Bitcoin Forum

(sorry for my limited english)

In my opinion, introduction of innovations through cloning is the number one threat to bitcoin.

I think there will be a clone that includes at least the following features:
a) mining for regular coins
b) mining for bond coins (i.e. tradeable securities that the blockchain converts into regular coins at a future date)
c) splitting of bond coins into derivative coins (i.e. tradeable securities that the blockchain converts into regular coins at a future date if certain block chain conditions are met (e.g. difficulty levels, transaction volumes). A set of derivative coins which spans the entire domain of future conditions is equivalent to a bond coin.)
d) Threshold-protected wallets (wallets that allow for daily send limits and an unlimited emergency cash-out address. Both the send limits and the cash-out address would be specified by the user at wallet creation and could not be changed subsequently.)
e) other features people haven't thought of yet.

It would be much better for digital currency if these features were developed as a fork in the bitcoin blockchain rather than as bitcoin clones. Development of successful clones undermines faith in the ability of digital currencies to store of value. Development of a successful forks allows pre-fork currency holders to have their wealth grandfathered in. Forking preserves the ability of digital currencies to store value, while allowing for innovation.

What I would like to see is a clone that would get rid of the wastefulness of mining or use mining for something useful like folding at home or something. The only cryptographic purpose of the mining is to time-stamp the transactions - with a central server this could be done with one machine instead of this massive array of mining computers.   It is probably impossible in a completely decentralized protocol - but maybe it is possible to have a clever compromise that would introduce a few super-nodes with additional checks and balances on them to do that job. 

Thats exactly the point. Mining is used to secure the network. Its not useless or wastefulness.

With a central server you can have even more secure time stamps using one machine instead of a vast network of computers to do that job.  In that sense the protocol is wasteful - it uses huge resources for something that can be done with very little.  Sure it would not be exactly the same thing - it would be an alternative :)

And all in the control of one source, why even bother? The current money systems do this just fine.

What is the point of bondcoins, and how would you enforce the threshold.

What if that could be done in a decentralized manner?  The one central server is just a proof that this can be done in some way - but this is not the goal.  What I would expect is that you can have a timestamping protocol with multiple super-nodes (not unlike those that are proposed as adaptations of the bitcoin protocol to handle bigger traffic) with many checks and balances, some of them probably outside of the protocol (just like now outside of the bitcoin protocol you have distribution of the block chain 'checkpoints' into bitcoin clients).  Control over timestamping does not mean 'all control' over the system - the timestamping server does not need to know what it is signing.

what if the time stamp server is compromised and starts stamping sept 11 2001 08:46 on all the blocks. what if one of the employees were drunk and tripped over the power cable. what if terrorists wanted to stop all global financial trade and crashed plane into the building.

This is why i like bitcoin, none of the above is possible short of a large EMP(very very very LARGE).

Short Answer:
Bond coins facilitate financial contracts which span a long time period.

For example, in this thread [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18205.0] a company is issuing private bonds to fund a project. The company promised to pay 1 bitcoin on Dec 31, 2011 for every 0.8 bitcoins invested by bondholders today. Currently, the company needs to accumulate current bitcoins to pay off this debt. Suppose that the company accumulates bondcoins with a maturity of Dec 31 instead. Based on the poll I made here [http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=25705.0], bondcoins with a half a year maturity might sell at a discount of 10% (i.e. 0.9 bitcoins trades for 1 half-year bondcoin). If so (and assuming the company has a constant revenue stream), the company would save around 5 percent of its financing costs by accumulating bond coins rather than bitcoins. This would reduce the interest rate the company faces from 25% to 19%.

This is just one example. Essentially, the same logic applies to any long-term contract demoninated in bitcoin.

Longer Answer:
A second point of bondcoins is facilitating the creation of derivative coins. Derivative coins address issues with compensating large merchants for adopting bitcoin and helping merchants manage bitcoin exchange rate risk. My ideas about derivative coins (aka contingent claims) are described here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19130.0


Regarding the threshold, that is a programming question. I'm not a programmer. I bet the current developers could manage it if they set their minds to it, however.

You're totally missing the point.

I think if you look at Bitcoin as a protocol, and not as a single technology, you'll see that the likelyhood of a clone is almost zero. By protocol I mean like SMPT for e-mail or HTTP for websites is a protocol. After more than two decades, we still don't have a "clone" of email. The protocol itself has improved, and many services have built up around it, but the "e-mail" protocol is still there. I think the same will happen with Bitcoin: why bother making something completely new when you have a large networked system already there to improve and build upon?

Early adopters have an intrinsic advantage in any protocol/implementation resembling Bitcoin. This is a factor not present in your examples.

BTW: Don't you mean the Simple Mail Transference Protocol, that's SMTP. Hehe, I used to confuse them too (You wrote SMPT) :D.

No, I don't think it is a threat. Any bitcoin clone pushed by a corporation will be centralized, and will not have the intrinsic advantage of bitcoin. It would simply be another Paypal.

Please note whether a Bitcoin-like system is pushed by a corporation is unrelated to whether it's controlled by such corporation.

Care to explain that?

I see more localized versions showing up in the future.  Maybe states will start their own type of bitcoins.  Bitcoins will always be the head honcho though.  Then again what do I know.

Here you go:
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9493.0