[tonysuper]

Until somebody invents a quantum computer with a sufficiently large number of Qbits. Then they can completely destroy the blockchain.

Alternatively, wait a few hundred years until you need several hundred terabytes to store the blockchain, which is required for transactions. That's going to be a problem.

Or you could switch to Bitcoin before realizing that currencies which deflate in value are a terrible idea.

(For the record, I support cryptocurrency. I just think Bitcoin has too many issues to be viable long-term. Nice proof of concept, but it needs to be refined).

[celticninja]

>Until somebody invents a quantum computer with a sufficiently large number of Qbits. Then they can completely destroy the blockchain.

That wont be developed overnight, by the time it is a possibility people will be working on solutions. a quantum computer would impact a lot more than bitcoin, all cryptography would become useless.

>Alternatively, wait a few hundred years until you need several hundred terabytes to store the blockchain, which is required for transactions. That's going to be a problem.

With the cost of storage rapidly reducing then that probably wont be an issue in a few hundred years.

>Or you could switch to Bitcoin before realizing that currencies which deflate in value are a terrible idea.

Currencies that inflate have had their share of problems and we certainly have not found a way to solve those problems or the issue of inflation/hyper-inflation. Any problems with delfationary currencies (which you do not detail) are merely hypothetical as no real deflationary currency has existed before.

[tonysuper]

Deflationary currencies reward saving over spending. Aka, you can just sit on your money and it increases in value.

That's really bad for an economy.

My ideal cryptocurrency would constantly "leak" money, trying to maintain a 0.1% or so inflation rate a year, to prevent this problem.

[celticninja]

>Deflationary currencies reward saving over spending. Aka, you can just sit on your money and it increases in value.

>That's really bad for an economy.

The economy is hardly in brilliant shape right now. This process of Boom/Bust has been running for the last century or so and they still cannot control it (or properly understand it) and they have had a lot of time to try and master fiat currency, controls, regulation etc. You say that people saving is bad for an economy, but that implies that the only good thing for an economy is constant spending and growth. That is bad for an economy, the belief that only through constant growth can the economy work. At somepoint there is a plateau, the planet cannot support an infinite number of people, at some point the world economy will stop growing. according to current thinking that may as well indicate the end of the economic world as we know it.

It is time to try something new, it may go against what most people believe but it cannot be any worse than the current situation which is not working as evidenced by the economic slump of recent years.

[Pr0methean]

Instead of leaking money, why not just let the total number of coins keep increasing exponentially indefinitely?

[evanb]

| Alternatively, wait a few hundred years until you need several hundred terabytes to store the blockchain, which is required for transactions. That's going to be a problem.

It seems more likely to me that in a few hundred years, several hundred terabytes will come in your mobile implant than for hundreds of terabytes to be a storage problem.

[tonysuper]

There is a limit on information to area in space. Eventually, bitcoin is going to be impractical to store even if you have a very large storage device at absolute maximum capacity.

[celticninja]

bitcoin will not be impractical to store, the blockchain maybe, but clients like electrum allow you to store bitcoin without the blockchain.

[Pr0methean]

The blockchain length is only growing linearly with time, but that's because it can only process O(1) transactions per hour. It'd be growing exponentially if either the monetary velocity or the size of the real economy was growing exponentially.