Quote from: Zangelbert Bingledack on November 20, 2014, 04:36:33 PM

Quote from: uvwvj on November 20, 2014, 01:51:33 PM

Sounds to me if our fight for bitcoin is to stop Ethereum all together and support Counterparty and Sidechains

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/20/bitcoin-maximalism-currency-platform-network-effects/

First, an introduction to the technical strategies at hand. In general, there are three approaches to creating a new crypto protocol:

Build on Bitcoin the blockchain, but not Bitcoin the currency (metacoins, eg. most features of Counterparty)
Build on Bitcoin the currency, but not Bitcoin the blockchain (sidechains)
Create a completely standalone platform

When discussing currency network effects, he completely missed the big one: the network effect of the ledger. He talked about network effects of currency, but not about store of value.

This whole Bitcoin thing has been about getting yourself on the universal ledger of civilization. That is why people invest. That is why people support it. That is why it's a big deal. It's like he has no idea that is even a thing.

The closest he came is this part:

Quote

Unit of account network effect (very large currencies become units of account, leading to more purchasing power stability via price stickiness as well as higher salience) unfortunately, Bitcoin will likely never be stable enough to trigger this effect; the best empirical evidence we can see for this is likely the valuation history of gold.

But this isn't really the same thing as store of value - the idea that arises in society that "we will use this ledger (or a commodity substitute) to keep track of debts from now on, by convention."

This is why the ledger concept really has to be understood, and understood on the deepest level, to avoid falling into silliness of various kinds.

the integrity of the ledger depends on the currency unit riding on it. the greed to obtain the unit is what drives the mining incentive. w/o the unit, the ledger dies. which is why allowing the units an offramp to an unrelated speculative SC will kill Bitcoin.

brg444 continues to morph his argument by alternating his cheerleading of these speculative SC's btwn, "we don't need or want them, just utility chains" to "we should want to incorporate speculative assets into SC's to grow the economy and diversify. decentralize all the things!"

but i say that the main goal of the spvp is to create speculative SC's; i have $21M in Blockstream investment that says i'm right.