'these people' are mostly scammers trying to scam people in a new unregulated arena. Coming up with a plausible sounding idea for a coin is part of the con. If they're not scammers, then they're probably just playing around with the tech and not entirely serious to begin with. (e.g. dogecoin) A lot of these ideas can be done using existing coins, but they make their own coins out of greed.
Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies
- Thread starter Tripamang
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Nester
Vyemm Raider
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This so much, some of these are pure scams lol. But people are still making mad cash, its Ponzi....no question with dedicated pump and dump shill groups.
The thing that is really interesting is people using multiple exchanges and transferring from one to the other, they use LTC, not BTC not ETH. BTC is way to expensive to move and ETH takes way longer. Its interesting to me that LTC seems to be the better coin for actual practical use for coin traders =p
To facilitate actual discussion, here are some fun questions.
1) So what coins do we think have a practical use and are not just trying to make a niche where a larger standardized coin would work just as well?
2) 20 30 100 years from now, what is the end game here.? Right now we have 1300 new "currencies" this does not help the world, this makes the world more complicated. IMO the end game (not in my lifetime) is one Crytpo to rule them all. Everything else dies. Fiat dies. That crypto can not be BTC as its supply will end one day, then what? As the population grows the currency supply must grown, but it needs a slow release mechanism (like we have now) to curb inflation.
Yes for sure but not entirely yes.
Some of these people are using it to fund startups. Essentially you buy into the ICO for a piece of the company.
Ravishing
Uninspiring Title
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BTC supply doesn't die, but having a single bitcoin will be reserved for the wealthy. Fraction of a coin will have names, like the Satoshi.
And I don't necessarily agree that there can't be multiple currencies. There are already hundreds of fiat currencies... we certainly don't need 1000s but clearly humans have been able to work with many currencies.
What becomes the global standard is what you're asking.. what overtakes USD. Right now BTC is the king of crypto. It has the best chance, but the unknown is what makes it so fun
gshurik
Tranny Chaser
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I sold off my last bitcoin today, XRP is gone and I'm washing my hands of it.
I feel like luck rather than skill or foresight has granted me some really great gains with crypto, but I'm actually finally comfortable with the profits I made and I want out.
Good luck to anyone carrying on though, you da real mvp.
(I might buy into Garlicoin for the meme fun in a few weeks)
I feel like luck rather than skill or foresight has granted me some really great gains with crypto, but I'm actually finally comfortable with the profits I made and I want out.
Good luck to anyone carrying on though, you da real mvp.
(I might buy into Garlicoin for the meme fun in a few weeks)
Nester
Vyemm Raider
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Bitcoin has a max capacity of 21 million coins. 16.78mm exist now.
What Happens to Bitcoin After All 21 Million are Mined?
Your right, of course many currencies can work, but i am talking about evolution to a better more efficient system that better represents the global integrated economy. At some point if our goal is to maximize efficiency we would want everything to be bought and sold in "units"
BTC is top dog, no question. but why? Other coins are faster and cheaper to use. Is it all first mover advantage?
Ravishing
Uninspiring Title
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I know what the max coins are but you can have fractions of a coin making the supply nearly infinite. Re-read what I said... 1 BTC could be worth millions in 20-50 years, and 1satoshi might be a standard unit
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Arative
Vyemm Raider
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Unknown but there are always stories about people losing hardware with the private keys on it.
That's true, and ICOs can be legit, but I would argue that most are scams. Most of the non-scams are well intentioned incompetent projects that would get laughed out of a VC firm and have nothing but a whitepaper. As of yet I haven't seen an ICO that looked like something that would succeed to me. In fact the projects that opt out of an ICO are more likely to be legit and succeed in my view. Seems rather insane to me to invest serious money into a project without so much as a proof-of-concept when writing code requires zero seed money.
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BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Except instead of high end hooker orgies, everyone is at home humping their waifu pillow.
First mover advantage is significant, but Bitcoin also has the best, most prolific developers. It's the most secure coin with the most hash power. It's the most widely adopted coin with the most mature wallets. It's the most decentralized. It has withstood attacks-- from its own miners even.
