Why testnet bitcoins have 0$ value?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Since they are useful for the newbies developers why do they have 0$ value? They are exactly like real bitcoins but they do not participate into the main network.

[Chlotide]

The same reason why this has 0 value too:


The same reason game developers don't charge for demo games.
Their only purpose are to be used in testing stuff like transactions, wallets, implementations etc.
Once they would somehow be worth anything the whole system will be reseted and rollback the test blockchain. Happened already a few times.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Once they would somehow be worth anything the whole system will be reseted and rollback the test blockchain. Happened already a few times.

Wait, how will the test blockchain be reseted? No one controls the network.

[Chlotide]

Read this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5211573

[hatshepsut93]

1. Testnet difficulty is much lower and also has a special reset mechanism, so it means it's much less secure than mainnet. This means that testnet is not suitable for actual value transactions.

2. Value is determined by supply and demand, and testnet coins are in high supply, as they can be claimed from faucets, while demand for them is very small, almost all of it comes from developers. Unlike with mainnet, there's no exchanges or speculation or financial activity.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Unlike with mainnet, there's no exchanges or speculation or financial activity.

There were at least: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet
But only since testnet2. In testnet3 no exchanges have been made.

[dothebeats]

Play money wherein developers are testing their new ideas and new implementations before it gets uploaded to the main code. Think of it like it's a mock testing/trial run before the actual things gets introduced to the public. Also in here, most devs go ham with their code before they can get the formula right on their own iteration of bitcoin or be it bitcoin itself. Testnet bitcoins can also be obtained easily, but is much less secure compared to mainnet thus rendering it unusable, insecure and unfit for real-world monetary exchange of value.

[pooya87]

Unlike with mainnet, there's no exchanges or speculation or financial activity.

There were at least: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet
But only since testnet2. In testnet3 no exchanges have been made.

i don't think there were any testnet2 exchanges, it was just people doing P2P trades which made no sense because of the purpose of testnet coins and the entire network. adding any kind of value to those coins defeats that purpose so it has to be reset if something like that happened.

[mocacinno]

--snip--

AFAIK that's reason developer moving to testnet3, people with ASIC would mine testnet Bitcoin and sold it to desperate developer while other developer either barely got any testnet bitcoin or moving to regtest (basically lesser version of testnet and limited on local network).

And it's about time this reset happens again... Current block reward is ~0.19 tBTC, the difficulty however is usually ~13.3M, with the occasional drop to 1, then building up to >10M over the course of hours/days...

The estimated hashrate is:
D * 2**32 / 600
13.300.000 * 2**32 /600 = ~95 Th

Yup, that's right, if we "guess" nobody would be dumb enough to actually run a profitable, latest gen, miner on the testnet, so we're probably talking about S7's or less, we can conclude that at this moment, there probably are the equivalent of 20 S7 ASIC's running on the testnet...


Since i started my tbtc faucet, i've been solo mining with my cpu using 2 threads, trying to find a block when diff drops to 1 (if no block has been found for 20 minutes) or when the diff drops to 1 just before a retarget, so i try to hit a block before diff climbs back to a value i cannot cpu mine anymore.

In the many months i've been cpu mining, i've found like 10 blocks, totaling like ~2,5 tBTC... If i were a developer that needed these tBTC to do big projects, i'd be forced to buy a recent gen ASIC and start to actually mine the testnet with an expensive ASIC just to get the tBTC i need to develop.

I've heared people saying that any development you can do with 1 tBTC should also be possible with 0.0001 tBTC, just by editing the sourcecode. I only think that's partially true, some developments just need large quantities of tBTC. Imagine building a mixer, or an exchange, or a high traffic ecommerce system and having to work with 0.01 tBTC to toroughly test your development. Values would start to get really, really, really small, and fees would basically burn your 0.01 tBTC after a couple of minutes of high volume testing.

I've also been criticized for asking collateral whenever i lend out tBTC to somebody i don't know... The matter of the fact is: tBTC might be worthless, but at current diff and block rewards it is by no means free to mine... I would never ever sell tBTC, but if i lend some out, i would want the most of it back after the lender finishes testing.

