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To be fair, Bitcoin is also unique within the crypto currency world, just like gold is unique within the elements. Nothing will ever change the fact that Bitco

by ptrincr 10y ago

To be fair, Bitcoin is also unique within the crypto currency world, just like gold is unique within the elements. Nothing will ever change the fact that Bitcoin was first, it has first-mover advantage over other implementations. You could also argue it currently has the most investment, both in monitory terms and development effort.

cb18 10y ago
It's not quite so easy to create iterative improvements on the basic elements of the universe, as it is to iteratively improve crypto currency software. It could be just as easily argued, probably more persuasively, that bitcoin's first mover status is more of a negative to its future prospects than a positive. This owing in large part to the hugely concentrated nature of the bitcoin currency. It's hard to see how a bitcoin economy gets off the ground in any meaningful sense when the distribution is arranged like that. It's unlikely to get any enthusiastic buy in when people doing so understand that the value of their currency would be subject to the whims of just a few major players in the bitcoin game. And any rich person capable of make a large bitcoin buy in would be hesitant to do so because their essentially making themselves relatively poorer than the bitcoin barons in doing so. Figuring out a distribution model that works in concert with a growing digital economy is an open question in crypto currencies.
dragontamer 10y ago
Unix was the first-mover, and should have first-mover advantage over other implementations and clones... Like Linux. Oh wait... but Debian is one of the first Linux distributions, there's no way it'd be displaced by an upstart like Ubuntu. Oh wait... Yahoo and Altavisa were first-movers in search engines. Google was developed years later, they have no chance. Wait a sec... Geocities, Homestead, and Xanga and MySpace were first-movers in web user-generated content and social networking. Facebook has no chance. Wait a sec... Intershop has first-mover advantage in online retailing. There's no chance that Ebay and Amazon will beat them out. Wait a sec... Pebble Watch has first-mover advantage in Smartwatches. There's no way anyone else can move them. Commodore C64 has first-mover advantage in the consumer personal computer market. Ehhh... scratch that. The true first mover was IBM, who branded the PC and created the ATX system and all of those standards. There's no way that IBM will lose their first-mover advantage to Dell and HP. Huh... Atari for first-mover in TV Video Game consoles? Nintendo can't beat them. Erm... I mean Sega can't beat Nintendo. I mean... Sony can't beat the Saturn or N64. I mean... Microsoft's XBox is entering an established field, they can't beat the PS2 or Gamecube.

by ptrincr 10y ago

cb18 10y ago

It's not quite so easy to create iterative improvements on the basic elements of the universe, as it is to iteratively improve crypto currency software. It could be just as easily argued, probably more persuasively, that bitcoin's first mover status is more of a negative to its future prospects than a positive. This owing in large part to the hugely concentrated nature of the bitcoin currency. It's hard to see how a bitcoin economy gets off the ground in any meaningful sense when the distribution is arranged like that. It's unlikely to get any enthusiastic buy in when people doing so understand that the value of their currency would be subject to the whims of just a few major players in the bitcoin game. And any rich person capable of make a large bitcoin buy in would be hesitant to do so because their essentially making themselves relatively poorer than the bitcoin barons in doing so. Figuring out a distribution model that works in concert with a growing digital economy is an open question in crypto currencies.

dragontamer 10y ago

Unix was the first-mover, and should have first-mover advantage over other implementations and clones... Like Linux. Oh wait... but Debian is one of the first Linux distributions, there's no way it'd be displaced by an upstart like Ubuntu. Oh wait... Yahoo and Altavisa were first-movers in search engines. Google was developed years later, they have no chance. Wait a sec... Geocities, Homestead, and Xanga and MySpace were first-movers in web user-generated content and social networking. Facebook has no chance. Wait a sec... Intershop has first-mover advantage in online retailing. There's no chance that Ebay and Amazon will beat them out. Wait a sec... Pebble Watch has first-mover advantage in Smartwatches. There's no way anyone else can move them. Commodore C64 has first-mover advantage in the consumer personal computer market. Ehhh... scratch that. The true first mover was IBM, who branded the PC and created the ATX system and all of those standards. There's no way that IBM will lose their first-mover advantage to Dell and HP. Huh... Atari for first-mover in TV Video Game consoles? Nintendo can't beat them. Erm... I mean Sega can't beat Nintendo. I mean... Sony can't beat the Saturn or N64. I mean... Microsoft's XBox is entering an established field, they can't beat the PS2 or Gamecube.