[sowbug]

Speak for yourself. We do.

It took a while for 28.8K modems to catch up with bandwidth needs, and that's part of the reason people thought the internet sucked and was a joke compared to all its promises. I think even today people snort about pets.com as the poster child of the dot-com boom. Then their Amazon Pantry order arrives, which they consume without irony.

[paulgb]

If your analogy is that Bitcoin is a 28.8k modem, then it seems to follow that something analogous to a 56k modem will come along and replace it?

[sowbug]

Maybe. Or the modem is part of Bitcoin's infrastructure that needs to be replaced. Bitcoin's architecture is reasonably modular, so that is a possible outcome.

I can't read tea leaves better than anyone else, but I do agree with Hal Finney's Bitcoin-or-bust observation. If another cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin takes hold, it's likely that all cryptocurrencies will fail. This is because the scarcity argument proves false -- yes, any individual currency is perfectly scarce, but technological improvements in newer currencies will effectively inflate the entire ecosystem and devalue existing currencies.

That's the weak version of the prediction. The stronger version is that those already in the ecosystem (and thus who have an interest in preserving existing wealth) will see the weak version of the prediction, conclude it's undesirable, and try to prevent it from coming true. Thus they will integrate technological improvements into Bitcoin rather than supporting a separate chain.

The question is whether there is enough momentum already behind Bitcoin to support the strong version of the Finney theory. I think there is; Bitcoin supporters will eventually address its technological weaknesses, and future improvements in cryptocurrency will be implemented in terms of Bitcoin rather than by forking the ecosystem.

You might disagree, and maybe you're right. Maybe Bitcoin is just the modem. Maybe it's the internet. I'm betting it's the internet.

[paulgb]

Fair enough, that's a more nuanced reply than I expected and I appreciate it.

[sowbug]

Best of luck, whatever you do and believe.