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> But there are new altcoins that have solved both of these, that exist right now! Any of them solve the fact that you have a eternal database fully replicated

> But there are new altcoins that have solved both of these, that exist right now! Any of them solve the fact that you have a eternal database fully replicated across hundreds of thousands of machines which could, by design, grow to infinite size? How about the fact that every one of those machines have to verify the integrity of every transaction ever made? Any of those could scale to handle even hundreds of transactions per second? How about any that solve the absolute piss-awful amount of energy wasted by PoW? Any of those not pre-mined scams designed to enrich the people who "invented" the coin? Any of those useful for anything outside of paying for murder, fentanyl, or unlocking cryptoransomware? What real-world problem, exactly, does any of this solve anyway? All of the problems we have in the financial world are political and social problems. You gotta solve those before you can start throwing tech at it...

dkonofalski 9y ago
This is exactly my problem with Bitcoin. The process for securing Bitcoin was fascinating to me because I thought mining was a clever way of staggering the growth of the currency. Unfortunately, you quickly realize that there's nothing to back the value of the currency and anything that could is disproportionately devalued when China builds farms for nothing but mining and the exploitation of the currency. Blockchain, on the other hand, is awesome and will continue to be a key piece of tech for things like voting and records where trust can be shared amongst all the users.
icelancer 9y ago
>>How about any that solve the absolute piss-awful amount of energy wasted by PoW? Any of those not pre-mined scams designed to enrich the people who "invented" the coin? Any of those useful for anything outside of paying for murder, fentanyl, or unlocking cryptoransomware? These inflammatory questions have legitimate answers, and the fact you ask them in this forum mean you haven't done any honest work to find them and would rather just post it on Hacker News and look intelligent. So, respectively: Yes, Yes, Yes. I hope this is a helpful answer.
heurist 9y ago
When a coin becomes unusable, fork it or switch to a better one. The market is extremely liquid.

dkonofalski 9y ago

This is exactly my problem with Bitcoin. The process for securing Bitcoin was fascinating to me because I thought mining was a clever way of staggering the growth of the currency. Unfortunately, you quickly realize that there's nothing to back the value of the currency and anything that could is disproportionately devalued when China builds farms for nothing but mining and the exploitation of the currency. Blockchain, on the other hand, is awesome and will continue to be a key piece of tech for things like voting and records where trust can be shared amongst all the users.

icelancer 9y ago

>>How about any that solve the absolute piss-awful amount of energy wasted by PoW? Any of those not pre-mined scams designed to enrich the people who "invented" the coin? Any of those useful for anything outside of paying for murder, fentanyl, or unlocking cryptoransomware? These inflammatory questions have legitimate answers, and the fact you ask them in this forum mean you haven't done any honest work to find them and would rather just post it on Hacker News and look intelligent. So, respectively: Yes, Yes, Yes. I hope this is a helpful answer.

heurist 9y ago

When a coin becomes unusable, fork it or switch to a better one. The market is extremely liquid.