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It seems clear to me at this point that the cryptocurrency revolution is now bigger than Bitcoin itself. Years ago, I saw three long-term outcomes: Bitcoin bei

It seems clear to me at this point that the cryptocurrency revolution is now bigger than Bitcoin itself. Years ago, I saw three long-term outcomes: Bitcoin being king and altcoins dying on the vine, Bitcoin being one of innumerable blockchains in use, and cryptocurrencies in general failing to gain adoption. I'm scratching the first outcome off the list, and my pen is hovering over the last outcome.

lawn 9y ago
The first version of new and revolutionary technology rarely (if ever?) becomes the dominant one. Obvious examples are search (Altavista -> Google) and social networks (MySpace -> Facebook).
- down 9y ago
  right MySpace, was a technology?, I think they were build on php or so, was a slow site, Google is not a technology either, golang it is, and is somehow revolutionary through simplicity and first-ish.
  - RandomInteger4 9y ago
    Agreed! Bridges aren't technologies either, only rivets and steel beams! I keep telling people, but they just won't listen. Cars? Not a technology, only wheels and motors are technologies.
- nlperguiy 9y ago
  None of these technologies are dominant enough. Not a single one is a usable product. All cannot support a large number of transactions, not even those that do not have proof of work. There's research-level problems being solved (like bulletproofs for compact private transaction - hides amounts). After research is done there's engineering. Then testing until it is ready to use. People really don't realize how early this is. Lightning network, a proposed solution for Bitcoin scaling problem, was announced 2 years ago, and they identified many issues with it since then. There's talks of layer number 3 etc. This is way too early and there's no winner. Bunch of cryptocurrencies are riding on the research-wave behind Bitcoin.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Where is your second internet?
  - ribosometronome 9y ago
    Are you posting on the ARPANET?
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      I use email almost every day, yes. You realize the arpanet is the internet right? It wasn't replaced, it was expanded. Call it layers if that would make it easier to understand.
      - ribosometronome 9y ago
        ARPANET refers to a specific network that was decommissioned in 1990. And for 13 years of it's 21 years in existence, it was using NCP rather than TCP/IP.
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        And the bitcoin node software i use today is version 0.15.1, not 0.8.0. The segwit block structure is different to the original implementation. One turned into the other. Nothing is stopping you running a 0.8.0 node of course. But the newer implementation has more functionality.
        joeblau 9y ago
        I worked at BBN Technologies in the early 2000's. I was always amazed at how a company that essentially co-founded the internet and had the second domain name ever registered[1] could basically go out of business. You just made me think that Bitcoin could definitely be the ARPANET of blockchains and Core devs could be BBN. Don't get me wrong, I worked with some extremely smart people, but in the end, Raytheon bought the whole company. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_registered_Internet_domain_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_r...
- xorcist 9y ago
  Any next system is likely to be bootstrapped from Bitcoin. That's the crucial difference.
  - bigpeopleareold 9y ago
    This is crucial in the midst of loose and fast comparisons between technologies in the past and what we have now. Can a piece of complicated software like Bitcoin be re-engineered from the ground up? Yes, certainly, but that is a tough road to take, I would think, if you want to do what Bitcoin does at its core. Bitcoin, the software, solves basic problems very well and is thus the basis of many altcoins. I'll invest in the next big coin if it is significantly better than Bitcoin while continuing to maintain Bitcoin's core value argument.
jncraton 9y ago
Bitcoin is the long term store of value for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. The small transaction issue may be overcome by something like the Lightning Network, but in the short term, you can just use other cryptocurrencies with lower fees or other features that are important to you.
- thevardanian 9y ago
  The thing I don't understand, and am concerned about the most is that cryptocurrencies rely on public ledgers, and therefore not private. That is all monetary transactions are in essence public record, which is very odd to me, and really doesn't sit well.
  - lawn 9y ago
