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The reader will find dozens of suggestion in this thread about how coin X is more "efficient". Note that efficiency would mean producing the same properties bu

The reader will find dozens of suggestion in this thread about how coin X is more "efficient". Note that efficiency would mean producing the same properties but with less resources. Not merely using less resources. While experimentation is certainly desired, it's a fallacy that any coin has actually reproduced bitcoin in a more efficient way. To name a couple, - Bitcoin had what some call an "immaculate conception" where there was no expectation that such a system would work in the first place and where the founder was anonymous. This creates a very different history in comparison with the founder led, pre mined, frothy market launches of today. - Bitcoin has stood the test of time. With each year in production that passes, there is more confidence that the system and specific implementation is sound. Once these other coins have stood in the market for 10 years straight and continued to retain the confidence in their protocol, the comparisons can start.

danShumway 6y ago
> have stood in the market for 10 years straight At which point, Bitcoin proponents will up the requirements again. This is an excuse people use to avoid talking about the fact that Bitcoin has spent the last 2-3 years consistently proving that it doesn't scale and that it is unusable as a currency. > had what some call an "immaculate conception" Or, it was a good first try that needs iteration now that we understand that hyper-deflation is a bad thing for a currency, now that we understand that pseudononymous addresses don't provide any real privacy guarantees at all, and now that we understand that transaction speed and cost has to be something that's optimized for early on in a coin's life and that those issues can't be fixed by pasting an ad-hoc, unproven non-blockchain solution on top of the coin 10 years later. The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. If you want to appeal to 'stability', then banks have been around for centuries. But if you're trying to build something new, you're going to have occasionally innovate and iterate on the thing you're building.
- nyolfen 6y ago
  > Or, it was a good first try that needs iteration now that we understand that hyper-deflation is a bad thing for a currency in what sense is bitcoin "hyper-deflation"ary? i think you are thinking of the word "deflation" but i know that doesn't sound as smart >The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. If you want to appeal to 'stability', then banks have been around for centuries. But if you're trying to build something new, you're going to have occasionally innovate and iterate on the thing you're building. there is nothing stopping anybody from making something better, so go on
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > there is nothing stopping anybody from making something better They already did. Half the crypto ecosystem is already better than Bitcoin if you're trying to build a functional currency. We're talking about a coin that doesn't have any privacy guarantees, it's not exactly hard to improve on that. When I talk about religious loyalty, what I'm getting at is that it turns out the Bitcoin ecosystem doesn't seem to care that much about stuff like privacy, and whenever anyone brings up Bitcoin's flaws, or the fact that it has been outclassed by other coins, suddenly the conversation is all about "stability" and the trust of having an old coin that hasn't fixed its problems in 10 years. It turns out that having a fixed number of coins that fluctuate wildly in price is very bad for building a currency, but we have people on here arguing that it's a good thing. It turns out that PoW is unscalable and prohibitively expensive, which is a barrier to real decentralization, but we have people on here arguing that's a good thing. It's understandable that Satoshi didn't know in advance every problem, but it's not understandable that in all of the years since then, the Bitcoin community has largely failed to evolve or learn anything about the initial flaws that the coin had. And this is honestly a tricky conversation to have because we have to keep dancing around the fact that Bitcoin is a speculative asset and that very little of the community cares about making a currency at all. But the community won't acknowledge that, so instead we get a lot of weird deflection around "stability" and we all have to pretend that the community is in good faith actually trying to create an alternative to cash, and that people genuinely believe that Bitcoin's tech is the best way to do that. But obviously that's not what's happening. Nobody would really look at the state of Bitcoin and argue that it's best-positioned to replace traditional currency. It's worse than cash for privacy, it has higher transaction fees than almost any other payment method, it doesn't scale environmentally, and it takes 10 minutes to add a new block. But... it is for the moment an excellent speculative investment because the speculative market is irrational and doesn't care about technology. And the speculative market benefits from pretending that it exists for some kind of grand purpose rather than just as an end to itself, even if doing so makes it harder to accomplish any of the original goals behind the coin.
- zepto 6y ago
  > The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. I’d say it’s not weird or religious - it’s a predictable outcome of the incentive structure of then currency. A key criteria for a better alternative is that it doesn’t incentivize hagiographic thinking.
ineedasername 6y ago
it's a fallacy that any coin has actually reproduced bitcoin in a more efficient way It's a fallacy to consider bitcoin as an apriori better system than either traditional currencies or other coins when it has failed to achieve the hoped-for results.
smnplk 6y ago
People often say, BTC has stood the test of time. What was the test exactly. Test to see how many people are greedy? Test to see how much energy can be wasted? How much more can we pollute the environment ? How it can not be used as a currency ? Yes I see, it is still here. But in my view, it shouldn't be. There needs to be another way to solve ledger consensus, other than POW.
- webinvest 6y ago
  Why didn’t Peercoin and Novacoin stand the test of time? Both were PoS and had high market caps.

