Dearie me! You do have to spell things out on the internet.
I meant things that are metallic, heavy, malleable, non corruptible, glitter and basically very attractive to the human senses (like gold).
Who are you, God? (and we'll get to that in a second
). He said it was a commodity - and he's quite right to say that. The comparison is completely valid. As for a list of precious metals, here you go -> Iridium, rhenium, ruthenium, palladium, osmium, platinum and silver.
You say there are 10,000 copycats. Of all of the other crypto projects only a handful pursue the use case that Bitcoin has cornered. They're entirely different (akin to the difference between garden variety commodities and precious metal-based commodities). So now we're down to a comparison between Bitcoin and maybe 5 or 6 other projects. Relative to Bitcoin, they've lost that race - and have been losing ground consistently to it.
I've told you before - you can go out and copy the Bitcoin codebase tomorrow and spin up MarmaladeCoin as a direct clone. And yet before we even consider network effect, it will be inferior. The Bitcoin blockchain is the most secure network out there. Spin up MarmaladeCoin and it can be undone from a security point of view. Bitcoin had the luxury back in 2009/10 - to slowly develop. It could have been taken down - but nobody cared about it. Now that it's of scale as a network, it can't be torn down. Lets consider that somehow MarmaladeCoin manages to muster a bit of interest - and starts to hold a bit of value. The minute it starts to accumulate a bit of value, it will be attacked and compromised.
I am open to the possibility of Bitcoin being usurped - but the chances of it happening are highly unlikely - although I'll keep that under ongoing revision as it's the healthy thing to do.
The only way I can foresee Bitcoin being usurped in the role its serving is by a blockchain network that offers 10x improvement. Back in 2016/17, there were a whole host of projects that said 'we're better'. At first glance, they may have improved on one aspect. But upon further inspection, they were then found to be lacking in so many other areas. Everything comes with tradeoffs. So then what's left is consideration of a brand new project that is somehow going to blow it out of the water. For it to get the upper hand on Bitcoin's network effect at this point, it will have to improve upon it 10x .
You spinning up MarmaladeCoin would be akin to someone leaving Facebook/Google with all the IP - copying those businesses precisely - but its not reasonable to expect that they can be usurped without a challenger being 10x better.
Well I've seen enough parallels even on this thread alone so I somewhat fail to be surprised by this.
It is all about the 'belief' innit !?
The People Who Are Finding God Through, and in, Bitcoin
I'm glad someone has written some clickbait that satisfies your cognitive bias such that you believe that anyone who is enthusiastic about Bitcoin belongs to the extreme examples that they managed to find and feature in this article.
And
@tecate accuses me of being insulting in calling it a cult.
Damn right I do - and I will continue to do so - because the accusation stands. This is the way with everything claimed in the naysayer camp vis-a-vis Bitcoin. Take the most extreme examples and then tar and feather everyone that is in anyway associated with either Bitcoin or crypto on that basis. We had precisely the same nonsense when someone posted up that Guardian article of some drink and coke addict that engaged in latent gambling on poocoins with no idea of what he was trading.
There are thought to be 180 million Bitcoin users or wallet holders globally right now. Imagine you've now taken some clickbait story about some clowns that have a Christian Bitcoin church or some nonsense (if anyone has ever spent any time in the US, we know that there are oddball 'Christian' groups for all sorts of nonsense ...Christian gun owners, and all sorts of clownery). Now you take this nonsense and very conveniently tar and feather anyone associated with the space on that basis. There are degenerates associated with this space but what won't suit your narrative is to admit that there are incredibly intelligent people working in it or implicated in it - to some degree or other. That doesn't make everyone 'religious' and it doesn't make them 'cultists'.
I have always said that I am open to the notion that Bitcoin could fail. There's no way that I could hold that view if this was a case of blind faith. Meanwhile, yourself and
@Brendan Burgess refuse to acknowledge even the outside chance that you could be wrong and that Bitcoin continues to develop. There's every reason that will come back to haunt you. As I mentioned before, there is nothing wrong with being wrong. In fact, we should expect to be wrong all the time. It's entirely normal. However, to express views in absolute form with no consideration (however unlikely) that you could be wrong lacks intelligence and smacks of arrogance.
I could cite a long list of examples Duke of people you have classed as 'cultists' who have little in reality to do with the Bitcoin space - but to qualify them for that tar and feathering, all that was necessary was for them to have said something supportive of Bitcoin. But keep it up, other than calling it what it is, I don't mind - because I've known from the outset that your objection to Bitcoin isn't pragmatic - it's ideological.
