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comment by ixnar
ixnar  ·  3394 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Microsoft accepts Bitcoin payments

Then you should say you're interested in cryptocurrencies. I feel there is too much focus on btc when it has so many problems (deflation being the most obvious)





mk  ·  3394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I would have probably made that distinction a year or so ago. However, at this point, I believe that bitcoin has such a first mover advantage and a network effect, that I see little potential that another cryptocurrency will supplant it. The most interesting alternate that I have seen is ethereum, and I got some ether in the presale, but I suspect that it won't win out.

As bitcoin's codebase can be altered to adopt advantageous characteristics, and as things like sidechains allow for flexibility beyond bitcoin protocol itself, and as the amount of capital backing bitcoin companies is orders of magnitude higher than all the rest combined, I just don't see it happening.

Even the deflationary nature of bitcoin can be changed with just a couple of lines of code. Of course, everyone claims that there will be a fork rebellion in the event of something like that changing, but imagine a future world that depends upon the bitcoin protocol, whereby the codebase is regulated by the UN/WTO/WorldBank or something like it. If every company in the world must use the 'legal blockchain' that that consortium maintains, then people will have little choice but to use that resulting BTC.

ixnar  ·  3394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    [...] the codebase is regulated by the UN/WTO/WorldBank or something like it. If every company in the world must use the 'legal blockchain' that that consortium maintains, then people will have little choice but to use that resulting BTC.

How is this different from current affairs?

mk  ·  3394 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think it is.