Consider the concept that a decentralized public currency should be platform independent and controlled by its owners, not its current hardware or software suppliers.
That case is beginning to be made as Bitcoin factions consider the increasingly popular "nuclear option" of forking Bitcoin to get their way over some incremental upgrade or another. Here's a particularly articulate case for BCC:
Government Sponsored Segwit is Dead on Arrival
In a soundbyte their argument goes like this:
What was needed was multiple implementations of bitcoin, so that we could move away from the now bought-out Bitcoin Core team (BlockstreamCore). Bitcoin-ABC was born. Bitcoin-ABC allows for unlimited blocksizes, and has stripped out Segwit from the code. On Aug 1, Bitcoin-ABC miners and users will fork off onto their own chain, regardless of hashpower. You can keep track of it here: www.btcforkmonitor.info
So far, in a poll that can't be sybil attacked, actual Bitcoin users strongly favor bigger block bitcoin over govt/corp Segwit coin:
Valid rationale. But once you embrace that philosophy, you open Bitcoin to much more beneficial upgrade like this:
BTC-U (Fast Bitcoin) Offers 3 Second Confirmations and Massive Throughput
Don't doubt me. Fast Bitcoin (BTC-U) aka (BTC.BTS) will run on BitShares DPOS platform instead of the aging Bitcoin POW platform and its light speed performance is well established -- holding recurring records for most transactions processed per day over old Bitcoin and new Ethereum combined. Next year the BitShares platform will probably upgrade to run on the EOS.io blockchain operating system. See the obvious trend?
But how big of an upgrade should be allowed and still call it Bitcoin?
Can I do a "pitch fork" and chuck the whole thing all at once?
What if I do that same upgrade in 100 baby steps? Then can I call it Bitcoin?
What if I get one of the existing miners to do it in 1000 baby steps?
What if I get the girlfriend of an ex-developer's uncle to do it?
Who exactly has the right to upgrade Bitcoin?
We quickly come to the realization that anyone has the right to upgrade a decentralized blockchain... if they can get a consensus behind them.
In the end, its a consensus of the people who buy and use your product isn't it? Bitcoin owners, not miners or developers or industry analysts.
Platform Independence is hardly a new idea. We have it at the hardware and software levels.
BitShares has already jumped platforms twice with a quantum leap in performance each time. It will probably be jumping to EOS.io next year -- without skipping a beat or changing its essential character or ownership of its tokens.
Will Bitcoin still be running the same hardware and software 100 years from now? If not, why can't we completely change its software AND hardware on August 1st?
The genie is already out of the bottle.
Arguments about tiny incremental changes have already opened to door.
It's going to happen sooner or later.
Maybe we should call our proposed Fast Bitcoin (BTC-U) aka (BTC.BTS)
"Bitcoin Unchained"
Nah. Bitcoin United. We want there to always be just one Bitcoin. The best it can be.
To be continued in: Doc Brown's Multiple Bitcoins Theory
Stan Larimer, President
Cryptonomex
The Godfather of BitShares, Fast Bitcoin, and the HERO
Image credits: see embedded links
About the Author -- Stan Larimer
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Greatest Hits
Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics
Engineering Trust with Charles Hoskinson
The Origin of BitShares
The Hero from BitShares Island
Hey, this is actually a pretty serious issue: What is your plan to get exchanges on board? Practically speaking, we wouldn't have Ethereum Classic if Poloniex hadn't listed it. How friendly are you with the folks at Polo? They and the other exchanges will be sitting on a boatload of BTC at the time of the hard fork, and if they let their customers redeem their BTCU, you'll have a coin. Otherwise, it's not clear what you'll get.
This is a good analysis. But there is another factor:
We will be training a massive wave of new, uninitiated mainstream people through our Billion Hero Challenge about the difference between the origins and utility of Fast Bitcoin (BTC-U) and the two Slow Bitcoins. It is they who will tip the scales over time because very few of these new mainstream users will see the need to use either of the two slow implementations.
Meanwhile, we will be explaining this reality to speculators inside the industry who may want to hedge their bets and buy them up cheap before we teach a billion new people about them.
Once this reality sinks in, the exchanges are businesses who are interested in any large exchange of tokens, regardless of their relative prices or philosophical underpinnings.
The Billion Hero Challenge completely changes the value proposition of Fast Bitcoin (BTC-U) as a speculative opportunity.
It may, in fact, be optimum for the exchanges to ignore it for a while giving the BitShares DEX and exclusive market and keeping massive amounts of Fast Bitcoin off the market until its value perception is established.
Fair enough. In any case, I think it's clever to make this happen exactly at the moment that bitcoin forks. It somehow gives BTC-U a bit of legitimacy that it otherwise would never have.
