Fri Jun 03, 2016 6:24 pm

I get your points about Ether, but I have a major problem with 'voting with your feet' to another cryptocurrency.



The main argument against holding bitcoin, for me, is the fear that it would just be replaced by another cryptocurrency - and then you are left holding worthless bits. The run towards Ether shows this is not just a theoretical risk.



Bitcoin has value due to trust in the system. Like fiat, you accept bitcoin because you believe you can use it to make another purchase tomorrow. You keep bitcoin, because you believe it will have value 10 years from now. There's no good reason to want to have bitcoins themselves, other than for their purchasing power and the ability to spend them efficiently and cheaply - now or in the future.



If we show the world that, indeed, when things get a little rough we flock to another currency - and the people who did not are left holding the bag - than this just proves that crypto is MUCH riskier than gold.



There is only one way to 'move to another cryptocurrency' that does not destroy trust in crypto - that would have to be a hard fork using the same genesis block AND the same blockchain (up to a point). Yes, this is hard to pull off - not impossible - however the alternative is destroying trust in crypto. Then, the critics who say 'there is no real value, because you can just create another crypto that can displace the current' are correct.



If ARGUMENTS between a group of people can destroy a currency - I don't even know what to say about that.



We shouldn't all have to agree. We could fork into multiple bitcoins, and let the best chain win. We could make forks merge-mineable on the main chain so that it doesn't outright compete for hashing power. We can do a lot of things, but one thing we cannot afford to do, is to do nothing. And we can't cheat people who trusted their purchasing power to bitcoin, to be worthless bits bag-holders because we 'flocked due to a disagreement'.