A fair and strong Bitcoin fork design exploration, "Faircoin"

[markm]

...and the system will eventually be forced to survive on transaction fees when it's vibrant enough. It's really a brilliant setup.

You can eventually force a coin to survive on transaction fees today.  This is another reason you should not be so upset at early adopters, 1/2 the coins are still out there.  I would not call it brilliant, it is really a flaw.  However, it did get a lot of interest in the coin.  Someday the coin is going to have to survive on transaction fees.  Basically you guessing whether it can.

There are several chains that have to survive on transaction fees.

So few people mined them that they were too vulnerable, thus only GRouPcoin stuck it out as a blockchain so the rest could watch how it survives as an aid in making their decision as to when to go back to blockchain form. Yet GRouPcoin does not survive only on transaction fees, so those that moved away temporarily from blockchain format are waiting not only for merged mining to be robust, as demonstrated to them by GRouPcoin's actual experience as a merged mined coin, but also for their expected transaction fees to be sufficient to attract merged mining.

Since GRouPcoin are not being valued very highly, the fact that GRouPcoin mints coins need not subtract from GRouPcoin's usefulness as a "weathervane" for deciding when/if it is "safe enough" for all the transaction-fees-only coins to move back to blockchain format, since the amount of value miners obtain by merged-mining GRouPcoins is hopefully, at its current low valuation, no higher than the amount of value the transaction fees alone of a more reasonably valued coin would be. (See http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html for relative values.)

-MarkM-

[crazy_rabbit]

You know, an easier solution might just be to reduce the coins in the reward. One should not underestimate the power of people's psychological reaction to big numbers. The idea that some PPC holders have hundreds of thousands if not millions of coins is quite silly and psychologically people will over estimate the value or underestimate the value based on how many zeros there are and where the decimal point it. Terracoin seems interesting because early adopters will have a tough time accumulating millions of coins. The difficulty adjusts fast to compensate for huge miners that might jump on board, and the pay out is 20TRC per block, which is less then bitcoin.

Someone dumping 1000 coins makes a far less dramatic impression psychologically on the members of the market then dumping 100000000 coins does.

That's just silly.
Did you play Diablo3? There, items are traded for millions of gold and people are accustomed to it. In wow the situation is entire different with much smaller numbers. But the end result is the same.
We simply substitute the zeros in our heads and arrive at the same behaviour.

I might be out on a limb here but I suspect it seems silly to you BECAUSE you play Diablo3. I'm in the majority here when I say I don't play Diablo3, or even videogames for that matter. Most people don't actually substitute the zeros in their heads and the redenomination of currencies when there get to be too many zeros happens by central banks all the time. Infact Iran is up for one very soon: http://www.alsumaria.tv/news/56866/iraq-to-cut-off-dinar-zeros-by-january-2013/en

The central question for all cryptocurrencies long term success is if we are building a money system people can use or a money system that only 'Diablo3' players can use. If America still can't get on the metric system, you're not going to get people to wrap their heads around .00150243601BTC.

That said, even for your fellow Diablo3 players who are doing the substitution probably are just rounding to the nearest quarter million more often then not. The technical increase in precision is lost in practice if people just don't want to bother with the numbers and round up for convenience.

If you need a real-world example, just look at real estate prices. People don't advertise to sell homes for 1235469 USD, do they? They sell them for 1.3 million.

All that precision might be necessary for calculating taxes and bank loans, etc... (or the financial 'diablo3' players) but if buyers and sellers didn't need to do that, a seller and buyer would settle for 1.3 million in cash and leave it at that.

It's our arrogance as numerically orientated, technologically literate, an logically reasoned people to assume everyone is as 'efficient' as we are. And that arrogance could be the difference between failure and success.

[Richy_T]

I'd like to propose the "Really fair coin (with social justice)". At midnight GMT, all the coins are added together and evenly divided between all users. This solves the early adopter and hoarding problems and since everyone has access to cash, the rfcoin economy should be booming.

[crazy_rabbit]

I'd like to propose the "Really fair coin (with social justice)". At midnight GMT, all the coins are added together and evenly divided between all users. This solves the early adopter and hoarding problems and since everyone has access to cash, the rfcoin economy should be booming.

CommieCoin?

[Richy_T]

The central question for all cryptocurrencies long term success is if we are building a money system people can use or a money system that only 'Diablo3' players can use. If America still can't get on the metric system, you're not going to get people to wrap their heads around .00150243601BTC.

That's about 1.5 Millis or 1502 Mikes.



When I was younger, one GBP was worth about 1000 Italian Lira. They have since tweaked that but I don't think it was a big issue (other than being a bit embarrassing for the Italians)

[crazy_rabbit]

The central question for all cryptocurrencies long term success is if we are building a money system people can use or a money system that only 'Diablo3' players can use. If America still can't get on the metric system, you're not going to get people to wrap their heads around .00150243601BTC.

That's about 1.5 Millis or 1502 Mikes.

