Bitcoins are experimental beta software. It will be replaced.

[evoorhees]

There are a lot of flaws with bitcoins

List me the flaws, and I'll refute them.

Any I can't refute, will be fixed either by an upgrade to Bitcoin software, or an entrepreneur who fills in the gap.

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[evoorhees]

It is obviously far, far superior to the original old bitcoin if you are among those who believe not halving coin generation is far, far superior to the old original bitcoin's periodic halving.

-MarkM-

I am not one of those people. There is no value in allowing coins to be generated forever, not even for the miners.

[Minor]

Its open source, of course everyone can write his own client. But if someone changes the protocol in a way like "send 10% of all transactions to themselves" 51% of all miners would have to agree to use that protocol, too.

That isn't exactly correct.

Any breaking change must be supported by EVERYONE.  Users, miners, exchanges, merchants, etc.

So if 51% of miners implemented that change those who disagreed could continue to use the "old/existing" Bitcoin where miners can't steal 10% of all coins.   The 51% of miners would simply be mining worthless blocks which have no value.

As long as some users and miners continue to support the current protocol it will exist.  What gets kinda meta is what is Bitcoin.

Say some miners decide to fork the protocol to keep the block reward at 50 BTC.  Since this is a breaking change it doesn't really matter if 20% of miners support it, or 80%.  The "51% check as in 51% attack" doesn't apply since each version of the protocol sees the other as completely invalid regardless of how much mining power supports it.  Now lets make it extra confusing. Lets say roughly half of the users support this change and upgrade their nodes but roughly half don't.  Some merchants support the "old" coins, some the "new" coins, and some support both (by implementing both nodes).  The same applies to exchanges.

Essentially at this point you have to completely independent protocols.  Which one is Bitcoin?   Obviously both camps will claim they are the real Bitcoin.

It is very unlikely that a merchant would support both coins because all the old coins would exist in both chains and could be double spent: once as old bitcoins and once a new bitcoins.

[dancupid]

Bitcoin isn't software, it's a protocol like email.
Google didn't invent their own email protocol when they developed gmail - infact gmail would be useless if it used it's own protocol because you would only be able to communicate with other gmail users. The BBC would not be able to send an email to a gmail user from an @BBC.com email address.
Protocols are very resilient - even when they become outdated because they are just protocols without a hidden agenda.

[Piper67]

Bitcoin isn't software, it's a protocol like email.
Google didn't invent their own email protocol when they developed gmail - infact gmail would be useless if it used it's own protocol because you would only be able to communicate with other gmail users. The BBC would not be able to send an email to a gmail user from an @BBC.com email address.
Protocols are very resilient - even when they become outdated because they are just protocols without a hidden agenda.

Precisely... and the original protocols are still alive. It's quite possible to improve upon them, when necessary... with Bitcoin, it ain't necessary.

[waspoza]

[wabber]

It is very unlikely that a merchant would support both coins because all the old coins would exist in both chains and could be double spent: once as old bitcoins and once a new bitcoins.

Which doesn't matter because that should be accounted in the value of each coin.

Example (using USD to show the value):
1BTC today equals 10$

Now theres a split and 20% of the people continue using bitcoinA and 80% continue using bitcoinB.
1BTCA then equals about 2$
1BTCB then equals about 8$

It's only a rough example but it should be pretty much like that in reality. As you can see there's actually no disadvantage for a merchant accepting both bitcoin versions. At a chain fork the value doesn't simply double because of being able to spend the same coin 2 times. The 2 coins aren't equal and they can have different exchange rates.
 

[byronbb]

I have always been amazed by the resiliency of IRC.

[jgarzik]

I have always been amazed by the resiliency of IRC.

IRC ops, you mean.  IRC itself is easy to DoS.

DDoS on networks is handled manually.  Most ISPs refuse to host IRC servers.  etc.

[Seal]

There are a lot of flaws with bitcoins, and it pioneered cryptocurrency. But do we still dial up to BBSes today? Use gopher? No, it has being replaced by the world wide web. Bitcoins will be replaced, don't put your life savings in.

Come on. 

Bitcoin isn't software, it's a protocol like email.
Google didn't invent their own email protocol when they developed gmail - infact gmail would be useless if it used it's own protocol because you would only be able to communicate with other gmail users. The BBC would not be able to send an email to a gmail user from an @BBC.com email address.
Protocols are very resilient - even when they become outdated because they are just protocols without a hidden agenda.

... in technology, the first decent implementation of almost any standard that is adopted by a majority will always succeed.

[Desolator]

Precisely... and the original protocols are still alive. It's quite possible to improve upon them,

That's what I don't get.  If anyone could arbitrarily alter the protocol, they could rewrite it to route 10% of all transactions to themselves So can't the protocol never be altered ever without shutting down bitcoin and starting over with a new chain?  Who could alter the protocol and how?

The way I understand it, the writers of the bitcoin client software could just rewrite the code to say whatever they want and say that is the new protocol.  As long as it doesn't contradict existing blocks, it would technically "work."  But if there were 3 bitcoin clients and 1 decided to do things differently, their data would get rejected by everyone who has the other 2 and thus the network as a whole.  That's why I'm a little concerned that the entire network is in the hands of a couple people who wrote the one and only client software.  Didn't they publicly release the code too?!?!  There should be as many bitcoin clients as torrent clients at this point.  For safety reasons, someone write another one! lol.

