Introducing Treazant - Bitcoin Without Reward Halving

[cunicula]

This kind of coin will never make it because it will not be able to achieve a critical mass.

For current bitcoin holders it would be a disadvantage as it would potentially devalue their coins.

From an inflationary point of view the difference to bitcoin is mostly psychological (and in time scale).

I dunno. I'd say a coin like this has far better chances than bitcoin in the long-run. Particularly if the algorithm is swapped out as in scrypt.

[killerstorm]

So ... are you selling all your Bitcoins for Treazant/Inflatiacoin?

LOL, no. I mean that if I'll ever going to start an alt-chain, it will likely have constant generation or something like that.

[killerstorm]

Of course, to a point.  But it does that through an inflation tax upon the entire currency base.  Thus it's not usage based,

There is a thing called "destructive fees", i.e. fees do not go to miners, they simply disappear. Destruction should cancel generation in theory.

How is it better then? It's more flexible. Miners do not have to charge fees to earn their living, instead they can affect activity. E.g. too many transactions -> larger fees -> more money is lost -> cost of money goes up -> overheating of economy is cancelled.

Your idea doesn't offer stability.  The voltility in the exchange rate has much less to do with it's generation rate and much more to do with it's relative demand.

Bitcoin volatility is caused by investors who buy bitcoins believing that they are going to appreciate in future.

This simply wouldn't be the case with inflationary currency, people will only buy it to use it.

If you could peg your coin to some baseline, such as a national currency, you would have much less voltility due to the inertia that the backing brought with it, but then you couldn't have a predictable inflation rate.  And I can't even imagine how such a peg could safely work.

For example: Colored coins allow private companies to make their private currencies and peg them via open market operations. Of course, such currency is as reliable as backing company.

[MoonShadow]

Of course, to a point.  But it does that through an inflation tax upon the entire currency base.  Thus it's not usage based,

There is a thing called "destructive fees", i.e. fees do not go to miners, they simply disappear. Destruction should cancel generation in theory.


How is it better then? It's more flexible. Miners do not have to charge fees to earn their living, instead they can affect activity. E.g. too many transactions -> larger fees -> more money is lost -> cost of money goes up -> overheating of economy is cancelled.

Your idea doesn't offer stability.  The voltility in the exchange rate has much less to do with it's generation rate and much more to do with it's relative demand.

Bitcoin volatility is caused by investors who buy bitcoins believing that they are going to appreciate in future.

This simply wouldn't be the case with inflationary currency, people will only buy it to use it.

If you could peg your coin to some baseline, such as a national currency, you would have much less voltility due to the inertia that the backing brought with it, but then you couldn't have a predictable inflation rate.  And I can't even imagine how such a peg could safely work.

For example: Colored coins allow private companies to make their private currencies and peg them via open market operations. Of course, such currency is as reliable as backing company.

What you are suggesting has been discussed at length before, and no one has been able to do these in a mathmatically consistant manner without also breaking anomininity.  Something else the community values.

[molecular]

Treazant is for folks who prefer for the Bitcoin reward to stay constant forever. Block chain confirmations will resume once ASIC hardware starts to arrive. The client only requires a few very trivial modifications to work. The one piece of the puzzle which would be useful, but is not required, is functionality to export wallets from Bitcoin and import them to Treazant and vice versa. If you haven't sent any outgoing transactions after the reward halving yesterday, then a simple copy and paste backup and restore should work fine. Minor modifications to accommodate the larger supply of currency will occur at block 420,000 and as needed at each subsequent 210,000 blocks.

this means I can double-spend my bitcoins on both chains, treazant and bitcoin?

[molecular]

I proposed this in the past and there was an overwhelming consensus that there is no demand for it.

I learned that the 21 million limit is a HIGHLY VALUED feature and that Bitcoin without it is far less appealing.  I gave up.  Good luck with this.

"Inflatacoin?" I still like the idea

The Keyn.

