Forgive my clickbait title, but in setting up this week's Bitdev's list I came across this delving post about "fixing" Bitcoin's security budget via tail emissions and other convoluted mechanics. I don't really care about that.
I found this response from Pieter Wuille (aka sipa) thought-provoking:
We've recently experienced this dynamic: a group of Bitcoiners were very dissatisfied with the fact that arbitrary data was being embedded in Bitcoin blocks and they thought that the rules should be changed to attempt to limit such data. We spent a fiery couple years arguing about the details of changing Bitcoin, but in the end they ended up with a new coin. Kinda wish they had just done that from the beginning.
Bitcoin has some problems. Indeed, it would be rather startling if it was the case that Satoshi got everything right right off the bat. The history of Bitcoin is littered with the scorch marks of people who wanted it to change in a certain way and who ended up leaving to start their own thing.
This leads me to wonder, if, instead of trying to get Bitcoin to adopt any given change,
Maybe the best way to improve bitcoin is to launch a new coin
Of course, as we are seeing with bcashjr, it's not quite so simple as that. There is a quality of being Bitcoin that comes from the fact that it was first. I've heard people talk about this like the immaculate conception. Their theology is horrible, but the common sense point comes across: Bitcoin's launch may have been a bit of a perfect storm.
And this is where I wonder if Wuille isn't wrong: it's easy enough to tell someone to go try it on a new coin, but I tihnk it's very likely that even some hypothetical coin that is better than BTC will fail simply because the dynamics of launching a new coin.
I know that there was a time when Bitcoin Maximalism meant that all the things will be done on Bitcoin and that the standard way of viewing the shitcoins was that many of them were testing out things that might eventually come to bitcoin (eg Mimble Wimble on Litecoin), so maybe Wuille is just saying what has always been said.
I do love the idea of the market always being the answer, and when I think about the current process by which we attempt to change bitcoin, it strikes me that the market is not really involved at all. I would much rather have Covenant Coin compete in the market with BTC to see how much market participants value each coin.
Watching the bcashjr launch -- while humorous and highly entertaining -- has also given me pause: go launch your own coin is maybe not such a realistic suggestion as might be assumed.
The best thing for Bitcoin is when dummies that want to change it move on to another coin
Hopefully covenants people move on next
hahaha
The question I'm asking though is: would anyone other than a dummy do such a thing?
Scammers looking to dump a shitcoin on dummies, but that means dummies are still implicated as the enabler.
If anyone has a counter-example to point to we could have fun with that.
I could conceive of a "shadow bitcoin" much in the way we have shadow governments, but I'm sure after some thought would conclude it wouldn't work.
Had Luke been earnest, and able to strategize his way out of a paper bag, had the tools to do such a thing...
Foreign adversaries are a logical other, I have no doubt a lot of shitcoin funding and Bitcoin FUD in the media is paid for by Chynah and London to muddle SIGINT for the chain and reduce Bitcoins ability to absorb inflation
But again you need dummies for it to be effective
Would you leave bitcoin if it ever activated a covenant soft fork with a majority of the hash rate?
It would take years after activation for it to effect me, if it did at all. So, unlikely, but impossible to be certain that far out.
Something dilutive like a supply increase/tail emission yes because at that point it's it undermines the value I place in it. That becomes more likely if covenants are active because of the incentive misalignment, but not a certainty.
It has gotten easier to launch your own coin. The question is then how does one do:
It's not easy and it's been tried countless times. Best to stick with Bitcoin and let the market follow the forked winners.
One doesn't just "launch a new coin." Not a new proof-of-work coin, at least.
Bitcoin survived launch because the people who would later want it gone neither knew nor cared about it. By the time it was a nuisance, it was too big to cheaply grief. That window closed long, long ago.
A new SHA-256 coin, launched today, with any price worth attacking, gets griefed into irrelevance by SHA-256 hardware that already exists. A new GPU coin gets the same treatment from the rental market. "Go start your own coin" is not a general method for molding a better Bitcoin.
BIP-110 is not a counterexample. It is a one-off, the same way BCH was a one-off. It does not become the next Bitcoin, but it persists.
$128k/day (at today's $285/BTC2B) is enough to keep the operable Sia boxes on. $12/day is not. SHA-256 majority hashrate cannot take that revenue away without buying a different machine. Amassing enough of those machines to 51% it already takes real capital, even with most of Bitcoin wanting this chain dead.
And yes: if someone does it anyway, the people on this chain will orphan the attack. Software patch, checkpoint, whatever is required to get through the window where the hardware class is still thin. That is ugly. It is also how a minority fork that has already changed PoW refuses to die. Call it not-Bitcoin if you want. That does not make the chain go away.
BIP-110 will still be here. But it will not be the model. There is no model.
I like this approach. And we will get an entirely new model in about a month and a half when Sztorc launches his coin. I will be curious to see how his much more planned and thought out fork goes.
I suspect it will be another somewhat forgettable acronym, though. Because as you lay out, one does not simply walk into Mordor.
So, the question will be: is starting a new coin a blunder on Storc's part, or the next best move for his stated goal of drive chain adoption?
Watching the bcashjr struggles with launching has been very sobering. They have made a right mess of it. Probably others could have done better, but I wonder by how much?
They never had enough support right? Shouldn't have gone ahead with it.
Let's see how the 'Ecash' fork goes. Looks like they don't have much support either.
I don't think it was solely an issue of support. It played out to me like something that ideological people who had very naive expectations about how things would play out. But I'm not sure that any future "good" fork would do that much better.
