Should we be concerned about the new alternate block chains/cryptocurrencies?

[m0w3r]

Question:  Should we be concerned about the new alternate block chains? ixcoin, iocoin, solidcoin, <next coin>, etc.

Soon, there may be a new cryptocurrency that has a better economic model/features than bitcoin.
I'm not sure that any of the current crop are much better than bitcoin, but what are the chances that a new one with great new features comes out?
Something like the Satoshi code but with actual admirable improvements.  Should I lighten up on my bitcoin holdings?

[YoYa]

Bitcoin represent's the original technology and will be the oldest establish, granted a better economic model may come along, but BTC is essentially the representative stock of the technology itself.

[fcmatt]

The other *coins struck me as obvious scams to make money and they will die off soon enough.
Namecoin is not included in this opinion.

[gw4tt]

Probably wouldn't worry about it right now.

If any one of them can give miners more profit than bitcoin, then I'd worry. Miners will switch to whichever one is more profitable, and this destroys bitcoin's value, mainly that it's highly secure.

[Piper67]

I can foresee, beyond 2020, another cryptocurrency, not-deflationary, and backed by Bitcoin. But for now, Bitcoin has a real prime-mover advantage over anything else, not to mention being the most elegant one of the lot.

[m0w3r]

Aren't miners making more with the alternate currencies, at least until the difficulty ramps up?  

[gw4tt]

Solidcoin is more profitable right now, but I meant long term.. Like for a few months or more so that all miners get wind of it and switch.

[triforcelink]

This will force bitcoin to become better. The top currency will have to earn its spot. Just because bitcoin was first, does not make it the best. Facebook was not the first social networking site by a long shot. Nor was the mining pool deepbit the first mining pool. I foresee many new blockchains starting up but only few of them will be at the top.

Bitcoin has had a good start, but at this point in time, it needs some serious organization to make the currency we all have hoped and dreamed for it to become.

We need PR, marketing, simplification, and more liquidity. And most of all, we need products and services which make good use of bitcoin, something like silkroad... just more legal.. when it comes to silkroad, bitcoin fulfilled an actual need. We have yet to see an effective micro payment system, I want to see something that works in a SINGLE click.

[joulesbeef]

competition is good.

problems though will bleed over in my opinion. If someone lost big, if an exchange got hacked and everyone lost their solidcoins, ixcoins w/e, I think that bad news might cross the line and make bitcoin drop.

plus there is very very valid concerns about someone malicious making one of these coins, people are quick to jump on them(me included) without doing adequate research on them. So far we have been lucky and they have probably been semi profitable for the founders.

I too thought of all the coins as scams... well "gambling apps". Hard to call them scams when there are so many pyramid scams in the gambling forum that people gladly jump on and call it gambling, btu so far solidcoin has gone further than I would have expected.(well it is plunging right now about as fast as it rose just a couple hours earlier btu still worth far more than any of the other coins rose too(minus namecoin)) It still has a chance of getting as high as namecoin.

it may end up dying as it has to actively compete with bitcoin on the exact same field, while namecoin made it;s own field somewhat. Then again it may continue to do well. I do think in the end these things will be a net good but we do have to be wary from a security aspect and understand that an insecure alternative chain could effect the bitcoin price.

[RandyFolds]

Start worrying when you see a fork whose value is tied to futures on a non-volatile industrial metal like paladium or titanium or platinum. That is the only thing to bring to the table that won't amount to a slightly-tweaked clone, and it will be the death of baseless currencies like bit, ix, i0, and solid.

[Technomage]

Solidcoin has some interesting features but it also has some bad ones that could prove very bad in the long run (for example fixed fees). There's nothing revolutionary there that makes it a lot better than Bitcoin, nothing at all. The widespread adoption of Bitcoin (well, compared to any forks) makes sure that these will not be revolutionary. Unless someone comes up with a cryptocurrency that's actually revolutionary compared to Bitcoin, which I doubt.

That being said, I'm saving a few SC just in case it does succeed in the future. It is the best fork since namecoin for sure.

[gw4tt]

Probably wouldn't worry about it right now.

If any one of them can give miners more profit than bitcoin, then I'd worry. Miners will switch to whichever one is more profitable, and this destroys bitcoin's value, mainly that it's highly secure.

This I would not be much of an issue soon I would think.  I don't know how soon but merged mining will become mainstream before you know it and the hash power of all the networks could be used for many of them (and I think all the current ones).

