Solution to The Bitcoin Foundation (the announcement)

[acoindr]

I would be more worried about corruption if bitcoin value exploded...which I don't think it will do without TBF. I see it as a catch 22...

I actually think Bitcoin value would explode either way eventually but TBF could accelerate it.

[acoindr]

Acoindr,

While others may call you a hater, troller, ect. I commend you.

Right now, you are the only one who said "Hey, there is something about this I dont like, so Im gonna make it better"

Instead of just complaining, you are showing effort, and an idea thats worth discussing.

I'd happily debate you any day, and if you come to New York City, first beers are on me! 

-Charlie

Thanks for the recognition, Charlie

Actually I don't see what I'm doing as being of my own creation. I think it's a natural progression of the market, and I'm simply fulfilling a role.

[acoindr]

Moderators: Please move this thread to the Alternative Currencies section as more than half of the OP is an alternative currency.

Have you not been paying attention? This is a discussion about Bitcoin, actually the concept of cryptocurrencies itself, and its ramifications and possible course as determined by the free market.

What's the matter, afraid of a little competition for Bitcoin? If people have no interest in the thread it will die away.

[greyhawk]

If people have no interest in the thread it will die away.

No it won't, seeing how you post 4 times in a row to bump it up.

[Portnoy]

The announcement of the Bitcoin Foundation has shaken this community; its thread received 50 plus pages and over 13K views in about 72 hours.

LOL

It seems to me the only ones who were shaken were a relatively few who posted the same paranoia over and over again.  

The exact same paranoia was posted in 50 plus pages?

Not all exactly the same. There was different types of paranoia mixed in with downright hating.

I am neutral myself, perhaps tending towards somewhat positive.   I don't see the foundation as being any danger to Bitcoin,
nor of it being a great force bringing awareness and light to the masses.  

There are many ways it can help, sure, along with many other factors.

Yes, I agree exactly with your last sentence. It's the "along with" other factors that raises concern.

You are concerned about other things helping bitcoin along with the foundation helping it? 
That's what I was saying. 

[acoindr]

If people have no interest in the thread it will die away.

No it won't, seeing how you post 4 times in a row to bump it up.

Well obviously I can't keep posting if people stop replying...

[AlexWhite]

I asked this when I was in Newbie jail and didn't get an answer:

Is Litecoin dying?  I looked at coblee's github (he is still the main ltc dev I think) and no commits in a few months.

Maybe ltc needs a foundation!

[deeplink]

Maybe ltc needs a foundation!

lol

[interlagos]

acoindr is spot on.

His mission is not to convince anybody to follow his way, but simply to show people the way things will play out.
Bitcoin is much bigger than a single crypto-currency. It is a hyper-dimensional concept which intersects with our 3D reality in a variety of ways. Intersections may appear as separate objects in space and time, but they really are just parts of a bigger more complex idea.

Imagine how fingers on your 3D hand would intersect with 2D plane - a bunch of independent circles here and there.
Similar thing happens when our plane of existence gets Bitcoin treatment. Instead of arguing about which finger is "the finger" I would say that we would need all those fingers when doing such a delicate and complex job as liberating humanity from oppressive grip of fiat.

Now from the market dynamics point of view the timing of events is so interesting that it hints at an intelligent design rather than being a mere coincidence. While Bitcoin Foundation is filling the vacuum in its own niche, a new vacuum forms in the mining business. As Bitcoin shifts to a specialized ASIC hardware, the general purpose hardware (CPUs and GPUs) become available for the next contender. This vacuum will be filled with a second most valued crypto-currency with independent hash algo, which is Litecoin.

This cycle would likely to continue as Litecoin shifts to ASIC mining at some point in the future until the market somewhat saturates with different coins filling all the necessary vacuums. The point of this thread is not to influence this process, but to point out the direction where to watch to see it unfold.

[acoindr]

I asked this when I was in Newbie jail and didn't get an answer:

Is Litecoin dying?  I looked at coblee's github (he is still the main ltc dev I think) and no commits in a few months.

Maybe ltc needs a foundation!

Well, no cryptocurrency really dies as long as at least two or more people use it. What can happen is it can become less likely people ever adopt it, though. For example, if a cryptocurrency had only 2 people with 70% of the coins it would be unlikely anyone else would adopt it.