What is up with all the core devs named Peter, liking the idea of tail emissions? (I guess sipa isnt exaclty endorsing them above though)
Why is it called the Peter Principle?
I don't have a clue. They used to teach us about this idea in high school. The irony - none of those teachers looked in the mirror.
I mean, it actually makes sense, you stop getting promoted when you stop being good at the role you're in.
It refers to the Apostle Peter being famously incompetent. He was supposed to be Jesus's right-hand man, and was "promoted" as such, yet when shit hit the fan, he's the guy who every remembers for denying Jesus.
Interesting. I suspected as much. But given the Catholic church's influence over western culture, and given that they see the pope as a direct successor of Peter's apostolic authority, I'm a bit surprised that we're using this as a term.
The church doesn't shy away from Peter's mistakes, he is generally held as an example a flawed human, called to something greater.
I dont know much about the origin of the Peter principle, but it was coined by a person with the name Peter, according to google.
Wuille has to pretend to be against such an idea until people forget about the recent fork a bit.
You’re confusing money with technology.
We can use thousands of different apps because they all do different things. Money doesn’t work that way. Money becomes more useful when more people agree to use the same one. The more people who accept Bitcoin, the more liquid and useful it becomes, which attracts even more people.
Starting another coin It just creates a weaker monetary network. You can copy the code and add new features, but you can’t copy Bitcoin’s history, liquidity, security, credibility, or users.
Bitcoin isn’t a tech startup competing to offer the most features. It’s money, and money tends to converge on one standard.
You point out network effects, but that's not the only thing that matters.
An obvious example would be that we do not have one world currency.
Yes, there is US dollar dominance, but people do use different currencies even when transacting on state level.
These are state controlled, so not a good example of the free market.
The explanation here is that various groups (states) want to have control over their money.
The same can exist in cryptocurrency.
Different groups might want to exercise control over their money while the money itself could be identical in nature.
Within the state, people are usually forced to conduct transactions in state currency.
A better example would be the state bank notes that existed roughly from 1790s to 1860s in the US.
These you could exchange for gold and silver coins, but the notes could be used as money.
What killed that was not market forces, but rather gov intervention.
You can think of gold and silver as different forms of money.
Both still exist today.
Cryptocurrency is money + technology, by definition.
So there could be multiple perfectly fine competing money implementations if they offer something new.
And they do exist today.
Lightning is money for people who want faster payments.
Spark is money for people who do not want to deal with Lightning.
Bitcoin is money for people who want trustless payments and that is a good store of value.
Monero is money for people who value confidentiality over the store of value property.
Stablecoins is money for people who do not want volatility and live in the fiat world.
But more broadly even non-cryptocurrency money is technology, it's just a matter of definition.
So in the end, competition on the free market is the answer here.
That could be either a Bitcoin proposal that gets adoption or an alternative currency.
I very much agree with you, and I can easily believe in a multicoin world (we live in one after all).
What I'm questioning is whether launching a new coin is a viable path to enacting changes in Bitcoin.
It is the case that starting a new coin now, in the era of AI, where everyone has seen the ICO boom and bust and while we all know how weak a new coin is -- can a new coin even get started?
I agree with you. I think, even, I was making a leas eloquent version of your argument.
What I wonder though is does this mean that "go Starr your own coin" is not very realistic advice.
You left out the original reply of Pieter where he states that his opposition for trying that in Bitcoin is because it would undermine a lot of what makes Bitcoin Bitcoin.
There is still a route for proposals within Bitcoin if they are compatible with the overall principles.
Good point. I think something like BIP110 was at least somewhat compatible with Bitcoin -- despite its advocates espousing attitudes that were very much Bitcoin's antithesis.
And perhaps the best outcome for them is a new coin and let the market decide. I don't see their coin having a realistic shot, though. And not just because of incompetence. I am questioning whether any new coin can realistically have a chance at winning in the market.
Sure. Let the market decide.
Wouldn't that be loverly? I don't think it is possible, though.
I'm starting to think starting a new coin that is not a scam is impossible.
I truly believe that being the first is one of Bitcoin's greatest strengths... and the fact that Satoshi left his BTC there without taking it also gives it more strength.
The problem Bitcoin faces is the apathy and indolence of most people.
People claim they want to be free but when faced by outright or subtle government obstruction they give up.
Just USE BItcoin and help it grow stronger.
Or, give up and watch it die.
It requires a mass movement pf people using Bitcoin in defiance of government obstruction- or it will fail.
No number of modifications or forks will change this basic fundamental.
Only you can change and start using Bitcoin.
Only buy Bitcoin (and use it!) if you want to be part of the peaceful revolution building an alternative to the fiat debt slavery bankers cartel that owns your government.
No, we don't need another coin. We need more use cases like SPEED Apps - Bitrefill for airtime, Stacker News for content. Fix UX, not the coin.
I don't want any new coin, but does this mean you think that Wuille's advice to the tail emissions guy is bad? Should he instead try to advocate for his stance within the BTC community?
no
I think the interesting distinction is between “launch another coin” as a way to experiment and “launch another coin” as a realistic way to change Bitcoin.
The first is clearly possible. The second is much harder because a new chain has to bootstrap miners, developers, liquidity, users, infrastructure, and credibility simultaneously—while starting with essentially none of Bitcoin’s network effects.
So perhaps “go launch your own coin” is technically sound advice but economically incomplete. The real question isn't whether you can create a new chain, but whether you can create one strong enough that the market actually gives its proposed changes a meaningful chance to compete with Bitcoin.
That makes Sztorc's upcoming launch especially interesting to watch. Not necessarily because it will succeed or fail, but because it may provide another real-world test of whether this path is actually viable today.