Is #BTC all that really matters?
Or do other crypto have a reliable and useful future as well?
Lots of #Bitcoin Maxi Echo chamber going on in NOSTR. Curious if I can get some variety of input on this.
Discussion
The more your learn about how the alt coins work, then you see how essentially none of them are really decentralized at all. And any "thing" they claim to do or solve doesn't need to be a blockchain at all. So it's fugazi.
If you study long and hard enough you'll realise "crypto" is mostly all a hustle.
Bitcoin is the best, most battletested, oldest, most secure and decentralized Blockchain. Period.
This is why it's worth what it is and nothing else is even close.
See.... other crypto do have uses tho, smart contracts, NFTs, quick and cheap transactions just being a fewof the big ones.
You do make valid points about decentralization/centralization. PoS has a big flaw in this.
There are areas of centralization in BTC too and it can't do what a lot of other chains can. Sure it does what it does best..but it's not all encompassing.
I appreciate your input but it still sounds like echo chamber rhetoric.
After years and years of study I still see a very good and long term use case for many alts.
Funny you say quick and cheap transactions because the lightning network is easily top class in that arena.
Nano quickly comes to mind. There are others that fit on this playing field too.
How many people use Nano?
I mean if we're talking real world practical use here, we must take into account how battle tested a product is and how widely adopted it is.
Bitcoin Lightning is used to accept Bitcoin payments as legal tender in El Salvador.
Nano is accepted... where?
It's still fast and cheap and available. It works and has worked for a long time just as fast and just as cheap.
Being popular doesn't make it less or more so.
I'm talking about how battle tested it is, not popularity.
But adoption is also important because these are meant to be currencies. I could invent some hypothetical super coin that's amazing technologically, but if no one adopts it, it's functionally useless.
It is a matter of fact that Bitcoin is, well, Bitcoin. Even my grandma knows what it is. As I said, adoption is key when you're asking someone to accept something as currency. You're asking them to trust that it has value.
To me it makes no sense to gamble on whether Nano will ever be adopted for payments because it's cheap and fast when lightning already allows me to make cheap and fast payments in the most recognised and valuable cryptocurrency in the world.
Like I said. All those things you're listing don't require a blockchain whatsoever. And most have central points of authority and control... so comparing it to Bitcoin is ... silly IMO.
You're confusing NFT with ownership. All its doing is time stamping something or wayfinding. That's it. Most blockchains don't even store the Metadata or NFT itself.
It's like someone collecting Airmiles and cashing them out for a Power Washer and then claiming "Look! There is utility here so it's better than money!" Silly right.
Bitcoin is the best coded money ever to exist... not an opinion. Based on market cap and math.
Locking up Bitcoins in smart contracts in the payment channel of the Lightning Network makes it far better and faster than any other payment system you're referencing.
NFTs, Polygon, Etc etc... all pretty mickey mouse. They have more in common with Airmiles, Groupon, or Chuck E Cheese tokens - more centralized, less security, more gimmicky.
That's your answer. If you choose to believe otherwise then that's OK! You're free to love Shiba Inu Coin or SafeMoon or whatever other project. You do you. Have fun. Thanks for asking.
Blockchain makes them better, akin to what email does to snailmail. NFTs have many uses beyond proof of digital ownship. There are a plethora of examples beyond BYAC, games and art. It most definitely enhances what already exists and brings new uses. Dead wrong.
Let's get it strait, CBDCs are being brought in by The governments and those in power who wish to control us. The tools they use are not inherently good or bad. They are tools and just that and they will use whatever tools they can at thier disposal.
And a lot of the big ones - Ethereum, Polygon, Algorand, Ripple - are VC backed WEF partners literally helping to make CBDCs.
You could spittle FUD about BTC all day too , the point here is Bitcoin is awesome and so are a lot of other Alts.
That's my issue with maxis. They can't see past anything except BTC. Tribalism is very close minded.
Anyone can spin a yarn about any coin in this crypto climate. It doesn't make something less useful, innovative or change its ability to change the future.
I think Ethereum can "change the future" just not in a desirable manner.
It's being used to deploy CBDCs around the world as we speak.
I'm not someone who thinks anything except BTC is a shitcoin. I also like XMR. It's on my profile.
I'm not denying Ethereum has functionality Bitcoin doesn't, I'm saying it's not about giving power to the people like Satoshi envisioned when he created Bitcoin.
Ethereum is and always was a WEF backed CBDC platform.
Any useful crypto features that were developed in the last say 5-6 yesrs will likely be ported to bitcoin I suspect. The main reason is that buildkng on other blockchains is similar to building on sand. If you can't 100% and blindly trust the chain to keep functioning and not stop/censor transactionsitts unlikely to work long term.
Bitcoin is superior in that sense and ultimately will attract value as I see. The next wave of apps are already being built onbitcoin. Many draw from the experiences and failures of altcoins as I see.
I don't see a lot of the big chains going anywhere or what's been built on them.
Right and that's the issue. They are going sideways in terms of usage or decreasing. They ain't going anywhere.
Time will tell. I'm no oracle but we havebl witnessed a small window of blockchain based technology so far. Some fads, some froth, some genuine use, some crime.