I only recently looked into Litecoin, but quickly realized it had the most traction of all the other alt-coins presently. It has the highest market exchange rate after Bitcoin. It was in the $.04-.05 range when I looked into it 2 days ago, but it's now in the $.05-.06 range, about a 20% increase. Apparently it was once $.03. The alt-coin section of this forum is dominated mostly by Litecoin discussion/projects, as is the trading chat on btc-e.com. So I would say no it's not dying, but growing and of course that can speed up or even explode anytime.

Regarding a LTC foundation how DARE you even suggest it  

J/K   Of course that thought had crossed my mind. Yes, any alt-coin might gain a foundation just as Bitcoin has, but it wouldn't matter because concentration of power would be divided; and the more alt-coins with market prominence the more chance to escape from and/or divide centralized power.

[franky1]

some of the OP comments i agree with but this one i do not

If people think Bitcoin is becoming tainted with power/corruption they can vote with their feet and opt to use alternative currencies.

kinda sounded like if u dont like TBF u cant use bitcoin..

i use litecoin and BTC.. i certainly wont drop BTC if i in future disagree with TBF. its not like they are the police saying.. if u dont like our laws F**k off to a different country.

if i do not like them i just dont become a member and continue using bitcoin. i have seen no advantages a member personally gets/receives apart from deciding what the programmers next projects are.

so i do not see any major things against TBF, but i dont see big advantages to being a member either.

[acoindr]

As I said, the fork is simple, I refuse to update with changes that I disagree with. I continue using and mining Bitcoin with the existing rules. You don't think a core of the Bitcoin adopters are here because of the properties of Bitcoin? Do you think they would simply shrug their shoulders and accept changes that they disagree with?

What if the changes are not to the protocol?

Let me give what I think may be a good example. We're talking literally about money are we not? How many people on earth use money? Almost all of them. That's near 7 billion people.

Now, say TBF becomes powerful, widely popular, and corrupted. Millions, even billions of people download the software client from TBF because that's what's popular (see Windows). What if the Bitcoin client followed the protocol with no changes, but also gave a convenient screen listing businesses that accepted the currency... You click 'restaurants' and a list appears, 'dentists', a list appears, 'wedding photographers', anything, but what order is the list in? And how are listings shown? This is just a separate tab on the client so it has nothing to do with BTC operation, but it does have to do with power/influence over what million or billions of people think are the recommended businesses to go to all around the world. You don't think that's too much power for one organization to have?

[jgarzik]

if i do not like them i just dont become a member and continue using bitcoin. i have seen no advantages a member personally gets/receives apart from deciding what the programmers next projects are.

As has been repeatedly stated, Bitcoin Foundation will not be directing the dev team to work on specific projects.

More likely the reverse is true:  the community and dev team will suggest things that need funding (like Gavin's salary).  If the Foundation's members agree, it happens.  Otherwise, it doesn't.

[bg002h]

Trololol, you forgot to sell your SolidCoins? xD

Lol...I sold 1k solid coins right before the tiny market folded...I think I got a whopping 6 or 8 bitcoins for it.

[Serenata]

Although I consider myself a Bitcoin fan, I do see some points being made by the OP. There are too many arguments in my head but to sum things up I'd say: Alternate cryptocurrencies can't hurt Bitcoin if the Foundation is run smoothly; if it's not and major problems arise then those cryptocurrencies will save the day. I think it's good to have them around as this would also be a major reason for the Foundation not to fail.

/offtopic
I was very tempted to hit the magic button beside posts with big letters and single word replies, providing nothing at all in the discussion.

[acoindr]

Trololol, you forgot to sell your SolidCoins? xD

Lol...I sold 1k solid coins right before the tiny market folded...I think I got a whopping 6 or 8 bitcoins for it.

Interestingly enough I hadn't given alt-coins to Bitcoin much thought before now. I had a neutral to slightly unfavorable view of alt-coins which I described in an eBook I wrote called How to Grow Bitcoin. I said such spinoffs were inevitable and okay, but warned against anyone duping non-technical users into thinking a valueless spinoff was a coin with value, like Bitcoin.

When IOCoin launched, which I think was the first one, I barely read the forum post. I knew no alt-coin would really go anywhere because it would have to pull users/resources from Bitcoin, which being first to market had natural momentum.

Other alt-coins launched and I gave them the same disregard. I think that was true of most of the community, as evidenced by the near zero exchange rates.

What I hadn't really paid attention to was that later alt-coins actually tried to improve upon Bitcoin in some way. I knew there were differences, but in my opinion the properties Bitcoin already has are good enough to gain widespread mainstream adoption. For something to pose a serious challenge it would have to have a significant improvement over Bitcoin, something Bitcoin didn't or couldn't offer. Surely something with that kind of technology, I thought, wouldn't come for a long time.

