Author Topic: A perfect example I found of Bitcoin maximalism  (Read 1830 times)

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Offline CLains

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From what I understand Paycoin is basically rising on the premise that there will be a tremendous buywall at 20$? Not sure it has any unique features, but I'd listen if someone told me what they were. In any case, "altcoin" is a dangerous label, and consigning everything not Bitcoin into "altcoin section" has hurt us and other innovative coins a lot. Bitcoiners will be especially hostile during downtrends, I now see even young people on Facebook laughing in Bitcoin's face predicting its "inevitable" demise..  :-\

Offline luckybit

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To be fair, Paycoin really does appear to be a very obvious, blatant scam. Everything I've read about it sounds terrible. I wouldn't touch that one with a 20-foot pole. I guess time will tell, but I'd be very surprised if the whole thing didn't implode.

Just MHO.

Honestly I feel it could be a scam too. At the same time I read a lot of posts where people are taking an almost bigoted attitude where all altcoins are considered a scam. These people think of Bitshares as a scam just as they think of every other altcoin.

That means they are influencing people new to the ecosystem to avoid all altcoins. This could actually be bad for diversity of the chains. I guess people aren't thinking about how important chain diversity could be and are instead thinking about making money from their favorite chain.

I highlight the post because it's an attitude which didn't exist in the community 6 months a go or 1 year ago. There was a time when you could go to Bitcoin talk and find new altcoins being given an open minded peer review. Now people see a new altcoin and immediately without peer review it's seen as an automatic scam by some.

Hostility to altcoins is not good. It may be that some people got burned, lost some money, but that is part of the process which helps determine what works and what doesn't.


Here is another example from the same thread:
Quote
Alt coins are "pump and dumps". There are maybe 1-5 guys that spend a day or so copying bitcoin, then call it a "bitcoin 2.0 coin", "pump it" onto the forums (they own usually 40%-90% of the coin), when it is worth something from pumping it, they sell everything they have (dump it) and disappear. When they run out of money they do it again.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qrlf6/mr_ipad_chain_is_selling_out_to_paycoin/cn98yd9
« Last Edit: December 30, 2014, 10:14:24 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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I think you cannot infer too much from a random Reddit discussion thread. Any sane person understand that it's irrational, both from a technological and financial perspective, to be "loyal" to something.

Bitcoin maximalism is a rational wolrdview, with real arguments, not some juvenile fanboy stuff "my blockchain is better than yours", imho.

It's rational in the sense that people like to make money and that is rational. But it's also unwise because it damages the ecosystem to benefit quicker profits for fewer people.

The ecosystem is more resilient, robust, and adaptive when multiple crypto technologies are allowed to evolve compete for market fitness. The most fit technologies will reproduce and their source code will spread.

It's more important that our ecosystem evolve the best technologies than for a few people to pocket some millions and disrupt the evolutionary trajectory. If we get this right we all win big as we'll have more variation in the DACs, which can allow DACs to attract more people, which can grow the overall network effect, and which over time can benefit our favored chains as well.

Vitalik is correct and I can site some research which shows that variation is necessary for the evolutionary process to work. If you for example look at an interactive genetic algorithm or interactive evolutionary computation network and compare the decentralized application/DAC ecosystem then you can actually see that there is a Darwinian process at work. The process benefits from diversity in the form of mutations to the code base and underlying technology because it is through that process that the evolutionary algorithmic process evolves to meet the wants and needs of the human participants.

Bitcoin isn't going to meet the needs of everyone on earth. It barely meets the needs of most libertarians, most tech oriented libertarians, and even if they were to implement side chains it's not going to convince people who aren't politically aligned with the currently forming blockchain ideology. Some people think Bitcoin is concentrating far too much into the hands of far too few and the current SHA-256 mining algorithm centralizes power.

So you have millions of people who might for equally rational reasons determine that Bitcoin is "unfit" for their needs. They might choose a blockchain which is "fit" for their needs and this is the process of artificial selection which should evolve mutually beneficial ecosystem. In my opinion we have to think bigger than just how we can get rich as quickly as possible and think seriously about how these technologies could alter the society of humans who interact with it.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_evolutionary_computation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-based_evolutionary_computation

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Offline nomoreheroes7

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To be fair, Paycoin really does appear to be a very obvious, blatant scam. Everything I've read about it sounds terrible. I wouldn't touch that one with a 20-foot pole. I guess time will tell, but I'd be very surprised if the whole thing didn't implode.

Just MHO.

Offline BldSwtTrs

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I think you cannot infer too much from a random Reddit discussion thread. Any sane person understand that it's irrational, both from a technological and financial perspective, to be "loyal" to something.

Bitcoin maximalism is a rational wolrdview, with real arguments, not some juvenile fanboy stuff "my blockchain is better than yours", imho.

Offline luckybit

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http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qrlf6/mr_ipad_chain_is_selling_out_to_paycoin/cn8upih

While I do not endorse Paycoin I think the reaction in that post highlights an attitude which shows to me that there are tribal factions in the crypto community forming around different blockchains.

Apparently if you're with Bitcoin and you touch an altcoin you've sold out? You have to be loyal to the chain now?

What happened to being loyal to the principles behind the technology or is it all about blockchain loyalty now?

Discuss?
« Last Edit: December 30, 2014, 09:32:18 am by luckybit »
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