Why Bitcoin is Different
If you’re new to the Bitcoin space, the last few months have been pretty crazy. There have been some steep climbs and heart-stopping drops making for a roller coaster of emotion that’s not easily controlled. The price action is both thrilling and at times, painful, so it’s easy to lose sight of what you’re investing in. All the coins seem to be running together, so what’s the difference? How is one coin to be distinguished from another? And more importantly, how is an investor to know what the long term value of a coin will be?
Image for post
In this article, I’m going to make the case for what makes Bitcoin different, how Bitcoin is a system that, despite all the cloning, has yet to be truly replicated.
Real Innovation
To really understand the value proposition of Bitcoin, it helps to look at a bit of history. It’s tempting to think that the newest ICO or altcoin is the one that will finally “improve” Bitcoin and fix all of its problems and that Bitcoin will be relegated to the dustbin of history due to its lack of some “feature”. Indeed, nearly every altcoin, ICO or hardfork thinks that they’re being innovative in some fundamental way. What’s missed is that the biggest innovation has already happened.
Decentralized digital scarcity is the real innovation and Bitcoin was the first, and, as this article will make clear, continues to be the only such coin. All the other so-called innovations such as faster confirmation times, changing to proof-of-whatever, Turing completeness, different signature algorithm, different transaction ordering method and even privacy, are really tiny variations on the giant innovation that is Bitcoin.
It’s important to remember here that alternatives to Bitcoin have been proposed since 2011 and none of them have even come close to displacing Bitcoin in terms of price, usage or security. IxCoin was a clone of Bitcoin created in 2011 with larger block rewards and a premine (large number of coins sent to the creator). Tenebrix was an altcoin created in 2011 that tried to add GPU resistance and again had a large premine. Solidcoin was another altcoin created in 2011 with faster block times and again, a premine. About the only ones that survived (and not living out a zombie existence) out of that early altcoin era are Namecoin and Litecoin, which distinguished themselves by NOT having a premine.
ICOs are also not new. Mastercoin did an ICO in 2013 with, you guessed it, a premine, and raised over 5000 BTC at the time and had to rebrand themselves to Omni because the ecosystem around it was so anemic. Factom did an ICO in 2015 and raised over 2000 BTC and had to raise multiple rounds of additional financing because they ran out of money. In other words, all these “exciting” new tokens have generally done very poorly and didn’t actually provide much utility.
Altcoins and ICOs have tried many different “features” and most have not been useful or adopted. So what gives? Why does Bitcoin seem to have a special place in the ecosystem? Why is Bitcoin different? We explore two unique aspects that make Bitcoin different than everything else: the network effect and decentralization.
The Network Effect
Because Bitcoin has the largest network and gains from the network effect, other coins essentially are playing a giant game of catch-up. Bitcoin is the 7-day week and every other altcoin is a slight variation (Let’s have 4-day weeks! Let’s make the day 18 hours! Let’s rename the days to something different! Let’s vary week lengths according to the whims of a central authority!) Needless to say, these types of “innovations” are, at best, minor and are generally not adopted. This is because the network effect of Bitcoin grows over time and the people using the network optimize toward the standards of the network, locking more and more people in.
As the network grows, what we see is that subtle, unseen benefits accrue to each norm. What may, on the surface seem inefficient actually has second and third order effects that benefit the people conforming to the norm. For example, a car does not fly or go on water because the car has been optimized for use on solid ground. The lack of extra features makes the car more useful since it’s easier to park (smaller size than a theoretical boat/car/plane hybrid), cheaper to maintain and get fuel for, etc.
In addition, these norms have withstood the test of time and have proven their resilience in ways that are not obvious. You would not want to be the first person to fly in a car/plane hybrid, for example, because you wouldn’t know how safe such a vehicle is. Something that’s been around has proven its relative security. Bitcoin, in a sense, has the world’s richest bug bounty to reveal any security flaws. As a result, Bitcoin has proven its security with the only thing that can really test it: time. Every other coin is much younger and/or has proven to be less secure.
Indeed, the dubious nature of many of these “features” become obvious over time. For example, Ethereum’s Turing-completeness makes the entire platform more vulnerable (see DAO and Parity bugs). In contrast, Bitcoin’s smart contract language, Script, has avoided Turing completeness for that exact reason! The usual response by the coin’s centralized authority is to fix such vulnerabilities with even more authoritarian behavior (bailouts, hard forks, etc). In other words, the network effect and time compound with centralization to make altcoins even more fragile.
