

If When Bitcoin fails, Ripple wins.

http://www.ripplecharts.com/ Going up right now.  :D :D :D

Market noise.
If Bitcoin crashed, there would be a big ass panic sell on all things crypto, no doubt. Of course it doesn't mean eventually some other coin would take the spot or Bitcoin would rise again. As a concept crypto is not going away, but a legitimate crash of Bitcoin means a crash in all things crypto.

There is too many XRP to sustain such prices... it has 7100x more supply than bitcoin so at bitcoin $300 its worth less than $0.04/xrp... with bitcoin volume.. so I'd say its too high, maybe $0.0004 I would buy.

The price ATM is only $ 0.0056 not $0.04/xrp. The price is somewhere in between what you regard as too high and $0.0004 where you would buy.

Oops true.. but id wait for one more drop in decimal place to be safe :) It's like bitcoin @ $30. But XRP userbase is nowhere near BTC.

bitcoin failed to me means;

everyone stops using it


even if bitcoin is worth one cent i can still use it to pay for goods and services without having to deal with banks and all the fees that go with that,
 and it is so easy with bitpay and current wallet apps e.g. circle

of course it would be fatal for other crypto's no other crypto has the services and the network like bitcoin


I am confused to why this question gets asked it is the same as saying what if fiat fails, there will always be a need for fiat where people do not have access to technology. There will always be a need for bitcoin even if to pay for something that is off the radar.

my speculation

Worst case
Bitcoin really failed, if the falls under 50% market share of crypto industry and the new leader is a Crypto-Coin owned/controlled by goverment or inter-goverments like EU, UN, OSCE, USA or NATO.

Pretty bad case
A fuck corporate controlled and manipulated coin like Stellar or Ripple or whatever takes over.

Stupid/bad case
A whatever-based legitimate but unfair-distributed crypto-coin takes over
(like an NXT or any other coin with unfair or manipulated ICO or distribution)

Neutral/good case
I) A non bitcoin-based legitimate coin takes over. Like an fair-distributed CryptoNote-based, fair-distributed NXT-based, ...
or
II) A fair-distributed legitimate bitcoin-based coin like Darkcoin or Litecoin (unlikely) takes over

Yes, to me bitcoin failed means nobody will swap it for anything, not a pizza, and not even 0.00000000001 of a cent. If nobody wants it then it's failed as a store of value.

That's a very loose definition though. Somebody will always want it, I guess, but this doesn't necessarily mean it's a good store of value, just ask Zimbabweans.

Ripple dates all the way back to 2004.  Ripple has had twice the amount of time as Bitcoin to go somewhere and it never did.  So keep entertaining these delusions.   :D    If Coinbase or BitPay had a stockmarket IPO, although they are not coins, I bet they would be worth more than that centralized scam Ripple.

I think in BTC there is to many money invest, that is why all this system will not collapse so easy.

Agreed with the overall idea, disagree on ethereum and doge completely.

Bitcoin won't be around forever or be as prominent. Things will change.

I'm completely fair with this discussion.  If Bitcoin had 100+ million users then I would say: "congratulations first mover advantage and can't be unseated"

This is compared to the reality where many people have estimated Bitcoin's userbase to be a high of 2 million users and a low of 250,000 users (some people on this forum suggest even lower like 50,000).  This is despite all the media attention, hype and government regulation.  You don't see governments obsessing over Drop Box which has a bigger capitalization than Bitcoin or harassing Costco & Walmart club members.  

I thought bad publicity was still publicity?  Well it doesn't seem to be working that way because Bitcoin is still smaller than the internet in the late 1980s.


If Bitcoin "fails" it's because some alternate overtakes it and it won't take 6 years either.  All you need is the one coin that goes viral and is palpable by mainstream.

The world have tested bitcoin and it has seen to be something unique and it ensures freedom, failure of bitcoin will easily give birth to something better than bitcoin because life must continue.

Are you talking about NXT? Ethereum maybe? Bitshares? There you have 3 inmediate examples of "something better than bitcoin".

I highly doubt these three are better, as a group of stakeholders with majority vote will at some point maintain total control over the network and can stay unchallenged in this position indefinitely at no cost. This is not possible with Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin fails, it won't be because of the technical issues as those can always be corrected, but because people are not yet ready to understand the mechanics of control over money in the system and often blinded with just possibility for profit. They sell control(freedom) for profit(comfort). Happened before, happens again.

Saying that other crypto might succeed if Bitcoin fails doesn't mean much, because as I already pointed out not all cryptos are in the same league. You can say that today's fiat is also crypto as banks use strong encryption, but that hardly makes any difference.

It's not clear to me what you mean by fail. 

Its a currency,  a tool.   
The only way it can "fail" completely is if there was some catastrophic flaw or "hack" that would deem it not viable to be used as the tool it is.

If you mean by market cap and price alone,  then also no,  aside from any unseen catastrophic flaws; there will always be some type of value.

That's actually a question in the OP. Different people define 'Bitcoin failed' in different ways, you need to post your definition, as well as your thoughts on if that happens would it have other cryptos fail too. No, I don't mean a catastrophic encryption flaw.

Failed concept = digital currencies revert to being worth less than $50 million
Failed execution = Bitcoin is surpassed by another coin

Seems simple enough

You have to include the dumb speculation when buying.  You won't get the price your trying to get.  When xrp userbase should be near a penny it will be 2 and so on.....

I think more accurate question is what model of control over money would prevail in the future.

If Bitcoin demonstrates that hard fork is possible at this stage (for block size increase), then it opens up possibilities to change other aspects of the system including distribution model, hard limit on coins as well as control over transactions with PoW mining.

If that changed, would we consider Bitcoin failed or just evolved?
The real battle in crypto-space is waged for minds of the people.
Ideas have more weight than just code.

Wrong u fail at investing., learn math.

U will mostly be able to buy at a cheaper price than u bought unless its a special case.. But depends wat pct u give it.. Id say btc has that not any alt