There would be some incentive for miners to switch but miners only make up half of  price negotiation.

For it to be worthwhile for the miners to switch the difference in amount mined would have to be greater than the difference in value. For that to happen the people using bitcoin to conduct transactions would need to switch and I don't see the incentive for them to switch.

If bitcoin wealth became concentrated enough and the large hoarders began to behave in monopolistic ways in order to increase the value of their own bitcoins you might see people jump ship for a bitcoin clone.

new bitcoin-like currency can emerge only in some niche area. look at social websites as example - it's very easy and straightforward model, but there is only very few ones available and being used a lot. others - are either not used at all, or are niche social networks.

bitcoins - it's about people who uses it. bitcoin protocol is just a protocol.

so correct questions will be: will another group of enthusiast emerge in near feature. I would say - no. Probably, only some very-very niche group.

Is it really?  To me if the community is large enough to provide liquidity of exchange to most other currencies, then I think it good enough.

I'm pretty sure that if 1% of World population was made of bitcoin enthusiasts, then the currency would be much efficient enough for pretty much anything we might expect from it.

Bitcoin with no changes will eventually do this.


Off peak hours are when free/low fee tx will get in.

If there is some way to tell when it is necessary then I'm all ears.


I think it's pretty smooth, but this will end eventually anyway.

edit: Bitcoin is pretty freaking clever imo

It seems that you are missing one critical thing about Bitcoin. The value of bitcoin does not come directly  from protocol, or from technical details.
It comes from the people who use it.

So it doesn't matter how many clones of bitcoin you make, miners won't switch because the forked coins will have no value, because it won't be possible to convince a lot of people to switch to it. The more people use a currency and exchange it for real goods, the more value and more power it has.

Also, stop comparing Bitcoin to Ponzi scheme. If Bitcoin is ponzi scheme, then gold is ponzi scheme too. If gold is ponzi scheme, then every bullion (and any valuable and scarce thing than can be used as a currency) is ponzi scheme.

Comparing Bitcoin to Ponzi annoys me. That is absurd.

No, "inconsistent" blocks are rejected by all honest blocks no matter how much power an attacker has. What power allows you to do is right a new consistent chain that doesn't contain a payment that you previously made. People will know afterwards, but presumably the attacker will have already gotten his merchandise or whatever.


I don't understand. Do you think there is too much or too little incentive to get in early as Bitcoin is now?

Any difficulty rise that happens due to Moore's law won't affect miners generally, the will need to do more hashes/payday, but they will also have the advantage of being able to hash faster.

Some miners will probably be programed to fill blocks with tx in order of fee size, and include free tx only if there is extra room. Maybe the backlog will be hours, days, years, infinity, but if it ever gets cleared it will probably be when fewer new tx with fees are coming as opposed to when the most are coming in.

Has anyone thought the threat of everyone switching to another block chain makes the miners not act in bad ways ?

It is in their best interest to act reasonably.

I disagree, higher prices won't effect trade, in fact it would encourage it. People see what a bitcoin is worth they're more likely to like being paid it.

Not sure how higher prices would effect speculators.

You're missing the point. Higher prices will turn off all those who aren't trading them yet. It's like when you look at stocks, everyone wants to find and buy that one super cheap stock that will explode in price when it becomes really popular. Once it's popular and the price already exploded mostly day traders buy it...

With the amount of services and goods being offered and the volume at the exchanges anyone without any screws loose will quickly recognize that $0.90 is just too high of a price and will simply not buy. I know I wont even though I think this is the greatest invention I have ever discovered.

My prediction: the price average might hover at this mark for a while longer despite ever higher hashing difficulty and ever larger network. Then there will either be a shit ton of people entering the market based only on the logic behind bitcoins and them being the great invention that they are and not their actual market value and the price will rise or people will follow common sense, look at the volume, look at the services and goods available for BitCoins and decide against entering the market and the price will stagnate and eventually fall and the hoarders will soon hold worthless BitCoins at which point they'll start selling for cheaper and cheaper until the market will find the price for their actual value.

I think Satoshi made a huge mistake when he was designing the whole thing. If I could have changed one thing it would be the rate of issuing new BitCoins to a really slow start and then double the rate until we reached half of the 21mio limit and then I'd reverse the trend back to ever slower issuing until the limit is reached. This way the first people would still get a head start but not to the extent they did now and the supply of BitCoins would have been much more evenly spread between the economy which would encourage more trade and would keep the price low through competition until they would have actually gained value.

But it is what is now I guess. In the end hoarders will sell and price will drop, it'll just be a longer and more grueling process that's all.