Imo Monero has its place with true privacy for all transactions.
BTC and XMR are the only two coins I feel are worth holding personally.
How many Mona Lisas is there? One. One, which has true value, because it's the original.
There's a million copies, some of them indistinguishable from the original for untrained eyes. But they are just copies. In a way they are a homage to the original...
Which one would you rather own?
Good point. Only the OG Mons Lisa has real value.
There isn't only one painting ever tho.
Starry night, last supper, the scream, anything Dali or Worhol.
Other painting have value any worth in this comparison as would other blockchains.
True. But if you ask someone what's the most famous painting in the world, I guess the answer would be M L.
It's just an analogy anyway, and all anologies eventually fail.
However, what the altcoins promise you is that they are 'like Bitcoin, but better', in whatever carrot they dangle in front of your face.
But that promise comes at a cost.
It cost you the perfection that Bitcoin offers.
BTC is awesome. That said it is not the place to test radical new ideas.
Hence the existence of true altcoins. A well made altcoin would be issued and started in the same way as BTC and no have premine etc etc to properly test the idea. Most altcoins fail this test immediately but be aware that the idea that they made FOSS benefits all potentially. See Ethereum. It started poorly imo with premine etc etc but the ideas of smart contracts controlling value and the idea of tokenisation was proven to be viable on Ethereum.
That said ethereum has issues with tokenisation or digitization of assets simply because the model used doesn't allow good ownership in users personal addresses. I'm specifically referring to Ethereum using the account based model for addresses rather than the UTXO model. That plus the Ethereum networks start and recent move to PoS makes me feel very uncomfortable issuing digital assets there.
Plus the idea of tokenisation needs an issuer for proper provenance. BTC has miners issuing the new coins at regular interval but and issuer needs liking to a unique name or address for verification in future. The only system I have seen doing this is Ravencoin. I would happily do it on Bitcoin but the Bitcoin network rules are strict and most nodes don't give a crap about opcodes that assets use to issue and manage their unique utxos datasets. Bitcoin doesn't care about assets travelling on its network. They are easily lost etc and hence coloured coins and mastercoin etc had issues. The first attempts to make digital assets were on Bitcoin, but the rules were not flexible enough to do effectively.
Even the latest attempt using ordinals is a social construct to assign a sat a position in a wallet and use that sat to hold extra meta data about an NFT etc. That is great but there is no provenance unless the issuer tells everyone somewhere each and every sat that they have inscribed an ordinal on that is definately theirs. Time consuming to say the least to verify an ordinal was issued by a specific issuer.
That difficulty in changing BTC is what makes it great and holds it back and is the reason why so many altcoins exist. Sadly the majority of altcoins are money grabs and people are getting scammed left right and centre.
I firmly belive no crypto is perfect, including BTC. Ty for your input.
Where do you see BTC's imperfection/s?
Imperfections to one person are defining marks of beauty to another.
BTC has the same issues with onchain scaling and would benefit from larger blocks.
The block propagation around the network is fast at sub 5 seconds for 1MB and we are still sitting at 10 min blocks.
To get faster block size increase is a no brainer to me personally. I say that knowing full well the BCH and other chains will laugh and jeer. But it's the right move. I reckon another BIP9 vote to make larger blocks to 2MB or 4MB etc would pass. If someone offers the code to the miners u think they would go for it. If no one codes it and no one runs the new code it'll never happen. But people would have the choice.
In the meantime people use altcoins.💥
Imo BTC is cool massively because it will never do what I have said above. To much egg on people faces to backtrack and the risk to the network and code is imo to sig ificant to implement without risking the stability of the network.
Beautiful imperfections.
I may be stuck in the echo chamber, but I’ve genuinely looked for any that seem attractive, and been consistently disappointed. That includes Nano. Doesn’t mean there might not be a pleasant surprise one day though! I currently think a neutral, profit-incentive-free observer doesn’t choose any alt coin. Always happy to change my mind on that though. Could earn a bunch of money if I can find the right one too so it’s not that there is no incentive. Bitcoin has painfully few doubling cycles left :)
I think it's important to not get hyperfocused and solely view one thing as the only option.
Lots of valid and good points in this thread.
My whole point here is to help people understand that you can keep being a Maxi but don't shut the door on all crypto without having a wide a broad viewpoint. There are many exciting things happening all around.
Glad you still can see that.
I don't think you can be a maxi, and remain open to the crypto space...
I also think that all good ideas from the crypto space (which admittedly exist, only that they are built on sand), will be built on Bitcoin.
Sure, whatever the definition of maxi (person who thinks bitcoin will be the only currency or person who doesn’t read about any other projects), I was responding as a Nostr user.
And I think you’re right, at least for most things. Some things like some base layer innovations won’t be figured out on bitcoin. But I think we’d agree they don’t need to. Bitcoin will likely get either close to or better features via L2 etc. LN + ecash is amazing for example. And now even NFTs lol.
Believe it or not many maxis cut their teeth in crypto, myself included there is a reasons we call them shitcoins. The only other coin I wouldn’t call a shitcoin is Monero because privacy is important that said I don’t hold any Monero but I respect the Cypherpunk ethos of it.