Unique is irrelevant. Market Cap is irrelevant. Security is paramount.
Bitcoin was designed to be the most secure, censorship resistant, online currency possible.
Well, it isn't. PoW is a very *insecure* and wasteful form of cryptographic security. Cryptographic security is normally based upon the asymmetry between the adversary's effort needed to crack the system, and the effort needed by the good guy to set up the system. Encrypting a disk with AES-256 costs you maybe half a cent, cracking it would not even be possible with trillions of dollars.
Now, the PoW security of bitcoin is ridiculously bad in that respect: you need to WASTE AS MUCH effort as "good guy" as the effort it would cost an attacker. Instead of having an insane asymmetry between setting up and cracking, with PoW, both are the same ! This is extremely LOUSY security which is extremely wasteful. So, no, it is not "the most secure design" AT ALL. You can hardly do worse than PoW security. It is also not censorship resistant, when mining gets centralized, and mining GETS centralized because of economies of scale, which are unavoidable with such a bad security scheme.
Now, it is true that the wasteful PoW system as it is now, is "good enough", but there are clearly better schemes around, and proof of stake systems can provide for smarter cryptographic security without all that wasting.
You are arguing that PoW is wasteful, which is irrelevant.
It was designed to be energy expense/conversion, since it mimics our
current understanding of physics. PoW is based on thermodynamics.
You then stated that PoS is superior, which is unproven and irrelevant to the
original argument about altcoins, which you are no longer arguing for and
instead have gone onto an argument about why PoW is bad (ignoring that
most altcoins are PoW).
What are the universal laws that PoS is secured upon?
It was designed with one purpose, securability. There may be flaws in the system, such
as the current mining centralization problem, but that is only transient. Over long periods
of time, that centralization loses it grip due to technological advancements. In 50 years, it
is possible civilians in their homes may begin solo mining again due to new technology that
are affordable and common in each home, as well as new forms of solar energy accumulation
and storage.
Of course not. Because PoW competition is relative. It is a winner-takes-all scheme. This is exactly what happened with the ASIC transition: technology improved a lot, and centralized the competition instead of decentralizing it.
But the worse of all is inherent to bitcoin's "lottery" design: the fact that mutualizing lottery risk is beneficial, makes that pools are a natural happening, in the same way that insurance is a natural phenomenon when random gains and losses occur. So the fact that the PoW lottery is a winner-takes-all lottery makes that we have an unavoidable centralization of the mining towards pools, which group together the relatively most successful mining technology industries into an oligarchy of highly invested power structures.
This is not an "unfortunate temporary feat". It is inherent in bitcoin's design: make a costly, technology and electricity intensive winner-takes-all lottery and you end up like this, in the same way that there are only a few centralized high-performance processor manufacturers (intel and amd, say), and only a few centralized high-performance memory manufacturers in the world, because there too, it is a high-investment winner-takes all environment where economies of scale matter.
No, you ignored what I wrote.
The centralization is natural and can happen to all unregulated PoW tokens at early points in their
lifetimes. There are no known mechanisms that exists that can prevent such now. It is an inevitability.
This centralization only comes about due to the location of technology and power manufacturing.
Over time, technology and power becomes cheaper and common and gets disbursed throughout
society. At that point in time, civilians in their homes will be able to manufacture their own chips
based on the schematics they find on the internet. When that occurs, civilians will be able to compete
with large centralizing manufacturers, who will become obsolete and eventually go out of business.
You ignore that Bitcoin subsidy mining will occur till 2140. You actually believe there will only be one
centralized entity at that point in time?
In comparison, PoS is bad because over longer periods of time, centralization will occur. In theory,
the centralizing forces are oppose of that in PoW tokens. As Bitcoin mining becomes less centralizing,
PoS coins staking becomes more centralized. PoS is a fine design for short term coin lifetimes, but bad
for long term. If there is nothing lost or converted, there is nothing gained. PoS is an illusion not
intended for security intensive systems, but for passive interest bearing ponzis. The new coins do
not come from the laws of physics but from a mechanism that violates the laws of this universe.
It is essentially something from nothing. Proof of Burn, in theory, is more reliable and secure.
All altcoins that currently exist are actually all untested.
I don't see how you can claim that. There are a few years of difference in age between bitcoin and alt coins, and wind back bitcoin 3 or 4 years, and it was more "untested" than certain altcoins are today. This difference of a few years will fade away as time passes by. Between a 6 year old system and a 2 year old system, there's a big difference. Between a 20 year old system and a 16 year old system, what's the advantage of the oldest one ?
Let me be more plain.
Length of life is irrelevant and does not test anything.
A coin is proven/tested when it is under constant attack, either internally or externally.
Bitcoin is constantly being tested from all angles, whether by the miners, devs, bugs,
malware, hackers, and etc. There is even possibilities that state actors are attempting to
coop or outright attack the system for purposes not fully understood. This is called testing.
