129 sats \ 17 replies \ @oomahq 26 Oct 2023 \ on: Bitcoin maximalists: Do you believe that competition leads to quality? bitcoin
Bitcoin is not perfect but it's the only decentralized cryptocurrency system in existence, which is the whole point of such a system, and it's not clear that this can be achieved again. Simple as.
This is not true. There are around 20,000 cryptocurrencies around right now, if you exclude the bad ones (PoS for instance, and all that are not open source) there are still many many alternatives.
Simple example (that isn't as controversial as Monero) is Litecoin. Litecoin is almost exactly like bitcoin, as it was forked from it. But it makes some improvements, has some changes.
It competes with bitcoin, and what does it matter if it becomes the winner?
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I'd echo Knut Svanholm here - Bitcoin is a one shot principle.
It is the discovery of resistance to replicability. You can't replicate resistance to replicability!
So you either believe this discovery embodies a scarcity which is valuable or you don't - that's up to you.
But if you think something else has done it instead, it hasn't by that very definition, since Bitcoin has been replicated.
In this way nocoiners have a more logical position than lots of altcoiners do, in my view. Albeit I think differently and that Bitcoin does have significant value.
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Never heard of him, sounds like a swedish guy. But Robert Breedlove is a total maximalist and he says "bitcoin was first, nothing else can be first" all the time, but i never understand it.
I understand your point even less, honestly. Sorry if im frustrating.
So bitcoin is the discovery of resistance to replicability (i'm guessing you mean it is trustlessly non-inflationary/non-replicating, immutable ledger which is designed to be uncrackable even by its creators, and designed to not have a central failing point?)
For sure I agree with that.
Do you think price of commodities comes from scarcity? Price is much more than that. There is no such thing as objevtive value which determines price. Everyone values all things differently. Price comes from unregulated buying and selling and haggling in markets. Nothing else! If I took a gold nugget to a remote south pacific island where they hated shiny stuff, the price of my gold would be ZERO dollars. I obviously would try to find a better market..
So no, the scarcity of being "the first" is not interesting as a predictor of price in the long run. In ten years, if there exists a coin just like bitcoin, except it's accepted everywhere and is way faster and cheaper to transact, do you think people will invest in bitcoin? How about in 20 years?
I also think bitcoin has significant value. Not as much for me to buy it at the current market price, though, but I don't care about money enough to speculate in either anyway, I don't speculate on any coin. I love Breedlove, but sometimes I get an uneasy feeling that he has "invested" a lot into bitcoin and that forces him to maintain this totally uncritical perspective.
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I appreciate your reply - I think you should check out Knut in some podcasts maybe.
I'm not going to convince on this thread and others will better explain - but I'd say ignore price when thinking about it.
The concept is more whether digital scarcity can even exist and have any value at all? It's whether we have solved the double spend problem. Up to Bitcoin there was no meaningful digital scarcity - for example if I send you an email, it's just a copy of it and I still have the email. Bitcoin solved this - but if litecoin is also the answer, then I think you're saying it didn't.
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Id love to, can you recommend a good one for me to listen to? Was about to go on a walk anyway so perfect timing.
Alright, that's reasonable. Digital currency can exist, i think they call it bitcoin! Do you mean that litecoin is the same as bitcoin and therefore inflates bitcoin? That would explain a lot
PS. You probably already know this but bitcoin was based in huge part by the email problen you are describing: It was solved by attaching a header (timestamped) to your email, with some extra random bits, and then doing PoW until you found a digest low enough, and attaching all that to the header of the email. Thus proving youre the one who sent it, that youre not a bot, and when you sent it. I dont think it had any central service keeping track of used hashes, so double email would still be a problem. But obviously bitcoin solved way more
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I can't remember which was the best one I heard. Maybe check out Natalie Brunell when she interviewed him? -
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It doesn't, and it won't.
You need to understand these simple facts first to understand where bitcoin maximalism comes from.
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I'm trying :) I know that's hard to believe. Such is the curse of dogmatic belief.
Here's a chart of PoW coins sorted by their trade volume in the past month.
Why wouldn't it beat bitcoin? I'm not implying that I care if it does or doesn't. Why are you so sure it can't?
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You can start by running a Bitcoin node, it may help you understand things.
Then pick this list and try to run a node for each one of these shitcoins, see if you notice any subtle differences.
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I have run bitcoin and lightning nodes, and I have written Script to interact with the network. I'm well aware of the technical details, though I can always know more. Since litecoin is a fork of btc, and doge is a fork of litecoin, I presume to know a bit about them as well.
I've run a Monero node as well. There is no "Script" equivalent there, but I've interacted with the network.
What are the subtle details you speak of?
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Lol. You don't need to look too hard into the transaction script, they aren't there. But keep looking, you'll eventually figure it out.
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If you don't know the answer, be a man and admit it. I'm not trying to convince you about anything, I'm honest about my intentions.
I'm also a scientist. The idea of starting with the preconception that bitcoin transactions are better but i dont know why, and THEN analyzing data, is only going to lead to biased understanding. Humans are incredible at finding patterns.
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You're a troll, first and foremost. And not a particularly bright one.
Nevertheless since you insist, here are some hints.