What are the chances BTC is replaced by something better soon?

[FandangledGizmo]

Fuck ripple and some guy holding your gold. I'll use bullion vault if I want gold

Same can be said to bitcoin and guys holding our money on it!!!

Digital currency is used by people for limitless transaction and I am sure you cannot move with your bullion in vault. But certainly i can if i reside in the UK and want my bullion delivered in the US, I can do it quiet comfortably with NoFiatCoin | XNF.

With Bitcoin I hold my Bitcoins

You can hold NoFiatCoin | XNF as well. This is traded on Ripple network. People having a bit knowledge of Ripple can say that Ripple is the most fast and robust currency network. Please follow the link http://www.nofiatcoin.com/ to find it all yourself.

Nope Ripple is a joke. They've only released such a small % of XRP onto the market. There's like what 20-50X inflation still to come?
Fiat will be less inflationary than ripple.

You can see by looking at how small the daily traded volume is, 2 Billion Market cap my ass, the numbers point to something more in $25 Million market cap range.

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[FandangledGizmo]

Doesn't matter, when new knc arrives in March, ghash will be nothing. There are no incumbents in Bitcoin

Do you know if it's a handful of companies that tend to bring out the next generation of Asics or is their more competition in the market than that?  I.e. if the new knc is so good, couldn't the one or two companies that manufacture it, be a threat if they wanted to be?
(Obviously they don't want to be, but someone else could want them to be.)  

There's a bunch of companies. But knowing when they arrive is a guessing game. Unless you are preordering, you can be sure they will come but don't really care when.

Ghash bitfury chips will be shit in a couple months. And they won't be able to procure that many chips again from anyone. Unless they buy a company. But I don't think they are in it for the long term. If I were them, i'd be moving to the carribean soon.

I hope you're right. Centralisation of mining still seems like Bitcoin's main weakness to me.

[Flanagan]

In  the computer programming industryworld, Is C++, Java, Python, VB, etc better than Cobol ?

Yet hundreds of thousands, probably millions of lines of code are still operating and being maintained in Cobol, mostly in the financial world (big banks, etc.).

A random seach for CONTRACT jobs in the UK at jobserve.co.uk shows rates going for GBP 300 pounds / day for Cobol specialist.

[hypostatization]

Ripple, as a platform, is worth reconsideration.

It is a powerful alternative to centralized exchanges and payment systems. Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are increasingly beholden to those systems.

Bitcoin vs. Ripple is dead.

Ripple vs. Bitpay vs. Circle vs. Coinbase vs. MtGox vs. inputs.io is worth consideration.

Ripple is best understood as a bridge or universal translator between currencies. It does not seek to replace Bitcoin. Ripple, by design, is fully complementary to Bitcoin. It will enable a user holding only BTC, LTC, NMC, or even DOGE to make purchases from a vendor accepting only USD, EUR, or GBP. Cross-currency payments is a killer feature.

Due to an inaccurate and outdated attack campaign led by tradefortress, in favor of his vested interests, Ripple is widely misunderstood.

Here is a great primer for those familiar with Bitcoin: https://ripple.com/wiki/Introduction_to_Ripple_for_Bitcoiners

Ripple, as a platform, aids Bitcoin.

Hate XRP, but want the benefits of Ripple? Check out Splash: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=372486.0

Interested in earning XRP? https://www.computingforgood.org/

I am hoping to see features of Ripple make their way into alternative systems. A lot of cool features are also coming down the pipeline:

• https://ripple.com/wiki/Contracts
• https://ripple.com/wiki/M_of_N
• https://ripple.com/wiki/Federation_protocol

Consider ripping it off, before dismissing it outright

All of that being said, I am skeptical of XNF.

[Dr Bloggood]

Fuck ripple and some guy holding your gold. I'll use bullion vault if I want gold

Exactly.

However, it is obvious digitalpro is just here to serve his agenda. Reported (and hopefully removed soon).

Can we all go on with the original discussion now?

[tspacepilot]

well, this is a great topic, but I am afraid half the posters here will hijack this thread by spamming the altcoin they hold

This poster was right.  Kinda a shame cos I'd also like to hear more serious discussion on this one.

[Giulio Prisco]

I think BTC won't be "replaced" by other cryptocurrencies anytime soon, but co-exist with a growing number of alternative cryptocurrencies.

