ASICS killing BTC ?

[Rassah]

I am saying that they have a time and place to be useful but it is not in everyday society. Anyone who wants Bitcoin to go mainstream is solely under the impression that they still haven't missed the boat by a long amount of time, and clearly doesn't understand why they are not viable to the common citizen.

Why not? How are they worse than debit cards? If they are at least as good, or even just a bit worse, there are still a ton of benefits they provide that can help drive adoption.

I support Litecoin but not because I am trying to make money off of it, I just think it is more functionally sound to use for spending on goods than Btc.

How so? Just the having to wait for only 2.5 minutes instead of 10 for a transaction? And why do you believe almost all hardware point-of-sale terminals and web shopping cart plugins are being developed for bitcoin instead of litecoin?

[hate_the_face]

Why not? How are they worse than debit cards? If they are at least as good, or even just a bit worse, there are still a ton of benefits they provide that can help drive adoption.

There is no economy to back them, besides the one it is trying to compete with. The bottom line is goods will always be priced in bitcoins to be equal to their price in USD, so you aren't really revolutionizing anything except the name of how you are paying for the item. The goods and production of goods themselves will still be done with USD. You are simply convincing yourselves otherwise.

How so? Just the having to wait for only 2.5 minutes instead of 10 for a transaction? And why do you believe almost all hardware point-of-sale terminals and web shopping cart plugins are being developed for bitcoin instead of litecoin?

Bitcoin does not take 10 minutes for a transaction, no idea where you got that from. And I think all of those things you listed are being developed for Bitcoin because it came out first, and it takes some time for most people to figure out the bullshit that is really going on.

You cannot be both a cryptocurrency and a mainstream currency, it is an oxymoron. How does that not sink in to you people?

[lucasjkr]

besides which, how hard would it be to adapt a shopping cart plugin from taking bitcoin to any other?

not very, i dont think. so all the advantages bitcoin claims can easily be applied to any other.

there's that phrase, about standing on the shoulders of giants, and I think it applies very well here.

While I think that that there will be a form of peer-to-peer crypto currency in the future, I think that Bitcoin is the version 0.1 of it. Many of the copy/paste coins are there as well. A few implementations might be 0.1.5 or even 0.2, but we're a far way off from a final product. And all of its proponents, rather than looking objectively at things, are blindly swinging around trying to prevent anything from climbing onto Bitcoin's shoulders.

And Hate's got a point... one of the biggest failings of Bitcoin, I think and agree, is that too many people are holding them  in the expectation that their value should skyrocket one day. Acting as if an intangible is a commodity. I think it's best roll would be as a medium of exchange, not something to hold onto for long periods... with no other currency do people simply hold onto that currency and hope that by that action alone, they should become rich. No, the currency is just the means to the end of actually acquiring things or investing in things to create actual wealth.

[hate_the_face]

I hope you guys understand I am not Anti-bitcoin, I am anti-social really at heart

I don't want to see anyone lose money, but I don't want to see anyone get rich quick due to insider trading either, which is exactly what I think goes on with Bitcoin.

[Rassah]

besides which, how hard would it be to adapt a shopping cart plugin from taking bitcoin to any other?

not very, i dont think. so all the advantages bitcoin claims can easily be applied to any other.

That sword cuts both ways: If it's so easy to switch back and forth, why not just stick to what everyone else is already using, anyway?

[lucasjkr]

besides which, how hard would it be to adapt a shopping cart plugin from taking bitcoin to any other?

not very, i dont think. so all the advantages bitcoin claims can easily be applied to any other.

That sword cuts both ways: If it's so easy to switch back and forth, why not just stick to what everyone else is already using, anyway?

Why doesn't everyone use Windows?

Why doesnt' everyone drive Fords?

Why isn't everyone vegetarian?

Why doesn't everyone think that Britney Spears is the biggest superstar ever?



Like i said, I think Bitcoin's got failings that some of the others are trying to remedy...  But I think a lot of people think that Bitcoin is perfect as is. If they're not willing to see that not everyone thinks that Bitcoin is the most perfect thing ever delivered to humanity, then why shouldn't I/we support other peoples works that attempts to improve on that design? Again, if someone thinks there's nothing at all wrong with Bitcoin, then even that would be hard for them to grasp... But believe that a lot of us think that there is a lot of room for improvement, it's not just about trying to strike it rich like bitcoins earliest adopters did.