[molecular]

Yes, it's much more attractive to Austrian/libertarian types who cannot do the math.

However, I think that that community is relevant only for bootstrapping. Once people will get familiar with cryptocurrency concept it will be adopted by people who really don't give a fuck, they just want reasonable stable exchange rate.

This is interesting. From a theoretical point of view the ever-decreasing inflation of Treazant isn't really that different from the 0 inflation of bitcoin.

The differences really are in "adoptability":

• bitcoins capped supply is ("there will never be more than 21 mio") is a great incentive for early adopters and gold-bugs. Bitcoin might not have gotten off the ground without this.
• treazants inflation is a good argument against the "early adopter unfairness"-accusation (while early adopter reward is really still high)

I think it's not the right time to make this change, though. It's too early.

There might, however, be a point in time at which it might be favorable for such a fork. Say we do this at block 630,000 and fork there keeping reward at 12.5 TZN (doing the switch of old keys as suggested). I could imagine even old-time bitcoin adopters jumping on the fork if it seems like the not-yet-tapped public shows a higher willingness to adopt the fork than bitcoin. They wouldn't loose that much wealth in the short run and if it boils down to: mass-adoption or not, I can see the idea gaining traction.

[cunicula]

What you are suggesting has been discussed at length before, and no one has been able to do these in a mathmatically consistant manner without also breaking anomininity.  Something else the community values.

What exactly are you talking about here? My guess is that you don't know, but I'm not sure.

[cunicula]

Yes, it's much more attractive to Austrian/libertarian types who cannot do the math.

However, I think that that community is relevant only for bootstrapping. Once people will get familiar with cryptocurrency concept it will be adopted by people who really don't give a fuck, they just want reasonable stable exchange rate.

And at that point things like security, scalability, cost of transactions, exchange rate stability and features would matter more than pseudo-Austrian appeal. In theory, at least.

So I believe other currencies do have a chance. Bitcoin is great for long-term store of value, but people might choose something else for day-to-day transactions.

Constant generation rate means that:

• there is less speculation; get-rich-quick and early-adopter bonus largely do not work in this case
• fees can be close to zero because miners are paid out of generation
• there is no reward-halving shock and uncertainty
• no theoretic woes like accidentally discovered wallet makes you richest person on planet

So I'd rather bet on it.

I agree with killerstorm completely here.

I think it is more reasonable to expand the money supply at a rate slightly lower than Switzerland (5-6% a year). With 4% money supply expansion per year, I could see PoW as completely sustainable in the long-term. It might even be justifiable as an adoption subsidy / marketing gimmick. Especially if you could find an algorithm favoring CPUs.

This would have only weak appeal to Austrians (Swiss Franc > US Dollar), but would still be a sane design choice.

Also, destroying fees is a good idea. Fees open up all kinds of weird bribery possibilities that are best left closed.

However, if you are making a crypto-currency, you are kind of stuck with the community as it is now (Austrian/libertarian types who can't do math). Sadly, it may be best to make something that appeals to them even if it doesn't make sense from a sensible person's perspective.

[myself]

we should not stick to a crypto only need need diversity the more the better and if some have a special feature much much better like name coin has one, this has no reward hawing and there are many more features that can be put in a coin, dev should not stop at feature like bitcoins have   

[killerstorm]

This is interesting. From a theoretical point of view the ever-decreasing inflation of Treazant isn't really that different from the 0 inflation of bitcoin.

It is different from miner compensation point of view.

The differences really are in "adoptability":

• bitcoins capped supply is ("there will never be more than 21 mio") is a great incentive for early adopters and gold-bugs. Bitcoin might not have gotten off the ground without this.
• treazants inflation is a good argument against the "early adopter unfairness"-accusation (while early adopter reward is really still high)

Early adopter incentive isn't that much different at start. For example, after 12 years we talk about 18.37M Bitcoins vs 31.5M "inflatacoins", so Bitcoins are only 71% more valuable.