    Exactly. Monero is the only real cryptocurrency because it does not have a public ledger. Monero is fungible, meaning you cannot tell two coins apart, which is an essential property of money. This is a very real issue most people into Bitcoin does not seem to care about. Anyone you transact with can gain insight into your personal finances which at best informs your friends of how rich/poor you are and at worst making you a robbery target.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      Bitcoin cares about decentralization. The Chinese government doesn't. So that's why there is bcash. If low fees were important, you'd just use litecoin. It has been around for years. They even have segwit, which allows atomic cross-chain swaps, which even further enables privacy. It is no surprise that the chinese government controlled crypto bcash didn't want that.
      - dylz 9y ago
        Why do you keep using the large phrase "chinese government controlled crypto bcash" instead of just calling it bcash? Sincerely, someone that isn't involved in all of this.
MadSudaca 9y ago
I can't imagine a future where some form of cryptocurrency technology isn't in widespread use.
xorcist 9y ago
That's speculation on the level of Bitcoin taking over. There's no reason to value altcoins over sidechains, for example. We don't know what the future will bring, only that large economies can't take place wholesale on a blockchain. But whether transactions denominated in Bitcoins will be popular is anyone's guess. Surely some better technology will come along, but it won't be altcoins as you know them.
- lawn 9y ago
  > There's no reason to value altcoins over sidechains, for example. > Surely some better technology will come along, but it won't be altcoins as you know them. There's no reason to value sidechains over other coins. Better technology will come, but it could come in the form of other coins.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    I know i know. It must be hard constantly trying to convince everyone your new altcoin is the next best thing. I know! Why don't you put the name 'bitcoin' in its name! That will work, right? Right? Guys?
nadam 9y ago
I see 3 scenarios right now: 1. Bitcoin + lighting network solves everything 2. Bitcoin's dominance ends and a more scalable payment-focused currency start to dominate (like Dash) 3. Bitcoin remains the main store of value, and people will convert some of their bitcoins to an altocin to do daily paymnt where there will be debates on the level of decentralization, but is designed to be extremely high (Visa level) tx/sec, and very low latency. My bet is currently EOS. I still think any of these can become true, but I am more and more predicting (3) to be the case. (That is why my main investments are BTC and EOS, but I also have some Dash in case (2) becomes true.)
- fragsworth 9y ago
  > 1. Bitcoin + lighting network solves everything As far as I can tell, the Lightning Network's design isn't robust enough to solve everything. It allows for an arbitrary number of back-and-forth transactions between any two parties. It will be good, but it's not clear to me that this extends to solving all of the scalability problems.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    I would suggest actually learning how it works before commenting on it. Lightning allows users to take a single bitcoin transaction, and use it over a finite space of time, in order to shift bitcoin back and forth, with no or vanishingly small transaction fees, as iou's between what are called 'lightning channels'. The actual transaction size will be the same as a normal transaction, with a flag that says it can only be committed to the blockchain at a specific time (or block depth). In effect, these lightning transactions are cryptographically signed 'iou's. The 'thousands' of back-and-forth iou changes are discarded when the channel is closed (massive privacy dividend), and only the aggregated change is committed to the blockchain. This is the great thing about lightning. It is a single transaction with as many inputs and outputs (one/two) as defined in the original transaction. Only the transaction values change. Consider a channel link of this : John->Bob->Sally->Anne. Only the people next to each other in the chain have a 'channel open' with each other (John/Bob, Bob/Sally, Sally/Anne). Assuming each of the channels between all of the participants have adequate funds in order to achieve this, if John wanted to send 1btc to Anne. A transaction ledger would read : John->Bob channel : John -1btc, Bob +1btc Bob->Sally channel : Bob -1btc, Sally +1btc Sally->Anne channel : Sally -1btc, Anne +1btc. Anne now has 1btc more, and John has 1btc less, but the net effect in each channel is simply a modification to the distribution of bitcoin in that channel. Imagine this happening, back and forth, and extended to thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of people. As long as there's a chain between them, you use the chain. You might even have your transaction split over multiple chains. For links that don't have a chain, you create a channel on-the-fly. Each channel, therefore, only ends up with the same single input, and the same two outputs, just differing