Crypto-currencies in 10 years

[tinus42]

sponsoring Olympic athletes and a NASCAR racer which gives them lots of mainstream media exposure.

Who paid for those and why?

The /r/Dogecoin community on Reddit. Lots of people gave small amounts, they raised 67 million Dogecoin in total, worth $55,000 for the NASCAR car and about $30,000 for the Jamaican bobsled team. In case of the NASCAR car they worked with the /r/NASCAR community for the sponsorship campaign (both subreddits were actually promoted on the side of the car). Many NASCAR fans on Reddit learned what cryptocurrency is for the first time because of the sponsorship. Even if you don't like Dogecoin you should appreciate that.

All Bitcoin has is the Bitcoin 100 and other various charity works. Certainly nothing that would interest the NASCAR crowd.

Dogecoin also has charities (see: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/dogecoin-community-raising-30000-children-charity-1435131). The NASCAR sponsorship was about getting media exposure for Dogecoin and that worked rather well. Obviously a racing team is not a charity.

Good for you, kiddo! Keep working hard and maybe Mastercard will attack you someday.

So we may see Dogecoin Mastercards one day?

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/xapo/

[Lauda]

So we may see Dogecoin Mastercards one day?

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/xapo/

Hopefully you realize that such a card would be flawed? The government would pretty much get any information that they want from that company.

[Peter R]

Hahah bitshares is without a doubt better [than colored coins]. It doesn't use IOU's, it is a 'trustless' system in the same way that bitcoin is a 'trustless' system.

This is another reason that colored coins are superior: they are not disingenuous.  

There is no way to create coins that are pegged to the USD that don't have counter-party risk.  This means that any "coin" that trades "as dollars" is actually an IOU.  Colored coins makes this fact obvious.  The fact that you think there is a way to achieve this in a "trustless" manner without IOUs shows how much disinformation there is in the foo-coin world.  

You can trade IOUs (colored coins) for bitcoins in a trustless and decentralized way, but the IOUs themselves can never be trustless because they are representations of assets and not the assets themselves.  The only trustless way to trade USD is to physically exchange paper bills.  

Have you researched bitshares? Its not disingenuous at all. It mitigates counterparty risk by collateralizing the banks debt with a market valued asset. The issuer of the coins is the p2p network itself not a single individual. You are not worried about the false promises of another person you are worried about the markets inaccurate valuation of the underlying asset. I'd rather have an IOU that is backed by distributed free market consensus than have an IOU backed by a central issuers promise to pay. You simply do not understand how bitshares works which is why you are lumping it together with projects that do not provide the same service. I once believed the same as you and then I looked into it.

Right, so the Bitshares' digital representations of real assets are IOUs just like for colored coins.  The value of a colored-coin IOU is:

   Value of colored coin = value of underlying bitcoins + market value of IOU

The market value of the IOU can deviate from its par value.  For example, the market value of USD IOUs issued by a bitcoin exchange would deviate from par value should the market lose trust in the issuer (the exchange).  If MtGox and BitStamp were using colored coins throughout 2013, we'd have seen MtGoxUSD trade at a discount to BitStampUSD through the fall of 2013, before collapsing in February.

Yes but they do not have central point of failure and all the iou's are adequately collateralized... colored coins don't add any value over existing systems. Ripple, nxt and bitshares me (which is the bitshares version of personally issued IOU's - this is different than the bank) will always be faster. For that matter why wouldn't I use mastercoin and counterparty instead of colored coins. Theres just nothing different about your systems in terms of the services they provide. At least bitshares, nxt, ethereum, ripple are doing something different. At least they are not trying to build on top of a network that comes to consensus slowly, is not scalable and is wasteful. I just don't really see the case you are trying to make. If you're not going to be better than your competitors at least be different.

Right.  You can do all the same things on the bitcoin network directly without buying into some foo-coin.  So foo-coins add little if any value other than a platform for experimentation.      

But I think you're still missing something: colored coins are not some new foo-coin.  They are just small amounts of bitcoins that represent IOUs or other assets.  No one is going to "IPO" colored coins; no one is pumping and dumping colored coins.  There is no way to invest in "colored coins" as an asset.  Anyone can color as many coins as they want and for no cost.  Colored coins are just a way to turn regular bitcoins into digital representations of assets.

