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

[kwest]

MintChip will never take off. It's been around since 2012 and there's still only three things you can buy with it (tuques, back bacon and life size posters of Michael Shanks from SG1).

Their POS/mobile solution isn't even out of closed beta testing yet. Read this: http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/royal-canadian-mint-readies-its-version-of-bitcoin-mintchip/46113

It says:
"At the moment, Brûlé says the MintChip and Ingenico solution will be in closed beta, with Royal Canadian Mint employees testing it out in their cafeteria, online, and peer-to-peer. The plan is to expand the pilot program to third-party consumers and merchants later this year.

The Mint is also in talks with some developing countries about how the MintChip might be used there, especially in regions where people are doing transactions over weak central banking systems and large geographic distances, Brûlé adds"

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[retrend]

I imagine ultracoin will beat it, because bumface is a mod on btc-e

[vpitcher07]

What do you mean by better? There's got to at least 20 other altcoins that people consider better. I see bitcoin as near perfect in my opinion. The only problems with it are it's difficulty to obtain for the average person and mining pools, which no other altcoin seems to fix.

[bitpop]

Here's a metaphor, it's 2014 and ipv6 is no where to be found. Good luck.

Digital ocean keeps running out of ipv4 and doesn't even support dual stack. Microsoft is hoarding 600,000 ipv4.

[fran2k]

I see Bitshares as a very promising coin if it succeeds its development.

[BitcoinSteve]

earthcoin

[JohnsonRobinson]

Proof of Stalk

[Bitcoinpro]

Dogecoin has moved to number 3 in trade and number 1 in transactions.

[anti-scam]

There's very little chance of this happening. Bitcoin can just copy any new revolutionary feature that springs forth from an alt-coin and the BTC community has the most money to throw around to fund the development of such things. The only chance is if an altcoin changes something that's controversial to change (like the 21 million coin limit) in a way that's unambiguously better (such as an algorithm to control money supply to achieve perfect price targets).

[Bitcoinpro]

There's very little chance of this happening. Bitcoin can just copy any new revolutionary feature that springs forth from an alt-coin and the BTC community has the most money to throw around to fund the development of such things. The only chance is if an altcoin changes something that's controversial to change (like the 21 million coin limit) in a way that's unambiguously better (such as an algorithm to control money supply to achieve perfect price targets).

its difficult to tell, Doge is making a move though doesn't really have to overtake it to become successful, fundamentals also suggest it may reach a very high market cap in near future

[keithers]

Rapecoin

Could you imagine...   "My wallet got hacked and all of my Rapecoin got stolen"   I'm sure people would be real sympathetic..lol

[bennybong]

Rapecoin

Made my day. LOL 

[BigJohn]

The way I see it, Bitcoin has some serious issues at the moment.

Proof of Work is a huge problem in my mind right now. It's a pretty big barrier of entry, you basically need lots of money to get into mining to buy hardware, and combined with mining pools, this creates too much centralization. This is coming to light now with the Ghash story. But even if Ghash were to disappear today, then all that means is that the power is centralized in the next couple of pools. Either way it's very few people who have quite a bit of control over the network.

It's still very difficult to get into. It's either registering with an exchange, or going on something like localbitcoin.com and trying to find someone. Then on top that, the problem gets compounded by the enormous price fluctuations.  Bitcoin price volatility has been a huge issue for a long time for many people.

Security is also a big risk. People are used to just putting their money in the bank and feeling safe. But now you have to keep your own Bitcoin yourself somehow. Lots of people have lost quite a bit of Bitcoin that way.

So another Cryptocurrency can take advantage of these issues (and many more) and take over Bitcoin in that way. Proof of Stake looks to be one up and coming alternative that's already feasible.



But here's the thing. None of these things are inherent in Bitcoin. They could all get fixed at some point in time. Emphasis on 'could'. It's possible the Proof of Work situation will change into something else, and although this seems very unlikely at this point, the situation may be forced on us if the pools decide to abuse their power one day. Trading fiat for BTC may become easier as more services move into that space. Even security is surely to improve over time with better wallet software, and even hardware-wallets in the future.

So in my mind it really all depends on what happens in the Bitcoin arena in the upcoming years. If enough of these problems get addressed, then there's really no room for Bitcoin to be replaced by anything. But if they don't, then it's almost a guarantee that something will replace Bitcoin.

[BitcoinSteve]

dogecoin is so gay..

[SaraMine]

Dogecoin has moved to number 3 in trade and number 1 in transactions.

yes...dogecoin was a joke...but now its a future couse its have great dev team...and now even foundation

[ak84]

I've observed  most of the major cryptocurrencies and I don't see any that threatens bitcoin soon.
Don't forget that a currency not only needs solid fundamentals (code and design) but also a dev team, miners, and adopters. Many of the altcoins have one-man dev team, a relatively small amount of mining power (as compared to that of bitcoin). But some of the alt coins do have believers and these believers are a strength. Scrypt coins' strength is that they are the domain of the little guy miner. But can these scrypt coins last when the asics move in? That's the question.