values. It's significantly more complex than that (transaction routing, and channel closure mechanics), but that's the idea. I wish I could remember the lightning dev that explained it. It really is very clever. I haven't actually questioned about the effect of having channels with multiple inputs (John/Sally) and outputs (Bob/Anne) at inception. Technically, I can't see any reason why this wouldn't be possible. Just a much weirder set of ramifications. I would suggest that the method for creating ln channels is most likely : Carol wants to pay Bob 0.5btc. She creates a ln channel with 1btc, of which Bob is allocated 0.5btc, and carol is allocated 0.5btc. Bob gets paid 0.5btc that is accessible once confirmed. Carol has 0.5btc that is now accessible once confirmed. That way the ln can be bootstrapped by existing txns. I'd also suggest that it would be easier to understand if Bob were Bob Inc. The incentive will be for the buyer to reduce txn fees. If Carol uses a store (coffee?) she will want to reduce paying those fees. So she creates a channel with 0.1btc and 0.001 is allocated to Bob Inc. For the coffee she buys today, coffee + txn fee. Ever more? Zippo txn fee. When your channel is almost zero, you buy bitcoin, it is delivered back to you by the rebalancing of that channel. And because it's Bob Inc the path through the channels from a source of bitcoin is reduced, maybe even two hops ( exchangeA/exchangeB -> exchangeB/Bob Inc. -> Bob Inc./Carol).
CryptoPunk 9y ago
Given the growth in transaction volume, it's pretty clear to me it will be the second, or possibly Ethereum will take the role of Bitcoin and fulfil the first: https://etherscan.io/chart/tx https://etherscan.io/chart/tx
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Eth nodes are a quarter of what they were nine months ago. Most people can't even sync a node anymore. None of this is a surprise. This is exactly the outcome expected with unrestrained blockchain expansion. Bitcoin is about decentralization. Every other altcoin, it would seem, is about trying to invent an inefficient paypal.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    Bitcoin saw exactly the same drop in full nodes when light clients were first released. Ethereum still has over two times as many full nodes as Bitcoin. 11,415 Bitcoin nodes: https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/ https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/ 29,805 Ethereum full nodes: https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1 https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1 >>Most people can't even sync a node anymore. Totally unsubstantiated. >Bitcoin is about decentralization. There's more to decentralization than being able to run a full node on your Raspberry Pi with a 128K modem. Like more than 500,000 people in the entire world being able to write to the blockchain with any regularity, which is not possible with a 1 MB limit on the 10-minute blocks (1.67 KB/s throughput limit). With such limited write-access to the Bitcoin blockchain, the vast majority of the world will have to rely on trusted third parties to hold their Bitcoin wealth on their behalf, since it's impossible for the vast majority of the world to have write-access to the Bitcoin blockchain in order to make use of a private key. I'd rather Ethereum users poll multiple trusted third parties to validate the transaction data they're seeing, and be able to hold their own private keys, and write transactions to the blockchain with those keys, than Ethereum users be able to validate the blockchain trustlessly, but have to trust third parties, acting effectively as banks, to hold their ether.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
empath75 9y ago
Many block chains being in use is going to wreck the value of bitcoin long term. People have this bizarre idea that cryptocurrency tokens are ‘rare’. They’re not. It’s trivial to make a new currency or fork an existing one.
- krrrh 9y ago
  Creating new coins is also the easiest way to introduce new features and ideas. We’re overvaluing version 1.0 because it has the biggest install base.
- cortic 9y ago
  Business models like NiceHash (putting aside their security issues) have elevated the price of bitcoin by letting miners mine the most profitable currency and then immediately selling it for BTC. This moves the demand off the best alt currencies onto BTC; so the more block chains the merrier as long as this kinds of business model persists, and i think it will. Also; "People have this bizarre idea that cryptocurrency tokens are ‘rare’." the belief in value is basically the foundation of all currency, why would cryptocurrency be any different?
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Decentralized ones are rare. There are lots of centralized blockchains. The centralized ones, with their cheerleaders of pump and dump get rich quick schemes, are constantly trying to convince the unaware that they have the same security model as the decentralized ones. They don't.