I heard about the launch of SolidCoin, but didn't bother to look into them. As I understand them now they attempt to obtain value based on power consumption without a hard limit on total coins. I don't see how that would be a significant advantage.

Litecoins, however, seem to be more interesting. Litecoins do everything the same as Bitcoin with a few changes.  First, they are optimized for CPU mining, meaning more people might participate since everyone has a CPU but not everyone has or will invest in GPUs. Next, the blocks are mined faster resulting in faster confirmation times than Bitcoin. Last, there are about 4 times as many coins in total than Bitcoin, probably meaning better overall distribution.

There are already about as many Litecoins as Bitcoins due to their faster block creation rate. Their exchange rate from my understanding was in the $.03 range, more recently in the $.04-.05 range, and within the last couple days in the $.05-.06 range, leading to talk of bubbles on btc-e.com chat.

I think the market was already giving some traction to Litecoin as it attempted to fulfill its stated mission to become the silver to Bitcoin's gold. However, I think such progression was going to be slow, because there still wasn't a good enough reason for mainstream Bitcoin users to adopt litecoins over bitcoins. And obviously nobody else in the world knows of any of these cryptocurrencies.

But I think this "Bitcoin Foundation" event can be a catalyst for litecoin adoption. Litecoins can now offer a clear and significant reason for mainstream Bitcoin users to adopt it which Bitcoin can't offer, which is the ability to diminish market power overall of a power-consolidating Bitcoin foundation. It offers a choice. It's an entirely different system incompatible with Bitcoins, but with all the same desirable properties. There is no reason LTC couldn't be used everywhere BTC could. There is no disadvantage to using them, yet they offer tremendous wealth opportunity - as Bitcoin does - due to the fact most of the market that would eventually adopt them hasn't yet.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bitcoin is "Bitcoin's silver" learn about how/why multiple metals evolved as currency and you will see Litecoin isn't silver to anything.  

Now hypothetically niche alt-coins "could" develop in the future however they would need to solve some deficiency in Bitcoin (no the method of mining isn't a deficiency).  It is also possible some future alt-coin will replace Bitcoin (becoming a superior "gold") by providing a superior protocol.  However litecoin isn't going to accomplish either of those goals.

One example:  Bitcoin likely will be increasingly difficult to use in micro transactions.  The cost of securing the chain, combined with the perpetual cost of storing tx forever makes it ill suited for small tx (say $0.01 to $1.00).  A chain developed which can be merge mined and use a ledger type system which allows the transaction "tail" to be dropped after tx are deep enough in the chain would be useful.  By focusing on the aspects that would be optimal for micro tx the alt-chain could present REAL UTILITY =VALUE over the competing Bitcoin protocol.

Litecoin doesn't present any increased UTILITY.  It is a technological dead end.

[acoindr]

Geez, I've got a lot of work to do.

DeathAndTaxes, I consider you one of the smartest people on this forum (and that's saying something) yet you completely miss the point. Let me try to explain.

Bitcoin is "Bitcoin's silver" learn about how/why multiple metals evolved as currency and you will see Litecoin isn't silver to anything.  

I know exactly why metals evolved as currency. (And note some are quite valuable, like platinum, but not used as currency) The comparison of litecoins to bitcoins has nothing to do with the comparison of gold to silver except that a person would expect these cryptocurrencies to be "joined at the hip" price wise where one always leads the way, just as happens with gold and silver.

General consensus is gold rates higher than silver for aesthetics, while both are used for jewelry and similar application. There is also about 10 times as much silver mined annually as gold. These factors, among others, result in gold maintaining a significant price lead over silver. Central banks hold gold as a reserve, because people have valued it as money for thousands of years. For this reason it's often helpful to compare the value of a thing, anything, to gold to determine its true value. Silver exchange rates rise and fall in relative lockstep with gold with little variance.

So how does this relate to Litcoin/Bitecoin? Simple, the comparison is both cryptocurrencies are essentially the same thing with slight differences. Litecoin is comparable to Bitcoin in every way in terms of usage, but there will be about 4 times as many of them total. That means whatever price the market assigns to bitcoins could also be assigned to litecoin, but divided by 4.

Now hypothetically niche alt-coins "could" develop in the future however they would need to solve some deficiency in Bitcoin (no the method of mining isn't a deficiency).  