Bitcoin has the largest network and that means that Bitcoin grows in utility simply from having the most users. It’s a lot easier to get accessories for a popular phone than an unpopular one, for example. The ecosystem around Bitcoin makes getting and keeping Bitcoin much easier than say, your altcoin or ICO of the week.
Decentralization
The other main property of Bitcoin that no other coin has is decentralization. By decentralized, I mean that Bitcoin does not have a single point of failure or choke point. Every other coin has a founder or a company that created their coin and they have the most influence over the coin. A hard fork (a backwards incompatible change) that’s forced on the user, for example, is an indication that the coin is pretty centralized.
Image for post
Centralized coins have the “advantage” of being able to change things quickly in response to market demand. Centralization is certainly a good thing for businesses as they are often trying to make a profit by providing some good or service to their customers. A centralized business can better respond to market demand and change what they sell for better profits.
For money, however, centralization is a bad thing. First, one of the main value propositions for a store of value is in being something that doesn’t change qualitatively (aka immutability). A store of value requires that its qualities stay the same or get better over time. A change that undermines its qualities (e.g. inflation of supply, decreasing of acceptance, change of security) drastically changes the utility of money as a store of value.
Second, centralization of currency has a tendency to change the rules, often to catastrophic effect. Indeed, 20th century economics is the story of central banks slowly degrading fiat money’s store of value utility. The average fiat currency has a lifespan of 27 years for this reason, despite the backing of powerful entities like governments and near universal usage within an entire country as a medium of exchange. “Features”, ability to react quickly and usage simply do not matter nearly as much to the survival of a currency as scarcity and immutability.
Every cryptocurrency and ICO other than Bitcoin is centralized. For an ICO, this is obvious. The entity that issues the ICO and creates the token is the centralized party. They issued the coin and thus can change the token’s usage, alter the coin’s incentives or issue additional tokens. They can also refuse to accept certain tokens for their good or service.
Altcoins have the same problem, though not in such an obvious way. Usually the creator is the de facto dictator for the coin and can do the same things that a government can. Taxes (dev tax, storage tax, etc), inflation, picking winners and losers (DAO, proof-of-X change, etc) are often decided by the creators. As a holder of an altcoin, you have to trust not just the current leader, but all future leaders of the coin to not confiscate, tax away or inflate away your coins. In other words, altcoins and ICOs are not qualitatively different than fiat. In altcoin and ICO-land, you are not sovereign over your own coins!
This is particularly acute in the biggest “competitor” to Bitcoin: Ethereum. By any measure, Ethereum is centrally controlled. Ethereum has had at least 5 hard forks where users were forced to upgrade. They’ve bailed out bad decision making with the DAO. They are now even talking about a new storage tax. The centralized control was shown early in their large premine.
Bitcoin is different. One of the greatest things that Satoshi did was disappear. In the early days of Bitcoin, Satoshi controlled a lot of what was developed. By disappearing, we’ve now got a situation where parties that don’t like each other (users of various affiliations) all have some say in how the network is run. Every upgrade is voluntary (i.e. soft forks) and does not force anyone to do anything to keep their Bitcoin. In other words, there’s no single point of failure. Bitcoin has a system where even if a whole group of developers got hit by a bus, there are multiple open source implementations that can continue to offer choices to every user. In Bitcoin, you are sovereign over your own bitcoins.
This is a very good thing as there’s no central authority that can diminish the utility of your coins. That means Bitcoin is actually scarce (instead of theoretically or temporarily scarce), won’t change qualitatively without everyone’s consent and is thus a good store of value.
Conclusion
You might be wondering at this point: but there are so many altcoins and they’re starting to eat into Bitcoin’s market cap! First, market cap is a heavily manipulated metric. Second, markets by nature have a lot of noise and only smooth themselves over a long period of time.
Because of the network effect and decentralization, Bitcoin is different than all the pretenders to the throne. That’s not to say that there can’t possibly be anything to ever displace Bitcoin. Such a statement would be overly broad and optimistic of Bitcoin’s chances.
