new currencies based on bitcoins

[hidden_citizen]

What if somebody wants to start a new currency based on bitcoins with some changes in mechanism (for exaqmle suggested here or any other), or even without any changes but for special purpose or within a special society? Bitcoin is open source, so I don't see any technical problems with that. Also, we would have a speculation market between two bitcoin currencies, which could be a way of earning bitcoins for newbies. So, what do you think of the idea?

[FreeMoney]

What if somebody wants to start a new currency based on bitcoins with some changes in mechanism (for exaqmle suggested here or any other), or even without any changes but for special purpose or within a special society? Bitcoin is open source, so I don't see any technical problems with that. Also, we would have a speculation market between two bitcoin currencies, which could be a way of earning bitcoins for newbies. So, what do you think of the idea?

It's totally possible technically. You might think about why test network coins have such an unfavorable exchange rate with bitcoin though. It always makes sense to join the strongest and most widely accepted chain unless there is some major improvement in the new one. This is good though because focusing all generation on one chain maximizes the difficulty of a takeover.

[theymos]

It's pretty easy to do. Bitcoin already contains an alternate network with a different genesis block and different network parameters (the minimum difficulty is lower to make generating easier).

Competing with Bitcoin will be almost impossible, however. You'd have to offer something really good.

[hidden_citizen]

Bitcoin already contains an alternate network with a different genesis block and different network parameters (the minimum difficulty is lower to make generating easier).

Never heard of it. Where can I read about it? Somebody, give me a link please.

[SmokeTooMuch]

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=363.0

[wumpus]

Better not to, fragmentation is really bad for starting open source projects...

[FreeMoney]

Better not to, fragmentation is really bad for starting open source projects...

It's not that he ought not, it's just that it won't really work. If we had to depend on everyone not doing something, we'd be screwed. Bitcoin has a good chance because the right incentives exist to get everyone to work together.

[wumpus]

I hope that you are right

[Stephen Gornick]

It's pretty easy to do. Bitcoin already contains an alternate network with a different genesis block and different network parameters (the minimum difficulty is lower to make generating easier).

Competing with Bitcoin will be almost impossible, however. You'd have to offer something really good.

It'll probably go down like this: Circa 2014.  I'll trade my 50 BTC for 0.214 of your OBX (Oprah Bux) -- which is just enough for the iPhone 6 my girlfriend wants.



[Edit: Changed currency name and added code OBX.]