4 ms·

I think Bit Coin is a fad... it will be replaced. Canada's 'Mint Chip' is catching up quickly and it is a superior product/currency.

macavity23 14y ago
In what way is MintChip superior? As far as I can see, it is a system for cryptographically signing transactions denominated in existing real-world currencies (eg CAD or USD), i.e. it's not really a currency at all. Seems terribly inferior to me.
gamegoblin 14y ago
How is MintChip a replacement for bitcoin? It isn't as anonympous and it isn't decentralized. It seems like they go for two entirely different goals.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- MacsHeadroom 14y ago
  I'm rooting for Bitcoin. But FYI MintChip transactions are anonymous. It is a digital form of cash.
jontaylor 14y ago
I feel the opposite. A friend and I put a submission together for the MintChip Challenge, mintchipy.com. My bigest concern then and now is that no one can use mint chip because it's not public. Coincidently I am working on another project now that uses BitCoin... Fad or not Bitcoin serves a very strong need for me an many others.
cookiecaper 14y ago
fwiw I agree that Bitcoin is a useful prototype but I seriously question its long-term viability outside of a niche. That niche, however, may be sufficient to continue to sustain high values for a while to come. Bitcoin shows us some cool stuff, but it's not sufficient for real-world everyday use. It will be an ancestor to a truly disruptive online currency imo. The network has too many fundamental inaccessibilities to make it plausible outside the elite nerd and/or money laundering sector.
- toomim 14y ago
  It sounds like you have a feeling that bitcoin isn't good enough, but don't have any actual reasons for it.
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    "The network has too many fundamental inaccessibilities" Just because I didn't rattle all of these off doesn't mean "I don't have any actual reasons for it". I suggest you ask more politely for exposition next time. The blockchain is huge, and splitting it is ad-hoc patchwork. The network was obviously not designed for such a thing and I'm not really optimistic about it. At this point it takes 6+ days to bootstrap a bitcoin client. There is still no easy integration method with extant payment systems. It takes weeks to transfer money in and out, or you have to make the trade in person. In many cases you must supply a lot of personal documentation to do anything meaningful on the exchanges. This could hypothetically be resolved, but given the stubbornness of banks and the fact that no one has done it yet gives me relatively little hope. The system of block verification makes it impossible to do truly instantaneous transfers. This is a big one. Double-spend attacks are real, and people want their transactions to go through immediately. The system is vulnerable to 51%+ attacks. Not a problem thus far, but I seriously believe it's a huge gaping weakness if btc wants to be taken seriously. Mining is prohibitively difficult for the layman. These days not even reasonable single-home GPU farms are going to be enough to compete. The reward for mining is diminishing quickly. Many of the perceived benefits of bitcoin are illusory or misunderstood. For instance, people claim bitcoin is private and/or anonymous when in reality, every transaction ever made with bitcoin is published publicly. This has serious implications for practical privacy deployments. The currency, like the US dollar, still has a baked-in elite class, which is the group of people that own the most compute power. This could hypothetically change, but in real life, it probably won't. I could keep going (have barely mentioned client-side stuff), but I think this is sufficient. I have "actual reasons" for it. I understand the bitcoin guys know about all of this and think it's not a problem, but I disagree with them. A currency that doesn't have (at least most of) these issues will be super awesome, and bitcoin is an important predecessor, but it's not the end of the story.
wcoenen 14y ago
If I understand correctly, mintchip relies on the private keys inside each chip to remain private, otherwise you can print money by generating fake transactions. Doesn't sound superior to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintChip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintChip

macavity23 14y ago

In what way is MintChip superior? As far as I can see, it is a system for cryptographically signing transactions denominated in existing real-world currencies (eg CAD or USD), i.e. it's not really a currency at all. Seems terribly inferior to me.

gamegoblin 14y ago

How is MintChip a replacement for bitcoin? It isn't as anonympous and it isn't decentralized. It seems like they go for two entirely different goals.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
MacsHeadroom 14y ago
I'm rooting for Bitcoin. But FYI MintChip transactions are anonymous. It is a digital form of cash.

jontaylor 14y ago

I feel the opposite. A friend and I put a submission together for the MintChip Challenge, mintchipy.com. My bigest concern then and now is that no one can use mint chip because it's not public. Coincidently I am working on another project now that uses BitCoin... Fad or not Bitcoin serves a very strong need for me an many others.

cookiecaper 14y ago

fwiw I agree that Bitcoin is a useful prototype but I seriously question its long-term viability outside of a niche. That niche, however, may be sufficient to continue to sustain high values for a while to come. Bitcoin shows us some cool stuff, but it's not sufficient for real-world everyday use. It will be an ancestor to a truly disruptive online currency imo. The network has too many fundamental inaccessibilities to make it plausible outside the elite nerd and/or money laundering sector.

toomim 14y ago
It sounds like you have a feeling that bitcoin isn't good enough, but don't have any actual reasons for it.
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  "The network has too many fundamental inaccessibilities" Just because I didn't rattle all of these off doesn't mean "I don't have any actual reasons for it". I suggest you ask more politely for exposition next time. The blockchain is huge, and splitting it is ad-hoc patchwork. The network was obviously not designed for such a thing and I'm not really optimistic about it. At this point it takes 6+ days to bootstrap a bitcoin client. There is still no easy integration method with extant payment systems. It takes weeks to transfer money in and out, or you have to make the trade in person. In many cases you must supply a lot of personal documentation to do anything meaningful on the exchanges. This could hypothetically be resolved, but given the stubbornness of banks and the fact that no one has done it yet gives me relatively little hope. The system of block verification makes it impossible to do truly instantaneous transfers. This is a big one. Double-spend attacks are real, and people want their transactions to go through immediately. The system is vulnerable to 51%+ attacks. Not a problem thus far, but I seriously believe it's a huge gaping weakness if btc wants to be taken seriously. Mining is prohibitively difficult for the layman. These days not even reasonable single-home GPU farms are going to be enough to compete. The reward for mining is diminishing quickly. Many of the perceived benefits of bitcoin are illusory or misunderstood. For instance, people claim bitcoin is private and/or anonymous when in reality, every transaction ever made with bitcoin is published publicly. This has serious implications for practical privacy deployments. The currency, like the US dollar, still has a baked-in elite class, which is the group of people that own the most compute power. This could hypothetically change, but in real life, it probably won't. I could keep going (have barely mentioned client-side stuff), but I think this is sufficient. I have "actual reasons" for it. I understand the bitcoin guys know about all of this and think it's not a problem, but I disagree with them. A currency that doesn't have (at least most of) these issues will be super awesome, and bitcoin is an important predecessor, but it's not the end of the story.

wcoenen 14y ago

If I understand correctly, mintchip relies on the private keys inside each chip to remain private, otherwise you can print money by generating fake transactions. Doesn't sound superior to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintChip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintChip