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226 sats \ 10 replies \ @kepford 26 Oct 2023 \ on: Bitcoin maximalists: Do you believe that competition leads to quality? bitcoin
Yes.
Nice, me too. So should I experiment with altcoins? To make sure they haven't developed tanks while I'm still using muskets?
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I don't call myself a bitcoin maxi mostly because I hate labels like this. They are usually just shortcuts used to avoid thinking. I do believe bitcoin is not only the best but the only money we should be using. There are many self proclaimed maxis that make dumb statements of course. The main issue I have with "altcoins" is that they are almost certainly scams. Those that aren't will be easily censored or destroyed by state actors. They simply do not have the ability to compete. There are only two values I can see in them. Demonstrating the mistakes they make and providing an easy target for state actors to attack before they go after bitcoin. I say the only value I can see realizing I can't foresee the future. If bitcoin is a threat to state / bank control we will see many attacks on bitcoin and bitcoiners. From what I've seen most "atlcoin" projects are very naive OR they aren't and they are just scamming people.
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For sure agreed, shortcuts to avoid thinking are to be very wary of.
These people who label / pigeonhole foolishly, I label them "labelers".
Jokes aside, sometimes I find labels (used on myself) sort of brave. E.g. I'm an atheist. I hated thinking about myself like that before (when i was younger than 29ish) because it's a factual statement that I do not have know the truth of. So, it's unscientific, it's a lie.
But I am an atheist. A "God" is just too simple an explanation. Nature is way more interesting than that. Who knows? My self-labeling is a way to be honest about what I feel, rather than prioritizing never being incorrect.
Definitely agree that most altcoins are scams and get-rich-quick bullshit. Do you certainly believe that all altcoins are either scams or worse (technologically) than bitcoin?
For instance, PoW. Is that optimal? Trustlessness by way of requiring so much energy in order to cheat that it's mostly unfeasible. Obviously PoS is bullshit. But there are others. What about proof of space? Instead of using computing power as your limited resource, they use storage space. You fill a harddrive with random stuff based on some public hash of the chain, then to mine a block of transactions, you search your harddrive (quick, due to merkle tree partitions) for a row that has, like bitcoin, a digest lower than the current block difficulty. Submit your block plus that row plus the key, baby you got a PoW alternative!
Most interesting is Monero. There's a reason it's loved by developers and mathematicians. It's truly incredible. Are you interested in learning about why it is fascinating? Maximalism will force you to ignore good solutions, in the same way that the church suppressed astrophysics for so many years. And there are people who gain a lot by acting maximalist. People who use fake confidence, fake domain-knowledge, in order to get customers to buy into them as a thought leader. And on this site specifically, in order to get you to buy subscriptions to their blogs.. Once you have a thought leader like that, you are a slave.
If you're interested in knowing a bit about Monero, I can recommend this page. It has the original whitepaper, an extended whitepaper with a ton of criticism and addendums, and a third party review of the whitepaper from a real mathematician (it's aimed at semi-laymen). This review is hilarious, and it is very negative to a LOT of aspects of the original monero whitepaper. How often do you see bitcoiners link to critiques of their own protocol? Your maximalist thought leaders certainly will never. This social manipulation strategy is well known, easy to recognize. Here's what I'm talking about, and below it is the monero research page with the papers.
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Monero is at least trying to solve a real issue. IMO bitcoin's biggest weakness is privacy. However, this is NOT the biggest problem bitcoin is seeking to solve. I cannot see Monero becoming the worlds money. At best, it could be a commonly used tool. It is entirely possible that Monero or other privacy projects will test and show methods that can be adopted by bitcoin in the future. That's my two sats.
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Yeah, bitcoin is not private or even pseudonymous really. Not even if you use a new address for every payment.
I can mention as well that Monero is only optionally anonymous. You CAN choose to set your ambiguity low and have public transactions like bitcoin, you can also prove you sent a transaction, received one, etc, all without revealing anything about anyone else.
Bitcoin and Monero are both solving the same problem: Creating trustless distributed ledgers. There are no smart contracts in monero. There's nothing but improvement to the outdated technology of Bitcoin, mainly anonymity, but also the inflexibility of bitcoin. Monero is designed around the idea that adapting to your environment quickly makes you more resilient. They use blockchain tech in order to prevent malicious protocol updates.
I feel like I'm shilling monero here. But what I'm trying to do is demonstrate that blinding yourself to competition leaves you in the dust. I label it Bitcoin Luddites. :)
I own no cryptocurrency myself. I don't care enough about money to make the investment. So I'm not trying to "get people to buy into monero". There are many flaws, as linked above.
I can also disclose that I have good reason to prefer xmr over btc, anecdotally. I was the subject of a criminal investigation because they were able to trace me through bitcoin network analysis, and link me to my real identity. This is not possible with XMR. So I'm biased. Thanks for engaging!
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Honest and fair enough
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HA! You should do whatever you think is a good investment of your time. Don't ask me. I'm for freedom. I'm also bitcoin only because I believe it is a waste of my time to look at shitcoins. Believe me, I've looked. I've wasted a lot of time on it. But you be you. In the end, the best money will win.
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In the end, both silver and gold can be used to buy bananas.
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True, I don't think bitcoin will ever be the only choice. But as of today I think it is the best hope for the future.
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Hey, as long as we can get get rid of these authoritarian unaccountable central bankers, I don't care either. That's my strongest steelman of maximalism, "united we stand". But as I've by now said ad nauseum, it's also potentially a weakness. Them bankers gotta go
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