After 20 years Bitcoins are 2.6 times more valuable.

If we are talking about return on investment with many zeros in it (e.g. buying bitcoins in October 2009 would give you ~16000 ROI now), 2x difference does not mean anything.

So I'd say early adopters would get absolutely insane profit in any case, it's just that finite money supply has religious meaning for some people.

(OK, we might say that with finite money supply "early adopter" period lasts longer. But we cannot really estimate it.)

[markm]

Merged mining is already extending the early adopter period massively in effect, since anyone interested  in picking up something dirt cheap that could go up in value by orders of magnitude over a few years can still pick up merged mined coins of various kinds dirt cheap due to most miners still not bothering to pick them up.

The early adopter period could have been extended even longer by not creating exchanges for new coins until a couple of years down the line, or maybe even not until they reached their first reward-halving, so that they would remain under the radar quiet little windfalls for more people longer before the masses finally realise just how much they all actually add up to.

Bitcoins themselves are shamefully undervalued, but you can get a whole lot more namecoins for the same investment and they are probably even more undervalued than bitcoins, which makes them still an amazing early adopter opportunity even after all this time. They do have exchanges though so the masses maybe do realise they are at least worth something; the best opportunities would be coins without exchanges, if you are mining those you will be hoping no exchange opens up for them until a few reward-halvings down the line so you can enjoy low difficulty mining as many years as you can...

-MarkM-

[finkleshnorts]

Isn't the algorithm more or less irrelevant beyond the initial bootstrapping, since asics can ultimately be developed for any application? Of course, the apparent difficulty of producing such hardware, even amidst considerable financial incentive, is noteworthy.

[K1773R]

Treazant is for folks who prefer for the Bitcoin reward to stay constant forever. Block chain confirmations will resume once ASIC hardware starts to arrive. The client only requires a few very trivial modifications to work. The one piece of the puzzle which would be useful, but is not required, is functionality to export wallets from Bitcoin and import them to Treazant and vice versa. If you haven't sent any outgoing transactions after the reward halving yesterday, then a simple copy and paste backup and restore should work fine. Minor modifications to accommodate the larger supply of currency will occur at block 420,000 and as needed at each subsequent 210,000 blocks.

this means I can double-spend my bitcoins on both chains, treazant and bitcoin?

better idea: wait for treazant to come up and get an exchange, dump ur "trezant/bincoin" from the past to real bitcoins

[molecular]

Treazant is for folks who prefer for the Bitcoin reward to stay constant forever. Block chain confirmations will resume once ASIC hardware starts to arrive. The client only requires a few very trivial modifications to work. The one piece of the puzzle which would be useful, but is not required, is functionality to export wallets from Bitcoin and import them to Treazant and vice versa. If you haven't sent any outgoing transactions after the reward halving yesterday, then a simple copy and paste backup and restore should work fine. Minor modifications to accommodate the larger supply of currency will occur at block 420,000 and as needed at each subsequent 210,000 blocks.

this means I can double-spend my bitcoins on both chains, treazant and bitcoin?

better idea: wait for treazant to come up and get an exchange, dump ur "trezant/bincoin" from the past to real bitcoins

theres a couple of options for the transition:

• 1.) do nothing special: not a good idea: bitcoins will remain on bitcoin chain and transaction are compatible and cross-broadcastable => not really an option
• 2.) convert wallet to new keys: this separates bitcoins and avoids cross-broadcastability. Owners of bitcoins will just keep the bitcoins on the bitcoin chain and "receive" the same amount of Treazant in Treazant chain.
• 3.) Make new logic in Treazant-chain (that uses the bitcoin chain also): bitcoins (pre block x) have to be spent to special address ("0") on the bitcoin chain and sent to a new key on the treazant chain. This forces bitcoin-owners to decide how many coins to "convert" to treazant. This will reduce the supply of bitcoins.