(of course then if there were 100 clients, any one of them could be rigged to steal your wallet so if you want to use an alternative client, you have no idea if it's legit or not)

[adamstgBit]

Precisely... and the original protocols are still alive. It's quite possible to improve upon them,

That's what I don't get.  If anyone could arbitrarily alter the protocol, they could rewrite it to route 10% of all transactions to themselves So can't the protocol never be altered ever without shutting down bitcoin and starting over with a new chain?  Who could alter the protocol and how?

The way I understand it, the writers of the bitcoin client software could just rewrite the code to say whatever they want and say that is the new protocol.  As long as it doesn't contradict existing blocks, it would technically "work."  But if there were 3 bitcoin clients and 1 decided to do things differently, their data would get rejected by everyone who has the other 2 and thus the network as a whole.  That's why I'm a little concerned that the entire network is in the hands of a couple people who wrote the one and only client software.  Didn't they publicly release the code too?!?!  There should be as many bitcoin clients as torrent clients at this point.  For safety reasons, someone write another one! lol.

(of course then if there were 100 clients, any one of them could be rigged to steal your wallet so if you want to use an alternative client, you have no idea if it's legit or not)

think about like this
bitcoin protocol 1.1.0 - works fine everyone loves it
bitcoin protocol 1.1.1 - works even better everyone loves it
bitcoin protocol 2.0.0 - not everyone agrees to this change... buttcoin protocol 1.0.0 is created! some stay with bitcoin and other move to buttcoin.

the protocol can be altered, but everyone has to agree on it, if anyone disagrees then a fork can be created.

so far the forks we've seen have nothing to do with a disagreement in protocol change, its just some guys looking to make money by starting a bitcoin fork.

I do not think the protocol will ever be changed so much so that people start to disagree and create forks.
honestly i dont give a @#$& how it works as long as it keeps its core properties.

I say dont be afraid of protocol changes, embrace them for what they are; Improvements.

 

[robbonz]

There are a lot of flaws with bitcoins, and it pioneered cryptocurrency. But do we still dial up to BBSes today? Use gopher? No, it has being replaced by the world wide web. Bitcoins will be replaced, don't put your life savings in.

All posts of this type are part of this highly clever money making scheme...

Step 1: Sell bitcoins
Step 2: Go on forum, and "discredit" bitcoins
Step 3: Observe massive price crash
Step 4: Buy back bitcoins
Step 5: Profit!?!?

Good luck buddy, you're gonna need it.

[byronbb]

I have always been amazed by the resiliency of IRC.

IRC ops, you mean.  IRC itself is easy to DoS.

DDoS on networks is handled manually.  Most ISPs refuse to host IRC servers.  etc.

I meant its 2012 and irc still exists.

[markm]

Nothing has improved upon IRC yet as far as I know, except maybe MUDs with channels between them if you like MUDs.

(Sure a MUD adds a whole bunch of crap many users might not have use for, but at least it does that at the server end not, like browsers, hogging the user's resources.)

-MarkM-

[BkkCoins]

That's why I'm a little concerned that the entire network is in the hands of a couple people who wrote the one and only client software.  Didn't they publicly release the code too?!?!  There should be as many bitcoin clients as torrent clients at this point.  For safety reasons, someone write another one! lol.

Maybe you should learn a bit more about Bitcoin. There are quite a few clients around now. That doesn't really matter because it's the protocol that is important. If a client tries to generate transactions not accepted by other clients or by miners the transactions don't get accepted into blocks. They get dropped. All the clients I'm aware of are open source software and you can get the source and read it yourself. Most of them are on GitHub, easy to checkout, fork and modify. You can create your own client if you want. But it has to work according to what others will accept or - as we've been talking about here, you end up forking with some group of users using your own new protocol. See DevCoin, NameCoin, LiteCoin, BkkCoin, etcCoin.

[dissipate]

There are a lot of flaws with bitcoins, and it pioneered cryptocurrency. But do we still dial up to BBSes today? Use gopher? No, it has being replaced by the world wide web. Bitcoins will be replaced, don't put your life savings in.

Bitcoin is not just software. Bitcoin happens to be a protocol, and as it becomes more popular and entrenched as the de facto cryptocurrency, it will be near impossible to replace it with a new cryptocurrency. It's called the network effect. If people can't be bothered to try a different social network than Facebook, they sure as heck are not going to be bothered to switch to a new cryptocurrency (and certainly not on a whim).

[markm]

Browsers actually include gopher still don't they? Wasn't one of the selling points of the early browsers that they did all the usual stuff like gopher and ftp plus also had this newfangled web thing too? Did they ever drop gopher support?

-MarkM-

[phatsphere]

Did they ever drop gopher support?

yes, but things like "extensions" or "plugins" save those, who really need gopher.

google told me this: http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/

[Etlase2]

Bitcoin is not just software. Bitcoin happens to be a protocol, and as it becomes more popular and entrenched as the de facto cryptocurrency, it will be near impossible to replace it with a new cryptocurrency. It's called the network effect. If people can't be bothered to try a different social network than Facebook, they sure as heck are not going to be bothered to switch to a new cryptocurrency (and certainly not on a whim).

Because facebook was the first social network

Browsers actually include gopher still don't they? Wasn't one of the selling points of the early browsers that they did all the usual stuff like gopher and ftp plus also had this newfangled web thing too? Did they ever drop gopher support?

-MarkM-

I don't remember netscape ever supporting gopher natively. Lynx probably did, but lynx was text-based so ehhh