There is a common misconception that the security of confirms between coins are equivalent; the security comes from how old the transactions are, not so much the number of confirms. I.e. 6 bitcoin confirms are more secure than 6 litecoin confirms. Granted the first confirm is by far the most significant. Lightning networks will make the 10 minute confirms a far smaller concern regardless.
In a way, the other coins enjoy protection that bitcoin gives them. So long as bitcoin remains secure, it provides confidence for the whole ecosystem. The other coins can fail miserably and the crypto ecosystem wouldn't care much; but if bitcoin were to fail, then all those altcoins would collapse along with it. Bitcoin needs to be the rock of crypto Gibraltar, and BTC devs know this, which is why they don't want to risk the security with block size increases and risky forks.
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James
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I think that's a pretty rosy view of where Bitcoin development is at right now, tbh, and Vitalik is definitely the most prolific developer. That said, the rest of the post is pretty spot on and precisely why I think ultimately Bitcoin will play a more niche role in the market compared to Ethereum. The latter is solving the biggest problems in the best way, while the former is choking on the burden of success.
It seems to me that there is a narrative out there that Bitcoin developers are not active or incompetent or obstructionist. So I'm going to quickly outline why I'm still bullish on BTC:
Bitcoin Core is the most dominant development influence on Bitcoin at the moment, (but far from the only group/faction) and they are primarily a group of cypherpunks that are motivated in delivering freedom to the masses and are not concerned with the price. In contrast, most new coins are dominated by big stakeholders (I'll remind you that ETH had a presale) who are primarily motivated in hyping the coin so that they can profit. In my view, you want to invest in projects/leaders that are interesting in changing the world and not trying to get rich. Furthermore their top priority is the security of the protocol, which is what you want when said protocol holds $300b in value.
I agree with Core's decisions on scaling. Here's why:
Block size increases are not a matter of disk space. That's a misconception. The most limiting factor is bandwith and network throughput. (also CPU) 1 meg blocks require network capacity of anywhere from roughly 500gb to 1tb (or more) monthly depending on how useful you want the node to be. This already prevents a lot of people from running full nodes. Consider that for Comcast users in the US, 1 TB monthly is their data cap. (it's my cap incidentally, not that I run a node) Furthermore, SegWit increased the block size beyond 1meg as a compromise already. This is why I think that monied crypto interests should be lobbying heavily for broadband competition and the greed of the telcoms is a threat to crypto security. Also note that even at 1meg blocks, that's 52 gigs/year, so enlarging blocks beyond a few megs can quickly become unreasonable for storage as well.
SegWit increased transaction capacity significantly, but it's not used much yet because it was soft forked, meaning that it's opt-in. Exchanges and wallets have been slow to adopt for whatever reasons. Capacity would triple overnight if everybody used SegWit addresses.
On Bitcoin's development roadmap are Schnorr Signatures. The tl;dr of this is that it's a protocol upgrade that will increase capacity by over 25% and increase privacy without increasing block size. Also it will make spamming the mempool cost more, which will further help lower fees since fees are high in part due to mempool spam from miners.
Second layer solutions make sense to me, because I have a networking background so I understand how the network layers work. It's a bad idea to try and shoehorn all the solutions into one layer/protocol. The more complicated it is, the easier it is to attack. Again, it makes no sense to globally broadcast your cup of coffee purchase from an efficiency standpoint. The current buzz that I'm reading suggests that lightning networks are more mature than people believe and right around the corner. We'll see. (lightning networks do far more than provide a scaling solution. See
)
Also it's important to note that the OVERWHELMING majority of developers are 'small blockers' and BCH/SegWit2x has/had virtually no development support. SegWit2x literally crashed right before it forked and it wasn't the first time it crashed.
What else are bitcoin devs working on?
The simplicity smart contract language, which would bring smart contracts to bitcoin and is designed to try and mitigate the smart contract security problems plaguing solidity with the many millions of dollars in lost Ether as a result.
A new address format, Bech32 - more human readable, error correction, easier to process on low end hardware.
Confidential Transactions for bitcoin - Bitcoin devs find way to reduce block space used by CTs by 3x.