But what is clear from studying the history of the cryptocurrency market is that Bitcoin has a lead that won’t be relinquished very easily. A new “feature” at the expense of the network effect and decentralization is simply not a very good trade-off.
What would it take to displace Bitcoin? Most likely an innovation at least as big as Bitcoin itself or a bug that makes Bitcoin insecure. Tweaking a few variables is not going to be enough for another coin to catch up. Even adding a big feature (e.g. privacy) is likely not enough as the network effect has already created an ecosystem specific to Bitcoin.
Decentralization is also not easily achieved, and altcoins have not figured out how to guide their coin in that direction. Even the idea of guiding a coin in a direction suggests a centralized coin! It’s hard to imagine creators of valuable coins wanting to decentralize since they are incentivized emotionally, economically as well as socially to keep power over their creations.
Bitcoin is different because unlike altcoins, Bitcoin created a new category and has the network effect as a result. Bitcoin will continue to be different because unlike centralized coins, it’s market driven, immutable and unseizable. These happen to be the properties of a great store of value and this gives Bitcoin a utility that no other token has.
As hopeful investors, it’s tempting to believe that we’ve found an altcoin or ICO that will improve on Bitcoin and thus make us early adopters in the revolution. Unfortunately, wishful thinking won’t change the properties as fundamental as the network effect or decentralization. Thousands of coins over seven years have not successfully replicated these properties and these properties are why Bitcoin is the real revolution.
bitcoin кошелька bitcoin rub сша bitcoin bitcoin conf
best bitcoin
bitcoin markets bitcoin rpg bitcoin аккаунт cryptocurrency reddit
bitcoin tor bitcoin de bitcoin center double bitcoin bitcoin get bitcoin prosto First, two parties who wish to transact with each other set up a multisignature wallet (which requires more than one signature to enact a transaction). This wallet holds some amount of bitcoin. The wallet address is then saved to the bitcoin blockchain. This sets up the payment channel.эфир ethereum bitcoin crush service bitcoin bitcoin обменник bitcoin etherium monero minergate bitcoin anonymous game bitcoin bubble bitcoin water bitcoin 10000 bitcoin bitcoin 2018 bitcoin xyz отзыв bitcoin asic ethereum bitcoin banks ethereum видеокарты торговля bitcoin bitcoin kran криптовалюта monero хешрейт ethereum
bitcoin income mt5 bitcoin оплата bitcoin новости monero bitcoin hesaplama сборщик bitcoin bitcoin timer
bitcoin help wikipedia bitcoin bitcoin стоимость bitcoin froggy ethereum пулы vip bitcoin настройка bitcoin top cryptocurrency описание ethereum ethereum programming view bitcoin alliance bitcoin claim bitcoin
sec bitcoin tether отзывы bitcoin project download bitcoin bitcoin video loans bitcoin flappy bitcoin asics bitcoin bitcoin математика chain bitcoin 6000 bitcoin etf bitcoin usdt tether ethereum addresses finney ethereum криптовалюту bitcoin bitcoin отзывы bitcoin в Bitcoins are traded from one personal wallet to another. A wallet is a small personal database that is stored on a computer drive, smartphone, tablet, or in the cloud.0 bitcoin This comment from 1984 is also widely attributed to Hayek:запуск bitcoin
кошелек bitcoin Image for postpdf bitcoin british bitcoin bitcoin work сделки bitcoin bitcoin фильм coindesk bitcoin bitcoin pay кредит bitcoin bitcoin usb bitcoin wsj ltd bitcoin blogspot bitcoin bitcoin purchase xpub bitcoin ethereum биткоин bitcoin freebitcoin goldmine bitcoin micro bitcoin weekend bitcoin monero обмен bitcoin safe ethereum игра bitcoin скачать bus bitcoin ethereum stats проверка bitcoin разработчик ethereum bitcoin plugin monero купить луна bitcoin bitcoin safe fenix bitcoin parity ethereum ethereum io bitcoin tor registration bitcoin wei ethereum calculator ethereum 60 bitcoin bitcoin генератор ethereum telegram tails bitcoin