It is definitely a bubble.  But I think there may also be speculation about the altcoin that will take over at least the "currency" aspect from bitcoin.  People are finally realising that bitcoin will not scale, merchants are having difficulties getting paid in bitcoin, and one is FINALLY seeing the ridicule of paying your coffee with bitcoin.  So, finally, the idea of "overtaking bitcoin" at least in one aspect is not ridiculous.  Bitcoin as a cheap, fast payment system has problems, and there's no solution in sight.  So there's a room to be taken, and maybe this is what the speculation is about.
Bitcoin will always remain as a reserve currency for big fish, but it has settings which make that it cannot be used to buy small stuff any more.  So more than ever, there's a part of bitcoin's market to be taken, and the speculation on which coin it is gonna be is maybe fuelling this bubble.

Hear, hear.  However, I don't distinguish *fundamentally* bitcoin and alt coins.  Bitcoin was here first, yes.  Bitcoin, being first, has the biggest network of users, the highest market cap and so on, yes.  But it also has the most primitive crypto technology, which is baked into it.  The big difference (we are witnessing it right now!) between a crypto currency and other technology, is that a crypto currency is a kind of smart contract laid down when its genesis block was published.  You normally can't change it.  Yes, you can change small details that do not affect economic aspects sometimes.  But you can't fundamentally change it.

As such, a crypto currency keeps the tech it has when it was put down (unless it regularly mutes, and has built-in regular hard forks).  When that tech starts to hinder its further development, I would think that it is normal that better tech takes over.  But in order for that to happen, the tech problems with the former first have to have REAL hindrance, not just potential future difficulties.  At that moment, the older coin will pay for its technological difficulties with the erosion of its first mover advantage.  To go to the next coin, who will maybe also run one day in problems.  To be taken over by a third one, and so on.

That doesn't mean that the first coin dies, but only that there is more "ecological competition", and that each coin will find its niche where it is useful.

I very much think that this will be the case, but bitcoin's price will not be affected negatively by that.  Bitcoin's price is not determined by people doing on chain transactions, but by people gambling on exchanges, and that doesn't need a solution for on chain transactions.  You will never have problems getting your coins on or from an exchange, because these exchanges will have bought chain room with their preferred mining pools.  You simply won't be able to do anything else.  At that point, bitcoin became a reserve currency which is in any case its fate.  But it can hold a very high price.

I think it is the "immutability consensus mechanism" at work: the protocol remains what it is, because people cannot agree upon a change that would give advantages to some, and disadvantages to others.  That's why the block chain is not unwound (it would give advantages to some, and disadvantages to others) ; it is why the block halving happens (advantages to coin holders, disadvantages to miners)... and why the number of transactions per second is not modified (advantages to users, disadvantage to fee collectors).

Of course, this appears like "political battles" between those that have advantages and disadvantages for each possible modification, but this is exactly what maintains status quo (immutability consensus).

Bitcoin too.  Only a tiny little part of its market cap is "currency use with merchants".  The rest is just as well greater fool games.

That was the case once with bitcoin too.


Of course not.  Simply because bitcoin is first mover and more known.  Bitcoin is immensely OVERPROTECTED cryptographically.

If a merchant has troubles receiving his 0.02 bitcoin payment because it is still in the mem pool for 3 hours, he might prefer just any other alt coin that gets him to his 25 dollars or so more reliably than the utmost improbable case that the block chain will be overdone the time he holds these 25 dollars before converting them to fiat, or spending them otherwise.

In other words, the immense "cryptographic vaults by huge proof of work" don't matter for the guy holding the coin half an hour.  You don't put your 20 dollar bills in a highly secured vault, you keep them in your wallet and you spend them.
The cryptographic vault of bitcoin is designed to hold a RESERVE currency, not for a used currency that you obtain, and spend again.  It is meant to "hold your precious", and not to get it and transmit it again.

Well, I also started on designing a system.  But it is far from even conceptually ready, so I have no clear answers yet to many questions, but I think that the main issue is indeed that one shouldn't gain from keeping the system running in any "proportional" way, as you say.

In fact, my idea is that the only reason to keep the system running, is that if you don't keep the system running, you lose everything you have in it.  Honestly, if nobody in the system cares about its holdings, then I don't mind the system failing.  


I'm not looking for altruism (a notion I think doesn't really exist).   It is more like: "if you don't care about your holdings, don't be surprised they are gone."


Very rough sketch:

My idea is that there are no transaction fees, nor "block rewards".  There is an initial amount of coins, and that's it (derived, for instance, from a fork of different existing coins, like bitcoin, ethereum, and a few others).  For each address you have on these chains, you are entitled to one coin.  Not even proportional.  Just a RANDOM initial coin distribution.

Next, there are no rewards for anything.  But each user is responsible for his own wallet, and co-signs off other people's wallet updates, and must make sure he gets a recent validation before he can make a valid transaction.   You get validations from those nodes that have kept a sufficiently long history of transactions that they can "update" your validation.  The longer you wait to get a validation, the larger is the risk that your wallet will never be validated again, and you've lost everything.  So you better validate regularly.  At that moment, you can also validate other wallets.

There is a kind of block-chainish distributed file, but it only contains validation information.

In fact, the idea is inspired from the masternode concept of DASH, where masternodes "validate" transactions on the mem pool.  But if, as a wallet owner, you keep those validated transactions, that's in fact good enough.  No need for writing them ultimately on a block chain.  And everyone with a minimum of stake can be a "masternode".


