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Here is the thing I can't get around... If Bitcoin is open source, what's stopping someone from setting up a competing currency? Perhaps it could have the pro
by mathattack 14y ago
Here is the thing I can't get around... If Bitcoin is open source, what's stopping someone from setting up a competing currency? Perhaps it could have the promise of a more optimal growth mechanism over time, or some other feature. Once it's in use, the value of Bitcoin drops quickly, no? And what if there are many Bitcoin-like currencies?
- tyw 14y agoThere are. Probably the #2 most popular coin is 'litecoin' (http://litecoin.org/ http://litecoin.org/). It uses scrypt instead of sha256 in order for it to be harder/more expensive to use GPU clusters and FPGA/ASIC hardware to mine them. Mining using GPU is still somewhat quicker/more efficient than CPU, but the delta is much less than exists for bitcoin. There are other coins as well, but I'm less familiar with them.
- codeulike 14y agoBecause a currency is basically a _convention_ within a _community_. Bitcoin has a _community_, whereas an arbitrarily cryptocurrency launched next week probably wont have, unless a lot of groundwork is done first.
- mathattack 14y agoRight, but it can be done so perpetual scarcity is a fallacy, no?
- chii 14y agono - if you started your own 'bitcoin' chainblock, the existing bitcoin chainblock shouldn't (as far as i understand it) be interoperable. That is, its like printing your own currency - no one else will reckonize it, unless you somehow own vast amounts of resources, and is willing to exchange that with the new bitcoin.