[jubalix]

So to all the tech savy people in here - what advantages could other cryptocurrencies bring that will give them a crucial edge over BTC, and how fast could something like that come along?

I think the biggest problem with Bitcoin is that the transaction volume can't scale past a certain point.  Bitcoin blocks can only support 5-7 transactions per second at max, which is way too low to support a large-scale public adoption.  Compare to Visa with 2,000 t/s and Paypal with 40+ t/s (numbers from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability ).  As the transaction volume gets closer to the block limit, the transaction fees go up and it becomes impractical to use Bitcoin for small value transactions.  As it stands, Bitcoin transactions are already too expensive for payments in the $1-$2 USD range (transaction fees around $0.20-$0.50).

Altcoins can provide value because they can offload some of that transaction volume and usually have lower transaction fees.  For example, Litecoin can support 4x the transaction volume of Bitcoin (with 4x faster blocks) and has transactions fees around $0.03.  But a 4x improvement is still nowhere near what we need to get to Visa-level numbers (or even catch up with Paypal).

I see two possible "end games" for Bitcoin:

1.  Bitcoin stays as the "gold standard" relative to other altcoins, but altcoins are used for most day-to-day transactions.  Bitcoin is only used for high-value transactions.  In this way, we solve the scalability limit by adding more coins.
2.  Some new cryptocoin comes along that has a whole new transaction/block structure and supports a much higher transaction volume than Bitcoin (e.g. 1000x).  None of the existing altcoins do this yet.  This is the only case where I can see Bitcoin actually dying.  

The number of transactions per second that Bitcoin can handle is limited to 7 per second artificially, and can be changed when needed.  Read about it in the white paper - Satoshi was very aware of a figure of 100k per second as being necessary as part of the scale up.

The biggest issue for bitcoin is the fact that it is currently going through the process of becoming legal and respectable. Once it has done this, and all the difficult questions have been answered, the door will be open for governments to introduce their own official version of crypto currency - with the advantage of any losses being covered by government insurance - just in the same way that if you burn cash, it can be replaced if you can prove it happened and have the remains.

When that happens, Bitcoin will die, possibly within a few months.  It will never die completely, but it will become the IRC of the currency world!

Think of it like the wrong example given earlier. Google, was not first to market, but actually one of the last. They took every fault in the market, and fixed it.  Within months, everyone forgot about Altavista, Dogpile and Yahoo, and to Google became a verb within 2 years.

Bitcoin, the protocol will grow and grow, but Bitcoin, the currency will be replaced, as soon as the mainstream finally understand and trust the process - don't hold your breath though!

The biggest issue for gov coin is the btc/CC protocol itself which enshrines the philosophy/ minium entropy level of capital allocation is antithetical to central gov operation, or non DAC's.

CC's minimize entropy because they can collect many, mnay times more information about what the user wants than a gov can in wealth redistribution. The same as DAC's versus corps.

The gov/coprs models themselves will be thus arbitraged out by CC's and DACS, until they cease to exist in current form, or are forced to adapt to exist.

in more common parlance, who would invest wealth and time into GOV coin that Gov can devalue at will? Conversely how would Gov function as they do without being able to devalue and issue currency at will?

Where mining becomes centralised, a decentralisation needs to occur, wogtami has written on this and donated to the development of the P2P mining. Of course, POS solves this problem, but has the separate problem of distribution. This is where (I see) PeerCoin comes in. It bootstraps mining into POS so bootstraping 1st gen into 2nd gen Cryptos. In the same way as 1st gen cryptos need time and mechanism to boot strap into fiat.

Nxt perhpas misses this as its distribution model forgets to boot strap to gen 1.

PeerCoin also steers clear of the transaction block chain bloat issue bu aiming at high store of value.

Emunie or something similar may be come day to day transactional currency.

the evaluation of Peercoin has been much greater than BTC and LTC over the same period.

[Dr Bloggood]

in more common parlance, who would invest wealth and time into GOV coin that Gov can devalue at will? Conversely how would Gov function as they do without being able to devalue and issue currency at will?

I have no idea what you are saying in the rest of your post, but this sentence I understand - and you are totally right there! That's the whole point of cyptos, and not enough people jumping on that train will be willing to give up their new freedom.

the evaluation of Peercoin has been much greater than BTC and LTC over the same period.

BTC and LTC had paved the way.

[Dr Bloggood]

What do you mean by better? There's got to at least 20 other altcoins that people consider better. I see bitcoin as near perfect in my opinion. The only problems with it are it's difficulty to obtain for the average person and mining pools, which no other altcoin seems to fix.

"Better" as in "showing crucial fundamental (not just psychological) advantages over BTC".

[Dr Bloggood]

Here's a metaphor, it's 2014 and ipv6 is no where to be found. Good luck.

Digital ocean keeps running out of ipv4 and doesn't even support dual stack. Microsoft is hoarding 600,000 ipv4.

What does this mean in normal language?

Is this something you can eat?