What would the implications of that last idea be?

[markm]

The inflation actually tends to zero, and in concept, I like that, which is why I had once proposed it.  That coin could be created today, and it may very well be a "better" coin.  But it won't get popular, and won't get adopted.

What I had underestimated at the time I first proposed it was that the simple notion of "There Will Never Be More Than 21,000,000 Bitcoins" is such an important part of the appeal.  It is far more attractive than "There Will Be Inflation Forever, But At Least It Won't Be That Much".

Yes, it's much more attractive to Austrian/libertarian types who cannot do the math.

However, I think that that community is relevant only for bootstrapping. Once people will get familiar with cryptocurrency concept it will be adopted by people who really don't give a fuck, they just want reasonable stable exchange rate.

And at that point things like security, scalability, cost of transactions, exchange rate stability and features would matter more than pseudo-Austrian appeal. In theory, at least.

So I believe other currencies do have a chance. Bitcoin is great for long-term store of value, but people might choose something else for day-to-day transactions.

Constant generation rate means that:

• there is less speculation; get-rich-quick and early-adopter bonus largely do not work in this case
• fees can be close to zero because miners are paid out of generation
• there is no reward-halving shock and uncertainty
• no theoretic woes like accidentally discovered wallet makes you richest person on planet

So I'd rather bet on it.

+1

Just show me client download link!  

https://sourceforge.net/projects/galacticmilieu/files/GRouPcoin/groupcoin-22-Aug-2012.tgz

-MarkM-

[markm]

I can't compile, so I tried this one - it starts and dies second later. I have Java 7 Update 9 installed and its working with Bitcoin MultiBit client.

That java thing is a play-by-email client that is currently mostly useful as a test of an installer program system that claims to build on linux an installer for windows. you are about the second or third person to report that apparently it does not seem to actually work on windows afterall. I have no idea why it does not work, it is a pretty famous cross-system installer-builder system. I am not even sure why an installer is even needed, I thought the whole damn point about java is it runs on any system. Maybe though it is meant to help with cases where someone packages u p some special graphics stuff or something that needs direct access to hardware thus gets specific to whether its 32 bit or 64 bit and exactly what kind of graphics card it is or something.

Basically if the installer thing doesn't actually work maybe just run the jar, a play by email tool doesn't seem like it ought to be doing anything that would be hardware-specific.

But the play by email thing also isn't going to bring in any coins currently, because the email address it sends the orders to is only looked at once a month or few months since each time I do look on the offhand chance someone actually did try the thing I see no emails there.

Since the Moneychanger GUI for Open Transactions is java, and they want an installer for windows, I made a new build of the thing so they could try my build of it and also of course the source code is there too so they can build it themselves and maybe build it better than I did.

Its a pain not being able to compile, isn't it? I remember when the Mac first came out, it was unprogrammable too, they wanted like $800 extra for BASIC, that computers normally came with. It was basically just a glorified etch-a-sketch, I was disgusted.

-MarkM-

[NewLibertyStandard]

Please let me know if you have a recommendation for which cryptographic algorithm I should use or if you know or if you can think of a more elegant solution.

I thought of a simpler way to force divergent balances to be incompatible while still retaining transaction protocol compatibility. Treazant will first copy the wallet and synchronize to block 109,999 without transmitting transactions. For each public/private key pair address that contains bitcoins, two new public/private keys will be generated. Both Bitcoin and Treazant will get a copy of both new addresses, but the treazants and bitcoins will be sent to opposite addresses. Neither the kludgy double signing idea nor the alternative encryption idea will be used.

this means I can double-spend my bitcoins on both chains, treazant and bitcoin?

Yes, you will be able to double spend Bitcoins/Treazants which you had before the first Bitcoin four year reward halving occurred at block 210,000. Don't delete your transaction history from when the Bitcoin reward halving occurred and I'll let everyone know when treazants are usable and worth more than nothing.