I think "Mike" might catch on, BTW. :-)

[ElectricMucus]

FYI I did quit playing 2 months ago, partly because of economic issues. (It's prone to inflation due to Botfarms selling ingame gold for money)

So you have a point there crazy_rabbit.
However the issue wouldn't be solved by choosing any arbitrary scale and hard-code it into the software. Of course it's more convenient to deal in a certain range of magnitude more familiar to us.
But that wouldn't solve any economic problems like inflation, deflation and stagnation. Only the right model coupled with the right social aspect can do that.



Richy_T, I encourage you to leave this thread.

[Richy_T]

The central question for all cryptocurrencies long term success is if we are building a money system people can use or a money system that only 'Diablo3' players can use. If America still can't get on the metric system, you're not going to get people to wrap their heads around .00150243601BTC.

That's about 1.5 Millis or 1502 Mikes.

I think "Mike" might catch on, BTW. :-)

There's quite a good thread on it somewhere. (Can't find it right now). I think it used "Millie" for the thousandths rather than Milli

[Richy_T]

Richy_T, I encourage you to leave this thread.

I would tell you what I would encourage you to do but I don't want a ban.

[ElectricMucus]

Richy_T, I encourage you to leave this thread.

I would tell you what I would encourage you to do but I don't want a ban.

Nah, you'd be safe.
My point: If you feel threatened by us discussing innovating the cryptocurrency concept you shouldn't make it so obvious.

[Richy_T]

It's actually on the bitcoin wiki:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Units

[markm]

Think of DIablo3, WoW, EVE Online etc botfarms as CPU mining.

http://devtome.org/wiki/index.php?title=CPU_mining

Afterall with even litecoin moving to GPUs, miners still need things to keep their CPUs busy, right?

The page linked is a start at exploring such CPU mining. (You need unpredictable-path "random" stuff like scripted non player characters in multiplayer online games have to deal with in order to stay in realms where CPUs outperform GPUs...)

-MarkM-

[crazy_rabbit]

FYI I did quit playing 2 months ago, partly because of economic issues. (It's prone to inflation due to Botfarms selling ingame gold for money)

So you have a point there crazy_rabbit.
However the issue wouldn't be solved by choosing any arbitrary scale and hard-code it into the software. Of course it's more convenient to deal in a certain range of magnitude more familiar to us.
But that wouldn't solve any economic problems like inflation, deflation and stagnation. Only the right model coupled with the right social aspect can do that.
.

That's true, and maybe Satoshi thought about that. Hence, we don't have BTC millionaires (yet) and I find it interesting that the price tends to hover around either 2.5, 5 or ten dollars. The other price ranges feel more volatile. Perhaps it's just psychology. :-)

At the same time though, we do have 8 decimal places of precision so all the technical things have been accounted for as well.

BTW: I like your tag line. Scam or Legit? You don't quite know before hand. :-)

[Richy_T]

Nah, you'd be safe.
My point: If you feel threatened by us discussing innovating the cryptocurrency concept you shouldn't make it so obvious.

OK, we're good then.

I'm not feeling threatened. My original post was more satirical. A lot of the original poster's concerns seemed to be based on some perceived need for fairness and the solutions he was suggesting either seemed to further unbalance things, damage the chances of adoption of the currency or both. The motivation seemed to be to want to get a share of the loot once all the work had been done. One might look to the story of the little red hen.

Everything about Bitcoin appears to have been done for a reason and those reasons seem to have been calculated by someone who was both a genius and had some serious experience in the field. It's not perfect for sure but it seems to me that every part of the spec is at least "in the ball park". So there really needs to be a very good reason to change any of those decisions. One does alter an aircraft and take away the front window and yoke because it's not "fair" to the passengers.

With that said, I'm up for getting into the nitty-gritty of things so let's jump on in.

[ElectricMucus]

Richy_T: People often try to hide their fear behind sarcasm. Since you think Bitcoin is perfect there is no point with you being here, is it? We are discussing an alternative to perfection, that's a waste of time.

FYI I did quit playing 2 months ago, partly because of economic issues. (It's prone to inflation due to Botfarms selling ingame gold for money)

So you have a point there crazy_rabbit.
However the issue wouldn't be solved by choosing any arbitrary scale and hard-code it into the software. Of course it's more convenient to deal in a certain range of magnitude more familiar to us.
But that wouldn't solve any economic problems like inflation, deflation and stagnation. Only the right model coupled with the right social aspect can do that.
.

That's true, and maybe Satoshi thought about that. Hence, we don't have BTC millionaires (yet) and I find it interesting that the price tends to hover around either 2.5, 5 or ten dollars. The other price ranges feel more volatile. Perhaps it's just psychology. :-)

At the same time though, we do have 8 decimal places of precision so all the technical things have been accounted for as well.

Yes it is clear Satoshi choose the number of coins to be a certain value with a specific purpose, the problem is that the current paradigm present in this forum (Bitcoinism) tends to promote driving the value up to the point where common day goods would be traded in fractional values. (The whole perpetual early adoption thing)
The problem with Bitcoin is that the ever reducing block reward encourages this ideology and that's the reason why I think it should be changed.