There is a chance that BTC will become more and more regulated and mainstreamized - for example, someday most merchants may accept BTC, but only with proof of identity and record keeping. If so, new systems more anonymous, less traceable, will gain traction. Then these new systems may become more and more regulated and mainstreamized in turn, other players will come in, and so forth.

Question: what are the most interesting alternatives to BTC at this moment?

[ktorn]

Define "replaced".

For all we know, whatever "replaces" Bitcoin in the future could be a higher-level protocol that "replaces" all cryptocurrencies (in people's minds), but actually uses their blockchains under the hood. Something like Mastercoin or similar. In that case people won't care if their transactions are done using Bitcoin, Litecoin, or... Rapecoin (really?) just like people today don't care whether their BitTorrent client uses TCP or UDP as long as it downloads their stuff.

One thing is for sure, Bitcoin currently has the advantage of the brand, everyone's talking about it.

As history has taught us time and time again, the best technology doesn't always win. I'm not saying that Bitcoin is based on poor technology, much the opposite, it's remarkable, but most people just do not care.

Anything that hopes to "replace" Bitcoin any time soon will need much more than some trivial technical improvements. In my opinion even POS might not be enough (and this coming from someone with a small stake in NXT).

[FandangledGizmo]

Can somebody tell me some of the flaws with NXT besides pre-mine/lack of distribution? 

I dismissed it completely because of the above, but I've given it another look.

My issues with Bitcoin are Centralised mining, compromised devs, and slow confirmation times + volatility requiring centralised BitPay companies.

In NXT,

The transactions are apparently pretty quick - Goodbye Centralised Bitpay (once it's less volatile.)
(I don't dislike Bitpay but I'm working on the idea that the crypto-market wants as little centralised weak points as possible.)

The mining is POS and apparently hard to attack - goodbye Bitcoin's centralised mining issue and 45% GHash.IO etc.

(Ideally NXT would have a development fund & voting system, to replace compromised developers and incentivise new ones.
-Only Memorycoin 2.0 really has that so far and not sure I'm a fan yet - slow confirmation times + slight pre-mine issues.)

NXT's also easily scale-able to be able to handle Mastercard/Visa type volumes, and it has whatever advantages Namecoin had

Next comes decentralized DNS (significantly enhancing Namecoin’s current offering), decentralized instant messaging and chat, completely anonymous websites with no additional plugins required to browse them, decentralized stock exchanges, and peer to peer transactions of all kinds which are 100% green, secure, encrypted and irreversible.

Anyway personally I can't see a reason why it shouldn't at least over take Litecoin soon, given scrypt-Asics are coming out so LC has very little USP. While NXT's current market cap, seems to suggest people have gotten over the pre-mine/lack of distribution thing, the daily trade volume is also pretty high suggesting a high % of NXT is circulating in the market not like just a small % of the intitial total like XRP.

[carbone]

Define "replaced".

One thing is for sure, Bitcoin currently has the advantage of the brand, everyone's talking about it.

As history has taught us time and time again, the best technology doesn't always win. I'm not saying that Bitcoin is based on poor technology, much the opposite, it's remarkable, but most people just do not care.

Anything that hopes to "replace" Bitcoin any time soon will need much more than some trivial technical improvements. In my opinion even POS might not be enough (and this coming from someone with a small stake in NXT).

This point is most important. The first-to-market advantage is hard to overcome by a competitor. A true replacement would need to be a major improvement over bitcoin, PoS is nice but not nearly enough.

[MakeBelieve]

Something will always come along which is better with the amount of alt coins being created I'm sure Bitcoin will be replaced with something better soon.

[jongameson]

can they replace bullion with something made from chicken?  cause chicken is cheaper?

[asdf]

Nxt looks cool and all, but I just don't get how it's going to work with the fixed transaction fee. If the value of Nxt rises to, say $1, That means the minimum fee for a transaction is $1! This implies a market cap of only 1 billion. How can Nxt be competitive vs other coins with such a high fee?

Otherwise, the PoS system looks really interesting. Can't we have PoS without fixed fess, or are fixed fees somehow fundamental to the PoS implementation (P2PCoin has the same issue)?

The transaction fee isn't set in stone. Here's a thread (including a poll) discussing various options for dealing with it in future:
https://nextcoin.org/index.php/topic,2075.0.html

Ultimately, the community will decide how transaction fees are handled. Right now it's set at 1 Nxt for simplicity, and this is ok for the moment because of Nxt's current low value.

The only solution in that thread that made any sense was the one about leaving the fee at 1 and using NXT as a "backbone" currency. I'm not sure how feasible this is.