I repeat, all altcoins that currently exist are not being tested and attacked. Majority of
them are time bombs laying in wait, filled with bugs and exploits.
Satoshi proposed an answer to the online currency problems inspired by the problems with
the financial world in 2008, but that does not mean that the full use and potential of the
system has come about.
Well, first of all, the fiat system didn't have a problem back then: the financial world had a problem with wild speculation on "empty" complex derivatives and over-investment in speculative assets that crashed down because of no content. Seems that Satoshi designed himself a highly speculative asset too. He based the economic model of his "currency" on some misguided theories about sound money, and this found some resonance in believers of these theories (I was part of them). I neglected warnings of deflationary spirals.
Did I mention the "fiat system"? No. You misunderstand what I'm saying.
Satoshi's proposed answer has nothing to do with fiat/currency and more to do with
manipulation by governments or financial sectors. All forms of manipulations ultimately
lead to failure in the system, whatever that system is. Satoshi tried to create a new
system type (manifested as a public decentralized blockchain) that was to prevent
manipulation.
In addition, he created a token for online transactability with gold like properties since
gold is the only known asset that has proven itself through time and easily fits into the
financial world's mindset of how human financial structure reliably functions. It is in
accordance with man's nature. That was the point. If you think bitcoin is a speculative
asset, you are saying that gold is a speculative asset. It is an empty remark that doesn't
really mean anything of significance. All matter is speculative, it is just some matter is
more worthy than others.
Comparing a bitcoin (token) to the worthless derivatives is an incorrect viewpoint.
They were selling eachother's debt, back and forth with a profit each time. That is all
it was and eventually when that debt was consolidated within certain parties, they stopped
it causing those parties to hold the bags and ultimately cause the citizens to be punished.
They were playing hot potato ponzi purposefully. This is why Satoshi was inspired to
create what he did. It was an answer that solved two problems: (1) an unexploitable
online currency and (2) a way for people to protect themselves from this manipulated
financial world. A new world has been created since the old is a debt ponzi.
Deflationary spirals can not exist in Bitcoin since Bitcoin does not issue debt. In fact,
bitcoin (token) is the realization of a virtual nondebt. If you convert your bitcoins into
fiat or credit, you have now taken on the debt their system creates. A deflationary spiral
can only exist within a credit system, since without credit there is no debt. Holding gold
and transacting with gold (in theory) does not create or transfer debt. When gold prices
rise (or bitcoin), that does not create debt, since that rise is due to people selling their
debt instruments into a virtual nondebt that is programmatically designed to appreciate
over time. As long as bitcoin serves a purpose, like gold, its future existence is ensured.
Interestingly, as we enter space, gold and other minerals becomes more common, thus
leaving Bitcoin as the only asset type left of any value (besides land) in the future.
The masses that exist now, and are entering our sphere are the
"get rich quickers". Majority of them are either directly from the financial world where they
have been taught to "rape and pillage" then repackage and sell to the next fool, or very
young children who have little money, but are beginning to learn trading by participating
within the altcoin world. Both of those "masses" are not the primary target of this type of
currency. Those people are irrelevant to Bitcoin's long term goals. If anything, they are
hurdles that we must be overcome since they think PayPalCoin is equivalent to Bitcoin.
The "get rich quickers" are the NORMAL public of deflationary speculative assets. You do not get "get rich quickers" in fiat, because fiat is slightly inflationary *especially to avoid that* ; but this feature was taken as a conspirational attack on people's assets by the designers of deflationary currencies - now we see why that was an error (at least, if the goal was to design a currency - if the goal was to design something akin to the "complex derivatives" that caused the crash in 2008, well, then it is succeeding very well).
If you need "true believers to come" for the system to work as pretended, then you know that the thing is not going to work as intended. But it is working. But as it was designed, not as it was pretended. It is not a currency, it is a speculative asset, like these complex derivatives.
You misunderstand. Speculation is normal, but speculation to the point that the protocol
needs to be changed to allow for greater speculation is what I am referring to. Those
speculators are the same types of people who destroyed the financial world and the
retirements of millions of people. They changed the rules and devised new scams to perform
on the markets and the people, which lead to 2008 and etc. The blockchain was created to
prevent these people from changing the rules, which is what they are attempting to do now
in Bitcoin. They wish to speculate to the point of collapse and then go on to the next asset
device, like locusts. These are the hurdles I am referring to, the non-healthy speculation.
Bitcoin is a "volatile currency" that currently functions as a "speculative commodity".
Over time, the commodity aspect will fall away as the currency begins to stabilize more
and more as we approach the year 2140. Calling Bitcoin a derivative, which makes no sense,
shows you're disingenuous and explains your incorrect reasoning and understanding of what
makes the system and its token interesting. Would you say Gold is a derivative? Are you
saying that all matter in the universe is essentially a derivative? Based upon such
statements it is not surprising why you think worthless empty altcoins are on equal
par to Bitcoin.
