Bitcoin Forum

You guys know the ins and outs of Bitcoin and likely have a clearer view of it's challenges and problems.

Given free reign to make immediate changes to bitcoin, what would you change? (discarding any worries about forking and or effects on value)

I suppose I could be mistaken, but this question sounds a lot like:

"I'm planning on making an altcoin.  What features should I add that will make it popular enough to make me rich?"

Start here:
Hardfork Wishlist (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist)
Softfork Wishlist (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork_wishlist)

I hope not. Almost all such features are non-trivial to implement, and potentially disastrous if implemented incompetently, not that most altcoiners ever bother to try.

It's the "discarding any worries about forking and or effects on value" part that makes this sound like a new coin development.

Generally an altcoin creator has no concerns about forking since there is nothing to fork yet, and has no concerns about effects on value since there is no established value yet.

I know, and I agree. When I said "I hope not", I did not mean "I expect not". Call me a pessimist, but I usually expect the opposite of what I hope.

Sadly, I can see why.

Even though, say that is what motivates me,  would there be anything wrong with a new altcoin that really explores alternative maybe more efficient ways of handling the tasks?

I don't subscribe to the school of "bitcoin only" . The mentality that Bitcoin should be the all of digital currencies will lead to problems on the future, as a community we need to freely discuss and develop our ideas because noone will. 98% of this forum is interested in profit only, not the ideas, technology or philosophy of it all.

But don't take my word for it , I'd just pose the same question to you:

Would you not be curious to know what the core developers current and past would do in a completely seperate currency?
For example , the originator, be it a man, a team or an alien, after studying how it has performed, what changes would they make.

Even theoretical ideas would be interesting as they open up room for innovation.

This raises an interesting question, maybe I'll open up another discussion on it. Say Satoshi finally gets out of Guantanamo and he's got new ideas that either aren't compatible with bitcoin, or are so drastic that even a hard fork would entail huge network/consenus issues and maybe loss of value.

What would he do and what would be the community response if he did not reveal his identity? Would it be lost in the Alt black hole?

If he did reveal himself , would community mentality change, re-labelling BTC as an alternative to his new creation?

We all know that there is nearly a religion surrounding the name now.

No, nothing wrong with an altcoin that implements significant new ideas (although 99.99% of them don't).  But such discussion belongs in the altcoin subforum.


Nor do I.  I also use U.S. dollars, and Euros.  There is plenty of room in the world economy for multiple currencies.


Perhaps.  This forum is pretty lenient and allows discussion on just about any legal topic as long as it is in the correct sub-forum.


That really depends on which sub-forums you spend most of your time in.  If you hang out in the mining or altcoin forums, you'll find it difficult to identify anyone that isn't focused on profit.  The development and technical support forums tend to be less focused on profits.


There is already a list of such things.


His interests don't really interest me.  He was a mediocre programmer with a well thought out concept for distributed consensus.  His concept is revolutionary, but that doesn't mean that all his thoughts are important.


Certainly.


He could create a new altcoin and try to convince people that it was a significant enough improvement to abandon bitcoin.  Just like everyone else with such ideas.  There is nothing "special" about the fact that the ideas belong to him.


No way to know what he would do.  I would expect that the community would respond with skepticism and that the idea would need to stand on its own merits for it to become accepted.


That's where it would belong.


I would hope not, but it's difficult to predict what effect crowd mentality can have.  I never expected the word "bits" to catch on for microbitcoin, and yet it seems that is has.  Crowds can do some pretty silly things sometimes.


For some, perhaps.

Kind of everything one can even think has been tried so far, or at least awaits trial. If you want engage in this experimentation just choose the right coin/protocol for yourself. You are bound to find something by now.
I am still waiting on my judgement until Ethereum's official release.

On the subject, I had a thought. The release of a brand new chain that incoporates the wishlist changes would be a test of the technology and the users.

This would clearly have advanced beyond the current chain, but would it gain as much popularity and adoption?