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Perfectly said. I'd also add that I'm not sure bitcoin ever needs to be anything more than a medium of exchange. In digital commerce there is no reason not to

by netcan 14y ago

Perfectly said. I'd also add that I'm not sure bitcoin ever needs to be anything more than a medium of exchange. In digital commerce there is no reason not to denote in one currency, exchange in another while marking to a third. Chargebacks, speed, etc all get translated to transaction costs. Lower transaction costs by an order of magnitude or two and all sorts of things become possible.

oleganza 14y ago
You miss one thing, though: the block chain has real costs. If you want another block chain for the document timestamping, for instance, then you'll have to convince people to mine that block chain. Inevitably, it'll be just another currency not very different from Bitcoin. And since both have almost the same objective properties and Bitcoin is already more valuable, nobody will spend CPU on your currency. So you'll end up using the Bitcoin block chain anyway. This is exactly what is happening to Namecoin: initially, it was just another blockchain, but very soon people realized that nobody is willing to spend any CPU/GPU time on Namecoin if Bitcoin is worth more (no matter how much more). So Namecoin guys proposed "merged mining", which is just a fancy way to reuse proof-of-work done on Bitcoin block chain without asking people to devote any resources specifically to Namecoin.
- MacsHeadroom 14y ago
  The Namecoin and Litecoin blockchains have relatively large/robust user/contributor networks behind them. Both are almost identical to Bitcoin, with very little modification.
contingencies 14y ago
I'm not sure bitcoin ever needs to be anything more than a medium of exchange My sentiments exactly. The other stuff will sort itself out. (Historical example: GUI client in codebase!) IMHO what integrators really need is a fixed target, and what they have now is spiralling complexity and ill-defined scope... ie. very suboptimal.

by netcan 14y ago

oleganza 14y ago

You miss one thing, though: the block chain has real costs. If you want another block chain for the document timestamping, for instance, then you'll have to convince people to mine that block chain. Inevitably, it'll be just another currency not very different from Bitcoin. And since both have almost the same objective properties and Bitcoin is already more valuable, nobody will spend CPU on your currency. So you'll end up using the Bitcoin block chain anyway. This is exactly what is happening to Namecoin: initially, it was just another blockchain, but very soon people realized that nobody is willing to spend any CPU/GPU time on Namecoin if Bitcoin is worth more (no matter how much more). So Namecoin guys proposed "merged mining", which is just a fancy way to reuse proof-of-work done on Bitcoin block chain without asking people to devote any resources specifically to Namecoin.

MacsHeadroom 14y ago
The Namecoin and Litecoin blockchains have relatively large/robust user/contributor networks behind them. Both are almost identical to Bitcoin, with very little modification.

contingencies 14y ago

I'm not sure bitcoin ever needs to be anything more than a medium of exchange My sentiments exactly. The other stuff will sort itself out. (Historical example: GUI client in codebase!) IMHO what integrators really need is a fixed target, and what they have now is spiralling complexity and ill-defined scope... ie. very suboptimal.