[justusranvier]

Litecoin is IPX/SPX to Bitcoin's TCP/IP.

[Rassah]

Why not? How are they worse than debit cards?

There is no economy to back them, besides the one it is trying to compete with.

It's not competing with an economy, it's competing with a currency and a financial system. Currencies are being inflated, in some cases are very unstable, and have tons of restrictions on them. Financial systems are slow and clunky, with lots of bureacracy and paperwork, with huge fees and likewise tons of restrictions on them. Bitcoin's main flaw right now is low adoption, but the way to fix that is just to increase adoption, which shouldn't be too hard, since it doesn't have those other currency and financial system flaws.

The bottom line is goods will always be priced in bitcoins to be equal to their price in USD, so you aren't really revolutionizing anything except the name of how you are paying for the item. The goods and production of goods themselves will still be done with USD. You are simply convincing yourselves otherwise.

How Americacentric of you. Goods are not just priced in USD. They are also priced in EUR, JPY, GBP, and other currencies. And when they are priced, they are typically priced in the currency that the buyer uses, so if I'm in US, and I'm selling to someone who uses Euros, I give them a price in Euros, not in USD. If they accept BTC, I'll price things in BTC. As more and more people use BTC, there will be less and less of a need to do a conversion to get a sense of what you are paying for.
Also, what do you mean by "anything except the name of how you are paying for the item?" Are you claiming that there is no difference between bitcoins and dollars besides the name???

And I think all of those things you listed are being developed for Bitcoin because it came out first, and it takes some time for most people to figure out the bullshit that is really going on.

Exactly right. In business, that's called "First Mover Advantage," which was quickly followed by "Network Effects," which is where everyone uses something because everyone else uses it. First Mover Advantage benefited bitcoin because it allowed it to set up the biggest customer and developer base first. Now Network Effects are sustaining it because everyone else uses bitcoin. The only business term left to decide whether bitcoin will succeed or not is called "Switching Costs," or the cost of switching from using Bitcon to something else. While true, they may seem very low, such as adding a Litecoin module to your shopping card plugin, you also have to take into account things like support and development, learning about new systems, opening up new accounts, etc. All of these concepts are perfectly exemplified by MS Windows, which had a First Mover advantage with DOS and GUI being built on top of it, Network Effect with everyone using and developing for Windows because everyone else is using it, and Switching Costs, where it would cost a lot in time and lost productivity for people and businesses to switch from it, despite Linux offering much of the same things, including a full office suite, for free. Microsoft tripped up, and may get beaten by Linux eventually, especially since they missed the boat on smartphones and tablets somehow (despite having them first). I don't think the same thing can happen with bitcoin, since it's an open source project from the start, and no one is restricted from developing or improving it.

I don't want to see anyone lose money, but I don't want to see anyone get rich quick due to insider trading either, which is exactly what I think goes on with Bitcoin.

Unless your definition of insider trading is different from mine, ASIC mining has nothing to do with insider trading

[Rassah]

Why doesn't everyone use Windows?

Almost everyone does. Especially in business and government.

Why doesnt' everyone drive Fords?

Because cars wear out, and you are forced to switch to either a new Ford, or something else. Bitcoin doesn't wear out.

Why isn't everyone vegetarian?

Why doesn't everyone think that Britney Spears is the biggest superstar ever?

I have no idea why this is relevant 

Like i said, I think Bitcoin's got failings that some of the others are trying to remedy...  But I think a lot of people think that Bitcoin is perfect as is.

Sounds like a strawman argument, as I don't know anyone who does. Certainly not the developers who are continuing to fix problems and add issues. Certainly not businesses, who are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for increased adoption and easier to use tools. And certainly not the users who find some things a hassle, and are hoarding coins with the expectation that eventually they will be easier to use, and thus will be worth more. If people thought it was perfect, everyone would be using it for transactions, and almost no one would hoard it, since there would be no future developments and adoption to "invest" in.

[2112]

Litecoin is IPX/SPX to Bitcoin's TCP/IP.

This is probably the most stupid pseudo-technical drivel that I have read since Mike Hearn warned against "running out of disk seeks". I decided to preserve it for posterity.

[CaptChadd]

All this will do is make is so that the only people mining Bitcoin either have alot of money to buy the ASICS or are influence in the Bitcoin world.

This is good in a way, due to the fact that you would hope that the older generation mining Bitcoins will be better education and have the knowledge to reinvest wisely and not dump as the first sign of a small drop.