[gentlemand]

I've heared people saying that any development you can do with 1 tBTC should also be possible with 0.0001 tBTC, just by editing the sourcecode. I only think that's partially true, some developments just need large quantities of tBTC. Imagine building a mixer, or an exchange, or a high traffic ecommerce system and having to work with 0.01 tBTC to toroughly test your development. Values would start to get really, really, really small, and fees would basically burn your 0.01 tBTC after a couple of minutes of high volume testing.

I've also been criticized for asking collateral whenever i lend out tBTC to somebody i don't know... The matter of the fact is: tBTC might be worthless, but at current diff and block rewards it is by no means free to mine... I would never ever sell tBTC, but if i lend some out, i would want the most of it back after the lender finishes testing.

This is an aspect of it that seems broken to me. I've seen people pleading for test BTC and never receiving any. The expense of mining when it spikes and the difficulty of obtaining coins must hold back innovation to an extent.

[BrewMaster]

And it's about time this reset happens again...
we can conclude that at this moment, there probably are the equivalent of 20 S7 ASIC's running on the testnet...

if your conclusion here were correct then resetting the testnet is not going to change anything. there still are going to be a lot of ASICs mining tbtc and it may even increase if the rest happened (reward went up to 50) and we still wouldn't be able to mine it using CPU.

[mocacinno]

And it's about time this reset happens again...
we can conclude that at this moment, there probably are the equivalent of 20 S7 ASIC's running on the testnet...

if your conclusion here were correct then resetting the testnet is not going to change anything. there still are going to be a lot of ASICs mining tbtc and it may even increase if the rest happened (reward went up to 50) and we still wouldn't be able to mine it using CPU.

The reason for the reset is twofold (IMHO)

First: Eventough the network is "flooded" with ASIC's, i  still succeeded in CPU mining about 10 blocks since i started my faucet... Mainly because the hashrate sometimes drops (for some reason) and if after 20 minutes no block was solved the difficulty drops to 1 for 1 block. At this point, you have a shot at solving a block. If this drop in hashrate coincides with a retarget, the next 2016 blocks will have diff 1, then 2, then 4,....
However, at the moment, solving a block only gives a coinbase reward of 0.19 tBTC. Not enough for really big projects.

If the testnet would have been reset, i would have mined >500 tBTC instead of 2.5.

Secondly: resetting the testnet would send a message to anybody burning electricity by mining on the testnet with a power-hungry ASIC... You can burn as much electricity as you like, we'll still reset the testnet and your tBTC stash is gone. Next time only cpu mine when you need tBTC and keep your ASIC away.

In the ideal situation, i guess some devtime might need to be allocated to the testnet. There must be things that can be implemented on the testnet to make it a little less prone to ASIC-mining, or at least make sure the block reward doesn't drop as fast. It is true, however, the more of these features get implemented, the bigger the difference between the testnet and the main net gets. However, as it stands, the testnet is almost "used up". If you need tBTC for a project it's very hard to get any decent amount for testing. This wasn't the reason why the testnet existed...
For example, the coinbase reward halving on the testnet could be disabled, the POW algo could be changed, the testnet could be reset at each new core release, unused unspent outputs could be truncated after x months (to discourage hodling), a huuuuge premine could be implemented by the designers, and they could run their own faucet with claims of 1-10 tBTC.

[avikz]

Since they are useful for the newbies developers why do they have 0$ value? They are exactly like real bitcoins but they do not participate into the main network.

The answer lies in your question itself. Because it is a test bitcoin and thus doesn't have a value! However,  if any collector wants to collect it for his online archive, it may have a value! Who knows! The world has a good number of mad population!

[BrewMaster]

For example, the coinbase reward halving on the testnet could be disabled, the POW algo could be changed, the testnet could be reset at each new core release, unused unspent outputs could be truncated after x months (to discourage hodling), a huuuuge premine could be implemented by the designers, and they could run their own faucet with claims of 1-10 tBTC.

yeah, it makes a lot more sense now. but i don't think we should change testnet that much specially things you mentioned here. as you said it increases the difference between the two networks and at some point testnet could become a full blown altcoin instead. not to mention that someone might want to test their POW related code (mining, reward halving, the algorithm itself,...).
i think i said this before to you, but i say it again: most (maybe even all) cases are solved using regtest instead. the other day i was reading about how you could also add another node to your regtest node .