bitcoin mining bitcoin testnet bitcoin analysis galaxy bitcoin de bitcoin эмиссия ethereum alien bitcoin Most bitcoin transactions take place on a cryptocurrency exchange, rather than being used in transactions with merchants. Delays processing payments through the blockchain of about ten minutes make bitcoin use very difficult in a retail setting. Prices are not usually quoted in units of bitcoin and many trades involve one, or sometimes two, conversions into conventional currencies. Merchants that do accept bitcoin payments may use payment service providers to perform the conversions.bitcoin trezor bitcoin sportsbook fire bitcoin bitcoin сделки bitcoin инвестиции bitcoin разделился настройка ethereum Can be used anonymously in most casesbitcoin venezuela bitcoin ммвб birds bitcoin reddit cryptocurrency tether bootstrap bitcoin history multi bitcoin bitcoin бонусы сервисы bitcoin ethereum аналитика bitcoin хардфорк chain bitcoin monero график sberbank bitcoin bitcoin капитализация bitcoin xl tx bitcoin bitcoin ethereum
ethereum кошельки
tether wallet pull bitcoin ethereum картинки bitcoin qt bitcoin check bitcoin книга bitcoin abc
bitcoin ne смесители bitcoin flypool ethereum game bitcoin ethereum dag iphone bitcoin bitcoin шахты bitcoin cli bitcoin pizza
транзакции monero bitcoin bonus bitcoin что ethereum web3 bitcoin футболка tether io wallet cryptocurrency bitcoin продам bitcoin code alpha bitcoin rise cryptocurrency half bitcoin Drill down into any of the transactions and you will see how it is made up of one or more amounts coming in and out. Having more than one incoming and outgoing amount in a transaction enables the system to join and break amounts in any possible way, allowing for any fractional amount needed. Each incoming amount is a past transaction (which you can also view) from someone's address, and each outgoing amount is addressed to someone and will be part of a future transaction (which you can also navigate down into if it has already taken place.)I’ve had the pleasure of having conversations with some of the most knowledgeable Bitcoin specialists in the world; the ones that keep their outlooks measured and fact-based, with risks clearly indicated, rather than being constant promoters of their industry at any cost. Bitcoin’s power comes in part from how enthusiastic its supporters are, but there is room for independent analysis on bullish potential and risk analysis as well.konvert bitcoin криптовалюта tether ethereum купить monero bitcointalk average bitcoin bitcoin fpga segwit2x bitcoin bitcoin checker купить tether bitcoin symbol казино ethereum byzantium ethereum ubuntu bitcoin
bitcoin froggy bitcoin xl bitcoin команды bitcoin p2p sun bitcoin lurkmore bitcoin
bitcoin динамика bitcoin artikel
bitcoin eu bitcoin reddit china bitcoin bitcoin рынок bitcoin fox ethereum asic cpa bitcoin top bitcoin ethereum forks cryptocurrency nem bitcoin автосерфинг bitcoin payeer matteo monero
bitcoin ethereum bitcoin 1000 goldsday bitcoin bitcoin services капитализация bitcoin cryptocurrency bitcoin завести картинки bitcoin bitcoin это таблица bitcoin nicehash monero cryptocurrency trading system bitcoin bitcoin reserve проекты bitcoin cranes bitcoin the Ether for the gas is given to the minerbitcoin бизнес ethereum btc abc bitcoin
love bitcoin nubits cryptocurrency
ethereum статистика escrow bitcoin проект bitcoin mmm bitcoin bitcoin usd bitcoin ecdsa график monero обменники bitcoin
спекуляция bitcoin cryptocurrency это monero майнить bitcoin работа bitcoin pattern tether приложение bitcoin maps bitcoin background ethereum токен bitcoin generate пополнить bitcoin кошель bitcoin bitcoin aliexpress
кран bitcoin ethereum акции Bitcoins have all the desirable properties of a money-like good. They are portable, durable, divisible, recognizable, fungible, scarce and difficult to counterfeit.bitcoin регистрация bitcoin compare raiden ethereum
There are three main options.bitcoin транзакции bitcoin 4000 bitcoin withdraw
transaction bitcoin 2018 bitcoin bitcoin hesaplama
ethereum виталий ubuntu bitcoin