lawn 9y ago

The first version of new and revolutionary technology rarely (if ever?) becomes the dominant one. Obvious examples are search (Altavista -> Google) and social networks (MySpace -> Facebook).

down 9y ago
right MySpace, was a technology?, I think they were build on php or so, was a slow site, Google is not a technology either, golang it is, and is somehow revolutionary through simplicity and first-ish.
- RandomInteger4 9y ago
  Agreed! Bridges aren't technologies either, only rivets and steel beams! I keep telling people, but they just won't listen. Cars? Not a technology, only wheels and motors are technologies.
nlperguiy 9y ago
None of these technologies are dominant enough. Not a single one is a usable product. All cannot support a large number of transactions, not even those that do not have proof of work. There's research-level problems being solved (like bulletproofs for compact private transaction - hides amounts). After research is done there's engineering. Then testing until it is ready to use. People really don't realize how early this is. Lightning network, a proposed solution for Bitcoin scaling problem, was announced 2 years ago, and they identified many issues with it since then. There's talks of layer number 3 etc. This is way too early and there's no winner. Bunch of cryptocurrencies are riding on the research-wave behind Bitcoin.
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Where is your second internet?
- ribosometronome 9y ago
  Are you posting on the ARPANET?
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    I use email almost every day, yes. You realize the arpanet is the internet right? It wasn't replaced, it was expanded. Call it layers if that would make it easier to understand.
    - ribosometronome 9y ago
      ARPANET refers to a specific network that was decommissioned in 1990. And for 13 years of it's 21 years in existence, it was using NCP rather than TCP/IP.
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        And the bitcoin node software i use today is version 0.15.1, not 0.8.0. The segwit block structure is different to the original implementation. One turned into the other. Nothing is stopping you running a 0.8.0 node of course. But the newer implementation has more functionality.
      - joeblau 9y ago
        I worked at BBN Technologies in the early 2000's. I was always amazed at how a company that essentially co-founded the internet and had the second domain name ever registered[1] could basically go out of business. You just made me think that Bitcoin could definitely be the ARPANET of blockchains and Core devs could be BBN. Don't get me wrong, I worked with some extremely smart people, but in the end, Raytheon bought the whole company. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_registered_Internet_domain_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_r...
xorcist 9y ago
Any next system is likely to be bootstrapped from Bitcoin. That's the crucial difference.
- bigpeopleareold 9y ago
  This is crucial in the midst of loose and fast comparisons between technologies in the past and what we have now. Can a piece of complicated software like Bitcoin be re-engineered from the ground up? Yes, certainly, but that is a tough road to take, I would think, if you want to do what Bitcoin does at its core. Bitcoin, the software, solves basic problems very well and is thus the basis of many altcoins. I'll invest in the next big coin if it is significantly better than Bitcoin while continuing to maintain Bitcoin's core value argument.

jncraton 9y ago

Bitcoin is the long term store of value for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It's poor for small transactions, but works well for storing large amounts of value as it is significantly more secure in terms of PoW than anything else out there. The small transaction issue may be overcome by something like the Lightning Network, but in the short term, you can just use other cryptocurrencies with lower fees or other features that are important to you.

thevardanian 9y ago
The thing I don't understand, and am concerned about the most is that cryptocurrencies rely on public ledgers, and therefore not private. That is all monetary transactions are in essence public record, which is very odd to me, and really doesn't sit well.
- lawn 9y ago
  Exactly. Monero is the only real cryptocurrency because it does not have a public ledger. Monero is fungible, meaning you cannot tell two coins apart, which is an essential property of money. This is a very real issue most people into Bitcoin does not seem to care about. Anyone you transact with can gain insight into your personal finances which at best informs your friends of how rich/poor you are and at worst making you a robbery target.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Bitcoin cares about decentralization. The Chinese government doesn't. So that's why there is bcash. If low fees were important, you'd just use litecoin. It has been around for years. They even have segwit, which allows atomic cross-chain swaps, which even further enables privacy. It is no surprise that the chinese government controlled crypto bcash didn't want that.
    - dylz 9y ago
      Why do you keep using the large phrase "chinese government controlled crypto bcash" instead of just calling it bcash? Sincerely, someone that isn't involved in all of this.