danShumway 6y ago

> have stood in the market for 10 years straight At which point, Bitcoin proponents will up the requirements again. This is an excuse people use to avoid talking about the fact that Bitcoin has spent the last 2-3 years consistently proving that it doesn't scale and that it is unusable as a currency. > had what some call an "immaculate conception" Or, it was a good first try that needs iteration now that we understand that hyper-deflation is a bad thing for a currency, now that we understand that pseudononymous addresses don't provide any real privacy guarantees at all, and now that we understand that transaction speed and cost has to be something that's optimized for early on in a coin's life and that those issues can't be fixed by pasting an ad-hoc, unproven non-blockchain solution on top of the coin 10 years later. The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. If you want to appeal to 'stability', then banks have been around for centuries. But if you're trying to build something new, you're going to have occasionally innovate and iterate on the thing you're building.

nyolfen 6y ago
> Or, it was a good first try that needs iteration now that we understand that hyper-deflation is a bad thing for a currency in what sense is bitcoin "hyper-deflation"ary? i think you are thinking of the word "deflation" but i know that doesn't sound as smart >The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. If you want to appeal to 'stability', then banks have been around for centuries. But if you're trying to build something new, you're going to have occasionally innovate and iterate on the thing you're building. there is nothing stopping anybody from making something better, so go on
- danShumway 6y ago
  > there is nothing stopping anybody from making something better They already did. Half the crypto ecosystem is already better than Bitcoin if you're trying to build a functional currency. We're talking about a coin that doesn't have any privacy guarantees, it's not exactly hard to improve on that. When I talk about religious loyalty, what I'm getting at is that it turns out the Bitcoin ecosystem doesn't seem to care that much about stuff like privacy, and whenever anyone brings up Bitcoin's flaws, or the fact that it has been outclassed by other coins, suddenly the conversation is all about "stability" and the trust of having an old coin that hasn't fixed its problems in 10 years. It turns out that having a fixed number of coins that fluctuate wildly in price is very bad for building a currency, but we have people on here arguing that it's a good thing. It turns out that PoW is unscalable and prohibitively expensive, which is a barrier to real decentralization, but we have people on here arguing that's a good thing. It's understandable that Satoshi didn't know in advance every problem, but it's not understandable that in all of the years since then, the Bitcoin community has largely failed to evolve or learn anything about the initial flaws that the coin had. And this is honestly a tricky conversation to have because we have to keep dancing around the fact that Bitcoin is a speculative asset and that very little of the community cares about making a currency at all. But the community won't acknowledge that, so instead we get a lot of weird deflection around "stability" and we all have to pretend that the community is in good faith actually trying to create an alternative to cash, and that people genuinely believe that Bitcoin's tech is the best way to do that. But obviously that's not what's happening. Nobody would really look at the state of Bitcoin and argue that it's best-positioned to replace traditional currency. It's worse than cash for privacy, it has higher transaction fees than almost any other payment method, it doesn't scale environmentally, and it takes 10 minutes to add a new block. But... it is for the moment an excellent speculative investment because the speculative market is irrational and doesn't care about technology. And the speculative market benefits from pretending that it exists for some kind of grand purpose rather than just as an end to itself, even if doing so makes it harder to accomplish any of the original goals behind the coin.
zepto 6y ago
> The weird, religious loyalty people have to reinterpreting Bitcoin's flaws as strengths is setting the entire crypto ecosystem back. I’d say it’s not weird or religious - it’s a predictable outcome of the incentive structure of then currency. A key criteria for a better alternative is that it doesn’t incentivize hagiographic thinking.

ineedasername 6y ago

it's a fallacy that any coin has actually reproduced bitcoin in a more efficient way It's a fallacy to consider bitcoin as an apriori better system than either traditional currencies or other coins when it has failed to achieve the hoped-for results.

smnplk 6y ago

People often say, BTC has stood the test of time. What was the test exactly. Test to see how many people are greedy? Test to see how much energy can be wasted? How much more can we pollute the environment ? How it can not be used as a currency ? Yes I see, it is still here. But in my view, it shouldn't be. There needs to be another way to solve ledger consensus, other than POW.

webinvest 6y ago
Why didn’t Peercoin and Novacoin stand the test of time? Both were PoS and had high market caps.