50 sats \ 3 replies \ @Michelson_Morley OP 27 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: Bitcoin maximalists: Do you believe that competition leads to quality? bitcoin
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.
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.
reply
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
reply
I can't remember which was the best one I heard. Maybe check out Natalie Brunell when she interviewed him? -
reply