Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[smooth]

3) Sidechained ledgers can span a huge range of economic-entanglement with bitcoin, from just about completely separate (ie, like any other alt), to effectively being 100% "backed" by bitcoin-the-unit.

Factually speaking it isn't really "backed' by bitcoin-the-unit. It is backed (no scare quotes) by Bitcoins, meaning actual Bitcoins on the Bitcoin blockchain that are locked as backing for the side chain until the protocol releases them.

The bitcoin-the-unit concept is marketing by the side chain advocates. As you say it will be up to the market to decide how much traction that concept gets.

This describes the whole thing quite well in neutral economic terms: http://konradsgraf.squarespace.com/storage/Monetary%20analsyis%20of%20sidecoins%20KG%2024Oct2014.pdf

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[Melbustus]

3) Sidechained ledgers can span a huge range of economic-entanglement with bitcoin, from just about completely separate (ie, like any other alt), to effectively being 100% "backed" by bitcoin-the-unit.

Factually speaking it isn't really "backed' by bitcoin-the-unit. It is backed (no scare quotes) by Bitcoins, meaning actual Bitcoins on the Bitcoin blockchain that are locked as backing for the side chain until the protocol releases them.

Yeah, I'd say that in this case, "backing" = proof-of-lock. I agree with Kongrad that the market will determine how well the value translates, but those details are not really what I find most interesting. I think the impact for bitcoin demand will be mostly determined by how well my #4 holds; ie, if people really do mostly use sidechaining with the *intent* of creating exchange-functions that boost demand for bitcoin.

[Odalv]

3) Sidechained ledgers can span a huge range of economic-entanglement with bitcoin, from just about completely separate (ie, like any other alt), to effectively being 100% "backed" by bitcoin-the-unit.

Factually speaking it isn't really "backed' by bitcoin-the-unit. It is backed (no scare quotes) by Bitcoins, meaning actual Bitcoins on the Bitcoin blockchain that are locked as backing for the side chain until the protocol releases them.

Yeah, I'd say that in this case, "backing" = proof-of-lock. I agree with Kongrad that the market will determine how well the value translates, but those details are not really what I find most interesting. I think the impact for bitcoin demand will be mostly determined by how well my #4 holds; ie, if people really do mostly use sidechaining with the *intent* of creating exchange-functions that boost demand for bitcoin.

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.
Bitcoin will successfully import all altCoin "features" and check them if they matters

[smooth]

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.

It may. That is clearly the intent of the side chain developers and promoters.

What Melbustus and I and are saying is that it will be up to the market whether that is actually what happens in practice. His #4 states this more precisely.

[Odalv]

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.

It may. That is clearly the intent of the side chain developers and promoters.

What Melbustus and I and are saying is that it will be up to the market whether that is actually what happens in practice. His #4 states this more precisely.

I agree. Market will decide.

I'm fan of SD's so "give market a chance." :-)

[brg444]

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.

It may. That is clearly the intent of the side chain developers and promoters.

What Melbustus and I and are saying is that it will be up to the market whether that is actually what happens in practice. His #4 states this more precisely.

Bottom line to me is the downsides to SC are rather limited and upside very interesting

[Odalv]

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.

It may. That is clearly the intent of the side chain developers and promoters.

What Melbustus and I and are saying is that it will be up to the market whether that is actually what happens in practice. His #4 states this more precisely.

Bottom line to me is the downsides to SC are rather limited and upside very interesting

Bitcoin is very hard to understand, but blockchain 2.0 is at least one order of magnitude harder.

[Melbustus]

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.

It may. That is clearly the intent of the side chain developers and promoters.

What Melbustus and I and are saying is that it will be up to the market whether that is actually what happens in practice. His #4 states this more precisely.

Bottom line to me is the downsides to SC are rather limited and upside very interesting

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Unfortunately, I think we're going to get a bunch of weird hybrid exchange functions that don't map 100% of the alt's supply to locked-bitcoin-creation, and other sorts of stuff that doesn't yield a clear demand-path for bitcoin. Of course, barring various of cypher's concerns, that doesn't leave bitcoin holders any *worse* off than the current alt-circus does.

In any event, at least we'll be able to aggressively demand an answer to that first question from new alt projects, and I think that was a huge part of the goal of sidechains to begin with.

[Odalv]

At least alt-development will be converted into sc-development. -> new features for bitcoin.

It may. That is clearly the intent of the side chain developers and promoters.

What Melbustus and I and are saying is that it will be up to the market whether that is actually what happens in practice. His #4 states this more precisely.

Bottom line to me is the downsides to SC are rather limited and upside very interesting

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Unfortunately, I think we're going to get a bunch of weird hybrid exchange functions that don't map 100% of the alt's supply to locked-bitcoin-creation, and other sorts of stuff that doesn't yield a clear demand-path for bitcoin. Of course, barring various of cypher's concerns, that doesn't leave bitcoin holders any *worse* off than the current alt-circus does.