You will find the older more mature generation mining Bitcoin and the much younger generation mining the vast array of Altcoin with their GPU's.

[AliceWonder]

besides which, how hard would it be to adapt a shopping cart plugin from taking bitcoin to any other?

For me the difficulty is an increased number of currencies I have to deal with and convert around to pay people.
And increased testing every time I make changes to how things are done.

[ilostcoins]

Simple. I ordered my ASIC out of greed nearly a year ago. Running the numbers and salivating just like everyone else. In the intervening period, seeing what's happened and extrapolating what will happen I think it's clear Asics are a net-negative to the currency. Sure, the network has many more hashes than it had a year ago. But that's not what's important. What it's starting to lack, and what will never come back, is the excitement that everyone had about bitcoin when it was something that everyone could participate in, to varying extents.

Put another way, bitcoin would be stronger, more valuable to everyone with 1/10 the network hashing power but 100x the miners, than this consolidation we have now. When the only investment required was a graphics card that many people already had, they participated and were excited about it. When the network devolves to exclude them, when its left with a few pillars of power (asicminer, a hand full of Avalon owners and a handful of mini rig owners), all of which require significant investment, the outside world will shrug their shoulders amd look on. As a consumer, for instance, I know that I have not been clamouring for an e-currency with irreversible transactions to send to vendors who may or may not be cooperative if there's an issue with their product. And I certainly don't wish for the means for my friends to send me money at no charge, only for myself to have to be hit with a wire fee if I need that money as cash. Especially not when they could just hand me cash or a check.

I very much doubt many other consumers wish for that either. But when they can at least participate, they then get excited about it and talk up those features. Don't believe me, that's fine. But that's my stance.  In the meantime, I'll continue on in my hashing, knowing or feeling like this is a dead end.

besides which, how hard would it be to adapt a shopping cart plugin from taking bitcoin to any other?

not very, i dont think. so all the advantages bitcoin claims can easily be applied to any other.

there's that phrase, about standing on the shoulders of giants, and I think it applies very well here.

While I think that that there will be a form of peer-to-peer crypto currency in the future, I think that Bitcoin is the version 0.1 of it. Many of the copy/paste coins are there as well. A few implementations might be 0.1.5 or even 0.2, but we're a far way off from a final product. And all of its proponents, rather than looking objectively at things, are blindly swinging around trying to prevent anything from climbing onto Bitcoin's shoulders.
...

Shh..., don't accelerate the downward trajectory. Just ride on the optimism/faith and make some money.

[kjj]

...insider trading either, which is exactly what I think goes on with Bitcoin.

LOL.  Good bye.

[lucasjkr]

Why doesn't everyone use Windows?

Almost everyone does. Especially in business and government.

Why doesnt' everyone drive Fords?

Because cars wear out, and you are forced to switch to either a new Ford, or something else. Bitcoin doesn't wear out.

Why isn't everyone vegetarian?

Why doesn't everyone think that Britney Spears is the biggest superstar ever?

I have no idea why this is relevant 

Like i said, I think Bitcoin's got failings that some of the others are trying to remedy...  But I think a lot of people think that Bitcoin is perfect as is.

Sounds like a strawman argument, as I don't know anyone who does. Certainly not the developers who are continuing to fix problems and add issues. Certainly not businesses, who are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for increased adoption and easier to use tools. And certainly not the users who find some things a hassle, and are hoarding coins with the expectation that eventually they will be easier to use, and thus will be worth more. If people thought it was perfect, everyone would be using it for transactions, and almost no one would hoard it, since there would be no future developments and adoption to "invest" in.

The point is that its a free market (god, I hate that word, sounds so libertarian!),  and there's no reason why bitcoin should be the only choice. Just as we speak different languages, have different phone carriers, use different forms of paper money (sons people in fact freak out about the idea of a merged currency among the America's). People choose between debit and credit, paper or plastic, visa Amex Mastercard, choose among different banks and gas stations (whose final product is indistinguishable from that of their competitors). Contrary to your statement, there is in fact a contingent of people who use macs. There's also many people who use iOS and many more who opt for android, while others opt for blackberry. RHEL, Centos or Ubuntu? Postgres, MySQL, mariadb, oracle, SQL server or FileMaker?

