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December 25, 2013, 04:34:22 PM |
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To expand on infinitybo's comment: It's not necessary to mine every altcoin under the sun because not every altcoin has value. As a matter of fact, few are worth anything. Of those few, only a couple altcoin are actively traded and have achieved any degree of liquidity in the market.
Sure, it's not a ridiculous notion to speculate on the possibility of one of the non-bitcoin altcoins to break away from the pack and become a legitimate alternative to bitcoin, but based on the current data, it's just not likely. Then again, during bitcoin's very early days, its current success and adoption was completely unfathomable.
I haven't researched all of the who-knows-how-many altcoins in existence, but if I had to speculate on an alternative to bitcoin, I would look for one that does not have a predetermined limit of coins in circulation. I'm not saying that bitcoin's maximum number (21-million?) is an fundamentally bad idea, but many do think this factor limits the long-term success of bitcoin because it is inherently deflationary. In other words, because the number of available coin is limited, the value of the coin goes up to quickly, which is not a good thing for a global currency, which should instead be a stable commodity.
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