The number of Bitcoin nodes doubled last year. People underestimate the importance of this. This becomes more important as governments begin to crack down. Bitcoin needs to be able to resist multiple nation states working in unison against it. Nodes are also required for SPV wallet functionality; it's a lie to say that only miners need to run nodes.
Those of you with notions of Ethereum replacing Bitcoin as the default payment coin might want to read these:
Ethereum's Congestion Returns as Transactions Near One Million a Day
Also, regarding my claim of 'most prolific developers': Cryptocurrencies Chart Sorted By Developer Score | CoinGecko
Since this is all open source, you can easily view github account activity.
Vitalik's: vbuterin · GitHub
Bitcoin Core devs: Contributors to bitcoin/bitcoin · GitHub
Yes, I use GitHub too and I understand that contribs/commits cannot be directly compared. Use your own judgement as to how 'prolific' they are.
Bitcoin Core is the most dominant development influence on Bitcoin at the moment, (but far from the only group/faction) and they are primarily a group of cypherpunks that are motivated in delivering freedom to the masses and are not concerned with the price. In contrast, most new coins are dominated by big stakeholders (I'll remind you that ETH had a presale) who are primarily motivated in hyping the coin so that they can profit. In my view, you want to invest in projects/leaders that are interesting in changing the world and not trying to get rich. Furthermore their top priority is the security of the protocol, which is what you want when said protocol holds $300b in value.
I agree with Core's decisions on scaling. Here's why:
Block size increases are not a matter of disk space. That's a misconception. The most limiting factor is bandwith and network throughput. (also CPU) 1 meg blocks require network capacity of anywhere from roughly 500gb to 1tb (or more) monthly depending on how useful you want the node to be. This already prevents a lot of people from running full nodes. Consider that for Comcast users in the US, 1 TB monthly is their data cap. (it's my cap incidentally, not that I run a node) Furthermore, SegWit increased the block size beyond 1meg as a compromise already. This is why I think that monied crypto interests should be lobbying heavily for broadband competition and the greed of the telcoms is a threat to crypto security. Also note that even at 1meg blocks, that's 52 gigs/year, so enlarging blocks beyond a few megs can quickly become unreasonable for storage as well.
SegWit increased transaction capacity significantly, but it's not used much yet because it was soft forked, meaning that it's opt-in. Exchanges and wallets have been slow to adopt for whatever reasons. Capacity would triple overnight if everybody used SegWit addresses.
On Bitcoin's development roadmap are Schnorr Signatures. The tl;dr of this is that it's a protocol upgrade that will increase capacity by over 25% and increase privacy without increasing block size. Also it will make spamming the mempool cost more, which will further help lower fees since fees are high in part due to mempool spam from miners.
Second layer solutions make sense to me, because I have a networking background so I understand how the network layers work. It's a bad idea to try and shoehorn all the solutions into one layer/protocol. The more complicated it is, the easier it is to attack. Again, it makes no sense to globally broadcast your cup of coffee purchase from an efficiency standpoint. The current buzz that I'm reading suggests that lightning networks are more mature than people believe and right around the corner. We'll see. (lightning networks do far more than provide a scaling solution. See
)
Also it's important to note that the OVERWHELMING majority of developers are 'small blockers' and BCH/SegWit2x has/had virtually no development support. SegWit2x literally crashed right before it forked and it wasn't the first time it crashed.
What else are bitcoin devs working on?
The simplicity smart contract language, which would bring smart contracts to bitcoin and is designed to try and mitigate the smart contract security problems plaguing solidity with the many millions of dollars in lost Ether as a result.
A new address format, Bech32 - more human readable, error correction, easier to process on low end hardware.
Confidential Transactions for bitcoin - Bitcoin devs find way to reduce block space used by CTs by 3x.
The number of Bitcoin nodes doubled last year. People underestimate the importance of this. This becomes more important as governments begin to crack down. Bitcoin needs to be able to resist multiple nation states working in unison against it. Nodes are also required for SPV wallet functionality; it's a lie to say that only miners need to run nodes.
