Quote from: Zangelbert Bingledack on May 19, 2015, 07:28:21 PM

This isn't a moral criticism, but a practical one, as argued in the post. Stores of value can change, but this cannot be a fast process as that contravenes the very definition of "store of value." Not unless it absolutely has to happen (facing catastrophe), as I also mentioned. Or let me make it more clear: I do not think the market will accept changing the store of value except as an absolute last resort.

Do you approach all your investments as lifetime or multi-decade HODL?

I thought investing into stores-of-value was a process of buying low and selling high?

If you bought gold in 1980 and I bought bonds or stocks, you'd be a relative pauper by now.

Changing stores-of-value is the normal mode. The abnormal mode is HODLing too long. September is the time to prepare to sell bonds (and in 2017 sell stocks).

I assume your point is bounded on stores-of-value that compete directly with Bitcoin for the same exact market as Bitcoin. In that case I agree with you that the chances of an upstart overtaking a market leader with Bitcoin's momentum are nil. And the chances of a negative wealth efffect on Bitcoin at this juncture are nil.

That is why put my sentence in red, bold that the only real chance for an altcoin to obtain escape velocity is to uptake markets that Bitcoin can't touch.

Monero's problem is there is no real ecosystem (circulatory, network effects) use for its anonymity that doesn't also involve Bitcoin. So any network effects tend to accrue more to Bitcoin as the dominant market leader.

Edit: one very important point I have learned from this discussion is that the worst thing an altcoin can do is allow too many coins to fall into the hands of indifferent speculators, because they will surely sell to arbitrage back into Bitcoin. Your whales will need to understand how you intend to generate a long-term superior return over Bitcoin and that trading in and out is more risky.

Quote from: smooth on May 19, 2015, 07:34:07 PM

Well, again, there is no fast process at work here. <0.1% of the store-of-value from gold, fiat, etc. has shifted to Bitcoin. In fact the real number considering all store-of-value asset classes is probably far less than 0.1% but that's an easy number to use. If 0.2% moves to some other cryptocoin next year that will still be an extremely slow process, but Bitcoin will likely be left behind at that point.

That window is quickly closing. The Circles, Paypals, are preparing to close it, at least in Bitcoin's current market as a speculation on the potential for a global ledger and money transfers without being tied to one behemoth (e.g. Paypal). Bitcoin is really a way of scaling Paypal to everyone while pretending it isn't (obfuscating that is) owned by Peter Thiel et al. Bitcoin is a reverse takeover of global banking by pretending it is open and fair. Bitcoin is the way you force national governments to accede to an international banking regulation.