You said, "theres just nothing different about [colored coins] in terms of the services they provide."  The fact that you used the word "service" indicates that you don't understand that there is no service--colored coins are just tools that anyone can use.  It would be like saying "there's nothing different about the services that pens and paper provide."  Like colored coins, pens and papers are implements that can be used to create IOUs, share certificates, titles to homes, etc.  Buying into some of the new foo-coins would be like hoarding pens thinking that they will go up in value.

[tinus42]

So we may see Dogecoin Mastercards one day?

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/xapo/

Hopefully you realize that such a card would be flawed? The government would pretty much get any information that they want from that company.

Yes I agree, why do people want to turn Bitcoin into traditional banking? It's like the first silent motion pictures trying to emulate theater too hard. Before some movie makers discovered the true potential of the medium they were dabbling with.

[Peter R]

why do you think dogecoin and litecoin will still be relevant in 10 years, that sounds crazy to me.

...Dogecoin may well survive the Doge meme for many moons.

Maybe you could answer a question about DOGE for me Tinus.

I understand that by January 2015 (8 months from now), the dogecoin inflation rate will have dropped to 10,000 DOGE per minute.  Right now the market value of 1 DOGE is approximately equal to 1 bit.  If we assume that dogecoin has the same value relative to bitcoin in January 2015, then the inflation rate per hour would be roughly 1 bit/DOGE x 10,000 DOGE / min x 60 min / hour = 600,000 bits = 0.6 BTC / hour. 

In a competitive market, the cost to mine a coin should be roughly equal to the market value of the coins mined.  This suggests that the cost to 51% attack the DOGE network would be a measly 0.6 BTC / hour.  At today's price for bitcoin, that is only $262 per hour. 

So my question is can the litecoin miners easily mine dogecoin?  If this is the case, what is stopping a malicious pool from paying out litecoin miners slightly more than the litecoin inflation rate for their hash power, and then use that hashpower to 51% attack doge?  In fact, there could be a large profit motive to do so if the attacker could build up a large short position in DOGE prior to switching the hash power from "nice" to "attack mode."

It seems like someone will be motivated to kill dogecoin by next January unless the price and number of dogecoin transactions grows by an enormous amount. 

[blackhull]

I firmly believe that a fixed supply of money and slow transaction times will make sure that whatever is present in 10 years, if anything, is mildly inflationary and quick to confirm transactions. If it could somehow be done by changing the Bitcoin code itself, even better.

[jonald_fyookball]

I firmly believe that a fixed supply of money and slow transaction times will make sure that whatever is present in 10 years, if anything, is mildly inflationary and quick to confirm transactions. If it could somehow be done by changing the Bitcoin code itself, even better.

why should it be inflationary?

[Peter R]

I firmly believe that a fixed supply of money and slow transaction times will make sure that whatever is present in 10 years, if anything, is mildly inflationary and quick to confirm transactions. If it could somehow be done by changing the Bitcoin code itself, even better.

why should it be inflationary?

what does it mean for a transaction to be confirmed?

[counter]

So we may see Dogecoin Mastercards one day?

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/xapo/

Hopefully you realize that such a card would be flawed? The government would pretty much get any information that they want from that company.

Yes I agree, why do people want to turn Bitcoin into traditional banking? It's like the first silent motion pictures trying to emulate theater too hard. Before some movie makers discovered the true potential of the medium they were dabbling with.

I believe it is commonly done so people who don't understand what Bitcoin is an how to sue it can have something to compare it to that they already sort of understand. 
It could also be a mistake by the subconscious because that is the system they have used since birth also, that should also be taken into consideration.

[blackhull]

why should it be inflationary?

It's an opinion thread but my thoughts, or examples of them, could probably be found in the inflation vs. deflation thread, found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=11627.0

I tend to side pretty strongly with the inflationary side, but again - opinions...

[QuestionAuthority]

In order for any crypto coin to remain more than a popular generational fad it needs to be more simple to use than just directly using your countries fiat and have a zero exchange fee. Would you rather go to the store and buy a stereo or go to a gold dealer, buy just the right amount of gold bars, pay a fee for the gold purchase, then find a store that takes gold bars and then buy the stereo. How many average joes are going to take the extra steps necessary?

It sounds like what you're saying is that if bitcoin is only used as a store of value (and not as a medium of exchange), then it is more analogous to gold than to currency.  The total value all mined gold is estimated as $8.3 trillion dollar.  Since the total bitcoin supply is presently valued at $5.6 billion, the gold/bitcoin analogy suggests that bitcoin can grow on the order of 100,000% fulfilling store-of-value demand.