MadSudaca 9y ago

I can't imagine a future where some form of cryptocurrency technology isn't in widespread use.

xorcist 9y ago

That's speculation on the level of Bitcoin taking over. There's no reason to value altcoins over sidechains, for example. We don't know what the future will bring, only that large economies can't take place wholesale on a blockchain. But whether transactions denominated in Bitcoins will be popular is anyone's guess. Surely some better technology will come along, but it won't be altcoins as you know them.

lawn 9y ago
> There's no reason to value altcoins over sidechains, for example. > Surely some better technology will come along, but it won't be altcoins as you know them. There's no reason to value sidechains over other coins. Better technology will come, but it could come in the form of other coins.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  I know i know. It must be hard constantly trying to convince everyone your new altcoin is the next best thing. I know! Why don't you put the name 'bitcoin' in its name! That will work, right? Right? Guys?

nadam 9y ago

I see 3 scenarios right now: 1. Bitcoin + lighting network solves everything 2. Bitcoin's dominance ends and a more scalable payment-focused currency start to dominate (like Dash) 3. Bitcoin remains the main store of value, and people will convert some of their bitcoins to an altocin to do daily paymnt where there will be debates on the level of decentralization, but is designed to be extremely high (Visa level) tx/sec, and very low latency. My bet is currently EOS. I still think any of these can become true, but I am more and more predicting (3) to be the case. (That is why my main investments are BTC and EOS, but I also have some Dash in case (2) becomes true.)

fragsworth 9y ago
> 1. Bitcoin + lighting network solves everything As far as I can tell, the Lightning Network's design isn't robust enough to solve everything. It allows for an arbitrary number of back-and-forth transactions between any two parties. It will be good, but it's not clear to me that this extends to solving all of the scalability problems.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  I would suggest actually learning how it works before commenting on it. Lightning allows users to take a single bitcoin transaction, and use it over a finite space of time, in order to shift bitcoin back and forth, with no or vanishingly small transaction fees, as iou's between what are called 'lightning channels'. The actual transaction size will be the same as a normal transaction, with a flag that says it can only be committed to the blockchain at a specific time (or block depth). In effect, these lightning transactions are cryptographically signed 'iou's. The 'thousands' of back-and-forth iou changes are discarded when the channel is closed (massive privacy dividend), and only the aggregated change is committed to the blockchain. This is the great thing about lightning. It is a single transaction with as many inputs and outputs (one/two) as defined in the original transaction. Only the transaction values change. Consider a channel link of this : John->Bob->Sally->Anne. Only the people next to each other in the chain have a 'channel open' with each other (John/Bob, Bob/Sally, Sally/Anne). Assuming each of the channels between all of the participants have adequate funds in order to achieve this, if John wanted to send 1btc to Anne. A transaction ledger would read : John->Bob channel : John -1btc, Bob +1btc Bob->Sally channel : Bob -1btc, Sally +1btc Sally->Anne channel : Sally -1btc, Anne +1btc. Anne now has 1btc more, and John has 1btc less, but the net effect in each channel is simply a modification to the distribution of bitcoin in that channel. Imagine this happening, back and forth, and extended to thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of people. As long as there's a chain between them, you use the chain. You might even have your transaction split over multiple chains. For links that don't have a chain, you create a channel on-the-fly. Each channel, therefore, only ends up with the same single input, and the same two outputs, just differing values. It's significantly more complex than that (transaction routing, and channel closure mechanics), but that's the idea. I wish I could remember the lightning dev that explained it. It really is very clever. I haven't actually questioned about the effect of having channels with multiple inputs (John/Sally) and outputs (Bob/Anne) at inception. Technically, I can't see any reason why this wouldn't be possible. Just a much weirder set of ramifications. I would suggest that the method for creating ln channels is most likely : Carol wants to pay Bob 0.5btc. She creates a ln channel with 1btc, of which Bob is allocated 0.5btc, and carol is allocated 0.5btc. Bob gets paid 0.5btc that is accessible once confirmed. Carol has 0.5btc that is now accessible once confirmed. That way the ln can be bootstrapped by existing txns. I'd also suggest that it would be easier to understand if Bob were Bob Inc. The incentive will be for the buyer to reduce txn fees. If Carol uses a store (coffee?) she will want to reduce paying those fees. So she creates a channel with 0.1btc and 0.001 is allocated to Bob Inc. For the coffee she buys today, coffee + txn fee. Ever more? Zippo txn fee. When your channel is almost zero, you buy bitcoin, it is delivered back to you by the rebalancing of that channel. And because it's Bob Inc the path through the channels from a source of bitcoin is reduced, maybe even two hops ( exchangeA/exchangeB -> exchangeB/Bob Inc. -> Bob Inc./Carol).