Wrong, sorry. It's not hypothetical; it has already happened, many times in fact. Alt-coins have already developed and it's arguable that any of them solve a deficiency in Bitcoin.

What I believe you meant to express is that alt-coins in the future might launch and garner real market value. However, this is also off the mark. Alt-coins exist right now with real market value. It's measured in the low cent range, but it's value nonetheless. (remember early Bitcoin)

It is also possible some future alt-coin will replace Bitcoin (becoming a superior "gold") by providing a superior protocol.

True.

However litecoin isn't going to accomplish either of those goals.

I didn't suggest that it would, and it doesn't have to. I guess I haven't considered that most people are only familiar with one currency dominating a market since this is what most of the world is familiar with.

However, a better market actually involves one with competing currencies where market participants can hold one or more and use one(s) that suit them best in ways that suit them best, whether as a store of value, for transactions, special use cases, or even political reasons (what I suggest for litecoin, and how some view gold vs fiat). This doesn't mean any currency must uproot any other, but rather that they exist simultaneously and have fluctuating values relative to one another.

One example:  Bitcoin likely will be increasingly difficult to use in micro transactions.  The cost of securing the chain, combined with the perpetual cost of storing tx forever makes it ill suited for small tx (say $0.01 to $1.00).  A chain developed which can be merge mined and use a ledger type system which allows the transaction "tail" to be dropped after tx are deep enough in the chain would be useful.  By focusing on the aspects that would be optimal for micro tx the alt-chain could present REAL UTILITY =VALUE over the competing Bitcoin protocol.

Litecoin doesn't present any increased UTILITY.  It is a technological dead end.

Real utility does equal value, but what you fail to consider is there are various forms of utility, not all of which are technical. Value can come about various ways. The value I suggest Litecoin could have has nothing to do with technical superiority to Bitcoin. In fact, it would serve the purpose I suggest if it was identical in every way to Bitcoin except its name and the fact that it's a different coin/network.

[firefop]

I think the whole foundation discussion is starting us (the community) on a slippery slope. The idea that it eventually turns into a corrupt regulatory entity isn't an enjoyable conversation.

That being said, I think the 'refuse to update' crowd has it right - if Gavin & other developers go off the deep end and make changes that are bad for the network - I simply won't use it. That may mean getting off the train entirely if the version I'm using loses popularity and becomes worthless. I know Gavin does what he does for love of the ideals bitcoin embodies. That's the same reason I (and some other portion of the community) are involved in it. I see bitcoin as having the potential to incite political change in the world at large.

I for one refuse to make decisions based on fear. Yes, I can see how the foundation could lead to badness... but it hasn't happened yet - and I'm not abandoning bitcoin just because it could eventually lead to that. To even suggest a pre-emptive more to an altcoin... shows everyone that you aren't a supporter of bitcoin... but merely a speculator trying to make a quick/easy gain. Nothing wrong with that, use the network however you like - but please don't run around pretending the sky is falling when it isn't.

[crazy_rabbit]

I think this has been blown out of proportion. The nay-sayers and armchair developers have a million opinions and want to just sit around and complain.

If someone thinks there is a better way, you're free to do it. This isn't a slippery slope- BST, GLBSE, Bitcoinica,PIRATE, and the list goes on- these are slippery slopes. Poorly secured or run services, or outright frauds that destroy our credibility. This is the slippery slope to a cesspool of inaction and ponzi schemes.

If anyone has a better foundation, stop complaining and build it.

 

I think the whole foundation discussion is starting us (the community) on a slippery slope. The idea that it eventually turns into a corrupt regulatory entity isn't an enjoyable conversation.

That being said, I think the 'refuse to update' crowd has it right - if Gavin & other developers go off the deep end and make changes that are bad for the network - I simply won't use it. That may mean getting off the train entirely if the version I'm using loses popularity and becomes worthless. I know Gavin does what he does for love of the ideals bitcoin embodies. That's the same reason I (and some other portion of the community) are involved in it. I see bitcoin as having the potential to incite political change in the world at large.

I for one refuse to make decisions based on fear. Yes, I can see how the foundation could lead to badness... but it hasn't happened yet - and I'm not abandoning bitcoin just because it could eventually lead to that. To even suggest a pre-emptive more to an altcoin... shows everyone that you aren't a supporter of bitcoin... but merely a speculator trying to make a quick/easy gain. Nothing wrong with that, use the network however you like - but please don't run around pretending the sky is falling when it isn't.