No one comes to a sensible conclusion about how the fee will actually be adjusted.

[FandangledGizmo]

Nxt looks cool and all, but I just don't get how it's going to work with the fixed transaction fee. If the value of Nxt rises to, say $1, That means the minimum fee for a transaction is $1! This implies a market cap of only 1 billion. How can Nxt be competitive vs other coins with such a high fee?

Otherwise, the PoS system looks really interesting. Can't we have PoS without fixed fess, or are fixed fees somehow fundamental to the PoS implementation (P2PCoin has the same issue)?

The transaction fee isn't set in stone. Here's a thread (including a poll) discussing various options for dealing with it in future:
https://nextcoin.org/index.php/topic,2075.0.html

Ultimately, the community will decide how transaction fees are handled. Right now it's set at 1 Nxt for simplicity, and this is ok for the moment because of Nxt's current low value.

The only solution in that thread that made any sense was the one about leaving the fee at 1 and using NXT as a "backbone" currency. I'm not sure how feasible this is.

No one comes to a sensible conclusion about how the fee will actually be adjusted.

Well looks like NXT will be trying to get the balance right to make it a transactional currency unlike Peercoin which aims to be a 'back-bone' currency.

Nxt is still in it's infancy. There aren't a lot of users yet, and features are still being implemented. So the number of transactions per day is still low, but growing. As transactions, and the price of Nxt grows, transaction fees will be adjusted downwards to keep transaction costs reasonable while still sufficiently rewarding forgers.[/u]

http://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/FAQ#Why_are_transaction_fees_so_high.3F

Looks like they will also be implementing a voting system and dev fund which is critical too.

So NXT 'potentially' solves

Centralisation of mining_____ - Using POS
Centralisation of developers_ - Using voting and independent fund to attract new developers and avoid key people getting compromised
Centralisation of merchants_ - Because of slow confirm times, Bitcoin will always require Bitpay weak-points even when it's less volatile, but NXT confirms super fast.

Personally I'm not selling any BTC for NXT but I can't see any point holding alt-coins that are just clones of BTC in one way or another, they will never compete with BTC, at least NXT has a shot.

[dissident]

I believe litecoin is going to slowly erode in value and get bumped out of the top 5 because it offers nothing over bitcoin, it's simply one of the older currencies that happened to get popular early... I'm still waiting for a nice bitcoin selloff to under 600 before I even consider getting in.. if it doesn't happen and I miss out, so be it.

Problem with NXT is that the foraging as they call it rewards the people with the most coins.... if they instead gave a fixed amount of coin to every account with a balance, or perhaps active accounts only to encourage trading, more people might adopt the coin... fixed payout for every account regardless of balance so the rich don't get richer... this would attract more people.

[whtchocla7e]

I believe litecoin is going to slowly erode in value and get bumped out of the top 5 because it offers nothing over bitcoin, it's simply one of the older currencies that happened to get popular early... I'm still waiting for a nice bitcoin selloff to under 600 before I even consider getting in.. if it doesn't happen and I miss out, so be it.

600? Not an ounce of pessimism, huh? My prediction is it will drop below 100 sometime this year.

[nodroids]

Ya, I've seen almost nothing but clones. NXT is basically a clone that makes some improvements but in principle, is the same.

Mastercoin however with allowing chargebacks is an real alternative that solves for alternative uses, but MasterCoin is built on Bitcoin and uses BTC as collateral. So BTC is still the undisputed king for the next 4 years imo. Although I haven't spent the hours and hours of research to really call myself a student of the whole altcoin landscape.

[billyjoeallen]

 A better coin would need a multi-billion dollar infrastructure to overcome Bitcoin's network effects. This forum is currently swarming with losers who think they can turn back the clock and become early adopters with their own alt-coins. Will. not. happen.  Money is accepted because people think it is money. People will think it is money because it is accepted as money. The ultimate network effect.  I paid $10/BTC for coins that were mined for pennies and I was happy to do it. Now they are worth hundreds. There is no more early adopter money to be made, but there is still VC money, wall-street money and mainstream money to be made. Quit crying over lost opportunities and take advantage of the opportunities you still have.

[bitpop]

Litecoin is going to become VERY centralized when the first asics hit and that will destroy it

[Bobsurplus]

Litecoin is going to become VERY centralized when the first asics hit and that will destroy it

Care to explain this nonsense in detail?