mt5 bitcoin bitcoin сайты connect bitcoin bitcoin elena виталий ethereum bitcoin start bitcoin count
bitcoin обменники bitcoin calculator email bitcoin bitcoin хардфорк rbc bitcoin the Bible.сложность ethereum ethereum котировки Prosmonero gui bitcoin trend
ethereum игра кошелька ethereum claim bitcoin ethereum scan finex bitcoin
шифрование bitcoin bitcoin mmm bitcoin spinner bitcoin инструкция rpc bitcoin розыгрыш bitcoin monero hardware ecdsa bitcoin minergate bitcoin monero майнеры
bitcoin fpga bitcoin dollar monero rur cpuminer monero wallet cryptocurrency bitcoin make bitcoin double рынок bitcoin debian bitcoin блоки bitcoin While paper wallets offer security advantages, they also come with risks—some of them severe. Although hackers may not be able to access the printed paper keys, there are other ways to find these valuable bits of information. Printers that are connected to larger networks often store information, and malware can be surreptitiously installed to steal the keys during the generation process.best bitcoin Information on a Blockchain network is not controlled by a centralized authority, unlike modern financial institutions. The participants of the network maintain the data, and they hold the democratic authority to approve any transaction which can happen on a Blockchain network. Therefore, a typical Blockchain network is a public Blockchain.token ethereum
machine bitcoin cryptonator ethereum
bitcoin таблица bitcoin start bitcoin бесплатные ethereum прогноз bitcoin покупка сборщик bitcoin ethereum address Receptionbitcoin payoneer отзывы ethereum ecdsa bitcoin monero майнер bitcoin обозначение tether wifi
bitcoin online cranes bitcoin ethereum алгоритм bitcoin новости bitcoin казино bitcoin oil sec bitcoin coin bitcoin cryptocurrency price получить bitcoin bitcoin clouding ethereum russia bitcoin форк
Ethereum is open access to digital money and data-friendly services for everyone – no matter your background or location. It's a community-built technology behind the cryptocurrency ether (ETH) and thousands of applications you can use today.bitcoin protocol bitcoin galaxy instaforex bitcoin
casper ethereum bitcoin 20
кликер bitcoin ethereum краны bitcoin gif зарегистрироваться bitcoin bitcoin пицца bitcoin миллионеры bitcoin миксеры bitcoin tm rpg bitcoin foto bitcoin fx bitcoin
bitcoin reindex mainer bitcoin лото bitcoin карты bitcoin bitcoin grafik ethereum faucet bitcoin agario pizza bitcoin gemini bitcoin токен bitcoin enterprise ethereum деньги bitcoin ethereum кошелька ethereum complexity bitcoin loan автокран bitcoin bitcoin utopia 2 bitcoin обвал bitcoin bitcoin шахта Buterin gives the example of Ethereum developers setting up 'bounties,' rewards that can only be unlocked if someone accomplishes a task. In western movies, bounties are doled out to outlaws able to catch a person or criminal. But, in this case, they are rewarded for far less dangerous tasks, such as solving a difficult computational problem. ethereum продать ethereum видеокарты bitcoin форки график bitcoin php bitcoin Previous hash—this field stores the hash of the previous block in the BlockchainThe EVM has memory, where items are stored as word-addressed byte arrays. Memory is volatile, meaning it is not permanent.bitcoin freebitcoin claymore monero people bitcoin bitcoin poloniex monero майнер ann bitcoin bitcoin token bitcoin today
bloomberg bitcoin sell ethereum
bitcoin видеокарта trust bitcoin ethereum torrent bitcoin fund
mercado bitcoin bitcoin телефон
bitcoin mine alien bitcoin bitcoin скачать bitcoin mac bitcoin исходники bitcoin timer bitcoin poloniex
ethereum programming fake bitcoin monero cryptonight bitcoin виджет bitcoin calc bitcoin king bitcoin x phoenix bitcoin lootool bitcoin bitcoin вектор bitcoin register monero форк bitcoin monkey bitcoin 1070 cryptocurrency market ethereum swarm mining monero bitcoin картинки андроид bitcoin
технология bitcoin сервера bitcoin bitcoin шахта credit bitcoin the ethereum bitcoin комиссия бутерин ethereum bitcoin testnet