BTW: I like your tag line. Scam or Legit? You don't quite know before hand. :-)

thanks!

[Richy_T]

Think of DIablo3, WoW, EVE Online etc botfarms as CPU mining.

http://devtome.org/wiki/index.php?title=CPU_mining

Afterall with even litecoin moving to GPUs, miners still need things to keep their CPUs busy, right?

The page linked is a start at exploring such CPU mining. (You need unpredictable-path "random" stuff like scripted non player characters in multiplayer online games have to deal with in order to stay in realms where CPUs outperform GPUs...)

-MarkM-

Would that be more like PC mining (player character). The strength of the CPU would not really be an issue.

Minecraft might be more of a fit though. I think a mod has even been suggested that would allow mining for actual BTC in the game.

[markm]

The major strength of CPUs is forked decision-trees. If it is not known even which planet one might end up on, or even, without some analysis of price lists from various planets, which planets offer the best rates of return for a given set of skills and state of peace, war, alliance or whatever between planets and the nations on those planets, it is hard to hard-code a fixed set of actions that will work constantly.

I suppose though I am really meaning PC mining as in Personal Computer mining, since the ability to keep historic prices on disk to compute trends and so on is also something GPUs and ASICs are not optimum at.

Daytrading automatically would be an example of the kind of mining I am thinking of.

Basically it is a matter of teaching your computer to make money automatically 24/7.

Once upon a time posting messages worked well, gradually the rules posting had to follow got harder and harder, like instead of only post to no more than 5 newsgroups the same post, it started getting into whether the post involved products or services for sale.

Once upon a time generating web-pages worked. You could generate gigabytes of pages of Yahoo search results on a topic and Yahoo would rate it number one because apparently it thought its own results were the most relevant possible content about the topic.

Once upon a time simply having autosurf programs running 24/7 in browsers worked. Heck that one still works somewhat for some people it just takes a heck of a lot of pageviews to earn, so that the electricity and network-bandwidth cost becomes more than the thing makes unless the pages it is showing to other "surfers" suck the rare actually live human viewers of the occassional page (e.g. people setting up still thus actually seeing some pages other people are showing) into extremely efficient marketing-funnels.

And so on. Mining World of Warcraft gold is really just yet another "how to rake in money automatically" plug-in.

See Total Automation Project, which was known as Money for Dummies until the "xxxxx for dummies" corp complained about it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040803020712/http://isp.knotwork.com/dummies/

See also Makemoney Knotwork: Toward a GNU "make money":

http://web.archive.org/web/20070429184251/http://www.makemoney.knotwork.com/

-MarkM-

[Richy_T]

Richy_T: People often try to hide their fear behind sarcasm. Since you think Bitcoin is perfect there is no point with you being here, is it? We are discussing an alternative to perfection, that's a waste of time.

It's not perfect, as I said. Perfection may not even be close to being required. Heck, we get by with pieces of paper with a dead guy's face on the front well enough. I just think you need to look closely at what you're hoping to do before you go massively adjusting the protocol. No rewards for early mining will likely mean it's DOA. Allowing long-term inflation would be much more damaging than people realize (I suspect). Trying to make things "fair" will typically remove many of the incentives for generating and using such a currency in the first place.

Heck, I'm almost at the point that I've almost mined my first complete bitcoin. I'm no big player and it's mostly just a curiosity for me. I think the focus on mining is misplaced. In a short enough time, it will "Go away". Will some people who got in early make out like bandits? Of course. That is the nature of being in the right place at the right time.

Is there room for other crypto currencies? Possibly but they will have their own niche and their own problems to solve. In the arena that bitcoin fills, it is likely to be the 800lb gorilla in the room. Even technically better solutions (and I don't believe the OP's is) would have a hard time competing against it. There may be some interesting options in alternative currencies. Heck, one which did gradually redistribute itself might be interesting to some.

[ElectricMucus]

Have you looked at my proposal at all? It's a little different than OP's in a way that it still rewards early adoption due to difficulty, but not as in the form of a block reward until 50% of the currency has been minted.
I am not that interested in being even in the same district as bitcoin, which strikes me more as a velociraptor than a gorilla. It might evolve into a bird some day but when the comet comes in its current form has to go.


I am not even interested in creating another cryptocurrency per se, but an engine to drive a self-sustaining civilization.

[Richy_T]

Have you looked at my proposal at all? It's a little different than OP's in a way that it still rewards early adoption due to difficulty, but not as in the form of a block reward until 50% of the currency has been minted.
I am not that interested in being even in the same district as bitcoin, which strikes me more as a velociraptor than a gorilla. It might evolve into a bird some day but when the comet comes in its current form has to go.


I am not even interested in creating another cryptocurrency per se, but an engine to drive a self-sustaining civilization.

I took a quick look. I'll take a better look before commenting on it though.