In any event, at least we'll be able to aggressively demand an answer to that first question from new alt projects, and I think that was a huge part of the goal of sidechains to begin with.

Exactly, bitcoin is store of value and bitcoin protocol can transfer this value.
SC's can show us what is the added value of new features.
Let's battle starts -> the better feature the more bitcoins/miner-hash-power it will get.

[dillpicklechips]

When I think of "sidechains" I imagine "entangled bitcoins". Sidechains have no inital coins. By creating a special transaction in bitcoin we can program them to be stuck until the "entangled sidecoin" does a similar transaction making the entangled sidecoins stuck. By making the sidecoin stuck you are releasing the original bitcoins to be used again. This process of "entanglement" allows sidecoins to be created and destroyed as needed. This entanglement also means the liquidity of all sidechains will equal bitcoin giving it a huge advantage over altcoins who can not use this "entanglement".

[Odalv]

When I think of "sidechains" I imagine "entangled bitcoins". Sidechains have no inital coins. By creating a special transaction in bitcoin we can program them to be stuck until the "entangled sidecoin" does a similar transaction making the entangled sidecoins stuck. By making the sidecoin stuck you are releasing the original bitcoins to be used again. This process of "entanglement" allows sidecoins to be created and destroyed as needed. This entanglement also means the liquidity of all sidechains will equal bitcoin giving it a huge advantage over altcoins who can not use this "entanglement".

At the same moment it will add new feature to bitcoin (fast transaction, distributed exchange) and remove dust from main blockchain (it saves disk space for full bitcoin node)

[justusranvier]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

[brg444]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

their 4% market share could help this Bitcoin market right about now 

[dillpicklechips]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

My guess: gambling in case an alt ever takes off. If it's a little bit you don't lose much but if it goes crazy you could make money. I think a lot of money in alts is not for actual use but hoarding in case it becomes popular. They want to be first like the people who were first for bitcoin.

[smooth]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

My guess: gambling in case an alt ever takes off. If it's a little bit you don't lose much but if it goes crazy you could make money. I think a lot of money in alts is not for actual use but hoarding in case it becomes popular. They want to be first like the people who were first for bitcoin.

I think he was asking why sidechains as a replacement for alts (or really anything about alts at all) is so compelling.

I don't think it is.

Fiat is 99+% of the market. Look that direction, and stop being distracted by the 4% in the other direction.

[dillpicklechips]

I think he was asking why sidechains as a replacement for alts (or really anything about alts at all) is so compelling.

I don't think it is.

Fiat is 99+% of the market. Look that direction, and stop being distracted by the 4% in the other direction.

A sidechain namecoin like blockchain would be interesting though. It would work for usernames, DNS, links, any data pairs etc and the coins to do the operations aren't floating on the free market prone to booms and busts. You don't have to hold namecoins just in case it's popular. You just create the sidechain and coin creation occurs when needed.

[Melbustus]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

Because alts are the strongest theoretical argument for why bitcoin (and transitively, any crypto) may not retain value in the long run. In many people's eyes, alts represent an attack on bitcoin's core scarcity property. I (and you as well, I'm sure) have plenty of arguments for why it's likely that alts do *not*, in fact, represent a meaningful threat, but it's nevertheless a core reason why a lot of people who otherwise see the value of bitcoin fail to fully embrace it.

[brg444]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

My guess: gambling in case an alt ever takes off. If it's a little bit you don't lose much but if it goes crazy you could make money. I think a lot of money in alts is not for actual use but hoarding in case it becomes popular. They want to be first like the people who were first for bitcoin.

I think he was asking why sidechains as a replacement for alts (or really anything about alts at all) is so compelling.

I don't think it is.

Fiat is 99+% of the market. Look that direction, and stop being distracted by the 4% in the other direction.

how is an anonymous (monero-type) sidechain backed by BTC not interesting?

[dEBRUYNE]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

My guess: gambling in case an alt ever takes off. If it's a little bit you don't lose much but if it goes crazy you could make money. I think a lot of money in alts is not for actual use but hoarding in case it becomes popular. They want to be first like the people who were first for bitcoin.

I think he was asking why sidechains as a replacement for alts (or really anything about alts at all) is so compelling.

I don't think it is.

Fiat is 99+% of the market. Look that direction, and stop being distracted by the 4% in the other direction.

how is an anonymous (monero-type) sidechain backed by BTC not interesting?

This was asked and answered before (credits to smooth).

In the wake of http://www.blockstream.com/ essentially making sidechains an inevitability - what is the point of holding XMR now? Wont all of the privacy Monero offers be available within the bitcoin blockchain?

I think the answer is no. First of all it is questionable whether you would really want to hold wealth long term on a sidechain. The security assumptions (even when it comes to things like network hash rate, but in other more fundamental respects as well) are questionable. It is more plausible you might want to use services or features on a side chain by moving your bitcoins there and then, relatively quickly, moving them back to the more secure main chain. For example, this might be be used for mixing, by moving your coins to a sidechain with ring signatures, transacting and then moving them back.