Yea, merged mining may change things quite a bit.

[FlipPro]

No the auxiliary chains will only make Bitcoin stronger. Solidcoin already has some nice features I would like to see on the original client. I thought they were a scam but I am soon starting to realize that there is a serious programmer on that team. I do believe solid coin was built by a group of people, thus explaining the reason why it's "solid" ;P.  All the chains that are getting started today that have serious goals/improvements will be worth millions in the future.

[wolftaur]

No the auxiliary chains will only make Bitcoin stronger. Solidcoin already has some nice features I would like to see on the original client. I thought they were a scam but I am soon starting to realize that there is a serious programmer on that team. I do believe solid coin was built by a group of people, thus explaining the reason why it's "solid" ;P.  All the chains that are getting started today that have serious goals/improvements will be worth millions in the future.

Ixcoin is a scam. Its author mined around 580,000 coins for himself before releasing it so others could mine and use the software. SolidCoin didn't have any real pre-mining on it (the author did pick up some coins first, but has been using those for bounties to get stuff for the fork, like encouraging pools and stuff like that) and actually had a number of features added -- whereas ixcoin was just a direct copy of Bitcoin, with the added "feature" that the guy who changed "Bitcoin" to "ixcoin" in the source code thinks he'll get rich from having mined for months by himself at difficulty 1.

i0coin was released in response to ixcoins, but it's currently dead due to a design error that at least as of now hasn't been fixed.

[Enky1974]

I moved to solidcoin yesterday to give it a try; at the moment it's 3 times more profitable then bitcoin (155$ per month against 58$ with bitcoin, using a 5870 overclocked) and i think is better then bitcoin, i dont worry for the fixed transaction fee, it might be changed in the future. What concern me of bitcoin is that it is vulnerable to a drop off in mining power, who is holding bitcoins could barely transfer them or do anything with them, if too many miners drop off (for instance to mine SolidCoins) the entire network could collapse leaving people with no way to get their Bitcoins out or do anything with them.

[dustintrammell]

We need PR, marketing, simplification, and more liquidity. And most of all, we need products and services which make good use of bitcoin, something like silkroad... just more legal.. when it comes to silkroad, bitcoin fulfilled an actual need. We have yet to see an effective micro payment system, I want to see something that works in a SINGLE click.

Might be worth looking into seeing if Flattr (http://flattr.com/) would support multiple currencies, including Bitcoin.

[Lumpy]

I moved to solidcoin yesterday to give it a try; at the moment it's 3 times more profitable then bitcoin (155$ per month against 58$ with bitcoin, using a 5870 overclocked) and i think is better then bitcoin, i dont worry for the fixed transaction fee, it might be changed in the future. What concern me of bitcoin is that it is vulnerable to a drop off in mining power, who is holding bitcoins could barely transfer them or do anything with them, if too many miners drop off (for instance to mine SolidCoins) the entire network could collapse leaving people with no way to get their Bitcoins out or do anything with them.

Where are you coming up with this 3x number? At the current bid rate of 0.019 BTC per SC, it's barely as profitable as Bitcoin.

Mining Solidcoins with 1 Gh/s, at the current difficulty (20250), I will mine ~31.8 Solidcoins in a day. That amounts to ~0.6 BTC.
Mining Bitcoins with 1 Gh/s, at the current difficulty (1805700), I will mine ~0.56 Bitcoins a day.

0.6 BTC vs. 0.56 BTC! Not 3x more profitable, and when you take into account the high number of SC stales, it is LESS profitable.

I'm mining SC anyway, but that figure is quite wrong.

[Enky1974]

yes sorry, but diff was 16000 and 0.025btc for 1sc

[m0w3r]

I'm trying to keep an eye on the solidcoin.  It got a spike of hash recently, but seems to have dropped off lately.  I'm trying to determine if bitcoin's first mover advantage will be enough to make it worth holding on to any bitcoins longer term.

[Enky1974]

I'm trying to keep an eye on the solidcoin.  It got a spike of hash recently, but seems to have dropped off lately.  I'm trying to determine if bitcoin's first mover advantage will be enough to make it worth holding on to any bitcoins longer term.

Me too, i like solidcoin, i like the fact that it's possible to encrypt the wallet, it's unaccetable that with the bitcoin client is still not yet possible.