Stan, PR is the real problem here. People just don't know that they can put their retirement money into a plan NOW, TODAY, that will act as a balanced investment portfolio. I have been playing with the Bitshares DEX and the smartcoins. It is just sheer genius, that someone can take a previously volatile, risky asset (bitcoin) and transfer it over to an exchange that will shelter it. There is enough volume now on bitshares to back a whole lot of the artificial coins, and with more users, more market makers will back the heroes and bitSILVERS and bitGOLDS. The markets will become rock solid. No more danger of collapse. True decentralization & immense confidence. This next year might see a full-on collapse of the fiat banking system, and an unstoppable rise in the quality cryptos. Bitshares is definately one of them. Keep at it.
A sharedrop is the best kind of pr, look at peerplays sharedropping 5% on BTS which brought users to ppy from bts. The sharedrop may recruit each btc holder to the bts dex which is not an insignificant number, without giving away a core asset.
I have always appreciated being on the receiving end of a sharedrop, but I've come to suspect that they're not quite as effective as you'd hope. Were you around in the early days of bitshares? We were totally out-of-our-minds sharedrop crazy back then, and they almost never ended up working as well as we'd hoped.
Yeah, past sharedrops have been somewhat lackluster however this is a 1-to-1 100% sharedrop, not 5%.
I'll be very interested to see how it goes, to be sure. As I replied elsewhere to Stan, I think its success will probably partially hang on how many exchanges they can get involved. If they could convince Polo to honor the sharedrop then it would have a bit of staying power.
Polo isn't exactly the best exchange, it's centralized and potentially insolvent (rumour).
Sure, but what exchange isn't centralized and potentially insolvent? Even OpenLedger has centralized wallets, even if their order book isn't.
"Fast Bitcoin as a type of ICO where we give away the coins to bitcoin owners and then buy them back from those who don't know what they've got." - Stan Larimer
@stan I'm all for the platform independent aspect of this. It will be interesting to find out who will be first to implement the EOS.io blockchain. It seems clear bitshares will be a very early adopter. Is EOS going to spin off a blockchain implementer?
Good question!
I like bitshares I own as much as I can afford! So basically, I believe in it!! I'm going to buy EOS as well!!
Brilliant Stan. Always thinking in futures. Sounds good to me, ""Fast Bitcoin as a type of ICO where we give away the coins to bitcoin owners and then buy them back from those who don't know what they've got." - Stan Larimer
Hi @stan I am still slightly confused. Would BTC-U be considered a hard fork of bitcoin? What would happen the BTC that I exchange for BTC-U? Would my BTC-U be backed by BTC or BTS? Is this essentially a smart contract on the BTS blockchain called BTC-U?
Yes it would be a hard fork (actually a pitch fork since we pitch all of Bitcoin's old hardware and software and move to a new platform.) You still keep all your old Slow Bitcoin tokens and you get bright shiny new Fast Bitcoin tokens as well. Both are backed only by market demand.
Perhaps the phrase 'hard fork' is too negatively perceived currently in the Bitcoin space (especially in the /r/bitcoin sub), a hard fork sounds like BTC-U proposes to meddle in Bitcoin's currently established mining consensus mechanism, where as in fact it operates entirely outwith the traditional Bitcoin ecosystem in a secure and inexpensive manner.
How about a different/additional visualization for explaining the snapshot/sharedrop?
The Bitshares starship drops out of hyperspace in planet Bitcoin's orbit, the crust is collapsing into itself as the various militarized mining corporations have bored the planet hollow to the detriment of their species. We stretch our transporter to maximum capacity and make a backup of every Bitcoin inhabitant on our starship just as the planet is destroyed. The Bitcoin species will live on, riding the Bitshares starship off into the cosmos!
That IS good! Great story line! Somebody please make an animated 5 minute short based on this, and get it into the hands of Stan & FromZeroToHero NOW!
Also, BTC isn't technically a pitch-fork either, as the old chain isn't necessarily destroyed as it was in the case of BitSharesX-->BitShares2.0 Even then it wasn't a foregone conclusion but did turn out that way.
If anyone wants to go ahead and create a short video/animation with this idea go ahead, full permission granted.
LOVE it!
I see thanks.
So will my old BTC be held as collateral in a similar way to bts/heros?
Surely it could not be as easy as own bitcoin and you will get free BTC-U.
No, this BTC-U token isn't a proposed 'Market pegged asset' like hero is, BTC-U would be an 'user issued asset' which would be sharedropped against existing BTC holders.
Yep, it's as simple as holding your BTC in a wallet where you control the keys (during the snapshot period) then importing your keys into the Bitshares wallet at a later date when the sharedrop has been performed & you'll be able to access your BTC-U tokens.