Yes, it would be more useful as a store of value if its value was universally accepted and intrinsic like gold or silver.

[Peter R]

In order for any crypto coin to remain more than a popular generational fad it needs to be more simple to use than just directly using your countries fiat and have a zero exchange fee. Would you rather go to the store and buy a stereo or go to a gold dealer, buy just the right amount of gold bars, pay a fee for the gold purchase, then find a store that takes gold bars and then buy the stereo. How many average joes are going to take the extra steps necessary?

It sounds like what you're saying is that if bitcoin is only used as a store of value (and not as a medium of exchange), then it is more analogous to gold than to currency.  The total value all mined gold is estimated as $8.3 trillion dollar.  Since the total bitcoin supply is presently valued at $5.6 billion, the gold/bitcoin analogy suggests that bitcoin can grow on the order of 100,000% fulfilling store-of-value demand.

Yes, it would be more useful as a store of value if its value was universally accepted and intrinsic like gold or silver.

Exactly.  Bitcoin becomes more useful the more valuable it becomes. But the more useful it becomes as a store of value, the more demand there is to hold it.  It's an unstable dynamic system with two equilibrium points: a very low value or a very high one.  

[Dogtanian]

In order for any crypto coin to remain more than a popular generational fad it needs to be more simple to use than just directly using your countries fiat and have a zero exchange fee. Would you rather go to the store and buy a stereo or go to a gold dealer, buy just the right amount of gold bars, pay a fee for the gold purchase, then find a store that takes gold bars and then buy the stereo. How many average joes are going to take the extra steps necessary?

It sounds like what you're saying is that if bitcoin is only used as a store of value (and not as a medium of exchange), then it is more analogous to gold than to currency.  The total value all mined gold is estimated as $8.3 trillion dollar.  Since the total bitcoin supply is presently valued at $5.6 billion, the gold/bitcoin analogy suggests that bitcoin can grow on the order of 100,000% fulfilling store-of-value demand.

Yes, it would be more useful as a store of value if its value was universally accepted and intrinsic like gold or silver.

Why can it not be used as both? You can get currency coins that are made out of gold and silver, but bitcoin is better with the technology behind it. You can't easily give or send a little piece of gold to someone if you wanted to for whatever reason.

[Peter R]

In order for any crypto coin to remain more than a popular generational fad it needs to be more simple to use than just directly using your countries fiat and have a zero exchange fee. Would you rather go to the store and buy a stereo or go to a gold dealer, buy just the right amount of gold bars, pay a fee for the gold purchase, then find a store that takes gold bars and then buy the stereo. How many average joes are going to take the extra steps necessary?

It sounds like what you're saying is that if bitcoin is only used as a store of value (and not as a medium of exchange), then it is more analogous to gold than to currency.  The total value all mined gold is estimated as $8.3 trillion dollar.  Since the total bitcoin supply is presently valued at $5.6 billion, the gold/bitcoin analogy suggests that bitcoin can grow on the order of 100,000% fulfilling store-of-value demand.

Yes, it would be more useful as a store of value if its value was universally accepted and intrinsic like gold or silver.

Why can it not be used as both? You can get currency coins that are made out of gold and silver, but bitcoin is better with the technology behind it. You can't easily give or send a little piece of gold to someone if you wanted to for whatever reason.

It can be both.  It's just that "bitcoin as a store of value" is the first app.  If the value continues to rise, it means that it is becoming more accepted as a store of value.  Once it is more accepted as a store of value, people will be more keen to accept it in return for the possessions and for their time.  And then it will become a medium of exchange. 

This is why worrying about merchant acceptance is superfluous.  It's good if it happens, and it gives people something to talk about, but bitcoin still huge progress to make as a store of value.  The properties of bitcoin make it superior to gold in every way but two.  And gold has a market cap over 1000X a large so there is a lot of room to grow. 

[Balls]

I think bitcoin will still be growing strong in ten years time.

[tinus42]

why do you think dogecoin and litecoin will still be relevant in 10 years, that sounds crazy to me.

...Dogecoin may well survive the Doge meme for many moons.

Maybe you could answer a question about DOGE for me Tinus.

