Why LN when we have altcoins and exchanges?

[rupy]

I'm just curious why you would want to peg the exchange rate?

To me the scaling solution of bitcoin is altcoins!

[charlton]

Not when the rates between altcoins and bitcoins are constantly floating.

But I do see a day when bitcoin is mainstream, everyone is using LN or some other layer for transactions and bitcoin for settlement.  Then altcoins will be the new cutting edge.

I keep thinking about the analogy between mp3, and other newer more cutting edge codecs that came afterwards.  The truth is they made the mp3 codec compete to get better, but now everyone still uses mp3 even though it was the first, it has been improved to the point where it competes favorably to the newer codecs as well.

[Jet Cash]

There is no reason why an alt coin can't operate on a Bitcoin sidechain, and be pegged to the value of Bitcoin. I believe that is the way to handle micro-payments, and community currencies.

[jl777]

There is no reason why an alt coin can't operate on a Bitcoin sidechain, and be pegged to the value of Bitcoin. I believe that is the way to handle micro-payments, and community currencies.

I am not sure  I understand. This exact issue came up in another conversation.

Can you explain how to deal with price slippage during the time for transferring into and out of the sidechain? Last I heard it is a day or longer. What happens if the price of the altcoin changes by 20% during this time?

And is it easy to have a dynamic peg (one that changes with market prices)?

James

[rupy]

I think you would want the price to be unpegged, so that the market can decide the value of altcoins; so the best float to the surface (become more valuable) and the copycats/broken/dishonest ones sink to the bottom.

This whole smart this / micro that is just ignorant, we already have the ecosystem to completely replace FIAT gov./bank/company death spiral.

XT, Classic all of those are just the last breath of the super debt cycle.

[Bitdrunk]

I think you would want the price to be unpegged, so that the market can decide the value of altcoins; so the best float to the surface (become more valuable) and the copycats/broken/dishonest ones sink to the bottom.

This whole smart this / micro that is just ignorant, we already have the ecosystem to completely replace FIAT gov./bank/company death spiral.

XT, Classic all of those are just the last breath of the super debt cycle.

Isn't "the market" deciding value if it considers a side-chain useful, and increases the value of btc?  You don't need an altcoin... unless you like losing all your money.

[AliceWonderMiscreations]

Not when the rates between altcoins and bitcoins are constantly floating.

But I do see a day when bitcoin is mainstream, everyone is using LN or some other layer for transactions and bitcoin for settlement.  Then altcoins will be the new cutting edge.

I keep thinking about the analogy between mp3, and other newer more cutting edge codecs that came afterwards.  The truth is they made the mp3 codec compete to get better, but now everyone still uses mp3 even though it was the first, it has been improved to the point where it competes favorably to the newer codecs as well.

It only competes because Vorbis and Opus are blacklisted by Apple and Microsoft meaning plugins that support their function are not allowed in browsers, where a lot of people play audio files.

MP3 competes because it is good enough and works everywhere, not because it has improved in quality.

When it comes to video however mp3 doesn't compete.

Note that in video codecs where audio is only a very small percentage of the file size, AAC is used in h.264, Vorbis is used in WebM, and Opus is used in WebM2. Where is mp3 used in video?

[charlton]

It only competes because Vorbis and Opus are blacklisted by Apple and Microsoft meaning plugins that support their function are not allowed in browsers, where a lot of people play audio files.

MP3 competes because it is good enough and works everywhere, not because it has improved in quality.

Good points that I don't disagree.
I was only trying to make a loose analogy that I guess doesn't quite work.

I wonder why Apple and MS banned Vorbis?  Probably because it's open-source and patent-free and therefore threatens them somehow.
Ogg Vorbis is exactly what I was thinking when I said "other newer codecs".  It is better than MP3, but since the lame engineers tweaked MP3 encoding it is possible to get mp3 quality *almost* as good.  I still encode to .ogg though.

When it comes to video however mp3 doesn't compete.

Note that in video codecs where audio is only a very small percentage of the file size, AAC is used in h.264, Vorbis is used in WebM, and Opus is used in WebM2. Where is mp3 used in video?

.avi?

I don't disagree here either, but I used to encode video to .ogm and I notice today it's not supported at all anywhere.

[AliceWonderMiscreations]

I don't disagree here either, but I used to encode video to .ogm and I notice today it's not supported at all anywhere.

I assume you mean Theora for the video codec.

Theora in the open source world was largely super-ceded by WebM because VP8 gave much better quality and the .mkv container WebM uses has a lot of advantages. WebM2 uses VP9 which in my tests is even better than VP8 but takes a really really really long time to encode, it needs to be better optimized.

Hopfefull Daala lives up to the hype and replace VP9 - I don't like Google's business practices so I would rather have something royalty free *and* not from Google