Perfect response.
I am realizing more and more that this fork is actually a great thing for investors. Getting free alts out of thin air :)
BCC futures already trading at $400 with an ATH of $800 or so.
That's it. A free coin drop on all bitcoin holders (who have their keys locally, not on an exchange) or the exchange will get them.
Do you know, that real bitcoin is also backed by the cost of its creation - which is big? How does it compare to BTC-U?
That is a myth. BTC is backed ONLY by demand for it. If there is no demand, it has zero value no matter what it cost to create.
They are literally wasting hundreds of millions on electricity that could go into funding useful work. Think of that!
Miners won't sell at 0 value if the cost is much higher. Anyway, market will verify if BTC-U has anything to do with real Bitcoin.
By the way, other are also trying to make money on naming their alt-coin Bitcoin.
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@cardboard/bitcoin-segwit2x-update-war-incoming
I'm sorry, but it's hard to take this serious. Call it as you want but it has nothing to do with Bitcoin. Price will tell anyway. Best of luck.
It is a complete reimplementation of Bitcoin, and it will BE Bitcoin if it gets acceptance. Since it is far better than Bitcoin in all twelve ways and since we have a billion dollar promotional campaign on tap for the next 18 months, we think we have a chance.
It will have an identical distribution to Bitcoin at the time of the snapshot, so it's certainly related to Bitcoin in that anyone that owns Bitcoin will also be eligible to own BTC-U, somewhat similar to byteball but in a more decentralized fashion and on a far greater distribution scale.
Wow 😳! It's very interesting post and blog! Good luck friend!!
Good and informative post
... some great points & proposals, and the "Bitcoin Unchained" has a nice ring to it!
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You would help me with a vote in my post., Thanks !!! ;)
Quality stuff. Keep up the good work!
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STOPAll these versions of "Bitcoin" are certainly getting to be tough to keep track of. The market's going to have quite a buffet to choose from. Hard to complain about a free drop though.
I got some more details about BTC soft & hard fork.. thanks.
These are too technical to me. Hope someone will break it down for people like us.
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Good
Our subjects are related. Thanks if you can follow me
Another point to consider is the vendor side of the equation. There are zillions of merchants that currently accept BTC, but I seriously doubt a significant number of them will start accepting BTC-U for some time to come.
Graphene is not an easy technology to quickly get up to speed on, and there aren't nearly as many tech-heads that are familiar with it as are BTC and it's similar derivatives.
There are few tools to help with integration, no shopping carts or web authentication tools. Steem was wise to address this shortcoming and thus it has on-boarded many devs and tool makers.
So as much in favor of BTC-U as I am, and as genius of an idea that it is, I believe it will take a big effort to convince BTC users to use BTC-U until (or if) the merchants do.
BTW, why are all the graphene chains on ShapeShift unavailable? If any dev team should have the chops to handle a wide range of altcoins it should be them.
ShapeShift is down for maintenance at the moment but the last time I checked bitshares was still listed there.
best job #BitCoin
That's a bold concept but I mean, isn't this gonna happen anyway? Coins are coming out every day, some of them are going to do better than others because they'll be better adapted to new technological and political realities. Pre-existing coins that can't adapt ... won't. Those that can, will.
All of this is mitigated by network effect which cause old stuff to dominate a lot longer than it should. But once bitcoin agreed that it's ok to have two slightly different version, why not give them one more version that leap over the next 9 hard forks over the coming decade? A fork in time saves nine.
sorry for the noob-ness but did this actually happen? was bitcoin united or hero or whats it called launched on bitshares?
The snapshot was taken on August 1. Now working on getting approvals from BitShares shareholders and finding the right devs to Free the Fast Bitcoins!
happy to hear that! so does that mean all holders bitshares of bitcoin at the time of the snapshot get the equivalent of Free the Fast Bitcoins? i had bitcoin at the time but transferred it yesterday (: also is there an estimate time frame for dev?
thank you & thank you
All bitcoin holders on Aug 1 get BTCX just like BTH... if we get BitShares community support to free them.
thank you @stan, thought that's what it meant. i hope you get that support and given your credentials it's unlikely you won't (:
i'm pretty new in the blockchain world and have much to learn but i'm already a big fan of dan larimer, have enormous respect for the dude but had no idea he had such a cool dad (if i got this right, did i??)
i'm working on a portrait of dan and now i'm thinking i should do you too haha. its just that there aren't a lot of clear pictures of you guys going around (:
anyways, check it out if you like https://steemit.com/art/@misu/bdan-larimer-charcoalb-part-ii
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And if anyone followed me i will follow him
Thanks