I understand that by January 2015 (8 months from now), the dogecoin inflation rate will have dropped to 10,000 DOGE per minute.  Right now the market value of 1 DOGE is approximately equal to 1 bit.  If we assume that dogecoin has the same value relative to bitcoin in January 2015, then the inflation rate per hour would be roughly 1 bit/DOGE x 10,000 DOGE / min x 60 min / hour = 600,000 bits = 0.6 BTC / hour. 

In a competitive market, the cost to mine a coin should be roughly equal to the market value of the coins mined.  This suggests that the cost to 51% attack the DOGE network would be a measly 0.6 BTC / hour.  At today's price for bitcoin, that is only $262 per hour. 

So my question is can the litecoin miners easily mine dogecoin?  If this is the case, what is stopping a malicious pool from paying out litecoin miners slightly more than the litecoin inflation rate for their hash power, and then use that hashpower to 51% attack doge?  In fact, there could be a large profit motive to do so if the attacker could build up a large short position in DOGE prior to switching the hash power from "nice" to "attack mode."

It seems like someone will be motivated to kill dogecoin by next January unless the price and number of dogecoin transactions grows by an enormous amount. 

There are now Scrypt ASICs (like the Gridseed) and it is expected that ASICs will dominate Scrypt coins as much as they dominate Bitcoin now. There will be a lot of competition with huge hashrates so I guess it will be harder to 51% Dogecoin.

BTW: I only own 2 Dogecoins so I'm not trying to pump the price.   I think they have one of the best cryptocurrency communities around which is very resourceful and takes lots of initiatives and are generally not so profit minded as many people involved in Bitcoin which seems to become more about making a buck than changing the world (even though there are still lots of idealists but less than in the past).

[counter]

why do you think dogecoin and litecoin will still be relevant in 10 years, that sounds crazy to me.

...Dogecoin may well survive the Doge meme for many moons.

Maybe you could answer a question about DOGE for me Tinus.

I understand that by January 2015 (8 months from now), the dogecoin inflation rate will have dropped to 10,000 DOGE per minute.  Right now the market value of 1 DOGE is approximately equal to 1 bit.  If we assume that dogecoin has the same value relative to bitcoin in January 2015, then the inflation rate per hour would be roughly 1 bit/DOGE x 10,000 DOGE / min x 60 min / hour = 600,000 bits = 0.6 BTC / hour. 

In a competitive market, the cost to mine a coin should be roughly equal to the market value of the coins mined.  This suggests that the cost to 51% attack the DOGE network would be a measly 0.6 BTC / hour.  At today's price for bitcoin, that is only $262 per hour. 

So my question is can the litecoin miners easily mine dogecoin?  If this is the case, what is stopping a malicious pool from paying out litecoin miners slightly more than the litecoin inflation rate for their hash power, and then use that hashpower to 51% attack doge?  In fact, there could be a large profit motive to do so if the attacker could build up a large short position in DOGE prior to switching the hash power from "nice" to "attack mode."

It seems like someone will be motivated to kill dogecoin by next January unless the price and number of dogecoin transactions grows by an enormous amount. 

There are now Scrypt ASICs (like the Gridseed) and it is expected that ASICs will dominate Scrypt coins as much as they dominate Bitcoin now. There will be a lot of competition with huge hashrates so I guess it will be harder to 51% Dogecoin.

BTW: I only own 2 Dogecoins so I'm not trying to pump the price.   I think they have one of the best cryptocurrency communities around which is very resourceful and takes lots of initiatives and are generally not so profit minded as many people involved in Bitcoin which seems to become more about making a buck than changing the world (even though there are still lots of idealists but less than in the past).

I myself don't know much or ever gave Dogecoins my attention but I did appreciate(not at first) how much the community did to get the coin attention.  Even if it was sort of short lived it was impressive.

[Honeybooboo]

Coins will keep coming and going but hard to say which ones will still be around.

[David1978]

hundreds of cryptosurrencies will go away and only 2-3 of them will remane. They will become popular worldwide

which of the already existing currencies will become popular in your opinion?

I'm pretty sure one of them will be bitcoin. Other could be completely new

in 10 years.... I don't know,  it s really difficult to foresee I hope it will be bitcoin, otherwise I would never become rich 

[pioneercoin]

Current technology will take us only so far; major breakthroughs are required.
Google's webRTC has come a long way. The technique was adopted widely.We should learn it well.