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It doesn't matter if bitcoin becomes a global currency or not. Napster never survived it was replaced with Limewire and then Bittorrent. V1 of a technology as

It doesn't matter if bitcoin becomes a global currency or not. Napster never survived it was replaced with Limewire and then Bittorrent. V1 of a technology as disruptive as this doesn't necessarily survive in the end. Version 2 or Version 3 is where it gets really interesting.

tmh88j 9y ago
>V1 of a technology as disruptive as this doesn't necessarily survive in the end. Version 2 or Version 3 is where it gets really interesting. The technology that's here to stay is blockchain, the currencies associated with them are irrelevant in the grand scheme for now. I think Bitcoin has the brand recognition to hang in there for a while, but if nothing new is brought to the table with every newly introduced altcoin they're destined for failure. Even Kodak is trying to get into cryptocurrency/blockchain game. I think DRM via smart contracts is a feasible and cool concept, but no one is going to take Kodakcoin (it's a real thing) seriously unless it has liquidity and value beyond photographers. Until they can leverage atomic swaps it's going nowhere in my opinion.
- prostoalex 9y ago
  > The technology that's here to stay is blockchain, the currencies associated with them are irrelevant in the grand scheme for now. But blockchain's validity is validated by miners, and miners stick around because they're compensated for constructing a valid block. How does miner compensation work in the cryptocurrency-free environment, and if there are no miners, what are the guarantees that some central entity did not rewind and fork the blockchain?
  - tmh88j 9y ago
    >How does miner compensation work in the cryptocurrency-free environment, and if there are no miners, what are the guarantees that some central entity did not rewind and fork the blockchain? You can establish whatever hypothetical situation you desire, but in the real world not all blockchain/cryptocurrencies are designed to operate the same way. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple are all different approaches. They each have their own incentives and use cases, but they all sit atop blockchain.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      Is there a significant difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum approaches? From what I can tell Ripple expects entities to run validation nodes as a service to the public https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/6w5vsd/validator_nodes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/6w5vsd/validator_no... but glad to be corrected if other (stronger) incentives exist.
      - tmh88j 9y ago
        >Is there a significant difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum approaches? The two have very different approaches. Bitcoin was designed to be a currency, with blockchain being the mechanism to facilitate transactions. Ethereum was built from the start as a platform to run applications for zero downtime, along with its own cryptocurrency and smart contracts. If you follow the HBO series Silicon Valley, Pied Piper's platform running thanks to the smart refrigerators is reminiscent of Ethereum. >From what I can tell Ripple expects entities to run validation nodes as a service to the public Ripple is an oddball, but I threw it in as an example. It was created by a company which mined all of the coins from day one and held onto a significant portion of them, yet claim it was built to connect different payment systems together. For example, here's a statement their lead cryptographer made. “Payment systems today are where email was in the early ‘80s. Every provider built their own system for their customers and if people used different systems they couldn’t easily interact with each other. Ripple is designed to connect different payment systems together.”
        shepardrtc 9y ago
        Yes, they removed distributed Proof-of-Work from the equation and used a distributed consensus algorithm instead. They're encouraging companies and institutions who are interested to run their own validator nodes. Running one doesn't make you any money, but it does help make the network more secure. Its an interesting alternative to PoW that doesn't require anywhere near as much electricity as PoW mining does.
andrewprock 9y ago
I would guess that e-gold, from 1996, is a better candidate for the V1 of digital currency technology.
- unabridged 9y ago
  E-gold, Liberty Reserve, PayPal, ... All of them failed or bowed to the US's FinCEN. Bitcoin was the first without a chokepoint the governments could step on.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  No, DigiCash would be.
freehunter 9y ago
If Napster disappeared overnight, literally nothing of value is lost. If Bitcoin disappeared overnight, millions of dollars of value is gone. That's the game Bitcoin is playing in. It doesn't matter if it becomes a global currency, but if it's not being taken seriously and is just for playing around, there are a lot of people who are going to lose a lot of money. What you're describing is gambling at best, theft and fraud at worst.
- disordinary 9y ago
  I posted another comment above but it reflects on this one as well. The difference is that napster was centralised even if it was peer to peer. Bitcoin cannot simply disappear in the same way that Bittorent hasn't disappeared, the paradigm is different as there is no central server which tracks the nodes.
disordinary 9y ago
Napster and Limewire were peer to peer but not decentralised. There is no one bittorrent network. My guess is that bitcoin as we know it now will not exist in the future, but there will be a fork which wins and that fork will take on the name bitcoin. When Napster died it's network was lost, not so with bitcoin, the blockchain will fork and a fork will win.