But this ends up being a lot like using a Bitcoin mixer, with many of the same issues such as simultaneity. For example, imagine you are making a donation to some controversial organization and you want to delink the bitcoins you are donating.

So you go ahead and move your coins to a ring-sig sidechain, move them around a few times, and then move them back. Unless other people are doing this at the same time, when you move your coins back to the main chain, you will get the same coins back that you started with.

Alternately, perhaps the organization wants to be all anonymous and stuff, so it publishes an address on the sidechain, and you donate to them there. They then withdraw the coins back to the main chain, and they get the exact Bitcoins you sent to the side chain.

Obviously if there are a few other people doing the transfers at the same time, there is a degree of mixing, but it is fairly limited.

I don't think a side chain with a specialized purpose can achieve the same degree of anonymity as a coin designed for that purpose, where the entire chain is being mixed and remixed continually. That is an emperical question though. It is possible that a Bitcoin side chain could get more usage and greater trust of its security for long term holdings than Monero will have. More usage would address the mixing issue to a some extent and trust in the security would address the need to constantly move coins back and forth (though there still may be a loss of network effect here). None of this is clear at all.

I also think it is possible the market may simply reject the notion of adopting the Bitcoin currency for everything. It will be an interesting experiment to decouple new features from using a different currency. We may well find that the reason for altcoins is not the features!

[lebing]

I think the most interesting part is that it forces alt-coin developers to have a good answer to: "Why do you need a new completely independent new unit?"

Altcoins are 4% of the market.

Why are people so obsessed with them?

My guess: gambling in case an alt ever takes off. If it's a little bit you don't lose much but if it goes crazy you could make money. I think a lot of money in alts is not for actual use but hoarding in case it becomes popular. They want to be first like the people who were first for bitcoin.

I think he was asking why sidechains as a replacement for alts (or really anything about alts at all) is so compelling.

I don't think it is.

Fiat is 99+% of the market. Look that direction, and stop being distracted by the 4% in the other direction.

how is an anonymous (monero-type) sidechain backed by BTC not interesting?

This was asked and answered before (credits to smooth).

In the wake of http://www.blockstream.com/ essentially making sidechains an inevitability - what is the point of holding XMR now? Wont all of the privacy Monero offers be available within the bitcoin blockchain?

I think the answer is no. First of all it is questionable whether you would really want to hold wealth long term on a sidechain. The security assumptions (even when it comes to things like network hash rate, but in other more fundamental respects as well) are questionable. It is more plausible you might want to use services or features on a side chain by moving your bitcoins there and then, relatively quickly, moving them back to the more secure main chain. For example, this might be be used for mixing, by moving your coins to a sidechain with ring signatures, transacting and then moving them back.

But this ends up being a lot like using a Bitcoin mixer, with many of the same issues such as simultaneity. For example, imagine you are making a donation to some controversial organization and you want to delink the bitcoins you are donating.

So you go ahead and move your coins to a ring-sig sidechain, move them around a few times, and then move them back. Unless other people are doing this at the same time, when you move your coins back to the main chain, you will get the same coins back that you started with.

Alternately, perhaps the organization wants to be all anonymous and stuff, so it publishes an address on the sidechain, and you donate to them there. They then withdraw the coins back to the main chain, and they get the exact Bitcoins you sent to the side chain.

Obviously if there are a few other people doing the transfers at the same time, there is a degree of mixing, but it is fairly limited.

I don't think a side chain with a specialized purpose can achieve the same degree of anonymity as a coin designed for that purpose, where the entire chain is being mixed and remixed continually. That is an emperical question though. It is possible that a Bitcoin side chain could get more usage and greater trust of its security for long term holdings than Monero will have. More usage would address the mixing issue to a some extent and trust in the security would address the need to constantly move coins back and forth (though there still may be a loss of network effect here). None of this is clear at all.

I also think it is possible the market may simply reject the notion of adopting the Bitcoin currency for everything. It will be an interesting experiment to decouple new features from using a different currency. We may well find that the reason for altcoins is not the features!

Yeah I didnt take the time to respond out of the respect for the developers of Monero, but this is a pretty flimsy answer.

 Unless other people are doing this at the same time, when you move your coins back to the main chain, you will get the same coins back that you started with.

-- this assumes a very low volume on the sidechain. It also assumes that they will keep the block processing length short enough for something like this to occur. This is not smart and therefore will not happen, especially immediately after release. They can short the block times down once enough volume has been achieved.

I also think it is possible the market may simply reject the notion of adopting the Bitcoin currency for everything.

-- The entire history of network effects says otherwise. This is totally baseless logic.

We may well find that the reason for altcoins is not the features!

-- This is equivalent to saying there is no reason to use Monero in the first place. Everyone there was there because they believed in a pure anonymous coin and the market it served. However now with that possibility achieved via sidechains, there remains no reason to be in Monero any longer (imo).