Those of you with notions of Ethereum replacing Bitcoin as the default payment coin might want to read these:
Ethereum's Congestion Returns as Transactions Near One Million a Day
Also, regarding my claim of 'most prolific developers': Cryptocurrencies Chart Sorted By Developer Score | CoinGecko
Since this is all open source, you can easily view github account activity.
Vitalik's: vbuterin · GitHub
Bitcoin Core devs: Contributors to bitcoin/bitcoin · GitHub
Yes, I use GitHub too and I understand that contribs/commits cannot be directly compared. Use your own judgement as to how 'prolific' they are.
Planet Money did an episode on it and they said between 2.7 and 3.7 million are considered lost forever.
James
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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SegWit will never work imo, it's antithetical to Satoshi's original vision, opens up new vectors of attack on the network. I hadn't heard of Schnorr Signatures before, but it seems to me to be more of a security feature to increase efficiency within the block chain, rather than a real scaling solution? Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all calling the Bitcoin Core devs lazy or incompetent or not even making the best decisions that they can. Unfortunately, the technology is inferior, and their options to address that inferiority is much more limited and, currently, philosophically fragmented. Proof of Stake on Ethereum will be a real game changer, imo.
My wife is bugging the shit out of me to clean the garage right now, but you should look up some videos about what Ethereum is doing to solve the scalability trilemma.
Incidentally the concerns about Bitcoin's energy use are dramatically exaggerated because miners set up near and use the cheapest sources of electricity, meaning they use surplus/unused electricity like hydro. It's simply too expensive to use fossil fuel generated electricity.
Proof of stake's security level relative to Proof of work is highly debated. PoS results in wealth concentration because only the rich can participate so only they end up with block rewards and they're not forced to sell it immediately like miners would, which results in them becoming even more likely to get the block reward and getting richer in feedback loop. An attack on the network can be done by merely buying coins (making it stealthy) and you're not limited by hardware production and energy constraints. Since only large stakeholders can participate, this dramatically reduces the number of coins you need to attack the network from 51% and in fact the more dispersed the coins are, the less coins you need to attack the network.
With PoW people will likely see a 51 attack coming, which allows devs and users time to implement countermeasures like an algorithm change, further disincentivizing the attack.
Proof of stake already exists in some coins (like Decred, a coin I favor, which is a hybrid PoW/PoS coin) and it's simply not used in favor of PoW on purpose due to the superior security of PoW.
Also, changes being difficult to get implemented in Bitcoin is a reason to like it, not the contrary.
Proof of stake's security level relative to Proof of work is highly debated. PoS results in wealth concentration because only the rich can participate so only they end up with block rewards and they're not forced to sell it immediately like miners would, which results in them becoming even more likely to get the block reward and getting richer in feedback loop. An attack on the network can be done by merely buying coins (making it stealthy) and you're not limited by hardware production and energy constraints. Since only large stakeholders can participate, this dramatically reduces the number of coins you need to attack the network from 51% and in fact the more dispersed the coins are, the less coins you need to attack the network.
With PoW people will likely see a 51 attack coming, which allows devs and users time to implement countermeasures like an algorithm change, further disincentivizing the attack.
Proof of stake already exists in some coins (like Decred, a coin I favor, which is a hybrid PoW/PoS coin) and it's simply not used in favor of PoW on purpose due to the superior security of PoW.
Also, changes being difficult to get implemented in Bitcoin is a reason to like it, not the contrary.
James
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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No doubt, and Ethereum developers are going to end that debate. Casper is their first step, and it's looking really good so far. The Ethereum yellow paper is a pretty good read for the introduction alone, quickly goes over my head tho -- http://gavwood.com/paper.pdf
Ethereum makes a lot of promises. The only reason why it's taken so seriously by other devs is because Vitalik really is extremely bright. Ethereum is significantly more experimental than Bitcoin is. I would strongly advise not being 100% in Ether.
ETH's reddit started sounding like a personality cult though, so I stopped reading it. Be careful you don't fall in love with your investment...
ETH's reddit started sounding like a personality cult though, so I stopped reading it. Be careful you don't fall in love with your investment...
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