tmh88j 9y ago

>V1 of a technology as disruptive as this doesn't necessarily survive in the end. Version 2 or Version 3 is where it gets really interesting. The technology that's here to stay is blockchain, the currencies associated with them are irrelevant in the grand scheme for now. I think Bitcoin has the brand recognition to hang in there for a while, but if nothing new is brought to the table with every newly introduced altcoin they're destined for failure. Even Kodak is trying to get into cryptocurrency/blockchain game. I think DRM via smart contracts is a feasible and cool concept, but no one is going to take Kodakcoin (it's a real thing) seriously unless it has liquidity and value beyond photographers. Until they can leverage atomic swaps it's going nowhere in my opinion.

prostoalex 9y ago
> The technology that's here to stay is blockchain, the currencies associated with them are irrelevant in the grand scheme for now. But blockchain's validity is validated by miners, and miners stick around because they're compensated for constructing a valid block. How does miner compensation work in the cryptocurrency-free environment, and if there are no miners, what are the guarantees that some central entity did not rewind and fork the blockchain?
- tmh88j 9y ago
  >How does miner compensation work in the cryptocurrency-free environment, and if there are no miners, what are the guarantees that some central entity did not rewind and fork the blockchain? You can establish whatever hypothetical situation you desire, but in the real world not all blockchain/cryptocurrencies are designed to operate the same way. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple are all different approaches. They each have their own incentives and use cases, but they all sit atop blockchain.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    Is there a significant difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum approaches? From what I can tell Ripple expects entities to run validation nodes as a service to the public https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/6w5vsd/validator_nodes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ripple/comments/6w5vsd/validator_no... but glad to be corrected if other (stronger) incentives exist.
    - tmh88j 9y ago
      >Is there a significant difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum approaches? The two have very different approaches. Bitcoin was designed to be a currency, with blockchain being the mechanism to facilitate transactions. Ethereum was built from the start as a platform to run applications for zero downtime, along with its own cryptocurrency and smart contracts. If you follow the HBO series Silicon Valley, Pied Piper's platform running thanks to the smart refrigerators is reminiscent of Ethereum. >From what I can tell Ripple expects entities to run validation nodes as a service to the public Ripple is an oddball, but I threw it in as an example. It was created by a company which mined all of the coins from day one and held onto a significant portion of them, yet claim it was built to connect different payment systems together. For example, here's a statement their lead cryptographer made. “Payment systems today are where email was in the early ‘80s. Every provider built their own system for their customers and if people used different systems they couldn’t easily interact with each other. Ripple is designed to connect different payment systems together.”
      - shepardrtc 9y ago
        Yes, they removed distributed Proof-of-Work from the equation and used a distributed consensus algorithm instead. They're encouraging companies and institutions who are interested to run their own validator nodes. Running one doesn't make you any money, but it does help make the network more secure. Its an interesting alternative to PoW that doesn't require anywhere near as much electricity as PoW mining does.

andrewprock 9y ago

I would guess that e-gold, from 1996, is a better candidate for the V1 of digital currency technology.

unabridged 9y ago
E-gold, Liberty Reserve, PayPal, ... All of them failed or bowed to the US's FinCEN. Bitcoin was the first without a chokepoint the governments could step on.
jacquesm 9y ago
No, DigiCash would be.

freehunter 9y ago

If Napster disappeared overnight, literally nothing of value is lost. If Bitcoin disappeared overnight, millions of dollars of value is gone. That's the game Bitcoin is playing in. It doesn't matter if it becomes a global currency, but if it's not being taken seriously and is just for playing around, there are a lot of people who are going to lose a lot of money. What you're describing is gambling at best, theft and fraud at worst.

disordinary 9y ago
I posted another comment above but it reflects on this one as well. The difference is that napster was centralised even if it was peer to peer. Bitcoin cannot simply disappear in the same way that Bittorent hasn't disappeared, the paradigm is different as there is no central server which tracks the nodes.

disordinary 9y ago

Napster and Limewire were peer to peer but not decentralised. There is no one bittorrent network. My guess is that bitcoin as we know it now will not exist in the future, but there will be a fork which wins and that fork will take on the name bitcoin. When Napster died it's network was lost, not so with bitcoin, the blockchain will fork and a fork will win.