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

[U1TRA_L0RD]

I think potential candidates are Litecoin, Protoshare, and DOGEcoin.

Why DOGEcoin? I've not looked into it. However, I was under the impression that DOGE was a straight-up Litecoin clone wrapped in a cute and fuzzy, but non-functional and nonsensical internet meme wrapper?

Doge can rise because its pretty much profitable each day, I make $1.86 of Doge coins daily.

[El Dude]

doge is a joke coin , that will stop being funny once people start losing money.

[dissident]

yep, doge brings nothing new to the table... the one thing that bitcoin has going for it is when people think of crypto currencies, they only know 'bitcoin' because the media only says 'bitcoin' .. they never mention 'litecoin' or any other for that matter.

[Dr Bloggood]

Proponents continue to state that Bitcoin can simply "evolve" to incorporate any new good ideas coming down the pike. However, any substantial change to Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency requires a hard fork, which is functionally equivalent to creating a new cryptocurrency form scratch and convincing holders of the old units to swap them out for new ones. The essential inflexibility of cryptocurrencies (which is what makes them tamper-resistant) inevitably leads to this. At the time of a hard fork, the new system starts from zero, and the alts out there have already been established for some time; so it is by no means clear how it would play out.

That's what I don't understand and what would be essential to know: What, in that regards, would be a "substantial change"?

[bitpop]

Proponents continue to state that Bitcoin can simply "evolve" to incorporate any new good ideas coming down the pike. However, any substantial change to Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency requires a hard fork, which is functionally equivalent to creating a new cryptocurrency form scratch and convincing holders of the old units to swap them out for new ones. The essential inflexibility of cryptocurrencies (which is what makes them tamper-resistant) inevitably leads to this. At the time of a hard fork, the new system starts from zero, and the alts out there have already been established for some time; so it is by no means clear how it would play out.

That's what I don't understand and what would be essential to know: What, in that regards, would be a "substantial change"?

Anything that requires a fork

[Dr Bloggood]

Proponents continue to state that Bitcoin can simply "evolve" to incorporate any new good ideas coming down the pike. However, any substantial change to Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency requires a hard fork, which is functionally equivalent to creating a new cryptocurrency form scratch and convincing holders of the old units to swap them out for new ones. The essential inflexibility of cryptocurrencies (which is what makes them tamper-resistant) inevitably leads to this. At the time of a hard fork, the new system starts from zero, and the alts out there have already been established for some time; so it is by no means clear how it would play out.

That's what I don't understand and what would be essential to know: What, in that regards, would be a "substantial change"?

Anything that requires a fork

If that was a serious reply: You are answering my question by refering back to the original question.

What requires a fork?

(And please don't tell me it's "any substantial change"...)

[bitpop]

Proponents continue to state that Bitcoin can simply "evolve" to incorporate any new good ideas coming down the pike. However, any substantial change to Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency requires a hard fork, which is functionally equivalent to creating a new cryptocurrency form scratch and convincing holders of the old units to swap them out for new ones. The essential inflexibility of cryptocurrencies (which is what makes them tamper-resistant) inevitably leads to this. At the time of a hard fork, the new system starts from zero, and the alts out there have already been established for some time; so it is by no means clear how it would play out.

That's what I don't understand and what would be essential to know: What, in that regards, would be a "substantial change"?

Anything that requires a fork

If that was a serious reply: You are answering my question by refering back to the original question.

What requires a fork?

(And please don't tell me it's "any substantial change"...)

A substantial change. Lol it's hard to explain.
Basically anything that is hard coded like block reward, number of coins, etc. There's no exact list and people come up with new things every day. But luckily many haven't needed a fork. It's crazy how flexible it is. Adding p2sh didn't need one.

There's only a few hard coded rules that run the network.

[bithic]

Here's a great essay from Anon136 of this forum that explains the key innovations in Nxt's unique Proof-of-Stake/Transparent Forging implementation. Definitely worth the read.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E_ToOMG2l1XThx6YnyXEajXaf6H1k2yjq8XkAF0ScB4/mobilebasic?pli=1

I think Nxt could challenge Bitcoin in time. Some of these ideas will be hard for Bitcoin to adapt to (would require changes at the fundamental level, which might necessitate a hard fork - difficult to do when so much money is at stake). Bitcoin could possibly come up with other ways to remain competitive though. I think this year will be very interesting.

eMunie looks very interesting too. As does Zerocoin. From what I gather, Bitcoin could implement Zerocoin, but probably won't in order to cooperate with governments. It wouldn't be able to implement the Nxt or eMunie ideas without a significant rewrite though, as these have very different ways of doing things that are not based on Bitcoin.

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.

[go1111111]

The main flaw in Bitcoin that might not be fixed after an altcoin fixes it is lack of anonymity. Let's say that zerocoin comes up with a more efficient implementation, so zerocoin starts to resemble an anonymous version of Bitcoin. There may be pressure from goverments and entrepreneurs/businesses/"The Foundation" to keep that feature out of Bitcoin, giving zerocoin time to grow and develop a large infrastructure of its own, then potentially overtake Bitcoin.

IMO the assumption that there will only be one "main" coin is correct, due to network effects. In terms of most likely to overtake Bitcoin, here are my estimates:

1. Some altcoin that hasn't been invented yet, which represents a large technical breakthrough which Bitcoin doesn't copy for some reason. 5%
2. Zerocoin: 2%
3. Litecoin: 1% (it can't overtake Bitcoin in its current form -- it would need to incorporate a politically difficult innovation like anonymity from Zerocoin without Bitcoin following suit).
4. Mastercoin or ProtoShares or Ethereum: 0.5%
5. Any other existing coin listed on coinmarketcap.com: much less than the ones I listed above.