CryptoPunk 9y ago

Given the growth in transaction volume, it's pretty clear to me it will be the second, or possibly Ethereum will take the role of Bitcoin and fulfil the first: https://etherscan.io/chart/tx https://etherscan.io/chart/tx

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Eth nodes are a quarter of what they were nine months ago. Most people can't even sync a node anymore. None of this is a surprise. This is exactly the outcome expected with unrestrained blockchain expansion. Bitcoin is about decentralization. Every other altcoin, it would seem, is about trying to invent an inefficient paypal.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Bitcoin saw exactly the same drop in full nodes when light clients were first released. Ethereum still has over two times as many full nodes as Bitcoin. 11,415 Bitcoin nodes: https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/ https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/ 29,805 Ethereum full nodes: https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1 https://www.ethernodes.org/network/1 >>Most people can't even sync a node anymore. Totally unsubstantiated. >Bitcoin is about decentralization. There's more to decentralization than being able to run a full node on your Raspberry Pi with a 128K modem. Like more than 500,000 people in the entire world being able to write to the blockchain with any regularity, which is not possible with a 1 MB limit on the 10-minute blocks (1.67 KB/s throughput limit). With such limited write-access to the Bitcoin blockchain, the vast majority of the world will have to rely on trusted third parties to hold their Bitcoin wealth on their behalf, since it's impossible for the vast majority of the world to have write-access to the Bitcoin blockchain in order to make use of a private key. I'd rather Ethereum users poll multiple trusted third parties to validate the transaction data they're seeing, and be able to hold their own private keys, and write transactions to the blockchain with those keys, than Ethereum users be able to validate the blockchain trustlessly, but have to trust third parties, acting effectively as banks, to hold their ether.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago

empath75 9y ago

Many block chains being in use is going to wreck the value of bitcoin long term. People have this bizarre idea that cryptocurrency tokens are ‘rare’. They’re not. It’s trivial to make a new currency or fork an existing one.

krrrh 9y ago
Creating new coins is also the easiest way to introduce new features and ideas. We’re overvaluing version 1.0 because it has the biggest install base.
cortic 9y ago
Business models like NiceHash (putting aside their security issues) have elevated the price of bitcoin by letting miners mine the most profitable currency and then immediately selling it for BTC. This moves the demand off the best alt currencies onto BTC; so the more block chains the merrier as long as this kinds of business model persists, and i think it will. Also; "People have this bizarre idea that cryptocurrency tokens are ‘rare’." the belief in value is basically the foundation of all currency, why would cryptocurrency be any different?
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Decentralized ones are rare. There are lots of centralized blockchains. The centralized ones, with their cheerleaders of pump and dump get rich quick schemes, are constantly trying to convince the unaware that they have the same security model as the decentralized ones. They don't.