So the point is, nowhere do you see a "this is good enough for everyone" approach, yet a lot of people think that bitcoin, with its 3 year history, ought to be it for peer to peer currencies. I digress - where some people see advantages, others will see flaws. The time to first confirmation is a huge one I think. The artificial cap on number of coins to be issued is another (I see zero advantage to this over a perpetually expanding monetary base). Those are big ones. Proof of work is resulting on a minor drain on resources, which is temporarily being fixed by ASICs, but once the arms race moves forward, I'm willing to bet that ASIC's will ultimately be the same power hogs as GPUs were....

More simply, and I say this as a complete hypocrite, having mined coins, sold them and bought from BFL while seeing dollar signs in my eyes, I think that the incentives in Bitcoin are completely upside down; people concentrate on mining as their road to riches rather than concieving businesses, and people hold coins close to their chest on hoping to simply profit from the fact that they hold those coins.... While I think mining (ie, issuing more currency and validatign transactions) needs to be a profitable activity for a peer to peer currency to take hold, think the reward structure needs to be rethought so that people are more focused on building an economy around a currency than to simply produce it and hope for demand to kick in.

So as you see, some of my complaints are based (I think) on what I think are shortcomings, other complaints are based more around the economy that's sprung up around Bitcoin in light of those shortcomings (ie the arms race to mine them since they're a limited resource and the hoarding effect that that has brought on).

Bitcoin is a pioneer, I'll give it that. The blockchain as the solution to the question of how a currency can be issued to tracked without a central authority is genius. So, there's no need to re-think that concept – other currencies can use Bitcoin as their “giant” whose shoulders they can stand on top of... Members of the community that think that Bitcoin is the be-all end-all solution can stick with Bitcoin, but remember, Satoshi released Bitcoin under an open-source license, fully understanding that not only would that mean that people could review his code and add to it under the “Bitcoin” umbrella and brand, but that other people might choose to take his work and go in a different direction with it.

I don't see why there are uproars when that happens, quite honestly. Worse are calls to actually attack the the competitors, and worse still are those who actually do attack currencies, simply because those currencies aren't Bitcoin.

[Rassah]

Litecoin is IPX/SPX to Bitcoin's TCP/IP.

This is probably the most stupid pseudo-technical drivel that I have read since Mike Hearn warned against "running out of disk seeks". I decided to preserve it for posterity.

I'm not a networking wiz, and only know IPX as the old Novel Netware that DOS based computers used to run before they switched to Windows and TCP/IP. Could you explain why that comparison was "stupid pseudo-technical drivel" please?

[lucasjkr]

Litecoin is IPX/SPX to Bitcoin's TCP/IP.

This is probably the most stupid pseudo-technical drivel that I have read since Mike Hearn warned against "running out of disk seeks". I decided to preserve it for posterity.

I'm not a networking wiz, and only know IPX as the old Novel Netware that DOS based computers used to run before they switched to Windows and TCP/IP. Could you explain why that comparison was "stupid pseudo-technical drivel" please?

In that case, perhaps Bitcoin is the TCP/IP...

[Rassah]

The point is that its a free market (god, I hate that word, sounds so libertarian!),  and there's no reason why bitcoin should be the only choice. ... People choose between debit and credit, paper or plastic, visa Amex Mastercard, choose among different banks and gas stations (whose final product is indistinguishable from that of their competitors). Contrary to your statement, there is in fact a contingent of people who use macs. There's also many people who use iOS and many more who opt for android, while others opt for blackberry. RHEL, Centos or Ubuntu? Postgres, MySQL, mariadb, oracle, SQL server or FileMaker?

There will of course be alternative cryptocurrencies. There are no laws or rules against them, and obviously everyone is free to use them. My main point is that Bitcoin is not dying, nor is it anywhere at risk of being replaced by something like Litecoin. Not unless something so radically different comes along that Bitcoin ca't implement it even with a hard fork. And sure, people use all those other OS's, but that still does't change the fact that Windows is the dominant OS out there.

So the point is, nowhere do you see a "this is good enough for everyone" approach, yet a lot of people think that bitcoin, with its 3 year history, ought to be it for peer to peer currencies.

I don't know what other people think. The reason I personally think that bitcoin is it, is simply because it's a protocol, not a piece of software that gets upgraded or not. If something like Litecoin's 2.5 minute block confirmation time turns out to be a significant advantage, Bitcoin can easily switch to such a confirmation with a fork. If, or rather when, SHA-265 hashing algorithm becomes inadequate, Bitcoin will switch to something better, like Scrypt, or something that is resistant to quantum computers. Bitcoin can even run two different mining algorithms at the same time if need be, giving time for miners to switch from old to new mining hardware. There is just nothing that I can think of, short of debt-based Ripple system, that Bitcoin can't implement if users see a need for it.