[davedx]

ZeroCoin has been mentioned a lot in this thread, but do people really believe it has mass market appeal outside of the black market sites?

But then again, I guess the black market economy is pretty large.

[Dr Bloggood]

Proponents continue to state that Bitcoin can simply "evolve" to incorporate any new good ideas coming down the pike. However, any substantial change to Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency requires a hard fork, which is functionally equivalent to creating a new cryptocurrency form scratch and convincing holders of the old units to swap them out for new ones. The essential inflexibility of cryptocurrencies (which is what makes them tamper-resistant) inevitably leads to this. At the time of a hard fork, the new system starts from zero, and the alts out there have already been established for some time; so it is by no means clear how it would play out.

That's what I don't understand and what would be essential to know: What, in that regards, would be a "substantial change"?

Anything that requires a fork

If that was a serious reply: You are answering my question by refering back to the original question.

What requires a fork?

(And please don't tell me it's "any substantial change"...)

A substantial change. Lol it's hard to explain.
Basically anything that is hard coded like block reward, number of coins, etc. There's no exact list and people come up with new things every day. But luckily many haven't needed a fork. It's crazy how flexible it is. Adding p2sh didn't need one.

There's only a few hard coded rules that run the network.

Ok, that explores the topic a bit better! 

[hynx]

I think potential candidates are Litecoin, Protoshare, and DOGEcoin.

Why DOGEcoin? I've not looked into it. However, I was under the impression that DOGE was a straight-up Litecoin clone wrapped in a cute and fuzzy, but non-functional and nonsensical internet meme wrapper?

Doge can rise because its pretty much profitable each day, I make $1.86 of Doge coins daily.

Right... because everyone dreams about earning $0.0775 per hour. If anything, people working on DOGE is trying to show bitcoin is a joke. Please stop supporting it.

[Kiki112]

really small..

there isn't something really competitive to bitcoin right now, don't think something will come up in the near future

[go1111111]

ZeroCoin has been mentioned a lot in this thread, but do people really believe it has mass market appeal outside of the black market sites?

Lots of people care about privacy for reasons other than black market stuff. As gmaxwell noted, if Bitcoin were anonymous it would mean: "Your inlaws don't see that you're buying birth control that deprives them of grand children, your employer doesn't learn about the non-profits you support with money from your paycheck, and thieves don't see your latest purchases or how wealthy you are to help them target and scam you."

People don't want anyone they transact with being able to find out about their other transactions.


I think the main areas for improvement in Bitcoin, in order of importance, are as follows:

(1) Anonymity
(2) Decentralization
(3) Scalability
(4) New features/capabilities (like a more expressive scripting language) -- I don't see that much room for improvement here. Bitcoin is already pretty awesome.

Anyone see any other big areas where an altcoin could have an advantage?

[dopey]

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

Rapecoin

LOL, I literally spit out of my coffee.

[shields]

yep, doge brings nothing new to the table... the one thing that bitcoin has going for it is when people think of crypto currencies, they only know 'bitcoin' because the media only says 'bitcoin' .. they never mention 'litecoin' or any other for that matter.

One new thing it brings to the table is the size of community it has so soon after launch. it's 6 weeks old but has 30,000 subscribers to the subreddit. That's 1/3rd the subscribers of the BTC one... 6 weeks in. I reckon this makes it probably the most fairly distributed coin to date. Whether it's inspired by a meme or has a silly name has no implications for the code of the coin itself, all that matters is the community. I'm no big DOGE fan but I find it interesting to see a coin spread viraly like none has before. If nothing else it helps bring the idea of crypto to a whole new set of people, and that's good in general.

[bitpop]

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

Rapecoin

LOL, I literally spit out of my coffee.

I think you read it wrong, its Rap-eCoin

[Phinnaeus Gage]

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

Rapecoin

LOL, I literally spit out of my coffee.

I think you read it wrong, its Rap-eCoin

That makes sense on so many levels.

[FandangledGizmo]

The successor to Bitcoin needs 2 things...

1. Central Bank proof mining         (Central banks may already control >51% of Bitcoin hashing power.)
2. Central Bank proof developers   (See Mike joining circle to sit with Goldman Sachs.)


The closest coin I've come across so far is memorycoin 2.0 they have a constant commitment to keeping mining decentralised and voting system that allows compromised developers to be replaced.

Unfortunately there's a bit of pre-mine scandal re: that coin, so personally I can't see the vision of Satoshi being transferred to something built on a questionable foundation, but I do think the coin that takes over from Bitcoin will have a lot of those features.

Bitcoin isn't a product as such, it's an idea, a premise. A currency that can operate outside the control of over-reaching governments and central banks. As soon as the market perceives Bitcoin no longer fulfils that idea, Bitcoin is no more. I don't even think there will be a market for it as a glorified Paypal.

I think we may be getting close to that tipping point, but there isn't a fully credible successor for us all to switch to yet.


Edit: I wouldn't mind if they were a bit more discreet about it & backed off a bit. I just don't think people are going to buy into the idea of BTC when is starts to be perceived more as GoldmanSachsCoin.

[Dr Bloggood]

1. Central Bank proof mining         (Central banks may already control >51% of Bitcoin hashing power.)

Care to elaborate?