But I think, these are technicalities, not a fundamental issue.

This is certainly true, but in practice, this process can be expected to be rough, not smooth, and will create a lot of adaptation issues, for which we (Bitcoin users community) don't have a working solution to deploy.

To OP:

you made a serious mistake by using such an allusive and condescending writing style. This is not the place to tell stories to the children.

Thus, if you want a honest discussion, then please come out of your cranny, and instead of talking in metaphors, put some clear arguments on the table!

• what exactly are you criticising?
• what are your presuppositions?
• what are your conclusions?

The first choice is to maintain the myths of Bitcoin for as long as possible, make what you will of good fortune to date, continue wasting good intellectual and capital investment in zero-sum endeavours where one group of techies screws over another, and therfore also waste an incredible opportunity for crytocurrencies to revolutionise finance and personal empowerment that would far surpass short-term personal gains (or at minimum waste a heck of a lot of time in getting to that point).

The second choice is to recognise that something has to change with Bitcoin because either:

1) Bitcoins are scarce in which case at some point those who do not already have any will rationally find something else to use instead of Bitcoin (see the rise of altcoins and alternatives as evidence of this). This phenomenon was predicted on these boards from at least 2010 when I started reading it, probably earlier, and will not end because it’s an inevitability, or

2) Bitcoins are not scarce because they may be replicated (for all intents and purposes with just a name change), in which case what is the value of a replicable and replicated digital asset offering no advantage over others?

Falling on either side of 1 or 2 without the existence of advantages or damn good reasons to prefer Bitcoin over alternatives (beyond marketing) therefore necessitates changes or precludes its demise beyond a blinkered niche. As to what changes are required, I will leave that to application of rationality and economics.
Everybody “gets” it. Whether they are able and willing to admit it is another matter. Perhaps unlike the bulk of people on this forum I’d actually like cryptos to (be able to) replace state fiat not remain a token playthings between small groups. That’s not possible with Bitcoin unless it is changed. Rather than the continual trumpeting of any innate libertarian, free-market ethos to Bitcoin why isn’t there more appreciation that the natural evolution of private free money and autonomy is that the next person or group will come along, compete with and improve it, likely resigning the previous form to the dustbin.

Either Bitcoin adherents accept there are flaws and moves with the times, or any objective observer has to conclude it’s just a pyramid because it doesn’t work economically for the majority of economic participants who will rationally not adopt it when they work it out. And to be clear my perspective there is as simple as not discerning any great difference between one group of powerful cronies controlling the fortunes of everybody else and another - be that a government, us Bitcoiners or whoever. There is no special ‘Bitcoin State’ that rewrites the rules of monetary theory or libertarian ideology and to think otherwise is naive or corrupt.

What I find interesting is that bitcoin's economic design (block reward reduction, 21 million, deflationary ect) is probably eventually going to be what ends up causing bitcoin's success or failure. The technology behind bitcoin seems pretty solid at this point, so that's not so much of an issue now. But with ripple, XRP and how they choose to deal with it isn't going to be a critical factor in the success or failure of ripple. Ripple isn't about XRP. XRP is a sideshow which attracts a lot of attention but is ultimately irrelevant in the bigger picture.

Exactly.

That's why I said this back in October 2012 when Litecoin was at $0.04:


One thing that altcoin bring to the table is a larger volume; if for example bitcoin were to be the only coin it would mean that the early adopters hold, say 40% of all volume that ever gonna be. If litecoin became even with bitcoin however, it would mean that the early adopter would hold a much lower fraction and that future coins would become much more distributed.  I believe that neither bitcoin nor litecoin will be the mainstream cc, but rather a coin that meet many of the whish-list features AND becomes widely distributed from the start.

I would disagree with you because Bitcoin and to a lesser extent Litecoin have filled the #1 and #2 slots, so when people think of CC they gravitate towards the most useful one, which in this case means the largest user-base.  The bar was low until those slots were filled, but just as Facebook might not be the best social network it is still the dominant one because if you want to use a social network, it makes sense to use the one which is in use by the largest number of people.  Because those slots are now filled, any new coin coming up has to have actual advantages that would motivate people to move away from the status quo and to one of the other chains.  this is only possible if there are actual advantages to doing so, it's not enough to be "the same" because features aside, it's the size of the network that directly impacts the usablity.

I miss something?

I'm looking for suggestions of what you would consider a "Scam Coin" - What the benefit is of pre-mining, what alt-coins are NOT scamcoins.  Looking for people both for and against various coins, we want to represent a variety of perspectives.

This is absurd. This is anything but a documentary. It's an impressive piece of propaganda, but to be a documentary it needs to be more than "These bitcoins are the solution to everything and they will fellate you in your sleep"

I should be more clear... these companies will most likely be financial type companies that are involved in money moving already.   Why would they use this?  Low to no cost of implementation and maintenance while simultaneously allowing your customers more services.  There might be other reasons too.   But those would be the top one's I would think.   Through this interface you could send $120 US to someone by sending BTC,  or 300 EU by sending an equivalent in LTC.   If two banks you deal with are on the system you could send your money from one to the other account instantly.   A merchant would be able to accept 100's of currencies if they wanted to without using different merchant providers, you could send $100 from your bank account to your friend in Italy without having the extra step of sending it to a Paypal. etc. etc.  

The end user most likely won't be the one to choose this intially.  Most likely you will end up using Ripple because a company is using the system and you'll have a custom app to access it.

No..and it doesn't need to. The reality of the situation is that if a very small percentage of the world thinks "Hey..I think I want to use or hold a bitcoin" then we're moving multiple orders of magnitude higher.

What happens if 12 million people each want 1 bitcoin?

Really now? That would only be true for a largescale adoption is BTC price was in the millions. Of course, 'early adopters' would be happy, but little sally would have to be content with her $1 satashi.