The time to first confirmation is a huge one I think.

I actually think confirmation times may be too short in the long run. There are discussions elsewhere on this forum about the speed-of-light problem for using Bitcoin between Earth and Mars. As for buying things like coffee, there are lots of ways to use bicoin where you don't need to worry about confirmations. One of those methods will be released either in 0.9, or the version after.

The artificial cap on number of coins to be issued is another (I see zero advantage to this over a perpetually expanding monetary base).

This has been discussed at length, and the basic problem is, how do you control the increase? If you give that control to a party of people, you've basically defeated one of the biggest reasons for Bitcoin. If you base it on some algorithm, there will always be ways to game them. If you just set it to a constant 3% a year increase, not only will you have trouble convincing people to move their money into something that gives them a negative return (see Freicoin), but the world's economy doesn't grow at a constant 3%, so you'll still have boom and bust cycles with periods of inflation/deflation.

More simply, and I say this as a complete hypocrite, having mined coins, sold them and bought from BFL while seeing dollar signs in my eyes, I think that the incentives in Bitcoin are completely upside down; people concentrate on mining as their road to riches rather than concieving businesses, and people hold coins close to their chest on hoping to simply profit from the fact that they hold those coins....

I'll name some of the richest Bitcoin people who are running bitcoin businesses:

Eric Voorhees (Satoshidice, Coinapult), Charlie Shrem (Bitinstant), Roger Ver (Bitcoinstore.com, and many others), Tony Gallippi (BitPay), Jered Kenna (Tradehill), Mark Karpeles (MtGox).

Now can you name some of the richest people who are bitcoin miners?

Sure, people started out thinking of Bitcoin as a get-rich-quick scheme, where you just run your GPU and print money. I was one of them. But bitcoin mostly makes people rich when they actually do some business with it. And Satoshi's brilliant idea was also that those who mined and hoarded at the start, found themselves wealthy once Bitcoin was more widely accepted, and are now pumping that wealth into developing more bitcoin tools. If you had been at the Bitcoin 2013 conference, you would've seen that of al the energy and enthusiasm there, barely any of it was about mining (BFL had a table, and Yifu made a presentation about Avalon), but 95% of the rest of it was all about bitcoin businesses, hardware, development, financial services, etc. The tens of thousands of dollars that were being thrown around at the conference weren't from miners.

I don't see why there are uproars when that happens, quite honestly. Worse are calls to actually attack the the competitors, and worse still are those who actually do attack currencies, simply because those currencies aren't Bitcoin.

Part of the reason there are uproars is because newbies get suckered into investing in scamcoins, or investing their money into altcoins thinking they can be "early adopters" or wealthy miners, when whatever it is they are adopting has no support behind it. Personally, I don't see Litecoin's "economy" growing beyond just the miners who feel butthurt about not being able to mine bitcoins anymore, and thus expect that it will eventually stagnate. There really aren't any benefits that can't be overcome on bitcoin's side. Look at this list:

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

and think about how many fools were parted with their money.

[2112]

I'm not a networking wiz, and only know IPX as the old Novel Netware that DOS based computers used to run before they switched to Windows and TCP/IP. Could you explain why that comparison was "stupid pseudo-technical drivel" please?

IPX/SPX and TCP/IP were developed completely independently with different goals, different target markets, different development models that have very little in common besides the basic concepts.

For a "not a networking wiz" I think it should be sufficient to read the Wikipedia articles portions about their respective history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite#History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPX/SPX

Edit: It took me a while to locate the appropriate document:

TCP AND IP BAKE OFF
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1025

This is probably the shortest description how the architects of TCP/IP encouraged interoperability of independent implementations and the general spirit of the cooperation within their base of users and vendors. Probably the quickest way to describe Bitcoin supporters is how they are an almost exact opposite of IETF: discouraging interoperability, confusing documentation, denigrating of both competitive and compatible implementations.

[justusranvier]

IPX/SPX and TCP/IP were developed completely independently with different goals, different target markets, different development models that have very little in common besides the basic concepts.

The point is that IPX/SPX is the one that nobody uses any more.

Metcalfe's law means there is little demand for competing networking standards, just like there is little demand for competing cryptocurrencies.