Well, the first idea is that you have to update the validation of your own wallet regularly.  And yes, if you don't "invest" in a running PC, you diminish the security of the system.  But there's not much security to be had.   Block chains do much too much, because they allow you to have an "immutable record".  But that's not what is needed for monetary assets.  What's needed for monetary assets is *unforgettable* transactions.  The real order in which non-double spent transactions are given is not really important if they don't succeed one another (and they can't).  Adding stuff doesn't matter.  Once a balance is updated with the most recent transactions concerning him, and having sufficient "validation signatures", we don't really care about the past.  There's no winding back, there's no inventing transactions that didn't exist (impossible imitation of signatures).  The ONLY thing that matters in monetary affairs, is that one doesn't FORGET a decreasing transaction.  But once it is included in your balance (in order to obtain a recent validation), there's nothing else that's needed.

If my only recent stamp I have indicates that I have 20 dollars in my account, that's all that's needed to prove that I have a right to spend 20 dollars.  If I spend 5 dollars, then the receiver will want to have a validation of his INCREASE in his account by 5 dollars.  The only way for him to get that validation, is by having a simultaneous recent validation of MY account by 5 dollars.  So I have now an "older" validation that says I have a 20 dollar account, and a more recent one that says that I have a 15 dollar account, which, at the same time, sets my counter party's account to 5 extra dollars.
Nodes know about this transaction which is broadcasted.  So if I want to have an 'update' of my validation, I ask nodes to sign off my account status, and they will only sign if this corresponds to the last transaction since my previous validation.
When nodes "forget" about this transaction, they cannot validate my account any more.   If I wait for too long a period, I will not find sufficient nodes that are able to have the list of transactions since my former validation stamp ; so I might lose all I have in my wallet (an old validation is worth nothing).  I better continuously ask for validation updates.  If my wallet didn't transact anything in the mean time, nodes will give me a validation update.  
In order to send a transaction, I have to have a recent validation, no conflicting double spends since this validation and my counter party has to have a recent validation too.  We then get a common "updated validation".


This is why this system needs to be entirely obfuscated so that nobody knows anything about it.  You only update potential wallets with potential transactions.  

Much more, because DASH is a half PoS system, and masternodes, which you can buy for 1000 DASH (back in time, I think it was 5000 DASH) take 45% of the mining rewards for them.  So if you own all master nodes, you get 45% of the new coins too.
Compound interest formula, and you find that the instamine must have, if always re-invested in master nodes, close to 50% of the stash.

Of course, it is possible that the instaminers spend all their holdings on cocaine and prostitutes when DASH was at $3.- and that the coins are now redistributed.

I fully agree with you, and this is why it is going to be extremely successful.  People just love scammy winners.

Uh, when I say "playing", I don't mean gambling at all !  I mean: playing with it like a kid, looking at the code, doing some transactions, looking at the block chain and all that.  I only need to buy a few coins for that.  Huh, no, I don't gamble at all.  I spend a few tens of dollars a month on crypto for fun.  That's all, unless I want to buy more to USE as a currency, but I bought more stuff in the past than recently.  I refuse to "invest".

And you also see why some other people like to keep it that way...

So you want to grave in stone for ever that you paid for porn, and tell the world ? 

Well, in as much as there is antagonists trying to attack code, that's the best peer review that can be done.  I don't think BU (nor Segwit) will be activated, but bitcoin without block limits would have been better.  But that's not bitcoin now. 

The problem is that the technique he invented can't handle this, and this was pointed out to him already early on.  But as he didn't know anything better, he made bitcoin.  Which was a very good start as a first working crypto.  What was a bigger blunder, was that he didn't fully grasp the consequences of his own invention of trustless consensus, and that he has frozen in a parameter (1MB blocks) without realizing that it was frozen in.

A reply of mine is just deleted, where I said (+1) to your post.
I fail to see why it was deleted.  I simply meant to say that I fully agree with your statement and do the same.

Well, to give you an idea, Byteball has something else than a block chain.  The system is not entirely well-designed and has a lock-in danger, and it contains other problems.  But it contains a significant conceptual step.   I'm myself also exploring something of the kind, but it is still way way too early to talk about it, as I may be entirely wrong, but there's more than just one way of "keeping accounts", and recording all transactions of everybody is not the only way.

No, not really.  You simply have to be a "customer" to a local LN bank ; that is, having opened a LN channel with them, under their commercial conditions, and send your transactions through them each time you want to spend your coins.   Like normal banking.

If there's money to be made, then of course you attract strategies to make it, you inspire scammy strategies, and you end up with an oligarchy of greedy bastards that are then responsible for the system.   If you are just a participant in the system, and there's nothing to be gained apart from having the system keep running, system in which you invested, then chances are bigger that you will volunteer to do so, without any nasty incentive.  Proof-of-stake without gain will not fall for "nothing at stake", because also "nothing to be won if you bet on both horses".  If you can get a distributed consensus of stake holders, they have only one incentive: not crash the system in which they hold value.  There are no fee strategies, no block reward wars, no crazy wasting electricity.  Of course, you need to trust that there is no conspiracy amongst other stake holders against you.  But if the "stake signature" is sufficiently diverse and involved, this can be mitigated.  ZCASH is based on the supposed honestly of ONLY SIX PERSONS with the trusted setup.  A continuous "trusted setup of hundreds or thousands of stake holders that have no other incentive but to keep the thing running should be good enough.

Not difficult.

Well, if you suddenly see a lovely pair of shoes you want to buy, and your bitcoins are locked in a channel, you settle the channel to be able to buy them.  Too bad for your counterparty.