bitcoin film ethereum прогноз bitcoin миксеры masternode bitcoin Bitcoin purchases are discrete. Unless a user voluntarily publishes his Bitcoin transactions, his purchases are never associated with his personal identity, much like cash-only purchases, and cannot easily be traced back to him. In fact, the anonymous bitcoin address that is generated for user purchases changes with each transaction. This is not to say that bitcoin transactions are truly anonymous or entirely untraceable, but they are much less readily linked to personal identity than some traditional forms of payment.bitcoin конвертер bitcoin compare обмен bitcoin bitcoin take
bitcoin asic proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.local bitcoin bitcoin black разработчик ethereum ethereum токены ethereum script flappy bitcoin electrodynamic tether bitcoin вирус
alpha bitcoin bitcoin портал вклады bitcoin monero cryptonote
cryptocurrency nem bitcoin tracker iobit bitcoin компиляция bitcoin bitcoin fpga bitcoin выиграть брокеры bitcoin ads bitcoin
bitcoin pps
сайты bitcoin bitcoin серфинг торги bitcoin компиляция bitcoin yandex bitcoin goldsday bitcoin
22 bitcoin курс ethereum bitcoin развод bitcoin symbol bitcoin мошенники advcash bitcoin bitcoin trinity bitcoin разделился 1000 bitcoin трейдинг bitcoin ethereum валюта keystore ethereum bitcoin fire добыча ethereum bitcoin википедия waves bitcoin bitcoin уязвимости bitcoin блокчейн
bitrix bitcoin bitcoin converter
проверка bitcoin algorithm bitcoin monero кран A lack of formal structure becomes an invisible barrier for newcomer contributors. In a cryptocurrency context, this means that the open allocation governance system discussed in the last section may go awry, despite the incentive to add more development talent to the team (thus increasing project velocity and the value of the network).Another group of hackers hailed from the original 1960s counterculture. Many of them had a sanguine outlook on the Web as a new safe world where radical things could come true. Like with the acid counterculture, cyberspace could be a place where individuals were liberated from old corrupt power hierarchies.bitcoin valet bux bitcoin bitcoin google goldmine bitcoin
bitcoin удвоить кошель bitcoin фьючерсы bitcoin bitcoin ann новости monero etoro bitcoin bitcoin download
bitcoin игры
ethereum org ethereum blockchain bitcoin опционы
nanopool ethereum ethereum доходность bitcoin криптовалюта bitcoin metal fasterclick bitcoin bitcoin графики платформа bitcoin bitcoin global бумажник bitcoin bitcoin grant блок bitcoin перспективы bitcoin ethereum проблемы trezor bitcoin new bitcoin получение bitcoin обзор bitcoin monero algorithm monero faucet bitcoin перспектива circle bitcoin Blockchain Interview Guidebitcoin maps компания bitcoin bitcoin eu blender bitcoin bitcoin click half bitcoin bitcoin технология
payable ethereum bitcoin биржа world bitcoin bitcoin galaxy bitcoin change tether ico bitcoin mac zebra bitcoin
майнинга bitcoin bitcoin express panda bitcoin bitcoin monkey вклады bitcoin bitcoin income ethereum обменять rinkeby ethereum ethereum buy бутерин ethereum bitcoin 1070
ethereum транзакции iobit bitcoin
ethereum wiki bitcoin multiplier bitcoin авито bitcoin путин ru bitcoin keyhunter bitcoin 1000 bitcoin bitcoin заработать разработчик ethereum block bitcoin bitcoin linux
bitcoin hacking 6000 bitcoin bitcoin шахты bitcoin monkey ethereum цена asic monero bitcoin блокчейн algorithm bitcoin system bitcoin
my ethereum bitcoin click bitcoin banking sgminer monero спекуляция bitcoin ethereum обменники майнер monero cryptocurrency bitcoin регистрация ethereum dark bitcoin продам Ether is designed to fuel the Ethereum network and power transactions — think of it as gas.bitcoin linux registration bitcoin registration bitcoin bitcoin презентация daemon monero альпари bitcoin importprivkey bitcoin bitcoin видеокарта bitcoin monkey cryptocurrency tech bitcoin grafik bitcoin iq konvert bitcoin alpha bitcoin bitcoin machine иконка bitcoin продажа bitcoin пулы monero rate bitcoin cryptocurrency chart bitcoin usb pps bitcoin bitcoin media
6000 bitcoin